The civilization of Babylonia and Assyria

Its remains, language, history, religion, commerce, law, art, and literature

by Morris Jastrow | 1915 | 168,585 words

This work attempts to present a study of the unprecedented civilizations that flourished in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley many thousands of years ago. Spreading northward into present-day Turkey and Iran, the land known by the Greeks as Mesopotamia flourished until just before the Christian era....

Here we may rest our survey of the decipherment of the Babylonian-Assyrian cuneiform writing, which we have followed from the successful unraveling of the old Persian inscriptions down to the time when a secure basis for the decipherment of Class III had been secured. The appearance, in 1859, of the "Expedition scientifique en Mesopotamie executee de 1851 a 1854", [1] the second volume of which contained Oppert's analysis of the principles of the decipherment, may be said to mark the termination of the second period of cuneiform research, as the publication, in 1849-51, of Rawlinson's researches in the old Persian inscriptions closed the first period.

The third period, marked by continuous publications of Babylonian and Assyrian texts, chiefly by French and English Assyriologists, is one of steady progress in perfecting the details of the decipherment. New ideographic and syllabic values were constantly being discovered, improved readings took the place of earlier imperfect ones, and the beginnings were made towards a systematic treatment of the grammatical features of the Babylonian language, or Assyrian as it continued to be called. Skepticism, however, still existed in some quarters and it was not until the appearance, in 1872, of Eberhard Schrader's Die Assyrisch-Babylonisclien Keilinschriften, [2] that what may be called the "trial" period came to an end. [3]

The fourth period of cuneiform research is marked by the participation ofGerman scholarship, which, since the pioneer work of Grotefend, had rather held aloof in the further struggle to unravel the mysteries of the various kinds of cuneiform script.

Excepting Grotefend, the work in Assyriology was carried on by English and French scholars, unless we count Jules Oppert, who was born in Hamburg, but who, as a young man, came to Paris and settled there for the remainder of his life, [4] among German scholars. Eberhard Schrader was the first among the students of Oriental languages in Germany to take up Assyriology and when, in 1875, the University of Berlin decided to introduce the subject, Schrader was called to fill the chair and continued active till within a few years of his death, in 1908.

Schrader's thoroughness and soundness of scholarship did much to gain the confidence of German scholars in general in the results of the decipherment, and after Gutschmidt's attack in 1876, all opposition practically ceased.

Schrader brought to his task that philological nicety for which German scholarship has so long been distinguished, and of which at that time cuneiform research stood much in need. Schrader's enthusiasm for the study attracted a number of young scholars to him, among them Friedrich Delitzsch, the son of the distinguished theologian, Franz Delitzsch.

Young Delitzsch became the founder of the present German school of Assyriology. First establishing himself as Privat-Dozent for Assyriology at Leipzig, then called to Breslau to occupy the chair of Assyriology, and in 1906, to Berlin, he has in the course of his career trained the largest percentage of Assyriologists of Germany and a large proportion of those in other parts of the world, notably in the United States and Canada ; and those of the present day who did not sit directly at his feet have imbibed inspiration from Delitzsch 's fruitful researches or have been pupils of Delitzsch 's pupils. [5]

The activity at the present time in all branches of Assyriology is largely due to the stimulus given to the study by Delitzsch and his pupils. The museums of London, Berlin, Paris and Philadelphia are steadily issuing new texts. Specialization within Assyriology has set in. Some scholars are devoting themselves to the extensive business and commercial literature, others to the religious texts and the development of the religious ideas and the cult, others to the study of Babylonian-Assyrian history, some to the linguistic problems, some to the further elucidation of the Sumerian texts and so forth.

Through the combined activity of scholars of many lands, supplementing the discoveries made by exploring expeditions, and through the interpretation of the material unearthed, which has grown, as we have seen, to such huge proportions and which is still growing, the civilization of Babylonia and Assyria stands revealed before us in all its ramifications as one of the great forces in the ancient history of mankind, the direct or indirect influence of which is to be seen in many a phase of our own modern culture.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The account of the French expedition above referred to (P- 28).

[2]:

Published in the Zeits. d. Deutsch. Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft, vol. xxvi, pp. 1-392 ; and then as a separate volume.

[3]:

Gutschmid's answer to Schrader (above, p. 98) appeared in 1876, but it failed to make any deep impression.

[4]:

See the sketch by W. Muss-Arnolt of Oppert's life, with a complete bibliography, in the Beitrage zur Assyriologie, vol. ii, pp. 523-556. No adequate biography of Edward Hincks has to my knowledge as yet appeared. A brief sketch with a complete bibliography, compiled by Dr. Cyrus Adler, will be found in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xiii and xiv.

[5]:

We owe to Delitzsch the first Assyrian Chrestomathy (Assyrische Lescstiicke, 1st ed., Leipzig, 1876 ; 5th ed., 1912); the first substantial grammar (Assyrische Grammatik, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1906, also English translation, Leipzig, 1889); and the first Assyrian Dictionary (Assyrisches Handworterbuch, Leipzig, 1896) to which, he is now adding a supplement.

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