|
A history of ancient Babylon (Babylonia) including its cities, laws, kings and legacy to civilization Care to express an opinion on a current or past historical event? Need to ask a question from our many visitors? Just visit our Forum and leave your message. Please Help Keep Us On the Web. We are a Non-Profit Organization and the cost of continuing is becoming more than we can handle. Therefore, we are asking you to please donate anything you can to help keep us on the web. Map
Stele of Hammurabi
|
Babylonia, A history of ancient Babylon (Babylonia) including its cities, laws, kings and legacy to civilization. The International History Project 2004
The Babylonian civilization, which endured from the 18th until the 6th century BC, was, like the Sumerian that preceded it, urban in character, although based on agriculture rather than industry. The country consisted of a dozen or so cities, surrounded by villages and hamlets. At the head of the political structure was the king, a more or less absolute monarch who exercised legislative and judicial as well as executive powers. Under him was a group of appointed governors and administrators. Mayors and councils of city elders were in charge of local administration.
History of the Babylonians and the region of Babylonia (Babylon) Chronology And History
An essential condition for adequate knowledge of an ancient people is the possession of a continuous historical tradition in the form of oral or written records. This, however, in spite of the mass of contemporaneous documents of almost every sort, which the spade of the excavator has unearthed and the skill of the scholar deciphered, is not available for scientific study of Babylonian or Assyrian antiquity. From the far-off morning of the beginnings of the two peoples to their fall, no historians appeared to gather up the memorials of their past, to narrate and preserve the annals of these empires, to hand down their achievements to later days. Consequently, where contemporaneous records fail, huge gaps occur in the course of historical development, to be bridged over only partially by the combination of a few facts with more or less ingenious inferences or conjectures. Sometimes what has been preserved from a particular age reveals clearly enough the artistic or religious elements of its life, but offers only vague hints of its political activity and progress. The true perspective of the several periods is sometimes lost, as when really critical epochs in the history of these peoples are dwarfed and distorted by a lack of sources of knowledge, while others, less significant, but plentifully stocked with a variety of available material, bulk large and assume an altogether unwarranted prominence.
36. What the Babylonians and Assyrians failed to do in supplying a continuous historical record was not accomplished for them by the later historians of antiquity. Herodotus, in the first Book of his "Histories," devotes twenty-three chapters to Babylonian affairs (Bk. I. 178-200), and refers to an Assyrian history in which he will write more at length of these events (I. 184). But the latter, if written, has been utterly lost, and the chapters just mentioned, while containing information of value, especially that which he himself collected on the ground, or drew from an earlier traveller, presumably Hecataeus of Miletus, give distorted and fantastic legends where sober history might be expected. Ctesias of Cnidos, physician at the court of Artaxerxes Mnemon (415-398 B.C.), who seems to have had access to some useful Assyrian material from Persian sources, introduced his Persian History with an account of Babylonio-Assyrian affairs, in which the same semi-mythical tales were interspersed with dry lists of kings in so hopeless a jumble of truth and falsehood as to reconcile us to the disappointment of having only a few fragments of it.
37. It is, however, a cause of keen regret that the three books of Babylonian or Chaldean History, by Berosus, have come down from the past only in scanty excerpts of later historians. Berosus was a Babylonian priest of the god Bel, and wrote his work for the Macedonian ruler of Babylonia, Antiochus Soter, about 280 B.C. As the cuneiform writing was still employed, he must have been able to use the original documents, and could have supplied just the needed data for our knowledge. Still, the passages preserved indicate that he had no proper conception of his task, since he filled a large part of his book with mythical stories of creation and incredible tales of primitive history, with its prediluvian dynasties of hundreds of thousands of years. A postdiluvian dynasty of thirty-four thousand ninety-one years prepares the way for five dynasties, reaching to Nabonassar, king of Babylon (747 B.C.), from whose time the course of events seems to have been told in greater detail down to the writer's own days. Imperfect and crude as this work must have been, it was by far the most trustworthy and important compendious account of Babylonio-Assyrian history furnished by an ancient author, and for that reason would, even to-day, be highly valued. A still more useful contribution to the chronological framework of history was made by Ptolemy, a geographer and astronomer of the time of the Roman Emperor, Antoninus Pius. Ptolemy's "Canon of Kings," compiled for astronomical purposes, starts with the same Nabonassar at whose time Berosus begins to expand his history, and continues with the names and regnal years of the Babylonian kings to the fall of Babylon. Since Ptolemy proceeds with the list through the Persian, Macedonian, and Roman regnal lines in continuous succession, and connects the era of Nabonassar with those of Philip Arridaeus and Augustus, a synchronism with dates of the Christian era is established, by which the reign of Nabonassar can be fixed at 747-733 B.C. and the reigns of his successors similarly stated in terms of our chronology. By this means, not only is a chronological basis of special value laid for this later age of Babylonian history, but a starting- point is given for working backward into the earlier periods, provided that adequate data can be secured from other sources.
38. Happily for historical science, the original documents of Babylonia and Assyria are unexpectedly rich in material available for this purpose. As already stated (sect. 29), the Assyrians were remarkably gifted with the historic sense, and not only do their royal annals and other similar documents contain many and exact chronological statements, but there was in vogue in the royal court a practical system which went far toward compensating for the lack of an era according to which the dates of events might be definitely fixed. From the royal officers one was appointed each year to give his name to the year. He or his official status during that period was called limu, and events or documents were dated by his name. The king usually acted as limu for the first full year of his reign. He was followed in succession by the Turtan, or commander-in-chief, the Grand Vizier, the Chief Musician, the Chief Eunuch, and the governors of the several provinces or cities. Lists of these limi were preserved in the royal archives, forming a fixed standard of the greatest practical value for the checking off of events or the dating of documents. While this system was in use in Assyria as early as the fourteenth century, the lists which have been discovered are of much later date and of varying length, the longest extending from 893 B.C. to about 650 B.C. Sometimes to the mere name of the limu was added a brief remark as to some event of his year. Such a reference to an eclipse of the sun occurring in the limu of Pur-
Sagali in the reign of Ashurdan III., has been calculated to have taken place on the fifteenth of June, 763 B.C., a fact which at once fixes the dates for the whole list and enables its data to be compared with those derived from the synchronisms of the canon of Ptolemy and other sources. The result confirms the accuracy of the Assyrian document, and affords a trustworthy chronological basis for fully three centuries of Assyrian history. For the earlier period before 900 B.C. the ground is more uncertain, but the genealogical and chronological statements of the royal inscriptions, coupled with references to contemporaneous Babylonian kings whose dates are calculable from native sources, supply a foundation which, if lacking in some parts, is yet capable of supporting the structure of historical development.
39. The Babylonians, while they possessed nothing like the well wrought out limu system of Assyria, and dated events by the regnal years of their kings, had in their kings' lists, compiled by the priests and preserved in the temples, documents of much value for historical purposes. The "Great List," which has been preserved, arranges the names in dynasties, and gives the regnal years of each king. At the end of each dynasty, the number of the kings and the sum of their regnal years are added. Though badly broken in parts, this list extends over a millennium, and contains legible names of at least seventy kings arranged in about nine dynasties. As the last division contains names of rulers appearing in the Assyrian and Ptolemaic canon, the starting-point is given for a chronological organization of the Babylonian kings, which unfortunately can be only approximately achieved, owing to the gaps in the list. The two other lists now available cover the first two dynasties only of the great list. Not only do they differ in some respects from one another, but they do not help in furnishing the missing names in the great list. These can be tentatively supplied from inscriptions of kings not mentioned on the lists, and presumably belonging to periods in which the gaps occur. Using all the means at their disposal, scholars have generally agreed in placing the beginning of the first dynasty of Babylon somewhat later than 2500 B.C.
40. For the chronology of Babylonian history before that time, the sources are exceedingly meagre, and all results, depending as they do upon calculation and inference from uncertain data, must be regarded as precarious. Numerous royal inscriptions exist, but connections between the kings mentioned are not easy to establish, and paleographic evidence, which must be invoked to determine the relative age of the documents, yields often ambiguous responses. A fixed point, indeed, in this chaos seems to be offered in a statement made by Nabuna'id, a king of the New Babylonian Empire. In searching for the foundations of the sun temple at Sippar, he came, to use his own words, upon "the foundation-stone of Naram Sin, which no king before me had found for 3200 years." As the date of the discovery is fixed at about 550 B.C., Naram Sin, king of Agade, whose name and inscriptions are known, may be placed at about 3750 B.C., and his father, Sargon, at about 3800 B.C. While much questioning has naturally been raised concerning the accuracy and trustworthiness of this date thus obtained, no valid reasons for discarding it have been presented. It affords a convenient and useful point from which to reckon backward and forward in the uncertain periods from the third to the fifth millennium B.C. By all these aids, to which are added some genealogical statements in the inscriptions, a series of dynasties has been worked out for this early age, and their chronological relations to one another tentatively determined.
41. It is possible, therefore, with a reasonable degree of accuracy, to determine chronologically not only the great turning points in Babylonio- Assyrian history, but even the majority of the dynasties and the reigns of the several kings. Founded upon this, the historical structure may be reared, and its various stages and their relations determined. A bird's-eye view of these will facilitate further progress. First in order of time comes the Rise and Development of the City-States of Old Babylonia to their unification in the City-State of Babylon. In the dawn of history different primitive centres of population in the lower Tigro-Euphrates valley appeared, attained a vigorous and expanding life, came into contact one with another, and successively secured a limited supremacy, only to give place to others. The process was already in full course by 5000 B.C. By the middle of the third millennium, the city of Babylon pushed forward under a new dynasty; one of its kings succeeded in driving out the Elamites, who had invaded and were occupying the southern and central districts; the victory was followed by the city's supremacy, which was not only more widely extended, but, by the wisdom of its kings, was more deeply rooted, and was thus made permanent. With Babylonia united under Babylon, the first epoch closed about 2000 B.C.
42. The second period covers the Early Conflicts of Babylonia and Assyria. The peaceful course of united Babylonia was interrupted by the entrance of the Kassites from the east, who succeeded in seating a dynasty of Kassite kings upon the throne of Babylonia, and maintaining them there for nearly six hundred years. But this foreign intrusion and dominance had roused into independent life a Semitic community which had its centre at Assur on the central Tigris, and in all probability was an offshoot from Babylonia. This centre of active political life developed steadily toward the north and west, but was dominated chiefly by its hostility toward Babylonia under Kassite rule. Having become the kingdom of Assyria, it warred with the southern kingdom, the advantage on the whole remaining with the Assyrian until, toward the close of the epoch, a great ruler appeared in the north, Tiglathpileser I., under whom Assyria advanced to the first place in the Tigro-Euphrates valley; while Babylonia, its Kassite rulers yielding to a native dynasty, fell into political insignificance. The forces that controlled the age had run their course by 1000 B.C.
43. The third period is characterized by the Ascendancy of Assyria. The promise of pre-eminence given in Tiglathpileser I. was not fulfilled for two centuries, owing to the flooding of the upper Mesopotamian plain with Aramean nomads from the Arabian steppes. At last, as the ninth century began, Ashurnacirpal led the way in an onward movement of Assyria which culminated in the extension of the kingdom over the entire region of western Asia. Shalmaneser II,, Tiglathpileser III., and Sargon, great generals and administrators, turned a kingdom into an empire. The first wore out the resistance of the Syrian states, the second added Babylonia to the Assyrian Empire, and the third, as conqueror of the north, ruled from the Persian gulf to the border of Egypt and the upper sea of Ararat. The rulers that followed compelled Egypt to bow, and reduced Elam to subjection, but at the expense of the vital powers of the state. New peoples appeared upon the eastern border, revolt deprived the empire of its provinces, until, in less than two decades after the death of the brilliant monarch Ashurbanipal, Nineveh, Assyria's capital, was destroyed, and the empire disappeared suddenly and forever. Four centuries were occupied with this splendid history and its tragical catastrophe. The age closed with the passing of the seventh century (600 B.C.).
44. Of the partners in the overthrow of Assyria, the rebellious governor of the province of Babylonia received as his share of the spoil the Tigro-Euphrates valley and the Mediterranean provinces. He founded here the New Babylonian Empire. Its brief career of less than a century concluded the history of these peoples. Under his son, the famous Nebuchadrezzar II., the empire was consolidated, its resources enlarged, its power displayed. His feeble successors, however, were beset with manifold difficulties, chief of which was the rising energy of the Medes and Persians who had shared in the booty of Assyria. United under the genius of Cyrus, they pushed westward and northward, until the hour came for advancing on Babylon. The hollow shell of the empire was speedily crushed, and the Semitic peoples, whose rulers had dominated this world of western Asia for more than four millenniums, yielded the sceptre in 538 B.C. to Cyrus the Persian.
Dawn Of History
45. The earliest indications of human settlement in the Tigro-Euphrates valley come from the lower alluvial plain (sect. 3) known as Babylonia. It is not difficult to see how the physical features of this region were adapted to make it a primitive seat of civilization. A burning sun, falling upon fertile soil enriched and watered by mighty, inundating streams, - these are conditions in which man finds ready to his hand everything needed to sustain and stimulate his elemental wants. Superabounding fruitfulness of nature, plant, animal, and man, contributes to his comfort and progress. Coming with flocks and herds from the surrounding deserts, he finds ample pasturage and inexhaustible water everywhere, an oasis inviting him to a permanent abiding-place. He cannot but abandon his nomadic life for settlement. The land, however, does not encourage inglorious ease. Wild nature must be subdued and waste tracts occupied as populations increase. The inundations are found to occur at regular intervals and to be of definite duration. They may be regulated and their fruitful waters directed upon barren soils, making them fertile. All suggests order and requires organization on the part of those settled along the river banks. From the same generous source are supplied mud and bitumen for the erection of permanent dwellings. The energies of the inhabitants of such a country would naturally be absorbed in developing its abundant resources. They would be a peaceful folk, given to agriculture. Trade, also, is facilitated by the rivers, natural highways through the land, and with trade comes industry, both stimulated by the generous gifts of nature, among which the palm-tree is easily supreme. Thus, at a time when regions less suggestive and responsive to human activity lay unoccupied and barren, this favored spot was inevitably the scene of organized progressive human activity already engaged upon the practical problems of social and political life. It furnishes for the history of mankind the most ancient authentic records at present known.
46. The position of the Babylonian plain is likewise prophetic of its history. It is an accessible land (sect. 11). Races and civilizations were to meet and mingle there. It was to behold innumerable political changes due to invasion and conquest. In turn, the union of peoples was to produce a strong and abiding social amalgam, capable of absorbing aliens and preserving their best. This civilization, because it lay thus open to all, was to contribute widely to the world's progress. It made commercial highways out of its rivers. The passes of the eastern and northern mountains were doorways, not merely for invading tribes, but also for peaceful armies of merchants marching to and from the ends of the world, and finding their common centre in its cities.
47. At the period when history begins, all these processes of development were already well advanced. Not only are the beginnings of civilization in Babylonia quite hidden from our eyes, but the various stages in the course of that first civilization, extending over thousands of years, are equally unknown, except as they may be precariously inferred from that which the beginnings of historical knowledge reveal. The earliest inscriptions which have been unearthed disclose social and political life already in full operation. Not only has mankind passed beyond the period of savage and even pastoral existence, but agriculture is the chief occupation; the irrigating canals have begun to distribute the river water to the interior of the land; the population is gathered into settled communities; cities are built; states are established, ruled over by kings; the arts of life are developed; language has already been reduced to written form, and is employed for literary purposes; religion is an essential element of life, and has its priests and temples.
48. The seat of the most advanced and presumably the most ancient historical life appears to have been the southernmost part of the Euphrates valley. As the river reached the gulf, which then stretched more than a hundred miles northwest of its present shore line, it spread out over the surrounding country in a shallow sea. Upon the higher ground to the east and west of the lowlands made marvellously fertile by this natural irrigation, the earliest cities were planted. Farthest to the south, presumably close to the gulf and west of the river mouth, was the ancient Eridu (now Abu Shahrein or Nowawis), the seat of a temple for the worship of Ea, the god of the waters. Here, no doubt, was told the story of Oannes, the being that came up daily from the sea to converse with men, to teach them letters, arts, and sciences, everything which could tend to soften manners and humanize mankind, and at night returned to the deep, - a myth of the sun, perhaps, associated with the recollection of the beginnings of culture in this coast city which, without tradition of political importance, was hallowed as a primitive centre of civilization and religion. Some ten miles to the west lay Ur, "the city" (at present called Mugheir), now a few miles west of the river in the desert, but once, like Eridu, a commercial city on the gulf. Here was the temple of Sin, the moon god, the ruins of which rise seventy feet above the plain. Across the river, thirty miles to the northeast, stood Larsam (now Senkereh), the biblical Ellasar, where the sun god Shamash had his temple. Twelve miles away to the northwest was Uruk, the biblical Erech (now Warka), the seat of the worship of the goddess Ishtar. Mar (now perhaps Tel Ede), a little known site, lay about the same distance north. Thirty-five miles east of Mar, on the ancient canal now known as Shatt-el-Hai, connecting the Tigris with the Euphrates, was Shirpurla, or Lagash (now Tello), looking out across the eastern plain, the frontier city of the early period, although fifty miles from the Tigris. These six cities, lying at the four corners of an irregular square, form the southernmost body of primitive communities already flourishing at the dawn of history.
49. Situated almost exactly in the centre of the ancient plain between the rivers, about fifty miles north of Uruk, was the already famous city of Nippur (now Niffer). Here the patron deity was En-lil, "chief spirit," called also Bel, the "lord," god of the terrestrial world. A long period of prehistoric political prominence must be assumed to explain the religious prestige of this city and of its god. Religion is its sole distinction at the time when records begin. But how great must have been that prominence to have secured for the city a claim to stand with Eridu as one of the two earliest centres of religion! En-lil was a father of gods, and his fame made Nippur the shrine where many kings were proud to offer their gifts.
50. North Babylonia had also its group of primitive cities, chief among which was Kutha (now Tel Ibrahim), the biblical Cuthah, more than fifty miles northwest of Nippur in the centre of the upper plain. Its god, Nergal, was lord of the world of the dead. Still further north, not far from the eastern bank of the Euphrates, was Sippar (now Abu Habba), where the sun god, Shamash, had his temple, and in its vicinity, probably, was Agade, once the famous capital of the land of Akkad. More uncertain are the sites of those northern cities which played an important part in the political activity of the earlier days, but soon disappeared, Kulunu (the biblical Calneh), Gishban (?), and Kish. It is a question whether Babylon and its sister city Borsippa should be included in this enumeration. If they were in existence, they were insignificant communities at this time, and their gods, Marduk and Nabu, do not stand high in the ranks of the earliest deities. The greatness of the two cities was to come, and to compensate by its splendor for the lateness of their beginnings.
51. Who were the people by whose energy this region was transformed into so fair and flourishing a land, at a time when elsewhere, with hardly an exception, the upward course of humanity did not yet reveal any trace of orderly and civilized conditions? What are their antecedents, and whence did they come to occupy the alluvial plain? These questions cannot be satisfactorily answered, because our knowledge of the facts involved is insufficient and the conclusions drawn from them are contradictory. Reference has already been made (sect. 26) to the linguistic phenomena of the early Babylonian inscriptions, and the opposite inferences drawn from them. The historical facts bearing on the question render a clearer answer, if also a more limited one. Whatever may be the conjectures based upon them as to prehistoric conditions and movements, these facts at the beginning of history testify that the civilization was that of a Semitic people. Inscriptions of an undoubtedly Semitic character are there, and the social, political, and religious phenomena presented by them have nothing that clearly demonstrates a non-Semitic character. Nor do any inscriptions, myths, or traditions testify, indubitably, either to a pre-Semitic population, or to the superimposing upon it of the Semitic stock. To the historian, therefore, the problem resolves itself into this: how and when did the Semitic people begin to occupy this Babylonian plain? As the consensus of judgment to-day seems to favor Central Arabia as the primitive home of the Semites, their advent into Babylonia must have been made from the west, by moving either upward, from the western side of the Persian gulf, or downward, along the Euphrates, - a drift from the desert as steady and continuous as the sand that creeps over the Babylonian border from the same source. When this movement began can only be conjectured from the length of time presumably required to develop the civilization which existed as early as 5000 B.C., back to which date the earliest materials must certainly be carried. The processes already indicated as having preceded this time (sects. 45, 47), suggest to what distant ages the incoming of the first settlers must be assigned.
52. The Babylonian primitive civilization did not stand alone or isolated in this dawn of history. It lay in the midst of a larger world, with some regions of which it had already entered into relations. To the northwest, along the Euphrates, nomadic tribes still wandered, although there are indications that, on the upper river, in the vicinity of the old city of Haran, a Semitic culture was already appearing. The Bedouin of the western desert hung on the frontier as a constant menace, or wandered into the cultivated land to swell the Semitic population. To the north, along the eastern banks of the upper Tigris, and on the flanks of the mountains were centres of primitive organization, as among the Guti and the Lulubi, whose kings, some centuries later, left Semitic inscriptions. But particularly active and aggressive were the people of the highlands east of Babylonia known by the collective name of Elam. The country sloped gently down to the Tigris, and was watered by streams descending from the hills. The people were hardy and warlike. They had already developed or acquired from their neighbors across the river the elements of organization and civilization. Through their borders ran the trade-routes from the east. Among the earliest memorials of history are evidences of their active interference in Babylonian affairs, in which they were to play so important a part in the future. Commerce was to bring more distant places into the circle of Babylonian life. On the borders, to the south, were the ports of
southern Arabia; far to the west, the peoples of the Mediterranean coast- lands were preparing to receive the visits of traders from the Euphrates; while at the end of the then known world was the rich and progressive nation in the valley of the Nile, already, perhaps, indebted to the dwellers in Babylonia for impulses toward civilization, which they were themselves to carry to so high a point in the ages to come.
Movements Toward Expansion And Unification
53. The cities whose existence at the dawn of history has already been noted, were, from the first, full of vigorous activity. The impulses which led to the organization of social life sought further development. Cities enlarged, came into touch with their neighbors, and sought to dominate them. The varying success of these movements, the rise, splendor, and decay of the several communities, their struggles with one another, and the ever-renewed activity which carried them beyond the confines of Babylonia itself, make up the first chapter in the story. It is impossible to give a connected and detailed account of the period, owing to the scantiness of the materials and the difficulty of them chronologically. The excavations of the last quarter of a century have only begun to suggest the wealth of inscriptions and archaeological matter which will be at the disposal of the future student. Much new light has been gained which makes it possible to take general views, to trace tendencies, and to prepare tentative outlines which discoveries and investigations still to come will fill up and modify.
54. Some general titles borne by rulers of the period afford a striking evidence of the character of this early development. Three of these are worthy of special mention, namely, "King of Shumer and Akkad," "King of the Totality (world)," "King of the Four (world-) Regions." It is evident that two of these titles, and possibly all, refer to districts and not to cities, although great uncertainty exists as to their exact geographical position. The second and third would suggest universal empire, though they might be localized upon particular regions. The "Kingdom of the Totality" is thought by Winckler and other scholars to have its centre in northern Mesopotamia about the city of Haran. "Shumer and Akkad" are regarded as including the northern and southern parts of Babylonia. The "Four Regions," synonymous with the four points of the compass, would include the known world from the eastern mountains and the Persian gulf to the Mediterranean. Whatever may be learned in the future respecting the exact content of these titles, they illustrate the impulses and tendencies which were already potent in these primitive communities.
55. This period of expansion and unification occupies more than two millenniums (about 4500-2250 B.C.). Three stages may be distinguished in what may truly be called this wilderness of years. (1) The first is marked by the struggles of cities within Babylonia for local supremacy. The chief rivalry lay between those of the north and those of the south. (2) With the career of Sargon I. (3800 B.C.), a new era opened, characterized by the extension of authority beyond the borders of Babylonia as far as the Mediterranean and the northern mountains, while yet local supremacy shifted from city to city. (3) The third epoch, which is, at the same time, the termination of the period and the opening of a new age, saw the final consolidation of Babylonian authority at home and abroad in the city-king of Babylon, which henceforth gave its name to land and government and
civilization. In each of these ages, some names of rulers stand out as fixed points in the vast void, gaps of unknown extent appear, and historic relations between individual actors upon the wide stage are painfully uncertain. Some account in the barest outline may be given of these kings, in some cases hardly more than shadows, whom the progress of investigation will in time clothe with flesh and blood, and assign the place and significance due to their achievements.
56. The struggle has already begun when the first known king, Enshagsagana (about 4500 B.C.) of Kengi, probably southwestern Babylonia, speaks of offering to the god of Nippur the spoil of Kish, "wicked of heart." Somewhat later the representative of the south in the wars with the northern cities, Kish and Gishban, was Shirpurla (sect. 48). Mesilim of Kish (about 4400 B.C.) made Shirpurla a vassal kingdom. It recovered under the dynasty of Ur Nina (about 4200 B.C.), who called himself king, while his successors were satisfied with the title of patesi, or viceroy. Two of these successors of Ur Nina, Eannatum (Edingiranagin) and Entemena, have left inscriptions of some length, describing their victories over cities of the north and south. Gishban, rivalling Kish in its hostility to the south, found a vigorous antagonist in Eannatum, whose famous "Vulture Stele" contains the terms imposed by him upon the patesi of that city.
Not long after, a king of Gishban, Lugalzaggisi (about 4000 B.C.), proclaimed himself "king of Uruk, king of the Totality," brought also Ur and Larsam under his sway, and offered his spoil at the sacred shrine of Nippur. He was practically lord of Babylonia. His inscription, moreover, goes on to declare that "from the lower sea of the Tigris and Euphrates to the upper sea (his god) made straight his path; from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same he gave him tribute." His authority extended from the Persian gulf to the Mediterranean. A later king of Kish, Alusharshid (about 3850 B.C.), wrote upon marble vases which he offered at Nippur, his boast of having subjugated Elam and Bara'se, the elevated plains to the east and northeast of Babylonia.
57. It is tempting to generalize upon these six centuries and more of history. The most obvious fact has already been mentioned, namely, that the movement toward expansion, incorporation, and unification is in full course. But more definite conclusions may be reached. There are those who see, in the arraying of north against south, the inevitable reaction of a ruder civilization against an older and higher one. The earlier culture of the south, and its more fully developed organization had pressed upon the northern communities and attempted to absorb them in the process of giving them civilization. But gradual decay sapped the strength of the southern states, and the hardier peoples of the north, having learned the arts of their conquerors, thirsted for their riches, and at last succeeded in overthrowing them. A more definite view is that which beholds in the aggressions of north upon south the steady advance of the Semitic people upon the Sumerians (sect. 26), and the process of fastening the yoke of Semitic political supremacy upon Babylonia, with the accompanying absorption of Sumerian culture by the conquerors. Another conclusion (that of Radau, Early Babylonian History) finds the Semites coming in from the south at the very beginning of the period and pushing northward beyond the confines of Babylonia. Then the Semites of the south, having become corrupted by the higher civilization of the Sumerians, were objects of attack on the part of the more virile Semites of the north who, turning back upon their former track, came down and occupied the seats of their brethren and renewed the purer Semitic element. There may be some truth in all these generalizations, but the positions are so opposed, and their foundations are as yet so precarious, that assent to their definite details must, for the present, be withheld from all of them.
58. Shargani-shar-ali, or, as he is more commonly called, Sargon I., king of the city of Agade (sect. 50), introduces the second stage in early Babylonian history. His son, Naram Sin, is said by Nabuna'id, the last king of the New Babylonian Empire, to have reigned three thousand two hundred years before his own time, that is, about 3750 B.C. Sargon lived, therefore, about 3800 B.C., the first date fixed, with reasonable certainty, in Babylonian history, and a point of departure for earlier and later chronology (sect. 40). The inscriptions coming directly from Sargon himself and his son are few and historically unimportant. Some, found at Nippur, indicate that both were patrons of the temple and worshippers of its god. A tablet of omens, written many centuries after their time, ascribes to them a wide range of activity and splendid achievement. While such a document may contain a legendary element, the truth of its testimony in general is substantiated by similar statements recorded in contract tablets of the Sargonic age. The very existence of such legends testifies to the impression made by these kings on succeeding generations. An interesting example of this type of document is the autobiographical fragment which follows:
Sargon, the powerful king, King of Agade, am I. My mother was of low degree, my father I did not know. The brother of my father dwelt in the mountain. My city was Azupirani, situate on the bank of the Euphrates. (My) humble mother conceived me; in secret she brought me forth. She placed me in a basket-boat of rushes; with pitch she closed my door. She gave me over to the river, which did not (rise) over me. The river bore me along; to Akki, the irrigator, it carried me. Akki, the irrigator, in the . . . brought me to land. Akki, the irrigator, reared me as his own son. Akki, the irrigator, appointed me his gardener. While I was gardener, Ishtar looked on me with love [and] . . . four years I ruled the kingdom.
(Assyrian and Babylonian Literature, p. 1.)
59. Sargon was a great conqueror. Within Babylonia, he was lord of Nippur, Shirpurla, Kish, Babylon, and Uruk. Beyond its borders, he and his son carried their arms westward to the Mediterranean, northward into Armenia, eastward into Elam and among the northeastern peoples, and southward into Arabia and the islands of the Persian gulf. To illustrate the character of these wars, reference may be made to the omen tablet, which, under the seventh omen, records a three years' campaign on the Mediterranean coast, during which Sargon organized his conquests, erected his images, and carried back the spoil to his own land. Possessed of so wide authority, Naram Sin assumed the proud title, for the first time employed by a Babylonian ruler, "King of the Four (world-) Regions."
60. The achievements of these kings were both a culmination of the activities of the earlier city-kings, and a model for those who followed. The former had from time to time gathered parts of the larger world under their own sway, as Lugalzaggisi the west, and Alusharshid the east. But the incorporation of the whole into a single empire was the work of the Sargonids, and no dynasty followed which did not strive after this ideal. The immediate descendants of Naram Sin, however, have left no monuments to indicate that they maintained their fathers' glory, and the dynasty of Agade disappeared in a darkness whi |
