September 26, 1907] 



NA TURE 



539 



foreign g-eology, so many of which art- of first-class 

 iniportance. 



The author is gently sarcastic regarding the nomen- 

 clature of some modern palaeontology published by 

 the society. The artificial Linnean system was 

 adequate for the biology of the eighteenth century, 

 which was innocent of such principles as " hetero- 

 genetic homogeneity." The plastic terminology that 

 is in process of development in correspondence with 

 the variability of life has lost in simplicity, while it 

 has gained in truth. Scientific names, like other 

 words, must be allowed to change in meaning, even 

 though the change may puzzle geologists as much 

 as a lawyer is puzzled to define such common terms 

 as mine or mineral. The author notes with apparent 

 regret that a fossil should be called a " konincko- 

 phyllid cyathophyllum " ; but the Geological Society 

 would be untrue to its inspiring traditions if it closed 

 its journal to those whose living faith in evolution is 

 much more than a mere verbal creed, and must be 

 expected to influence all their practice. J. W. G. 



ANCIENT BABYLONIAN LETTERS. 

 Late Babylonian Letters. By R. Campbell Thomp- 

 son. Pp. xxxvi+226. (London: Luzac and Co., 

 1906.) Price 15s. net. 



OF all the ancient written matter that has been 

 discovered by modern archseological research and 

 deciphered by the professors of languages long dead, 

 perhaps the documents most interesting to the general 

 reader are those which reveal to us the dailv life of 

 the people who wrote them thousands of years ago. 

 These " human documents " are always interesting 

 reading. Royal instructions, reports of generals or 

 of astrologers, ministers or caravan-leaders, diplo- 

 matic correspondence, and last, but not least, the 

 ordinary letters from one man to another, whether 

 anent business or pleasure, have been during the last 

 half-century recovered from the past, and are now 

 supplementing in a most remarkable way the formal 

 annals of the historians. From Egypt we have the 

 famous " Tell el-Amarna Letters " of 1400 B.C., the 

 correspondence of the time of the priest-kings (1000 

 B.C.) published by Spiegelberg, and the interesting 

 series of Greek letters recovered from the sands of 

 Oxyrrhynchus by Drs. Grenfell and Hunt, not 

 to speak of the Coptic epistles of the monks 

 of Deir el-Bahari in the seventh centurv a.v., trans- 

 lated by Crum and by Hall. From far Turkestan we 

 have the wooden tablets inscribed in Kharoshthi char- 

 acters, discovered by Dr. M. A. Stein, which tell us 

 of the daily life of the Indian kingdom of Khotan in 

 the flourishing days of Buddhism ; and now Mr. 

 R. C. Thompson (late of the British Museum), of the 

 University of Chicago, has published an edition of 

 a series of late Babylonian letters, being " trans- 

 literations and translations of a series of letters written 

 in Babylonian cuneiform, chiefly during the reigns of 

 Nabonidus, Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius," i.e. from 

 about 550 to 480 B.C. These letters are preserved in 

 the British Museum, and the original cuneiform texts 

 have been published by the Trustees. 



The book is published by Messrs. Luzac and Co. in 

 NO. IQ78, VOL. 76I 



their admirably got-up " Semitic Text and Translation 

 Series." Print, paper, and binding are good and 

 appropriate. As a frontispiece Mr. Thompson gives 

 an adaptation (with English text instead of Baby- 

 lonian) of a remarkable Babylonian map of the world, 

 which we recommend to the attention of Mr. Beazley 

 for comparison with other ancient maps. We do not 

 believe, by the way, that this map, with its restricted 

 knowledge, really represents the world as known to 

 the Babylonians of the sixth century B.C. It is 

 obviously a copy of a far more ancient map, dating 

 from the days when the Babylonian knew of but little 

 beyond the limits of his own fens, which he conceived 

 as an island surrounded by the waters of the Persian 

 Gulf. 



The perusal of these letters will be useful to the 

 modern historian who is not content merely to re- 

 capitulate the annals of his ancient confreres, but 

 wishes to give a picture of the civilisation of an ancient 

 people. With the exception of an occasional royal 

 epistle, such as the very interesting one of Ashur- 

 banipal (No. i, a century older than the rest) ordering 

 the collection of tablets for the royal library at Nineveh, 

 now in its entirety preserved on the shelves of the 

 British Museum, these letters were written by the 

 ordinary Babylonian " man in the street," the ordinary 

 middle-class inhabitant of Babylon, and his wife. For 

 the ladies of Babylon were as busy with the stilus as 

 those of London are with the pen, and many of Mr. 

 Thompson's collection were written by women. They 

 relate to the usual round of life of a civilised people 

 as led in an Oriental country. The letters of the 

 modern inhabitants of Cairo, Baghdad, Lahore or 

 Delhi must be very like them. Perhaps at Benares, 

 rather, we might get their ven,^ counterparts. For in 

 Babylonia, as in modern India, the temples of the 

 gods and the business of the priests were a great 

 factor in the city life, and a large proportion of these 

 letters " is connected with the business of the great 

 temple of the Sun-god at Sippar," with the landed 

 property belonging to the temple, from which the 

 priests drew their revenues, and with the arrangements 

 for the temple-dues, which were often paid in kind. 

 This is an ancient touch, which we should only find 

 paralleled now in India and the Far East. An 

 Oriental trait is the correspondence with regard to 

 the transport of food, goods, materials for building, 

 &c., by beasts. The back of a beast of burden was 

 then, as now in the same country, the only means of 

 transport. Babylonia has not progressed a step in the 

 direction of the improvement of transport since the 

 days when these letters were written ; and the com- 

 pletion of the Baghdad Railway seems still far off ! 



Of the ordinary letters between man and man on 

 matters of interest only to themselves Mr. Thompson 

 gives many specimens. Travellers in a far country 

 write to their friends asking for news, and upbraiding 

 their faithless correspondents, for then, as now, " one 

 had not time to write." Husbands indite model 

 epistles to their wives, like one, highly commended 

 by the editor, which reads : — 



" Bv the grace of the gods I am well, as also is 

 Bel-iddin. See. I am sending a letter to Iddina- 



