EGYPT AND BABYLON.

CHAPTER I.

NOTICES OF BABYLON IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

"Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."-GEN. x. 8-10.

THAT this passage refers to Babylon will scarcely be disputed. The words " Babel" and "Shinar" are sufficient proof. "Babel," elsewhere generally translated "Babylon" (2 Kings xx. 12; xxiv. 1; 2 Chron. xxxii. 31; xxxiii. 11; Ps. cxxxvii. I, etc.), is the exact Hebrew equivalent of the native Babil, which appears as the capital of Babylonia in the cuneiform records from the time of Agu-kak-rimi (about B.C. 2000) to the conquest of the country by Cyrus (B. C. 538). "Shinar" is probably an equivalent of "Mesopotamia," "the country of the two rivers," and in Scripture

always designates the lower part of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, the alluvial plain through which the great rivers flow before reaching the Persian Gulf.

Four facts are recorded of Babylonia in the passage:-1. That it became at a very early date a settled government under a king; 2. That it contained, besides Babylon, at least three other great cities-Erech, Accad, Calneh; 3. That among its earliest rulers was a great conquering monarch named Nimrod; and 4. That this monarch, and therefore probably his people, 'descended from Cush-i.e., was a Cushite, or Ethiopian.

The first of these facts is confirmed by Berosus, by Diodorus Siculus, and by the monuments. Berosus declared that a monarchy had been set up in Babylon soon after the flood, which he regarded as a real occurrence, and counted 208 kings from Evechoüs, the first monarch, to Pul, the predecessor of Tiglath-Pileser. Diodorus believed that Babylon had been built by Semiramis, the wife of Ninus, at a date which, according to his chronology, would be about B. C. 2200. The monuments furnish above ninety names of kings anterior to Tiglath-Pileser, and carry back the monarchy by actual numerical statements to B. C. 2286, while the super-position of the remains is considered by the explorers to indicate an even greater antiquity. An early Babylonian kingdom, once denied on the authority of Ctesias, is now generally allowed by historians; the researches of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Mr. George Smith, Professor Sayce, Mr. Pinches, and others,

having sufficiently established the fact previously questioned.

The second fact-the early existence of several large cities in Babylonia, cities ranking almost upon a par-is also strongly supported by the native records. In the most ancient times to which the monuments go back, the chief cities, according to Mr. George Smith,1 were Ur, Nipur, Karrak, and Larsa, all of them metropolitan, and all of them places giving their titles to kings. Somewhat later, Babylon and Erech rose to greatness, together with a city called Agadé, or Accad, according to the same authority. If this last identification be allowed, then three out of the four cities mentioned in Genesis as metropolitan at this early date will have the same rank in the native records, and one only of the four names will lack such direct confirmation. Certainly, no name at all resembling Calneh occurs in the primitive geography of Babylonia. There are, however, grounds for regarding Calneh as another name of Nipur,3 and one which superseded it for a time in the nomenclature of the inhabitants. In this case we may say that all the four cities of Genesis x. 10 are identified, and shown to have had (about B. C. 2000) the eminence ascribed to them in that passage. Mr. George Smith's reading of "Agadé" is, however, questioned by some, who read

1"History of Babylonia" (edited by Rev. A. H Sayce), ch. iii., pp. 63-74.

3 Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," ad voc. Calneh.

the name "Agané." If this latter reading be correct, the city Accad must be regarded as at present not identified.

The third fact-the reign of a powerful king, called Nimrod, over Babylonia has not as yet received any confirmation from the monuments. It is suspected that the monarch so called had two names, and that, while Scripture uses one of them, the Babylonian documents employ the other. Mr. George Smith proposed to identify the scriptural Nimrod with a certain Izdubar, a semi-mythical, semi-historical personage, very prominent in the primitive legends. But the identification is a pure conjecture. The monuments must be regarded as silent with respect to Nimrod, and we must look elsewhere for traces of his existence and authority. Such traces are numerous in the traditions of the East, and among the early Jewish and Arabic writers. Josephus tells us that Nimrod lived at the time when the attempt was made to build the Tower of Babel, and represents him as the prime mover in that impious enterprise. The Mohammedans have a tradition that he lived somewhat later, and was brought into contact with Abraham, whom he attempted to burn to death in a furnace of fire. In Arabian astronomy he appears as a giant who at his decease was translated to heaven, and transformed into the constellation which the Arabs called El Jabbar, "the Giant," and the Greeks Orion. These tales have, of course, but little value in themselves; they are merely important as showing how large a space this

monarch occupied in the imaginations of the Eastern races, a fact only to be accounted for by his having once filled a prominent position. That position is declared in the "Nabathæan Agriculture," an Arabic work of great antiquity, to have been the position of a king the founder of a dynasty which long bore sway over the land. Another sign of the reality of Nimrod's rule is to be found in the attachment of his name to various sites in the Mesopotamian region. The remarkable ruin generally called Akkerkuf, which lies a little to the south-west of Baghdad, is known to many as the “Tel-Nimrúd;" the great dam across the Tigris below Mosul is the "Sahr-el-Nimrúd;" one of the chief of the buried cities in the same neighbourhood is called "Nimrúd" simply; and the name of "Birs-Nimrúd" attaches to the grandest mass of ruins in the lower country.1

The fourth fact-that Nimrod, and therefore probably his people, was of Cushite origin, has been strenuously denied by some, even among modern critics. But ancient classical tradition and recent linguistic research agree in establishing a close connection between the early inhabitants of the lower Mesopotamian plain and the people, which, under the various names of Cushites, Ethiopians, and Abyssinians, has long been settled upon the middle Nile. Memnon, king of Ethiopia, according to Hesiod and Pindar, led an army of combined Ethiopians and Susi

1 See Rich's "Journey to Babylon," p. 2, note.

2 See Bunsen's "Philosophy of History," vol. iii., pp. 190, 191.