Читать книгу A History of Sumer and Akkad - L. W. King - Страница 5

The study of origins may undoubtedly be regarded as the most striking characteristic of recent archaeological research. There is a peculiar fascination in tracking any highly developed civilization to its source, and in watching its growth from the rude and tentative efforts of a primitive people to the more elaborate achievements of a later day. And it is owing to recent excavation that we are now in a position to elucidate the early history of the three principal civilizations of the ancient world. The origins of Greek civilization may now be traced beyond the Mycenean epoch, through the different stages of Aegean culture back into the Neolithic age. In Egypt, excavations have not only yielded remains of the early dynastic kings who lived before the pyramid-builders, but they have revealed the existence of Neolithic Egyptians dating from a period long anterior to the earliest written records that have been recovered. Finally, excavations in Babylonia have enabled us to trace the civilization of Assyria and Babylon back to an earlier and more primitive race, which in the remote past occupied the lower plains of the Tigris and Euphrates; while the more recent digging in Persia and Turkestan has thrown light upon other primitive inhabitants of Western Asia, and has raised problems with regard to their cultural connections with the West which were undreamed of a few years ago.

It will thus be noted that recent excavation and research have furnished the archaeologist with material by means of which he may trace back the history of culture to the Neolithic period, both in the region of the Mediterranean and along the valley of the Nile. That the same achievement cannot be placed to the credit of the excavator of Babylonian sites is not entirely due to defects in the scope or method of his work, but may largely be traced to the character of the country in which the excavations have been carried out. Babylonia is an alluvial country, subject to constant inundation, and the remains and settlements of the Neolithic period were doubtless in many places swept away, and all trace of them destroyed by natural causes. With the advent of the Sumerians began the practice of building cities upon artificial mounds, which preserved the structure of the buildings against flood, and rendered them easier of defence against a foe. It is through excavation in these mounds that the earliest remains of the Sumerians have been recovered; but the still earlier traces of Neolithic times, which at some period may have existed on those very sites, must often have been removed by flood before the mounds were built. The Neolithic and pre-historic remains discovered during the French excavations in the graves of Mussian and at Susa, and by the Pumpelly expedition in the two Kurgans near Anau, do not find their equivalents in the mounds of Babylonia so far as these have yet been examined.

In this respect the climate and soil of Babylonia present a striking contrast to those of ancient Egypt. In the latter country the shallow graves of Neolithic man, covered by but a few inches of soil, have remained intact and undisturbed at the foot of the desert hills; while in the upper plateaus along the Nile valley the flints of Palaeolithic man have lain upon the surface of the sand from Palaeolithic times until the present day. But what has happened in so rainless a country as Egypt could never have taken place in Mesopotamia. It is true that a few palaeoliths have been found on the surface of the Syrian desert, but in the alluvial plains of Southern Chaldaea, as in the Egyptian Delta itself, few certain traces of prehistoric man have been forthcoming. Even in the early mat-burials and sarcophagi at Fâra numerous copper objects[1] and some cylinder-seals have been found, while other cylinders, sealings, and even inscribed tablets, discovered in the same and neighbouring strata, prove that their owners were of the same race as the Sumerians of history, though probably of a rather earlier date.

Although the earliest Sumerian settlements in Southern Babylonia are to be set back in a comparatively remote period, the race by which they were founded appears at that time to have already attained to a high level of culture. We find them building houses for themselves and temples for their gods of burnt and unburnt brick. They are rich in sheep and cattle, and they have increased the natural fertility of their country by means of a regular system of canals and irrigation-channels. It is true that at this time their sculpture shared the rude character of their pottery, but their main achievement, the invention of a system of writing by means of lines and wedges, is in itself sufficient indication of their comparatively advanced state of civilization. Derived originally from picture-characters, the signs themselves, even in the earliest and most primitive inscriptions as yet recovered, have already lost to a great extent their pictorial character, while we find them employed not only as ideograms to express ideas, but also phonetically for syllables. The use of this complicated system of writing by the early Sumerians presupposes an extremely long period of previous development. This may well have taken place in their original home, before they entered the Babylonian plain. In any case, we must set back in the remote past the beginnings of this ancient people, and we may probably picture their first settlement in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf some centuries before the period to which we may assign the earliest of their remains that have actually come down to us.

In view of the important rôle played by this early race in the history and development of civilization in Western Asia, it is of interest to recall the fact that not many years ago the very existence of the Sumerians was disputed by a large body of those who occupied themselves with the study of the history and languages of Babylonia. What was known as "the Sumerian controversy" engaged the attention of writers on these subjects, and divided them into two opposing schools. At that time not many actual remains of the Sumerians themselves had been recovered, and the arguments in favour of the existence of an early non-Semitic race in Babylonia were in the main drawn from a number of Sumerian texts and compositions which had been found in the palace of the Assyrian king, Ashur-banipal, at Nineveh. A considerable number of the tablets recovered from the royal library were inscribed with a series of compositions, written, it is true, in the cuneiform script, but not in the Semitic language of the Assyrians and Babylonians. To many of these compositions Assyrian translations had been added by the scribes who drew them up, and upon other tablets were found lists of the words employed in the compositions, together with their Assyrian equivalents. The late Sir Henry Rawlinson rightly concluded that these strange texts were written in the language of some race who had inhabited Babylonia before the Semites, while he explained the lists of words as early dictionaries compiled by the Assyrian scribes to help them in their studies of this ancient tongue. The early race he christened "the Akkadians," and although we now know that this name would more correctly describe the early Semitic immigrants who occupied Northern Babylonia, in all other respects his inference was justified. He correctly assigned the non-Semitic compositions that had been recovered to the early non-Semitic population of Babylonia, who are now known by the name of the Sumerians.

Sir Henry Rawlinson's view was shared by M. Oppert, Professor Schrader, Professor Sayce, and many others, and, in fact, it held the field until a theory was propounded by M. Halévy to the effect that Sumerian was not a language in the legitimate sense of the term. The contention of M. Halévy was that the Sumerian compositions were not written in the language of an earlier race, but represented a cabalistic method of writing, invented and employed by the Babylonian priesthood. In his opinion the texts were Semitic compositions, though written according to a secret system or code, and they could only have been read by a priest who had the key and had studied the jealously guarded formulæ. On this hypothesis it followed that the Babylonians and Assyrians were never preceded by a non-Semitic race in Babylonia, and all Babylonian civilization was consequently to be traced to a Semitic origin. The attractions which such a view would have for those interested in ascribing so great an achievement to a Semitic source are obvious, and, in spite of its general improbability, M. Halévy won over many converts to his theory, among others Professor Delitzsch and a considerable number of the younger school of German critics.

It may be noted that the principal support for the theory was derived from an examination of the phonetic values of the Sumerian signs. Many of these, it was correctly pointed out, were obviously derived from Semitic equivalents, and M. Halévy and his followers forthwith inferred that the whole language was an artificial invention of the Babylonian priests. Why the priests should have taken the trouble to invent so complicated a method of writing was not clear, and no adequate reason could be assigned for such a course. On the contrary, it was shown that the subject-matter of the Sumerian compositions was not of a nature to justify or suggest the necessity of recording them by means of a secret method of writing. A study of the Sumerian texts with the help of the Assyrian translations made it obvious that they merely consisted of incantations, hymns, and prayers, precisely similar to other compositions written in the common tongue of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and thus capable of being read and understood by any scribe acquainted with the ordinary Assyrian or Babylonian character.