G. Maspero - History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12)

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[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 IX.

LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS

[Illustration: 001.jpg Frontispiece] Howling Dervish

[Illustration: Titlepage]

[Illustration: 001.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

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_THE IRANIAN CONQUEST_

_THE IRANIAN RELIGIONS--CYRUS IN LYDIA AND AT BABYLON; CAMBYSES IN
EGYPT--DARIUS AND THE ORGANISATION OF THE EMPIRE._

_The constitution of the Median empire borrowed from the ancient peoples
of the Euphrates: its religion only is peculiar to itself--Legends
concerning Zoroaster, his laws; the Avesta and its history--Elements
contained in it of primitive religion--The supreme god Ahura-maza and
his Amesha-spentas: the Yazatas, the Fravashis--Angro-mainyus and his
agents, the Daivas, the Pairikas, their struggle with Ahura-mazda--The
duties of man here below, funerals, his fate after death---Worship and
temples: fire-altars, sacrifices, the Magi_.

_Cyrus and the legends concerning his origin: his revolt against
Astyages and the fall of the Median empire--The early years of the reign
of Nabonidus: revolutions in Tyre, the taking of Harran--The end of
the reign of Alyattes, Lydian art and its earliest coinage--Croesus,
his relations with continental Greece, his conquests, his alliances with
Babylon and Egypt--The war between Lydia and Persia: the defeat of
the Lydians, the taking of Sardes, the death of Croesus and subsequent
legends relating to it--The submission of the cities of the Asiatic
littoral._

_Cyrus in Bactriana and in the eastern regions of the Iranian table-land
--The impression produced on the Chaldaean by his victories; the Jewish
exiles, Ezekiel and his dreams of restoration, the new temple, the
prophecies against Babylon; general discontent with Nabonidus--The
attach of Cyrus and the battle of Zalzallat, the taking of Babylon
and the fall of Nabonidus: the end of the Chaldaean empire and the
deliverance of the Jews._

_Egypt under Amasis: building works, support given to the
Greeks; Naukratis, its temples, its constitution, and its
prosperity--Preparations for defence and the unpopularity of Amasis with
the native Egyptians--The death of Cyrus and legends relating to it: his
palace at Pasargadae and his tomb--Cambyses and Smerdis--The legendary
causes of the war with Egypt--Psammetichus III., the battle of Pelusium;
Egypt reduced to a Persian province._

_Cambyses' plans for conquest; the abortive expeditions to the oceans of
Amnion and Carthage--The kingdom of Ethiopia, its kings, its customs:
the Persians fail to reach Napata, the madness of Cambyses--The fraud of
Gaumata, the death of Cambyses and the reign of the pseudo-Smerdis,
the accession of Darius--The revolution in Susiana, Chaldaea, and Media:
Nebuchadrezzar III. and the fall of Babylon, the death of Oraetes, the
defeat of Khshatrita, restoration of peace throughout Asia, Egyptian
affairs and the re-establishment of the royal power._

_The organisation of the country and its division into satrapies: the
satrap, the military commander, the royal secretary; couriers, main
roads, the Eyes and Ears of the king--The financial system and the
provincial taxes: the daric--Advantages and drawbacks of the system of
division into satrapies; the royal guard and the military organisation
of the empire--The conquest of the Hapta-Hindu and the prospect of war
with Greece._

[Illustration: 003.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

CHAPTER I--THE IRANIAN CONQUEST

Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving in Coste and Flandin.
The vignette, drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a statuette in
terra-cotta, found in Southern Russia, represents a young
Scythian.

_The Iranian religions--Cyrus in Lydia and at Babylon: Cambyses in Egypt
--Darius and the organisation of the empire._

The Median empire is the least known of all those which held sway for a
time over the destinies of a portion of Western Asia. The reason of this
is not to be ascribed to the shortness of its duration: the Chaldaean
empire of Nebuchadrezzar lasted for a period quite as brief, and yet the
main outlines of its history can be established with some certainty in
spite of large blanks and much obscurity. Whereas at Babylon, moreover,
original documents abound, enabling us to put together, feature by
feature, the picture of its ancient civilisation and of the chronology
of its kings, we possess no contemporary monuments of Ecbatana to
furnish direct information as to its history. To form any idea of
the Median kings or their people, we are reduced to haphazard notices
gleaned from the chroniclers of other lands, retailing a few isolated
facts, anecdotes, legends, and conjectures, and, as these materials
reach us through the medium of the Babylonians or the Greeks of the
fifth or sixth century B.C., the picture which we endeavour to compose
from them is always imperfect or out of perspective. We seemingly
catch glimpses of ostentatious luxury, of a political and military
organisation, and a method of government analogous to that which
prevailed at later periods among the Persians, but more imperfect,
ruder, and nearer to barbarism--a Persia, in fact, in the rudimentary
stage, with its ruling spirit and essential characteristics as yet
undeveloped. The machinery of state had doubtless been adopted almost
in its entirety from the political organisations which obtained in the
kingdoms of Assyria, Elam, and Chaldaea, with which sovereignties the
founders of the Median empire had held in turns relations as vassals,
enemies, and allies; but once we penetrate this veneer of Mesopotamian
civilisation and reach the inner life of the people, we find in the
religion they profess--mingled with some borrowed traits--a world of
unfamiliar myths and dogmas of native origin.

The main outlines of this religion were already fixed when the
Medes rose in rebellion against Assur-bani-pal; and the very name of
_Confessor_--Fravartish--applied to the chief of that day, proves that
it was the faith of the royal family. It was a religion common to all
the Iranians, the Persians as well as the Medes, and legend honoured as
its first lawgiver and expounder an ancient prophet named Zarathustra,
known to us as Zoroaster.* Most classical writers relegated Zoroaster
to some remote age of antiquity--thus he is variously said to have lived
six thousand years before the death of Plato,** five thousand before the
Trojan war,*** one thousand before Moses, and six hundred before Xerxes'
campaign against Athens; while some few only affirmed that he had lived
at a comparatively recent period, and made him out a disciple of the
philosopher Pythagoras, who flourished about the middle of the fifth
century B.C.

* The name Zarathustra has been interpreted in a score of
different ways. The Greeks sometimes attributed to it the
meaning "worshipper of the stars," probably by reason of the
similarity in sound of the termination "-astres" of
Zoroaster with the word "astron." Among modern writers, H.
Rawlinson derived it from the Assyrian Ziru-Ishtar, "the
seed of Ishtar," but the etymology now most generally
accepted is that of Burnouf, according to which it would
signify "the man with gold-coloured camels," the "possessor
of tawny camels." The ordinary Greek form Zoroaster seems to
be derived from some name quite distinct from Zarathustra.

** This was, as Pliny records, the opinion of Eudoxus; not
Eudoxus of Cnidus, pupil of Plato, as is usually stated, but
a more obscure personage, Eudoxus of Rhodes.

*** This was the statement of Hermodorus.

According to the most ancient national traditions, he was born in the
Aryanem-vaejo, or, in other words, in the region between the Araxes and
the Kur, to the west of the Caspian Sea. Later tradition asserted
that his conception was attended by supernatural circumstances, and
the miracles which accompanied his birth announced the advent of a saint
destined to regenerate the world by the revelation of the True Law. In
the belief of an Iranian, every man, every living creature now existing
or henceforth to exist, not excluding the gods themselves, possesses a
Frohar, or guardian spirit, who is assigned to him at his entrance into
the world, and who is thenceforth devoted entirely to watching over
his material and moral well-being,* About the time appointed for the
appearance of the prophet, his Frohar was, by divine grace, imprisoned
in the heart of a Haoma,** and was absorbed, along with the juice of
the plant, by the priest Purushaspa,*** during a sacrifice, a ray of
heavenly glory descending at the same time into the bosom of a maiden of
noble race, named Dughdova, whom Purushaspa shortly afterwards espoused.

* The Fravashi (for _fravarti_, from _fra-var_, "to support,
nourish"), or the _frohar (feruer)_, is, properly speaking,
the nurse, the genius who nurtures. Many of the practices
relating to the conception and cult of the Fravashis seem to
me to go back to the primitive period of the Iranian
religions.

** The haoma is an _Asclepias Sarcostema Viminalis_.

*** The name signifies "He who has many horses."

Zoroaster was engendered from the mingling of the Frohar with the
celestial ray. The evil spirit, whose supremacy he threatened,
endeavoured to destroy him as soon as he saw the light, and despatched
one of his agents, named Bouiti, from the country of the far north to
oppose him; but the infant prophet immediately pronounced the formula
with which the psalm for the offering of the waters opens: "The will of
the Lord is the rule of good!" and proceeded to pour libations in honour
of the river Dareja, on the banks of which he had been born a moment
before, reciting at the same time the "profession of faith which puts
evil spirits to flight." Bouiti fled aghast, but his master set to work
upon some fresh device. Zoroaster allowed him, however, no time to
complete his plans: he rose up, and undismayed by the malicious riddles
propounded to him by his adversary, advanced against him with his hands
full of stones--stones as large as a house--with which the good deity
supplied him. The mere sight of him dispersed the demons, and they
regained the gates of their hell in headlong flight, shrieking out, "How
shall we succeed in destroying him? For he is the weapon which strikes
down evil beings; he is the scourge of evil beings." His infancy
and youth were spent in constant disputation with evil spirits: ever
assailed, he ever came out victorious, and issued more perfect from each
attack. When he was thirty years old, one of the good spirits, Vohumano,
appeared to him, and conducted him into the presence of Ahura-mazda,
the Supreme Being. When invited to question the deity, Zoroaster asked,
"Which is the best of the creatures which are upon the earth?" The
answer was, that the man whose heart is pure, he excels among his
fellows. He next desired to know the names and functions of the angels,
and the nature and attributes of evil. His instruction ended, he crossed
a mountain of flames, and underwent a terrible ordeal of purification,
during which his breast was pierced with a sword, and melted lead poured
into his entrails without his suffering any pain: only after this ordeal
did he receive from the hands of Ahura-mazda the Book of the Law, the
Avesta, was then sent back to his native land bearing his precious
burden. At that time, Vishtaspa, son of Aurvataspa, was reigning over
Bactria. For ten years Zoroaster had only one disciple, his cousin
Maidhyoi-Maonha, but after that he succeeded in converting, one
after the other, the two sons of Hvogva, the grand vizir Jamaspa, who
afterwards married the prophet's daughter, and Frashaoshtra, whose
daughter Hvogvi he himself espoused; the queen, Hutaosa, was the next
convert, and afterwards, through her persuasions, the king Vishtaspa
himself became a disciple. The triumph of the good cause was hastened by
the result of a formal disputation between the prophet and the wise men
of the court: for three days they essayed to bewilder him with their
captious objections and their magic arts, thirty standing on his right
hand and thirty on his left, but he baffled their wiles, aided by grace
from above, and having forced them to avow themselves at the end of
their resources, he completed his victory by reciting the Avesta before
them. The legend adds, that after rallying the majority of the people
round him, he lived to a good old age, honoured of all men for his
saintly life. According to some accounts, he was stricken dead by
lightning,* while others say he was killed by a Turanian soldier,
Bratrok-resh, in a war against the Hyaonas.

* This is, under very diverse forms, the version preferred
by Western historians of the post-classical period.

The question has often been asked whether Zoroaster belongs to
the domain of legend or of history. The only certain thing we know
concerning him is his name; all the rest is mythical, poetic, or
religious fiction. Classical writers attributed to him the composition
or editing of all the writings comprised in Persian literature: the
whole consisted, they said, of two hundred thousand verses which had
been expounded and analysed by Hermippus in his commentaries on the
secret doctrines of the Magi. The Iranians themselves averred that he
had given the world twenty-one volumes--the twenty-one _Nasks_ of the
Avesta,* which the Supreme Deity had created from the twenty-one words
of the Magian profession of faith, the _Ahuna Vairya_. King Vishtaspa is
said to have caused two authentic copies of the Avesta--which contained
in all ten or twelve hundred chapters**--to be made, one of which
was consigned to the archives of the empire, the other laid up in
the treasury of a fortress, either Shapigan, Shizigan, Samarcand, or
Persepolis.***

* The word _Avesta_, in Pehlevi _Apastak_, whence come the
Persian forms _avasta, osta_, is derived from the
Achaemenian word _Abasta_, which signifies _law_ in the
inscriptions of Darius. The term Zend-Avesta, commonly used
to designate the sacred book of the Persians, is incorrectly
derived from the expression _Apastac u Zend_, which in
Pehlevi designates first the law itself, and then the
translation and commentary in more modern language which
conduces to a _knowledge (Zend)_ of the law. The customary
application, therefore, of the name Zend to the language of
the Avesta is incorrect.

** The Dinkart fixes the number of chapters at 1000, and the
Shah-Namak at 1200, written on plates of gold. According to
Masudi, the book itself and the two commentaries formed
12,000 volumes, written in letters of gold, the twenty-one
Nasks each contained 200 pages, and the whole of these
writings had been inscribed on 12,000 cow-hides.

*** The site of Shapigan or Shaspigan is unknown. J.
Darmesteter suggests that it ought to be read as _Shizigan_,
which would permit of the identification of the place with
Shiz, one of the ancient religious centres of Iran, whose
temple was visited by the Sassanids on their accession to
the throne. According to the Arda-Viraf the law was
preserved at Istakhr, or Persepolis, according to the Shah-
Namak at Samarcand in the temple of the Fire-god.

Alexander is said to have burnt the former copy: the latter, stolen by
the Greeks, is reported to have been translated into their language and
to have furnished them with all their scientific knowledge. One of the
Arsacids, Vologesus I., caused a search to be made for all the fragments
which existed either in writing or in the memory of the faithful,* and
this collection, added to in the reign of the Sassanid king, Ardashir
Babagan, by the high priest Tansar, and fixed in its present form under
Sapor I., was recognised as the religious code of the empire in the time
of Sapor II., about the fourth century of the Christian era.*** The text
is composed, as may be seen, of three distinct strata, which are by no
means equally ancient;*** one can, nevertheless, make out from it with
sufficient certainty the principal features of the religion and cult of
Iran, such as they were under the Achaemenids, and perhaps even under the
hegemony of the Medes.

* Tradition speaks simply of a King Valkash, without
specifying which of the four kings named Vologesus is
intended. James Darmesteter has given good reasons for
believing that this Valkash is Vologesus I. (50-75 A.D.),
the contemporary of Nero.

** This is the tradition reproduced in two versions of the
Dinkart.

*** Darmesteter declares that ancient Zoroastrianism is, in
its main lines, the religion of the Median Magi, even though
he assigns the latest possible date to the composition of
the Avesta as now existing, and thinks he can discern in it
Greek, Jewish, and Christian elements.

It is a complicated system of religion, and presupposes a long period of
development. The doctrines are subtle; the ceremonial order of worship,
loaded with strict observances, is interrupted at every moment by laws
prescribing minute details of ritual,* which were only put in practice
by priests and strict devotees, and were unknown to the mass of the
faithful.

* Renan defined the Avesta as "the Code of a very small
religious sect; it is a Talmud, a book of casuistry and
strict observance. I have difficulty in believing that the
great Persian empire, which, at least in religious matters,
professed a certain breadth of ideas, could have had a law
so strict. I think, that had the Persians possessed a sacred
book of this description, the Greeks must have mentioned
it."

The primitive, base of this religion is difficult to discern clearly:
but we may recognise in it most of those beings or personifications of
natural phenomena which were the chief objects of worship among all the
ancient nations of Western Asia--the stars, Sirius, the moon, the sun,
water and fire, plants, animals beneficial to mankind, such as the cow
and the dog, good and evil spirits everywhere present, and beneficent
or malevolent souls of mortal men, but all systematised, graduated, and
reduced to sacerdotal principles, according to the prescriptions of a
powerful priesthood. Families consecrated to the service of the altar
had ended, as among the Hebrews, by separating themselves from the rest
of the nation and forming a special tribe, that of the Magi, which was
the last to enter into the composition of the nation in historic times.
All the Magi were not necessarily devoted to the service of religion,
but all who did so devote themselves sprang from the Magian tribe; the
Avesta, in its oldest form, was the sacred book of the Magi, as well as
that of the priests who handed down their religious tradition under the
various dynasties, native or foreign, who bore rule over Iran.

The Creator was described as "the whole circle of the heavens," "the
most steadfast among the gods," for "he clothes himself with the solid
vault of the firmament as his raiment," "the most beautiful, the most
intelligent, he whose members are most harmoniously proportioned; his
body was the light and the sovereign glory, the sun and the moon were
his eyes." The theologians had gradually spiritualised the conception
of this deity without absolutely disconnecting him from the material
universe.

[Illustration: 012.jpg THE AHURA-MAZDA OF THE BAS-RELIEFS OF PERSEPOLIS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Flandin and Coste.

He remained under ordinary circumstances invisible to mortal eyes,
and he could conceal his identity even from the highest gods, but he
occasionally manifested himself in human form. He borrowed in such case
from Assyria the symbol of Assur, and the sculptors depict him with the
upper part of his body rising above that winged disk which is carved in
a hovering attitude on the pediments of Assyrian monuments or stelae.

[Illustration: 012b.jpg HYPOSTYLE OF HALL OF XERXES: DETAIL OF
ENTABLATURE]

In later days he was portrayed under the form of a king of imposing
stature and majestic mien, who revealed himself from time to time to the
princes of Iran.*

* In a passage of Philo of Byblos the god is described as
having the head of a falcon or an eagle, perhaps by
confusion with one of the genii represented on the walls of
the palaces.

[Illustration: 013.jpg AN IRANIAN GENIUS IN FORM OF A WINGED BULL]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

He was named Ahuro-mazdao or Ahura-mazda, the omniscient lord,*
_Spento-mainyus_, the spirit of good, _Mainyus-spenishto_** the most
beneficent of spirits.

* _Ahura_ is derived from _Ahu_ = _Lord_: Mazdao can be
analysed into the component parts, _maz = great_, and _dao
= he who knows_. At first the two terms were
interchangeable, and even in the Gathas the form Mazda Ahura
is employed much more often than the form Ahura Mazda. In
the Achsemenian inscriptions, Auramazda is only found as a
single word, except in an inscription of Xerxes, where the
two terms are in one passage separated and declined _Aurahya
mazdaha_. The form Ormuzd, Ormazd, usually employed by
Europeans, is that assumed by the name in modern Persian.

** These two names are given to him more especially in
connection with his antagonism to Angromainyus.

Himself uncreated, he is the creator of all things, but he is assisted
in the administration of the universe by legions of beings, who are all
subject to him.*

* Darius styles Ahura-mazda, _mathishta baganam_, the
greatest of the gods, and Xerxes invokes the protection of
Ahura-mazda along with that of the gods. The classical
writers also mention gods alongside of Ahura-mazda as
recognised not only among the Achaemenian Persians, but also
among the Parthians. Darmesteter considers that the earliest
Achaemenids worshipped Ahura-mazda alone, "placing the other
gods together in a subordinate and anonymous group: May
Ahura-mazda and the other gods protect me."

[Illustration: 014.jpg AHURA-MAZDA BESTOWING THE TOKENS OF ROYALTY ON AN
IRANIAN KING]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Dieulafoy.

The most powerful among his ministers were originally nature-gods, such
as the sun, the moon, the earth, the winds, and the waters. The sunny
plains of Persia and Media afforded abundant witnesses of their power,
as did the snow-clad peaks, the deep gorges through which rushed roaring
torrents, and the mountain ranges of Ararat or Taurus, where the
force of the subterranean fires was manifested by so many startling
exhibitions of spontaneous conflagration.* The same spiritualising
tendency which had already considerably modified the essential concept
of Ahura-mazda, affected also that of the inferior deities, and tended
to tone down in them the grosser traits of their character. It had
already placed at their head six genii of a superior order, six
ever-active energies, who, after assisting their master at the creation
of the universe, now presided under his guidance over the kingdoms and
forces of nature.**

* All these inferior deities, heroes, and genii who presided
over Persia, the royal family, and the different parts of
the empire, are often mentioned in the most ancient
classical authors that have come down to us.

** The six Amesha-spentas, with their several
characteristics, are enumerated in a passage of the _De
Iside_. This exposition of Persian doctrine is usually
attributed to Theopompus, from which we may deduce the
existence of a belief in the Amesha-spentas in the
Achsemenian period. J. Darmesteter affirms, on the contrary,
that "the author describes the Zoro-astrianism of his own
times (the second century A.D.), and quotes Theopompus for a
special doctrine, that of the periods of the world's life."
Although this last point is correct, the first part of
Darmesteter's theory does not seem to me justified by
investigation. The whole passage of Plutarch is a well-
arranged composition of uniform style, which may be regarded
as an exposition of the system described by Theopompus,
probably in the eighth of his Philippics.

[Illustration: 016a.jpg THE MOON-GOD]

[Illustration: 016b.jpg GOD OF THE WIND]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coin of King Kanishka,
published by Percy Gardner.

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