Читать книгу Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon - Lesley Adkins - Страница 10

Having arrived in Bombay as a raw and immature East India Company cadet in 1827, on his ‘fatal day’ of 26 October, Rawlinson left India exactly six years later, a more mature and experienced officer, especially competent in the Hindustani, Marathi and Persian languages. His destination was Persia, known today as Iran.

The East India Company’s interest in Persia was originally commercial, but over the previous three decades every diplomatic effort had been made to maintain the country’s independence so that it could not be used as a base by Russia, Afghanistan or France for an invasion of British India, a threat that was felt to be very real. Fath Ali Shah, the ruler of Persia (‘Shah’ being the Persian title given to the country’s king), had made alliances with Britain and then France, but turned to Britain again in 1809. The following year British officers began to train the Shah’s army and accompany it into battle, but once peace was established between Britain and Russia in 1813 and Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo two years later, this military presence was largely withdrawn.

By the early 1830s, Russian influence in Tehran began to alarm the British to such a degree that the Company formed a new military detachment, drawn from all over India. Under the command of the forty-four-year-old Cornishman Colonel William Pasmore of the Bengal Native Infantry, the detachment consisted of native troops, eight officers, fourteen sergeants and an assistant apothecary. Rawlinson was chosen because of his proficiency in Persian, a language he was inspired to pursue by Sir John Malcolm, who had died of influenza in England a few months earlier. That inspiration caused ‘the most momentous change in his whole life’¹ and would have a profound impact on the study of ancient cuneiform writing.

The military detachment sailed from Bombay on 26 October 1833 and completed the 1,700-mile journey to Bushire in early November. Known today as Bushehr, this Persian Gulf port is situated at the northernmost end of a narrow promontory, and the East India Company set up a factory there in 1763, although it was of little use as a port because ships had to drop anchor 2 to 3 miles offshore and transfer cargo in small boats. Rawlinson and his fellow officers were heading for Tehran and so needed to cross the coastal strip and make their way through the formidable Zagros mountains, rising to over 13,000 feet in height. News that the narrow mountain passes were already blocked with deep snow forced them to remain nearly three months in Bushire, considered ‘a most wretched place’,² but their stay did at least coincide with the cooler weather and enabled sufficient baggage animals to be organized for the long trek ahead.

At the beginning of February 1834 Colonel Pasmore at last ordered his men to leave Bushire, and after a climb of 120 miles up through the mountains they reached Shiraz. This city is at an altitude of 5,000 feet and it became the capital of the province of Fars in the late seventh century, after the Arab conquest. From the thirteenth century it was renowned as a literary centre, especially because of two poets who were born and buried there: Sa’di (died 1292) and Háfez (died 1390). To the north of Shiraz the mountains rise steeply, and deep snow in the passes brought a halt to their journey.

Rawlinson made use of his enforced stay at Shiraz by immediately riding out to the ruins of Persepolis, some 30 miles away. Known now as Takht-i Jamshid (Throne of Jamshid) after a mythical king of Persia, Persepolis lies on the edge of a wide plain. It was Darius the Great, soon after his accession as King of Persia in 522 BC, who decided to build an impressive new capital city there, which he called ‘Parsa’. The city had monumental palace buildings constructed on a huge artificial stone terrace overshadowed by a fortified hill. The ancient Greek name of Persepolis may be a contraction of ‘Persai polis’ (meaning ‘the city in Persis’), or it can be translated as ‘destroyer of cities’, a more apt phrase for the site because nearly two centuries later, in 331 BC, it was looted and burned to the ground by Alexander the Great and his troops who had set out from Greece to conquer the Persian Empire. The destroyed city was abandoned and never rebuilt, but great stone columns, gateways, staircases and impressive relief sculptures remained standing, and Rawlinson spent many hours examining these ruins and copied some of the cuneiform inscriptions – strange writing with abstract, geometric signs. Though this site had been visited and recorded by many European travellers, he had not encountered such inscriptions before and was fascinated.

Still unable to move on to Tehran, Rawlinson made a further trip with two other officers and his head groom back into the mountains, this time to explore the deserted ruins of Bishapur – ‘The Beautiful [City of] Shapur’ – a city that had been founded nearly eight centuries after Persepolis. It took its name from the second Sasanian ruler of Persia, Shapur I, who ruled for over three decades from AD 240. He belonged to the Sasanian (or Sassanian) dynasty that was founded by Ardashir, supposedly a descendant of the legendary ruler Sasan. Shapur himself was particularly successful in battle against the powerful Roman Empire, defeating two of its emperors and even capturing Valerian in AD 260 – the only time a Roman emperor was taken prisoner. At Bishapur Shapur’s victories were commemorated in three sculptured reliefs on the rock faces of a river gorge, showing the king on horseback trampling and receiving in submission his Roman enemies, while beyond the gorge at the foot of a mountain he built the royal city of Bishapur.

Rawlinson had been warned that ‘a notorious Robber chief had possession of the whole country and it was as much as my life was worth to venture into his lands. I also learnt from my servant who had been in his service, that Bakir Khan the son was in reality a very good fellow, smoking his segar [cigar], and taking his glass of wine as kindly as any English gentleman – he was also a very good rider and first rate shot … I took the precaution therefore before starting to take a few presents, on the chance of meeting Bakir Khan, and above all I put aside a few bottles of sherry and brandy.’³

After some hours sketching ruins and copying inscriptions, they rode on a few miles and agreed to climb a steep mountain to look for the famous Cave of Shapur with its colossal statue of Shapur I, once over 20 feet high, but now collapsed. ‘Up to this time,’ Rawlinson recorded, ‘we had not seen a single soul in any part of the ruins and so hoped to escape all observation of the robber tribes who lived near.’⁴ Leaving their horses with the groom, they began the difficult climb in the sweltering heat. Although they were all capable, resourceful soldiers, only Rawlinson had the nerve and climbing ability to reach the cave: ‘The ascent of the mountain was exceedingly difficult, and my two companions … gave in before reaching the summit. I went on, found the cave and carved my name on the statue.’⁵ Some years later he was told that ‘some travellers, penetrating to the statue and imagining they were the first Europeans to visit the spot, were misdeceived and astonished by finding it’.⁶

For two hours Rawlinson stayed in the cave, while his companions returned to camp, so when he returned to his groom, he was alarmed to be surrounded by Persian horsemen, followers of Bakir Khan, who was himself visible in the distance. In order to avert a potentially dangerous situation, Rawlinson rode straight up to him and greeted him in Persian. Although he was reproached for coming to the area like a spy, a friendly conversation followed, ending with Bakir Khan asking for something to drink. Rawlinson’s groom filled up a drinking cup with half a bottle of brandy, which Bakir proceeded to drink rather rapidly until he staggered about and collapsed. Immediately Bakir’s men aimed their long matchlock guns at Rawlinson, who seized the cup and drank the remaining liquid in case it was thought to be poisoned. While they hesitated to fire, Bakir Khan showed signs of recovery and asked: ‘Sahib, what was that liquid fire you gave me? It was very good but awfully strong. I thought it was sherry, but it was the father of all sherries, where did it come from?’⁷ Rawlinson diplomatically replied that he had given him brandy, the strongest of all liquors, having heard he could drink anything. Before leaving, Bakir promised ‘to take care of any travellers who might bring letters from me, and I believe he acted up to this promise [and] always behaved well to Englishmen’.⁸ Rawlinson was saddened a few years later when Bakir Khan was killed by government forces ‘for some banditti proceedings’.⁹

With weather conditions improving, the detachment set off from Shiraz towards the end of February and managed to travel 250 miles until hampered by deep snow in the mountain passes beyond Isfahan. From the late sixteenth century, Isfahan had been transformed into one of the most magnificent cities of Persia by Shah Abbas I (ruler from 1588 to 1629), who made it his capital. Its splendour was short-lived, as the Afghans invaded Persia and besieged the city in 1722, massacring most of its inhabitants, and it never recovered its former glory. After a week, the British detachment advanced as far as Qum (pronounced Ghom in Persian), one of the most sacred places of pilgrimage for the Shi’ite Muslims.

In AD 817, Fatima al-Ma’suma died on a journey to her brother, Imam Ali Reza, and was buried at Qum, where her shrine became a site of pilgrimage. Imam Ali Reza died a year later and was buried at Messed in north-east Persia, the country’s holiest city. Both the shrine of Imam Reza and that of Fatima were restored some eight hundred years later by Shah Abbas I and, not long before Rawlinson’s visit, the reigning Shah, Fath Ali, had repaired Fatima’s shrine and embellished the dome with gilding. The shrine was strictly barred to non-believers, but Rawlinson was determined to be the first European to gain entry, even though it was ‘whispered that instant death would be the portion of the audacious infidel who should be found intruding into its hallowed precincts’.¹⁰ Over fifty years later, he wrote that ‘I visited the sacred shrine in the disguise of a pilgrim, a visit of great danger which has never been repeated by any one up to the present time’.¹¹ Thrilled to be inside, he was nearly detected by turning his back on the holy spot as he viewed everything around him, but realized his error in time – and came out alive.

The detachment continued northwards from Qum for another 90 miles and finally reached Tehran in mid-March. The city lies in the foothills of the Elburz mountains, a snowy backdrop dominated by the dormant volcano Damavand, which is the highest mountain in Persia at 18,600 feet. It was only a modest trading town when it became the capital city of Persia in 1789, but over half a century later Tehran’s population had risen to around 50,000. A near-contemporary description of the city was uncomplimentary, reckoning that the ‘streets swarm in the day time with beggars from every region in Asia, their attire as diversified as their extraction … The Bazaars of Teheran are constructed in the form of long, covered corridors, lighted from above. On either side of the interior, are ranges of shops, occupied by dealers and working people, each quietly plying his avocation … The Bazaar is both a market and a factory … The streets of Teheran have never been cleaned since the place was built … The public ways are infested with the remains of camels, apes, mules, horses, dogs and cats; and here they lie, until some starving dog strips the bones of their flesh, and leaves them to the gradual corrosion of time’.¹² The detachment remained at Tehran for several months ‘studying Persian and becoming acquainted with the country’.¹³

To emphasize his importance, Fath Ali Shah, the second ruler of the Qajar dynasty, kept the officers of the detachment waiting a few weeks before receiving them, and Rawlinson’s own observations of the occasion indicate his opinion of the absurd pomp and rigid etiquette. In order to impress the Persians, Rawlinson and the other officers formed a glittering and gaudy spectacle as they set out on their horses from the residence of the British Envoy in the south of the city. ‘A party of two-and-twenty Europeans thus brilliantly attired,’ Rawlinson noted, ‘is a spectacle to which the eyes of the Teheranees are but little accustomed.’¹⁴ Riding through the narrow streets and bazaars, they reached the Golestan Palace, dismounted and were led through courtyards and gloomy passages to the splendid Golestan Garden. The Shah was in an adjoining audience room, ‘but, it being utterly inconsistent with etiquette that we should proceed thither by the direct route, we were paraded half round the enclosure before being permitted to approach the throne’.¹⁵ Seated on a throne in one corner of the room overlooking the garden, the Shah was surrounded by sword and shield bearers and miscellaneous princes, who were attired in expensive robes and equipped with jewel-encrusted weapons. The throne, Rawlinson observed, ‘was shaped much like a large high-backed old-fashioned easy chair, and, though made of gold, and studded throughout with emeralds and rubies, appeared a most strange ungainly piece of furniture’.¹⁶

This display of wealth contrasted with the simplicity of the room and with the appearance of the elderly Shah (then sixty-four years of age). Although portrayed in numerous flattering paintings gorgeously attired and with a beard down to his waist, Rawlinson thought him a person of ‘a plain and almost mean appearance. The old man’s beard is still of prodigious length, but its claim to supremacy in this respect may, I think, be fairly questioned. His face is dark and wrinkled; his teeth have all fallen out from age; and he retains not a trace of that manly beauty which is said to have distinguished him in former days, and which characterizes even now the pictures which are daily taken of him.’¹⁷ In a polite conversation lasting just fifteen minutes, the Shah expressed the value he placed on the detachment, and they were then dismissed with the greatest honour.

As his son Crown Prince Abbas Mirza had died the year before after a long illness, Fath Ali now appointed as his successor his twenty-six-year-old grandson Muhammed Mirza (‘Mirza’ being a Persian title meaning ‘born of a prince’, given to those of good birth), who was one of the twenty-six sons of Abbas Mirza. This announcement dashed the hopes of Fath Ali’s other sons and grandsons, who, according to Rawlinson, numbered nearly three thousand, ‘and every Persian in consequence felt a pride in being the subject of such a king. The greatest misfortune, indeed, that can befall a man in Persia is to be childless. When a chief’s “hearthstone,” as it was said, “was dark,” he lost all respect.’¹⁸ Summoned from his military campaigns beyond the north-eastern border of Persia, Muhammed Mirza lifted his siege of the Afghan city of Herat and entered Tehran in a grand procession on 14 June. He was proclaimed Crown Prince straightaway, and the British detachment was transferred to him as a bodyguard, accompanying him at his investiture a few days later.

Because the city of Tabriz, capital of the province of Azerbaijan, was also the official residence of the heir-apparent, Muhammed Mirza was sent there as governor by the Shah. Situated in the far north-west of Persia, this was strategically important territory as it bordered Russia and the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Tabriz had been captured by Russia as recently as 1827, after provocation by Persia, although it was restored the following year. The city was located in a valley at the foot of the mountains, and had over the centuries been battered by invading armies, epidemics and devastating, frequent earthquakes, as well as bitterly cold winters with heavy snowfall and hot, dry summers. Accompanied by Colonel Pasmore’s British detachment, Muhammed and the Persian army from his Herat campaign set off from Tehran on 4 July after delays finding sufficient transport animals for the journey of over 300 miles.

Most of the British officers suffered from illness on the march, including Rawlinson who had to be carried for much of the way in a palanquin (a covered litter). ‘Prostrated by fever and ague’,¹⁹ he was most likely suffering from malaria, although it was only towards the end of the nineteenth century that the cause of the illness was found to be a microscopic parasite transmitted through mosquito bites. The symptoms of malaria include violent shivering, followed by a fever with very high temperature, then profuse sweating, as well as headaches and vomiting, culminating in a period of fatigue. Such symptoms caused Rawlinson to spend several days in bed when they reached their destination towards the end of July.

Throughout August and September 1834 the British officers relentlessly trained the Persian troops, stationed on the disputed frontier region. In mid-October Rawlinson and two colleagues obtained a few days’ leave and headed across the border towards Bayazit, a town of about three thousand Armenian inhabitants, 20 miles south-west of Mount Ararat, where a Turkish force was encamped. In the nearby village of Ahura, on the south-eastern slope of Mount Ararat, a legend persisted that a shepherd had once seen a great wooden ship on their mountain, which was believed to be none other than Noah’s Ark of the Old Testament book of Genesis. Today three main controversies still surround Noah’s Ark. Where did it land? Could it have survived to the present day? And did it ever exist? As related in Genesis, God decided to destroy everything living on earth with a catastrophic flood because wickedness among people was so great, but Noah, a righteous man, was told to build an ark (a box-like boat) to protect himself, his family and a pair of every bird and animal. Of enormous size (300 cubits long, equivalent to 450 feet), the ark was equipped with three decks and took over one hundred years to build. The flood, caused by relentless rainfall for forty days and forty nights, did not begin to subside until after a hundred and fifty days, and the tops of mountains only began to be visible after a further two months.

Genesis, originally written in Hebrew, does not say that the ark came to rest on a specific peak, but on the ‘mountains of Ararat’, and for believers in the literal story of the ark, the imposing Mount Ararat has been favoured as the resting place since medieval times. The mountain actually has two peaks 7 miles apart, the highest being Great Ararat, which rises to 16,945 feet and has a permanent ice cap and glaciers. It was not originally known as Ararat, but as Masis to the Armenians and Agri Dag in Turkish. The reference in Genesis is probably to Urartu, a very powerful state in the Lake Van area in the eighth and seventh centuries BC, extending into what is now Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The name Urartu is found in the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria, its great rival to the south, although the people of Urartu actually called their own land Bianili.

From the mid-nineteenth century there have been over forty claims of spotting the ark on Mount Ararat, at times seen embedded in ice or submerged in a lake, since when about 140 expeditions have attempted to find the ark. Ancient wood can survive for thousands of years in very dry or in waterlogged conditions, but Mount Ararat is a large and inhospitable dormant volcano, although no known eruptions have occurred in historical times. There is no evidence of marine deposits from a flood, and the volcano has probably erupted within the last 10,000 years, since any Biblical flood. The ice cap, hundreds of feet thick, is thought to be the most likely hiding place for the ark, and yet the movement of the glaciers would pulverize a wooden vessel.

The summit of Mount Ararat was reached for the first time, on his third attempt, in October 1829 by a German professor of natural philosophy, Friedrich Parrot, only five years before Rawlinson’s visit. Rawlinson was unaware of Parrot’s success, and although he believed in the ark story, he was less certain that Ararat was its resting place. Nevertheless, it was an irresistible, formidable challenge: ‘I should enter on the attempt with sanguine expectations, and if ever I have an opportunity for putting my wishes in execution during my residence in the North of Persia, I shall certainly avail myself of it in the middle of August as the most favourable time for the ascent.’²⁰ The opportunity never arose, but years later the search for Noah’s Ark was overshadowed by the decipherment of similar flood stories from earlier civilizations written in cuneiform on clay tablets.

On 10 November news reached the British camp of the sudden and unexpected death three weeks earlier of Fath Ali Shah at Isfahan and his burial at Qum in the shrine of Fatima. With the Persian troops, Rawlinson marched back to Tabriz, where the Scottish General Henry Lindesay-Bethune had just arrived to take over from Colonel Pasmore. Lindesay-Bethune was an impressive figure ‘six foot eight inches in height (without his shoes), and thus realized, in the minds of the Persians, their ideas of the old heroes of romance’.²¹ Fath Ali may have been poisoned, and the delay in Muhammed Mirza hearing about the death had allowed his position as heir to the throne to be disputed by other claimants. Muhammed was unable to advance on Tehran in force because his Persian troops had not been paid for four years, and so Russia and Britain agreed to ensure his succession, with the British Envoy providing funds for the soldiers’ pay. A few days later Lindesay-Bethune set off with the troops for Tehran and on the way forced the surrender of the army of one of Muhammed’s uncles who had proclaimed himself Shah. Tehran was reached in late December, and on 2 January 1835 Muhammed, as the new Shah, entered the city. Lindesay-Bethune marched the Persian troops to Isfahan and Shiraz to put down further resistance, after which Muhammed Shah had various uncles, brothers and nephews exiled, imprisoned or blinded.

In mid-January Rawlinson and some of his fellow officers met Muhammed Shah for the first time in the main reception room of the palace, but Rawlinson’s verdict, recorded in his private journal, was damning: ‘[he] has little appearance of Eastern sovereignty about him. Instead of a fine, bold, manly bearing, with the gleam of intellect upon his brow … he possesses a gross, unwieldy person, a thick, rapid, unimpressive utterance, an unmeaning countenance, and a general bearing more clownish and commonplace than is often met with even in the middle ranks of Persian society. There is in his appearance no spark of grace, dignity, or intelligence.’²²

By contrast, the palace reception room was considered by Rawlinson to be ‘probably the most splendid apartment in Persia’,²³ the focus being the magnificent seventeenth-century Peacock Throne with its 26,000 emeralds, rubies, diamonds and pearls. Commissioned by the Mughal Emperor of India, Shah Jehan, for his Red Fort at Delhi, it had been brought back to Persia by Nadir Shah in 1739 as part of the treasure he had looted from the city after massacring some 20,000 of its citizens. Muhammed Shah, who had chosen not to sit on the throne but on more comfortable velvet cushions, firmly announced his wish ‘to have an army of 100,000 disciplined troops, and – Inshallah – to revive the days of Nadir in Iran. Otherwise the conversation related chiefly to the wonders of European science – balloons, steam guns, Herschel’s telescope, and the subject of aerolites were successively touched upon.’²⁴

The coronation of the new Shah took place on the last day of January, and those attending included ‘the chief executioner and his establishment, who, with their very red robes and turbans and axes of office, presented a very imposing appearance’.²⁵ Rawlinson had not changed his opinion of the Shah, who ‘waddled in his usual undignified manner across the chamber to the foot of the throne, clambered up the steps, and sat himself down at the further end, leaning against the richly carved marble back. His appearance was rendered more ludicrous on this occasion than I ever previously beheld it, by his being obliged to keep one hand up at his head in order to preserve the ponderous top-heavy crown, which he wore, in its place … It appeared to be made of white cloth, and owed its weight, of course, to the vast quantity of jewels with which it was adorned.’²⁶

Rawlinson, newly promoted to Lieutenant, evidently impressed the Shah, however, as he was chosen to raise and train troops from Kurdish tribes in the province of Kermanshah for the Governor Bahram Mirza, who was the Shah’s own brother. Accompanied by one other European – Sergeant George Page – Rawlinson left Tehran on 10 April for the town of Kermanshah (today renamed Bakhtaran), 300 miles to the south-west in the Zagros mountains. The following day was his twenty-fifth birthday and he made an extremely brief journal entry: ‘The year has evolved and brought no material change, either in my fortune or my feelings.’²⁷

Kermanshah was on the main trade route between Tehran and Baghdad, in a region rich in ancient rock-cut reliefs and inscriptions of varying dates. Just over halfway there, Rawlinson passed the large town of Hamadan at the foot of Mount Elwand (or Alvand), once the ancient city of Ecbatana, which was founded as the capital of the empire of the Medes in the eighth century BC. At an altitude of 5,900 feet in the mountains, Ecbatana controlled the major east – west route from the plains of Mesopotamia to the central Iranian plateau. Famous in ancient times for its vast wealth and architectural splendour, Ecbatana became part of the Persian Empire when it was conquered in 550 BC by King Cyrus the Great, who used it as his summer capital. Passing through this area so rich in the remains of ancient and largely unknown civilizations, Rawlinson was in his element, appealing as it did to his flair for exploration and linguistics, and his growing interest in ancient history.

A detour was made to find cuneiform inscriptions Rawlinson had heard about a few miles away along a wooded gorge of Mount Elwand, aware that other travellers had seen them but unaware that copies had been done as recently as 1827 and subsequently given to Friedrich Edward Schulz. A German professor of philosophy, Schulz had himself been recording inscriptions and other antiquities for the French government in the Lake Van area, until he was murdered by Kurds in 1829. His papers passed to Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin, an Oriental scholar in Paris who had been a great friend of Jean-François Champollion, the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs, until politics tore them apart. Although Saint-Martin intended to publish these inscriptions from Mount Elwand, he died of cholera at the age of forty-one in 1832, only months after Champollion’s death. Saint-Martin’s papers passed to Eugène Burnouf, another Oriental scholar in Paris who had replaced Champollion as a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and became Professor of Sanskrit at the College of France. While Rawlinson was copying the Elwand inscriptions, Burnouf was preparing them for publication.

In the Elwand Gorge, two adjacent square panels of trilingual cuneiform inscriptions, one slightly higher than the other, had been cut into the steep rock face, praising Ahuramazda (Persian for ‘Great God’) and recording the lineages and prowess of the Persian king Darius the Great in one panel, and his successor Xerxes I in the other. The site became known as Ganj Nameh (Tales of a Treasure) in the belief that the strange inscriptions described the location of a large treasure hidden during the campaigns of Alexander the Great. Rawlinson spent some time carefully copying these inscriptions, unaware that the real treasure they contained were clues to the decipherment of cuneiform, because they were trilingual inscriptions; like those at Persepolis and Bisitun, they had been carved in the three ancient languages of Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. Rawlinson later recorded that the ‘first materials which I submitted to analysis were the sculptured tablets of Hamadán [Mount Elwand], carefully and accurately copied by myself upon the spot, and I afterwards found that I had thus, by a singular accident, selected the most favourable inscriptions of the class which existed in all Persia for resolving the difficulties of an unknown character’.²⁸