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The Historians' History of the World 01 [Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The first four years were devoted to an extensive and systematic excavation of Telloh, a great mound about five miles from the Shatt-el-khai, in southern Babylonia, and now identified with the ancient Shirpurla. The first season was marked by the discovery of two large terra-cotta cylinders, twenty-four inches long and twelve in diameter. The inscriptions on these cylinders, which contained fully two thousand lines each, were the longest then known from an early period. By the end of the four seasons of work a great temple had been uncovered, one hundred and seventy-five by one hundred feet in dimensions, and built on a mound from sixteen to twenty feet high. The bricks of the outer wall, which was five feet thick, were one foot square and bore the name Gudea. The objects found in the interior of the temple have proved very important to early Babylonian history. One room contained eight statues of an early period, all headless, however, having been mutilated by barbarians of a later time.
Scarcely less important was De Sarzec’s discovery in 1894 of a chamber in which were found thirty thousand tablets. While a considerable proportion of them were religious documents, most of these tablets were commercial, agricultural, and industrial archives.
The Louvre has profited greatly by the work of De Sarzec, for a large part of his discoveries has found its way thither.
The American expeditions have been among the most successful ones in this field. The Wolfe expedition of 1884-1885—so called from Miss Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, who defrayed its expenses—confined its work to a thorough exploration of the whole field, not only visiting the sites of previous excavations, but examining many new mounds as well. The succeeding expeditions have been sent out under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. The first one, in 1888-1889, under the direction of Dr. John P. Peters, with Professors H. V. Hilprecht and R. F. Harper as Assyriologists, began excavations at Niffer, the site of ancient Nippur. They had many difficulties with native tribes and Turkish officials, but succeeded in making a trigonometrical survey of all the mounds and obtaining a great number of antiquities of all sorts. Dr. Peters, however, modestly characterises the expedition as “more or less of a failure.”
In 1890 work was begun again. Thousands of tablets and various kinds of objects were obtained, and were all sent to the Imperial Museum at Constantinople. Professor Hilprecht was sent to Constantinople to catalogue the finds. He did the work with great skill and tact, and the Sultan repaid the University of Pennsylvania for his services by the gift of a large part of the collection.
Assyrian Stele
The third expedition was sent out in 1893 under the direction of Mr. J. H. Haynes, who had been the business manager of the first two. With a single brief interruption of two months in 1894 he carried on the work steadily until 1896, accomplishing what no European had ever ventured to attempt before. This expedition and the fourth one, which set out under Haynes in 1899 and was joined by Hilprecht in 1900, procured many thousands of tablets and antiquities of other kinds. These finds have enriched the store of Babylonian literature with vast quantities of texts, religious, commercial, and historical.
The first German expedition, in 1897, like the first American, simply explored Babylonia and Assyria. Then in 1899 Dr. Robert Koldewey, who had been a member of the first expedition, accompanied by Dr. Bruno Meissner, went out under the auspices of the German Orient Society. They went to work at the mound of El-Kasr, Babylon, which covers the remains of the palace of Nebuchadrezzar. Their first success was in the finding of a new Hittite inscription and many tablets of the Neo-Babylonian period. Great results may be expected from their future work.
The Turks, themselves, have naturally the best opportunity for carrying on the work of exploration, for they can count upon the support instead of the opposition of the officials, and can keep the natives under control. Thus far one expedition has been sent out. It was under the direction of Father Scheil, a distinguished Assyriologist, a French Dominican. Its complete success shows that if the Turkish government can once be aroused to the importance of the work, greater discoveries may be expected.
One of the most important discoveries of cuneiform inscriptions was made at Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt in 1888. From these tablets, which are letters and despatches of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV and of many monarchs of western Asia, much valuable chronological material has been obtained, as well as much light upon social relations.
The great discoveries of the past thirty years are but an inspiration to further exploration. The work is bound to be carried on until the buried cities have been completely brought to light again.ad
THE RESULTS OF THE EXCAVATIONS
We have followed the story of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria with some detail because of the unique character of the record. It remains now to examine the results of these excavations in their bearings upon the story of history. For, of course, it is the material supplied by the workers in this field rather than the work itself which has pertinence in the present connection.
Hunting Scene from a Bas-relief in the Palace of Asshurnazirpal
Great numbers of historical documents have been restored to us, sufficing, as has already been suggested, to rebuild the history of the all but forgotten nations. Such historical documents as are not to be found in connection with Greece or Rome, or even of the civilisation of the Middle Ages down to about the tenth century A.D., are supplied us from the ruins of the Babylonian and Assyrian cities. These documents, as already pointed out, are in the form of inscriptions on fragments of brick. These inscriptions, in an altogether unknown character, were at first enigmatic, but oriental scholarship soon availed to decipher them. The story of this decipherment must be outlined here for comparison with the account of the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which has already been presented. In no other cases except these two has the historian been called upon to deal with a great mass of documents written in an absolutely dead language. It must be remembered that the so-called dead languages of the classical world were never really forgotten. All through the Middle Ages there were numberless scholars who had an expert knowledge of Greek and Latin. Indeed, these languages were the current medium of scholarly intercourse throughout the dark ages. But the Babylonian and Assyrian languages, like the Egyptian, were dead in the fullest significance of the term; that is to say, they were utterly unknown to any human being for a period of more than two thousand years. Their restoration was one of the marvels of nineteenth-century scholarship; and while the details of this feat of scholarship do not properly come within the province of the historian in the narrower sense, they have such universal interest that we shall do well to present at least their outline here.
Before turning to the story of decipherment, however, it will be well to gain an idea as to the number and the variety and character of the historical documents in question. And perhaps the best way to do this will be to take a glance at the contents of the Assyrian collections in the British Museum, giving particular attention to the marvellous library of King Asshurbanapal, one of the last of the great rulers of Assyria—a remarkable collection of books, the discovery of which has been already referred to in the previous section. Nothing could give one a more vivid realisation of the character of this ancient oriental civilisation than the most casual glance at the sample books from this old library. Having inspected, however casually, this marvellous set of documents, one is prepared to take up the chronological history of the Babylonians and the Assyrians with a fresh interest based upon the comprehension that this people, so long regarded as scarcely more than mythical, possessed a civilisation strangely comparable in many essential features to the civilisation of our own time.a