G. Maspero - History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12)

G >> G. Maspero >> History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

[Illustration: Spines]

[Illustration: Cover]

HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO, Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen's
College, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of
France

Edited by A. H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford

Translated by M. L. McCLURE, Member of the Committee of the Egypt
Exploration Fund

CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume IV.

LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

[Illustration: Titlepage]

_THE FIRST CHALDEAN EMPIRE AND THE HYKSOS IN EGYPT_

_SYRIA: THE PART PLAYED BY IT IN THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD--
BABYLON AND THE FIRST CHALDAEAN EMPIRE--THE DOMINION OF THE HYKSOS:
AHMOSIS._

_Syria, owing to its geographical position, condemned to be subject to
neighbouring powers-Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon, the valley of the Orontes
and of the Litany, and surrounding regions: the northern table-land, the
country about Damascus, the Mediterranean coast, the Jordan and the Dead
Sea-Civilization and primitive inhabitants, Semites and Asiatics: the
almost entire absence of Egyptian influence, the predominance of that of
Chaldaea._

_Babylon, its ruins and its environs--It extends its rule over
Mesopotamia; its earliest dynasty and its struggle with Central
Chaldaea-Elam, its geographical position, its peoples; Kutur-Nakhunta
conquers Larsam-Bimsin (Eri-Aku); Khammurabi founds the first Babylonian
empire; Ids victories, his buildings, his canals--The Elamites in
Syria: Kudurlagamar--Syria recognizes the authority of Hammurabi and his
successors._

_The Hyksos conquer Egypt at the end of the XIVth dynasty; the founding
of Avaris--Uncertainty both of ancients and moderns with regard to the
origin of the Hyksos: probability of their being the Khati--Their kings
adopt the manners and civilization of the Egyptians: the monuments of
Khiani and of Apophis I. and II--The XVth dynasty._

_Semitic incursions following the Hyksos--The migration of the
Phoenicians and the Israelites into Syria: Terah, Abraham and his
sojourn in the land of Canaan--Isaac, Jacob, Joseph: the Israelites go
down into Egypt and settle in the land of Goshen._

_Thebes revolts against the Hyksos: popular traditions as to the origin
of the war, the romance of Apophis and Saquinri--The Theban princesses
and the last Icings of the XVIIth dynasty: Tiudqni Kamosis, Ahmosis
I.--The lords of El-Kab, and the part they played during the war of
independence--The taking of Avaris and the expulsion of the Ilylcsos._

_The reorganization of Egypt--Ahmosis I. and his Nubian wars, the
reopening of the quarries of Turah--Amenothes I. and his mother
Nofritari: the jewellery of Queen Ahhotpu--The wars of Amenothes I.,
the apotheosis of Nofritari--The accession of Thutmosis I. and the
re-generation of Egypt._

CHAPTER I--THE FIRST CHALDAEAN EMPIRE AND THE HYKSOS IN EGYPT

_Syria: the part played by it in the ancient world--Babylon and the
first Chaldaean empire--The dominion of the Hyksos: Ahmosis._

Some countries seem destined from their origin to become the
battle-fields of the contending nations which environ them. Into such
regions, and to their cost, neighbouring peoples come from century to
century to settle their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of
supremacy which disturb their little corner of the world. The nations
around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated; it
is seized upon bit by bit, and in the strife dismembered and trodden
underfoot: at best the only course open to its inhabitants is to join
forces with one of its invaders, and while helping the intruder to
overcome the rest, to secure for themselves a position of permanent
servitude. Should some unlooked-for chance relieve them from the
presence of their foreign lord, they will probably be quite incapable of
profiting by the respite which fortune puts in their way, or of making
any effectual attempt to organize themselves in view of future attacks.
They tend to become split up into numerous rival communities, of which
even the pettiest will aim at autonomy, keeping up a perpetual frontier
war for the sake of becoming possessed of or of retaining a glorious
sovereignty over a few acres of corn in the plains, or some wooded
ravines in the mountains. Year after year there will be scenes of bloody
conflict, in which petty armies will fight petty battles on behalf of
petty interests, but so fiercely, and with such furious animosity, that
the country will suffer from the strife as much as, or even more than,
from an invasion. There will be no truce to their struggles until they
all fall under the sway of a foreign master, and, except in the interval
between two conquests, they will have no national existence, their
history being almost entirely merged in that of other nations.

From remote antiquity Syria was in the condition just described,
and thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. Chaldaea, Egypt,
Assyria, and Persia presided in turn over its destinies, while Macedonia
and the empires of the West were only waiting their opportunity to lay
hold of it. By its position it formed a kind of meeting-place where most
of the military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later
to come violently into collision. Confined between the sea and the
desert, Syria offers the only route of easy access to an army marching
northwards from Africa into Asia, and all conquerors, whether attracted
to Mesopotamia or to Egypt by the accumulated riches on the banks of the
Euphrates or the Nile, were obliged to pass through it in order to reach
the object of their cupidity. It might, perhaps, have escaped this fatal
consequence of its position, had the formation of the country permitted
its tribes to mass themselves together, and oppose a compact body to
the invading hosts; but the range of mountains which forms its backbone
subdivides it into isolated districts, and by thus restricting each
tribe to a narrow existence maintained among them a mutual antagonism.
The twin chains, the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, which divide the
country down the centre, are composed of the same kind of calcareous
rocks and sandstone, while the same sort of reddish clay has been
deposited on their slopes by the glaciers of the same geological
period.*

* Drake remarked in the Lebanon several varieties of
limestone, which have been carefully catalogued by Blanche
and Lartet. Above these strata, which belong to the Jurassic
formation, come reddish sandstone, then beds of very hard
yellowish limestone, and finally marl. The name Lebanon, in
Assyrian Libnana, would appear to signify "the white
mountain;" the Amorites called the Anti-Lebanon Saniru,
Shenir, according to the Assyrian texts and the Hebrew
books.

Arid and bare on the northern side, they sent out towards the south
featureless monotonous ridges, furrowed here and there by short narrow
valleys, hollowed out in places into basins or funnel-shaped ravines,
which are widened year by year by the down-rush of torrents. These
ridges, as they proceed southwards, become clothed with verdure and
offer a more varied outline, the ravines being more thickly wooded, and
the summits less uniform in contour and colouring. Lebanon becomes white
and ice-crowned in winter, but none of its peaks rises to the altitude
of perpetual snows: the highest of them, Mount Timarun, reaches 10,526
feet, while only three others exceed 9000.* Anti-Lebanon is, speaking
generally, 1000 or 1300 feet lower than its neighbour: it becomes
higher, however, towards the south, where the triple peak of Mount
Hermon rises to a height of 9184 feet. The Orontes and the Litany drain
the intermediate space. The Orontes rising on the west side of the
Anti-Lebanon, near the ruins of Baalbek, rushes northwards in such a
violent manner, that the dwellers on its banks call it the rebel--Nahr
el-Asi.** About a third of the way towards its mouth it enters a
depression, which ancient dykes help to transform into a lake; it flows
thence, almost parallel to the sea-coast, as far as the 36th degree of
latitude. There it meets the last spurs of the Amanos, but, failing to
cut its way through them, it turns abruptly to the west, and then to the
south, falling into the Mediterranean after having received an increase
to its volume from the waters of the Afrin.

* Bukton-Drake, Unexplored Syria, vol. i. p. 88, attributed
to it an altitude of 9175 English feet; others estimate it
at 10,539 feet. The mountains which exceed 3000 metres are
Dahr el-Kozib, 3046 metres; Jebel-Mislriyah, 3080 metres;
and Jebel-Makhmal or Makmal, 3040 metres. As a matter of
fact, these heights are not yet determined with the accuracy
desirable.

** The Egyptians knew it in early times by the name of
Aunrati, or Araunti; it is mentioned in Assyrian
inscriptions under the name of Arantu. All are agreed in
acknowledging that this name is not Semitic, and an Aryan
origin is attributed to it, but without convincing proof;
according to Strabo (xvi. ii. Sec. 7, p. 750), it was
originally called Typhon, and was only styled Orontes after
a certain Orontes had built the first bridge across it. The
name of Axios which it sometimes bears appears to have been
given to it by Greek colonists, in memory of a river in
Macedonia. This is probably the origin of the modern name of
Asi, and the meaning, _rebellious river_, which Arab
tradition attaches to the latter term, probably comes from a
popular etymology which likened Axios to Asi, the
identification was all the easier since it justifies the
epithet by the violence of its current.

The Litany rises a short distance from the Orontes; it flows at first
through a wide and fertile plain, which soon contracts, however, and
forces it into a channel between the spurs of the Lebanon and the
Galilaean hills. The water thence makes its way between two cliffs of
perpendicular rock, the ravine being in several places so narrow that
the branches of the trees on the opposite sides interlace, and an active
man could readily leap across it. Near Yakhmur some detached rocks
appear to have been arrested in their fall, and, leaning like flying
buttresses against the mountain face, constitute a natural bridge over
the torrent. The basins of the two rivers lie in one valley, extending
eighty leagues in length, divided by an almost imperceptible watershed
into two beds of unequal slope. The central part of the valley is given
up to marshes. It is only towards the south that we find cornfields,
vineyards, plantations of mulberry and olive trees, spread out over the
plain, or disposed in terraces on the hillsides. Towards the north,
the alluvial deposits of, the Orontes have gradually formed a black
and fertile soil, upon which grow luxuriant crops of cereals and other
produce. Cole-Syria, after having generously nourished the Oriental
empires which had preyed upon her, became one of the granaries of the
Roman world, under the capable rule of the Caesars.

Syria is surrounded on all sides by countries of varying aspect and
soil. That to the north, flanked by the Amanos, is a gloomy mountainous
region, with its greatest elevation on the seaboard: it slopes gradually
towards the interior, spreading out into chalky table-lands, dotted over
with bare and rounded hills, and seamed with tortuous valleys which
open out to the Euphrates, the Orontes, or the desert. Vast, slightly
undulating plains succeed the table-lands: the soil is dry and stony,
the streams are few in number and contain but little water. The Sajur
flows into the Euphrates, the Afrin and the Karasu when united yield
their tribute to the Orontes, while the others for the most part pour
their waters into enclosed basins. The Khalus of the Greeks sluggishly
pursues its course southward, and after reluctantly leaving the gardens
of Aleppo, finally loses itself on the borders of the desert in a small
salt lake full of islets: about halfway between the Khalus and the
Euphrates a second salt lake receives the Nahr ed-Dahab, the "golden
river." The climate is mild, and the temperature tolerably uniform. The
sea-breeze which rises every afternoon tempers the summer heat: the
cold in winter is never piercing, except when the south wind blows which
comes from the mountains, and the snow rarely lies on the ground for
more than twenty-four hours. It seldom rains during the autumn and
winter months, but frequent showers fall in the early days of spring.
Vegetation then awakes again, and the soil lends itself to cultivation
in the hollows of the valleys and on the table-lands wherever
irrigation is possible. The ancients dotted these now all but desert
spaces with wells and cisterns; they intersected them with canals,
and covered them with farms and villages, with fortresses and populous
cities. Primaeval forests clothed the slopes of the Amanos, and pinewood
from this region was famous both at Babylon and in the towns of Lower
Chaldaea. The plains produced barley and wheat in enormous quantities,
the vine throve there, the gardens teemed with flowers and fruit, and
pistachio and olive trees grew on every slope. The desert was always
threatening to invade the plain, and gained rapidly upon it whenever
a prolonged war disturbed cultivation, or when the negligence of the
inhabitants slackened the work of defence: beyond the lakes and salt
marshes it had obtained a secure hold. At the present time the greater
part of the country between the Orontes and the Euphrates is nothing
but a rocky table-land, ridged with low hills and dotted over with some
impoverished oases, excepting at the foot of Anti-Lebanon, where two
rivers, fed by innumerable streams, have served to create a garden of
marvellous beauty. The Barada, dashing from cascade to cascade, flows
for some distance through gorges before emerging on the plain: scarcely
has it reached level ground than it widens out, divides, and forms
around Damascus a miniature delta, into which a thousand interlacing
channels carry refreshment and fertility. Below the town these streams
rejoin the river, which, after having flowed merrily along for a day's
journey, is swallowed up in a kind of elongated chasm from whence it
never again emerges. At the melting of the snows a regular lake is
formed here, whose blue waters are surrounded by wide grassy margins
"like a sapphire set in emeralds." This lake dries up almost completely
in summer, and is converted into swampy meadows, filled with gigantic
rushes, among which the birds build their nests, and multiply as
unmolested as in the marshes of Chaldaea. The Awaj, unfed by any
tributary, fills a second deeper though smaller basin, while to
the south two other lesser depressions receive the waters of the
Anti-Lebanon and the Hauran. Syria is protected from the encroachments
of the desert by a continuous barrier of pools and beds of reeds:
towards the east the space reclaimed resembles a verdant promontory
thrust boldly out into an ocean of sand. The extent of the cultivated
area is limited on the west by the narrow strip of rock and clay which
forms the littoral. From the mouth of the Litany to that of the Orontes,
the coast presents a rugged, precipitous, and inhospitable appearance.
There are no ports, and merely a few ill-protected harbours, or narrow
beaches lying under formidable headlands. One river, the Nahr el-Kebir,
which elsewhere would not attract the traveller's attention, is here
noticeable as being the only stream whose waters flow constantly and
with tolerable regularity; the others, the Leon, the Adonis,* and the
Nahr el-Kelb,* can scarcely even be called torrents, being precipitated
as it were in one leap from the Lebanon to the Mediterranean. Olives,
vines, and corn cover the maritime plain, while in ancient times the
heights were clothed with impenetrable forests of oak, pine, larch,
cypress, spruce, and cedar. The mountain range drops in altitude towards
the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills,
connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the latter
it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow
Phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable
wall. Near to the termination of Coele-Syria, but separated from it
by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of Hermon a
valley unlike any other in the world. At this point the surface of the
earth has been rent in prehistoric times by volcanic action, leaving a
chasm which has never since closed up. A river, unique in character--the
Jordan--flows down this gigantic crevasse, fertilizing the valley formed
by it from end to end.***

* The Adonis of classical authors is now Nahr-Ibrahim. We
have as yet no direct evidence as to the Phoenician name of
this river; it was probably identical with that of the
divinity worshipped on its banks. The fact of a river
bearing the name of a god is not surprising: the Belos, in
the neighbourhood of Acre, affords us a parallel case to the
Adonis.

** The present Nahr el-Kelb is the Lykos of classical
authors. The Due de Luynes thought he recognized a
corruption of the Phoenician name in that of Alcobile, which
is mentioned hereabouts in the Itinerary of the pilgrim of
Bordeaux. The order of the Itinerary does not favour this
identification, and Alcobile is probably Jebail: it is none
the less probable that the original name of the Nahr el Kelb
contained from earliest times the Phoenician equivalent of
the Arab word _kelb_, "dog."

*** The Jordan is mentioned in the Egyptian texts under the
name of Yorduna: the name appears to mean _the descender,
the down-flowing._

Its principal source is at Tell el-Qadi, where it rises out of a
basaltic mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of Laish.*

* This source is mentioned by Josephus as being that of the
Little Jordan.

[Illustration: 014.jpg THE MOST NORTHERN SOURCE OF THE JORDAN, THE
NAIIR-EL-HASBANY]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by the Duc de Luynes.

The water collects in an oval rocky basin hidden by bushes, and flows
down among the brushwood to join the Nahr el-Hasbany, which brings the
waters of the upper torrents to swell its stream; a little lower down it
mingles with the Banias branch, and winds for some time amidst desolate
marshy meadows before disappearing in the thick beds of rushes bordering
Lake Huleh.*

* Lake Huleh is called the Waters of Merom, Me-Merom, in the
Book of Joshua, xi. 5, 7; and Lake Sammochonitis in
Josephus. The name of Ulatha, which was given to the
surrounding country, shows that the modern word Huleh is
derived from an ancient form, of which unfortunately the
original has not come down to us.

[Illustration 014b.jpg LAKE OF GENESARATH]

At this point the Jordan reaches the level of the Mediterranean, but
instead of maintaining it, the river makes a sudden drop on leaving the
lake, cutting for itself a deeply grooved channel. It has a fall of
some 300 feet before reaching the Lake of Grenesareth, where it is only
momentarily arrested, as if to gather fresh strength for its headlong
career southwards.

[Illustration: 017.jpg ONE OF THE REACHES OF THE JORDAN]

Drawn by Boudier, from several photographs brought back by
Lortet.

Here and there it makes furious assaults on its right and left banks,
as if to escape from its bed, but the rocky escarpments which hem it in
present an insurmountable barrier to it; from rapid to rapid it descends
with such capricious windings that it covers a course of more than 62
miles before reaching, the Dead Sea, nearly 1300 feet below the level of
the Mediterranean.*

* The exact figures are: the Lake of Huleh 7 feet above the
Mediterranean; the Lake of Genesareth 68245 feet, and the
Dead Sea 1292 feet below the sea-level; to the south of
the Dead Sea, towards the water-parting of the Akabah, the
ground is over 720 feet higher than the level of the Red
Sea.

[Illustration: 018.jpg THE DEAD SEA AND THE MOUNTAINS OF MOAB, SEEN FKOM
THE HEIGHTS OF ENGEDI]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by the Duc de Luynes.

Nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either
bank. On the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3000
feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions:
behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and
intersected in all directions by the affluents of the Jordan and the
Dead Sea--the Yarmuk,* the Jabbok,** and the Arnon.***

* The Yarmuk does not occur in the Bible, but we meet with
its name in the Talmud, and the Greeks adopted it under the
form Hieromax.

** _Gen._ xxxii. 22; Numb, xxi. 24. The name has been
Grecized under the forms lobacchos, labacchos, Iambykes. It
is the present Nahr Zerqa.

*** _Numb._ xxi. 13-26; Beut. ii. 24; the present Wady
Mojib. [Shephelah = "low country," plain (Josh. xi. 16).
With the article it means the plain along the Mediterranean
from Joppa to Gaza.--Te.]

The whole of this district forms a little world in itself, whose
inhabitants, half shepherds, half bandits, live a life of isolation,
with no ambition to take part in general history. West of the Jordan, a
confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes
affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and
olives. One ridge--Mount Carmel--detached from the principal chain
near the southern end of the Lake of Genesareth, runs obliquely to
the north-west, and finally projects into the sea. North of this range
extends Galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields;
while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel
zones--the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes--an
expanse of plain, a "Shephelah," dotted about with woods and watered by
intermittent rivers,--and finally the mountains. The region of dunes
is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it--Gaza, Jaffa,
Ashdod, and Ascalon--are surrounded by flourishing orchards and gardens.
The plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground needing no
manure and very little labour. The higher ground and the hill-tops are
sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance southwards, they
become denuded and burnt by the sun. The valleys, too, are watered only
by springs, which are dried up for the most part during the summer, and
the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be distinguished
from the desert. In fact, till the Sinaitic Peninsula and the frontiers
of Egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and almost
uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and overshadowed
by the volcanic summits of Mount Seir. The spring rains, however,
cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few weeks
furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food.

We may summarise the physical characteristics of Syria by saying that
Nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal
area, isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is
admirably suited to become the seat of a separate independent state.
In the north, we have the country of the two rivers--the
Naharaim--extending from the Orontes to the Euphrates and the Balikh, or
even as far as the Khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of
the Lebanon, lie Coele-Syria and its two unequal neighbours, Aram of
Damascus and Phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of
provinces bordering the valley of the Jordan.

* The Naharaim of the Egyptians was first identified with
Mesopotamia; it was located between the Orontes and the
Balikh or the Euphrates by Maspero. This opinion is now
adopted by the majority of Egyptologists, with slight
differences in detail. Ed. Meyer has accurately compared the
Egyptian Naharaim with the Parapotamia of the administration
of the Seleucidae.

It is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to
accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the
fourth millennium before our era. Wherever excavations are made, relics
are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we
find stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in
contour, but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. These
remains, however, are not accompanied by any monument of definite
characteristics, and they yield no information with regard to the
origin or affinities of the tribes who fashioned them.* The study of the
geographical nomenclature in use about the XVIth century B.C. reveals
the existence, at all events at that period, of several peoples and
several languages. The mountains, rivers, towns, and fortresses in
Palestine and Coele-Syria are designated by words of Semitic origin: it
is easy to detect, even in the hieroglyphic disguise which they bear
on the Egyptian geographical lists, names familiar to us in Hebrew or
Assyrian.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24