Mesopotamia

L. Delaporte

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136199318
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

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First Part
Babylonian CivilizationBook One
Historical Outline

Chapter I
The Land and its Resources

EXCEPTING the district of Eridu (Abu Shahreïn), the southernmost city built on an island in the Persian Gulf and separated from the Euphrates valley by sandstone cliffs, the Babylonia of classical writers corresponds precisely to the plain created by the Tigris and Euphrates on their arrival at the sea through the alluvial deposits whose constituents are derived from the Armenian mountains where the rivers rise. Formed in the quarternary epoch after the glacial period, its natural boundaries are: on the west the Arabian desert, inhabited by nomads who make raids upon the sedentary populations: on the north the high plain of Mesopotamia, where the Assyrians were to establish themselves and from which Babylonia is separated by a line commencing at Hit, on the Euphrates, and reaching the Tigris above its junction with the Adhem; on the east the last outposts of the hills which form the present frontier of Persia, with diverse tribes established in all their valleys; thence come stone, metals, timber for building; finally, towards the south the Persian Gulf with its lagoons beyond which navigation scarcely proceeds. At the beginning of historical times this plain did not extend far below the present canal of the Shatt-el-Hai: the country of Lagash, a city whose ruins lie an hour-and-a-quarter to the east of this canal and two hundred kilometres from the gulf, was included in the maritime region.

The regime of the two rivers is not identical. The Tigris, with higher and more resisting banks, has a rapid current. Its flood commences at the beginning of March, reaches its maximum in the first days of May and ends towards the middle of June. The Euphrates carries half as much water; its flood begins about a fortnight later and does not subside before September; its banks being lower, it overflows more readily on to the plain, and spreads there a beneficent inundation. So the first inhabitants preferred its banks for the foundation of their cities. The present course of the Euphrates does not wash the ruins of the greater number of these ancient cities; if Babylon (Hille) and Ur (Muqayyar) are still near its bed, the others are found on the plain much further to the east. But the evidence of the ancient texts proves the change of the river's course due to the looseness of the soil and the crumbling of the banks during the inundation. The ideogram for Euphrates means Stream of Sippar; then Sippar (Abu Habba) stood upon its banks. One of the years of Samsu-Iluna, a king of the First Dynasty of Babylon, commemorates the building of the walls of Kish (El Oheïmir) on the banks of the Euphrates. The ruins of Kish lie on a canal, the Shatt-el-Nil, which also passes Niffer, the ruins of Nippur; it was still at the time of Darius II a branch of the Euphrates, the " river of Sippar and Nippur." Shuruppak (Fara) was likewise on the banks of the Euphrates, according to the legend of Gilgamesh. For Larsa (Senkereh) the same information is given by the correspondence of Hammurabi with Sin-idinnam, governor of that town. The river's branches were numerous; Umma (Yokha) stood on the arm which flowed not far from Lagash. In the earliest historical period, when the two cities were in continual conflict, Entemena, prince of the latter city, cut a canal which connected the two rivers. The Tigris, which was thereby diverted eastward, followed at that epoch almost the course of the Shatt-el-Amâra to-day.

The men who established themselves in these localities, as soon as they were habitable, already possessed a high culture. To put themselves beyond the reach of the flood, they built cities upon artificial escarpments. They constructed houses and temples of brick, they possessed numerous flocks and herds of stock; they could irrigate their cultivated land, cut canals and constructed watering machines. They worked copper and silver, fashioned arms in metal. If their sculpture was still rude and naïve, their script bears witness to great development: it was no longer simply pictographic, and beside ideographic signs purely phonetic characters are to be met. In the lowest strata, however, traces of neolithic industry, chipped flints imported from the mountainous regions, are found.

The naturalist, Olivier, visiting Mesopotamia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, found barley, starch and wheat growing wild on soil unsuitable for cultivation to the north-west of Anah, on the right bank of the Euphrates, This region is the original habitat of these three plants, and from the most remote times they were spread thence in Babylonia. Barley, the basis of the nourishment of men and animals, has been the commonest grain at all periods in history. It formed a highly-prized medium of exchange, and a loan of barley remained till the end of the NeoBabylonian Empire more expensive than a loan of silver.

Millet was also sown, but rye and oats seem to have been unknown. Sesame was valued for its edible oil, and for a drink which could be extracted from it; the tamerisk for its sugary gum, the vine for raisins and wine. The fig tree is mentioned with the pomegranate tree in pre-Sargonic texts, and its fruit was considered worthy to be offered to the gods by Gudea.¹ The date palm is one of the principal riches of the land. In the words of Strabo, "it suffices for all the needs of the population. From it they make a sort of bread, wine, vinegar, honey, cakes, and a hundred kinds of tissues; smiths use its stones in the form of charcoal, and the same stones crushed and soaked are used in feeding cattle and sheep which are being fattened." In the gardens the onion, the cucumber, and many another plant still unidentified were cultivated. A tablet of the epoch of Agade ² (about the twenty-eighth century B.C.) mentions plantations of onions having an area of a quarter, a half, or even a whole gan ³ (35 ares or ⅞ acre). In the reed beds gigantic rushes served for the construction of shelters and hedges, the fabrication of pens and that of the cinders necessary for the lye.¹

The animals whose existence is attested by the ancient texts or graphic representations are: among the domestic species, the ass, cattle, sheep, the goat, the pig, the dog and some sorts of poultry; among the wild species, the lion, the bison, the buffalo, the deer, the leopard, the wild goat, the antelope, the eagle, the snake, the scorpion, several species of fishes and crustaceans.

Two varieties of animals, grouped with the ass species and carefully distinguished from the earliest epoch, represent perhaps the horse and the mule, in any case some species of equidæ.

The ancient inhabitants seem to have had some notion of apiculture; the existence of bees in the Lower Euphrates valley is certain; for honey was gathered and used for food.

The fauna and flora of Babylonia originated and developed on an alluvial soil formed by the deposits laid down by the Tigris and Euphrates, and fertilized every year by the beneficent overflow of the two rivers. Man had to found his dwelling above the level of the flood, and to that end to form artificial mounds on which he built a hut of reeds or a house of earth. The clayey soil furnished him with material for making bricks, which he baked or simply left to dry in the sun. From it, too, he fashioned all his pottery for domestic purposes—dishes, drinking vessels, jugs, and jars. From it he shaped tablets on which, with a pen cut from a reed, he commemorated public events or jotted down private memoranda. Of shells and bones he put together ornaments; but he found no stone, no metal on his territory. The door sockets of the palaces, the diorite or marble blocks from which statues of deities and kings were to be carved, the precious stones from which engraved seals were made, the cedar-wood so highly prized for the decoration of sanctuaries, gold and silver, iron and copper for all sorts of implements, all these had to be imported by the Babylonian.

This necessity led to relations with other ethnic groups. To the south swamps extended to the seashore, and navigation was never destined to reach a high development. In the south-west all was inhospitable wilderness which imagination peopled with terrifying demons. A natural route opened towards the north; ascending the Euphrates you reached, beyond the junction with the Habur, mountains where diorite was abundant; further on in the Taurus, west of the bend of the river, were silver mines exploited from a high antiquity; in the Amanus and the Lebanon grew forests of cedars and other trees to serve as rafts for the transportation of stone blocks, and then to be used themselves in building. The caravans from Babylon will descend along the Mediterranean coast to the Nile delta, preparing the path for the Assyrians and Nebuchadrezzar. In Asia Minor, during the course of the third millennium, the cuneiform script inscribed upon a clay tablet was adopted by some Semitic worshippers of Ashur, whose art already manifested certain characteristics which were to distinguish the works of the Assyrians and Hittites. By the same way, in the opposite direction, foreign influences were going to penetrate to Babylonia; towards the end of the third millennium, after a gradual infiltration, Amorites grasped the sovereignty and achieved the unity of the empire; still later the Hittites will come and ruin their power, but will not succeed in annihilating their Work.

To the north, at the end of the third millennium, Babylon maintained garrisons in the cities where the Assyrian power was growing up and kept it in subjection for a time. Eastward, beyond the Tigris, stretched a mountainous region rich in stone and metal. Diverse ethnic groups dwelt there, against whom a continuous struggle with varying success would have to be waged. A Sargon, a Narâm-Sin, a Dungi, could subdue them to the yoke, but reactions would follow. Awan and Gutium were to exercise dominion over the lowlands; the Elamites from Emutbal founded a kingdom at Larsa; a Kassite dynasty was to be established for five centuries at Babylon, and finally Cyrus, the Anzanite, was destined to descend from these regions to destroy the NeoBabylonian Empire.

Notes

¹ CXI, p. 123.

² XXIV, Vol. II, No. 3070.

³ The relation between the ancient measures and the metric system are indicated on pp. 224 ff.

¹ I, Vol. VII, pp. 107 ff.

Chapter II
Peoples and Dynasties

THE plain was inhabited by two distinct races, in the south by non-Semites, in the north by Semites. Which were the first comers? Had they to surrender part of their territory? Tradition preserves no memory of the answers; it only notes that now a city of the north, now a city of the south, now even a foreign city, won the hegemony and exercised a more or less ephemeral supremacy. One of the oldest documents testifies to the intervention of a king of Kish, a city of the northern division, between the people of Umma and those of Lagash, who belong to the southern group.

It looks, indeed, as if the non-Semites had originally occupied not only the whole alluvial plain, but also the middle course of the Tigris, where the Assyrian power was destined to arise later on. The Semites appear to have subsequently come from Syria, descending the course of the Euphrates, as their kinsmen, the Amorites, did at a later date, and then settled in the northern region as far as the neighbourhood of Nippur.

The non-Semites are called Sumerians from the name, Sumer, by which their Semitic neighbours designated their territory. Often, too, in the oldest documents this region, called Kengi in Sumerian, is simply named kalam, "the Land," in opposition to kurkur, "the Countries," an expression applied in general to the whole inhabited world, but more especially to what was not Sumer. Enshakushana I calls himself " Lord of Sumer and king of the Countries." Two centuries at least after him, Lugalzaggisi of Uruk (twenty-ninth century) assigns to himself the title, "king of the Land," after having united under his sceptre all the cities of the region, and he is, so he says, established by the gods as their vicegerent in the sanctuaries of Sumer. His domination extended over Nippur, the religious capital and most northerly city, Ur,...