Chapter III: Chaldaean Civilization (4)

To express the units, they made use of so many vertical “nails” placed one after, or above, each other, thus [symbols] etc.; tens were represented by bent brackets [symbols], up to 60; beyond this figure they had the choice of two methods of notation: they could express the further tens by the continuous additions of brackets thus, [symbols] or they could represent 50 by a vertical “nail,” and add for every additional ten a bracket to the right of it, thus: [symbols]. The notation of a hundred was represented by the vertical “nail” with a horizontal stroke to the right thus [symbols], and the number of hundreds by the symbols placed before this sign, thus [symbols], etc.: a thousand was written [symbols] i.e. ten times one hundred, and the series of thousands by the combination of different notations which served to express units, tens, and hundreds. They subdivided the unit, moreover, into sixty equal parts, and each of these parts into sixty further equal subdivisions, and this system of fractions was used in all kinds of quantitive measurements. The fathom, the foot and its square, talents and bushels, the complete system of Chaldaean weights and measures, were based on the intimate alliance and parallel use of the decimal and duodecimal systems of notation. The sixtieth was more frequently employed than the hundredth when large quantities were in question: it was called a “soss,” and ten sosses were equal to a “ner,” while sixty ners were equivalent to a “sar;” the series, sosses, ners, and sars, being employed in all estimations of values. Years and measures of length were reckoned in sosses, while talents and bushels were measured in sosses and sars. The fact that these subdivisions were all divisible by 10 or 12, rendered calculations by means of them easy to the merchant and workmen as well as to the mathematical expert. The glimpses that we have been able to obtain up to the present of Chaldaean scientific methods indicate that they were on a low level, but they were sufficiently advanced to furnish practical rules for application in everyday affairs: helps to memory of different kinds, lists of figures with their names phonetically rendered in Sumerian and Semitic speech, tables of squares and cubes, and rudimentary formulas and figures for land-surveying, furnished sufficient instructions to enable any one to make complicated calculations in a ready manner, and to work out in figures, with tolerable accuracy, the superficial area of irregularly shaped plots of land. The Chaldaeans could draw out, with a fair amount of exactness, plans of properties or of towns, and their ambition impelled them even to attempt to make maps of the world. The latter were, it is true, but rough sketches, in which mythological beliefs vitiated the information which merchants and soldiers had collected in their journeys. The earth was represented as a disk surrounded by the ocean stream: Chaldaea took up the greater part of it, and foreign countries did not appear in it at all, or held a position out in the cold at its extremities. Actual knowledge was woven in an extraordinary manner with mystic considerations, in which the virtues of numbers, their connections with the gods, and the application of geometrical diagrams to the prediction of the future, played an important part. We know what a brilliant fortune these speculations attained in after-years, and the firm hold they obtained for centuries over Western nations, as formerly over the Bast. It was not in arithmetic and geometry alone, moreover, that the Chaldaeans were led away by such deceits: each branch of science in its turn was vitiated by them, and, indeed, it could hardly be otherwise when we come to consider the Chaldaean outlook upon the universe. Its operations, in their eyes, were not carried on under impersonal and unswerving laws, but by voluntary and rational agents, swayed by an inexorable fate against which they dared not rebel, but still free enough and powerful enough to avert by magic the decrees of destiny, or at least to retard their execution. From this conception of things each subordinate science was obliged to make its investigations in two perfectly distinct regions: it had at first to determine the material facts within its competence--such as the position of the stars, for instance, or the symptoms of a malady; it had then to discover the beings which revealed themselves through these material manifestations, their names and their characteristics. When once it had obtained this information, and could lay its hands upon them, it could compel them to work on its behalf: science was thus nothing else than the application of magic to a particular class of phenomena.

The number of astronomical facts with which the Chaldaeans had made themselves acquainted was considerable.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Peiser.

It was a question in ancient times whether they or the Egyptians had been the first to carry their investigations into the infinite depths of celestial space: when it came to be a question as to which of the two peoples had made the greater progress in this branch of knowledge, all hesitation vanished, and the pre-eminence was accorded by the ancients to the priests of Babylon rather than to those of Heliopolis and Memphis.*

* Clement of Alexandria, Lucien, Diogenes Laertius, Macrobius, attribute the origin of astronomy to the Egyptians, and Diodorus Sioulus asserts that they were the teachers of the Babylonians; Josephus maintains, on the contrary, that the Egyptians were the pupils of the Chaldaeans.

The Chaldaeans had conducted astronomical observations from remote antiquity.* Callisthenes collected and sent to his uncle Aristotle a number of these observations, of which the oldest had been made nineteen hundred and three years before his time--that is, about the middle of the twenty-third century before our era: he could have transcribed many of a still earlier date if the archives of Babylon had been fully accessible to him.

* Epigenes asserts that their observations extended back to
720,000 years before the time of Alexander, while Berossus
and Critodemus limit their antiquity to 490,000 years, which
was further reduced to 473,000 years by Diodorus, to 470,000
by Cicero, and to 270,000 by Hipparchus.

The Chaldaean priests had been accustomed from an early date to record on their clay tablets the aspect of the heavens and the changes which took place in them night after night, the appearance of the constellations, their comparative brilliancy, the precise moments of their rising and setting and culmination, together with the more or less rapid movements of the planets, and their motions towards or from one another. To their unaided eyes, sharpened by practice and favoured by the transparency of the air, many stars were visible, as to the Egyptians, which we can perceive only by the aid of the telescope. These thousands of brilliant bodies, scattered apparently at random over the face of the sky, moved, however, with perfect regularity, and the period between their departure from and their return to the same point in the heavens was determined at an early date: their position could be predicted at any hour, their course in the firmament being traced so accurately that its various stages were marked out and indicated beforehand. The moon, they discovered, had to complete two hundred and twenty-three revolutions of twenty-nine days and a half each, before it returned to the point from which it had set out. This period of its career being accomplished, it began a second of equal length, then a third, and so on, in an infinite series, during which it traversed the same celestial houses and repeated in them the same acts of its life: all the eclipses which it had undergone in one period would again afflict it in another, and would be manifest in the same places of the earth in the same order of time.* Whether they ascribed these eclipses to some mechanical cause, or regarded them as so many unfortunate attacks made upon Sin by the seven, they recognized their periodical character, and they were acquainted with the system of the two hundred and twenty-three lunations by which their occurrence and duration could be predicted. Further observations encouraged the astronomers to endeavour to do for the sun what they had so successfully accomplished in regard to the moon.

* This period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations is
that described by Ptolemy in the fourth book of his
“Astronomy,” in which he deals with the average motion of
the moon. The Chaldaeans seem not to have been able to make a
skilful use of it, for their books indicate the occurrence
of lunar eclipses outside the predicted periods.

No long experience was needed to discover the fact that the majority of solar eclipses were followed some fourteen days and a half after by an eclipse of the moon; but they were unable to take sufficient advantage of this experience to predict with certainty the instant of a future eclipse of the sun, although they had been so struck with the connection of the two phenomena as to believe that they were in a position to announce it approximately.* They were frequently deceived in their predictions, and more than one eclipse which they had promised did not take place at the time expected:** but their successful prognostications were sufficiently frequent to console them for their failures, and to maintain the respect of the people and the rulers for their knowledge. Their years were vague years of three hundred and sixty days. The twelve equal months of which they were composed bore names which were borrowed, on the one hand, from events in civil life, such as “Simanu,” from the making of brick, and “Addaru,” from the sowing of seed, and, on the other, from mythological occurrences whose origin is still obscure, such as “Nisanu,” from the altar of Ea, and “Elul,” from a message of Ishtar. The adjustment of this year to astronomical demands was roughly carried out by the addition of a month every six years, which was called a second Adar, Blul, or Nisan, according to the place in which it was intercalated.

* Tannery is of opinion that the Chaldaeans must have
predicted eclipses of the sun by means of the period of two
hundred and twenty-three lunations, and shows by what a
simple means they could have arrived at it.

** An astronomer mentions, in the time of Assurbanipal, that
on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of the month he prepared for the
observation of an eclipse; but the sun continued brilliant,
and the eclipse did not take place.

The neglect of the hours and minutes in their calculation of the length of the year became with them, as with the Egyptians, a source of serious embarrassment, and we are still ignorant as to the means employed to meet the difficulty. The months had relations to the signs of the zodiac, and the days composing them were made up of twelve double hours each. The Chaldaens had invented two instruments, both of them of a simple character, to measure time--the clepsydra and the solar clock, the latter of which in later times became the source of the Greek “polos.” The sun-dial served to determine a number of simple facts which were indispensable in astronomical calculations, such as the four cardinal points, the meridian of the place, the solstitial and equinoctial epochs, and the elevation of the pole at the position of observation. The construction of the sundial and clepsydra, if not of the polos also, is doubtless to be referred back to a very ancient date, but none of the texts already brought to light makes mention of the employment of these instruments.*

* Herodotus (ii. 109) formally attributes the invention of
the sun-dial and polos to the Babylonians. The “polos” was a
solar clock. It consisted of a concave hemisphere with a
style rising from its centre: the shadow of the style
described every day an arc of a circle parallel to the
equator, and the daily parallels were divided into twelve or
twenty-four equal parts. Smith discovered, in the palace of
Sennacherib at Koyunjik, a portion of an astrolabe, which is
now in the British Museum.

All these discoveries, which constitute in our eyes the scientific patrimony of the Chaldaeans, were regarded by themselves as the least important results of their investigations. Did they not know, thanks to these investigations, that the stars shone for other purposes than to lighten up the nights--to rule, in fact, the destinies of men and kings, and, in ruling that of kings, to determine the fortune of empires? Their earliest astronomers, by their assiduous contemplation of the nightly heavens, had come to the conclusion that the vicissitudes of the heavenly bodies were in fixed relations with mundane phenomena and events. If Mercury, for instance, displayed an unusual brilliancy at his rising, and his disk appeared as a two-edged sword, riches and abundance, due to the position of the luminous halo which surrounded him, would be scattered over Chaldaea, while discords would cease therein, and justice would triumph over iniquity. The first observer who was struck by this coincidence noted it down; his successors confirmed his observations, and at length deduced, in the process of the years, from their accumulated knowledge, a general law. Henceforward, each time that Mercury assumed the same aspect it was of favourable augury, and kings and their subjects became the recipients of his bounty. As long as he maintained this appearance no foreign ruler could install himself in Chaldaea, tyranny would be divided against itself, equity would prevail, and a strong monarch bear sway; while the landholders and the king would be confirmed in their privileges, and obedience, together with tranquillity, would rule everywhere in the land. The number of these observations increased to such a degree that it was found necessary to classify them methodically to avoid confusion. Tables of them were drawn up, in which the reader could see at one and the same moment the aspect of the heavens on such and such a night and hour, and the corresponding events either then happening, or about to happen, in Chaldaean, Syria, or some foreign land. If, for instance, the moon displayed the same appearance on the 1st and 27th of the month, Elam was threatened; but “if the sun, at his setting, appears double his usual size, with three groups of bluish rays, the King of Chaldaea is ruined.” To the indications of the heavenly bodies, the Chaldaeans added the portents which could be deduced from atmospheric phenomena: if it thundered on the 27th of Tammuz, the wheat-harvest would be excellent and the produce of the ears magnificent; but if this, should occur six days later, that is, on the 2nd of Abu, floods and rains were to be apprehended in a short time, together with the death of the king and the division of his empire. It was not for nothing that the sun and moon surrounded themselves in the evening with blood-red vapours or veiled themselves in dark clouds; that they grew suddenly pale or red after having been intensely bright; that unexpected fires blazed out on the confines of the air, and that on certain nights the stars seemed to have become detached from the firmament and to be falling upon the earth. These prodigies were so many warnings granted by the gods to the people and their kings before great crises in human affairs: the astronomer investigated and interpreted them, and his predictions had a greater influence than we are prepared to believe upon the fortunes of individuals and even of states. The rulers consulted and imposed upon the astronomers the duty of selecting the most favourable moment for the execution of the projects they had in view. From an early date each temple contained a library of astrological writings, where the people might find, drawn up as in a. code, the signs which bore upon their destinies. One of these libraries, consisting of not less than seventy clay tablets, is considered to have been first drawn up in the reign of Sargon of Agade, but to have been so modified and enriched with new examples from time to time that the original is well-nigh lost. This was the classical work on the subject in the VIIth century before our era, and the astronomers-royal, to whom applications were accustomed to be made to explain a natural phenomenon or a prodigy, drew their answers ready-made from it. Astronomy, as thus understood, was not merely the queen of sciences, it was the mistress of the world: taught secretly in the temples, its adepts--at least, those who had passed through the regular curriculum of study which it required--became almost a distinct class in society. The occupation was a lucrative one, and its accomplished professors had numerous rivals whose educational antecedents were unknown, but who excited the envy of the experts in their trading upon the credulity of the people. These quacks went about the country drawing up horoscopes, and arranging schemes of birthday prognostications, of which the majority were without any authentic warranty. The law sometimes took note of the fact that they were competing with the official experts, and interfered with their business: but if they happened to be exiled from one city, they found some neighbouring one ready to receive them.

Chaldaea abounded with soothsayers and necromancers no less than with astrologers; she possessed no real school of medicine, such as we find in Egypt, in which were taught rational methods of diagnosing maladies and of curing them by the use of simples. The Chaldaeans were content to confide the care of their bodies to sorcerers and exorcists, who were experts in the art of casting out demons and spirits, whose presence in a living being brought about those disorders to which humanity is prone. The facial expression of the patient during the crisis, the words which escaped from him in delirium, were, for these clever individuals, so many signs revealing the nature and sometimes the name of the enemy to be combated--the Fever-god, the Plague-god, the Headache-god. Consultations and medical treatment were, therefore, religious offices, in which were involved purifications, offerings, and a whole ritual of mysterious words and gestures. The magician lighted a fire of herbs and sweet-smelling plants in front of his patient, and the clear flame arising from this put the spectres to flight and dispelled the malign influences, a prayer describing the enchantments and their effects being afterwards recited. “The baleful imprecation like a demon has fallen upon a man;--wail and pain have fallen upon him,--direful wail has fallen upon him,--the baleful imprecation, the spell, the pains in the head!--This man, the baleful imprecation slaughters him like a sheep,--for his god has quitted his body--his goddess has withdrawn herself in displeasure from him,--a wail of pain has spread itself as a garment upon him and has overtaken him!” The harm done by the magician, though terrible, could be repaired by the gods, and Merodach was moved to compassion betimes. Merodach cast his eyes on the patient, Merodach entered into the house of his father Ea, saying: “My father, the baleful curse has fallen like a demon upon the man!” Twice he thus speaks, and then adds: “What this man ought to do, I know not; how shall he be healed?” Ea replies to his son Merodach: “My son, what is there that I could add to thy knowledge?--Merodach, what is there that I could add to thy knowledge?--That which I know, thou knowest it:--go then, my son, Merodach,--lead him to the house of purification of the god who prepares remedies,--and break the spell that is upon him, draw away the charm which is upon him,--the ill which afflicts his body,--which he suffers by reason of the curse of his father,--or the curse of his mother,--or the curse of his eldest brother,--or by the curse of a murderess who is unknown to the man.--The curse, may it be taken from him by the charm of Ea,--like a clove of garlic which is stripped skin by skin,--like a cluster of dates may it be cut off,--like a bunch of flowers may it be uprooted! The spell, may heaven avert it,--may the earth avert it!” The god himself deigned to point out the remedy: the sick man was to take a clove of garlic, some dates, and a stalk bearing flowers, and was to throw them into the fire, bit by bit, repeating appropriate prayers at each stage of the operation. “In like manner as this garlic is peeled and thrown into the fire,--and the burning flame consumes it,--as it will never be planted in the vegetable garden, it will never draw moisture from the pond or from the ditch,--its root will never again spread in the earth,--its stalk will not pierce the ground and behold the sun,--it will not serve as food for the gods or the king,--so may it remove the baleful curse, so may it loose the bond--of sickness, of sin, of shortcomings, of perversity, of crime!--The sickness which is in my body, in my flesh, in my muscles,--like this garlic may it be stripped off,--and may the burning flame consume it in this day;--may the spell of the sorcerer be cast out, that I may behold the light!” The ceremony could be prolonged at will: the sick person pulled to pieces the cluster of dates, the bunch of flowers, a fleece of wool, some goats’ hair, a skein of dyed thread, and a bean, which were all in turn consumed in the fire. At each stage of the operation he repeated the formula, introducing into it one or two expressions characterizing the nature of the particular offering; as, for instance, “the dates will no more hang from their stalks, the leaves of the branch will never again be united to the tree, the wool and the hair will never again lie on the back of the animal on which they grew, and will never be used for weaving garments.” The use of magical words was often accompanied by remedies, which were for the most part both grotesque and disgusting in their composition: they comprised bitter or stinking wood-shavings, raw meat, snake’s flesh, wine and oil, the whole reduced to a pulp, or made into a sort of pill and swallowed on the chance of its bringing relief. The Egyptian physicians employed similar compounds, to which they attributed wonderful effects, but they made use of them in exceptional circumstances only. The medical authorities in Chaldaea recommended them before all others, and their very strangeness reassured the patient as to their efficacy: they filled the possessing spirits with disgust, and became a means of relief owing to the invincible horror with which they inspired the persecuting demons. The Chaldaeans were not, however, ignorant of the natural virtues of herbs, and at times made use of them; but they were not held in very high esteem, and the physicians preferred the prescriptions which pandered to the popular craving for the supernatural. Amulets further confirmed the effect produced by the recipes, and prevented the enemy, once cast out, from re-entering the body; these amulets were made of knots of cord, pierced shells, bronze or terra-cotta statuettes, and plaques fastened to the arms or worn round the neck. On each of the latter kind were roughly drawn the most terrible images that they could conceive, a shortened incantation was scrawled on its surface, or it was covered with extraordinary characters, which when the spirits perceived they at once took flight, and the possessor of the talisman escaped the threatened illness.

However laughable, and at the same time deplorable, this hopeless medley of exact knowledge and gross superstition may appear to us at the present day, it was the means of bringing a prosperity to the cities of Chaldaea which no amount of actual science would ever have produced. The neighbouring barbaric peoples were imbued with the same ideas as the Chaldaens regarding the constitution of the world and the nature of the laws which governed it. They lived likewise in perpetual fear of those invisible beings whose changeable and arbitrary will actuated all visible phenomena; they attributed all the reverses and misfortunes which overtook them to the direct action of these malevolent beings; they believed firmly in the influence of stars on the course of events; they were constantly on the look out for prodigies, and were greatly alarmed by them, since they had no certain knowledge of the number and nature of their enemies, and the means they had invented for protecting themselves from them or of overcoming them too often proved inefficient. In the eyes of these barbarians, the Chaldeans seemed to be possessed of the very powers which they themselves lacked. The magicians of Chaldaea had forced the demons to obey them and to unmask themselves before them; they read with ease in the heavens the present and future of men and nations; they interpreted the will of the immortals in its smallest manifestations, and with them this faculty was not a limited and ephemeral power, quickly exhausted by use: the rites and formulas known to them enabled them to exercise it freely at all times, in all places, alike upon the most exalted of the gods and the most dreaded of mortals, without its ever becoming weakened.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The
original is in the British Museum.

A race so endowed with wisdom was, indeed, destined to triumph over its neighbours, and the latter would have no chance of resisting such a nation unless they borrowed from it its manners, customs, industry, writing, and all the arts and sciences which had brought about their superiority. Chaldaeann civilization spread into Elam and took possession of the inhabitants of the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then, since its course was impeded on the south by the sea, on the west by the desert, and on the east by the mountains, it turned in the direction of the great northern plains and proceeded up the two rivers, beside whose lower waters it had been cradled. It was at this very time that the Pharaohs of the XIIIth dynasty had just completed the conquest of Nubia. Greater Egypt, made what she was by the efforts of twenty generations, had become an African power. The sea formed her northern boundary, the desert and the mountains enclosed her on all sides, and the Nile appeared the only natural outlet into a new world: she followed it indefatigably from one cataract to another, colonizing as she passed all the lands fertilized by its waters. Every step which she made in this direction increased the distance between her capitals and the Mediterranean, and brought her armies further south. Asia would have practically ceased to exist, as far as Egypt was concerned, had not the repeated incursions of the Bedouin obliged her to make advances from time to time in that direction; still she crossed the frontier as seldom as possible, and recalled her troops as soon as they had reduced the marauders to order: Ethiopia alone attracted her, and it was there that she firmly established her empire. The two great civilized peoples of the ancient world, therefore, had each their field of action clearly marked out, and neither of them had ever ventured into that of the other. There had been no lack of intercourse between them, and the encounter of their armies, if it ever really had taken place, had been accidental, had merely produced passing results, and up till then had terminated without bringing to either side a decisive advantage.