Legends Of Babylon And Egypt

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LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

By Leonard W. King, M.A., Litt.D., F.S.A.


Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British
Museum

Professor in the University of London King's College


First Published 1918 by Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press.


THE BRITISH ACADEMY

THE SCHWEICH LECTURES 1916


PREPARER'S NOTE

This text was prepared from a 1920 edition of the book,
hence the references to dates after 1916 in some places.

Greek text has been transliterated within brackets "{}"
using an Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table.
Diacritical marks have been lost.




PREFACE

In these lectures an attempt is made, not so much to restate familiar
facts, as to accommodate them to new and supplementary evidence which
has been published in America since the outbreak of the war. But even
without the excuse of recent discovery, no apology would be needed for
any comparison or contrast of Hebrew tradition with the mythological
and legendary beliefs of Babylon and Egypt. Hebrew achievements in the
sphere of religion and ethics are only thrown into stronger relief when
studied against their contemporary background.

The bulk of our new material is furnished by some early texts, written
towards the close of the third millennium B.C. They incorporate
traditions which extend in unbroken outline from their own period into
the remote ages of the past, and claim to trace the history of man back
to his creation. They represent the early national traditions of
the Sumerian people, who preceded the Semites as the ruling race in
Babylonia; and incidentally they necessitate a revision of current
views with regard to the cradle of Babylonian civilization. The most
remarkable of the new documents is one which relates in poetical
narrative an account of the Creation, of Antediluvian history, and of
the Deluge. It thus exhibits a close resemblance in structure to the
corresponding Hebrew traditions, a resemblance that is not shared by the
Semitic-Babylonian Versions at present known. But in matter the Sumerian
tradition is more primitive than any of the Semitic versions. In spite
of the fact that the text appears to have reached us in a magical
setting, and to some extent in epitomized form, this early document
enables us to tap the stream of tradition at a point far above any at
which approach has hitherto been possible.

Though the resemblance of early Sumerian tradition to that of the
Hebrews is striking, it furnishes a still closer parallel to the
summaries preserved from the history of Berossus. The huge figures
incorporated in the latter's chronological scheme are no longer to be
treated as a product of Neo-Babylonian speculation; they reappear in
their original surroundings in another of these early documents, the
Sumerian Dynastic List. The sources of Berossus had inevitably been
semitized by Babylon; but two of his three Antediluvian cities find
their place among the five of primitive Sumerian belief, and two of his
ten Antediluvian kings rejoin their Sumerian prototypes. Moreover, the
recorded ages of Sumerian and Hebrew patriarchs are strangely alike.
It may be added that in Egypt a new fragment of the Palermo Stele has
enabled us to verify, by a very similar comparison, the accuracy of
Manetho's sources for his prehistoric period, while at the same time
it demonstrates the way in which possible inaccuracies in his system,
deduced from independent evidence, may have arisen in remote antiquity.
It is clear that both Hebrew and Hellenistic traditions were modelled on
very early lines.

Thus our new material enables us to check the age, and in some measure
the accuracy, of the traditions concerning the dawn of history which
the Greeks reproduced from native sources, both in Babylonia and Egypt,
after the conquests of Alexander had brought the Near East within the
range of their intimate acquaintance. The third body of tradition, that
of the Hebrews, though unbacked by the prestige of secular achievement,
has, through incorporation in the canons of two great religious systems,
acquired an authority which the others have not enjoyed. In re-examining
the sources of all three accounts, so far as they are affected by the
new discoveries, it will be of interest to observe how the same problems
were solved in antiquity by very different races, living under widely
divergent conditions, but within easy reach of one another. Their
periods of contact, ascertained in history or suggested by geographical
considerations, will prompt the further question to what extent each
body of belief was evolved in independence of the others. The close
correspondence that has long been recognized and is now confirmed
between the Hebrew and the Semitic-Babylonian systems, as compared with
that of Egypt, naturally falls within the scope of our enquiry.

Excavation has provided an extraordinarily full archaeological
commentary to the legends of Egypt and Babylon; and when I received the
invitation to deliver the Schweich Lectures for 1916, I was reminded of
the terms of the Bequest and was asked to emphasize the archaeological
side of the subject. Such material illustration was also calculated to
bring out, in a more vivid manner than was possible with purely literary
evidence, the contrasts and parallels presented by Hebrew tradition.
Thanks to a special grant for photographs from the British Academy,
I was enabled to illustrate by means of lantern slides many of the
problems discussed in the lectures; and it was originally intended that
the photographs then shown should appear as plates in this volume.
But in view of the continued and increasing shortage of paper, it
was afterwards felt to be only right that all illustrations should
be omitted. This very necessary decision has involved a recasting of
certain sections of the lectures as delivered, which in its turn has
rendered possible a fuller treatment of the new literary evidence. To
the consequent shifting of interest is also due a transposition of names
in the title. On their literary side, and in virtue of the intimacy of
their relation to Hebrew tradition, the legends of Babylon must be given
precedence over those of Egypt.

For the delay in the appearance of the volume I must plead the pressure
of other work, on subjects far removed from archaeological study
and affording little time and few facilities for a continuance of
archaeological and textual research. It is hoped that the insertion
of references throughout, and the more detailed discussion of problems
suggested by our new literary material, may incline the reader to add
his indulgence to that already extended to me by the British Academy.

L. W. KING.





LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT

IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION




LECTURE I--EGYPT, BABYLON, AND PALESTINE, AND SOME TRADITIONAL ORIGINS
OF CIVILIZATION

At the present moment most of us have little time or thought to spare
for subjects not connected directly or indirectly with the war. We have
put aside our own interests and studies; and after the war we shall all
have a certain amount of leeway to make up in acquainting ourselves
with what has been going on in countries not yet involved in the great
struggle. Meanwhile the most we can do is to glance for a moment at any
discovery of exceptional interest that may come to light.

The main object of these lectures will be to examine certain Hebrew
traditions in the light of new evidence which has been published in
America since the outbreak of the war. The evidence is furnished by some
literary texts, inscribed on tablets from Nippur, one of the oldest
and most sacred cities of Babylonia. They are written in Sumerian, the
language spoken by the non-Semitic people whom the Semitic Babylonians
conquered and displaced; and they include a very primitive version of
the Deluge story and Creation myth, and some texts which throw new light
on the age of Babylonian civilization and on the area within which it
had its rise. In them we have recovered some of the material from which
Berossus derived his dynasty of Antediluvian kings, and we are thus
enabled to test the accuracy of the Greek tradition by that of the
Sumerians themselves. So far then as Babylonia is concerned, these
documents will necessitate a re-examination of more than one problem.

The myths and legends of ancient Egypt are also to some extent involved.
The trend of much recent anthropological research has been in the
direction of seeking a single place of origin for similar beliefs and
practices, at least among races which were bound to one another by
political or commercial ties. And we shall have occasion to test, by
means of our new data, a recent theory of Egyptian influence. The Nile
Valley was, of course, one the great centres from which civilization
radiated throughout the ancient East; and, even when direct contact
is unproved, Egyptian literature may furnish instructive parallels and
contrasts in any study of Western Asiatic mythology. Moreover, by a
strange coincidence, there has also been published in Egypt since the
beginning of the war a record referring to the reigns of predynastic
rulers in the Nile Valley. This, like some of the Nippur texts, takes us
back to that dim period before the dawn of actual history, and, though
the information it affords is not detailed like theirs, it provides
fresh confirmation of the general accuracy of Manetho's sources, and
suggests some interesting points for comparison.

But the people with whose traditions we are ultimately concerned are the
Hebrews. In the first series of Schweich Lectures, delivered in the year
1908, the late Canon Driver showed how the literature of Assyria and
Babylon had thrown light upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin
and early history of the world. The majority of the cuneiform documents,
on which he based his comparison, date from a period no earlier than the
seventh century B.C., and yet it was clear that the texts themselves,
in some form or other, must have descended from a remote antiquity. He
concluded his brief reference to the Creation and Deluge Tablets with
these words: "The Babylonian narratives are both polytheistic, while
the corresponding biblical narratives (Gen. i and vi-xi) are made
the vehicle of a pure and exalted monotheism; but in spite of this
fundamental difference, and also variations in detail, the resemblances
are such as to leave no doubt that the Hebrew cosmogony and the Hebrew
story of the Deluge are both derived ultimately from the same original
as the Babylonian narratives, only transformed by the magic touch of
Israel's religion, and infused by it with a new spirit."(1) Among the
recently published documents from Nippur we have at last recovered one
at least of those primitive originals from which the Babylonian accounts
were derived, while others prove the existence of variant stories of the
world's origin and early history which have not survived in the later
cuneiform texts. In some of these early Sumerian records we may trace
a faint but remarkable parallel with the Hebrew traditions of man's
history between his Creation and the Flood. It will be our task, then,
to examine the relations which the Hebrew narratives bear both to the
early Sumerian and to the later Babylonian Versions, and to ascertain
how far the new discoveries support or modify current views with regard
to the contents of those early chapters of Genesis.

(1) Driver, _Modern Research as illustrating the Bible_ (The
Schweich Lectures, 1908), p. 23.

I need not remind you that Genesis is the book of Hebrew origins, and
that its contents mark it off to some extent from the other books of the
Hebrew Bible. The object of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua is to
describe in their origin the fundamental institutions of the national
faith and to trace from the earliest times the course of events which
led to the Hebrew settlement in Palestine. Of this national history
the Book of Genesis forms the introductory section. Four centuries of
complete silence lie between its close and the beginning of Exodus,
where we enter on the history of a nation as contrasted with that of
a family.(1) While Exodus and the succeeding books contain national
traditions, Genesis is largely made up of individual biography. Chapters
xii-l are concerned with the immediate ancestors of the Hebrew race,
beginning with Abram's migration into Canaan and closing with Joseph's
death in Egypt. But the aim of the book is not confined to recounting
the ancestry of Israel. It seeks also to show her relation to other
peoples in the world, and probing still deeper into the past it
describes how the earth itself was prepared for man's habitation.
Thus the patriarchal biographies are preceded, in chapters i-xi, by an
account of the original of the world, the beginnings of civilization,
and the distribution of the various races of mankind. It is, of course,
with certain parts of this first group of chapters that such striking
parallels have long been recognized in the cuneiform texts.

(1) Cf., e.g., Skinner, _A Critical and Exegetical
Commentary on Genesis_ (1912), p. ii f.; Driver, _The Book
of Genesis_, 10th ed. (1916), pp. 1 ff.; Ryle, _The Book of
Genesis_ (1914), pp. x ff.

In approaching this particular body of Hebrew traditions, the necessity
for some caution will be apparent. It is not as though we were dealing
with the reported beliefs of a Malayan or Central Australian tribe. In
such a case there would be no difficulty in applying a purely objective
criticism, without regard to ulterior consequences. But here our own
feelings are involved, having their roots deep in early associations.
The ground too is well trodden; and, had there been no new material to
discuss, I think I should have preferred a less contentious theme. The
new material is my justification for the choice of subject, and also the
fact that, whatever views we may hold, it will be necessary for us to
assimilate it to them. I shall have no hesitation in giving you my own
reading of the evidence; but at the same time it will be possible to
indicate solutions which will probably appeal to those who view the
subject from more conservative standpoints. That side of the discussion
may well be postponed until after the examination of the new evidence in
detail. And first of all it will be advisable to clear up some general
aspects of the problem, and to define the limits within which our
criticism may be applied.

It must be admitted that both Egypt and Babylon bear a bad name in
Hebrew tradition. Both are synonymous with captivity, the symbols of
suffering endured at the beginning and at the close of the national
life. And during the struggle against Assyrian aggression, the
disappointment at the failure of expected help is reflected in
prophecies of the period. These great crises in Hebrew history have
tended to obscure in the national memory the part which both Babylon
and Egypt may have played in moulding the civilization of the smaller
nations with whom they came in contact. To such influence the races of
Syria were, by geographical position, peculiarly subject. The country
has often been compared to a bridge between the two great continents of
Asia and Africa, flanked by the sea on one side and the desert on the
other, a narrow causeway of highland and coastal plain connecting the
valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.(1) For, except on the frontier of
Egypt, desert and sea do not meet. Farther north the Arabian plateau is
separated from the Mediterranean by a double mountain chain, which runs
south from the Taurus at varying elevations, and encloses in its lower
course the remarkable depression of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and
the 'Arabah. The Judaean hills and the mountains of Moab are merely
the southward prolongation of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and their
neighbourhood to the sea endows this narrow tract of habitable country
with its moisture and fertility. It thus formed the natural channel of
intercourse between the two earliest centres of civilization, and was
later the battle-ground of their opposing empires.

(1) See G. A. Smith, _Historical Geography of the Holy
Land_, pp. 5 ff., 45 ff., and Myres, _Dawn of History_, pp.
137 ff.; and cf. Hogarth, _The Nearer East_, pp. 65 ff., and
Reclus, _Nouvelle Geographie universelle_, t. IX, pp. 685 ff.

The great trunk-roads of through communication run north and south,
across the eastern plateaus of the Hauran and Moab, and along the
coastal plains. The old highway from Egypt, which left the Delta at
Pelusium, at first follows the coast, then trends eastward across the
plain of Esdraelon, which breaks the coastal range, and passing under
Hermon runs northward through Damascus and reaches the Euphrates at its
most westerly point. Other through tracks in Palestine ran then as they
do to-day, by Beesheba and Hebron, or along the 'Arabah and west of the
Dead Sea, or through Edom and east of Jordan by the present Hajj route
to Damascus. But the great highway from Egypt, the most westerly of
the trunk-roads through Palestine, was that mainly followed, with some
variant sections, by both caravans and armies, and was known by the
Hebrews in its southern course as the "Way of the Philistines" and
farther north as the "Way of the East".

The plain of Esraelon, where the road first trends eastward, has been
the battle-ground for most invaders of Palestine from the north, and
though Egyptian armies often fought in the southern coastal plain, they
too have battled there when they held the southern country. Megiddo,
which commands the main pass into the plain through the low Samaritan
hills to the southeast of Carmel, was the site of Thothmes III's famous
battle against a Syrian confederation, and it inspired the writer of the
Apocalypse with his vision of an Armageddon of the future. But invading
armies always followed the beaten track of caravans, and movements
represented by the great campaigns were reflected in the daily passage
of international commerce.

With so much through traffic continually passing within her borders,
it may be matter for surprise that far more striking evidence of its
cultural effect should not have been revealed by archaeological research
in Palestine. Here again the explanation is mainly of a geographical
character. For though the plains and plateaus could be crossed by the
trunk-roads, the rest of the country is so broken up by mountain and
valley that it presented few facilities either to foreign penetration
or to external control. The physical barriers to local intercourse,
reinforced by striking differences in soil, altitude, and climate,
while they precluded Syria herself from attaining national unity, always
tended to protect her separate provinces, or "kingdoms," from the
full effects of foreign aggression. One city-state could be traversed,
devastated, or annexed, without in the least degree affecting
neighbouring areas. It is true that the population of Syria has always
been predominantly Semitic, for she was on the fringe of the great
breeding-ground of the Semitic race and her landward boundary was open
to the Arabian nomad. Indeed, in the whole course of her history the
only race that bade fair at one time to oust the Semite in Syria was the
Greek. But the Greeks remained within the cities which they founded or
rebuilt, and, as Robertson Smith pointed out, the death-rate in Eastern
cities habitually exceeds the birth-rate; the urban population must be
reinforced from the country if it is to be maintained, so that the type
of population is ultimately determined by the blood of the peasantry.(1)
Hence after the Arab conquest the Greek elements in Syria and Palestine
tended rapidly to disappear. The Moslem invasion was only the last of a
series of similar great inroads, which have followed one another since
the dawn of history, and during all that time absorption was continually
taking place from desert tribes that ranged the Syrian border. As we
have seen, the country of his adoption was such as to encourage
the Semitic nomad's particularism, which was inherent in his tribal
organization. Thus the predominance of a single racial element in the
population of Palestine and Syria did little to break down or overstep
the natural barriers and lines of cleavage.

(1) See Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 12
f.; and cf. Smith, _Hist. Geogr._, p. 10 f.

These facts suffice to show why the influence of both Egypt and Babylon
upon the various peoples and kingdoms of Palestine was only intensified
at certain periods, when ambition for extended empire dictated the
reduction of her provinces in detail. But in the long intervals,
during which there was no attempt to enforce political control, regular
relations were maintained along the lines of trade and barter. And in
any estimate of the possible effect of foreign influence upon Hebrew
thought, it is important to realize that some of the channels through
which in later periods it may have acted had been flowing since the dawn
of history, and even perhaps in prehistoric times. It is probable that
Syria formed one of the links by which we may explain the Babylonian
elements that are attested in prehistoric Egyptian culture.(1) But
another possible line of advance may have been by way of Arabia and
across the Red Sea into Upper Egypt.

(1) Cf. _Sumer and Akkad_, pp. 322 ff.; and for a full
discussion of the points of resemblance between the early
Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations, see Sayce, _The
Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions_, chap. iv, pp.
101 ff.

The latter line of contact is suggested by an interesting piece of
evidence that has recently been obtained. A prehistoric flint knife,
with a handle carved from the tooth of a hippopotamus, has been
purchased lately by the Louvre,(1) and is said to have been found at
Gebel el-'Arak near Naga' Hamadi, which lies on the Nile not far below
Koptos, where an ancient caravan-track leads by Wadi Hammamat to the
Red Sea. On one side of the handle is a battle-scene including some
remarkable representations of ancient boats. All the warriors are nude
with the exception of a loin girdle, but, while one set of combatants
have shaven heads or short hair, the others have abundant locks falling
in a thick mass upon the shoulder. On the other face of the handle is
carved a hunting scene, two hunters with dogs and desert animals
being arranged around a central boss. But in the upper field is a very
remarkable group, consisting of a personage struggling with two lions
arranged symmetrically. The rest of the composition is not very unlike
other examples of prehistoric Egyptian carving in low relief, but here
attitude, figure, and clothing are quite un-Egyptian. The hero wears
a sort of turban on his abundant hair, and a full and rounded beard
descends upon his breast. A long garment clothes him from the waist and
falls below the knees, his muscular calves ending in the claws of a bird
of prey. There is nothing like this in prehistoric Egyptian art.

(1) See Benedite, "Le couteau de Gebel al-'Arak", in
_Foundation Eugene Piot, Mon. et. Mem._, XXII. i. (1916).

Perhaps Monsieur Benedite is pressing his theme too far when he compares
the close-cropped warriors on the handle with the shaven Sumerians and
Elamites upon steles from Telloh and Susa, for their loin-girdles are
African and quite foreign to the Euphrates Valley. And his suggestion
that two of the boats, flat-bottomed and with high curved ends, seem
only to have navigated the Tigris and Euphrates,(1) will hardly command
acceptance. But there is no doubt that the heroic personage upon the
other face is represented in the familiar attitude of the Babylonian
hero Gilgamesh struggling with lions, which formed so favourite a
subject upon early Sumerian and Babylonian seals. His garment is
Sumerian or Semitic rather than Egyptian, and the mixture of human and
bird elements in the figure, though not precisely paralleled at
this early period, is not out of harmony with Mesopotamian or Susan
tradition. His beard, too, is quite different from that of the Libyan
desert tribes which the early Egyptian kings adopted. Though the
treatment of the lions is suggestive of proto-Elamite rather than
of early Babylonian models, the design itself is unmistakably of
Mesopotamian origin. This discovery intensifies the significance of
other early parallels that have been noted between the civilizations of
the Euphrates and the Nile, but its evidence, so far as it goes, does
not point to Syria as the medium of prehistoric intercourse. Yet then,
as later, there can have been no physical barrier to the use of the
river-route from Mesopotamia into Syria and of the tracks thence
southward along the land-bridge to the Nile's delta.

(1) Op. cit., p. 32.

In the early historic periods we have definite evidence that the eastern
coast of the Levant exercised a strong fascination upon the rulers of
both Egypt and Babylonia. It may be admitted that Syria had little to
give in comparison to what she could borrow, but her local trade in wine
and oil must have benefited by an increase in the through traffic which
followed the working of copper in Cyprus and Sinai and of silver in
the Taurus. Moreover, in the cedar forests of Lebanon and the north
she possessed a product which was highly valued both in Egypt and
the treeless plains of Babylonia. The cedars procured by Sneferu from
Lebanon at the close of the IIIrd Dynasty were doubtless floated as
rafts down the coast, and we may see in them evidence of a regular
traffic in timber. It has long been known that the early Babylonian
king Sharru-kin, or Sargon of Akkad, had pressed up the Euphrates to the
Mediterranean, and we now have information that he too was fired by a
desire for precious wood and metal. One of the recently published Nippur
inscriptions contains copies of a number of his texts, collected by
an ancient scribe from his statues at Nippur, and from these we gather
additional details of his campaigns. We learn that after his complete
subjugation of Southern Babylonia he turned his attention to the west,
and that Enlil gave him the lands "from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea",
i.e. from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Fortunately this rather
vague phrase, which survived in later tradition, is restated in greater
detail in one of the contemporary versions, which records that Enlil
"gave him the upper land, Mari, Iarmuti, and Ibla, as far as the Cedar
Forest and the Silver Mountains".(1)