Читать книгу A History of Sumer and Akkad - L. W. King - Страница 9
ОглавлениеFig. 12.—Limestone panel sculptured in relief, with a scene representing Gudea being led by Ningishzida and another god into the presence of a deity who is seated on a throne.—In the Berlin Museum; cf. Sum. und Sem., Taf. VII.
By a similar examination of the gods of the Sumerians, as they are represented on the monuments, Professor Meyer has sought to show that the Semites were not only in Babylonia at the date of the earliest Sumerian sculptures that have been recovered, but also that they were in occupation of the country before the Sumerians. The type of the Sumerian gods at the later period is well illustrated by a limestone panel of Gudea, which is preserved in the Berlin Museum. The sculptured scene is one that is often met with on cylinder-seals of the period, representing a suppliant being led by lesser deities into the presence of a greater god. In this instance Gudea is being led by his patron deity Ningishzida and another god into the presence of a deity who was seated on a throne and held a vase from which two streams of water flow. The right half of the panel is broken, but the figure of the seated god may be in part restored from the similar scene upon Gudea's cylinder-seal. There, however, the symbol of the spouting vase is multiplied, for not only does the god hold one in each hand, but three others are below his feet, and into them the water falls and spouts again. Professor Meyer would identify the god of the waters with Anu, though there is more to be said for M. Heuzey's view that he is Enki, the god of the deep. We are not here concerned, however, with the identity of the deities, but with the racial type they represent. It will be seen that they all have hair and beards and wear the Semitic plaid, and form a striking contrast to Gudea with his shaven head and face, and his fringed Sumerian mantle.[44]
Fig. 13. Figure of the seated god on the cylinder-seal of Gudea.—Déc., p 293.
A very similar contrast is represented by the Sumerian and his gods in the earlier historical periods. Upon the Stele of the Vultures, for instance, the god Ningirsu is represented with abundant hair, and although his lips and cheeks are shaved a long beard falls from below his chin.[45] He is girt around the waist with a plain garment, which is not of the later Semitic type, but the treatment of the hair and beard is obviously not Sumerian. The same bearded type of god is found upon early votive tablets from Nippur,[46] and also on a fragment of an archaic Sumerian relief from Tello, which, from the rudimentary character of the work and the style of the composition, has been regarded as the most ancient example of Sumerian sculpture known. The contours of the figures are vaguely indicated in low relief upon a flat plaque, and the interior details are indicated only by the point. The scene is evidently of a mythological character, for the seated figure may be recognized as a goddess by the horned crown she wears. Beside her stands a god who turns to smite a bound captive with a heavy club or mace. While the captive has the shaven head and face of a Sumerian, the god has abundant hair and a long beard.[47]
Fig. 14.—Fig. 15. Votive tablets from Nippur, engraved with scenes of worship.—Cf. Hilprecht, Explorations, p. 475, and Old Bab. Inscr., II., pl. xvi.
Man forms his god in his own image, and it is surprising that the gods of the Sumerians should not be of the Sumerian type. If the Sumerian shaved his own head and face, why should he have figured his gods with long beards and abundant hair and have clothed them with the garments of another race? Professor Meyer's answer to the question is that the Semites and their gods were already in occupation of Sumer and Akkad before the Sumerians came upon the scene. He would regard the Semites at this early period as settled throughout the whole country, a primitive and uncultured people with only sufficient knowledge of art to embody the figures of their gods in rude images of stone or clay. There is no doubt that the Sumerians were a warrior folk, and he would picture them as invading the country at a later date, and overwhelming Semitic opposition by their superior weapons and method of attack. The Sumerian method of fighting he would compare to that of the Dorians with their closed phalanx of lance-bearing warriors, though the comparison is not quite complete, since no knowledge of iron is postulated on the part of the Sumerians. He would regard the invaders as settling mainly in the south, driving many of the Semites northward, and taking over from them the ancient centres of Semitic cult. They would naturally have brought their own gods with them, and these they would identify with the deities they found in possession of the shrines, combining their attributes, but retaining the cult-images, whose sacred character would ensure the permanent retention of their outward form. The Sumerians in turn would have influenced their Semitic subjects and neighbours, who would gradually have acquired from them their higher culture, including a knowledge of writing and the arts.
Fig. 16—Sumerian deities on an archaic relief from Tello.—Déc., pl. 1, Fig. 1.
It may be admitted that the theory is attractive, and it certainly furnishes an explanation of the apparently foreign character of the Sumerian gods. But even from the archaeological side it is not so complete nor so convincing as at first sight it would appear. Since the later Sumerian gods were represented with full moustache and beard, like the earliest figures of Semitic kings which we possess, it would naturally be supposed that they would have this form in the still earlier periods of Sumerian history. But, as we have seen, their lips and cheeks are shaved. Are we then to postulate a still earlier Semitic settlement, of a rather different racial type to that which founded the kingdom of Kish and the empire of Akkad? Again, the garments of the gods in the earliest period have little in common with the Semitic plaid, and are nearer akin to the plainer form of garment worn by contemporary Sumerians. The divine headdress, too, is different to the later form, the single horns which encircle what may be a symbol of the date-palm,[48] giving place to a plain conical headdress decorated with several pairs of horns.
Fig. 17—Fig. 18—Fig. 19—Earlier and later forms of divine headdresses. Figs. 17 and 18 are from the obverse of the Stele of the Vultures, fragments C and B; Fig. 19, the later form of horned headdress, is from a sculpture of Gudea.—Déc., pl. 4, and pl. 26, No. 9.
Thus, important differences are observable in the form of the earlier Sumerian gods and their dress and insignia, which it is difficult to reconcile with Professor Meyer's theory of their origin. Moreover, the principal example which he selected to illustrate his thesis, the god of the central shrine of Nippur, has since been proved never to have borne the Semitic name of Bêl, but to have been known under his Sumerian title of Enlil from the beginning.[49] It is true that Professor Meyer claims that this point does not affect his main argument;[50] but at least it proves that Nippur was always a Sumerian religious centre, and its recognition as the central and most important shrine in the country by Semites and Sumerians alike, tells against any theory requiring a comparatively late date for its foundation.
Such evidence as we possess from the linguistic side is also not in favour of the view which would regard the Semites as in occupation of the whole of Babylonia before the Sumerian immigration. If that had been the case we should naturally expect to find abundant traces of Semitic influence in the earliest Sumerian texts that have been recovered. But, as a matter of fact, no Semitism occurs in any text from Ur-Ninâ's period to that of Lugal-zaggisi with the single exception of a Semitic loan-word on the Cone of Entemena.[51] In spite of the scanty nature of our material, this fact distinctly militates against the assumption that Semites and Sumerians were living side by side in Sumer at the time.[52] But the occurrence of the Semitic word in Entemena's inscription proves that external contact with some Semitic people had already taken place. Moreover, it is possible to press the argument from the purely linguistic side too far. A date-formula of Samsu-iluna's reign has proved that the Semitic speech of Babylonia was known as "Akkadian,"[53] and it has therefore been argued that the first appearance of Semitic speech in the country must date from the establishment of Shar-Gani-sharri's empire with its capital at Akkad.[54] But there is little doubt that the Semitic kingdom of Kish, represented by the reigns of Sharru-Gi, Manishtusu and Urumush, was anterior to Sargon's empire,[55] and, long before the rise of Kish, the town of Akkad may well have been the first important centre of Semitic settlement in the north.
FRAGMENT OF SUMERIAN SCULPTURE REPRESENTING SCENES OF WORSHIP BEFORE THE GODS.—In the Louvre; Déc. en Chald., pl. 23.
It would thus appear that at the earliest period of which remains or records have been recovered, Semites and Sumerians were both settled in Babylonia, the one race in the north, the other southwards nearer the Persian Gulf. Living at first in comparative isolation, trade and war would gradually bring them into closer contact. Whether we may regard the earliest rulers of Kish as Semites like their later successors, is still in doubt. The character of Enbi-Ishtar's name points to his being a Semite; but the still earlier king of Kish, who is referred to on the Stele of the Vultures, is represented on that monument as a Sumerian with shaven head and face.[56] But this may have been due to a convention in the sculpture of the time, and it is quite possible that Mesilim and his successors were Semites, and that their relations with the contemporary rulers of Lagash represent the earlier stages in a racial conflict which dominates the history of the later periods.
Of the original home of the Sumerians, from which they came to the fertile plains of Southern Babylonia, it is impossible to speak with confidence. The fact that they settled at the mouths of the great rivers has led to the suggestion that they arrived by sea, and this has been connected with the story in Berossus of Oannes and the other fish-men, who came up from the Erythraean Sea and brought religion and culture with them. But the legend need not bear this interpretation; it merely points to the Sea-country on the shores of the Gulf as the earliest centre of Sumerian culture in the land. Others have argued that they came from a mountain-home, and have cited in support of their view the institution of the ziggurat or temple-tower, built "like a mountain," and the employment of the same ideogram for "mountain" and for "land." But the massive temple-tower appears to date from the period of Gudea and the earlier kings of Ur, and, with the single exception of Nippur, was probably not a characteristic feature of the earlier temples; and it is now known that the ideogram for "land" and "mountain" was employed in the earlier periods for foreign lands, in contradistinction to that of the Sumerians themselves.[57] But, in spite of the unsoundness of these arguments, it is most probable that the Sumerians did descend on Babylonia from the mountains on the east. Their entrance into the country would thus have been the first of several immigrations from that quarter, due to climatic and physical changes in Central Asia.[58]
Still more obscure is the problem of their racial affinity. The obliquely set eyes of the figures in the earlier reliefs, due mainly to an ignorance of perspective characteristic of all primitive art, first suggested the theory that the Sumerians were of Mongol type; and the further developments of this view, according to which a Chinese origin is to be sought both for Sumerian roots and for the cuneiform character, are too improbable to need detailed refutation. A more recent suggestion, that their language is of Indo-European origin and structure,[59] is scarcely less improbable, while resemblances which have been pointed out between isolated words in Sumerian and in Armenian, Turkish, and other languages of Western Asia, may well be fortuitous. With the Elamites upon their eastern border the Sumerians had close relations from the first, but the two races do not appear to be related either in language or by physical characteristics. The scientific study of the Sumerian tongue, inaugurated by Professors Zimmern and Jensen, and more especially by the work of M. Thureau-Dangin on the early texts, will doubtless lead in time to more accurate knowledge on this subject; but, until the phonetic elements of the language are firmly established, all theories based upon linguistic comparisons are necessarily insecure.
In view of the absence of Semitic influence in Sumer during the earlier periods, it may be conjectured that the Semitic immigrants did not reach Babylonia from the south, but from the north-west, after traversing the Syrian coast-lands. This first great influx of Semitic nomad tribes left colonists behind them in that region, who afterwards as the Amurru, or Western Semites, pressed on in their turn into Babylonia and established the earliest independent dynasty in Babylon. The original movement continued into Northern Babylonia, and its representatives in history were the early Semitic kings of Kish and Akkad. But the movement did not stop there; it passed on to the foot of the Zagros hills, and left its traces in the independent principalities of Lulubu and Gutiu. Such in outline appears to have been the course of this early migratory movement, which, after colonizing the areas through which it passed, eventually expended itself in the western mountains of Persia. It was mainly through contact with the higher culture of the Sumerians that the tribes which settled in Akkad were enabled later on to play so important a part in the history of Western Asia.
[1] In point of time, the work of Loftus and Taylor (see below, pp. 32 ff.) preceded that of De Sarzec, but the results obtained were necessarily less complete. It would be out of place in the present volume to give any account of excavations in Assyria, as they have only an indirect bearing on the period here treated. For a chronological sketch of the early travellers and excavators, see Rogers, "History of Babylonia and Assyria," vol. i. pp. 100 ff., who also gives a detailed account of the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions; cf. also Fossey, "Manuel," I., pp. 6 ff. For a similar chronological treatment, but from the archaeological side, see the sections with which Hilprecht prefaces his account of the Nippur excavations in "Explorations in Bible Lands," pp. 7 ff.
[3] Cf. "Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus.," Pt. XVI., pl. 36, l. 4 f.; as written here the name might also be read Lagarum or Lagadil. That Lagash is the correct reading is proved by the fragment of a duplicate text published in Reisner, "Sum.-Bab. Hymnen," pl. 126, No. 81, where the final character of the name is unmistakably written as ash; cf. Meissner, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1907, col. 385.
[4] Separate mounds in the group were referred to by De Sarzec under the letters A-P, P', and V. For the account of the diggings and their results, see E. de Sarzec and Léon Heuzey, "Découvertes en Chaldée" ("Description des fouilles" by De Sarzec; "Description des monuments" by Heuzey; "Partie épigraphique" by Amiaud and Thureau-Dangin), Paris, 1884–1906; see also Heuzey, "Une Villa royale chaldéenne," and "Revue d'Assyriologie," passim.
[5] The plate opposite p. 20 illustrates the way in which Gudea's gateway has been worked into the structure of the Parthian Palace. The slight difference in the ground-level of the two buildings is also clearly shown.
[6] See the plate opposite p. 26.
[7] From the nature of this building Amiaud christened the mound the "Tell de la Maison des Fruits."
[8] A description of these buildings is given in Chap. IV., pp. 90 ff.
[9] Cf. "Zeits. für Assyr." II., pp. 406 ff.
[10] Cf. Messerschmidt, "Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler," p. v. f., pl. 1 ff.
[11] The name is still often transcribed as Gishkhu or Gishukh; for the reading Umma, supplied by a Neo-Babylonian vocabulary, see "Cun. Texts," XII., pl. 28, Obv., l. 7, and cf. Hrozný, "Zeits. für Assyr." XX. (1907), pp. 421 ff. For its identification with Jôkha, see Scheil, "Rec. de trav.," XIX., p. 63; cf. also XXI., p. 125.
[12] Cf. "Mitteil. der Deutsch. Orient-Gesellschaft," No. 16, p. 20 f. Dr. Andrae adds valuable notes on other mounds he visited during this journey.
[14] See "Mitteil. der Deutsch. Orient-Gesellschaft," No. 15, p. 9 ff.
[15] Op. cit., No. 17, p. 4 ff.
[16] Each section of a trench is also given a letter, so that such a symbol as IV. b or XII. x indicates within very precise limits the provenance of any object discovered. The letter A on the plan marks the site of the house built by the expedition.
[17] This form of brick is characteristic of the Pre-Sargonic period; cf. p. 91.
[18] The positions of some of the larger ones, which were excavated in the northern part of the mounds, are indicated by black dots in the plan.
[19] The houses with the clay tablets were found in trenches VII., IX., XIII., and XV.
[20] In the folding map Fâra has been set on the right bank of the Shatt el-Kâr, in accordance with Loftus's map published in "Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana." From Andrae's notes it would seem that Abû Hatab, and probably Fâra also, lie on the east or left bank. But the ancient bed of the stream has disappeared in many places, and is difficult to follow, and elsewhere there are traces of two or three parallel channels at considerable distances apart, so that the exact position of the original bed of the Euphrates is not certain at this point.
[21] In the plan the trenches and excavated sites are lettered from A to K. The figures, preceded by a cross, give in metres and centimetres the height of the mound at that point above the level of the plain.
[22] Itûr-Shamash, whose brick-inscription furnished the information that Abû Hatab is the site of the city Kisurra, is to be set towards the end of this period; see below, Chap. XI., and cf. p. 283 f., n. 1.
[23] See the extracts from the "Reports of the Expedition of the Oriental Exploration Fund (Babylonian Section) of the University of Chicago," which were issued to the subscribers.
[24] See below, Chap. IV., pp. 85 ff.
[25] See "Chaldaea and Susiana," pp. 174 ff. and 188 f.
[26] Op. cit., pp. 244 ff., 266 ff.
[27] See his "Notes on the ruins of Mugeyer" in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1855, pp. 260 ff., 414 f.
[28] See his "Notes on Abû Shahrein and Tel el-Lahm," op. cit., p. 409. The trench which disclosed this structure, built of uninscribed plano-convex bricks laid in bitumen, was cut near the south-eastern side of the ruins, between the mounds F and G (see plan), and to the north-east of the gulley.
[29] See Weissbach, "Wâdī Brîssā," Col. VI., ll. 46 ff., and cf. pp. 39 ff.
[30] The incantation is the one which has furnished us with authority for reading the name of Shirpurla as Lagash (see above, p. 17, n. 3). It is directed against the machinations of evil demons, and in one passage the powers for good inherent in the ancient cities of Babylonia are invoked on behalf of the possessed man. Here, along with the names of Eridu, Lagash, and Shuruppak, occurs the ideogram for Opis, which is rendered in the Assyrian translation as Ki-e-shi, i.e. Kesh, or Kish (cf. Thompson, "Devils and Evil Spirits," vol. i., p. 162 f.)
[32] See George Smith, "Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch.," III., p. 364, and cf. Thureau-Dangin, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1909, col. 205 f.
[33] The fact that in an early Babylonian geographical list ("Cun. Inscr. West. Asia," Vol. IV., pl. 36, No. 1) the name of Opis is mentioned after a number of Sumerian cities, is no indication that the city itself, or another city of the same name, was regarded as situated in Sumer, as suggested by Jensen (cf. "Zeits. für Assyr.," XV., pp. 210 ff.); the next two names in the list are those of Magan and Melukhkha.
[34] For the fullest treatment of this subject, see Meyer, "Sumerier und Semiten in Babylonien" (Abh. der Königl. Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaft., 1906).
[35] Cf. Herodotus, III., 8.
[36] The women of the earlier period appear to have worn a modified form of this garment, made of the same rough wool, but worn over the left shoulder (see below, p. 112, Fig. 43). On the Stele of the Vultures, Eannatum, like his soldiers, wears the petticoat, but this is supplemented by what is obviously a separate garment of different texture thrown over the left shoulder so as to leave the right arm free; this may have been the skin of an animal worn with the natural hair outside (see the plate opposite p. 124).
[37] A very similar fringed mantle was usually worn by the Sumerian women of the later period, but it was draped differently upon the body. Pressed at first over the breasts and under each arm, it is crossed at the back and its ends, thrown over the shoulders, fall in front in two symmetrical points; for a good example of the garment as seen from the front, see below, p. 71.
[38] See below, p. 245, Fig. 59.
[39] Remains of an inscription upon Fig. 6 treat of the dedication of a temple to the god Ningirsu, and to judge from the characters it probably does not date from a period earlier than that of Gudea.
[40] See the plate facing p. 52, and cf. p. 68 f.
[41] See below, Chap. VIII., pp. 220 ff.
[42] According to the traces on the stone the figure immediately behind the beardless chief has a shaven head and face, like his other two followers in Fig. 3. The figure on the right of this fragment wears hair and beard, and probably represents a member of the opposite party conducting them into the presence of his master.
[43] See "Déc. en Chaldée," pl. 1 bis, Figs. 3–7.
[44] The fact that on seals of this later period the Moon-god is represented in the Sumerian mantle and headdress may well have been a result of the Sumerian reaction, which took place under the kings of Ur (see below, p. 283 f.).
[45] See below, p. 131, Fig. 46.
[46] See p. 49. In Fig. 14 the hair and beard of the god who leads the worshipper into the presence of the goddess is clearer on the original stone. In Fig. 15 the locks of hair and long beards of the seated gods are more sharply outlined; they form a striking contrast to the figures of Sumerians, who are represented as pouring out libations and bringing offerings to the shrine.
[48] Cf. Langdon, "Babyloniaca," II., p. 142; this explanation is preferable to treating the crowns as a feathered form of headdress. The changes in the dress of the Sumerian gods, and in the treatment of their beards, appear to have taken place in the age of the later Semitic kings of Kish and the kings of Akkad, and may well have been due to their influence. The use of sandals was certainly introduced by the Semites of this period.
[49] See Clay, "The Amer. Journ. of Semit. Lang, and Lit.," XXIII., pp. 269 ff. In later periods the name was pronounced as Ellil.
[50] Cf. "Nachträge zur aegyptischen Chronologie," p. 44 f., and "Geschichte des Altertums," Bd. I., Hft. II., p. 407.
[51] See Thureau-Dangin, "Sum. und Akkad. Königsinschriften," p. 38, Col. I., l. 26; the word is dam-kha-ra, which he rightly takes as the equivalent of the Semitic tamkhara, "battle" (cf. also Ungnad, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1908, col. 63 f.).
[52] In this respect the early Sumerian texts are in striking contrast to those of the later periods; the evidence of strong Semitic influence in the latter formed the main argument on which M. Halévy and his followers relied to disprove the existence of the Sumerians.
[53] See Messerschmidt, "Orient. Lit.-Zeit.," 1905, col. 268 ff.; and cf. King, "Chronicles," I., p. 180, n. 3.
[54] See Ungnad, op. cit., 1908, col. 62 ff.
[55] See below, Chap. VII. f.
[56] See below, p. 141, Fig. 48.
[57] See above, p. 14, n. 1.¨¨
[58] See further, Appendix I.
[59] Cf. Langdon, "Babyloniaca," I., pp. 225 f., 230, 284 ff., II., p. 99 f. The grounds, upon which the suggestion has been put forward, consist of a comparison between the verb "to go" in Sumerian, Greek, and Latin, an apparent resemblance in a few other roots, the existence of compound verbs in Sumerian, and the like; but quite apart from questions of general probability, the "parallelisms" noted are scarcely numerous enough, or sufficiently close, to justify the inference drawn from them.
