Science of Babylonia and Assyria
THROUGHOUT classical antiquity Egyptian science
was famous. We know that Plato spent
some years in Egypt in the hope of penetrating the
alleged mysteries of its fabled learning; and the story
of the Egyptian priest who patronizingly assured
Solon that the Greeks were but babes was quoted
everywhere without disapproval. Even so late as the
time of Augustus, we find Diodorus, the Sicilian, looking
back with veneration upon the Oriental learning,
to which Pliny also refers with unbounded respect.
From what we have seen of Egyptian science, all this
furnishes us with a somewhat striking commentary
upon the attainments of the Greeks and Romans themselves.
To refer at length to this would be to anticipate
our purpose; what now concerns us is to recall that
all along there was another nation, or group of nations,
that disputed the palm for scientific attainments.
This group of nations found a home in the valley of
the Tigris and Euphrates. Their land was named
Mesopotamia by the Greeks, because a large part of
it lay between the two rivers just mentioned. The
peoples themselves are familiar to every one as the
Babylonians and the Assyrians. These peoples were
of Semitic stock—allied, therefore, to the ancient
Hebrews and Phœnicians and of the same racial stem
with the Arameans and Arabs.
The great capital of the Babylonians during the
later period of their history was the famed city of
Babylon itself; the most famous capital of the Assyrians
was Nineveh, that city to which, as every Bible-student will recall, the prophet Jonah was journeying
when he had a much-exploited experience, the record
of which forms no part of scientific annals. It was the
kings of Assyria, issuing from their palaces in Nineveh,
who dominated the civilization of Western Asia during
the heyday of Hebrew history, and whose deeds are so
frequently mentioned in the Hebrew chronicles. Later
on, in the year 606 B.C., Nineveh was overthrown by
the Medes [11] and Babylonians. The
famous city was completely destroyed, never to be rebuilt. Babylon,
however, though conquered subsequently by Cyrus
and held in subjection by Darius,[12] the
Persian kings, continued to hold sway as a great world-capital for
some centuries. The last great historical event that
occurred within its walls was the death of Alexander
the Great, which took place there in the year 322 B.C.
In the time of Herodotus the fame of Babylon was
at its height, and the father of history has left us a
most entertaining account of what he saw when he
visited the wonderful capital. Unfortunately, Herodotus
was not a scholar in the proper acceptance of the
term. He probably had no inkling of the Babylonian
language, so the voluminous records of its literature
were entirely shut off from his observation. He
therefore enlightens us but little regarding the science
of the Babylonians, though his observations on their
practical civilization give us incidental references of
no small importance. Somewhat more detailed
references to the scientific attainments of the Babylonians
are found in the fragments that have come down to us
of the writings of the great Babylonian historian,
Berosus,
[13] who was born in Babylon
about 330 B.C., and who was, therefore, a contemporary of Alexander
the Great. But the writings of Berosus also, or at least
such parts of them as have come down to us, leave
very much to be desired in point of explicitness. They
give some glimpses of Babylonian history, and they
detail at some length the strange mythical tales of
creation that entered into the Babylonian conception
of cosmogony—details which find their counterpart in
the allied recitals of the Hebrews. But taken all in all,
the glimpses of the actual state of Chaldean
[14] learning,
as it was commonly called, amounted to scarcely more
than vague wonder-tales. No one really knew just
what interpretation to put upon these tales until the
explorers of the nineteenth century had excavated the
ruins of the Babylonian and Assyrian cities, bringing to
light the relics of their wonderful civilization. But
these relics fortunately included vast numbers of written
documents, inscribed on tablets, prisms, and
cylinders of terra-cotta. When nineteenth-century
scholarship had penetrated the mysteries of the
strange script, and ferreted out the secrets of an
unknown tongue, the world at last was in possession of
authentic records by which the traditions regarding
the Babylonians and Assyrians could be tested.
Thanks to these materials, a new science commonly
spoken of as Assyriology came into being, and a most
important chapter of human history was brought to
light. It became apparent that the Greek ideas concerning
Mesopotamia, though vague in the extreme,
were founded on fact. No one any longer questions
that the Mesopotamian civilization was fully on a par
with that of Egypt; indeed, it is rather held that superiority
lay with the Asiatics. Certainly, in point of
purely scientific attainments, the Babylonians passed
somewhat beyond their Egyptian competitors. All
the evidence seems to suggest also that the Babylonian
civilization was even more ancient than that of Egypt.
The precise dates are here in dispute; nor for our present
purpose need they greatly concern us. But the
Assyrio-Babylonian records have much greater historical
accuracy as regards matters of chronology than
have the Egyptian, and it is believed that our knowledge
of the early Babylonian history is carried back,
with some certainty, to King Sargon of Agade,
[15] for whom the date 3800 B.C. is
generally accepted; while somewhat vaguer records give us
glimpses of periods as remote as the sixth, perhaps even
the seventh or eighth millenniums before our era.
At a very early period Babylon itself was not a capital
and Nineveh had not come into existence. The
important cities, such as Nippur and Shirpurla, were
situated farther to the south. It is on the site of these
cities that the recent excavations have been made,
such as those of the University of Pennsylvania expeditions
at Nippur, [16] which are giving us
glimpses into remoter recesses of the historical period.
Even if we disregard the more problematical early
dates, we are still concerned with the records of a
civilization extending unbroken throughout a period of
about four thousand years; the actual period is in all
probability twice or thrice that. Naturally enough,
the current of history is not an unbroken stream
throughout this long epoch. It appears that at least
two utterly different ethnic elements are involved. A
preponderance of evidence seems to show that the
earliest civilized inhabitants of Mesopotamia were not
Semitic, but an alien race, which is now commonly
spoken of as Sumerian. This people, of whom we
catch glimpses chiefly through the records of its
successors, appears to have been subjugated or
overthrown by Semitic invaders, who, coming perhaps
from Arabia (their origin is in dispute), took possession
of the region of the Tigris and Euphrates, learned
from the Sumerians many of the useful arts, and,
partly perhaps because of their mixed lineage, were
enabled to develop the most wonderful civilization
of antiquity. Could we analyze the details of this
civilization from its earliest to its latest period we
should of course find the same changes which always
attend racial progress and decay. We should then
be able, no doubt, to speak of certain golden epochs
and their periods of decline. To a certain meagre
extent we are able to do this now. We know, for example,
that King Khammurabi, who lived about 2200
B.C., was a great law-giver, the ancient prototype of
Justinian; and the epochs of such Assyrian kings as
Sargon II., Asshurnazirpal, Sennacherib, and Asshurbanapal
stand out with much distinctness. Yet, as a
whole, the record does not enable us to trace with
clearness the progress of scientific thought. At best
we can gain fewer glimpses in this direction than in almost
any other, for it is the record of war and conquest
rather than of the peaceful arts that commanded the
attention of the ancient scribe. So in dealing with the
scientific achievements of these peoples, we shall perforce
consider their varied civilizations as a unity, and
attempt, as best we may, to summarize their achievements
as a whole. For the most part, we shall not attempt
to discriminate as to what share in the final
product was due to Sumerian, what to Babylonian, and
what to Assyrian. We shall speak of Babylonian science
as including all these elements; and drawing our
information chiefly from the relatively late Assyrian
and Babylonian sources, which, therefore, represent
the culminating achievements of all these ages of effort,
we shall attempt to discover what was the actual
status of Mesopotamian science at its climax. In so far
as we succeed, we shall be able to judge what scientific
heritage Europe received from the Orient; for in the
records of Babylonian science we have to do with the
Eastern mind at its best. Let us turn to the specific
inquiry as to the achievements of the Chaldean scientist
whose fame so dazzled the eyes of his contemporaries
of the classic world.