Book Description

Of the importance of the Amherst Collection of tablets, beginning, as they do, almost at the earliest period to which we can go back at the present moment, and extending down to the centuries immediately preceding the Christian Era, there is no need to speak. Roughly, the extent of time which they cover may be set down as rather more than four millenniums, and from its great length is bound to offer a series of most important epochs in the history of those branches of the Hamitic and the Semitic races which used the cuneiform characters for their records. Those who have made it their specialty know it as a study full of romance in its history, from the first guesses to get at the readings of the characters to the noteworthy find of Hittite remains at Boghaz Keui; and full of surprises in the discoveries which its present advanced state enables the student to appreciate so fully. A few remarks upon the position of the different sections of the Amherst Collection in the historical scheme will, therefore, be welcomed by the reader who approaches documents of this class for the first time, as well as by others who are already acquainted with it.At what date the civilization of Babylonia had its beginnings is unknown. king of our records, judging from the forms of the characters in the' sequence of their development, was En-sag-kus-ana, "lord of Kengi"--that is, Sumer or southern Babylonia. From the style of his inscriptions, his date is regarded as having been before 4500 B.C., but until we get more precise indications, this estimate of his period must be regarded as more or less tentative. On the limit of 4500 B.C. comes Uru-ka-gina or Uru-enima-gina of Lagas, inscriptions of whose time are given on pp. 1-14, unless the first, which has no king's name, belongs to the reign of Lugal-and, who was probably his immediate predecessor. As will be seen from an examination of the copies on pp. 3-5, 10, II, and 14, and the reproduction on pl. 1. of the first tablet translated, the lines of which the characters were formed had already become wedges in consequence of their being impressed by the corner of a. square or triangular stick instead of being drawn thereon with a point, showing that we must still go back a considerable period to reach the date of their early hieroglyphic forms. Whether we shall ever get authentic details of the first beginnings of Sumero-Babylonian writing is doubtful, but it is not at all improbable that certain exceedingly archaic tablets found at Susa, in Elam, and inscribed with unusual wedge-written characters, may point out the way.1 As will be seen from several tablets published in this volume, there was constant intercourse between Babylonia and Susa, which seems to have been the early capital of Elam, in the middle of the third millennium before Christ, and also, probably, earlier still. Another important Elamite city, which must have been a formidable rival to Susa, was Ansan1(also written Assan, and, later, Anzan), the capital of the fatherland of Cyrus the Great.