300 



SCIENCE- GOSSIP. 



SOCIOLOGY AND SCIENCE OF BABYLON. 



OOME eight thousand years ago the dawn of 

 human civilisation is said to have broken in 

 Babylonia. This is doubtless true in a sense, because 

 we have now available abundant records written and 

 dated as early as six thousand years before the birth 

 of Christ ; memoirs of the people who then lived on 

 the fringe of the plain drained by the great rivers 

 Euphrates and Tigris. That some form of civilisa- 

 tion had existed, probably for thousands of years 

 before these early human documents were written, 

 there can be no doubt, as the art of writing, either 

 pictorial or by arbitrary signs, was one of man's later 

 accomplishments. 



Considering the tone and subjects dealt with in the 

 earliest discovered documents, there does not appear 

 to be any reason why man should not have been 

 partially civilised for ten or twenty thousand years 

 before he commenced to write. Everything, indeed, 

 tends to point to this having been the case, for very 

 shortly after the system of definite writing grew out 

 of the pictorial, We find records of a social system 

 differing in principle but little from that of our own 

 in this last year of the nineteenth century after the 

 birth of Christ. 



The charmingly written book by Professor Sayce 

 of Oxford,' which forms the first of the " Semitic 

 Series," edited by Professor James Alexander Craig, 

 of the University of Michigan, will come as a revela- 

 tion to many of his readers who have known only 

 the usual narrative of the age of man. Yet the 

 story unfolded by the Babylonian and Assyrian tablets 

 found during the past few years is so simply convinc- 

 ing that we cannot come to any other conclusion 

 with regard to man's antiquity. These tablets have 

 been long known, and there is already a consider- 

 able literature devoted to them and their transla- 

 tion. So far as we are aware, however, the first 

 popularly written work on the subject, gathering 

 together the latest information divulged by their 

 translation, is the book before us. 



Babylonia, referred to in the book of Genesis as 

 Babel, was situated on the plain formed by the 

 deposits brought down by the rivers Euphrates and 

 Tigris, that once flowed separately into the Persian 

 Gulf. Consequently the substratum is of clay. To 

 this accident of environment we of the present times 

 are thankful, otherwise it is improbable that we 

 should possess the indelible evidence of those ancient 

 times. Naturally, where stone and even wood were 

 scarce, the people used day for most of the needs to 

 which it was suited. Their houses were built of 

 brick, their household utensils were made in a corner 

 of the brickfield, and flat tiles or tablets of soft clay 



(i) The Babylonians and Assyrians^ by tfie Rev. A. H. 

 Sayce, x -t- 273 pp. 7J in. x 5 in. (London ; John Nimmo. 

 1900.) ss. net. 



were used for writing upon with a stylus. At first 

 they were sun-dried ; but later, as civilisation ad- 

 vanced, kiln-baked. Hence it is that these tablets 

 have come down to us uninjured, whereas almost 

 any other substance would have so far decayed as to 

 have lost the sharpness of the cuneiform signs repre- 

 senting the letters. Most of the tablets are of small 

 size, easily carried, and useful for correspondence. 

 Indeed, as our author points out, many of them are 

 within the weight of our own postal limits, so were 

 no more trouble to a Babylonian postman— for there 

 were such centuries upon centuries before the 

 Christian era. Some of the tablets were even en- 

 closed in envelopes ; remains of them, bearing 

 addresses, having been found. As Professor Sayce 

 says of some among them: — "That we should 

 possess the autograph letters of a contemporary of 

 Abraham is one of the romances of historical science, 

 for it must be remembered that the letters are not 

 copies, but the original documents themselves." 

 Stripped of their complimentary introductions, for • 

 the Babylonians were a polite people, many of these 

 epistles would be nowise out of place in our own 

 correspondence. One writes in early times : — "To 

 my father, thus says Zimri-eram : May the Sun-god 

 and Merodach grant thee everlasting life ! May 

 your health be good ! I write to ask you how you 

 are ; send me back news of your health. I am at 

 present at Dur-Sin, on the canal of Bit-Sikir. In 

 the place where I am living there is nothing tcj be 

 had for food. So I am sealing up and sending you 

 three-quarters of a silver shekel. In return for the 

 money, send me some good fish and other provisions 

 for me to eat. " 



It is from these ancient human records that we get 

 the first glimpses of the earliest beginnings of civilisa- 

 tion historically known to us. For several thousands 

 of years Babylonia was the gathering-place of the 

 nations, and was peopled by men and women of 

 higher mental capacity, as it was only the most enter- 

 prising of each race who ventured to travel in those 

 remote periods. These, as is the case with modern 

 nations, formed the most progressive nation of ancien 

 times, owing to their admixture and consequent 

 vigorous offspring. Trade was the first incentive to 

 immigration, and later conquest brought them. The 

 extent of Babylonia was annually increased by Nature 

 as well as by occasional conquest. The shore-line 

 was, and still is, always advancing seawards, and 

 geologists are, from the tablet records, now able to 

 calculate its progress. The primitive seaport of 

 Chaldea was Eridu, flourishing 6,500 years before 

 Christ ; its site is now about 130 miles from the 

 present coast-line. 



The difficulty of the variety of languages spoken 

 in Babylon led to the adoption of a classic, being the 



