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A Manual of the Ancient History of the East, Volume 1 - Francois Lenormant - E-Book

A Manual of the Ancient History of the East, Volume 1 E-Book

François Lenormant

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Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
Sprache: Englisch

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Recent antiquarian research, in the hands of a greatly expanded scholarship, has completely revolutionized ancient Oriental history. The last 150 years have been prolific of discoveries going to enlarge our knowledge of the pre-Hellenic world. First came the original memoirs of the discoverers and decipherers; then great works combining their fruits into connected history and rehandling the old narratives in their light; and now we are having all that condensed and separated from critical apparatus and presented in forms for popular reading and instruction. Among works of the latter class this of Lenormant is positively one of the best we have yet seen. Its clear and brief narrative contains the latest results of the most advanced Orientalists, in their respective fields, and the whole is woven together by a scholar whose own life has been devoted successfully to the same round of subjects. This is volume one out of two covering the histories of the Israelites, Egyptians, Assyrians and Babylonians.

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Leseprobe

A Manual of the Ancient History of the East

Volume 1: History of the Israelites, Egyptians, Assyrians and Babylonians

FRANCOIS LENORMANT

A Manual of the Ancient History of the East Volume 1, F. Lenormant

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783988680938

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

PREFACE.

THE one great fact of the last fifty years in the scientific world has certainly been the revival of historical studies, and especially that conquest which has been achieved of the ancient past of the East by modern criticism, which has been able to throw light into the darkest recesses of annals long buried in obscurity.

But a short half century ago, little was known of the ancient world beyond the Greeks and Romans. Accustomed to look on these two great nations as the representatives of ancient civilisation, it was easy to ignore all that had taken place beyond the regions of Greece and Italy. It was almost agreed that one entered the domain of positive history, only in setting foot on the soil of Europe. It was known, however, that in this immense tract of country, lying between the Nile and the Indus, there had once been great centres of civilisation-monarchies embracing vast territories and innumerable tribes; capitals more extensive than our modern western capitals; palaces as sumptuous as those of our own kings, on which, as some vague traditions said, their proud builders had inscribed the pompous history of their deeds. It was also known that these ancient nations of Asia had left behind them mighty traces of their passage o'er the earth. Heaps of ruins in the desert, and on the riverbanks, temples, pyramids, monuments of every kind, covered with inscriptions in strange and unknown characters, and the tales of travellers in these countries-all bore witness to a really great development of social culture. But this greatness was to be found only in ruins, in fragmentary stories of Grecian historians, and in some passages in the Bible. And as everything belonging to the primitive eastern world assumes colossal proportions, it was but natural to infer that fiction occupied a large place in Biblical story, and in the pages of Herodotus. To-day everything is quite changed. In all its branches the science of antiquities has soared to a height previously unknown, and its discoveries have changed the page of history. From the great works of the learned men of the Renaissance, the civilisation of Greece and Rome was supposed to be known to its very base; and yet on that very civilisation Archaeology has been found to throw an unexpected light. The study and correct understanding of the ornamented remains, the history of art, dates, so to speak, but from yesterday. Winckelman closes the eighteenth, and Visconti inaugurates the present, century. The innumerable painted vases, and monuments of every description which have been and still are furnished by the burial places of Etruria, of Greece, of Cyrene, and of the Crimea, constitute an immense field of research unknown fifty years ago, and which has prodigiously extended the horizon of science.

But these advances in the domain of the classical world are nothing when compared with the new worlds suddenly revealed to our eyes; with Egypt, opened up to us first by the French, and which has supplied remains to fill the museums of Europe, and initiate us into the minutest details of the oldest civilisation of the world; with Assyria, whose monuments, discovered also by a Frenchman, have been disinterred from the grave where they have lain for more than 2,000 years, and open to our view an art and culture of which but the faintest indication is to be found in historical literature.

Nor is this all. Phoenician art, intermediate between that of Egypt and Assyria, has been revealed to us, and invaluable treasures have been recovered from the catacombs. Aramæan Syria has given us its ancient inscriptions and memorials. Bold explorers, too, have made us acquainted with the traces of all the various nations so closely packed in the narrow territory of Asia Minor. Cyprus with its strange writing and the sculptures of its temples; Lycia with its peculiar language, its inscriptions, coins, sepulchral grottoes; Phrygia with its great rock, sculptured bas-reliefs, and the tombs of the kings of the family of Midas; Arabia contributes to science ancient monuments of times anterior to Islamism, texts engraven by pilgrims on the rocks of Sinai, and the numerous inscriptions which abound in Yemen. Nor let Persia be forgotten with the remains of its kings, Achæmenian and Sassanian. Nor India, where our knowledge has been entirely renewed by the study of the Vedas. But it is not only the length of the course that has been increased, the progress of science has been so great that its domain is now also widely extended. Everywhere, by new routes, enterprising and successful pioneers have pushed their researches, and thrown light into the darkest recesses. Europe in our age takes definite possession of the world. What is true of the events of the day, is also true in the region of learning; science regains possession of the ancient world, and of ages long forgotten.

This resuscitation of the earliest epochs of civilisation commenced with Egypt. The hand of Champollion has torn down the veil which concealed mysterious Egypt from our eyes, and has added lustre to the name of France by the greatest discovery of our age. Thanks to him, we have at last the key to the enigma of the Hieroglyphs. And henceforth we may tread boldly on solid and well-known ground, where those who preceded us wandered among swamps and pitfalls. Champollion's discovery has been the starting point for those learned and ingenious researches to which we owe the restoration of Egyptian History. Through the whole extent of the Nile Valley the monuments have been examined, and in reply they have told us all the deeds of the kings who governed Egypt from the most ancient times.

Science has penetrated the dark catacombs where sleep the Pharaohs and has restored to us many dynasties whose only traces were to be found in some mutilated remains of the old historian Manetho. At the commencement of the present century, we knew little beyond the names of a few sovereigns, whose reigns were far apart and connected with but a small number of events, distorted by the statements of credulous Greek travellers, or magnified by national vanity. We now know nearly the whole series of monarchs who reigned over Egypt during more than 4,000 years. The art of the Pharaohs has been appreciated in all its diverse forms, architecture, sculpture, painting; and the law which governed the inspiration of Egyptian genius has been discovered. Their religion, under its double character, sacerdotal and popular, has been studied, and it has been proved that under the strange and confused symbolism which ordained the worship of animals, was hidden a profound theology, which in its conceptions embraced the entire universe, and was based on the grand idea of the unity of God, the vague and faint echo of a primitive revelation. We can also form an estimate of the state of science in this famous nation. The most important fragments of its literature have been translated into modern languages, and in style closely resemble the Bible. In a word, Egypt has completely resumed its place in positive history, and we can now relate its annals on the authority of original and contemporary documents exactly as we relate the history of any modern nation.

The resurrection of Assyria has been, if possible, yet more extraordinary. Nineveh and Babylon have not, like Thebes, left gigantic ruins above the surface of the ground. Shapeless masses of rubbish, now crumbled into mounds, are all that remain for travellers to see. One might then readily have believed that the last vestiges of the great Mesopotamian civilisation had forever perished, when the spades of Mr. Botta's excavators, and subsequently those of Mr. Layard and Mr. Loftus, opened to the light those majestic sculptures which we admire at the Louvre and the British Museum; guarantees of discoveries still more brilliant and extensive, when explorations can be pushed on into all parts of Assyria and Chaldæa. So now those pious kings, who led entire nations into captivity, live again, as it were, before our very eyes, on the bas-reliefs of their palaces. These are the figures which seem so terrible in the burning words of the Hebrew seers. We have found again the gates where, to quote the prophet's expression, people passed like the waters of the river. These are the beautifully wrought idols which corrupted the people of Israel and caused them so soon to forget Jehovah. There, reproduced in a thousand different phases, is the daily life of the Assyrians; their religious ceremonies, domestic habits; their splendid furniture, and rich vases. There are their battles, the beleaguered cities, the war machines that shook the ramparts.

Innumerable inscriptions cover the walls of the Assyrian edifices that have been laid bare by excavations. They are written in those strange cuneiform characters so complicated as to seem likely to baffle the sagacity of interpreters. But there is no philological mystery that can defy the methods of modern science. The sacred writing of Nineveh and Babylon has been, like that of Egypt, compelled to give up its secrets. The learned labours of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr. Hincks, and, above all, of M. Oppert, have given us the key to the graphic system in use on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris. We read now –– following an established principle—the annals of the kings of Assyria and Babylon, engraved on alabaster or impressed on clay, for the instruction of posterity. We read the accounts they themselves have given of their wars, their conquests, their cruelties. We there decipher the official Assyrian version of events of which the Bible, in the Books of Kings, gives us the Jewish version; and the comparison of the two, places in the clearest light the incomparable veracity of the Sacred Volume.

These discoveries in Assyrian antiquity have thrown invaluable and most unexpected light on the origin and progress of civilisation. It was impossible that such brilliant culture should remain imprisoned in the narrow limits of Assyria. And so we find, in fact, that the influence of Assyrian art and civilisation followed everywhere the conquering Ninevite arms. To the east and north she made her influence felt in Media and Persia, where, combining with the subtle and delicate genius of the Persians under the Achæmenians, she gave birth to the marvellous creations of Persepolis. The origin of Grecian art, vainly sought in Egypt, is found at Nineveh. Assyrian influence penetrated into Syria, Asia Minor and the Islands of the Mediterranean; through the Greek cities of the coast it found its way into the heart of the Hellenic tribes. The early Greek sculptors thus received the inspirations and precepts of sculptors of the Assyrian school, who approached them step by step, and selected Asiatic works for their models. From Asia Minor this influence passed with the Lydian colonists into Italy, where it formed the base of the development of the Etruscan civilisation, while this, in its turn, furnished to that of Rome the elements of its primitive grandeur. Thus are explained the monuments, the luxury, and the riches of the cities of Etruria, which for so long a time excited the fierce desires of the rude sons of Romulus. Thus the history of the oldest empires in the world, of those birth-places of civilisation, is rendered henceforward accessible to Europe, under conditions now admitted to be the only guarantees for real historical study—that is, with the assistance and guidance of original documents.

We can now appreciate at their true value the ideas –– crude and confused in even the best of them—which the writers of classical antiquity have left us of nations whose languages they did not know, and of an historical tradition probably already falsified when they gathered the few fragments which they have preserved. Nevertheless, we both may and ought still to speak with respect of the accuracy with which Herodotus has related what was told him by the Egyptians and Persians, and with sympathy for the zeal which Diodorus Siculus has shown for learned researches. We are also bound to accept those traces of manners and customs which they have collected. But to reproduce as a whole the facts which they relate, and to give them as an account of the chain of principal events in Egyptian or in Assyrian History, is not to give a summary of that history suitable for young people, for it would convey an absolutely untrue idea.

The stories of Herodotus and Diodorus about Egypt and Assyria are no more a real history than one of our own country would be which suppressed the invasion of the barbarians, the feudal period, the renaissance which made Philip Augustus the predecessor of Charlemagne, and Napoleon, the son of Louis XIV., and which explained the financial difficulties of Philippe le Bel by the disaster of the battle of Pavia. Nevertheless, such, with some corrections borrowed from Josephus, is the character of the majority of the standard works. Doubtless there are some who, to a certain extent, have advanced with the progress of science, and have eliminated gross errors. But at the point to which knowledge has advanced –– when the history of Oriental nations can be related in a connected and precise manner, and furnishes lights which can be no longer passed by, on the origin of our arts and civilisation, it is not sufficient to suppress a few incongruities. There is no longer any reason to leave great gaps, to ignore facts of the highest interest, and to preserve, by the side of important rectifications, errors which falsify the general result. It is therefore indispensable to introduce amongst us, and into standard works, a complete reform in all that relates to the first period of ancient history, to the annals of the ancient empires of the East, to the first dawn of civilisation.

The immense conquests of science must be made common property, their principal results must be made part of that sum of knowledge which no one can be permitted to ignore, and which is the foundation of all real education. At the present day, one cannot, without unpardonable ignorance, adhere to such a history as has been written by good old Rollin, and all the tribe of his followers. What would be said of any professor, or man of the world, who would now speak of four elements, or of the three quarters of the habitable globe –– who would with Ptolemy, make the sun move round the world? And yet it is much in this style that the great majority of our historical works speak even now on the subject of Egypt and Assyria. The absolute necessity of the reform of which we speak must, therefore, be obvious to everyone. There is no one master of science but has loudly proclaimed it, and the opinion is becoming general. But the historical archæological sciences now require popular works, manuals such as have been produced in great quantities for the physical sciences and have carried ideas into every grade of society.

The results of the wonderful progress in antiquities and Oriental philology during the last fifty years have not been sufficiently communicated to the general public. They have to be sought out in special, voluminous, and costly works, written in a style so learned as to make them available for only a small number. How often have we not heard in the world, and from the cleverest men of education, "Yes, we know that primitive Oriental History, that history which is the starting-point for every other, has been completely reconstructed, has assumed an entirely new aspect in the last half-century; but where shall we find, brought together and clearly expressed, all the facts which science is now able to establish?" This is the gap we have attempted to fill in the Manual now put forth. Doubtless, we are not the first to make the attempt; besides M. Henry de Riancy, who, in his “Histoire du Monde," has embodied some of the results of modern researches, two distinguished members of the University, M. Guillemin, rector of the Academy of Nancy, and M. Robiou, professor of history, have attempted to introduce into public instruction the true history of the ancient empires of the East.

These books have paved the way for us, and on more than one point we have followed their lead. But in spite of all their merit, they do not seem to us to fulfil all requirements. They still present serious deficiencies, and useful and ample as they are for students of public schools, they are not so for men of the world and professors, to whom they do not supply sufficient means for rectifying previous impressions. It is but too easily perceived that the authors have but partly studied the sciences, –– the results of which they profess to give-that their knowledge on some points is second-hand, and not always from the best sources. Moreover, these books have been published several years; science has advanced in the meanwhile, and they are now out of date.

We hope we may state confidently that the reader will find in the present Manual a complete résumé of the state of knowledge at the present time –– saving only those imperfections which no man—and ourselves less than any other, can hope to avoid. The science whose results I have set forth is one in which an illustrious father, whose labours I attempt to continue, has educated me, and which forms the aim and occupation of my life. There is no one branch comprised in the present publication to which I have not devoted direct and profound study.

In the history of every nation, we have taken as guides those authorities who command the greatest respect, those whose opinions give law to the learned world. For that of the Israelites during the periods of the Judges and of the Kings, in all cases where the interpretation of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions has not given new and unexpected light, our guides have been M. Munk, removed far too early from those Biblical studies in which he was an acknowledged master in our country, and M. Ewald, in whose writings so many brilliant flashes of genius and profound poetic sentiment shine out among ideas often rash and capricious. For Egypt, we have followed the traces of the disciples of Champollion, of De Rongé and Mariette, in France; Lepsius and Brugsch, in Germany; and Birch, in England. But chiefly we have used the great Histoire d'Egypt of M. Brugsch, and still more the excellent abridgment composed by M. Mariette, for the schools of Egypt, a real masterpiece of historic sense, clear explanation, prudent method, and substantial conciseness. We have borrowed entire pages from this last book, particularly in relation to the dynasties of the ancient and middle empires, for we have nothing to add to what the learned director of excavations to the Egyptian government has said, and we could not possibly say it better. The writings of Sir H. Rawlinson, Dr. Hincks, and, above all, of M. Oppert, have furnished us with the elements necessary for the re-construction of the annals of Assyria and Babylonia, of which M. Oppert has commenced a comparative statement, unfortunately still incomplete. The translations of the historical inscriptions of the kings of Nineveh, which we have inserted in the text, are borrowed from the works of that eminent Orientalist whom France has brought from Germany, to make him our fellow countryman; but we have ourselves compared the whole with the original monuments, and in offering them to our readers, we do not hesitate "jurare in verba magistri."

Our own immortal Eugene Burnouf, M. Spiegel, the German commentator of the Zend Avesta, Westergaard, and, finally, M. Oppert, are the authorities to whom we have had recourse on the subject of the antiquities, doctrines, and institutions of Persia. Lastly, as to Phœnicia, the admirable studies of Morris have been, naturally, our starting point; but we have amplified or modified his results with the assistance of the writings of the Duke de Luynes, M. Munk, M. de Saulcy, Dr. A. Levy of Breslau, and the Count de Vogué. The summary, then, of the works of the masters of science, of the conquests of European learning during the last fifty years in the field of Oriental literature, forms the foundation of our book, and constitutes its chief value; but, in these studies, which are peculiarly our own, it has been impossible to confine ourselves to the mere part of a copyist. In this Manual will be found a large mass of personal researches and also some assertions for which we must be held personally responsible. But we have at least always taken care to indicate our own hypotheses and individual opinions. One last word on the principles and ideas which are reflected on every page of this book.

I am a Christian, and proclaim it loudly; but my faith fears none of the discoveries of criticism when they are true. A son of the Church, submissive in all things necessary, I for that very reason claim from her with even greater ardour the rights of scientific liberty. And it is just because I am a Christian that I regard myself as being more in accord with the true meaning and spirit of science than are those who have the misfortune to be without faith. In history, I am of the school of Bossuet. I see in the annals of humanity the development of a providential plan running through all ages and all vicissitudes of society. In it I recognise the designs of God, permitting the liberty of man, and infallibly doing His work by their free hands, almost always without their knowledge, very often against their will. For me, as for every Christian, all ancient history is the preparation for, –– modern history the consequence of, –– the Divine sacrifice of Calvary.

Thus it is that, faithful to the traditions of my father, I have a passion for liberty and for the dignity of man. Thus it is that I have a horror of despotism and oppression, that I have no admiration for those great scourges of humanity, called conquerors—those men whom the materialist historian elevates to the honours of an apotheosis –– be they called Sesostris, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Cæsar, Louis XIV., or Napoleon. Thus, above all, it is that I am almost invincibly attached to the doctrine of the constant and unlimited progress of humanity—a doctrine unknown to paganism, a doctrine born of Christianity, and whose whole law is found in the words of the evangelist, "BE YE PERFECT."

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.

THIS Manual, as originally published last year in Paris, found greater favour with the public than I had ventured to anticipate. Two editions sold in a few months; and a version, published in Germany, proved to me that the Work supplied what had been long and generally required. I am also especially proud and thankful to acknowledge the kind reception the Manual met with from men of the highest authority on the subject of historical study –– the encouragement which such men as Guizot, Mignet, Vitet, and Guigniaut have given to my attempt to introduce to the general public, and for educational purposes, the results of those discoveries in Oriental Archæology which have in the last fifty years entirely remodelled Ancient History.

The Work, too, has been honoured by the award of the prize of the Academie Française, and is thus stamped with the approval of the highest possible authority.

In England the Work was most favourably received, and in some reviews the publication of an English translation was recommended.

Such encouragement imposed on me the duty of leaving nothing undone that may render my Book as deserving as possible of the approval it had met with; to revise it carefully, and to correct and complete it as far as possible.

This I have endeavoured to do in the present Edition, which has been entirely revised, in many parts re-written, and so extended as to be much larger than the original work, from which it differs considerably in some respects, to which it is desirable I should refer.

In the first place, I have deferred to the opinion expressed by many persons, that the absence of references to authorities was a serious defect; as the reader was unable to refer to original works, and to verify the statements made in the Book. It was, however, found impossible in every case to refer to authorities in notes, as the size of the book would have been enormously increased; I have therefore confined myself, except for very important facts, to prefixing to each chapter a list of every book from which information has been drawn.

The chief fault, however, found with the "Manuel d'Histoire Ancienne de l'Orient" in its original form was, that it had no distinctly defined character; that it was neither a book entirely suited to pupils, nor perfectly fitted for teachers. Some parts, the first chapter for instance, were too elementary, and others too much in detail and too scientific, to be comprehended by children. This fault I have endeavoured to repair. As now published, the Manual is intended for teachers, for senior pupils, and for men of education who desire to keep pace with the advance of Oriental historical studies.

The First Book is entirely new; in this, as a preface to the others, I have endeavoured to collect the small number of facts at present ascertained as to the condition of the primitive races of men. As required both by the principles of sound criticism, and by my own conviction, I have given the first place to the Biblical narration and have appended to this the parallel traditions preserved among other ancient nations. I have next given a rapid sketch of the discoveries of prehistoric archæology, bearing on facts totally apart from those contained in the Bible, and giving us an insight into the daily conditions of the life of the first men. And this book closes with an enumeration of the facts relating generally to the races of mankind, and to the principal families of languages –– a necessary introduction to the historical narrative.

In the Second Book, on the history of the Israelites, little change has been made; it has been slightly expanded, and advantage has been taken of the admirable work in which M. Oppert has definitely fixed the chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah, by means of solar and lunar eclipses, mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions.

In the history of the Israelites two things run side by side: one, the constant, direct, and supernatural interference of the Almighty with the destiny of that nation to whom He had entrusted the sublime mission of preserving religious truth, and from which the Redeemer was to come; the other, events arising from ordinary and natural causes apart from this supernatural interference. In writing Sacred History, it would be natural to give prominence to this Divine government of Israel; but in introducing the Israelites into a picture of the whole civilisation of Ancient Asia, it was necessary to look more at the merely human aspect of their history, without, however, for a moment losing sight of the entirely exceptional character of that history.

The Third Book, on Egypt, has been only slightly modified. Some few additions have been made, amongst others, a short analysis of the Funereal Ritual, or Book of the Dead; and a few errors have been corrected.

The Fourth Book, however, on the History of the Assyrians and Babylonians, has been doubled in size, and has been entirely re-written. In the past year science has continued to advance, and I have been compelled to keep pace with its progress. I have, moreover, especially devoted myself to the study of Assyrian texts, and have therefore been able to bring a larger amount of knowledge to bear on Assyrian history, and to add translations of some hitherto unpublished documents. As the greater part of these translations are from tablets in the British Museum, I have been careful to insert their distinctive marks, in order that Assyriologists may compare my versions with the originals.

The two following Books treat, the one of the Annals of the Medes and Persians to the time of the first disagreement between the Greeks and Darius, son of Hystaspes; the other, of the History of the Phoenicians to the period of the first rise of the Carthaginian power. No essential change has been made in this portion of the work, but it has been carefully revised, and has received numerous additions and corrections.

The Seventh and Eighth Books are entirely new, the nations of whom they treat were not mentioned in the original editions. The Seventh Book contains the History of Ancient Arabia, considered chiefly with reference to its intermediate position between the civilisations of India and of Western Asia; it is founded on the admirable work of M. Caussin de Percival, on the History of the Arabs previous to the rise of Islamism, and on the newly ascertained facts from the monumental texts of Egypt and Assyria, as well as from the ancient inscriptions of Yemen.

The absence of any history of India in my original work was universally regarded as an omission, as leaving a vacant space requiring to be filled. India no doubt had no political relations with Western Asia, but was, nevertheless, not entirely isolated from the nations bordering on the Mediterranean. From the time of Darius that country was brought into relations with Persia, and from the time of Alexander with Greece; moreover, Arian India exercised too great an influence on the progress of the human mind in periods of remote antiquity to permit us to omit her entirely in a general view of the great ancient civilisations of Asia.

I could not but acknowledge the justice of this criticism; and the History of India forms the Eighth Book of this Manual-a book a little longer than the others on account of the importance of the subject, and founded on the successive labours of Sir W. Jones, Colebrooke, Schlegel, Eugene Burnouf, Lassen, Max Müller, and Weber.

With India I have ended. I was urged to add a chapter on the early Annals of China; but in the first place I have not considered myself competent to deal with the subject; and in the second, it appeared to me that China has always been so completely isolated from the rest of the world that it could claim no place in a book on the subject of civilisations that have influenced, even indirectly, our own.

This English edition has had the advantage of my latest revisions, and in one or two instances includes discoveries made too late for insertion in the French work.

BOOK I. PRIMITIVE TIMES

CHAPTER I. THE BIBLE NARRATIVE

SECTION I.-THE HUMAN RACE BEFORE THE DELUGE.

I. WE have no precise and consecutive history of the first men, or of the origin of our species, but that of Holy Scripture. This sacred story, even without the assured and solemn authority which it derives from the inspired character of the book in which it is found, would always form in sound criticism the base of all history; for, merely considered from a human point of view, it contains the most ancient tradition as to the first days of the human race, the only one which has not been disfigured by the introduction of fantastic myths of disordered imagination run wild. The chief features of that tradition, which was originally common to all mankind, and which the special care of Providence has preserved in greater purity among the chosen people than among other races, are preserved, though changed, in countries far distant from each other, and whose inhabitants have had no communication for thousands of years. And the only clue which can guide us through the labyrinth of these scattered fragments of tradition, is the Bible Story. This it is to which the historian must first turn, recognising its distinctive character; whilst for the Christian it has a dogmatic value, permitting him, indeed, to interpret it in conformity with the light furnished by the progress of science, but at the same time giving him a fixed point round which to group the results of human investigation.

The historical interpretation of this narrative presents, however, serious difficulties. The most able and orthodox theologians have repeatedly discussed the degree of latitude which may be allowed for exegesis. In very many places it is impossible to know absolutely how far that allegorical style of language, which is so largely employed in the Bible, has been used in these passages. We may remark also, that gaps which appear in the Bible story, leave open a very large field for scientific speculation. Our high respect for the authority of the sacred books must prevent us from seeking in them what they were not intended to contain, what never entered the minds of those who wrote under the divine inspiration. Moses has never pretended to write a complete history of primitive man, and certainly not of the origin and progress of material civilisation. He has confined himself to recording a few of the essential and principal features of that history, in a form suitable to the people whom he addressed. His object has been to elucidate the descent of the Patriarchs who were chosen by God to preserve, from age to age, the primitive revelations, and above all, to show, in opposition to the monstrous cosmogonies of the nations who surrounded the Hebrews, those great truths which idolatry had obscured, the creation of the world from nothing by the mere will of an Almighty being, the unity of the human race sprung from one couple, the fall of that race, the origin of evil in the world, the promise of a Redeemer, and, finally, the constant interference of Providence in the affairs of the world.

2. The story of creation itself, and its agreement with the discoveries of the natural sciences, are things beyond the scope of our work. It is only from the moment when God, having created the world and all the beings which inhabit it, put the seal to his work by creating man, that we shall take up the story of the first book of the Bible, "Genesis," so called in Europe, from a Greek word, which signifies "beginning,' because this book commences with the history of the creation of the Universe. "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."

The story of the fall of the first human pair immediately succeeds that of their creation. The father of all mankind, Adam (whose name in the Semitic languages means "Man" par excellence), created by God in a state of absolute innocence and happiness, disobeyed the Lord by his presumption in the delicious gardens of Eden where he had at first been placed, and this disobedience condemned him and his race to pain, grief, and death. God had created him for work, as the inspired book expressly says, but it was in expiation of his fall that his work became painful and difficult. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," said the Lord to him, and this condemnation still rests upon all men.

This is how the book of Genesis recounts the temptation and fall, the consequences of which have fallen on all the descendants of our first parents: "Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons."

"Prodigious, overwhelming truth," says Chateaubriand, "man dying, poisoned with the fruit of the tree of life. Man lost, for having tasted of the tree of knowledge; for having dared too well to know both good and evil. Should we suppose a prohibition from God, relative to any other desire of the soul, how could the wisdom, the depth of the providence of the Most High be vindicated. It would then be only a caprice unworthy of the Deity, and no moral lesson would result from Adam's disobedience. As it is, all the history of the world is the consequence of the law imposed on our first parents. The secret of the moral and political existence of nations, the profoundest mysteries of the human heart, are contained in the tradition of that wonderful, that fatal tree."

3. The Bible assigns no precise date to the origin of the human species, it gives no positive time for that event. It has in reality no chronology for the early epochs of man's existence, neither for that which extends from the creation to the deluge, nor for that which reaches from the deluge to the call of Abraham. The dates which commentators have attempted to fix are purely arbitrary, and have no dogmatic authority. They belong to the domain of historical hypothesis, and one might mention a hundred attempts to make the calculation, each with a different result. What alone the sacred books state, in which science is in complete agreement with them, is that the appearance of man on the earth (however remote the date may be) is recent, when contrasted with the immense duration of the geological periods of creation; and that the antiquity of many thousands of years, which some people, as for instance the Egyptians, Chaldæans, Indians and Chinese, have self-complacently claimed in their mythological traditions, is entirely fabulous.

Equally useless, equally devoid of solid foundation, as are these calculations regarding the date of man's creation, would be the attempt to determine from the Bible the exact place of the cradle of our species, or of the garden of Eden. The sacred story furnishes no precise indications on that point. The most learned and orthodox commentators of the holy books have left the question undecided. Everything bids us imitate their reserve and hold the common opinion which places in Asia the origin of the first human family, and the source of all civilisation.

4. Adam and Eve (Chavah) the first human couple who came from the hands of God, had two sons, Cain and Abel (Habel).

They led, the one an agricultural, the other a pastoral life, the origin of which modes of life the Bible thus places at the very first footstep of humanity. Cain killed his brother Abel, being jealous of the blessings with which the Lord had recompensed his piety, but became an exile in the despair of his remorse, and retired with his family to the east of Eden, where he built the first city, which after the name of his firstborn he called "Enoch." God had created man with gifts of mind and body fitted to enable him to accomplish the object of his existence, and consequently to form regular and civilised societies. The book of Genesis attributes to the family of Cain the first invention of the industrial arts. To Enoch, son of Cain, was born, it is said, in the fourth generation, Lamech, who in his turn had many sons. Jabal, "the father, of such as dwell in tents and of such as have cattle;" Jubal the inventor of music, Tubalcain the discoverer of the art of casting and working in metals, and lastly a daughter Naamah, inventor of that of spinning the wool of the flocks and weaving the thread into cloth. (This last tradition is not found in the Bible but is mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud as a very ancient Jewish legend.)

The Bible ascribes to Lamech the origin of those sanguinary customs of revenge which played so great a part in the life of ancient nations; "Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: I would slay a man in my wound, and a young man in my hurt : if Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.' "

5. Adam had a third son named Seth, and God afterwards gave him a great many more children. Seth lived 912 years and had a numerous family, who, whilst all other men gave themselves up to idolatry and vice of every kind, preserved faithfully, down to the time of the deluge, those religious traditions of the primitive revelation, which after that event passed into the race of Shem.

The descendants of Seth were Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, who walked with God 365 years, and ". was not, for God took him," Methuselah who of all men lived the longest life, 969 years, Lamech, and lastly Noah, who was the father of Shem, Ham and Japhet. Each of these three was the head of a numerous family.

SECTION II.-THE DELUGE.

1. In the meanwhile the corruption of mankind went on increasing and passed all bounds. Their iniquities were such that the Lord was angered and determined to exterminate their race. The just Noah, descendant of Seth, alone "found grace in the eyes of the Lord " (Gen. vi. 8). God caused him to build an ark into which He shut him, and his family and seven couples of every kind of animal clean and unclean, and then the deluge commenced. "The fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven opened, and rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. . . And the waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth; . . and the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered; fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land died . . . Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days" (Gen. vii. 11, 12, 17, 19—24).

There are some observations which it is in the highest degree important to make on this narrative. The distinction between clean and unclean animals proves that the species taken into the ark were only those useful to man, and capable of domestication, for to these only, does the division into two such classes, apply among the Hebrews. The manner in which the deluge was brought about, an idea quite distinct from the fact itself, is related in accordance with the crude notions on physical science which were current with the contemporaries of Moses; and here the wise words of one of the most eminent catholic theologians of Germany, Dr. Reusch, are particularly applicable, "God gave to the writers of the Bible a supernatural inspiration, but the object for which this supernatural inspiration was given was, as in all revelation, the teaching of religious truth, not of secular science; and we may, without trenching on the respect due to these sacred writers, without weakening the truth of divine inspiration, freely admit that in secular, and consequently in physical science, these writers were not above the level of their contemporaries; that they were liable to the errors of their time and of their nation Moses was not raised by revelation above the intellectual level of his time; and further, nothing proves to us that it was possible for him to raise himself above that level by study or thought."

Finally, the expressions used by the author of the book of Genesis, if interpreted by comparison with other similar expressions, will not necessarily lead us to suppose that he intended to mean that the deluge was really, and in the literal sense of the word, universal. The words, "all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered," and "all flesh died that moved upon the earth," are not stronger than the words of the same author, "And the famine was over all the face of the earth;" "and all countries came to Egypt for to buy corn" (Gen. xli. 56, 57). "This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven" (Deut. ii. 25).

It is quite clear that the expressions in these last three passages are not to be understood literally, that Moses did not intend to convey the idea that Joseph's famine extended to China, or that the red men of America were to be in fear of the Jews. And we may without violence to the sacred text extend the same limited interpretation to the account of the deluge. We shall see as we proceed whether the limitation should be carried even farther.

2. "And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark, and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; and the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested. . . upon the mountains of Ararat . . . And it came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; and the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off. So, Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth" (Gen. viii. 1—4, 10).

On quitting the ark with his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet, and their wives, Noah sacrificed to the Lord, who made a covenant with him and his race, and commenced to cultivate the earth. His posterity was very numerous, for he lived three hundred and fifty years after the deluge, and died at the age of nine hundred and fifty years.

SECTION III. THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES.

I. THE family of Noah multiplied rapidly; but from this time the life of man was much shortened, and as a rule did not exceed our present average. Shem, nevertheless, (and probably also his brothers) lived on during many centuries; and according to the testimony of Holy Scripture, the family whence Abraham sprung (thanks no doubt to the temperate habits of patriarchal life) enjoyed up to his time far more than the ordinary length of human life.

2. All men being of one family still used the same language. Some generations after the deluge the mass of the descendants of Noah, who had become very numerous, had fixed their dwellings on the immense plains watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, in the country originally called Shinar, that is in the Semitic idiom, "the land of the two rivers." Proud of their numbers and strength, they believed themselves all powerful, and their insolent audacity led them to defy God himself. "They said one to another, 'Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven,'" (Gen. xi. 4). But God punished their pride by confusing their language. No longer able to understand one another, they were compelled to disperse, each family or group of families, carrying with it the new language, from that time to become its own, and whence the idioms, science now attempts to classify according to their analogies, are descended. Thus were formed the three great races who have peopled the world—the children of Ham in parts of Asia and in Africa, of Shem in Asia, and of Japhet in Europe. The Tower remained unfinished, and was called Babel, that is, "confusion," on account of the confusion of languages which took place there.

3. The confusion of tongues and general dispersion of mankind are to be placed, according to the natural sense of a passage in Scripture which has afforded much exercise to the sagacity of commentators, in the time of Peleg the fifth from Shem, and about the time of his birth, because that name, which means division, was given him in commemoration of that event. Nothing, however, in the Bible forbids us to suppose that some families had already separated themselves from the mass of the descendants of Noah, and had gone to a distance and formed colonies apart from the common centre, while the greater number of the families destined to repeople the earth still remained united.

CHAPTER II. TRADITIONS PARALLEL TO THE BIBLE STORY.

SECTION I.-THE CREATION-THE FALL-AND THE ANTEDILUVIAN PATRIARCHS.

1. THE Bible narrative, which we now resume, is not one isolated tale unconnected with the traditions of other nations and proceeding only from the pen of Moses. It is on the contrary, as we have already said, the most complete and authentic form of a grand primitive tradition, which can be traced back to the earliest ages of humanity, and has originally been common to all races and all people, and been carried all over the world, by the dispersion of these races on the surface of the earth. In his narrative of this history the Hebrew legislator has faithfully reproduced the ancient memories preserved from age to age among the Patriarchs, and, by a special dispensation of Providence, favoured by the isolated and nomadic life led by the family of Abraham, less corrupted among them than among the surrounding nations. He has, assisted by the light of inspiration, restored their true character to facts elsewhere frequently obscured by polytheism and idolatry; but, as St. Augustine has said, without attempting to make the Hebrews a nation of scholars, either in ancient history, or in physics and geology. Let us now seek in various parts of the world, among people spread over the most distant latitudes, the scattered fragments of this primitive tradition, which the Mosaic narrative has taught us how to piece together.

We shall find in one place or another all its essential features, even those parts of the tradition that are difficult to understand literally, and where we may be allowed to suppose allegorical and figurative expressions. But the search presents difficulties and must necessarily be restricted by the severest rules of criticism. Otherwise, we may be in danger of receiving, like some indiscreetly zealous defenders of Holy Scripture, legends arising from more or less direct communication, from a sort of infiltration of the Mosaic narrative, in place of those ancient and genuine traditions which coincide in a most striking manner with the sacred story. It is necessary then before all, and for our greater security, to leave out everything that comes to us from nations on whose traditions, Jewish, Christian, or even Moslem writings, may be suspected of having exercised an influence. It is necessary to select traditions of proved antiquity founded on ancient written monuments; and when savage nations are in question, who have no books, to admit only such as have been collected by witnesses worthy of entire belief, and prior to the arrival of any missionary.

2. And first, among many people, we find the idea that man was formed of the dust of the earth. The Greeks in their legends represented Prometheus as playing the part of a demiurgus or secondary Creator, who moulded from clay the first individuals of our species and gave them life by means of the fire which he stole from heaven. In the cosmogony of Peru, the first man created by the Divine power was called Alpa Camasca "animated earth." Among the tribes of North America, the Mandans believed that the Great Spirit formed two figures of clay, which he dried and animated by the breath of his mouth, the one received the name of the "first man," the other that of 'companion." The great God of Otaheite "Toroa" made man of red earth; and the Dyacks of Borneo, stubbornly opposed to all Moslem influences, repeated from generation to generation, that man had been formed of earth.

The religion of Zoroaster is the only one among the elaborate religious systems of the ancient world which admits the creation of man by the exercise of the almighty power of a personal God, distinct from primordial matter. The fundamental ideas of the pantheistic and emanative theories which were the basis of all religion in Chaldæa and in Egypt, as well as in India, left everything uncertain as to the creation of mankind.

Men, as well as all other created beings, were supposed to have issued from the very substance of the Deity –– a substance hardly distinguished from the matter of the world –– and they came into being spontaneously, as successive emanations were developed, not by a free and predetermined action of creative will; and those who held this faith gave themselves little trouble to define, except under a symbolical and mythological form, the why and wherefore of the emanation.

3. Zoroastrian Mazdeism alone, among the nations of the ancient world, preserved the idea of the original sin and of the fall of the human race. The sacred book called Bundehesh contains a story of the temptation of the first human pair, almost exactly like that of the Bible, in which all the essential features are found, even to that of the tempter having assumed the form of a serpent; and nevertheless it is no more possible that the Bundehesh has borrowed from the Bible, than the Bible from Zoroastrian religion. We shall give this story further on in that chapter of our manual in which we explain the system of the religious legislator of the Persians.

We should seek in vain for the same belief among the Egyptian, Chaldæan, or Indian priests. Doubtless as Pascal has so eloquently said, "The problem of our existence is complicated in this dark abyss, and it is as impossible to imagine man without this mystery, as for man himself to understand it ;" but the doctrine of the fall and of original sin is one of those against which human pride has constantly revolted, and from which it has first tried to escape. And so, everywhere, the primitive tradition as to the first step of humanity has been the first to be obliterated. As soon as men have felt the sentiment of pride arise, which their progress in civilisation, their conquests in the material world, inspired, they cast off that tradition. All religious philosophy which has arisen beyond the limits of the revelation preserved among the chosen people, has rejected the doctrine of the fall. And, indeed, how was it possible for such a doctrine to agree with the dreams of pantheism and of emanation. And thus the tradition of the fall of our first parents has not been preserved beyond the Zoroastrians and the Mosaic narrative, except among some savage nations whose miserable condition had made them still feel all the consequences of the fall. Thus the inhabitants of the Caroline Islands, in the legends which the first European navigators collected from them, said, “In the beginning there was no death, but a certain Erigiregers, who was one of the evil spirits, one of the Elus Melabut, and who was aggrieved by the happiness of mankind, contrived to get for them a sort of death from which they should wake no more."

The Hottentots also said that "their first parents had committed so great a fault, and so grievously offended the supreme God, that he had cursed both them and their posterity."

3. But if the doctrine of original sin and of the fall is, of all the facts in the Mosaic narrative, the one least found among the traditions of other nations—if this is the point where the Christian should recognise most clearly the marks of divine inspiration as bearing most directly on the instruction which Holy Scripture is designed to give us, as to our origin, our destiny, and our duties –– the circumstances with which Moses relates the fault which brought about that fall, are nevertheless found divested indeed of all meaning, without moral signification, and intermixed with entirely material ideas, in the most ancient legends of many people. It is in fact impossible not to recognise a close connection in their origin, between the forms though not between the ideas, of the biblical tradition of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and a series of ancient myths common to all the branches of the Arian race, to which a learned German, Adalbert Kuhn, has devoted a book of the highest interest.

We speak of those containing the idea of the discovery of the use of fire, and of the water of life; they are found in their most ancient state in the Vedas; they have passed, more or less modified by the lapse of time, to the Greeks, Romans, Slavonians, Iranians, and Indians. The fundamental fact of these myths, which are complete only in their most ancient forms, represents the Universe as an immense tree, whose roots embrace the earth, and whose branches form the vault of heaven. The fruit of the tree is fire, indispensable to the life of man, and also the material symbol of intelligence; from its leaves distils the water of life. The gods have reserved for themselves the possession of fire; it falls sometimes to the earth as lightning, but man cannot produce it for himself. He, who like the Greek Prometheus, discovers the means of producing fire artificially and gives it to other men, is an impious being who has robbed the sacred tree of its forbidden fruit; he is accursed, and the wrath of the gods pursues him and his race.

The analogy between the form of these myths, and that of the Bible story, is very close. It is in fact the same tradition, but perverted to another meaning to symbolise the introduction of material progress, instead of applying to a fundamental principle of moral government, and further disfigured by that monstrous conception, too common in Paganism, which represents the Deity as a formidable power, and a jealous enemy of human happiness and progress. The spirit of error had altered among the Gentiles the mysterious remembrance of the event which decided the lot of humanity; Moses reproduced it in the form evidently preserved among the Hebrews, the same form as among the Arian nations, –– in spite of the alteration in sense –– but he restored to it its true meaning, and caused it to reassume its solemnly instructive character.

4. So far we have been advancing on uncertain ground and in constant danger of falling into error. The lights of the primitive traditions which we have been able to catch from right and left, have been so few and far between, that it would have been wiser not to tread that road, had we not been sure of soon entering on a plainer path. But we have now reached solid ground. In place of a few isolated tales, scattered links of a chain whose unity is likely to be contested, we now come suddenly on a multitude of concordant proofs, which, coming from the four winds of heaven, arrange themselves so as to put beyond doubt that these stories were identical in the early ages of the world.

In the number given by the Bible for the antediluvian patriarchs, we have the first instance of a striking agreement with the traditions of various nations. Ten are mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and a remarkable coincidence gives the same number, ten, in the legends of a great number of people, for those primitive ancestors whose history is lost in a mist of fable. To whatever epoch they carry back these ancestors, whether before or after the deluge, whether the mythical or historical character prevails in the picture, they are constant to this sacred number ten, which some have vainly attempted to connect with the speculations of later religious philosophers, on the mystical value of numbers. In Chaldæa, Berosus enumerates ten antediluvian kings, of whom we shall speak in the chapter on the history of Babylon, and whose fabulous reign extended to thousands of ordinary years, forming ten cosmic days. The legends of the Iranian race commence with the reign of ten Peisdadien kings, men of the ancient law," who lived on 'pure Homa (water of life), and who preserved their sanctity." In India we meet with the nine Brahmadikas, who with Brahmah, their founder, make ten, and who are called the Ten Petris or Fathers. The Chinese