The Historians' History of the World 01

It is obvious that in such a sweep of time numerous changes must take place in the manners and customs of the people, and multiform alterations must be developed in the various phases of civilisation. This would necessarily be true even if the history of a single people were involved. But, in point of fact, as we have seen, we have here to do with four tolerably distinct peoples—the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans. To attempt a brief exposition of the varied civilisations of these four peoples during a period of several millenniums within brief bounds, would clearly be a presumptuous task were full details accessible as to all the periods involved. But we have already seen that such details are not accessible. Meagre details have come down to us from the Sumerians, and only less meagre ones Babylonians; and the reminiscences of the Chaldeans, notwithstanding their later period in history, are but slightly less vague. It is the Assyrians that must be looked to chiefly for data that can afford us, at best, an inferential knowledge of their predecessors; and we must all along remember that we are to a certain extent seeing with Assyrian eyes in attempting to view the Babylonian civilisation. Still, it should be recalled that important changes in the manners and customs of any people are usually of slow development everywhere, and that they were perhaps particularly so here, because we have to do with the most conservative of races. The Babylonians and Assyrians were own cousins to the Hebrews, and no doubt partook in full measure of what Goethe styles the “obstinate persistency” of that race. The main outline of their civilisation, therefore, probably remained unchanged generation after generation.

On the other hand, it must be understood that the Sumerians, whatever their precise racial affinities, were a very different people from the Semitic races that superseded them. There is reason to believe that they were essentially a creative race, whereas the Semites, and in particular the Assyrians, were pre-eminently copyists and adapters rather than originators. It would appear that all the chief features of the later Assyrian civilisation were adumbrated, if not indeed fully elaborated, in that early day when the Sumerians were dominant in southern Babylonia. Even the cuneiform system of writing, with all its extraordinary complexities, is believed by philologists to give unequivocal evidence of Sumerian origin. But however correct this view may be, we are constrained to view the Sumerians solely in the light of their successors. The monumental remains exhumed from amid the ruins of the palace of Asshurbanapal supply us with the chief documents for the interpretation of a civilisation that had passed away something like three thousand years before this palace itself or its documentary treasures came into being.

This is somewhat as if one were to study the manners and customs of the Italians of to-day in order to gain a knowledge of the civilisation of Rome in the time of the Tarquinians. The parallel is really not quite so complete as it might at first sight appear, for in many respects practical civilisation changed more in the nineteenth century than in all the previous centuries of recorded history. Beyond cavil, the civilisation of the time of Sargon I had far greater resemblance to the time of Asshurbanapal than the Rome of the early kings bears to the Rome of King Victor Emmanuel. Nevertheless, we should bear this corrective view in mind in the alleged attempt to deal with Mesopotamian civilisation as a whole.

OUR SOURCES

The sources of our knowledge of Mesopotamian history have been pretty fully discussed in previous chapters. Beyond the classical traditions, our sole reliance must be placed upon the monuments. And of these the sculptures are by far the most important in their bearings upon the civilisation of the people.

Very little is said, except inferentially, by the written inscriptions, that throws any definite light upon the manners and customs of the people. But fortunately the Assyrians in particular were much given to pictorial presentation of the scenes of at least certain features of their everyday life; their bas-reliefs, therefore, furnish us with the clearest index as to their life customs. The interpretation of these bas-reliefs in this light was first taken up in detail by Sir Henry Layard, and his expositions remain to this day the most complete and satisfactory. We shall have occasion to turn frequently to his pages in the present book, supplementing his accounts with certain elaborations, in particular with reference to the religious and legal documents, based on the more recent readings of the inscriptions.