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by Perrot, Georges; Chipiez, Charles
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In: History - Ancient·Art·Archaeology & Anthropology
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #28072.
The work is a scholarly survey of the art and archaeology of ancient Chaldæa and Assyria, written by the French scholars Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez. It opens with a dense series of footnote‑style references to the excavations of Layard, the linguistic studies of Oppert, and the recent cuneiform publications of Maspero and Lenormant, establishing the foundation of modern knowledge about Mesopotamian inscriptions. From these citations the authors launch into a critical overview of how earlier mythic histories, filled with figures such as Ninus, Semiramis, and the biblical Daniel, have been supplanted by concrete archaeological evidence, allowing a “skeleton” of chronology to be drawn for the two thousand years of Babylonian and Assyrian development. The introduction therefore sets the stage for a detailed examination of monuments, seals, and city foundations, while constantly reminding the reader of the ever‑advancing state of decipherment that underpins the narrative.
The prose reflects the late‑nineteenth‑century French academic tradition: a formal, erudite voice that interweaves extensive citation, comparative mythology, and meticulous description of artifacts. Its style is dense, with long sentences and a penchant for exhaustive qualifiers, mirroring the period’s confidence in philology and archaeology. Readers who relish rigorous historical analysis, particularly students of ancient Near Eastern art, historians of archaeology, or collectors interested in the evolution of cuneiform studies, will find this volume rewarding. Those preferring a more narrative or popular‑history approach may find the text demanding, but scholars seeking a comprehensive snapshot of the discipline as it stood in the 1880s will appreciate its depth and scholarly rigor.
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[48] LAYARD, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, p. 506.
[49] OPPERT, Expedition scientifique de Mesopotamie, vol. ii. pp. 62, 3.
[50] LAYARD, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 180.
[51] A list of these languages, and a condensed but lucid explanation of the researches which have led to the more or less complete decipherment of the different groups of texts will be found in the Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne de l'Orient of LENORMANT, 3rd edition, vol. ii. pp. 153, &c.--"Several languages--we know of five up to the present moment--have given the same phonetic value to these symbols. It is clear, however, that a single nation must have invented the system," OPPERT, Journal Asiatique, 1875, p. 474. M. Oppert has given an interesting account of the mode of decipherment in the Introduction and in Chapter 1. of the first volume of his Expedition scientifique de Mesopotamie.
[52] A reproduction of this stone will be found farther on. The detail in question is engraved in LAYARD'S Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. p. 181.
[53] The latest cuneiform inscription we possess dates from the time of Domitian. It has been published by M. OPPERT, Melanges d'Archeologie egyptienne et assyrienne, vol. i. p. 23 (Vieweg, 1873, 4to.). Some very long ones, from the time of the Seleucidae and the early Arsacidae, have been discovered.
[54] Hence the name pictography which some scholars apply to this primitive form of writing. The term is clear enough, but unluckily it is ill composed: it is a hybrid of Greek and Latin, which is sufficient to prevent its acceptance by us.
[55] See the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, twelfth session, 1881-2.
[56] See MICHEL BREAL, Le Dechiffrement des Inscriptions cypriotes (Journal des Savants, August and September, 1877). In the last page of his article, M. Breal, while fully admitting the objections, asserts that it is "difficult to avoid recognizing the general resemblance (difficile de meconnaitre la ressemblance generale)." He refers us to the paper of Herr DEECKE, entitled Der Ursprung der Kyprischen Sylbenschrift, eine palaeographische Untersuchung, Strasbourg, 1877. Another hypothesis has been lately started, and an attempt made to affiliate the Cypriot syllabary to the as yet little understood hieroglyphic system of the Hittites. See a paper by Professor A. H. SAYCE, A Forgotten Empire in Asia Minor, in No. 608 of Fraser's Magazine.
Sec. 5.--_The History of Chaldaea and Assyria._
We cannot here attempt even to epitomize the history of those great empires that succeeded one another in Mesopotamia down to the period of the Persian conquest. Until quite lately their history was hardly more than a tissue of tales and legends behind which it was difficult to catch a glimpse of the few seriously attested facts, of the few people who were more than shadows, and of the dynasties whose sequence could be established. The foreground was taken up by fabulous creatures like Ninus and Semiramis, compounded by the lively imagination of the Greeks of features taken from several of the building and conquering sovereigns of Babylon and Nineveh. So, in the case of Egypt, was forged the image of that great Sesostris who looms so large in the pages of the Greek historians and combines many Pharaohs of the chief Theban dynasties in his own person. The romantic tales of Ctesias were united by Rollin and his emulators with other statements of perhaps still more doubtful value. The book of Daniel was freely drawn upon, and yet it is certain that it was not written until the year which saw the death of Antiochus Epiphanes. The book of Daniel is polemical, not historical; the Babylon in which its scene is laid is a Babylon of the imagination; the writer chose it as the best framework for his lessons to the Israelites, and for the menaces he wished to pour out upon their enemies.[57] Better materials are to be found in other parts of the Bible, in Kings, in the Chronicles, and in the older prophets. But it would be an ungrateful task for the critic to attempt to work out an harmonious result from evidence so various both in origin and value. The most skilful would fail in the endeavour. With such materials it would be impossible to arrive at any coherent result that would be, we do not say true, but probable.
The discovery of Nineveh, the exploration of the ruins in Chaldaea, and the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, have changed all this, although much of the detail has yet to be filled in, especially so far as the earlier periods are concerned. We are now able to trace the leading lines, to mark the principal divisions, in a word, to put together the skeleton of a future history. We are no longer ignorant of the origin of Babylonish civilization nor of the directions in which it spread; we can grasp both the strong differences and the close bonds of connection between Assyria and Chaldaea, and understand the swing of the pendulum that in the course of two thousand years shifted the political centre of the country backwards and forwards from Babylon to Nineveh, while from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian Gulf, beliefs, manners, arts, spoken dialects, and written characters, preserved so many striking resemblances as to put their common origin beyond a doubt.
Not a year passes but the discovery of fresh documents and the process of translation allows us to retouch and complete the story. MM. Maspero and Lenormant have placed it before us as shaped by their most recent studies, and we shall take them for our guide in a rapid indication of the ruling character and approximate duration of each of those periods into which the twenty centuries of development may be divided. We shall then have some fixed points by which to guide our steps in the vast region whose monuments we are about to explore. So that if we say that a certain fragment belongs to the first or second Chaldaean Empire, our readers will know, not perhaps its exact date, but at least its relative age, and all risk of confusing the time of Ourkam or Hammourabi with that of Nebuchadnezzar will be avoided.
When we attempt to mount the stream of history and to pierce the mists which become ever thicker as we near its source, what is it that we see? We see the lower part of the basin through which the twin rivers make their way, entirely occupied by tribes of various origin and blood whose ethnic characteristics we have endeavoured to point out. These mixed populations are divided by the Tigris into two distinct groups. These groups often came into violent collision, and in spite of mutual relations kept up through a long series of years, the line of demarcation between them ever remained distinct.
Towards the east, in the plain which borders the river, and upon the terraces which rise one above the other up to the plateau of Iran, we have the country called by the Greeks Susiana, and by the Hebrews the kingdom of Elam. West of the Tigris, in Mesopotamia, the first Chaldaean Empire is slowly taking shape.
The eastern state, that of which Susa was the capital, was, at intermittent periods, a great military power, and more than once poured its hosts, not only over Babylonia, but over the Syrian provinces to the west of the Euphrates. But in these momentary successes, nevertheless, the part played by this state was, on the whole, a subordinate one. It spent itself in bloody conflicts with the Mesopotamian empires, to which it became subject in the end, while at no time does it appear to have done anything to advance civilization either by isolated inventions or by general perseverance in the ways of progress. We know very little of its internal history, and nothing to speak of about its religion and government, its manners and laws; but the few monuments which have been discovered suffice to prove that its art had no independent existence, that it was never anything better than a secondary form of Chaldaean art, a branch broken off from the parent stem.
We are better, or, rather, less ill, informed, in the case of the first Chaldee Empire. The fragments of Berosus give us some knowledge of its beginnings, so far, at least, as the story was preserved in the national traditions, and the remains by which tradition can be tested and corrected are more numerous than in the case of Susiana.
The chronicles on which Berosus based his work began with a divine dynasty, which was succeeded by a human dynasty of fabulous duration. These legendary sovereigns, like the patriarchs of the Bible, each lived for many centuries, and to them, as well as to the gods who preceded them, certain myths were attached of which we find traces in the surviving monuments. Such myths were the fish god, Oannes, and the Chaldaic deluge with its Noah, Xisouthros.[58]
This double period, with its immoderate duration, corresponds to those dark and confused ages during which the intellect of man was absorbed in the constant and painful struggle against nature, during which he had no leisure either to take note of time or to count the generations as they passed. After this long succession of gods and heroes, Berosus gives what he calls a Medic dynasty, in which, it has been thought, the memory of some period of Aryan supremacy has survived. In any case, we have serious reasons for thinking that the third of the dynasties of Berosus, with its eleven kings, was of Susian origin. Without speaking of other indications which have been ingeniously grouped by modern criticism, a direct confirmation of this hypothesis is to be found in the evidence of the Bible. In the latter we find Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, master of the whole basin of the Tigris and Euphrates in the time of Abraham. Among his vassals were Amraphel, king of Shinar, and Arioch, king of Ellasar, the two principal cities of Assyria.[59] All doubts upon this point have been banished since the texts in which Assurbanipal, the last of the Ninevite conquerors, vaunts his exploits, have been deciphered. In two of these inscriptions he tells us how he took Susa 1,635 years after Chedornakhounta, king of Elam, had conquered Babylon; he found, he says, in that city sacred statues which had been carried off from Erech by the king of Elam. He brought them back again to Chaldaea and re-established them in the sanctuary from which they had been violently removed.[60]
Assurbanipal took Susa in 660. All antiquity declares that the Babylonians and the Syrians had a taste for chronology at a very early period. This is proved by the eponymous system of the Assyrians, a system much to be preferred to the Egyptian habit of dating their monuments with the year of the current reign only.[61] Moreover, have not the ancients perpetuated the fame of the astronomical tables drawn up by the Chaldaeans and founded upon observations dating back to a very remote epoch? Such tables could not have been made without a strict count of time. We have, then, no reason to doubt the figure named by Assurbanipal, and his chronicle may be taken to give the oldest date in the history of Chaldaea, B.C. 2,295, as the year of the Susian conquest.
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