The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max

the mysteries disclosed by Dagon to Edorankhus of Sippara (p. 239). Hence we may assume that the priests of Babylon arrived at an early age at a code which included their creed and ritual, as it would seem, in seven books (p. 245). How high the cosmogonies go, of which the most essential traits were found in the fragments of Berosus (p. 238), we cannot decide. In the conception which lies at the base of them the forces of nature are seen pouring forth in wild confusion. The name of the woman who rules these forces, or of this chaos inhabited by monsters, Omorka, has been explained as "Homer-Kai," i.e., "material of the egg," the world-egg, but more recently by "Um Uruk," i.e. "the mother," the "great goddess of Erech." In the cosmogony of Berosus we can see, though in a very rude and contradictory shape, the opposition of a material and intellectual, a natural and supernatural principle, and later accounts maintain that the Babylonians regarded the world as arising out of fire and water, that Chaos and Love were the parents of Life and Contention, and of Life and Contention Bel was the son.[388]

More important and far more valuable than these abstractions, to which the Babylonians obviously attained only at a late period, and in all probability under the influence of Greek ideas, are the results which their knowledge and acuteness gained in other fields. The cuneiform writing, according to the conclusions we have already been compelled to draw, was borrowed by the Elamites and Babylonians from the earlier inhabitants of the lower districts. It was originally a picture-writing, which, like the Egyptian, passed from real pictures to indicatory and symbolic pictures or picture-signs. The necessity of abbreviating and compressing the picture-signs was here far more keenly felt than in Egypt, quite irrespective of the fact that the strong pictorial tendency of the Egyptians was probably wanting on the Lower Tigris. The stones and slabs on which the Egyptians engraved their hieroglyphics were not to be found in the plains of the two rivers, and the slabs of mud, clay, and brick on which they were compelled to write (the pictures and symbols were written on the soft slabs with the style, and these were then burnt), were ill-adapted for sketches. Such obstinate material made the abbreviation of the symbols an imperative necessity; and it was by sharp and straight strokes that the signs could be most easily traced upon slabs of mud and clay. The oldest bricks in the ruins of Mugheir, Warka, and Senkereh display pictures in outline; then beside bricks with inscriptions of this kind we find others repeating the same inscription in cuneiform signs, which now form a completely ideographic system of writing. The immediate comprehension of picture signs by the senses died away owing to abbreviations of the kind mentioned, and the picture-writing became symbolic writing. This writing, which consisted of groups of cuneiform symbols, attained a higher stage of development when a phonetic value was attributed to a part of the cuneiform groups, whether used to signify nouns or verbs and adjectives, or new groups were formed for this purpose. By cuneiform groups both simple and compound syllables are expressed. For simple syllables, i.e. for those consisting of a single consonant with a vowel before or after it in order to give the consonant a sound, the cuneiform writing of Babylon and Assyria possesses about one hundred groups, and several hundred groups for compound syllables, i.e. for those which have more than one consonant. Side by side with this syllabic writing the old abbreviated picture-writing was retained. Certain words of frequent occurrence, as king, battle, month, were always represented by picture signs, or ideograms, and so also were the names of deities and most proper names. The greater number of the cuneiform groups were then used in a phonetic as well as an ideographic sense, and without any correlation between the phonetic and actual meaning. Thus the symbol for the word "father" had the phonetic value of the syllable at, but "father" in the Babylonian language is abu. In Babylon this system of writing became even more complicated by the fact that different meanings and different phonetic values were ascribed to the same cuneiform groups. There are symbols which have four different phonetic values and four different meanings.[389] In order to lessen to some degree the great difficulty in understanding the meaning which was caused by the varying use of the same symbol as an ideogram and a sound, and the multiplicity of meanings and sounds attached to certain signs—key-symbols were placed before the names of gods, lands, cities, and persons, and occasionally one or more syllables were attached to ideograms of more than one meaning, which formed the termination of the word intended to be expressed by the ideogram in the particular instance.

Complicated and difficult as this writing was, it was applied on a considerable scale in Assyria and Babylonia, and it remained in use even after the fall of the Babylonian empire, as is shown by bricks and tablets of the time of Cyrus, Cambyses, Artaxerxes I., and the Seleucidæ.[390] These are principally records of business or legal matters, of which, in this way, a selection has come down to us extending from the times of Hammurabi (p. 261) to the first century B.C. The Armenians adopted this system from the Babylonians and Assyrians; and they also made it shorter and simpler. In the same way the Medes and Persians borrowed it. But in the Persian inscriptions of the Achæmenids it has already become a mere phonetic mode of writing but little removed from an ordinary alphabet. Beyond doubt the Babylonian system was known to the Western Semitic tribes; it even passed over from Syria to Cyprus, where we find it assuming a peculiar form, and displaying throughout the character of a syllabic mode of writing. At the same time among the Syrians and Phenicians a cursive method was developed, just as in Egypt the hieratic writing grew up beside the hieroglyphic. This cursive writing of the Western Semitic nations has not, however, arisen out of the cuneiform symbols, but out of the hieratic writing of the Egyptians. The Phenicians must claim the merit of having abbreviated still further, for their own use, the cursive writing of the Egyptians. But the picture-symbols of the hieratic writing were not merely contracted and simplified; the mixture of pictorial, syllabic, and alphabetic symbols—beyond which the Egyptians did not rise—was abandoned, and then for the first time an alphabet was discovered. This Phenician alphabet was in use in Syria as early as the year 1000 B.C.[391] In Babylonia also this alphabetic writing was in use beside the cuneiform. We find it in Babylon side by side with the corresponding cuneiform on a weight, of which the inscription tells us: "Thirty minæ of standard weight: the palace of Irba Merodach (Marduk) king of Babylon." The exact date of this king cannot be ascertained: we only know that he must have belonged to the old kingdom. Assyrian weights with inscriptions in the Phenician alphabet, beside the cuneiform inscriptions, are found of the eighth century B.C., the time of King Tiglath Pilesar II., Shalmanesar IV., and Sennacherib.[392]

"It can be maintained with good reason," says Diodorus, "that the Chaldæans are far before all other nations in their knowledge of the heavens; and that they devoted the greatest attention and labour to this science." At an early period, by comparing the course of the sun with that of the moon, they had perceived that the sun returned to the same position after passing through about twelve cycles of the moon; hence they fixed the year at twelve months of thirty days, which they, by intercalations of various kinds, brought into harmony with the astronomical year of 365¼ days.[393] The observation, that the sun after a course of twelve months returns to the same constellation, led them on to determine the changing position of the sun in the other months by constellations. Thus the Babylonians marked off the constellations which seemed to touch nearest upon the course of the sun, and arrived at the signs of the ecliptic or zodiac. Each of these twelve stations through which the sun passed they again divided into thirty parts. The week they fixed at seven days by the course of the moon; to the day they allotted twelve hours, to correspond to the twelve months of the year; the hours they divided into sixty parts, and each of these sixtieths was again subdivided into sixty parts. Their measures were also duodecimal. The cubit was twenty-four finger-breadths; and on the same system, their numerals were based upon the sossus, or sixty—a derivative from twelve, and the sarus, or square of the sossus.