OUR great grandfathers who accepted the chronology of the good Bishop Usher, by which the creation of the world was placed neatly and exactly at 4004 years before Christ, would never have dreamed of such periods of time as those the ethnologist, in his search for the natural history of man, compasses today in the annals of a single family, like the so-called, and at present discredited, Aryan. Nor yet would it have seemed possible to our grandfathers, that modern archÆology would have made it possible for our savants and scientists to be today correcting the mistakes of Herodotus, and showing by their decipherings of new-found inscriptions and monuments, that before the earliest Greeks, the Egyptians, and even the Semitic peoples who inhabited Babylon and Assyria, there was another people,—a people whose origin it is not possible to place even now,—the Sumerians and Akkadians, Recent excavations have changed the entire historical attack. Instead of beginning with the Homeric Age as an age of legend, “civilization may now be traced beyond the MycenÆan epoch, through the different stages of Ægean culture back into the Neolithic Age.” “On the northern and eastern confines of the Babylonian culture-system, new nations pass within our ken; Vannic men of Armenia, ruled by powerful kings; Kassites of the Zagros, whose language seems to contain elements which if really Aryan are probably the oldest known monuments of Indo-European speech (c. 1600 B. C.); strange tongued Elamites, also, akin neither to Iranian nor Semite. Nor does it seem to us remarkable that we should read the trilingual proclamations of Darius Hystaspis to his peoples in their original tongues, although an eighteenth century philosopher would have regarded the prospect of our ever being able to do so as the wildest of chimeras!” Recent excavations have established the fact that the earliest known civilization was in what afterwards came to be known as Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and that groups of people living in cities and calling themselves, in the lower section of the country, the Sumerians, and in the upper section, the Akkadians, dwelt in civilized state until they were conquered by the Semitic peoples. The Semites in their conquest of the Greeks, as we now know, took from the conquered the culture of the race that was physically weaker, as indeed the Gauls did from the Romans. In government, law, literature, and art the Sumerians were the superior people, and though the Semites improved on their models, the impulse, says King, came from the Sumerians. Even with the excavations that are now going on and the discoveries that are being made almost daily, our evidence is still too scanty and imperfect, the gaps in it are too numerous, From these Semitic conquerors of the Sumerians, however, there came the first civilization and the first humanization, for in this rich valley with its abundance of water and its rich soil, the Nomads became an agricultural people; there was plenty for all, and the germ of human tolerance that the world was to show later toward the child, was there in that long ago pre-Semitic civilization of Babylonia. Traces there are, however, of an earlier attitude, when the first-born was sacrificed. Speaking of a Babylonian text, that he believed established the fact that there were sacrifices of the first-born among the Sumerians, Professor Sayce said: “My interpretation of the text has been disputed, but it still appears to me to be the sole legitimate one. The text is bilingual, in both Sumerian and Semitic, and therefore probably goes Further corroboration of this belief of Professor Sayce was furnished by the recently dug up Stele of the Vultures, now in the Louvre. Here there is a representation of a wicker cage, filled with captives who are waiting to be put to death by the god Ningirsu, who holds in his hand the heraldic emblem of the city of Lagash. The Stele of the Vultures records the triumph of the King of Lagash, the great Eannatum, over the men of Umma who are undoubtedly the captives and are about to be sacrificed. A POMEIOC CHIEFTAIN’S WIFE AND CHILD (FROM THE ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA IN 1587.) ESKIMO MOTHER CARRYING INFANT IN HER HOOD (FROM ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA, 1587.) More positive knowledge, however, we have of the Sumerian laws, laws it should be remembered that tell of a civilization 1000 years before the Chinese. That there was a sense of justice in Sumer and Akkad long before the period of Hammurabi, is evident from the inscriptions found at Tello by Gerzec. Inscriptions of the year 3500 B. C., according to Cuq, and about the year 2800, according to Kang, show that Hammurabi was indebted to the reform king, Urukagina, for many of his laws. Urukagina declared that the people had rights, and even went so far as to say that if the king bought the property of a subject, he must pay for it. We have many tablets telling of the wonderful things that he did, but the one reform which indicates that he had a regard for the family, and consequently, there was probably more care for children, is that provision of his laws which deals with divorce. In telling of his reforms in these inscriptions, Urukagina records the fact that under the old rÉgime, if a man put away his wife, he paid the patesi five shekels of silver and gave one to the grand vizir. Undoubtedly in the beginning, the object of these fees was to prevent the nobles, and through them by force of example, the plain people, from putting away their wives too easily. In other words there was a desire to hold together the old Sumerian family. In the course of time, however, Tablets of the time of Urukagina and his predecessor, Lugalanda, translated by M. de Genouillac, give some indication of what the family condition was, although we still have to guess as to what was the real attitude toward children. Women were important; they could hold property and they were protected in their property rights by law. This in itself might indicate that there were no such primeval practices as exposing or drowning female children. Among these tablets of Tello, is a series telling what provision was made for the women who were attached to the Temple of Bau, the goddess to whom the great ruler prays, as: “... The one that grantest life unto the land.... “Thou art the Queen, the mother that founded Lagash.” “The education of a large number of infants,” concluded de Genouillac, “was encouraged by the pension for mothers.” Here indeed was progress!—at a time when there was nothing but barbarism everywhere else in the world. It is interesting to note in these same tablets the fact that the wife of the king or the patesi was of great importance, for all documents signed by Lugalanda bear the name of his wife, Barnamtarra, and those under Urukagina have the signature of his wife, Sagsag. It is more than likely too, that the service mentioned above as being for the Temple of Bau, was for the goddess’s representative, the Queen Sagsag. Another tablet, in which are set forth the expenses of the servants who were apparently more attached to the queen, speaks of thirty infants to fifty-seven women, In the Imperial Museum at Constantinople two tablets show that parents were free to sell their children and that these sales were frequent matters of legal adjudication four centuries before Hammurabi. Tablet No. 830, excavated at Tello, is imperfect, but there is enough of it to show us that in the month of the fÊte of the goddess Bau, the daughter of Ab-ba-gi-na was sold by her father, and the sale was confirmed and properly sworn to and then registered. In Tablet No. 925, we have the sale of a daughter to a cook, by a widow who was probably in hard straits. The daughter tries to break the contract and the mother stands by her, but the cook brings two witnesses who prove that the sale took place and was a proper one; as a result of this attempted fraud, the master then inflicts punishment on the slave. As a further evidence of the humanity of the Sumerians, we have the fact that, like the Egyptians, they had a god who presided over the accouchements, a god who corresponded in some ways to the Hera of the Greeks and the Juno of the Latins, but who had other and more kindly functions, and was there to ameliorate pain and apparently to protect the young. Among the Greeks and Romans the young were never thought of except as the property of adults, whose interest always came It was in December, 1901, that M. J. de Morgan, Director-General of the expedition sent out by the French Government, while excavating the acropolis of Susa, found three large fragments of a block of black diorite among the debris. Under this bas-relief was the longest cuneiform Semitic inscription yet recovered, having sixteen columns of text of which four and a half formed the prologue. On the reverse of the stele there were twenty-eight columns, the entire inscription being estimated by Johns to contain “forty-nine columns four thousand lines, and eight thousand words.” Hammurabi, identified by Assyriologists as the Amraphael of Genesis xiv., 1, was the sixth King of the dynasty of Babylon, reigning over fifty-five years, about 2250 B. C., and the first king to consolidate the Semitic empire, making Babylon the capital. There are two periods in the history of humanity: one when the morals make the laws, and one when the laws change the morals. The Code of Hammurabi, the oldest known code in the world, belongs to the second period. While it appears from the prologue and epilogue of the Code that Hammurabi was deeply devoted to religion and was, in addition to being king, a pious, God-fearing man, one who destroyed his enemies North and South, the Code is strictly devoted to civil and secular affairs. Nevertheless, scarcely anything is known of the laws of the time dealing with crimes, nothing having been discovered to show how murder or theft was treated. Hammurabi’s Code is undoubtedly a compilation and, while he enacted fresh laws, he built for the most part on the foundations of other men. In the Sumerian days that preceded these Semitic kings, of whom Hammurabi, Sargon I., and Lugalzaggisi were the greatest, there were codes of laws “I. If a son has said to his father, ‘You are not my father,’ he may brand him, lay fetters upon him, and sell him. “II. If a son has said to his mother, ‘You are not my mother,’ one shall brand his forehead, drive him out of the city, and make him go out of the house. “III. If a father has said to his son, ‘You are not my son,’ he shall leave house and yard. “IV. If a mother has said to her son, ‘You are not my son,’ he shall leave house and property. “V. If a wife hates her husband and has said, ‘You are not my husband,’ one shall throw her into the river. “VI. If a husband has said to his wife, ‘You are not my wife,’ he shall pay half a mina of silver. “VII. If a man has hired a slave and he dies, is lost, has fled, has been incapacitated, or has fallen sick, he shall measure out 10 ka of corn per diem as his wages.” From this it will be observed that if the son repudiates his parent, real or adoptive, he meets Adoption was an ancient institution, and the rights of the man who adopted the infant were protected in order that he might be paid for the trouble and expense of his charge. The adoption of children in the Code of Hammurabi is the subject of much minute regulation. In the Code the endeavour to protect the father who picks up a child, is shown in paragraphs 185, 186, 187 and 188: “185. If a man take in his name a young child as a son and rear him, one may not bring claim for that adopted son. “186. If a man take a young child as a son, and, when he takes him, he is rebellious toward his father and mother (who have adopted him), that adopted son shall return to the house of his father. “187. One may not bring claim for the son of “188. If an artisan take a son for adoption and teach him his handicraft, one may not bring claim for him.” Coming down to a later period, we may see the influence of other peoples on the Babylonians in the Assyrian Doomsday Book or Liber Censualis, copied from the cuneiform tablets of the seventh century, B. C. Of this period too, is the story of Sargon the younger—a legend that is interesting not alone because of its similarity to that of Moses, but because it shows that this section of the country As an indication of the conditions a thousand years later, we may take the certificate of adoption cited by Dr. Rogers, of the time of King Kurigalzu who reigned in Babylon from about 1390 B. C. to 1375. “Ina-Uruk-rishat, daughter of (mu) shallim, had no daughter and therefore she adopted Etirtu, daughter of Ninib-mushallim, as her daughter. Seven shekels of gold she gave. She may give her to a husband, she may appoint her a temple slave, but she may not make her a servant. If she does make her a servant, Etirtu shall go to her father’s house. As long as Ina-Uruk-rishat lives, Etirtu shall pay her reverence. When Ina-Uruk-rishat dies, Etirtu, as her daughter, shall offer the water libation. If Ina-Uruk-rishat should say, ‘Thou art not my daughter,’ she shall lose the gold which she has paid. If Etirtu should say, ‘Thou art not my mother,’ she shall become a servant. There shall no claim be made. Before Ellil, Ninib, Nusku, and King Kurigalzu they have made oath together. “Before Damkum, her uncle on the mother’s side. Before Rabasha-Ninib. Before Ellil-ibni, son of Ellil-ishu. Before Etel-pi-Azagshug, son of Amel-Marduk; before Rish-Marduk, son of Ba’il-Nusku; before Arad-Belit, the scribe, son of From another point of view we may also understand the Babylonian morality. As a characteristic it is interesting to note “that the general modesty of the Babylonian art, in the matter of clothes, is very marked,” says Ward, “we never see any display of Phallism.” They were a truly remarkable people of whom we are yet to learn a great deal. Future excavations may reveal much, but up to now “the abundant literature of Babylon,” says Dussaud, “does not offer a single example of human sacrifice and yet one has the right to suppose that it was common among them.” |