September :o, 1S94] 



NATURE 



507 



Mesopotamian valley, it was on a grander scale than we had 

 heen accustomed to suppose, or, in plain language, a genuine 

 historic caiaslrophe. ^ 



A local flood must have had a locality, and ihe clue to ih's is 

 furnished by Genesis itself, which informs us that Abraham, 

 ihe founder of the Hebrew race, left his ancestral city, " Ur of , 

 the Chaldees." at a lime long subsequent to ihe flood ; it is, 

 therefore, rather in Ihe land ot the Chaldees than in Palestine, 

 ihat we should be led to seek ihe scene of this momenlous 

 tragedy. 



This land is no other than the famous and fince beautiful 

 valley of Mesopotamia, through which the greac Euphrates and j 

 arrow-swift Tigris llow to empty themselves into the Persian j 

 Gulf. Almost lost sight of for awhile, interest in it was re- j 

 awakened some seventy years ago by the investigations com- i 

 menced by Mr. Rich, and followed up with such wonderful ' 

 results by Bolta, Place, Layard, George Smith, and others. 

 Their discoveries have revealed to us in unexpected fulness the 

 details of acomplex and advanced civilisation almost, if not quite, 

 as ancient as the Egyptian, and far more profoundly interesting, 

 for the ancient nations of >resopotamia are the intellectual I 

 forefathers of the modern world. The learning of the Chaldees 

 was the heritage of the Jews and Greeks, from these the 

 torch was handed on to the Romans, and Jew and Greek 

 and Roman inspired, and still inspire, for good and evil, the 

 civilisation of the nineteenth century. There is much more of 

 the Chaldean in every one of us than we are given to imagine. 



The people whom we find in possession at the dawn of 

 history were Semites, the parent stock from which the Jews 

 subsequently branched off; and one has but to glance at their 

 faces and forms, as portrayed in their statues and pictures, to 

 lecognise the strong family likeness, while the emphasis with 

 which muscular development is expressed in parts of the human 

 figure suggests that the rfmarUable assertion, "The pride of a 

 young man is in his legs," was a .Semitic opinion long before 

 the time of .Solomon. 



Just as Egypt is the gift of the Nile, so is Mesopotamia 

 equally the gift of the Tigris and Euphrates, for it is built up 

 ot the mud brought down from the mountains by these two 

 streams into the Persian Gulf, which is thus in process of 

 obliteration. So long as the two great rivers wee no' regu- 

 lated, they produced terrible floods in the wet season ; and one 

 of the earliest works i f the Chaldeans was to control their flow 

 by gieat dams, and by diveitmg a part of their water into 

 canals. These canals covered ilie country like a network, and 

 served not merely to ease the rivers, but also to irrigate the land, 

 which thus richly supplied iiy water, became, under the hot 

 sun, so fat and Iruilful, that corn is said lo have borne 300- 

 fold. Groves of palms, rrchards, with grapes and many 

 other luscious fruits, were cuitivate<l, while the pastures sup- 

 ported abundant flocks and herds. It was a true garden uf 

 Eden, and differed chiefly from the biblical paradise, wliich 

 Delitsch thinks was actually situated within this garden, in 

 the f.ict tint even here man had still lo earn his bread in the 

 sweat of his brow. This the Turks, who now possess the 

 country, have no inclination to do, and consequently it is 

 rapidly returning to its primitive desolation. Were England 

 as enterprising as she was in the time of Elizabeth, we should 

 rent this land from the Porte, run a railway through it. ami 

 thus shorten our route to India by a thousand miles, fai m i', 

 and thus provide ourselves with one of the richest granaries in 

 the world. 



In a land so favoured, it is nothing wonderful that Ihe in- 

 habitants teemed in millions, villages were everywhere dotted 

 about, and in their midst great and flourishing criies aro«e — Ur, 

 the City of the Moon-good ; Erech, the City of Hooks ; Xipput. 

 and, most famous of all, proud liabvlon, "the Gale of God," 

 whrch stood on the led bank of the Euphrates, some 280 miles 

 al.ive its prest-nt mouth. In early limes, probably about 2300 

 11. c., the Jews left this beautiful land for some unknown reason, 

 and alur various vicissitudes settled in Palestine. Another 

 branch of ihe Chaldean stock migrated in later times lo the 

 northern part of the Tigris valley, where they built many 

 mighty cities, and founilcd the warlike kingdom of .\ssyria. 1 

 Of their cities it is sufficient to mention .-Xssur, which gave its • 

 name lo the kingdom, and Nineveh, which afterwards became 

 the capital. 



The Mesopotamian plain, owing to the way in which it 

 has been produced, is an almost dead fl.it, and oOiers no 

 natural elevations for building ; the Chaldees, iherefore, to 1 



NO. 1299, VOL. 50] 



raise the foundations of their pilaces, temples, and houses 

 above Ihe reach of floods and fever, and for better defence 

 against their enemies, constructed, with incredible labour, 

 great mounds, by piling io<:ether quantities of sun-dried 

 bricks and rulibi^h, and I uildrng round this a thick «'all of 

 burnt bricks, well cemented rogeiher. Some of these mound';, 

 as that of Kojundjik at Nineveh, are as much a- 60 feet in 

 height, and it has been computed that this mound alone would 

 have required the labour of 20,000 men for six years in its con- 

 struction. But there was never any difficulty in obtaining all 

 the labour Ihat was wanted. Prisoners of war were compelled 

 to work under the stick, and the building of mounds was one of 

 (he wholesome occupations lo which the Jews were set during 

 Iheir captivity in Assyria. 



On the mound of Knjunri'ik stood two great palaces, one n' 

 them that of King Assurbanipal. It was evidently not merely 

 a royal resilience, for one of its chambers at least was devoteil 

 to public purposes; this was the king's library, to \* hich the 

 citizens, who were taught in their early years to read and write, 

 had free access. Whether any of the books were written on 

 papyrus is uncertain ; all ihat have survived the conflagration, 

 in which Ihe pa'ace was destroyed, are on tablets of kiln-made 

 brick. Of such tablets many thousands have been recovered, 

 not only from Nineveh, but from other towns, and many of 

 them are now preserved in ihe Hrltish Museum. Thus within 

 the last fifty years modern Europe h.as obtained a glimpse, and 

 more than a glimpse, into the literature of a civilisation that 

 perished just as the Roman was coming into existence : for, as 

 Sir Walter Raleigh puis it, " In .Mexander's lime learnirkg and 

 greatness bad not travelled so far yvest as Rome, Alexander 

 es'eeming of Italy but as a barbarous country, and of Rome as 

 but a village. Cut it was Babylon that stood in his eyes, and 

 the fame of the e;ist pierced his ears." 



The recovered literature covers avast field of human interest, 

 in science, as in astronomy and mathematics, particularly in 

 astronomy, for ihe Chaldeans were famous slar-watchers, and 

 had already named the stars and constellations, associating ihem 

 with the deeds and mighty works of their heroes and demigods, 

 so ihat ihe s'arlit sky became a pictured rome, and the zodiac a 

 frieze to the Assyrian, reminding him of history or fable, like 

 the sculptures and paintings which adorned ihe king's palaces ; 

 in religion and poetry, and in commerce, many of the tabiels 

 recoriling business contracts, and revealing a system of mortgage 

 and banking, money being frequently lent at from 13 to 20 per 

 cent., yvhich was moderate ; lor ihe advantages of cent, per 

 rent, were already known and appreciated by these simple 

 Semitic folk. 



It was an ongst the Lablets from King Assurbanipal's library 

 at Nineveh, that George Smith, now over twenty year< ago, made 

 a famous discovery. He found a Tagment of a table", bearing 

 words, yvhich he deciphered as folloy<s : — "On the Mount 

 Nizir the ship stood still. Then I took a dove, ami let her fly. 

 The dove flew hither an I thither, but finding no resting-place, 

 returned to the ship. " Every Englishman yvho knows his Bible 

 would have guessed, as George .'^mith immediately did, that he 

 had before him a piece out of a Chaldean account of the deluge. 

 He searched for more fragments, and found them. Ileyventout 

 to Assyria, visited the King's palace, and foui.d still more tablets 

 and pieces of tablets, some of them just those he required to fill 

 up missing gaps in ihe story. Since its first translation by its 

 discoverer it h.as been again translated and retranslated by some 

 of the acutest scholars in Europe, so that we now possess a 

 fairly complete knoyvledge of it ; a few missing yvords or even 

 lines, and occasional obscurities occur, but these are of no great 

 importance. In a toyvn yvhich has the privilege to number the 

 distinguished .\ssyriologist. Prof. Sayce, among its residents, 

 there will be no necessity to present the story more ihan briefly. 

 It runs as follows : — Siinapisiim, the ChaMean Noah, is yvarned 

 by Ea, the god of wisdom and the sea, that the gods of Surippak, 

 a city on the Euphrates, even then exlremrly old, had decided 

 in council lo destroy mankind by a flood. Sitnapislim is told to 

 build a ship in yvhich 10 save himself, his family, household, and 

 lielongings. Anticipating Ihe curiosity of his neighbours, since 

 he had i ever before built a boat, he asks yvhat answer he is lo 

 make yvhen questioned astohis unusual proceedings. Ea, yvho 

 as the god ot wisdom is naturally a master of evasion, provides 

 him with a subterfuge, and .Sitnapislim sels about building his 

 boai. He forms it of limber and reeds, and makes it water- 

 light by filling up the crevices yviih pilch, yyhich he poured over 

 it both yvithin and yvithout. It is of great inleiest, as showing 



