Читать книгу A History of Sumer and Akkad - L. W. King - Страница 10

Considerable changes have recently taken place in our estimate of the age of Sumerian civilization, and the length of time which elapsed between the earliest remains that have been recovered and the foundation of the Babylonian monarchy. It was formerly the custom to assign very remote dates to the earlier rulers of Sumer and Akkad, and although the chronological systems in vogue necessitated enormous gaps in our knowledge of history, it was confidently assumed that these would be filled as a result of future excavation. Blank periods of a thousand years or more were treated as of little account by many writers. The hoary antiquity ascribed to the earliest rulers had in itself an attraction which outweighed the inconvenience of spreading the historical material to cover so immense a space in time. But excavation, so far from filling the gaps, has tended distinctly to reduce them, and the chronological systems of the later Assyrian and Babylonian scribes, which were formerly regarded as of primary importance, have been brought into discredit by the scribes themselves. From their own discrepancies it has been shown that the native chronologists could make mistakes in their reckoning, and a possible source of error has been disclosed in the fact that some of the early dynasties, which were formerly regarded as consecutive, were, actually, contemporaneous. Recent research on this subject has thus resulted in a considerable reduction of the early dates, and the different epochs in the history of Sumer and Akkad, which were at one time treated as isolated phenomena, have been articulated to form a consistent whole. But the tendency now is to carry the reaction rather too far, and to compress certain periods beyond the limits of the evidence. It will be well to summarize the problems at issue, and to indicate the point at which evidence gives place to conjecture.

In attempting to set limits to the earlier periods of Sumerian history, it is still impossible to do more than form a rough and approximate estimate of their duration. For in dealing with the chronology of the remoter ages, we are, to a great extent, groping in the dark. The material that has been employed for settling the order of the early kings, and for determining their periods, falls naturally into three main classes. The most important of our sources of information consists of the contemporary inscriptions of the early kings themselves, which have been recovered upon the sites of the ancient cities in Babylonia.[1] The inscriptions frequently give genealogies of the rulers whose achievements they record, and they thus enable us to ascertain the sequence of the kings and the relative dates at which they reigned. This class of evidence also makes it possible to fix certain points of contact between the separate lines of rulers who maintained an independent authority within the borders of their city-states.

A second class of material, which is of even greater importance for settling the chronology of the later Sumerian epoch, comprises the chronological documents drawn up by early scribes, who incorporated in the form of lists and tables the history of their own time and that of their predecessors. The system of dating documents which was in vogue was not a very convenient one from the point of view of those who used it, but it has furnished us with an invaluable summary of the principal events which took place for long periods at a time. The early dwellers in Babylonia did not reckon dates by the years of the reigning king, as did the later Babylonians, but they cited each year by the event of greatest importance which took place in it. Such events consisted in the main of the building of temples, the performance of religious ceremonies, and the conquest of neighbouring cities and states. Thus the dates upon private and official documents often furnish us with historical information of considerable importance.

But the disadvantages of the system are obvious, for an event might appear of great importance in one city and might be of no interest to another situated at some distance from it. Thus it happened that the same event was not employed throughout the whole country for designating a particular year, and we have evidence that different systems of dating were employed in different cities. Moreover, it would have required an unusually good memory to fix the exact period of a document by a single reference to an event which took place in the year when it was drawn up, more especially after the system had been in use for a considerable time. Thus, in order to fix the relative dates of documents without delay, the scribes compiled lists of the titles of the years, arranged in order under the reigns of the successive kings, and these were doubtless stored in some archive-chamber, where they were easily accessible in the case of any dispute arising with regard to the date of a particular year. It is fortunate that some of these early Sumerian date-lists have been recovered, and we are furnished by them with an outline of Sumerian history, which has the value of a contemporary record.[2] They have thrown light upon a period of which at one time we knew little, and they have served to remove more than one erroneous supposition. Thus the so-called Second Dynasty of Ur was proved by them to have been non-existent, and the consequent reduplication of kings bearing the names of Ur-Engur and Dungi was shown to have had no foundation in fact.

From the compilation of lists of the separate years it was but a step to the classification of the reigns of the kings themselves and their arrangement in the form of dynasties. Among the mass of tablets recovered from Niffer has been found a fragment of one of these early dynastic tablets,[3] which supplements the date-lists and is of the greatest value for settling the chronology of the later period. The reverse of the tablet gives complete lists of the names of the kings who formed the Dynasties of Ur and Isin, together with notes as to the length of their respective reigns, and it further states that the Dynasty of Isin directly succeeded that of Ur. This document fixes once for all the length of the period to which it refers, and it is much to be regretted that so little of the text has been recovered. Our information is at present confined to what is legible on part of one column of the tablet. But the text in its complete form must have contained no less than six columns of writing, and it probably gave a list of various dynasties which ruled in Babylonia from the very earliest times down to the date of its compilation, though many of the dynasties enumerated were doubtless contemporaneous. It was on the base of such documents as this dynastic list that the famous dynastic tablet was compiled for the library of Ashurbani-pal at Nineveh, and the existence of such lengthy dynastic records must have contributed to the exaggerated estimate for the beginnings of Babylonian history which have come down to us from the work of Berossus.

A third class of material for settling the chronology has been found in the external evidence afforded by the early historical and votive inscriptions to which reference has already been made, and by tablets of accounts, deeds of sale, and numerous documents of a commercial and agricultural character. From a study of their form and material, the general style of the writing, and the nature of the characters employed, a rough estimate may sometimes be made as to the time at which a particular record was inscribed, or the length of a period covered by documents of different reigns. Further, in the course of the excavations undertaken at any site, careful note may be made of the relative depths of the strata in which inscriptions have been found. Thus, if texts of certain kings occur in a mound at a greater depth than those of other rulers, and it appears from an examination of the earth that the mound has not been disturbed by subsequent building operations or by natural causes, it may be inferred that the deeper the stratum in which a text is found the earlier must be the date to be assigned to it. But this class of evidence, whether obtained from palaeographical study or from systematic excavation, is sometimes uncertain and liable to more than one interpretation. In such cases it may only be safely employed when it agrees with other and independent considerations, and where additional support is not forthcoming, it is wiser to regard conclusions based upon it as provisional.

The three classes of evidence that have been referred to in the preceding paragraphs enable us to settle the relative order of many of the early rulers of Babylonia, but they do not supply us with any definite date by means of which the chronology of these earlier ages may be brought into relation with that of the later periods of Babylonian history. In order to secure such a point of connection, reliance has in the past been placed upon a notice of one of the early rulers of Babylonia, which occurs in an inscription of the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire. On a clay cylinder of Nabonidus, which is preserved in the British Museum, it is stated that 3200 years elapsed between the burial of Narâm-Sin's foundation-memorial in the temple of the Sun-god at Sippar, and the finding of the memorial by Nabonidus himself when digging in the temple's foundations.[4] Now Narâm-Sin was an early king of Akkad, and, according to later tradition, was the son of the still more famous Sargon I. On the strength of the figure given by Nabonidus, the approximate date of 3750 B.C. has been assigned to Narâm-Sin, and that of 3800 B.C. to his father Sargon; and mainly on the basis of these early dates the beginning of Sumerian history has been set back as far as 5000 and even 6000 B.C.[5]

The improbably high estimate of Nabonidus for the date of Narâm-Sin has long been the subject of criticism.[6] It is an entirely isolated statement, unsupported by any other reference in early or late texts; and the scribes who were responsible for it were clearly not anxious to diminish the antiquity of the foundation-record, which had been found at such a depth below the later temple's foundations, and after so prolonged a search. To accept it as accurate entailed the leaving of enormous gaps in the chronological schemes, even when postulating the highest possible dates for the dynasties of Ur and Babylon. An alternative device of partially filling the gaps by the invention of kings and even dynasties[7] was not a success, as their existence has since been definitely disproved. Moreover, the recent reduction in the date of the First Dynasty of Babylon, necessitated by the proof that the first three dynasties of the Kings' List were partly contemporaneous, made its discrepancy with Nabonidus's figures still more glaring, while at the same time it furnished a possible explanation of so high a figure resulting from his calculations. For his scribes in all good faith may have reckoned as consecutive a number of early dynasties which had been contemporaneous.[8] The final disproof of the figure is furnished by evidence of an archaeological and epigraphic character. No such long interval as twelve or thirteen hundred years can have separated the art of Gudea's period from that of Narâm-Sin; and the clay tablets of the two epochs differ so little in shape, and in the forms of the characters with which they are inscribed, that we must regard the two ages as immediately following one another without any considerable break.

By rejecting the figures of Nabonidus we cut away our only external connection with the chronology of the later periods, and, in order to evolve a scheme for earlier times we have to fall back on a process of reckoning from below. Without discussing in detail the later chronology, it will be well to indicate briefly the foundations on which we can begin to build. By the aid of the Ptolemaic Canon, whose accuracy is confirmed by the larger List of Kings and the principal Babylonian Chronicle, the later chronology of Babylon is definitely fixed back to the year 747 B.C.; by means of the eponym lists that for Assyria is fixed back to the year 911 B.C. Each scheme controls and confirms the other, and the solar eclipse of June 15th, 763 B.C., which is recorded in the eponymy of Pûr-Sagale, places the dead reckoning for these later periods upon an absolutely certain basis. For the earlier periods of Babylonian history, as far back as the foundation of the Babylonian monarchy, a chronological framework has been supplied by the principal List of Kings.[9] In spite of gaps in the text which render the lengths of Dynasties IV. and VIII. uncertain, it is possible, mainly by the help of synchronisms between Assyrian and Babylonian kings, to fix approximately the date of Dynasty III. Some difference of opinion exists with regard to this date, but the beginning of the dynasty may be placed at about the middle of the eighteenth century B.C.

With regard to Dynasty II. of the King's List it is now known that it ruled in the Sea-country in the region of the Persian Gulf, its earlier kings being contemporary with the close of Dynasty I. and its later ones with the early part of Dynasty III.[10] Here we come to the first of two points on which there is a considerable difference of opinion. The available evidence suggests that the kings of the Sea-country never ruled in Babylon, and that the Third, or Kassite, Dynasty followed the First Dynasty of Babylon without any considerable break.[11] But the date 2232 B.C., which probably represents the beginning of the non-mythical dynasties of Berossus,[12] has hitherto played a considerable part in modern schemes of chronology, and, in spite of the fact that no amount of ingenuity can reconcile his dynasties with those of history, there is still a strong temptation to retain the date for the beginning of Dynasty I. of the Kings' List as affording a fixed and certain point from which to start calculations. But this can only be done by assuming that some of the kings of the Sea-country ruled over the whole of Babylonia, an assumption that is negatived by such historical and archaeological evidence as we possess.[13] It is safer to treat the date 2232 B.C. as without significance, and to follow the evidence in confining the kings of the Sea-country to their own land. If we do this we obtain a date for the foundation of the Babylonian monarchy about the middle of the twenty-first century B.C.