The Historians' History of the World 01 [Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia]

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY AND OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

The Babylonians and Assyrians were two very important peoples of remote antiquity, inhabiting the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southwestern Asia. The Greeks regarded these peoples as constituting one nation and called their country Mesopotamia, a name that could properly be applied to only a part of their territory. The Babylonians and Assyrians, themselves, on the other hand, regarded each other as alien peoples, though both belonged to the same Semitic stock. The Babylonians were the more ancient, and their territory lay to the south, where, many scholars believe, they had been preceded by a people of a different race.

Though the seat of this early civilisation is geographically small in extent, yet the peoples who entered into it were by no means homogeneous, nor was their history a continuous record of unbroken political succession. On the contrary, at least two different races of people were involved,—a Turanian stock in the early Babylonian history, a Semitic stock in all the later periods,—and at least three successive kingdoms or empires, not to speak of mere changes of dynasty. The earliest period known to us—that which left records at Nippur and Shirpurla, in old Babylonia—had its seat in the southern portion of the territory bordering on the sea; thence, seemingly, civilisation spread northward. Assyriologists are not fully agreed as to the share which the non-Semitic race had in this early civilisation. It has even been questioned whether these so-called Sumerians really existed at all.[15] In any event the Semitic Babylonians acquired full control at a very early period.

The Assyrian kingdom—which came to be a veritable world-empire—had its seat at Calah and afterwards at Nineveh. It conquered and absorbed the old Babylonian kingdom, and then reached out for domination to the east and to the west, finally overrunning even Egypt.

The Bible accounts preserve records of some of its most famous kings, including Sennacherib. The Greek legends are chiefly concerned with a mythical Semiramis, the alleged founder of Nineveh, and with a seemingly mythical Sardanapalus, who perished after an inglorious reign, in the destruction of Nineveh, which came about suddenly and dramatically in the year 606 B.C.—the Sardanapalus myth being, however, based on an actuality.

After the destruction of Nineveh, Babylon, the capital of Babylonia, resumed renewed importance as a world metropolis. Nebuchadrezzar, the most famous king of this period, besieged Jerusalem and carried the Israelites to his capital (the Babylonian capital). The classical accounts preserve reminiscences of the magnificence of Babylon in this period. The course of the New Babylonian empire, though brilliant, was brief, ending with the overthrow of Babylon by the Persians under Cyrus in the year 538 B.C. Babylon was not, like Nineveh, totally destroyed; but it never regained autonomy or anything approaching its former importance. It was one of the Persian capitals for two centuries, until in 331 B.C., with the downfall of the Persian empire, it passed into the hands of Alexander the Great, who, after his eastern conquests, chose it as the capital of his newly acquired empire. But Alexander died in his new capital almost immediately, and his death was the last great world-historic event that occurred in Mesopotamia. In the course of a few centuries thereafter, the whole region that for so many years had been the very heart of the world’s civilisation, became a barren wilderness, and Babylon itself, like Nineveh before it, was reduced to a mere earth-covered mound of ruins, the very location of which was practically forgotten.

Such a fate was tragic enough; yet after all it seems less cruel than the destiny of such nations as Egypt, and in later time, Greece, which live on in senescence long after all vestige of their power has departed. And in any event, Mesopotamia had had its full share of glory, for no other region of the globe, within historic times, with the possible exception of Egypt alone, has so long held rank as a centre of influence and civilisation. If the earlier walls of the Temple of Bel (Baal) at Nippur really date from 6000 or 7000 years B.C. as the records seem to prove, there was a continuous, powerful empire in Mesopotamia for at least five or six thousand years. The civilisations of Greece, of Rome, or of any modern state, seem mere mushroom growths in comparison.

In studying the history of Egypt we have caught occasional glimpses of this oldest Asiatic civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, and it is almost impossible to avoid drawing comparisons between these two countries, so closely related are the two peoples in the minds of all students. It is true that the ethnological types are quite different, and that the two peoples, during the greater part of their existence, did not mingle much with one another. Often they were at war, and it is traditional that for the most part the Egyptians repelled rather than invited any advances from their Asiatic neighbours. Nevertheless, their own interests dictated a commercial policy that led first and last to an extensive intermingling between all the contemporary civilisations of western Asiatic antiquity, and there are abundant evidences that the same influence extended also to the Nile Valley.

But even had this not been the case,—even had Egypt and Mesopotamia been shut off absolutely one from the other,—it would still be impossible for the modern student to disassociate the two, so many are the links of association between them. The fact that these two are the oldest civilisations known to us, and the further fact that there has been a constant question in the minds of investigators as to which one of these ancient peoples can claim priority of development, form in themselves an indissoluble bond of union. Yet in some respects the story of the Babylonians and Assyrians is unique; because this well-nigh greatest of civilisations was blotted out absolutely almost before the oldest European civilisation was under way. Egypt, indeed, declined in power at about the same period and permanently lost autonomy, but its pyramids and temples and numberless antiquities remain as obvious testimonials of its former greatness; whereas the monuments of Mesopotamia—the ruins of such wonderful cities as Nippur, Babylon, and Nineveh—were completely buried under the accumulating earth deposits of centuries, and almost absolutely lost to view. For more than two thousand years the names of these once famous cities were only reminiscences. No one knew accurately even their site, and scarcely an antiquity of any description was known to be preserved that evidenced the sometime greatness of the Mesopotamian civilisation.

During this long period a few reminiscences preserved in the writings of Berosus, Diodorus, Herodotus, and a few other classical writers, and in the text of Hebrew writings, gave all the clews that were obtainable, and apparently all that could ever be obtained regarding one of the most remarkable peoples of antiquity.

We have said that the entire destruction of the Mesopotamian civilisation gave it peculiar interest. It should not be forgotten, however, that at least one other very important people of antiquity, namely the Hittites, met with a like fate. Probably there were still others whose names even are unknown to us. But the story of Mesopotamia stands quite by itself in the fact that it has been very largely restored to us through the efforts of modern explorers. We have seen that the decipherment of the hieroglyphics led to a much fuller understanding of Egyptian history than had previously been possible; yet, after all, these new revelations sufficed to fill in the outlines of an old story, rather than to create an altogether new one. But in the case of Babylonia and Assyria the modern investigators had virtually a blank canvas upon which to work in reconstructing the history. The Bible references and the classical myths gave but the most shadowy outlines. Yet traditions are all powerful for the transmission of knowledge in a vague form, and throughout all generations it had never been doubted that the reminiscences of Mesopotamian greatness had a firm foundation in fact, though few historians were visionary enough to dare hope that more tangible evidence would ever be forthcoming, and not even the most enthusiastic dreamer could have suspected that such records as the nineteenth century has restored to us had been preserved.