Legends Of Babylon And Egypt

L >> Leonard W. King >> Legends Of Babylon And Egypt


(1) Gen. l. 26, assigned by critics to E.

We shall see that the problems we have to face concern the possible
influence of Babylon, rather than of Egypt, upon Hebrew tradition. And
one last example, drawn from the later period, will serve to demonstrate
how Babylonian influence penetrated the ancient world and has even left
some trace upon modern civilization. It is a fact, though one perhaps
not generally realized, that the twelve divisions on the dials of
our clocks and watches have a Babylonian, and ultimately a Sumerian,
ancestry. For why is it we divide the day into twenty-four hours? We
have a decimal system of reckoning, we count by tens; why then should we
divide the day and night into twelve hours each, instead of into ten or
some multiple of ten? The reason is that the Babylonians divided the day
into twelve double-hours; and the Greeks took over their ancient system
of time-division along with their knowledge of astronomy and passed it
on to us. So if we ourselves, after more than two thousand years, are
making use of an old custom from Babylon, it would not be surprising if
the Hebrews, a contemporary race, should have fallen under her influence
even before they were carried away as captives and settled forcibly upon
her river-banks.

We may pass on, then, to the site from which our new material has been
obtained--the ancient city of Nippur, in central Babylonia. Though the
place has been deserted for at least nine hundred years, its ancient
name still lingers on in local tradition, and to this day _Niffer_ or
_Nuffar_ is the name the Arabs give the mounds which cover its extensive
ruins. No modern town or village has been built upon them or in their
immediate neighbourhood. The nearest considerable town is Diwaniyah, on
the left bank of the Hillah branch of the Euphrates, twenty miles to the
south-west; but some four miles to the south of the ruins is the village
of Suq el-'Afej, on the eastern edge of the 'Afej marshes, which begin
to the south of Nippur and stretch away westward. Protected by its
swamps, the region contains a few primitive settlements of the wild
'Afej tribesmen, each a group of reed-huts clustering around the mud
fort of its ruling sheikh. Their chief enemies are the Shammar, who
dispute with them possession of the pastures. In summer the marshes near
the mounds are merely pools of water connected by channels through
the reed-beds, but in spring the flood-water converts them into a vast
lagoon, and all that meets the eye are a few small hamlets built on
rising knolls above the water-level. Thus Nippur may be almost isolated
during the floods, but the mounds are protected from the waters'
encroachment by an outer ring of former habitation which has slightly
raised the level of the encircling area. The ruins of the city stand
from thirty to seventy feet above the plain, and in the north-eastern
corner there rose, before the excavations, a conical mound, known by
the Arabs as _Bint el-Emir_ or "The Princess". This prominent landmark
represents the temple-tower of Enlil's famous sanctuary, and even after
excavation it is still the first object that the approaching traveller
sees on the horizon. When he has climbed its summit he enjoys an
uninterrupted view over desert and swamp.

The cause of Nippur's present desolation is to be traced to the change
in the bed of the Euphrates, which now lies far to the west. But in
antiquity the stream flowed through the centre of the city, along the
dry bed of the Shatt en-Nil, which divides the mounds into an eastern
and a western group. The latter covers the remains of the city proper
and was occupied in part by the great business-houses and bazaars. Here
more than thirty thousand contracts and accounts, dating from the fourth
millennium to the fifth century B.C., were found in houses along the
former river-bank. In the eastern half of the city was Enlil's great
temple Ekur, with its temple-tower Imkharsag rising in successive stages
beside it. The huge temple-enclosure contained not only the sacrificial
shrines, but also the priests' apartments, store-chambers, and
temple-magazines. Outside its enclosing wall, to the south-west, a large
triangular mound, christened "Tablet Hill" by the excavators, yielded
a further supply of records. In addition to business-documents of the
First Dynasty of Babylon and of the later Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian,
and Persian periods, between two and three thousand literary texts and
fragments were discovered here, many of them dating from the Sumerian
period. And it is possible that some of the early literary texts that
have been published were obtained in other parts of the city.

No less than twenty-one different strata, representing separate periods
of occupation, have been noted by the American excavators at various
levels within the Nippur mounds,(1) the earliest descending to virgin
soil some twenty feet below the present level of the surrounding plain.
The remote date of Nippur's foundation as a city and cult-centre
is attested by the fact that the pavement laid by Naram-Sin in the
south-eastern temple-court lies thirty feet above virgin soil, while
only thirty-six feet of superimposed _debris_ represent the succeeding
millennia of occupation down to Sassanian and early Arab times. In
the period of the Hebrew captivity the city still ranked as a great
commercial market and as one of the most sacred repositories of
Babylonian religious tradition. We know that not far off was Tel-abib,
the seat of one of the colonies of Jewish exiles, for that lay "by the
river of Chebar",(2) which we may identify with the Kabaru Canal in
Nippur's immediate neighbourhood. It was "among the captives by the
river Chebar" that Ezekiel lived and prophesied, and it was on Chebar's
banks that he saw his first vision of the Cherubim.(3) He and other of
the Jewish exiles may perhaps have mingled with the motley crowd that
once thronged the streets of Nippur, and they may often have gazed on
the huge temple-tower which rose above the city's flat roofs. We know
that the later population of Nippur itself included a considerable
Jewish element, for the upper strata of the mounds have yielded numerous
clay bowls with Hebrew, Mandaean, and Syriac magical inscriptions;(4)
and not the least interesting of the objects recovered was the wooden
box of a Jewish scribe, containing his pen and ink-vessel and a little
scrap of crumbling parchment inscribed with a few Hebrew characters.(5)

(1) See Hilprecht, _Explorations in Bible Lands_, pp. 289
ff., 540 ff.; and Fisher, _Excavations at Nippur_, Pt. I
(1905), Pt. II (1906).

(2) Ezek. iii. 15.

(3) Ezek. i. 1, 3; iii. 23; and cf. x. 15, 20, 22, and
xliii. 3.

(4) See J. A. Montgomery, _Aramaic Incantation Texts from
Nippur_, 1913

(5) Hilprecht, _Explorations_, p. 555 f.

Of the many thousands of inscribed clay tablets which were found in
the course of the expeditions, some were kept at Constantinople, while
others were presented by the Sultan Abdul Hamid to the excavators, who
had them conveyed to America. Since that time a large number have been
published. The work was necessarily slow, for many of the texts were
found to be in an extremely bad state of preservation. So it happened
that a great number of the boxes containing tablets remained until
recently still packed up in the store-rooms of the Pennsylvania Museum.
But under the present energetic Director of the Museum, Dr. G. B.
Gordon, the process of arranging and publishing the mass of literary
material has been "speeded up". A staff of skilled workmen has been
employed on the laborious task of cleaning the broken tablets and
fitting the fragments together. At the same time the help of several
Assyriologists was welcomed in the further task of running over and
sorting the collections as they were prepared for study. Professor Clay,
Professor Barton, Dr. Langdon, Dr. Edward Chiera, and Dr. Arno Poebel
have all participated in the work. But the lion's share has fallen to
the last-named scholar, who was given leave of absence by John
Hopkins University in order to take up a temporary appointment at the
Pennsylvania Museum. The result of his labours was published by the
Museum at the end of 1914.(1) The texts thus made available for study
are of very varied interest. A great body of them are grammatical
and represent compilations made by Semitic scribes of the period
of Hammurabi's dynasty for their study of the old Sumerian tongue.
Containing, as most of them do, Semitic renderings of the Sumerian words
and expressions collected, they are as great a help to us in our study
of Sumerian language as they were to their compilers; in particular they
have thrown much new light on the paradigms of the demonstrative and
personal pronouns and on Sumerian verbal forms. But literary texts are
also included in the recent publications.

(1) Poebel, _Historical Texts_ and _Historical and
Grammatical Texts_ (Univ. of Penns. Mus. Publ., Bab. Sect.,
Vol. IV, No. 1, and Vol. V), Philadelphia, 1914.

When the Pennsylvania Museum sent out its first expedition, lively hopes
were entertained that the site selected would yield material of interest
from the biblical standpoint. The city of Nippur, as we have seen,
was one of the most sacred and most ancient religious centres in
the country, and Enlil, its city-god, was the head of the Babylonian
pantheon. On such a site it seemed likely that we might find versions of
the Babylonian legends which were current at the dawn of history before
the city of Babylonia and its Semitic inhabitants came upon the scene.
This expectation has proved to be not unfounded, for the literary
texts include the Sumerian Deluge Version and Creation myth to which I
referred at the beginning of the lecture. Other texts of almost equal
interest consist of early though fragmentary lists of historical and
semi-mythical rulers. They prove that Berossus and the later Babylonians
depended on material of quite early origin in compiling their dynasties
of semi-mythical kings. In them we obtain a glimpse of ages more remote
than any on which excavation in Babylonia has yet thrown light, and for
the first time we have recovered genuine native tradition of early date
with regard to the cradle of Babylonian culture. Before we approach the
Sumerian legends themselves, it will be as well to-day to trace back
in this tradition the gradual merging of history into legend and myth,
comparing at the same time the ancient Egyptian's picture of his own
remote past. We will also ascertain whether any new light is thrown by
our inquiry upon Hebrew traditions concerning the earliest history of
the human race and the origins of civilization.

In the study of both Egyptian and Babylonian chronology there has been a
tendency of late years to reduce the very early dates that were formerly
in fashion. But in Egypt, while the dynasties of Manetho have been
telescoped in places, excavation has thrown light on predynastic
periods, and we can now trace the history of culture in the Nile Valley
back, through an unbroken sequence, to its neolithic stage. Quite
recently, too, as I mentioned just now, a fresh literary record of
these early predynastic periods has been recovered, on a fragment of
the famous Palermo Stele, our most valuable monument for early Egyptian
history and chronology. Egypt presents a striking contrast to Babylonia
in the comparatively small number of written records which have survived
for the reconstruction of her history. We might well spare much of
her religious literature, enshrined in endless temple-inscriptions and
papyri, if we could but exchange it for some of the royal annals of
Egyptian Pharaohs. That historical records of this character were
compiled by the Egyptian scribes, and that they were as detailed and
precise in their information as those we have recovered from Assyrian
sources, is clear from the few extracts from the annals of Thothmes
III's wars which are engraved on the walls of the temple at Karnak.(1)
As in Babylonia and Assyria, such records must have formed the
foundation on which summaries of chronicles of past Egyptian history
were based. In the Palermo Stele it is recognized that we possess a
primitive chronicle of this character.

(1) See Breasted, _Ancient Records_, I, p. 4, II, pp. 163
ff.

Drawn up as early as the Vth Dynasty, its historical summary proves that
from the beginning of the dynastic age onward a yearly record was kept
of the most important achievements of the reigning Pharaoh. In this
fragmentary but invaluable epitome, recording in outline much of the
history of the Old Kingdom,(1) some interesting parallels have long been
noted with Babylonian usage. The early system of time-reckoning, for
example, was the same in both countries, each year being given an
official title from the chief event that occurred in it. And although in
Babylonia we are still without material for tracing the process by which
this cumbrous method gave place to that of reckoning by regnal years,
the Palermo Stele demonstrates the way in which the latter system was
evolved in Egypt. For the events from which the year was named came
gradually to be confined to the fiscal "numberings" of cattle and land.
And when these, which at first had taken place at comparatively long
intervals, had become annual events, the numbered sequence of their
occurrence corresponded precisely to the years of the king's reign. On
the stele, during the dynastic period, each regnal year is allotted its
own space or rectangle,(2) arranged in horizontal sequence below the
name and titles of the ruling king.

(1) Op. cit., I, pp. 57 ff.

(2) The spaces are not strictly rectangles, as each is divided
vertically from the next by the Egyptian hieroglyph for "year".

The text, which is engraved on both sides of a great block of black
basalt, takes its name from the fact that the fragment hitherto known
has been preserved since 1877 at the Museum of Palermo. Five other
fragments of the text have now been published, of which one undoubtedly
belongs to the same monument as the Palermo fragment, while the others
may represent parts of one or more duplicate copies of that famous text.
One of the four Cairo fragments(1) was found by a digger for _sebakh_
at Mitrahineh (Memphis); the other three, which were purchased from a
dealer, are said to have come from Minieh, while the fifth fragment,
at University College, is also said to have come from Upper Egypt,(2)
though it was purchased by Professor Petrie while at Memphis. These
reports suggest that a number of duplicate copies were engraved and set
up in different Egyptian towns, and it is possible that the whole of the
text may eventually be recovered. The choice of basalt for the records
was obviously dictated by a desire for their preservation, but it has
had the contrary effect; for the blocks of this hard and precious
stone have been cut up and reused in later times. The largest and
most interesting of the new fragments has evidently been employed as a
door-sill, with the result that its surface is much rubbed and parts of
its text are unfortunately almost undecipherable. We shall see that the
earliest section of its record has an important bearing on our knowledge
of Egyptian predynastic history and on the traditions of that remote
period which have come down to us from the history of Manetho.

(1) See Gautier, _Le Musee Egyptien_, III (1915), pp. 29 ff., pl.
xxiv ff., and Foucart, _Bulletin de l'Institut Francais d'Archeologie
Orientale_, XII, ii (1916), pp. 161 ff.; and cf. Gardiner, _Journ. of
Egypt. Arch._, III, pp. 143 ff., and Petrie, _Ancient Egypt_, 1916, Pt.
III, pp. 114 ff.

(2) Cf. Petrie, op. cit., pp. 115, 120.

From the fragment of the stele preserved at Palermo we already knew that
its record went back beyond the Ist Dynasty into predynastic times.
For part of the top band of the inscription, which is there preserved,
contains nine names borne by kings of Lower Egypt or the Delta, which,
it had been conjectured, must follow the gods of Manetho and precede
the "Worshippers of Horus", the immediate predecessors of the Egyptian
dynasties.(1) But of contemporary rulers of Upper Egypt we had hitherto
no knowledge, since the supposed royal names discovered at Abydos and
assigned to the time of the "Worshippers of Horus" are probably not
royal names at all.(2) With the possible exception of two very archaic
slate palettes, the first historical memorials recovered from the
south do not date from an earlier period than the beginning of the Ist
Dynasty. The largest of the Cairo fragments now helps us to fill in this
gap in our knowledge.

(1) See Breasted, _Anc. Rec._, I, pp. 52, 57.

(2) Cf. Hall, _Ancient History of the Near East_, p. 99 f.

On the top of the new fragment(1) we meet the same band of rectangles as
at Palermo,(2) but here their upper portions are broken away, and there
only remains at the base of each of them the outlined figure of a royal
personage, seated in the same attitude as those on the Palermo stone.
The remarkable fact about these figures is that, with the apparent
exception of the third figure from the right,(3) each wears, not the
Crown of the North, as at Palermo, but the Crown of the South. We have
then to do with kings of Upper Egypt, not the Delta, and it is no longer
possible to suppose that the predynastic rulers of the Palermo Stele
were confined to those of Lower Egypt, as reflecting northern tradition.
Rulers of both halves of the country are represented, and Monsieur
Gautier has shown,(4) from data on the reverse of the inscription, that
the kings of the Delta were arranged on the original stone before the
rulers of the south who are outlined upon our new fragment. Moreover, we
have now recovered definite proof that this band of the inscription is
concerned with predynastic Egyptian princes; for the cartouche of the
king, whose years are enumerated in the second band immediately below
the kings of the south, reads Athet, a name we may with certainty
identify with Athothes, the second successor of Menes, founder of the
Ist Dynasty, which is already given under the form Ateth in the Abydos
List of Kings.(5) It is thus quite certain that the first band of the
inscription relates to the earlier periods before the two halves of the
country were brought together under a single ruler.

(1) Cairo No. 1; see Gautier, _Mus. Egypt._, III, pl. xxiv
f.

(2) In this upper band the spaces are true rectangles, being
separated by vertical lines, not by the hieroglyph for
"year" as in the lower bands; and each rectangle is assigned
to a separate king, and not, as in the other bands, to a
year of a king's reign.

(3) The difference in the crown worn by this figure is
probably only apparent and not intentional; M. Foucart,
after a careful examination of the fragment, concludes that
it is due to subsequent damage or to an original defect in
the stone; cf. _Bulletin_, XII, ii, p. 162.

(4) Op. cit., p. 32 f.

(5) In Manetho's list he corresponds to {Kenkenos}, the
second successor of Menes according to both Africanus and
Eusebius, who assign the name Athothis to the second ruler
of the dynasty only, the Teta of the Abydos List. The form
Athothes is preserved by Eratosthenes for both of Menes'
immediate successors.

Though the tradition of these remote times is here recorded on a
monument of the Vth Dynasty, there is no reason to doubt its general
accuracy, or to suppose that we are dealing with purely mythological
personages. It is perhaps possible, as Monsieur Foucart suggests, that
missing portions of the text may have carried the record back through
purely mythical periods to Ptah and the Creation. In that case we should
have, as we shall see, a striking parallel to early Sumerian tradition.
But in the first extant portions of the Palermo text we are already in
the realm of genuine tradition. The names preserved appear to be those
of individuals, not of mythological creations, and we may assume that
their owners really existed. For though the invention of writing had
not at that time been achieved, its place was probably taken by oral
tradition. We know that with certain tribes of Africa at the present
day, who possess no knowledge of writing, there are functionaries
charged with the duty of preserving tribal traditions, who transmit
orally to their successors a remembrance of past chiefs and some details
of events that occurred centuries before.(1) The predynastic Egyptians
may well have adopted similar means for preserving a remembrance of
their past history.

(1) M. Foucart illustrates this point by citing the case of
the Bushongos, who have in this way preserved a list of no
less than a hundred and twenty-one of their past kings; op.
cit., p. 182, and cf. Tordey and Joyce, "Les Bushongos", in
_Annales du Musee du Congo Belge_, ser. III, t. II, fasc. i
(Brussels, 1911).

Moreover, the new text furnishes fresh proof of the general accuracy of
Manetho, even when dealing with traditions of this prehistoric age.
On the stele there is no definite indication that these two sets of
predynastic kings were contemporaneous rulers of Lower and Upper Egypt
respectively; and since elsewhere the lists assign a single sovereign
to each epoch, it has been suggested that we should regard them as
successive representatives of the legitimate kingdom.(1) Now Manetho,
after his dynasties of gods and demi-gods, states that thirty Memphite
kings reigned for 1,790 years, and were followed by ten Thinite kings
whose reigns covered a period of 350 years. Neglecting the figures as
obviously erroneous, we may well admit that the Greek historian here
alludes to our two pre-Menite dynasties. But the fact that he should
regard them as ruling consecutively does not preclude the other
alternative. The modern convention of arranging lines of contemporaneous
rulers in parallel columns had not been evolved in antiquity, and
without some such method of distinction contemporaneous rulers, when
enumerated in a list, can only be registered consecutively. It would be
natural to assume that, before the unification of Egypt by the founder
of the Ist Dynasty, the rulers of North and South were independent
princes, possessing no traditions of a united throne on which any claim
to hegemony could be based. On the assumption that this was so, their
arrangement in a consecutive series would not have deceived their
immediate successors. But it would undoubtedly tend in course of time to
obliterate the tradition of their true order, which even at the period
of the Vth Dynasty may have been completely forgotten. Manetho would
thus have introduced no strange or novel confusion; and this explanation
would of course apply to other sections of his system where the
dynasties he enumerates appear to be too many for their period. But his
reproduction of two lines of predynastic rulers, supported as it now is
by the early evidence of the Palermo text, only serves to increase our
confidence in the general accuracy of his sources, while at the
same time it illustrates very effectively the way in which possible
inaccuracies, deduced from independent data, may have arisen in quite
early times.

(1) Foucart, loc. cit.

In contrast to the dynasties of Manetho, those of Berossus are
so imperfectly preserved that they have never formed the basis of
Babylonian chronology.(1) But here too, in the chronological scheme,
a similar process of reduction has taken place. Certain dynasties,
recovered from native sources and at one time regarded as consecutive,
were proved to have been contemporaneous; and archaeological evidence
suggested that some of the great gaps, so freely assumed in the royal
sequence, had no right to be there. As a result, the succession of known
rulers was thrown into truer perspective, and such gaps as remained were
being partially filled by later discoveries. Among the latter the most
important find was that of an early list of kings, recently published by
Pere Scheil(2) and subsequently purchased by the British Museum shortly
before the war. This had helped us to fill in the gap between the famous
Sargon of Akkad and the later dynasties, but it did not carry us
far beyond Sargon's own time. Our archaeological evidence also comes
suddenly to an end. Thus the earliest picture we have hitherto obtained
of the Sumerians has been that of a race employing an advanced system of
writing and possessed of a knowledge of metal. We have found, in short,
abundant remains of a bronze-age culture, but no traces of preceding
ages of development such as meet us on early Egyptian sites. It was
a natural inference that the advent of the Sumerians in the Euphrates
Valley was sudden, and that they had brought their highly developed
culture with them from some region of Central or Southern Asia.