ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART IV

THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE OLD WORLD A RECOLLECTION OF ATLANTIS

CHAPTER VI

GOLD AND SILVER THE SACRED METALS OF ATLANTIS.

MONEY is the instrumentality by which man is lifted above the limitations of barter. Baron Storch terms it "the marvellous instrument to which we are indebted for our wealth and civilization."

It is interesting to inquire into the various articles which have been used in different countries and ages as money. The following is a table of some of them:

Articles of Utility.

India	Cakes of tea.
China	Pieces of silk.
Abyssinia	Salt.
Iceland and Newfoundland	Codfish.
Illinois (in early days)	Coon-skins.
Bornoo (Africa)	Cotton shirts.
Ancient Russia	Skins of wild animals.
West India Islands (1500)	Cocoa-nuts.
Massachusetts Indians	Wampum and musket-balls.
Virginia (1700)	Tobacco.
British West India Islands	Pins, snuff, and whiskey.
Central South America	Soap, chocolate, and eggs.
Ancient Romans	Cattle.
Ancient Greece	Nails of copper and iron.
The Lacedemonians	Iron.
The Burman Empire	Lead.
Russia (1828 to 1845)	Platinum.
Rome (under Numa Pompilius)	Wood and leather.
Rome (under the Cars)	Land.
Carthaginians	Leather.
Ancient Britons Cattle,	slaves, brass, and iron.
England (under James II.)	Tin, gun-metal, and pewter.
South Sea Islands	Axes and hammers.

Articles of Ornament.

Ancient Jews	Jewels.
The Indian Islands and Africa	Cowrie shells,

Conventional Signs.

Holland (1574)	Pieces of pasteboard.
China (1200)	Bark of the mulberry-tree.

It is evident that every primitive people uses as money those articles upon which they set the highest value--as cattle, jewels, slaves, salt, musket-balls, pins, snuff, whiskey, cotton shirts, leather, axes, and hammers; or those articles for which there was a foreign demand, and which they could trade off to the merchants for articles of necessity--as tea, silk, codfish, coonskins, cocoa-nuts, and tobacco. Then there is a later stage, when the stamp of the government is impressed upon paper, wood, pasteboard, or the bark of trees, and these articles are given a legal-tender character.

When a civilized nation comes in contact with a barbarous people they seek to trade with them for those things which they need; a metal-working people, manufacturing weapons of iron or copper, will seek for the useful metals, and hence we find iron, copper, tin, and lead coming into use as a standard of values--as money; for they can always be converted into articles of use and weapons of war. But when we ask bow it chanced that gold and silver came to be used as money, and why it is that gold is regarded as so much more valuable than silver, no answer presents itself. It was impossible to make either of them into pots or pans, swords or spears; they were not necessarily more beautiful than glass or the combinations of tin and copper. Nothing astonished the American races more than the extraordinary value set upon gold and silver by the Spaniards; they could not understand it. A West Indian savage traded a handful of gold-dust with one of the sailors accompanying Columbus for some tool, and then ran for his life to the woods lest the sailor should repent his bargain and call him back. The Mexicans had coins of tin shaped like a letter T. We can understand this, for tin was necessary to them in hardening their bronze implements, and it may have been the highest type of metallic value among them. A round copper coin with a serpent stamped on it was found at Palenque, and T-shaped copper coins are very abundant in the ruins of Central America. This too we can understand, for copper was necessary in every work of art or utility.

All these nations were familiar with gold and silver, but they used them as sacred metals for the adornment of the temples of the sun and moon. The color of gold was something of the color of the sun's rays, while the color of silver resembled the pale light of the moon, and hence they were respectively sacred to the gods of the sun and moon. And this is probably the origin of the comparative value of these metals: they became the precious metals because they were the sacred metals, and gold was more valuable than silver--just as the sun-god was the great god of the nations, while the mild moon was simply an attendant upon the sun.

The Peruvians called gold "the tears wept by the sun." It was not used among the people for ornament or money. The great temple of the sun at Cuzco was called the "Place of Gold." It was, as I have shown, literally a mine of gold. Walls, cornices, statuary, plate, ornaments, all were of gold; the very ewers, pipes, and aqueducts--even the agricultural implements used in the garden of the temple--were of gold and silver. The value of the jewels which adorned the temple was equal to one hundred and eighty millions of dollars! The riches of the kingdom can be conceived when we remember that from a pyramid in Chimu a Spanish explorer named

Toledo took, in 1577, $4,450,284 in gold and silver. ("New American Cyclopia," art. American Antiquities.) The gold and silver of Peru largely contributed to form the metallic currency upon which Europe has carried on her commerce during the last three hundred years.

Gold and silver were not valued in Peru for any intrinsic usefulness; they were regarded as sacred because reserved for the two great gods of the nation. As we find gold and silver mined and worked on both sides of the Atlantic at the earliest periods of recorded history, we may fairly conclude that they were known to the Atlanteans; and this view is confirmed by the statements of Plato, who represents a condition of things in Atlantis exactly like that which Pizarro found in Peru. Doubtless the vast accumulations of gold and silver in both countries were due to the fact that these metals were not permitted to be used by the people. In Peru the annual taxes of the people were paid to the Inca in part in gold and silver from the mines, and they were used to ornament the temples; and thus the work of accumulating the sacred metals went on from generation to generation. The same process doubtless led to the vast accumulations in the temples of Atlantis, as described by Plato.

Now, as the Atlanteans carried on an immense commerce with all the countries of Europe and Western Asia, they doubtless inquired and traded for gold and silver for the adornment of their temples, and they thus produced a demand for and gave a value to the two metals otherwise comparatively useless to man--a value higher than any other commodity which the people could offer their civilized customers; and as the reverence for the great burning orb of the sun, master of all the manifestations of nature, was tenfold as great as the veneration for the smaller, weaker, and variable goddess of the night, so was the demand for the metal sacred to the sun ten times as great as for the metal sacred to the moon. This view is confirmed by the fact that the root of the word by which the Celts, the Greeks, and the Romans designated gold was the Sanscrit word karat, which means, "the color of the sun." Among the Assyrians gold and silver were respectively consecrated to the and moon precisely as they were in Peru. A pyramid belonging to the palace of Nineveh is referred to repeatedly in the inscriptions. It was composed of seven stages, equal in height, and each one smaller in area than the one beneath it; each stage was covered with stucco of different colors, "a different color representing each of the heavenly bodies, the least important being at the base: white (Venus); black (Saturn); purple (Jupiter); blue (Mercury); vermillion (Mars); silver (the Moon); and gold (the Sun)." (Lenormant's "Ancient History of the East," vol. i., p. 463.) "In England, to this day the new moon is saluted with a bow or a courtesy, as well as the curious practice of 'turning one's silver,' which seems a relic of the offering of the moon's proper metal." (Tylor's "Anthropology", p. 361.) The custom of wishing, when one first sees the new moon, is probably a survival of moon-worship; the wish taking the place of the prayer.

And thus has it come to pass that, precisely as the physicians of Europe, fifty years ago, practised bleeding, because for thousands of years their savage ancestors had used it to draw away the evil spirits out of the man, so the business of our modern civilization is dependent upon the superstition of a past civilization, and the bankers of the world are to-day perpetuating the adoration of "the tears wept by the sun" which was commenced ages since on the island of Atlantis.

And it becomes a grave question--when we remember that the rapidly increasing business of the world, consequent upon an increasing population, and a civilization advancing with giant steps, is measured by the standard of a currency limited by natural laws, decreasing annually in production, and incapable of expanding proportionately to the growth of the world--whether this Atlantean superstition may not yet inflict more incalculable injuries on mankind than those which resulted from the practice of phlebotomy.

ATLANTIS

THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD

by Ignatius Donnelly

[1882]

PART IV

THE MYTHOLOGIES OF THE OLD WORLD A RECOLLECTION OF ATLANTIS

CHAPTER V

THE PYRAMID, THE CROSS, AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

No fact is better established than the reverence shown to the sign of the Cross in all the ages prior to Christianity. We cannot do better than quote from an able article in the Edinburgh Review of July, 1870, upon this question:

"From the dawn of organized Paganism in the Eastern world to the final establishment of Christianity in the Western, the Cross was undoubtedly one of the commonest and most sacred of symbolical monuments; and, to a remarkable extent, it is so still in almost every land where that of Calvary is unrecognized or unknown. Apart from any distinctions of social or intellectual superiority, of caste, color, nationality, or location in either hemisphere, it appears to have been the aboriginal possession of every people in antiquity--the elastic girdle, so to say, which embraced the most widely separated heathen communities--the most significant token of a universal brotherhood, to which all the families of mankind were severally and irresistibly drawn, and by which their common descent was emphatically expressed, or by means of which each and all preserved, amid every vicissitude of fortune, a knowledge of the primeval happiness and dignity of their species. Where authentic history is silent on the subject, the material relics of past and long since forgotten races are not wanting to confirm and strengthen this supposition. Diversified forms of the symbol are delineated more or less artistically, according to the progress achieved in civilization at the period, on the ruined walls of temples and palaces, on natural rocks and sepulchral galleries, on the hoariest monoliths and the rudest statuary; on coins, medals, and vases of every description; and, in not a few instances, are preserved in the architectural proportions of subterranean as well as superterranean structures, of tumuli as well as fanes. The extraordinary sanctity attaching to the symbol, in every age and under every variety of circumstance, justified any expenditure incurred in its fabrication or embellishment; hence the most persistent labor, the most consummate ingenuity, were lavished upon it. Populations of essentially different culture, tastes, and pursuits--the highly-civilized and the demi-civilized, the settled and nomadic--vied with each other in their efforts to extend the knowledge of its exceptional import and virtue among their latest posterities. The marvellous rock-hewn caves of Elephanta and Ellora, and the stately temples of Mathura and Terputty, in the East, may be cited as characteristic examples of one laborious method of exhibiting it; and the megalithic structures of Callernish and Newgrange, in the West, of another; while a third may be instanced. in the great temple at Mitzla, 'the City of the Moon,' in Ojaaca, Central America. also excavated in the living rock, and manifesting the same stupendous labor and ingenuity as are observable in the cognate caverns of Salsette--of endeavors, we repeat, made by peoples as intellectually as geographically distinct, and followers withal of independent and unassociated deities, to magnify and perpetuate some grand primeval symbol. . . .

"Of the several varieties of the Cross still in vogue, as national or ecclesiastical emblems, in this and other European states, and distinguished by the familiar appellations of St. George, St. Andrew, the Maltese, the Greek, the Latin, etc., etc., there is not one among them the existence of which may not be traced to the remotest antiquity. They were the common property of the Eastern nations. No revolution or other casualty has wrought any perceptible difference in their several forms or delineations; they have passed from one hemisphere to the other intact; have survived dynasties, empires, and races; have been borne on the crest of each successive wave of Aryan population in its course toward the West; and, having been reconsecrated in later times by their lineal descendants, are still recognized as military and national badges of distinction. . . .

"Among the earliest known types is the crux ansata, vulgarly called 'the key of the Nile,' because of its being found sculptured or otherwise represented so frequently upon Egyptian and Coptic monuments. It has, however, a very much older and more sacred signification than this. It was the symbol of symbols, the mystical Tau, 'the bidden wisdom,' not only of the ancient Egyptians but also of the Chaldeans, Phnicians, Mexicans, Peruvians, and of every other ancient people commemorated in history, in either hemisphere, and is formed very similarly to our letter T, with a roundlet, or oval, placed immediately above it.

EGYPTIAN TAU.

Thus it was figured on the gigantic emerald or glass statue of Serapis, which was transported (293 B.C.) by order of Ptolemy Soter from Sinope, on the southern shores of the Black Sea, re-erected within that famous labyrinth which encompassed the banks of Lake Mris, and destroyed by the victorious army of Theodosius (A.D. 389), despite the earnest entreaties of the Egyptian priesthood to spare it, because it was the emblem of their god and of 'the life to come.' Sometimes, as may be seen on the breast of an Egyptian mummy in the museum of the London University, the simple Tonly is planted on the frustum of a cone; and sometimes it is represented as springing from a heart; in the first instance signifying goodness; in the second, hope or expectation of reward.

CROSS ROM THE MONUMENTS OF PALENQUE.

CENTRAL AMERICAN CROSS

Professor Hardwicke says:

"All these and similar traditions are but mocking satires of the old Hebrew story--jarred and broken notes of the same strain; but with all their exaggerations they intimate how in the background of man's vision lay a paradise of holy joy--a paradise secured from every kind of profanation, and made inaccessible to the guilty; a paradise full of objects that were calculated to delight the senses and to elevate the mind a paradise that granted to its tenant rich and rare immunities, and that fed with its perennial streams the tree of life and immortality."

COPPER COIN--TEOTIHUACAN.

To quote again from the writer in the Edinburgh Review, already cited:

"Its undoubted antiquity, no less than its extraordinary diffusion, evidences that it must have been, as it may be said to be still in unchristianized lands, emblematical of some fundamental doctrine or mystery. The reader will not have failed to observe that it is most usually associated with water; it was 'the key of the Nile,' that mystical instrument by means of which, in the popular judgment of his Egyptian devotees, Osiris produced the annual revivifying inundations of the sacred stream; it is discernible in that mysterious pitcher or vase portrayed on the brazen table of Bembus, before-mentioned, with its four lips discharging as many streams of water in opposite directions; it was the emblem of the water-deities of the Babylonians in the East and of the Gothic nations in the West, a

ANCIENT IRISH CROSS--PRE-CHRISTIAN--KILNABOY.

well as that of the rain-deities respectively of the mixed population in America. We have seen with what peculiar rites the symbol was honored by those widely separated races in the western hemisphere; and the monumental slabs of Nineveh, now in the museums of London and Paris, show us how it was similarly honored by the successors of the Chaldees in the eastern. . . .

"In Egypt, Assyria, and Britain it was emblematical of creative power and eternity; in India, China, and Scandinavia, of heaven and immortality; in the two Americas, of rejuvenescence and freedom from physical suffering; while in both hemispheres it was the common symbol of the resurrection, or 'the sign of the life to come;' and, finally, in all heathen communities, without exception, it was the emphatic type, the sole enduring evidence, of the Divine Unity. This circumstance alone determines its extreme antiquity--an antiquity, in all likelihood, long antecedent to the foundation of either of the three great systems of religion in the East. And, lastly, we have seen how, as a rule, it is found in conjunction with a stream or streams of water, with exuberant vegetation, and with a bill or a mountainous region--in a word, with a land of beauty, fertility, and joy.

CROSS FROM EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS.

Thus it was expressed upon those circular and sacred cakes of the Egyptians, composed of the richest materials-of flour, of honey, of milk--and with which the serpent and bull, as well as other reptiles and beasts consecrated to the service of Isis and their higher divinities, were daily fed; and upon certain festivals were eaten with extraordinary ceremony by the people and their priests. 'The cross-cake,' says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 'was their hieroglyph for civilized land;' obviously a land superior to their own, as it was, indeed, to all other mundane territories; for it was that distant, traditional country of sempiternal contentment and repose, of exquisite delight and serenity, where Nature, unassisted by man, produces all that is necessary for his sustentation."

And this land was the Garden of Eden of our race. This was the Olympus of the Greeks, where

"This same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden and the fruits to grow."

In the midst of it was a sacred and glorious eminence--the umbilicus orbis terrarum--"toward which the heathen in all parts of the world, and in all ages, turned a wistful gaze in every act of devotion, and to which they hoped to be admitted, or, rather, to be restored, at the close of this transitory scene."

In this "glorious eminence" do we not see Plato's mountain in the middle of Atlantis, as he describes it:

"Near the plain and in the centre of the island there was a mountain, not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth-born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter, who was named Cleito. Poseidon married her. He enclosed the hill in which she dwelt all around, making alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water . . . so that no man could get to the island. . . . He brought streams of water under the earth to this mountain-island, and made all manner of food to grow upon it. This island became the seat of Atlas, the over-king of the whole island; upon it they built the great temple of their nation; they continued to ornament it in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who came before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and beauty. . . . And they had such an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings and potentates--as is not likely ever to be again."

The gardens of Alcinous and Laertes, of which we read in Homeric song, and those of Babylon, were probably transcripts of Atlantis. "The sacred eminence in the midst of a 'superabundant, happy region figures more or less distinctly in a]most every mythology, ancient or modern. It was the Mesomphalos of the earlier Greeks, and the Omphalium of the Cretans, dominating the Elysian fields, upon whose tops, bathed in pure, brilliant, incomparable light, the gods passed their days in ceaseless joys."

"The Buddhists and Brahmans, who together constitute nearly half the population of the world, tell us that the decussated figure (the cross), whether in a simple or a complex form, symbolizes the traditional happy abode of their primeval ancestors--that 'Paradise of Eden toward the East,' as we find expressed in the Hebrew. And, let us ask, what better picture, or more significant characters, in the complicated alphabet of symbolism, could have been selected for the purpose than a circle and a cross: the one to denote a region of absolute purity and perpetual felicity; the other, those four perennial streams that divided and watered the several quarters of it?" (Edinburgh Review, January, 1870.)

And when we turn to the mythology of the Greeks, we find that the origin of the world was ascribed to Okeanos, the ocean, The world was at first an island surrounded by the ocean, as by a great stream:

"It was a region of wonders of all kinds; Okeanos lived there with his wife Tethys: these were the Islands of the Blessed, the gardens of the gods, the sources of nectar and ambrosia, on which the gods lived. Within this circle of water the earth lay spread out like a disk, with mountains rising from it, and the vault of heaven appearing to rest upon its outer edge all around." (Murray's "Manual of Mythology," pp. 23, 24, et seq.)

On the mountains dwelt the gods; they had palaces on these mountains, with store-rooms, stabling, etc.

"The Gardens of the Hesperides, with their golden apples, were believed to exist in some island of the ocean, or, as it was sometimes thought, in the islands off the north or west coast of Africa. They were far famed in antiquity; for it was there that springs of nectar flowed by the couch of Zeus, and there that the earth displayed the rarest blessings of the gods; it was another Eden." (Ibid., p. 156.)

Homer described it in these words:

"Stern winter smiles on that auspicious clime,
The fields are florid with unfading prime,
From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow.
Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow;
But from the breezy deep the blessed inhale
The fragrant murmurs of the western gale."

"It was the sacred Asgard of the Scandinavians, springing from the centre of a fruitful land, which was watered by four primeval rivers of milk, severally flowing in the direction of the cardinal points, 'the abode of happiness, and the height of bliss.' It is the Tien-Chan, 'the celestial mountain-land, . . . the enchanted gardens' of the Chinese and Tartars, watered by the four perennial fountains of Tychin, or Immortality; it is the hill-encompassed Ilof the Singhalese and Thibetians, 'the everlasting dwelling-place of the wise and just.' It is the Sineru of the Buddhist, on the summit of which is Tawrutisa, the habitation of Sekr the supreme god, from which proceed the four sacred streams, running in as many contrary directions.

It is the Slratta, 'the celestial earth,' of the Hindoo, the summit of his golden mountain Meru, the city of Brahma, in the centre of Jambadwa, and from the four sides of which gush forth the four primeval rivers, reflecting in their passage the colorific glories of their source, and severally flowing northward, southward, eastward, and westward."

It is the Garden of Eden of the Hebrews:

"And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison; that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." (Gen. ii., 8-1-5.)

As the four rivers named in Genesis are not branches of any one stream, and head in very different regions, it is evident that there was an attempt, on the part of the writer of the Book, to adapt an ancient tradition concerning another country to the known features of the region in which be dwelt.

Josephus tells us (chap. i., p. 41), "Now the garden (of Eden) was watered by one river, which ran round about the whole earth, and was parted into four parts." Here in the four parts we see the origin of the Cross, while in the river running around the whole earth we have the wonderful canal of Atlantis, described by Plato, which was "carried around the whole of the plain," and received the streams which came down from the mountains. The streams named by Josephus would seem to represent the migrations of people from Atlantis to its colonies.

"Phison," he tells us, "denotes a multitude; it ran into India; the Euphrates and Tigris go down into the Red Sea while the Geon runs through Egypt."

We are further told (chap. ii., p. 42) that when Cain, after the murder of. Abel, left the land of Adam, "he travelled over many countries" before be reached the land of Nod; and the land of Nod was to the eastward of Adam's home. In other words, the original seat of mankind was in the West, that is to say, in the direction of Atlantis. Wilson tells us that the Aryans of India believed that they originally came "from the West." Thus the nations on the west of the Atlantic look to the east for their place of origin; while on the east of the Atlantic they look to the west: thus all the lines of tradition converge upon Atlantis.

But here is the same testimony that in the Garden of Eden there were four rivers radiating from one parent stream. And these four rivers, as we have seen, we find in the Scandinavian traditions, and in the legends of the Chinese, the Tartars, the Singhalese, the Thibetians, the Buddhists, the Hebrews, and the Brahmans.

And not only do we find this tradition of the Garden of Eden in the Old World, but it meets us also among the civilized races of America. The elder Montezuma said to Cortez, "Our fathers dwelt in that happy and prosperous place which they called Aztlan, which means whiteness. . . . In this place there is a great mountain in the middle of the water which is called Culhuacan, because it has the point somewhat turned over toward the bottom; and for this cause it is called Culhuacan, which means 'crooked mountain.'" He then proceeds to describe the charms of this favored land, abounding in birds, game, fish, trees, "fountains enclosed with elders and junipers, and alder-trees both large and beautiful." The people planted "maize, red peppers, tomatoes, beans, and all kinds of plants, in furrows."

Here we have the same mountain in the midst of the water which Plato describes--the same mountain to which all the legends of the most ancient races of Europe refer.

The inhabitants of Aztlan were boatmen. (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. v., p. 325.) E. G. Squier, in his "Notes on Central America," p. 349, says, "It is a significant fact that in the map of their migrations, presented by Gemelli, the place of the origin of the Aztecs is designated by the sign of water, Atl standing for Atzlan, a pyramidal temple with grades, and near these a palm-tree." This circumstance did not escape the attention of Humboldt, who says, I am astonished at finding a palm-tree near this teocalli. This tree certainly does not indicate a northern origin. . . . The possibility that an unskilful artist should unintentionally represent a tree of which he had no knowledge is so great, that any argument dependent on it hangs upon a slender thread." ("North Americans of Antiquity," p. 266.)

The Miztecs, a tribe dwelling on the outskirts of Mexico, had a tradition that the gods, "in the day of obscurity and darkness," built "a sumptuous palace, a masterpiece of skill, in which they male their abode upon a mountain. The rock was called 'The Place of Heaven;' there the gods first abode on earth, living many years in great rest and content, as in a happy and delicious land, though the world still lay in obscurity and darkness. The children of these gods made to themselves a garden, in which they put many trees, and fruit-trees, and flowers, and roses, and odorous herbs. Subsequently there came a great deluge, in which many of the sons and daughters of the gods perished." (Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii., p. 71.) Here we have a distinct reference to Olympus, the Garden of Plato, and the destruction of Atlantis.

And in Plato's account of Atlantis we have another description of the Garden of Eden and the Golden Age of the world:

"Also, whatever fragrant things there are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or distilling drops of flowers and fruits, grew and thrived in that land; and again the cultivated fruits of the earth, both the edible fruits and other species of food which we call by the name of legumes, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments . . . all these that sacred island, lying beneath the sun, brought forth in abundance. . . . For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well affectioned toward the gods, who were their kinsmen; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, practising gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods were increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by excessive zeal for them, and honor of them, the good of them is lost, and friendship perishes with them."

All this cannot be a mere coincidence; it points to a common tradition of a veritable land, where four rivers flowed down in opposite directions from a central mountain-peak. And these four rivers, flowing to the north, south, east, and west, constitute the origin of that sign of the Cross which we have seen meeting us at every point among the races who were either descended from the people of Atlantis, or who, by commerce and colonization, received their opinions and civilization from them.

Let us look at the question of the identity of the Garden of Eden with Atlantis from another point of view:

If the alphabet of the Phnicians is kindred with the Maya alphabet, as I think is clear, then the Phnicians were of the same race, or of some race with which the Mayas were connected; in other words, they were from Atlantis.

Now we know that the Phnicians and Hebrews were of the same stock, used the same alphabet, and spoke almost precisely the same language.

The Phnicians preserved traditions, which have come down to us in the writings, of Sanchoniathon, of all the great essential inventions or discoveries which underlie civilization. The first two human beings, they tell us, were Protogonos and Aion (Adam and 'Havath), who produce Genos and Genea (Q and Qath), from whom again are descended three brothers, named Phos, Phur, and Phlox (Light, Fire, and Flame), because they "have discovered how to produce fire by the friction of two pieces of wood, and have taught the use of this element." In another fragment, at the origin of the human race we see in succession the fraternal couples of Autochthon and Technites (Adam and Quen--Cain?), inventors of the manufacture of bricks; Agros and Agrotes (Sade and C), fathers of the agriculturists and hunters; then Amynos and Magos, "who taught to dwell in villages and rear flocks."

The connection between these Atlantean traditions and the Bible record is shown in many things. For instance, "the Greek text, in expressing the invention of Amynos, uses the words κώμας καὶ ποίμνας, which are precisely the same as the terms el umiqneh, which the Bible uses in speaking of the dwellings of the descendants of Jabal (Gen., chap. iv., v. 20). In like manner Lamech, both in the signification of his name and also iv the savage character attributed to him by the legend attached to his memory, is a true synonyme of Agrotes."

"And the title of Ἀλῆται, given to Agros and Agrotes in the Greek of the Phnician history, fits in wonderfully with the physiognomy of the race of the Cainites in the Bible narrative, whether we take Ἀλῆται simply as a Hellenized transcription of the Semitic Elim, 'the strong, the mighty,' or whether we take it in its Greek acceptation, 'the wanderers;' for such is the destiny of Cain and his race according to the very terms of the condemnation which was inflicted upon him after his crime (Gen. iv., 14), and this is what is signified by the name of his grandson 'Yirad. Only, in Sanchoniathon the genealogy does not end with Amynos and Magos, as that of the Cainites in the Bible does with the three sons of Lamech. These two personages are succeeded by Mis and Sydyk, 'the released and the just,' as Sanchoniathon translates them, but rather the 'upright and the just' (Mish and d), 'who invent the use of salt.' To Mis is born Taautos (Ta), to whom we owe letters; and to Sydyk the Cabiri or Corybantes, the institutors of navigation." (Lenormant, "Genealogies between Adam and the Deluge." Contemporary Review, April, 1880.)

We have, also, the fact that the Phnician name for their goddess Astynome (Ashtar No'em, whom the Greeks called Nemaun, was the same as the name of the sister of the three sons of Lamech, as given in Genesis--Na'emah, or Na'amah.

If, then, the original seat of the Hebrews and Phnicians was the Garden of Eden, to the west of Europe, and if the Phnicians are shown to be connected, through their alphabets, with the Central Americans, who looked to an island in the sea, to the eastward, as their starting-point, the conclusion becomes irresistible that Atlantis and the Garden of Eden were one and the same.

The Pyramid.--Not only are the Cross and the Garden of Eden identified with Atlantis, but in Atlantis, the habitation of the gods, we find the original model of all those pyramids which extend from India to Peru.

This singular architectural construction dates back far beyond the birth of history. In the Puras of the Hindoos we read of pyramids long anterior in time to any which have survived to our day. Cheops was preceded by a countless host of similar erections which have long since mouldered into ruins.

If the reader will turn to page 104 of this work he will see, in the midst of the picture of Aztlan, the starting-point of the Aztecs, according to the Botturini pictured writing, a pyramid with worshippers kneeling before it.

Fifty years ago Mr. Faber, in his "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," placed artificial tumuli, pyramids, and pagodas in the same category, conceiving that all were transcripts of the holy mountain which was generally supposed to have stood in the centre of Eden; or, rather. as intimated in more than one place by the Psalmist, the garden itself was situated on an eminence. (Psalms, chap. iii., v. 4, and chap. lxviii., vs. 15, 16, 18.)

The pyramid is one of the marvellous features of that problem which confronts us everywhere, and which is insoluble without Atlantis.

The Arabian traditions linked the pyramid with the Flood. In a manuscript preserved in the Bodleian Library, and translated by Dr. Sprenger, Abou Balkhi says:

"The wise men, previous to the Flood, foreseeing an impending Judgment from heaven, either by submersion or fire, which would destroy every created thing, built upon the tops of the mountains in Upper Egypt many pyramids of stone, in order to have some refuge against the approaching calamity. Two of these buildings exceeded the rest in height, being four hundred cubits, high and as many broad and as many long. They were built with large blocks of marble, and they were so well put together that the joints were scarcely perceptible. Upon the exterior of the building every charm and wonder of physic was inscribed."

This tradition locates these monster structures upon the mountains of Upper Egypt, but there are no buildings of such dimensions to be found anywhere in Egypt. Is it not probable that we have here another reference to the great record preserved in the land of the Deluge? Were not the pyramids of Egypt and America imitations of similar structures in Atlantis? Might not the building of such a gigantic edifice have given rise to the legends existing on both continents in regard to a Tower of Babel?

How did the human mind hit upon this singular edifice--the pyramid? By what process of development did it reach it? Why should these extraordinary structures crop out on the banks of the Nile, and amid the forests and plains of America? And why, in both countries, should they stand with their sides square to the four cardinal points of the compass? Are they in this, too, a reminiscence of the Cross, and of the four rivers of Atlantis that ran to the north, south, east, and west?

"There is yet a third combination that demands a specific notice. The decussated symbol is not unfrequently planted upon what Christian archlogists designate 'a calvary,' that is, upon a mount or a cone. Thus it is represented in both hemispheres. The megalithic structure of Callernish, in the island of Lewis before mentioned, is the most perfect example of the practice extant in Europe. The mount is preserved to this day. This, to be brief, was the recognized conventional mode of expressing a particular primitive truth or mystery from the days of the Chaldeans to those of the Gnostics, or from one extremity of the civilized world to the other. It is seen in the treatment of the ash Yggdrasill of the Scandinavians, as well as in that of the Bo-tree of the Buddhists. The prototype was not the Egyptian, but the Babylonian crux ansata, the lower member of which constitutes a conical support for the oval or sphere above it. With the Gnostics, who occupied the debatable ground between primitive Christianity and philosophic paganism, and who inscribed it upon their tombs, the cone symbolized death as well as life. In every heathen mythology it was the universal emblem of the goddess or mother of heaven, by whatsoever name she was addressed--whether as Mylitta, Astarte, Aphrodite, Isis, Mata, or Venus; and the several eminences consecrated to her worship were, like those upon which Jupiter was originally adored, of a conical or pyramidal shape. This, too, is the ordinary form of the altars dedicated to the Assyrian god of fertility. In exceptional instances the cone is introduced upon one or the other of the sides, or is distinguishable in the always accompanying mystical tree." (Edinburgh Review, July, 1870.)

If the reader will again turn to page 104 of this work he will see that the tree appears on the top of the pyramid or mountain in both the Aztec representations of Aztlan, the original island-home of the Central American races.

The writer just quoted believes that Mr. Faber is correct in his opinion that the pyramid is a transcript of the sacred mountain which stood in the midst of Eden, the Olympus of Atlantis. He adds:

"Thomas Maurice, who is no mean authority, held the same view. He conceived the use to which pyramids in particular were anciently applied to have been threefold--namely, as tombs, temples, and observatories; and this view he labors to establish in the third volume of his 'Indian Antiquities.' Now, whatever may be their actual date, or with whatsoever people they may have originated, whether in Africa or Asia, in the lower valley of the Nile or in the plains of Chaldea, the pyramids of Egypt were unquestionably destined to very opposite purposes. According, to Herodotus, they were introduced by the Hyksos; and Proclus, the Platonic philosopher, connects them with the science of astronomy--a science which, he adds, the Egyptians derived from the Chaldeans. Hence we may reasonably infer that they served as well for temples for planetary worship as for observatories. Subsequently to the descent of the shepherds, their hallowed precincts were invaded by royalty, from motives of pride and superstition; and the principal chamber in each was used as tombs."

The pyramidal imitations, dear to the hearts of colonists of the sacred mountain upon which their gods dwelt, was devoted, as perhaps the mountain itself was, to sun and fire worship. The same writer says:

"That Sabian worship once extensively prevailed in the New World is a well-authenticated fact; it is yet practised to some extent by the wandering tribes on the Northern continent, and was the national religion of the Peruvians at the time of the Conquest. That it was also the religion of their more highly civilized predecessors on the soil, south of the equator more especially, is evidenced by the remains of fire-altars, both round and square, scattered about the shores of lakes Umayu and Titicaca, and which are the counterparts of the Gueber dokh mehs overhanging the Caspian Sea. Accordingly, we find, among these and other vestiges of antiquity that indissolubly connected those long-since extinct populations in the New with the races of the Old World, the well-defined symbol of the Maltese Cross. On the Mexican feroher before alluded to, and which is most elaborately carved in bass-relief on a massive piece of polygonous granite, constituting a portion of a cyclopean wall, the cross is enclosed within the ring, and accompanying it are four tassel-like ornaments, graved equally well. Those accompaniments, however, are disposed without any particular regard to order, but the four arms of the cross, nevertheless, severally and accurately point to the cardinal quarters, The same regularity is observable on a much smaller but not less curious monument, which was discovered some time since in an ancient Peruvian huaca or catacomb--namely, a syrinx or pandean pipe, cut out of a solid mass of lapis ollaris, the sides of which are profusely ornamented, not only with Maltese crosses, but also with other symbols very similar in style to those inscribed on the obelisks of Egypt and on the monoliths of this country. The like figure occurs on the equally ancient Otrusco black pottery. But by far the most remarkable example of this form of the Cross in the New World is that which appears on a second type of the Mexican feroher, engraved on a tablet of gypsum, and which is described at length by its discoverer, Captain du Paix, and depicted by his friend, M. Barade. Here the accompaniments--a shield, a hamlet, and a couple of bead-annulets or rosaries--are, with a single exception, identical in even the minutest particular with an Assyrian monument emblematical of the Deity. . . .

"No country in the world can compare with India for the exposition of the pyramidal cross. There the stupendous labors of Egypt are rivalled, and sometimes surpassed. Indeed, but for the fact of such monuments of patient industry and unexampled skill being still in existence, the accounts of some others which have long since disappeared, having succumbed to the ravages of time and the fury of the bigoted Mussulman, would sound in our ears as incredible as the story of Porsenna's tomb, which 'o'ertopped old Pelion,' and made 'Ossa like a wart.' Yet something not very dissimilar in character to it was formerly the boast of the ancient city of Benares, on the banks of the Ganges. We allude to the great temple of Bindh Madhu, which was demolished in the seventeenth century by the Emperor Aurungzebe. Tavernier, the French baron, who travelled thither about the year 1680, has preserved a brief description of it. The body of the temple was constructed in the figure of a colossal cross (i. e., a St. Andrew's Cross), with a lofty dome at the centre, above which rose a massive structure of a pyramidal form. At the four extremities of the cross there were four other pyramids of proportionate dimensions, and which were ascended from the outside by steps, with balconies at stated distances for places of rest, reminding us of the temple of Belus, as described in the pages of Herodotus. The remains of a similar building are found at Mhuttra, on the banks of the Jumna. This and many others, including the subterranean temple at Elephanta and the caverns of Ellora and Salsette, are described at length in the well-known work by Maurice; who adds that, besides these, there was yet another device in which the Hindoo displayed the all-pervading sign; this was by pyramidal towers placed crosswise. At the famous temple of Chillambrum, on the Coromandel coast, there were seven lofty walls, one within the other, round the central quadrangle, and as many pyramidal gate-ways in the midst of each side which forms the limbs of a vast cross."

In Mexico pyramids were found everywhere. Cortez, in a letter to Charles V., states that he counted four hundred of them at Cholula. Their temples were on those "high-places." The most ancient pyramids in Mexico are at Teotihuacan, eight leagues from the city of Mexico; the two largest were dedicated to the sun and moon respectively, each built of cut stone, with a level area at the summit, and four stages leading up to it. The larger one is 680 feet square at the base, about 200 feet high, and covers an area of eleven acres. The Pyramid of Cholula, measured by Humboldt, is 160 feet high, 1400 feet square at the base, and covers forty five acres! The great pyramid of Egypt, Cheops, is 746 feet square, 450 feet high, and covers between twelve and thirteen acres. So that it appears that the base of the Teotihuacan structure is nearly as large as that of Cheops, while that of Cholula covers nearly four times as much space. The Cheops pyramid, however, exceeds very much in height both the American structures.

Ser Garcia y Cubas thinks the pyramids of Teotihuacan (Mexico) were built for the same purpose as those of Egypt. He considers the analogy established in eleven particulars, as follows: 1, the site chosen is the same; 2, the structures are orientated with slight variation; 3, the line through the centres of the structures is in the astronomical meridian; 4, the construction in grades and steps is the same; 5, in both cases the larger pyramids are dedicated to the sun; 6, the Nile has "a valley of the dead," as in Teotihuacan there is "a street of the dead;" 7, some monuments in each class have the nature of fortifications; 8, the smaller mounds are of the same nature and for the same purpose; 9, both pyramids have a small mound joined to one of their faces; 10, the openings discovered in the Pyramid of the Moon are also found in some Egyptian pyramids; 11, the interior arrangements of the pyramids are analogous. ("Ensayo de un Estudio.")

It is objected that the American edifices are different in form from the Egyptian, in that they are truncated, or flattened at the top; but this is not an universal rule.

"In many of the ruined cities of Yucatan one or more pyramids have been found upon the summit of which no traces of any building could be discovered, although upon surrounding pyramids such structures could be found. There is also some reason to believe that perfect pyramids have been found in America. Waldeck found near Palenque two pyramids in a state of perfect preservation, square at the base, pointed at the top, and thirty-one feet high, their sides forming equilateral triangles." (Bancroft's Native Races," vol. v., p. 58.)

Bradford thinks that some of the Egyptian pyramids, and those which with some reason it has been supposed are the most ancient, are precisely similar to the Mexican teocalli." ("North Americans of Antiquity" p. 423.)

And there is in Egypt another form of pyramid called the mastaba, which, like the Mexican, was flattened on the top; while in Assyria structures flattened like the Mexican are found. "In fact," says one writer, "this form of temple (the flat-topped) has been found from Mesopotamia to the Pacific Ocean." The Phnicians also built pyramids. In the thirteenth century the Dominican Brocard visited the ruins of the Phnician city of Mrith or Marathos, and speaks in the strongest terms of admiration of those pyramids of surprising grandeur, constructed of blocks of stone from twenty-six to twenty-eight feet long, whose thickness exceeded the stature of a tall man. ("Prehistoric Nations," p. 144.)

"If," says Ferguson, "we still hesitate to pronounce that there was any connection between the builders of the pyramids of Suku and Oajaca, or the temples of Xochialco and Boro Buddor, we must at least allow that the likeness is startling, and difficult to account for on the theory of mere accidental coincidence."

The Egyptian pyramids all stand with their sides to the cardinal points, while many of the Mexican pyramids do likewise.

PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT.

The Egyptian pyramids were penetrated by small passage-ways; so were the Mexican. The Pyramid of Teotihuacan, according to Almarez, has, at a point sixty-nine feet from the base, a gallery large enough to admit a man crawling on hands and knees, which extends, inward, on an incline, a distance of twenty feet, and terminates in two square wells or chambers, each five feet square and one of them fifteen feet deep.

PYRAMIDS OF TEOTIHUACAN.

Mr. Lenstern states, according to Mr. Bancroft ("Native Races," vol. iv., p. 533), that "the gallery is one hundred and fifty-seven feet long, increasing in height to over six feet and a half as it penetrates the pyramid; that the well is over six feet square, extending (apparently) down to the base and up to the summit; and that other cross-galleries are blocked up by dris." In the Pyramid of Cheops there is a similar opening or passage-way forty-nine feet above the base; it is three feet eleven inches high, and three feet five and a half inches wide; it leads down a slope to a sepulchral chamber or well, and connects with other passage-ways leading up into the body of the pyramid.

THE GREAT MOUND, NEAR MIAMISBURG, OHIO.

In both the Egyptian the American pyramids the outside of the structures was covered with a thick coating of smooth, shining cement.

Humboldt considered the Pyramid of Cholula of the same type as the Temple of Jupiter Belus, the pyramids of Meidoun Dachhour, and the group of Sakkarah, in Egypt.

GREAT PYRAMID OF XCOCH, MEXICO.

In both America and Egypt the pyramids were used as places of sepulture; and it is a remarkable fact that the system of earthworks and mounds, kindred to the pyramids, is found even in England. Silsbury Hill, at Avebury, is an artificial mound one hundred and seventy feet high. It is connected with ramparts, avenues (fourteen hundred and eighty yards long), circular ditches, and stone circles, almost identical with those found in the valley of the Mississippi. In Ireland the dead were buried in vaults of stone, and the earth raised over them in pyramids flattened on the top. They were called "moats" by the people. We have found the stone vaults at the base of similar truncated pyramids in Ohio. There can be no doubt that the pyramid was a developed and perfected mound, and that the parent form of these curious structures is to be found in Silsbury Hill, and in the mounds of earth of Central America and the Mississippi Valley.

We find the emblem of the Cross in pre-Christian times venerated as a holy symbol on both sides of the Atlantic; and we find it explained as a type of the four rivers of the happy island where the civilization of the race originated.

We find everywhere among the European and American nations the memory of an Eden of the race, where the first men dwelt in primeval peace and happiness, and which was afterward destroyed by water.

We find the pyramid on both sides of the Atlantic, with its four sides pointing, like the arms of the Cross, to the four cardinal points-a reminiscence of Olympus; and in the Aztec representation of Olympos (Aztlan) we find the pyramid as the central and typical figure.

Is it possible to suppose all these extraordinary coincidences to be the result of accident? We might just as well say that the similarities between the American and English forms of government were not the result of relationship or descent, but that men placed in similar circumstances had spontaneously and necessarily reached the same results.

Mesopotamia

with thanks to The History Guide

What is good in a man's sight is evil for a god, What is evil to a man's mind is good for his god. Who can comprehend the counsel of the gods in heaven? The plan of a god is deep waters, who can fathom of it? Where has befuddled mankind ever learned what is a god's conduct?

---

Before Civilization

Between 9000 B.C. and the beginning of the Christian era, western civilization came into being in Egypt and in what historians call Ancient Western Asia (modern-day Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Turkey, south-western Russia, Iraq and Iran). The earliest permanent settlements occurred between 9000-6000 B.C. and were accompanied by the domestication of plants and animals. Between 4000-3000 B.C., the first cities appeared in response to the pressures of population growth, the organizational requirements of irrigation and the demands of more complex trade patterns. According to our previous definitions, these societies of Egypt and Ancient Western Asia correspond to what we would call civilization.

Around 10,000 B.C., many hunter-gatherers living along the coastal plains of modern Syria and Israel and in the valleys and hills near the Zagros Mountains between Iran and Iraq began to develop special strategies that led to a transformation in the human community. Rather than constantly travelling in search of food, people stayed in one region and exploited the seasonal sources of food, including fish, grain, fruits and game. At a community such as Jericho, people built and rebuilt their mud brick and stone huts rather than moving on as had their ancestors. In general, these communities began to focus on seasonal food sources and so were less likely to leave in search of new sources.

Just why hunters and gatherers in this region of the ancient world turned to agriculture is difficult to say. And there are a variety of problems associated with this transformation. For one thing, specialization in a relatively small number of plants or animals could spell disaster during times of famine. Some scholars have argued that agriculture developed out of an increased population and the development of a political hierarchy. In settled communities, infant mortality decreased and life expectancy rose. This change may have occurred since life in a fixed community was less demanding. The practice of infanticide decreased since children could now be used in rudimentary agricultural tasks. And as population growth put pressure on the local food supply, gathering activities required more coordination and organization and led eventually to the development of political leadership.

Settlements began to encourage the growth of plants such as barley and lentils and the domestication of pigs, sheep and goats. People no longer looked for their favorite food sources where they occurred naturally. Now they introduced them into other locations. An agricultural revolution had begun.

The ability to domesticate goats, pigs, sheep and cattle and to cultivate grains and vegetables changed human communities from passive harvesters of nature to active partners with it. The ability to expand the food supply in one area allowed the development of permanent settlements of greater size and complexity. The people of the Neolithic or New Stone Age (8000-5000 B.C.) organized fairly large villages. Jericho grew into a fortified town complete with ditches, stone walls, and towers and contained perhaps 2000 residents. Catal H in southern Turkey may have been substantially larger.

Although agriculture resulted in a stable food supply for permanent communities, the revolutionary aspect of this development was that the community could bring what they needed (natural resources plus their tool kit) to make a new site inhabitable. This development made it possible to create larger communities and also helped to spread the practice of agriculture to a wider area. Farmers in Catal-H cultivated plants that came from hundreds of miles away. The presence of tools and statues made of stone not available locally indicates that there was also some trading with distant regions.

Agricultural society brought changes in the organization of religious practices as well. Sanctuary rooms decorated with frescoes and sculptures of the heads of bulls and bears shows us that structured religious rites were important to the inhabitants of these early communities. At Jericho, human skulls were covered with clay in an attempt to make them look as they had in life suggesting that they practiced a form of ancestor worship. Bonds of kinship that had united hunters and gatherers were being supplemented by religious organization, which helped to regulate the social behaviour of the community.

Around 1500 B.C., a new theme appears on the cliff walls at Tassili-n-Ajjer. We see men herding horses and driving horse-drawn chariots. These practices had emerged more than fifteen hundred years earlier in Mesopotamia, a desert plain stretching to the marshes near the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Chariots symbolized a dynamic and expansive phase in western culture. Constructed of wood and bronze and used for transport as well as for warfare, the chariot is symbolic of the culture of early river civilizations, the first civilizations in Ancient Western Asia.

Mesopotamian Civilization

The history and culture of Mesopotamian civilization is inextricably connected to the ebb and flow of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The earliest communities developed to the north but since rainfall in that area was so unpredictable, by 5000 B.C. communities had spread south to the rich alluvial plain. The economy of these communities was primarily agricultural and approximately 100-200 people lived in these permanently established villages. The alluvial plain in southern Mesopotamia ("land between the rivers") was far more fertile than the north but because there was little rainfall, irrigation ditches had to be constructed. Furthermore, the river beds of the Tigris and Euphrates rise and fall with the seasons and they change their course unpredictably. Southern Mesopotamia also had its share of flash floods which could destroy crops, livestock and village homes. Floods and torrential rains were a significant theme in Mesopotamian literature as depicted in the EPIC OF GILGAMESH.

The rampant flood which no man can oppose,
Which shakes the heavens and causes earth to tremble,
In an appalling blanket folds mother and child,
Beats down the canebrake's full luxuriant greenery,
And drowns the harvest in its time of ripeness.

Rising waters, grievous to eyes of man, All-powerful flood, which forces the embankments And mows down mighty trees, Frenzied storm, tearing all things in massed confusion With it in hurling speed.

Civilization emerged in Mesopotamia because the soil provided a surplus of food. With this surplus, people could settle down to village life and with these new settlements, towns and cities began to make their appearance, a process known as urbanization. With settlements and a surplus of food came an increase in the population, a well-defined division of labor, organization, cooperation and kingship. The emergence of cities involved interaction between people. Most cities evolved from smaller farming villages and with the practice of irrigation, which was necessary for villages distant from the Tigris and Euphrates, a stable food supply was produced. This, in turn, allowed increases in the number of people who inhabited each settlement.

Because the land closest to the river was the most fertile, there was a variation in terms of the wealth of these early farmers, which led to distinct social classes. At the same time, the construction of canals, ditches and dikes essential to irrigation demanded cooperation between different social groups. Decision-making, regulation and control of all food production and herding meant cooperation. And because more food could be produced by less people, some people gave up farming and became craftsmen, labourers, merchants and officials and this too required cooperation. The Mesopotamians built massive temples or ziggurats which housed the priestly class, the human representatives of the gods. The priests controlled the religious life of the community, the economy, land ownership, the employment of workers as well as the management of long distance trade.

Mesopotamian villages and towns eventually evolved into independent and nearly self-sufficient city-states. Although largely economically dependent on one another, these city-states were independent political entities and retained very strong isolationist tendencies. This isolationism hindered the unification of the Mesopotamian city-states, which eventually grew to twelve in number.

By 3000 B.C., Mesopotamian civilization had made contact with other cultures of the Fertile Crescent (a term first coined by James Breasted in 1916, an extensive trade network connecting Mesopotamia with the rest of Ancient Western Asia. Again, it was the two rivers which served as both trade and transportation routes.

The achievements of Mesopotamian civilization were numerous. Agriculture, thanks to the construction of irrigation ditches, became the primary method of subsistence. Farming was further simplified by the introduction of the plow. We also find the use of wheel-made pottery. Between 3000 and 2900 B.C. craft specialization and industries began to emerge (ceramic pottery, metallurgy and textiles). Evidence for this exists in the careful planning and construction of the monumental buildings such as the temples and ziggurats. During this period (roughly 3000 B.C.), cylinder seals became common. These cylindrical stone seals were five inches in height and engraved with images. These images were reproduced by rolling the cylinder over wet clay. The language of these seals remained unknown until to 20th century. But, scholars now agree that the language of these tablets was Sumerian.

Ancient Sumer

The Sumerians inhabited southern Mesopotamia from 3000-2000 B.C. The origins of the Sumerians is unclear -- what is clear is that Sumerian civilization dominated Mesopotamian law, religion, art, literature and science for nearly seven centuries.

The greatest achievement of Sumerian civilization was their CUNEIFORM ("wedge-shaped") system of writing. Using a reed stylus, they made wedge-shaped impressions on wet clay tablets which were then baked in the sun. Once dried, these tablets were virtually indestructible and the several hundred thousand tablets which have been found tell us a great deal about the Sumerians. Originally, Sumerian writing was pictographic, that is, scribes drew pictures of representations of objects. Each sign represented a word identical in meaning to the object pictured, although pictures could often represent more than the actual object.

The pictographic system proved cumbersome and the characters were gradually simplified and their pictographic nature gave way to conventional signs that represented ideas. For instance, the sign for a star could also be used to mean heaven, sky or god. The next major step in simplification was the development of phonetization in which characters or signs were used to represent sounds. So, the character for water was also used to mean "in," since the Sumerian words for "water" and "in" sounded similar. With a phonetic system, scribes could now represent words for which there were no images (signs), thus making possible the written expression of abstract ideas.

The Sumerians used writing primarily as a form of record keeping. The most common cuneiform tablets record transactions of daily life: tallies of cattle kept by herdsmen for their owners, production figures, lists of taxes, accounts, contracts and other facets of organizational life in the community. Another large category of cuneiform writing included a large number of basic texts which were used for the purpose of teaching future generations of scribes. By 2500 B.C. there were schools built just for his purpose.

The city-state was Sumer's most important political entity. The city-states were a loose collection of territorially small cities which lacked unity with one another. Each city-state consisted of an urban center and its surrounding farmland. The city-states were isolated from one another geographically and so the independence of each city-state became a cultural norm with important consequences. For instance, it was held that each city-state was the estate of a particular god: Nannar (moon) was said to have watched over the city-state of Ur; Uruk had An (sky), Sippar had Utu (sun) and Enki (earth) could be found at Eridu. Nippur, the earliest centre of Sumerian religion, was dedicated to Enlil, god of wind (Enlil was supplanted by Marduk at Babylon). Each city-state was sacred since it was carefully guarded by and linked to a specific god or goddess. Located near the centre of each city-state was a temple. Occupying several acres, this sacred area consisted of a ziggurat with a temple at the top dedicated to the god or goddess who "owned" the city. The temple complex was the true centre of the community. The main god or goddess dwelt there symbolically in the form of a statue, and the ceremony of dedication included a ritual that linked the statue to the god or goddess and thus harnessed the power of the deity for the benefit of the city-state. Considerable wealth was poured into the construction of temples as well as other buildings used for the residences of priests and priestesses who attended to the needs of the gods. The priests also controlled all economic activities since the economy was "redistributive." Farmers would bring their produce to the the priests at the ziggurat. The priests would "feed" and "clothe" the gods and then redistribute the remainder to the people of the community.

With its rather large pantheon of gods and goddesses animating all aspects of life, Sumerian religion was polytheistic in nature. By far, the most important deities were An, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursaga. An was the god of the sky and hence the most important force in the universe. He was also viewed as the source of all authority including the earthly power of rulers and fathers alike. In one myth, the gods address them in the following manner:

What you have ordered comes true! The utterance of Prince and Lord is but what you have ordered, do agree with.
O An! your great command takes precedence, who could gainsay it?
O father of the gods, your command, the very foundations of heaven and earth, what god could spurn it?

Enlil, god of wind, was considered the second greatest power of the universe and became the symbol of the proper use of force and authority on earth. As the god of wind, Enlil controlled both the fertility of the soil and destructive storms. This dual nature of Enlil inspired a justifiable fear of him:

What has he planned? . . .
What is in my father's heart?
What is in Enlil's holy mind?
What has he planned against me in his holy mind?
A net he spread: the net of an enemy; a snare he set: the snare of an enemy.
He has stirred up the waters and will catch the fishes, he has cast his net, and will bring down the birds too.

Enki was god of the earth. Since the earth was the source of life-giving waters, Enki was also god of rivers, wells, and canals. He also represented the waters of creativity and was responsible for inventions and crafts. Ninhursaga began as a goddess associated with soil, mountains, and vegetation. Eventually she was worshipped as a mother goddess, a "mother of all children," who manifested her power by giving birth to kings.

Although these four deities were supreme, there were numerous gods and goddesses below them. One group included the astral deities, who were all grandchildren and great-grandchildren of An. These included Utu, god of the sun, the moon god Nannar, and Inanna, goddess of the morning and evening star as well as of war and rain. Unlike humans, these gods and goddesses were divine and immortal. But they were not all-powerful since no one god had control over the entire universe. Furthermore, humans were capable of devising ways to discover the will of the gods and to influence them as well.

The relationship of human beings to the gods was based on subservience since, according to Sumerian myth, human beings were created to do the manual labour the gods were unwilling to do for themselves. As a consequence, humans were insecure since they could never be sure of the god's actions. But humans did make attempts to circumvent or relieve their anxiety by discovering the intentions of the gods; these efforts gave rise to the development of the arts of divination, which took a variety of forms. A common form, at least for kings and priests who could afford it, involved killing animals, such as sheep or goats, and examining their livers or other organs. Supposedly, features seen in the organs of the sacrificed animals foretold of events to come. Private individuals relied on cheaper divinatory techniques. These included interpreting patterns of smoke from burning incense or the pattern formed when oil was poured into water.

The Sumerian art of divination arose from a desire to discover the purpose of the gods. If people could decipher the signs that foretold events, the events would be predictable and humans could act wisely. But the Sumerians also developed cultic arts to influence good powers (gods and goddesses) whose decisions could determine human destiny and to ward off evil powers (demons). These cultic arts included ritualistic formulas, such as spells against evil spirits, or prayers or hymns to the gods to win their positive influence. Since only the priests knew the precise rituals, it is not difficult to understand the important role they exercised in a society dominated by a belief in the reality of spiritual powers.

The Code of Hammurabi

Mesopotamian men and women viewed themselves as subservient to the gods and believed humans were at the mercy of the god's arbitrary decisions. To counter their insecurity, the Mesopotamians not only developed the arts of divination in order to understand the wishes of their gods, but also relieved some anxiety by establishing codes that regulated their relationships with one another. These law codes became an integral part of Mesopotamian society. Although there were early Sumerian law codes, the best-preserved Mesopotamian collection of law codes was that of Hammurabi (fl.18th century B.C.).

The CODE OF HAMMURABI reveals a society of strict justice. Penalties for criminal offences were severe and varied according to the wealth of the individual. According to the code, there were three social classes in Babylonia: an upper class of nobles (government officials, priests, and warriors), the class of freemen (merchants, artisans, professionals, and wealthy farmers), and a lower class of slaves. An offence against a member of the upper class was punished with more severity than the same offence against a member of a lower class. The principle of retaliation ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth") was fundamental. It was applied in cases where members of the upper class committed criminal offences against their own social equals. But for offences against members of the lower classes, a money payment was made instead.

Mesopotamian society, like any other society, had its share of crime. Burglary was common. If a person stole goods belonging to the temples, he was put to death, and so was the person who received the stolen goods. If the private property of an individual was stolen, the thief had to make a tenfold restitution. If he could not do so he was put to death. An offender caught attempting to loot a burning house was to be "thrown into that fire."

Private individuals were often responsible for bringing charges before a court of law. To insure that accusations were not brought lightly, the accuser in cases of murder was responsible for proving his case against the defendant. If the accuser could not, he was put to death. Providing false testimony in a murder case meant the same fate.

Hammurabi's code took seriously the responsibilities of all public officials. The governor of an area and city officials were expected to catch burglars. If they failed to do so, public officials in which the crime took place had to replace the lost property. If murderers were not found, the officials had to pay a fine to the relatives of the murdered person. Soldiers were also expected to fill their duties. If a soldier hired a substitute to fight for him, he was put to death, and a substitute was given control of his estate.

The law code also extended into the daily life of the ordinary citizen. Builders were held responsible for the buildings they constructed. If a house collapsed and caused the death of its owner, the builder was put to death. Goods destroyed by the collapsed must also be replaced and the house itself rebuilt at the builder's expense.

Slavery was a common feature of Mesopotamian society. Slaves were obtained by war; others were criminals. Crimes such as striking one's older brother and kicking one's mother were punished by condemnation to slavery. A man could pay his debts by selling both his children and wife into slavery for a specified length of time. One could become a slave simply by going into debt.

Slaves were used in temples, in public buildings, and in the homes of private individuals. Most temple slaves were women who did domestic chores. Royal slaves were used to construct buildings and fortifications. Slaves owned by private citizens performed domestic chores. The laws were harsh for those slaves who tried to escape or who were disobedient. "If a male slave has said to his master, 'You are now my master,' his master shall prove him to be his slave and cut off his ear." Despite such harsh measures, slaves did possess a number of privileges: they could hold property, participate in business, marry free man or women, and eventually purchased their own freedom.

The number of laws in Hammurabi's code dedicated to land and commerce reveal the importance of agriculture and trade in Mesopotamian society. Numerous laws dealt with questions of landholding, such as the establishment of conditions for renting farmland. Tenant farming was the basis of Mesopotamian agriculture. Ten farmers paid their annual rent in crops rather than money. Laws concerning land-use and irrigation were especially strict. If a landowner or tenant failed to keep dikes in good repair he was required to pay for the grain that was destroyed. If he could not pay he was sold into slavery and his goods sold, the proceeds of which were divided among the injured parties. Rates of interest on loans were watched carefully. If the lender raised his rate of interest after a loan was made, he lost the entire amount of the loan. The Code of Hammurabi also specified the precise wages of labourers and artisans.

The largest number of laws in the Code of Hammurabi were dedicated to marriage and family. Parents arranged marriages for their children. After marriage, the party signed a marriage contract. Without this contract, no one was considered legally married. While the husband provided a bridal payment, the woman's parents were responsible for a dowry to the husband. Dowries were carefully monitored and governed by regulations.

Mesopotamian society was a patriarchal society, and so women possessed far fewer privileges and rights in their marriage. A woman's place was at home and failure to fulfil her duties was grounds for divorce. If she was not able to bear children, her husband could divorce her but he had to repay the dowry. If his wife tried to leave the home in order to engage in business, her husband could divorce her and did not have to repay the dowry. Furthermore, if his wife was a "gadabout, . . . neglecting her house [and] humiliating her husband," she could be drowned.

Women were guaranteed some rights, however. If a woman was divorced without good reason she received the dowry back. A woman could seek divorce and get her dowry back if her husband was unable to show that she had done anything wrong. The mother also chose a son to whom an inheritance would be passed.

Sexual relations were strictly regulated as well. Husbands, but not wives, were permitted sexual activity outside marriage. A wife caught committing adultery was pitched into the river. Incest was strictly forbidden. If a father committed incestuous relations with his daughter, he would be banished. Incest between a son and his mother resulted in both being burned.

Fathers ruled their children as well as their wives. Obedience was expected: "If a son has struck his father, they shall cut off his hand." If a son committed a serious enough offence, his father could disinherit him. It should be clear that the Code of Hammurabi covered virtually every aspect of an individual's life. Although scholars have questioned the extent to which these laws were actually employed in Babylonian society, the Code of Hammurabi provides us an important glimpse into the values of Mesopotamian civilization.

The Akkadian Kingdom

The Sumerians were not the only people to inhabit the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia. There were other groups of people who lived in permanent communities and who interacted with the Sumerians in times of peace and in war. By 2350 B.C., Semitic-speaking people united northern Mesopotamia with the Sumerian city-states and a new capital was set up at Akkad. The result was a centralized government under the authority of the king, his royal court, and the high class of priests.

The man most responsible for this development is assumed to be Sargon. Sargon, whose name is taken to mean "the king is legitimate," carried out more than thirty battles against the Sumerian city-states and eventually, these city-states were incorporated into the Akkadian kingdom.

The foundation of the Akkadian state was economic. Sargon and his royal court served as the focal point of all economic activity. Remember, at Sumer, this task was assumed by the priests of the temple. Sargon brought vast amounts of wealth to the capital city he also brought a huge number of royal servants and administrators, thus creating a bureaucratic organization to help rule his kingdom.

The Akkadian kingdom, like most Ancient Near Eastern kingdoms, also embraced a polytheistic religion. Their gods were anthropomorphic, that is, the gods took human form. And because the gods took human form, they also had human qualities: the gods could be foolish, intelligent, shy, humorous, jealous, angry or silly. Among themselves, the gods also had unequal status. The gods were derived from the world of nature for the simple reason that life in Mesopotamia was controlled or conditioned by the seasons. Theirs was a world of nature and in order to understand nature, the Mesopotamians gave human shape to the forces of nature. So, we encounter An, the sky god, Enlil, the god of air, Nanna, the moon god and Utu, the sun god. The Mesopotamians believed these gods were responsible for creating the universe and everything it contained, including humankind. The gods were also responsible for the smooth running of that world. The gods ruled the world of men through their earthly representatives, and in the case of the Akkadian kingdom, this meant Sargon. Hopefully, you can already notice the decreased status of the temple priests at Akkad. Although they still exist, and continue to serve a vital role, the mediator between the gods and ordinary men and women, is now Sargon.

Men and women were created by the gods to serve the gods to feed and clothe them, to honour and obey them. One thing absent from this religion, however, was that the gods did not specify any code of ethics or morality. Issues of good and evil were left to men and women to discover on their own. In the end, the gods gave the inhabitants of these early river civilizations an answer to the basic question why are we here? what is our role? And the answer was equally simple to serve the gods.

Clay Tablets from Sumer, Babylon and Assyria

This page is added because a lot of my readers complained about the absence of pictures of the published texts so I gathered some pictures of clay tablets from the internet, most of them are mentioned in my book as well as in the ancient texts in my Babylon and Sumer section.

To enlarge the pictures click on them

Special Thanks to The Schoyen Collection, worth a visit.

The Schen Collection comprises most types of manuscripts from the whole world spanning over 5000 years. It is the largest private manuscript collection formed in the 20th century. The whole collection, MSS 1-5268, comprises 13,497 manuscript items, including 2,174 volumes. 6,850 manuscript items are from the ancient period, 3300 BC - 500 AD; 3,864 are from the medieval period, 500 - 1500; and 2,783 are post-medieval. Never before there has been formed a collection with such variety geographically, linguistically, textually, and of scripts, writing materials, etc., over such a great span of time as 5 millennia.

The Schen Collection is located mainly in Oslo and London. Scholars are always welcome, and are strongly encouraged to do research and to publish material. Parts of the collection are deposited with universities and public libraries to facilitate access for scholars. Over 90 % of the MSS are unpublished at present.

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Sumerian history

MS 2426 Sumer, ca. 2385 BC

MS 4556 Sumer, ca. 2217-2193 BC

MS 2814 Sumer, 2100-1800 BC

MS 2855 Babylonia, 2000-1800 BC

MS 2110/1 Babylonia 1900-1700 BC

MS 5103 Babylonia 1900-1700 BC

MS 2426

ROYAL INSCRIPTION OF GISHAKIDU OF UMMA: WHEN SHARA SAID TO ENLIL, AND STOOD AT HIS SERVICE, GISHAKIDU, THE BELOVED OF SHARA - HERO AND FIERCE ENCHANTER OF SUMER, THE BOLD ONE WHO TURNS BACK THE LANDS, THE CONQUEROR OF NIN-URRA, THE MOTHERLY COUNSELLOR OF ENKI, THE BELOVED COMPANION OF ISHTARAN, THE MIGHTY FARMER OF ENLIL, THE KING CHOSEN BY INANNA; HE DUG THE CANALS, HE SET UP THE STELES -

MS in Sumerian on limestone, Umma, Sumer, ca. 2385 BC, 1/3 of a truncated cone, h. 11,9 cm, originally ca. 35 cm, diam. 5,3-7,3 cm, 2 columns, compartments with 30 lines in a transitional linear script between pictographic and cuneiform script.

Context: Continuation of the text (mainly listing the boundaries of Shara of Umma) on British Museum terracotta vase, former Erlenmeyer Collection (Christie's 13.12.1988:60), and also related to The Louvre AO 19225, a gold beard from a statue which alludes to the existence of King Gishakidu.

For another foundation inscription of Gishakidu of Umma, see MS 4983.

Commentary: The cone and the vase relate to the Umma-Lagash border conflict that lasted over the reign of many kings between ca. 2450 and 2300 BC, with many bloody battles. This conflict is the earliest well documented piece of history. All the written and artistic materials came from Lagash, such as the stele of the vultures in The Louvre. The cone and the vase for the first time tell the history from Umma's point of view. The present MS also reveals the unknown king of the British Museum vase, and dates it to ca. 2385 BC.

Information kindly given by Mark Wilson who will publish the text.

MS 4556

ROYAL INSCRIPTION OF KING SHAR-KALI-SHARRI OF AKKAD, DESCRIBING HIS CAMPAIGNS AND CONQUESTS

MS in Sumerian on light green translucent alabaster, Akkad, Sumer, ca. 2217-2193 BC, 1 partial tablet, 10,0x11,5x4,7 cm, (originally at least ca. 20x25x5 cm), 2+2 columns (originally 5+5 columns), 18 compartments remaining in a formal archaizing cuneiform script of high quality.

Commentary: This was originally a luxury inscription of impressive size and beauty. No royal inscriptions have so far been published of this king, who is known from other sources, including monumental inscriptions. The king's name have been recut, after another name had been erased, possibly of the previous king, Naram-S (2254-2218 BC).

MS 2814

ROYAL INSCRIPTION COMMEMORATING DEFEAT OF MAGAN, MELUKHAM, ELAM(?), AND AMURRU, AND ESTABLISHMENT OF REGULAR OFFERINGS TO HIS STATUE; SCHOOL TEXT?

MS in Neo Sumerian and Old Babylonian on clay, Sumer, 2100-1800 BC, 1 tablet, 14,8x14,0x3,3 cm (originally ca. 16x14x3 cm), 3+3 columns, 103 lines in cuneiform script.

Commentary: The text was copied from a Sargonic royal inscription on a statue in the Ur III or early Old Babylonian period. Magan was at Oman and at the Iranian side of the Gulf. Meluhha or Melukham was the Indus Valley civilisation (ca. 2500-1800 BC). This is one of fairly few references to the Indus civilisation on tablets. The 3 best known references are: 1. Sargon of Akkad (2334-2279 BC) referring to ships from Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun; 2. Naram-Sin (2254-2218 BC) referring to rebels to his rule, listing the rebellious kings, including '(..)ibra, man of Melukha'; and 3. Gudea of Lagash (2144-2124 BC) referring to Meluhhans that came from their country and sold gold dust, carnelian, etc. There are further references in literary texts. After ca. 1760 BC Melukha is not mentioned any more. For Indus MSS in The Schen Collection, see MS 2645 (actually linking the Old Acadian and Indus civilisations), MSS 4602, 4617, 4619, 5059, 5061, 5062 and 5065.

Exhibited: Tigris 25th anniversary exhibition. The Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo, 30.1. - 15.9.2003.

MS 2855

LIST OF KINGS AND CITIES FROM BEFORE THE FLOOD

IN ERIDU: ALULIM RULED AS KING 28,800 YEARS. ELALGAR RULED 43,200 YEARS. ERIDU WAS ABANDONED. KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO BAD-TIBIRA. AMMILU'ANNA THE KING RULED 36,000 YEARS. ENMEGALANNA RULED 28,800 YEARS. DUMUZI RULED 28,800 YEARS. BAD-TIBIRA WAS ABANDONED. KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO LARAK. EN-SIPA-ZI-ANNA RULED 13,800 YEARS. LARAK WAS ABANDONED. KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO SIPPAR. MEDURANKI RULED 7,200 YEARS. SIPPAR WAS ABANDONED. KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO SHURUPPAK. UBUR-TUTU RULED 36,000 YEARS. TOTAL: 8 KINGS, THEIR YEARS: 222,600

MS in Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 2000-1800 BC, 1 tablet, 8,1x6,5x2,7 cm, single column, 26 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: 5 other copies of the Antediluvian king list are known only: MS 3175, 2 in Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, one is similar to this list, containing 10 kings and 6 cities, the other is a big clay cylinder of the Sumerian king list, on which the kings before the flood form the first section, and has the same 8 kings in the same 5 cities as the present.

A 4th copy is in Berkeley: Museum of the University of California, and is a school tablet. A 5th tablet, a small fragment, is in Istanbul.

Commentary: The list provides the beginnings of Sumerian and the worlds history as the Sumerians knew it. The cities listed were all very old sites, and the names of the kings are names of old types within Sumerian name-giving. Thus it is possible that correct traditions are contained, though the sequence given need not be correct. The city dynasties may have overlapped. It is generally held that the Antediluvian king list is reflected in Genesis 5, which lists the 10 patriarchs from Adam to Noah, all living from 365 years (Enoch) to 969 years (Methuselah), altogether 8,575 years. It is possible that the 222,600 years of the king list reflects a more realistic understanding of the huge span of time from Creation to the Flood, and the lengths of the dynasties involved. The first of the 5 cities mentioned , Eridu, is Uruk, in the area where the myths places the Garden of Eden, while the last city, Shuruppak, is the city of Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah.

MS 2110/1

1. DEBATE BETWEEN BIRD AND FISH; PART OF THE SUMERIAN CREATION STORY
2. CREATION OF THE WORLD, THE MAN AND THE HOE, 1 - 33, SUMERIAN MYTH

MS in Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 1900-1700 BC, 1 tablet, 24x17x5 cm, 2+2 columns, 42 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: Creation of the hoe is the text on MSS 2423/1-5, 2110/1, text 2, and 3293. Bird and Fish is also the text on MSS 2884 and 3325. About 50-60 sources for the Creation of the Hoe is known.

Commentary:

Text 1, a part of the Sumerian creation story; as a literary debate between the bird and the fish in which they argue for their usefulness in the universe as it was then conceived. It has a substantially variant form of the published text, and the end is unpublished. Parts of the text are similar to Genesis 1:20-22.

Text 2: The Sumerians believed that the hoe, one of their basic agricultural tools, in the beginning was given as a gift of the gods. A myth was created explaining the circumstances of this event. It opens with the Sumerian creation of the world and of man. There are parallels to both the Bible's 1st creation story: 'The Lord hastened to separate heaven from earth' (Gen. 1:6-10); 'and Daylight shone forth' (Gen. 1:3-5); and the 2nd creation story: 'The Lord put the (first) human in the brick mould, and Enlil's people emerged from the ground' (Gen. 2:7).

Exhibited: Tigris 25th anniversary exhibition. The Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo, 30.1. - 15.9.2003.

MS 5103

ICREATION OF THE WORLD, SUMERIAN MYTH: IN DISTANT DAYS, IN THOSE DAYS, AFTER DESTINIES HAD BEEN DECREED, AFTER AN AND ENLIL HAD SET UP THE REGULATIONS FOR HEAVEN AND EARTH, ENKI, THE EXALTED KNOWING GOD, LIKE A HIGH PRIEST WITH WIDE KNOWLEDGE, ENLIL-BANDA, IN THE LANDS WAS THEIR RULER. BY THE RULES FOR HEAVEN AND EARTH, THE FIXED RULES, HE SET UP CITIES. - HE DUG THE TIGRIS AND THE EUPHRATES. THEREUPON HE ESTABLISHED THE RULES OF THE LANDS. HE SET UP HAND-WASHING RITES, HE SET UP LIBATIONS

MS in Neo Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 1900-1700 BC, 1 tablet, 10,6x5,0x2,2 cm, single column, 26 lines in cuneiform script, the lines on reverse missing.

Commentary: The present text is unique, and different from the abbreviated creation story which introduces the creation of the hoe (MSS 2423/1-5, 2110/1, text 2, and 3293), and some Neo Babylonian epic of Creation, Enuma Elish, 1000 years later.

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Babylonian history

MS 1686 Babylonia, 1813-1812 BC

MS 1876/1 Babylonia, 1792-1750 BC

MS 1955/1 Syria, 1250-1240 BC

MS 2063 Babylon, 604-562 BC

MS 1686  

THE UR-ISIN KING LIST

1. LIST OF THE 5 KINGS OF THE UR III DYNASTY WITH REGNAL YEARS FROM KING UR-NAMMU 2112 BC TO KING IBBI-SIN 2004 BC
2. LIST OF THE 15 KINGS OF THE ISIN I DYNASTY WITH REGNAL YEARS FROM KING ISHBI-ERRA 2017 BC TO THE 4TH YEAR OF KING DAMIQ-ILISHU 1813 BC

MS in Old Babylonian with a few names in Sumerian on clay, Isin, Babylonia, 1813 or 1812 BC, 1 tablet, 5,6x3,9x2,0 cm, 21 lines in Old Babylonian cuneiform script.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 1993, red quarter morocco gilt folding case by Aquarius.

Context: An incomplete tablet with the same texts was Erlenmeyer Collection no. 115, now in a public institution. The texts were originally extracted from date lists, now lost.

Commentary: 17 different Babylonian and Assyrian King Lists have survived, mostly in fragmentary or worn condition. The present King List is the only one perfectly preserved and is the oldest as well. All others are in public collections. In addition there are 23 surviving Sumerian King Lists, all in public collections except MS 2855 . The importance of the King Lists for the chronology of the Babylonian and Assyrian Kingdoms can hardly be over-estimated. They are crucial tools and primary historical evidence for the historians.

Published: E. Sollberger: 'New Lists of the Kings of Ur and Isin', in: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 8(1954) pp. 135-6; and A.H. Grayson, King List 2 in the article 'Kiglisten und Chroniken' in Reallexicon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archaeologie, Berlin 1980, p. 90.

Exhibited: 1. Conference of European National Librarians, Oslo. Sept. 1994; 2. 'The Story of Time', Queen's House at the National Maritime Museum and The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Dec. 1999 - Sept. 2000.

MS 1876/1

HAMMURABI, MIGHTY KING, KING OF BABYLON, KING OF THE FOUR QUARTERS OF THE WORLD, THE BUILDER OF THE TEMPLE EZI-KALAM-MA ('HOUSE - THE LIFE OF THE LAND'), TEMPLE OF THE GODDESS INNANA IN ZABALA

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Zabala, Babylonia, 1792-1750 BC, 1 brick, 13x29x9 cm, originally ca. 33x29x9 cm, 9 columns, (7x16 cm) in cuneiform script.

Context: There are 10 bricks extant apart from MS 1876/1-2, 9 in the Iraq Museum and 1, former MS 1876/3, now in British Museum (gift from The Schen Collection). MS 3028 is a royal inscription on black stone from the shoulder of a statue.

Commentary: Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), the great king who created the Old Babylonian empire, is today mostly remembered for his famous law code. But he also built a series of great temples like the present one in Zabala. Towards the end of his reign, Hammurabi ordered his law code to be carved on stelae which were placed in the temples bearing witness that the king had performed his important function of 'king of justice' satisfactorily. The famous stele now in the Louvre, was originally erected in the Sippar temple. The 12 surviving bricks are the only witnesses of the Zabala temple, its law code stele is lost.

For The Hammurabi law code, see MS 2813.

The Iraq bricks are published in: The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, early periods, vol. 4: Douglas Frayne, Old Babylonian Period (2003-1595 BC), p. 352.

MS 1955/1

INTERNATIONAL JUDGEMENT MADE BEFORE INITESHSHUB, KING OF CARCHEMISH AND SHAUSHGAMUWA KING OF AMURRU WHICH WAS SENT TO AMISTAMRU II, KING OF UGARIT CONCERNInG PIDDU, THE FORMER QUEEN OF UGARIT, SISTER OF SHAUSHGAMUWA, AND FORMER WIFE OF AMISTAMRU. PIDDU IS EXILED BUT PROTECTED FROM BEING PUT TO DEATH IN THAT AMISTAMRU CANNOT BRING HER BACK TO UGARIT FOR ANY REASON, AND SHAUSHGAMUWA IS FORBIDDEN TO ASSOCIATE WITH HER OR MAKE PLANS THAT WILL HAVE ANY IMPLICATIONS ON THE ROYAL LINE AT UGARIT

MS in Acadian on clay, Carchemish, Syria, 1250-1240 BC, 1 tablet, 8,2x10,2x3,2 cm, single column, 15+5 lines in cuneiform script, with seal impression rolled across the whole of the tablet, showing the deity Sharruma advancing left, holding a double axe and a sceptre.

Context: The present tablet is one out of 11 tablets concerning the divorce and judgement of Queen Piddu, involving 3 of the Kingdoms of the time, as well as the Hittite empire under King Tudkhaliash IV (ca. 1265-1220 BC).

Commentary: The kingdoms of Ugarit, Amurru and Carchemish at the North-east corner of the Mediterranean, were squeezed between the 3 great powers of the 13th c. BC, the Hittite empire, Assyria and Egypt. The present tablet illustrates the tensions among the kingdoms that fills in a bit of the picture of the upheaval to come at the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age, leading to the fall of the Hittite empire to Assyria and the following Trojan war as described by Homer.

Published in Analecta Orientalia, 48, Roma, Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1971: Loren R. Fisher, editor, The Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets, pp. 11-21. The seal is published in Ugaritica III, p. 24.

Exhibited: 1. The Claremont Ras Shamra Tablets, at the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California, 1970-1994. 2. 'Preservation for access: Originals and copies'. On the occasion of the 1st International Memory of the World Conference, organized by the Norwegian Commission for UNESCO and the National Library of Norway, at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 3 June - 14 July 1996.

MS 2063

THE TOWER OF BABEL STELE

ETEMENANKI: ZIKKURAT BABIBLI: 'THE HOUSE, THE FOUNDATION OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, ZIGGURAT IN BABYLON'. CAPTION IDENTIFYING THE GREAT ZIGGURAT OF BABYLON, THE TOWER OF BABEL. THE ROYAL INSCRIPTION OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR CONTINUES: ETEMENANKI, I MADE IT THE WONDER OF THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, I RAISED ITS TOP TO THE HEAVEN, MADE DOORS FOR THE GATES, AND I COVERED IT WITH BITUMEN AND BRICKS

MS in Neo Babylonian on black stone, Babylon, 604-562 BC, the upper half of a stele with rounded top, 47x25x11 cm, originally ca. 80-100x25x11 cm, 3+24 lines in cuneiform script, to the left: carving of the Tower of Babel from a side view, clearly showing the relative proportions of the 7 steps and the buttress construction and a temple complex at its foot; to the right: the standing figure of Nebuchadnezzar II with his royal conical hat, holding a spear in his left hand and a scroll with the rebuilding plans of the Tower in his outstretched right hand; at the top: a line drawing of the ground plan of the temple on the top, showing both the outer walls and the inner arrangement of rooms, including the one that once had a fine large coach in it, richly covered, and a gold table beside it, according to Herodot: The Histories I:181; on the left edge: a line drawing of the ground plan of Esagila, the temple of Marduk, showing the buttresses as an integral part of the construction.

Context: The lower part of the stele with account of further building works on other temples, was in a religious institution in U.S.A. The stele was found in a special hiding chamber, broken into 3 parts in antiquity, at Robert Koldewey's excavations of the site of the Tower of Babel in 1917. Its importance was immediately recognised. A photograph was taken with 3 archaeologists standing next to the stele. With the imminent danger of war breaking out in the area, they decided to rescue it, and each archaeologist carried one part out of the war zone. Two parts were taken to Germany, the third part to U.S.A. Now the 2 most important parts are reunited in The Schen collection. For bricks from the Tower of Babel, stamped with Nebuchadnezzar's name, used during the rebuilding, see MS 1815/1-3. For the only other known architect's plan of a known temple, see MS 3031.

Commentary: The Ziggurat in Babylon was restored and enlarged by Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon 604-562, captured by Kyros 538 BC, Dareios I 519 BC, Xerxes ca. 483 BC, and entirely destroyed by Alexander I the Great 331 BC. Until now our knowledge of the Tower of Babel has been based on the account in Genesis 11:1-9, and of Herodot: The Histories I:178 - 182, with the measurement of the first 2 steps, and a Seleucid tablet of 229 BC (Louvre AO 6555), giving the sizes of the steps. However, no contemporary illustrations have been known, resulting in a long series of fanciful paintings throughout the art history until present. Here we have for the first time an illustration contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar II's restoring and enlargement of the Tower of Babel, and with a caption making the identity absolutely sure. We also have the building plans, as well as a short account of the reconstruction process. Only 4 of 24 lines concerning this has so far been read. The last of these lines also covers the restoration of the E-ir-inimanki ziggurat in Borsippa, once believed by some scholars to be the Tower of Babel. A German scholar identified a few worn wedges to represent the name of Nebuchadnezzar II; and Dr. Stefan Maul has recently confirmed the reading.

Exhibited: Rounded top part only: 1. The Bibliophile Society of Norway's 75th anniversary. Bibliofilklubben 75 . Jubileumsutstilling Bok og Samler, Universitetsbliblioteket 27.2 - 26.4.1997; 2. XVI Congress of the International Organization for the study of the Old Testament. Faculty of Law Library, University of Oslo, 29 July - 7 August 1998; 3. Tigris 25th anniversary exhibition. The Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo, 30.1. - 15.9.2003.

Published: To be published by Andrew George in the series, Manuscripts in The Schen Collection, ed. Jens Braarvig.

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Assyrian history

MS 2004 Assyria, 1115-1077 BC

MS 711 Assyria, 883-859 BC

MS 2848 Assyria, 811-783 BC

MS 2368 Assyria, 722-705 BC

MS 2180 Assyria, ca. 646 BC

MS 2004

ROYAL ANNALS OF KING TIGLATH-PILESAR I

1. CHRONICLE OF SEVERAL MILITARY CAMPAIGNS TO CONQUER NAIRI, LEBANON, AMURRU AND THE HITTITE EMPIRE
2. CHRONICLE OF THE FIRST WAR BETWEEN ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA: 'I WENT TO BABYLONIA. FROM THE CITY RIKSU-SHA-ILI WHICH IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LOWER ZAB RIVER AS FAR AS THE CITY LUBDI I CONQUERED. I KNOCKED DOWN THEIR TOWNS AND BURNT THEM WITH FIRE, THEIR POSSESSIONS AND THEIR PROPERTY I CARRIED OFF TO MY CITY ASHUR. I WENT TO THE LAND SUHA - VARIOUS TOWNS WHICH ARE IN THE MIDST OF THE EUPHRATES I CONQUERED. THEIR POSSESSIONS WITHOUT NUMBER I TOOK AWAY. I TORE UP THEIR FIELDS. I CUT DOWN THEIR ORCHARDS'
3. CHRONICLE OF THE SECOND WAR BETWEEN ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA: 'AT THE COMMAND OF NINURTA, THE GOD WHO LOVES ME, FOR THE SECOND TIME TO BABYLONIA I WENT. SIPPAR, BABYLON, UPI, THE GREAT SETTLEMENTS OF BABYLONIA I CONQUERED TOGETHER WITH THEIR FORTRESSES. THEIR POSSESSIONS AND THEIR PROPERTY WITHOUT NUMBER I TOOK AWAY. THE PALACES OF BABYLON, THE CITY OF MARDUK-NADIN-AHHI, KING OF BABYLONIA, I KNOCKED DOWN. THE MANY OBJECTS OF HIS VARIOUS PALACES I CARRIED OFF. THE KING OF BABYLONIA, IN THE STRENGTH OF HIS SOLDIERS AND HIS CHARIOTS HE PUT HIS TRUST, AND HE CAME AFTER ME. IN THE CITY SITULA WHICH IS NORTH OF THE CITY AKKAD WHICH IS OPPOSITE THE TIGRIS RIVER, HE ENGAGED IN BATTLE WITH ME. HIS MANY CHARIOTS I DISPERSED, THE DEFEAT OF HIS WARRIORS AND HIS FIGHTERS IN THE MIDST OF THAT BATTLE I BROUGHT ABOUT. HE RETREATED AND RETURNED TO HIS LAND'
4. DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE REBUILDING OF THE GREAT CITY WALL OF PAKUTE AND ITS PRINCIPAL PALACE

MS in Middle Assyrian on clay, Assyria, 1115-1077 BC, 1 tablet, 19,7x14,5x3,3 cm, single column, 35+35 lines in Assyrian cuneiform script, with 60 'fire holes'.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 1995, quarter green morocco gilt folding case, by Aquarius.

Context: Another inscription of Tiglath-pileser is MS 2795.

Commentary: The present tablet represents a major new contribution to the history of the world in its detailed account of two hitherto unknown wars between 2 of the 3 greatest powers of the period, Assyria and Babylonia, texts 2 and 3. The campaigns in text 1 are known from other sources, while the city Pakute in text 4 is attested here for the first time.

Exhibited: 'Preservation for access: Originals and copies'. On the occasion of the 1st International Memory of the World Conference, organized by the Norwegian Commission for UNESCO and the National Library of Norway, at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 3 June - 14 July 1996.

MS 711

ROYAL INSCRIPTION OF ASSURNASIRPAL II: CALAH I RESTORED. A TEMPLE OF MY LADY I ESTABLISHED THERE. THIS TEMPLE DEDICATED TO THE GODS AND SUBLIME, WHICH WILL ENDURE FOREVER, I WILL DECORATE SPLENDIDLY. PART OF THE 'STANDARD INSCRIPTION' FROM THE ROYAL PALACE IN CALAH, MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE

MS in Assyrian on basalt stone, Nimrod (Calah), Assyria, 883-859 BC, 1 plaque, 43x26 cm, single column, (43x23 cm), 10 lines in display cuneiform script. Complete standard inscription: ca. 50x225 cm (ca. 45x215), 21 long lines with friezes over and below (both ca. 70x225 cm).

Context: Most of the reliefs and inscriptions are in British Museum and Louvre. Further holdings in New York Historical Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University.

Commentary: From the East Wing of the Palace, room I. The site of the temple is mentioned in Genesis 10:11-12: 'Out of that land went forth Assur, and builded Nineveh, and the city of Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, the same is a great city'. Genesis 10:1-12 mentions that the builder of Calah was Nimrod, son of Cush, son of Ham, son of Noah. The 'standard inscription' is a 22-line text that records Assurnasirpal's victories, his greatness and describes the building of his palace at Calah. The inscription exists in many variants, all of which come from the slabs lining the walls of the palace. The version presented here is recorded by Y. Le Gac: Les incriptions d'Ashur-nasir-pal II, roi d'Assyrie. Paris 1908, p. 187. What makes the present inscription of interest, is that it includes a detailed description of the very palace that it adorned, and that Calah is directly referred to in Genesis 10:11-12.

MS 2848

ROYAL INSCRIPTION OF ADAD-NIRARI III: - MY DREAD OVERWHELMED THEM - I CONSTRUCTED A CITY - I WENT UP AND MADE SACRIFICES - PRIME SON OF ASSUR-NASIR-APLI - PRINCES HAS NO RIVAL - SON OF TUKULTI-NINURTA

MS in Neo Babylonian on bronze, Assyria, 811-783 BC, lower part of the garment of a giant statue, 42x26x5-10 cm remaining, single column, 19 lines in a large formal cuneiform script, the lower border of the garment, 6x18 cm, divided into 4 square compartments with decorative designs of Assyrian type.

Commentary: A unique royal inscription. There seems to be no other remains of so large a statue of an Assyrian king surviving. Assur-nasir-apli II was the son of Tukulti-Ninurta II and the great grandfather of Adad-nirari III.

MS 2368

ROYAL INSCRIPTION OF SARGON II OF ASSYRIA, DESCRIBING HIS CONQUESTS GENERALLY, MENTIONING: BIT-HABAN, PARSHUMASH, MANNAEA, URARTU; THE HEROIC MAN WHO DEFEATED HUMBANIGASH, KING OF ELAM; WHO MADE THE EXTENSIVE BIT-HUMRIYA (HOUSE OF OMRI) TOTTER, THE DEFEAT OF MUSRU IN RAPIHU; BOUND TO ASHUR, WHO CONQUERED THE TAMUDI; WHO CAUGHT THE IONIANS IN THE SEA LIKE A BIRD-CATCHER; ALSO BIT-BURTASHA, KIAKKI AND AMRISH, THEIR RULERS; WHO DROVE AWAY MIT(MIDAS), KING OF MUSHKU; WHO PLUNDERED HAMATH AND CARCHEMISH; GREAT HAND CONQUERED, THE DEVASTATOR OF URARTU, MUSASIR; THE URARTIANS BY THE TERROR OF HIS WEAPONS, KILLED BY HIS OWN HANDS; WHO DESTROYED THE PEOPLES OF HARHAR, WHO GATHERED THE MANNAEANS, ELLIPI; WHO CHANGED THE ABODE OF PA, LALLUKNU; WHO FLAYED THE SKIN OF ASHUR-L#39;I, THEIR GOVERNOR; WHO IMPOSED THE YOKE OF ASHUR ON SHURD FROM MELIDU, HIS ROYAL CITY; THE FEARSOME ONSLAUGHT, WHO HAD NO FEAR OF BATTLE, -

MS in Neo Babylonian on clay, Nimrod, Assyria, 722-705 BC, 1 partial 8-facetted prism, 6,2x12,0 cm remaining, 8 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: 1 fragment of a cylinder with the same inscription, also in Neo Babylonian, is known.

Commentary: The present MS is related to the clay cylinders from Khorsabad, but they are in Assyrian. These cylinders were written in Nimrud, Assyria, for being sent to Babylonian cities to be deposited in foundation deposits in buildings in Babylonia.

MS 2180

TO NAB EXALTED LORD, WHO DWELLS IN EZIDA, WHICH IS IN NINEVEH, HIS LORD: I ASHURBANIPAL, KING OF ASSYRIA, THE ONE LONGED FOR AND DESTINED BY HIS GREAT DIVINITY, WHO, AT THE ISSUING OF HIS ORDER AND THE GIVING OF HIS SOLEMN DECREE, CUT OFF THE HEAD OF TE'UMMAN, KING OF ELAM, AFTER DEFEATING HIM IN BATTLE, AND WHOSE GREAT COMMAND MY HAND CONQUERED UMMAN-IGASH, TANMARIT, PA'E AND UMMAN-ALTASH, WHO RULED OF ELAM AFTER TE'UMMAN. I YOKED THEM TO MY SEDAN CHAIR, MY ROYAL CONVEYANCE. WITH HIS GREAT HELP I ESTABLISHED DECENT ORDER IN ALL THE LANDS WITHOUT EXCEPTION. AT THAT TIME I ENLARGED THE STRUCTURE OF THE COURT OF THE TEMPLE OF NAB MY LORD, USING MASSIVE LIMESTONE. MAY NABLOOK WITH JOY ON THIS, MAY HE FIND IT ACCEPTABLE. BY THE RELIABLE IMPRESS OF YOUR WEDGES MAY THE ORDER FOR A LIFE OF LONG DAYS COME FORTH FROM YOUR LIPS, MAY MY FEET GROW OLD BY WALKING IN EZIDA IN YOUR DIVINE PRESENCE

MS in Neo Assyrian on limestone, Nineveh, Assyria, ca. 646 BC, 1 limestone slab, 47x42x4 cm, single column, 19 lines in Neo Assyrian cuneiform script.

Commentary: King Ashurbanipal (669-631 BC) rebuilt Ezida, the temple of Nab the god of writing.

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Sumerian literature

MS 3396 Sumer, ca. 2600 BC

MS 3026 Babylonia, 19th-18th c. BC

MS 2652/1 Babylonia, ca. 18th c. BC

MS 3283 Babylonia, 1900-1700 BC

MS 2367/1 Babylonia, 20th-17th c. BC

MS 3396

INSTRUCTIONS OF SHURUPPAK, proofRB COLLECTION

MS in Sumerian on clay, Sumer, ca. 2600 BC, 1 tablet, 8,7x8,7x2,5 cm, 2 columns + 2 blank columns, 8+8 compartments in cuneiform script, reverse blank. Context: For the Old Babylonian recension of the text, see MSS 2817 (lines 1-22), 3352 (lines 1-38), 2788 (lines 1-45), 2291 (lines 88-94), 2040 (lines 207-216), 3400 (lines 342-345), MS 3176/1, text 3, and 3366.

Context: For the Old Babylonian recension of the text, see MSS 2788 (lines 1-45), 2291 (lines 88-94) and 2040 (lines 207-216).

Commentary: The present Early Dynastic tablet is one of a few that represent the earliest literature in the world. Only 3 groups of texts are known from the dawn of literature: The Shuruppak instructions, The Kesh temple hymn, and various incantations (see MS 4549 ). The instructions are addressed by the ante-diluvian ruler Shuruppak, to his son Ziusudra, who was the Sumerian Noah, cf. MS 3026 , the Sumerian Flood Story, and MS 2950 , Atra- Hasis, the Old Babylonian Flood Story. The Shuruppak instructions can be said to be the Sumerian forerunner of the 10 Commandments and some of the proofrbs of the Bible: Line 50: Do not curse with powerful means (3rd Commandment); lines 28: Do not kill (6th Commandment); line 33-34: Do not laugh with or sit alone in a chamber with a girl that is married (7th Commandment); lines 28-31: Do not steal or commit robbery (8th Commandment); and line 36: Do not spit out lies (9th Commandment).

MS 3026

FLOOD STORY

MS in Neo Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 19th-18th c. BC, 1/4 tablet, 6,4x5,5x2,3 cm, ca. 35 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: For 5 of the 6 Sumerian forerunners of the Gilgamesh Epic, see MSS2652/1-2 , 2887, 3026 , 3027 and 3361.

Commentary: Mankind's oldest reference to the Deluge, together with 1/3 tablet in Philadelphia, the only other tablet bearing this story in Sumerian. The tablets share several lines from the beginning of the Flood story, but the present tablet also offers new lines and textual variants. Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah, is here described as 'the priest of Enki', which is new information.

The Sumerian Flood story is one of the 6 forerunners to the Old Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, the source for the Old Babylonian myth Atra-Hasis, and for the Biblical account of the Flood (Genesis 6:5-9:29), written down several hundred years later.

According to British Museum, their Neo Babylonian tablet with the Flood story as a part of Gilgamesh, is perhaps the most famous tablet in the world. The present tablet is over 1000 years older.

Exhibited: Tigris 25th anniversary exhibition. The Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo, 30.1. - 15.9.2003.

MS 2652/1

GILGAMESH AND KING AKKA OF KISH, LINES 1 - 60

MS in Neo Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, ca. 18th c. BC, 1 tablet, 14,5x5,5 cm, single column, 60 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: In line 25 there is a possible, much earlier parallel from ca. 2600 BC, in MS 1952/37. There would possibly have been a companion tablet with the remaining lines, 61-114 of this work.

For 5 of the 6 Sumerian forerunners of the Gilgamesh Epic, see MSS 2652/1-2 , 2887, 3026 , 3027 and 3361.

Commentary: There are two literary traditions concerning the war between Kish and Uruk, the present and Shulgi Hymn O, taking up themes from other tales, such as Gilgamesh in the Cedar forest, and Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven, eventually melting together in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh.

Exhibited: Tigris 25th anniversary exhibition. The Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo, 30.1. - 15.9.2003.

MS 3283

1.	DEBATE BETWEEN SUMMER (EMESH) AND WINTER (ENTEN)

2.	CREATION OF THE WORLD, PART OF THE SUMERIAN CREATION STORY

MS in Neo Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 1900-1700 BC, a 4-sided prism, 20x12x11 cm, 2 columns per side, 50 lines per column in cuneiform script.

Context: Other tablets of the Sumerian creation story are MSS 2110 , 2423/1-5 and 3293.

Commentary: The prism had the full text of some 400 lines, but with losses along one corner. This is the most substantial MS of the text. The end is different from the published edition, which has 318 lines. The disputation between Summer and Winter remains unsolved, since their verdict insists that they are complementary and should remain so. There are parallels to the Biblical creation story: 'The Lord lifted his head in pride, bountiful days arrived. Heaven and earth he regulated and the population spread wide' (Genesis 1:31-2:1), with further references to Genesis 1:11-13; 20-25.

MS 2367/1

1. ENHEDU' ANNA: HYMN C TO INANNA 1 - 16: 'INANNA, STOUT-HEARTED, AGGRESSIVE LADY, MOST NOBle OF THE ANUNNA-GODS, - SHE IS A BIG NECK-STOCK CLAMPING DOWN ON THE GODS OF THE LAND, - ONCE SHE HAS SPOKEN, CITIES BECOME RUIN-HEAPS, A HOUSE OF DEVILS'
2. proofRB

MS in Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 20th-17th c. BC, 1 tablet, 21x17x4 cm, 3 columns, 16+16+16+4 lines in cuneiform script by a teacher of a scribal school in column 1, with 2 students repeating the hymn in columns 2 and 3.

Context: The same text as on MS 2367/3. Hymns to Inanna are MSS 2367/1, 2367/3, 2647, 2698/1-2, 2784, 3286, 3301, 3376 and 3384. Hymns by Enhedu'Anna are MSS 2367/1-4 ,, 2647, 3376 and 3384.

Commentary: Enheduanna was daughter of King Sargon of Akkad (2334-2279 BC), founder of the first documented empire in Asia. Enheduanna emerges as a genuine creative talent, a poetess as well as a princess, a priestess and a prophetess. She is, in fact, the first named and non-legendary author in history. As such she has found her way into contemporary anthologies, especially of women's literature.

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Babylonian literature

MS 2866 Babylonia, 18th c. BC

MS 3025 Babylonia, 19th-18th c. BC

MS 4573/1 Babylonia, 2000-1600 BC

MS 2950 Babylonia, 1900-1700 BC

MS 5108 Babylonia, 1900-1700 BC

MS 2624 Babylonia, 1700-1500 BC

MS 2866

MY BELOVED KNOWS MY HEART,

MY BELOVED IS SWEET AS HONEY,

SHE IS AS FRAGRANT TO THE NOSE AS WINE,

THE FRUIT OF MY FEELINGS -, POEM

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, 18th c. BC, 1 tablet, 11,0x5,7 cm, 23 lines in cuneiform script.

Commentary: So far a unique love poem, without parallels for this early period.

MS 3025

GILGAMESH EPIC:: THE DREAM OF GILGAMESH, INCLUDING THE FIRST TWO OF GILGAMESH'S NIGHTMARES FROM THE EXPEDITION TO THE CEDAR FOREST AND ENKIDU'S EXPLANATIONS OF THEM

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, 19th-18th c. BC, 1 tablet, 20,3x7,5x3,2 cm, 85 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: For 5 of the 6 Sumerian forerunners of the Gilgamesh Epic, see MSS 2652/1 -2, 4, 2887, 3026 , 3027 and 3361.

Commentary: Gilgamesh, the oldest substantial world literature, is mostly preserved on a set of 12 Neo Babylonian tablets, which however, are about 1000 years later than the present Old Babylonian original version. Only one more large intact tablet and 9 fragments of this version are known. One of the fragments is MS 2652/5. None of these are overlapping the present text, which makes this tablet the sole witness to this part of the Old Babylonian Gilgamesh. Less than half of the text has parallels with the later Middle Babylonian version from Hathusa, and the Neo Babylonian Gilgamesh tablet IV. Only about 2/3 of the epic is preserved. The present tablet adds 55 new lines to it, including an entirely new dream and its explanation.

Published: A.R. George: The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Introduction, critical edition and cuneiform texts. Oxford, University press, 2003. 2 vols. Also to be published in the series Manuscripts in The Schen Collection, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 4573/1

HUMBABA'S HEAD WITH WRINKLES, A BROAD GRIN AND STRAIGHT HAIR, VOTIVE CLAY CAST

MS on clay, Babylonia, 2000-1600 BC, 1 circular votive head, 7,3x7,1x3,0 cm, uninscribed.

Context: MSS 4573/1-3 come from a hoard of 4 casting forms and 56 casts of an artist's workshop, not yet distributed for votive use in private homes.

Commentary: Humbaba belongs in the tale of Gilgamesh in the Cedar Forest, where Gilgamesh and Enkindu kill the demi god, Humbaba. 'Humbaba, his voice is the Deluge, his speech is Fire, and his breath is Death!' See MS 3025.

MS 2950

ATRA-HASIS, EPIC, THE END OF THE BABYLONIAN FLOOD STORY: - IN HIS HEART HE DID NOT TAKE COUNSEL(?) -, THE ANIMALS HAD SWELLED UP -, MANKIND HAD SWELLED UP -, AT THAT TIME THE SAGE WATRAM-HASIS SAW THIS. HE SPOKE TO EA HIS LORD, (ENLIL WAS DISTURBED BY) THE NOISE OF (THE PEOPLE)

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, 1900-1700 BC, upper half of a tablet, 6,5x5,2x2,5 cm, single column, 12 lines of originally 40 lines in cuneiform script.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 2000, blue quarter morocco gilt folding case by Aquarius.

Context: The present part of Atra-Hasis is so far missing on all known tablets. It could belong to BM tablet I, lines 360-365, with a gap concerning the plague prior to the Flood, or to BM tablet III, column 3 after line 27, and column 4 before line 30, where 54 lines are missing, covering the flood story from its peak to the period after the flood had dried up. The primary cause of swelling is development of interior gasses following floods and drowning or famine. According to W.G. Lambert and A.R. Milland: Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian story of the flood. Eisenbrauns 1999, pp. 31-41. There are only some 13 tablets and fragments preserved of the Atra-Hasis Epic, in at least 4 different recentions. Very much of the epic is lost. Another part of the Atra-Hasis epic is MS 5108.

Commentary: The Old Babylonian Flood story told in both the epics of Atra-Hasis and Gilgamesh was written about 200 years before the account in the Bible, Genesis 6:5-8:22. While the cause of the Flood in the Bible was mankind's wickedness and violence, the Old Babylonian cause was the noisy activities of humans, preventing the chief god, Enlil, from sleeping, actually mentioned in the present tablet.

The harsh account of swollen animals and human bodies was apparently deleted from the Biblical Flood story, even if it would have been the first sight meeting Noah leaving the Arc.

MS 5108

ATRA-HASIS EPIC, TABLET 2, COLUMN 4:11 - 20; COLUMN 8:34 - END; AND CA. 40 NEW LINES: - THEY BROKE THE COSMIC BARRIER! - THE FLOOD WHICH YOU MENTIONED, WHOSE IS IT? - THE GODS COMMANDED TOTAL DESTRUCTION! ENLIL DID AN EVIL DEED ON THE PEOPLE! THEY COMMANDED IN THE ASSEMBLY OF THE GODS, BRINGING A FLOOD FOR A LATER DAY, 'LET US DO THE DEED!' ATRA-HASIS -

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, ca. 1900-1700 BC, upper half of a tablet, 13,0x12,3x4,2 cm, 2+2 columns, 15+17+20+24+1 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: There are only some 13 tablets and fragments preserved of the Atra-Hasis Epic, in at least 4 different recentions. Very much of the epic is lost. The ca. 40 new lines on the present tablet improofs this situation. Another part of the Atra-Hasis epic is MS 2950.

Commentary: The Old Babylonian Flood story told in both the epics of Atra-Hasis and Gilgamesh was written about 200 years before the account in the Bible, Genesis 6:5-8:22. While the cause of the Flood in the Bible was mankind's wickedness and violence, the Old Babylonian cause was the noisy activities of humans, preventing the chief god, Enlil, from sleeping. When the Neo Babylonian account of the Flood story as part of the Gilgamesh epic was discovered in the 19th c., it caused a sensation. It turned out that this was a abbreviated account extracted from the Old Babylonian Atra-hasis epic, written about 1000 years earlier. The Flood is the climax of the whole story. The gods created the human race to take over the hard agricultural work in the universe. They were created with the power to reproduce, but without the fate of dying as an result of age. The human race multiplied and made such noise that the chief Sumerian god, Enlil, could not sleep. Accordingly he tried to reduce their numbers, first by plague, then by famine. In each case the god Ea, who was mainly responsible for creating the human race, frustrated the plan. Enlil then got all the gods to swear to co-operate in exterminating the whole human race by a huge flood, which failed because Ea got his favourite , Ziuzudra (the Old Babylonian Noah), to build an ark and so save the human race and the animals. This tablet starts when the second attempt, famine, had just failed, Enlil was looking into what had happened and making another plan.

MS 2624

LITERARY AND RELIGIOUS SPEECH, STARTING: LIKE A CITY WITH SUPREME POWER MY CITY IS URUK, THE CITY OF THE KING. BUT YOU, WHO GREW UP IN MY CITY AND MY LAND, HAVE PLUNDERED THE TEMPLE OF MY LORD, HAVE DESPOILED THE PROPERTY OF MY LADY. -

MAY THE FORMER DAYS OF CONFLICT PASS ON, AND MAY THE NOW DISTANT DAYS OF PEACE BE ESTABLISHED. - CONFER AND ANSWER THAT HE MAY BE SET FREE, BECAUSE TO ME YOU ARE A FOOL. -

MS in Neo Sumerian and Old Babylonian on clay, Uruk, Babylonia, 1700-1500 BC, 1 tablet, 20,0x6,4x2,2 cm, 63 double lines in a minute expert cuneiform script.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 1998, blue quarter morocco gilt folding case by Aquarius.

Commentary: The text is bilingual, first line in artificial Sumerian, quite unlike the real Sumerian of the 3rd millennium, immediately followed by a line with the Old Babylonian translation. The text is hitherto unknown.

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Sumerian Block printing in blind on clay

MS 5105

ROYAL INSCRIPTION OF NARAM-S: NARAM-S WHO BUILT THE TEMPLE OF INANNA

MS in Sumerian on clay, Akkad, Sumer, 2291-2254 BC, 1 brick printing block, 13x13x10 cm, 3 lines in a large formal cuneiform script, large loop handle.

Context: There are only 2 more brick stamps of Naram-S known, one intact with a cylindrical handle, and a tiny fragment in British Museum.

Commentary: Naram-S was the first king to use blocks for printing bricks. Prior to him the inscriptions on the bricks were written by hand. These 3 brick stamps known, are the earliest evidence of printing, in this case blindprinting on soft clay.

MS 1937

TO NINGIRSU, MIGHTY WARRIOR OF ENLIL, GUDEA RULER OF LAGASH MADE IT SPLENDID FOR HIM AND BUILT FOR HIM THE TEMPLE OF THE SHINING IMDUGUD BIRD AND RESTORED IT

 

Blockprint in blind in Sumerian on clay, Lagash, Sumer, 2141-2122 BC, 1 brick, 32x32x7 cm, 6+4 columns, in cuneiform script.

Context: Foundation inscriptions of Gudea in The Schen collection are MSS 1877, 1895, 1936, 1937 and 2890. Building cones, see MSS 1791/1-2.

Commentary: Gudea built or rather rebuilt, at least 15 temples in the city-state of Lagash. The present brick has deposits of the bitumen that originally bound the bricks together in the wall of the temple.

MS 2764

AMAR-SIN OF NIPPUR, CHOSEN BY ENLIL, MIGHTY HERO, THE TEMPLE OF ENLIL, BRICK STAMP INSCRIPTION

MS in Neo Sumerian on white marble, Sumer, 2046-2038 BC, 1 brick printing block, 18,5x10,0x3,5 cm, single column, 7 lines in cuneiform script, with a handle on the back.

Context: Bricks of King Amar-Sin with full texts are MSS 1878 and 1914.

Commentary: Brick printing blocks are so rare as objects that there is a theory that they were broken when a production run was finished. Those that are known are almost never intact. There are some broken ones from the Old Acadian Period, including the intact MS 5106, but they are of terracotta. Until this one there were no examples of an UR III brick printing block known at all, and the material of their construction was a complete mystery.

The inscription is a well known one, but the last 3 lines have not been cut, apart from the first sign in line 7. This printing block was never used, but discarded by the scribe due to a slight chipping to the inscription. Since the natural medium for writing at this time, was clay, the process of impressing a block into wet soft clay can be seen as the first known example of true printing. Some of the printing blocks even had 'movable type' so that the inscription relating to more than one building could be accommodated with a minimum of effort.

Exhibited: TEFAF Maastricht International Fine Art and Antiques Fair, 12-21 March 1999.

MS 1878

AMAR-SIN IN NIPPUR, CALLED BY ENLIL WHO SUPPORTS THE TEMPLE OF ENLIL, POWERFUL MALE, KING OF UR, KING OF THE 4 QUARTERS OF THE WORLD

Blockprint in blind in Neo Sumerian on clay, Nippur, Sumer, reign of King Amar-Sin, 2047-2038 BC, 1 brick, 17x19x6 cm, originally ca. 33x33x6 cm, 9 columns, (10x11 cm) in cuneiform script.

Context: A original brick printing block of Amar-Sin is MS 2764.

Commentary: Enlil was the chief Sumerian god, whose main temple was in Nippur.

See also MS 1876/1 , Hammurabi brick, Babylonia, 1792-1750 BC

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Sumerian music

MS 2340

LEXICAL LIST OF 9 TYPES OF MUSICAL STRINGS, 23 TYPES OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND MUSIC, INCLUDING DIFFERENT TYPES OF STRINGED INSTRUMENTS SUCH AS HARP AND LYRE, AS WELL AS HITHERTO UNKNOWN INSTRUMENTS; FURTHER LAPIS LAZULI, BEDS, COPPER UTENSILS, TEXTILES, DOMESTIC ANIMALS AND SINEWS, JEWELLERY, WEAPONS, LEATHER PARTS OF YOKE, STRAPS, SACKS, TYPES OF SHEEP, KNIVES, AROMATICS AND PERFUMES, REED OBJECTS, GRAINS AND FLOURS, ETC.

MS in Sumerian on clay, Sumer, 26th c. BC, upper half of a huge tablet + fragment of lower part, 20x30x5 cm + 9x18x5 cm, originally ca. 40x30x5 cm, 16+9 and 7+7 columns, 437+ ca. 100 lines remaining in cuneiform script, circular depressions introducing each new entry.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 1996, green quarter morocco gilt folding case by Aquarius.

Context: Similar, smaller tablets are known from Fara or Tell Abu Salabikh. 3 compilations all from 26th c. BC have music instruments. The present tablet is almost a duplicate of a relatively well-known lexical list, discussed by Miguel Civil in Cagni, Ebla 1975-1985, pp. 133 ff. The obverse is an abbreviated recension with minor changes in the sequence of the entries. The reverse is the continuation of the unfinished Fara recension.

Commentary: The earliest known record of music and musical instruments in history. The name of one of the stringed instruments is a Semitic word, ki-na-ru, the later kinnaru known from the Mari letters and Ras Shamra texts (13th c. BC, cfr. MS 1955/1-6 ), and the still later Biblical Hebrew kinnor. The system of phonetic notation in Sumer and Babylonia is based on a music terminology that gives individual names to 9 musical strings or 'notes', and to 14 basic terms describing intervals of the 4th and 5th that were used in tuning string instruments (according to 7 heptatonic diatonic scales), and terms for 3rds and 6ths that appear to have been used to fine tune (or temper in some way) the 7 notes generated for each scale. The combination of string names and interval terms is used to describe the tuning procedure and the generation of the 7 scales and form a skeletal phonetic notation. (The New Grove, 2nd ed., vol. 18, p. 74.) The oldest musical instruments known are a ca. 41 000 BC flute made of bear bone, found in 1995 at a Neanderthal site in Slovenia, and 6 intact and 30 fragmentary crane bone flutes from Jiahu, in the Chinese province of Henan, dated to 9000-7700 BC. One crane bone flute is still in playing order, the earliest instrument possible to play.

MS 2951

HEBE-ERIDU THE SON OF ADAD-LAMASI SAT WITH IL-SIRI IN ORDER TO LEARN MUSIC. AT THAT TIME, IN ORDER TO STUDY SINGING, THE TIGIDLU-INSTRUMENT, THE ASILA, TIGI INSTRUMENT, AND THE ADAB INSTRUMENT SEVEN TIMES, ADAD-LAMASI PAID IL-SIRI 5 SHEKELS OF SILVER. ILI-IPPALSANI, THE SCHOOLMASTER

MS in Neo Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 1900-1700 BC, 1 tablet, 6,5x4,4x2,0 cm, single column, 13 lines in cuneiform script.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 2000, blue cloth gilt folding case by Aquarius.

Context: Cf. MS 2340 listing 23 types of musical instruments.

Commentary: There are texts of dialogues between a teacher and a scribe, (Schooldays, see MS 4481 ) and between an examiner and a student, but a text concerning music lessons is so far unique.

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Old Babylonian cuneiform musical notation

MS 5105

MUSICAL NOTATION OF 2 ASCENDING CONSECUTIVE HEPTATONIC SCALES TO BE PLAYED ON A 4 STRINGED LUTE TUNED IN ASCENDING FIFTHS: C - G - D - A, USING FRETS; SCHOOL TEXT

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, 2000-1700 BC, 1 lenticular tablet, diam. 9,0x3,2 cm, 2 double columns, each of 7 ruled lines with numbers in Old Babylonian cuneiform notation, with headings, 'intonation' and 'incantation', respectively.

Context: The only other complete music text is a later Hurrian hymn written in the mode of nidqibli, which is the enneatonic descending scale of E.

Commentary: The oldest musical notation known so far. Lutes are not preserved from the Old Babylonian period. The earliest known description of a lute dates from the middle of the 10th c., of a 9th c. instrument, Oxford, Bodleian library MS Marsh 521. The present notation system gives contemporary information on the Old Babylonian 4 stringed lute. It further attests that frets were used, and that their values, tonal and semitonal, were purposely calculated. Most significantly the discovery of this text attests of a music syllabus in educational institutions about 4000 years ago.

Published: To be published by Richard Dunnbrill: An Old Babylonian music text, from where the information has been taken.

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Sumerian law

MS 2064

THE UR-NAMMU LAW CODE

CODE OF 57 LAWS INCLUDING CRIMINAL LAW, FAMILY LAW, INHERITANCE

LAW, LABOUR LAW INCLUDING SLAVE RIGHTS, AND AGRICULTURAL AND COMMERCIAL TARIFFS

MS in Sumerian on clay, Sumer, reign of King Shulgi, 2095-2047 BC, 1 cylinder, l. 28 cm, diam. 12 cm, 8 columns (originally 10 columns), 243 lines in cuneiform script.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 1996, green quarter morocco gilt folding case by Aquarius.

Context: For the Hammurabi law code, see MS 2813 .

Commentary: The Ur-Nammu law code is the oldest known, written about 300 years before Hammurabi's law code. When first found in 1901, the laws of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) were heralded as the earliest known laws. Now older collections are known: The laws of the town Eshnunna (ca. 1800 BC), the laws of King Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1930 BC), and Old Babylonian copies (ca. 1900-1700 BC) of the Ur-Nammu law code , with 26 laws of the 57 on the present MS. This cylinder is the first copy found that originally had the whole text of the code, and it is the world's oldest law code MS. Further it actually mentions the name of Ur-Nammu for the first time.

Hammurabi's laws represented the inhuman Law of Retaliation, 'an Eye for an Eye'. One would expect the 300 years older laws of Ur-Nammu would be even more brutal, but the opposite is the case: 'If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out 1/2 a mina of silver'.

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Babylonian law

MS 2813

THE HAMMURABI LAW CODE

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, ca. 1750 BC, 1 tablet, 11,7x10,0x3,0 cm (originally ca. 13x10x3 cm), 2 columns, 48 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: The complete text is 282 laws of which 247 are on the famous black basalt stele in Louvre. Cf. MS 2064 , The Ur- Nammu law code, the oldest laws known.

Commentary: Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), the great king who created the Old Babylonian empire, is today mostly remembered for his famous law code. Towards the end of his reign, Hammurabi ordered his law code to be carved on stelae which were placed in the temples bearing witness that the king had performed his important function of 'king of justice' satisfactorily. The stele now in the Louvre, was originally erected in the Sippar temple, but was found in Susa in 1901.

The Hammurabi law code has until recently been considered the oldest, until the laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1800 BC), Lipit-Ishtar (ca. 1930 BC) and Old Babylonian school extracts (ca. 1900-1700 BC) of Ur-Nammu were discovered. Hammurabi's laws represented the inhuman Law of Retaliation, 'an Eye for an Eye', that was taken up in the laws of Moses and subsequent legislation.

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Pre-literate counting and accounting

MS 5067/1-8

NEOLITHIC PLAIN COUNTING TOKENS POSSIBLY REPRESENTING 1 MEASURE OF GRAIN, 1 ANIMAL AND 1 MAN OR 1 DAY'S LABOUR, RESPECTIVELY

Counting tokens in clay, Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 8000-3500 BC, 3 spheres: diam. 1,6, 1,7 and 1,9 cm , (D.S.-B 2:1); 3 discs: diam. 1,0x0,4 cm, 1,1x0,4 cm and 1,0x0,5 cm (D.S.-B 3:1); 2 tetrahedrons: sides 1,4 cm and 1,7 cm (D.S.-B 5:1).

Commentary: About 8000 BC the Palaeolithic notched tallies representing the simplest form of counting, in one-to-one correspondence, were superseded by Neolithic tokens of various geometric forms suited for concrete counting, including the type of commodity. This invention was used without any discontinuity for 5000 years, prior to the use of abstract numbers which lead to writing about 3300 BC, and then to mathematics ca. 2600 BC. When tokens were invented they were the first clay objects of the Near East, and they first exploited systematically most of the basic geometric forms, such as spheres, tetrahedrons, cones, cylinders, discs, quadrangles, triangles, etc. They were first kept in baskets, leather poaches, clay bowls, etc., and later within clay bullas, see MSS 4631, 4632and 4638.

Exhibited: The Norwegian Intitute of Palaeography and Historical Philology (PHI), Oslo, 13.10.2003-

MS 4522/1

COMPLEX COUNTING TOKEN REPRESENTING 1 JAR OF OIL

Counting token in stone, Ur?, Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 4000-3200 BC, 1 ovoid token, diam. 2,0x2,3 cm, circular line at the top and piercing at the bottom.

Context: For a drum shaped token with zigzag band, see MS 4522/2 (Schmandt-Besserat 3:72), and for disk type tokens, see MSS 4522/3-8.

Commentary: Same type as Schmandt-Besserat 6:14, but pierced at the bottom. The complex tokens were a natural development from the plain tokens (see MSS 5067/1-8) with new forms, added lines, dots and various designs to cover the more advanced accounting needs. They were first kept in baskets, leather poaches, bowls, etc., and then to some extent within bulla-envelopes (see MS 4631), but mainly attached to strings fastened to a bulla (see MS 4523). They lasted until ca. 3200 BC, when they were superseded by counting tablets and pictographic tablets. Some of the earliest tablets have actual tokens impressed into the clay to form numbers and pictographs, and many of the pictographs were illustrations of tokens. An account of 14 jars of oil would just be 14 tokens of the present type. On a pictographic tablet this representation would be substituted by the number 14 and the pictograph of a jar with lid looking similar to the token. This was the first break-through of the invention of writing. For such a pictographic tablet, see MS 4551 . (All 8 tokens MSS 4522/1-8 are illustrated here, text: Counting tokens representing a Jar of oil and various textiles, Near East, ca. 4000-3200 BC.)

MS 4631

BULLA-ENVELOPE WITH 11 PLAIN AND COMPLEX TOKENS INSIDE, REPRESENTING AN ACCOUNT OR AGREEMENT, TENTATIVELY OF WAGES FOR 4 DAYS' WORK, 4 MEASURES OF METAL, 1 LARGE MEASURE OF BARLEY AND 2 SMALL MEASURES OF SOME OTHER COMMODITY

Bulla in clay, Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 3700-3200 BC, 1 spherical bulla-envelope (complete), diam. ca. 6,5 cm, cylinder seal impressions of a row of men walking left; and of a predator attacking a deer, inside a complete set of plain and complex tokens: 4 tetrahedrons 0,9x1,0 cm (D.S.-B.5:1), 4 triangles with 2 incised lines 2,0x0,9 (D.S.-B.(:14), 1 sphere diam. 1,7 cm (D.S.-B.2:2), 1 cylinder with 1 grove 2,0x0,3 cm (D.S.-B.4:13), 1 bent paraboloid 1,3xdiam. 0,5 cm (D.S.-B.8:14).

Context: MSS 4631-4646 and 5114-5127are from the same archive. Total number of bulla-envelopes worldwide is ca. 165 intact and 70 fragmentary.

Commentary: While counting for stocktaking purposes started ca. 8000 BC using plain tokens of the type also represented here, more complex accounting and recording of agreements started about 3700 BC using 2 systems: a) a string of complex tokens with the ends locked into a massive rollsealed clay bulla (see MS 4523), and b) the present system with the tokens enclosed inside a hollow bulla-shaped rollsealed envelope, sometimes with marks on the outside representing the hidden contents. The bulla-envelope had to be broken to check the contents hence the very few surviving intact bulla- envelopes. This complicated system was superseded around 3500-3200 BC by counting tablets giving birth to the actual recording in writing, of various number systems (see MSS 3007 and 4647), and around 3300-3200 BC the beginning of pictographic writing (see MSS 2963 and 4551 ).

Exhibited: The Norwegian Intitute of Palaeography and Historical Philology (PHI), Oslo, 13.10.2003-

MS 4632

BULLA-ENVELOPE WITH 17 PLAIN TOKENS INSIDE, REPRESENTING AN ACCOUNT OR WAGES OF TENTATIVELY 1 LARGE MEASURE OF BARLEY, 8 SMALL MEASURES OF BARLEY, 5 MEDIUM AND 3 SMALL MEASURES OF SOME OTHER COMMODITY

Bulla in clay, Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 3700-3200 BC, 1 spherical bulla-envelope (complete), diam. ca. 7 cm, cylinder seal impressions of a row of men each carrying a sack on his head towards a large cauldron placed on a rounded stand; and of a line of tall ringstaffs and men; a 3rd impression of a large disk type token or the bottom of a large cone, diam. 2,2 cm, possibly representing the total sum of the complete set of plain tokens inside: 1 sphere diam. 1,5 cm (D.S.-B.2:2), 8 small spheres diam. 0,8 cm of which 1 still sticks to the inside of the bulla (D.S.-B.2:1), 5 cones diam.1,0x1,5 cm (D.S.-B.1:1), 3 small cylinders diam. 0,4xca.1,2 cm (D.S.-B.4:1).

Context: MSS 4631-4646 and 5144-5127 are from the same archive. Only 25 more bulla-envelopes are known from Sumer, all excavated in Uruk. Total number of bulla-envelopes worldwide is ca. 165 intact and 70 fragmentary.

Commentary: 17 tokens is the largest number found inside a bulla-envelope. While counting for stocktaking purposes started ca. 8000 BC using plain tokens of the type here, more complex accounting and recording of agreements started about 3700 BC using 2 systems: a) a string of complex tokens with the ends locked into a massive rollsealed clay bulla (see MS 4523), and b) the present system with the tokens enclosed inside a hollow bulla-shaped rollsealed envelope, sometimes with marks on the outside representing the hidden contents. The bulla-envelope had to be broken to check the contents hence the very few surviving intact bulla- envelopes. This complicated system was superseded around 3500-3200 BC by counting tablets giving birth to the actual recording in writing, of various number systems (see MSS 3007 and 4647), and around 3300-3200 BC the beginning of pictographic writing (see MSS 2963 and 4551 ).

MS 4638

BULLA-ENVELOPE WITH 1 PLAIN TOKEN INSIDE, REPRESENTING AN ACCOUNT OR AGREEMENT OF TENTATIVELY 1 VERY LARGE MEASURE OF BARLEY

Bulla in clay, Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 3700-3200 BC, 1 spherical bulla-envelope (complete), diam. 6,0-6,8 cm, cylinder seal impression of several men facing tall ringstaff; and another with animals; token inside: 1 large sphere diam. 2 cm (D.S.-B.2:2). Context: MSS 4631-4646 and 5144-5127 are from the same archive. Only 25 more bulla-envelopes are known from Sumer, all excavated in Uruk. Total number of bulla-envelopes worldwide is ca. 165 intact and 70 fragmentary.

Commentary: While counting for stocktaking purposes started ca. 8000 BC using plain tokens of the type here, more complex accounting and recording of agreements started about 3700 BC using 2 systems: a) a string of complex tokens with the ends locked into a massive rollsealed clay bulla (see MS 4523), and b) the present system with the tokens enclosed inside a hollow bulla-shaped rollsealed envelope, sometimes with marks on the outside representing the hidden contents. The bulla-envelope had to be broken to check the contents hence the very few surviving intact bulla- envelopes. This complicated system was superseded around 3500-3200 BC by counting tablets giving birth to the actual recording in writing, of the sexagesimal counting system (see MSS 3007 and 4647), and around 3300-3200 BC the beginning of pictographic writing (see MSS 2963 and 4551 ).

MS 4523

BULLA FOR HOLDING A STRING OF COMPLEX COUNTING TOKENS CONCERNING A TRANSACTION

Bulla in clay, Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 3500-3200 BC, 1 oblong bulla, diam. 2,5x6,5 cm, rollsealed with a line of animals walking left or 2 men standing with arms raised, pierced for holding a string of counting tokens.

Context: For another bulla of the same type, see MS 5113.

Commentary: The bulla originally locked the ends of a string with a number of complex counting tokens attached to it, representing 1 transaction. The string with the tokens was hanging outside the bulla like a necklace. If the string had, say, 5 disk type tokens representing types of textiles, this number could not be tampered with without breaking the seal. The tokens could also be entirely enclosed in the centre of the bulla, see MSS 4631, 4632 and 4638. Tokens were used for accounting purposes in the Near East from the Neolithic period ca. 8000 BC until ca. 3200 BC, when they were superseded by counting tablets and pictographic tablets. Some of the earliest tablets have actual tokens impressed into the clay to form numbers and pictographs, and some of the pictographs were illustrations of tokens, see MS 4551 .

MS 3007

NUMBERS 10 AND 5 +4 + 4 + 4 + 5 + 3

MS on clay, Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 3500-3200 BC, 1 elliptical tablet, 6,7x4,4x1,9 cm, 2+1 compartments, 2 of which with 3 columns of single numbers as small circular depressions.

Commentary:Numerical or counting tablets with their more complex combination of decimal and sexagesimal numbers are a further step from the tallies with the simplest form of counting in one-to-one correspondence. They were used parallel with the bulla-envelopes with tokens. The commodity counted was not indicated in the beginning, but was gradually imbedded in the numbers system or with a seal or a pictograph of the commodity added, i. e. development into ideonumerographical tablets, the forerunners to pictographic tablets. There are only about 260 numerical tablets known. Most of them are found in Iran.

MS 4647

NUMBERS 3+4, POSSIBLY REPRESENTING 3 MEASURES OF BARLEY AND 4 MEASURES OF SOME OTHER COMMODITY, IN SEXAGESIMAL NOTATION

MS on clay, Syria/Sumer/Highland Iran, ca. 3500-3200 BC, 1 tablet, 4,4x5,0x2,3 cm, 2 lines with 3 small circular depressions and 4 short wedges.

Numerical or counting tablets with their more complex combination of decimal and sexagesimal numbers are a further step from the tallies with the simplest form of counting in one-to-one correspondence. They were used parallel with the bulla-envelopes with tokens. The commodity counted was not indicated in the beginning, but was gradually imbedded in the numbers system or with a seal or a pictograph of the commodity added, i. e. development into ideonumerographical tablets, the forerunners to pictographic tablets. There are only about 260 numerical tablets known. Most of them are found in Iran.

Exhibited: The Norwegian Intitute of Palaeography and Historical Philology (PHI), Oslo, 13.10.2003-

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Arithmetic's

MS 3047

1, MULTIPLICATION TABLE FOR LENGTH MEASURES, WITH THE PRODUCTS EXPRESSED AS AREA MEASURES, THE LENGTH NUMBERS (5, 10, 20, ETC.) IN COLUMN 1 ARE MULTIPLIED WITH THE LENGTH NUMBERS (5X60, 10X60, 20X60, ETC.) IN COLUMN 2 TO GIVE THE COMPLICATED AREA NUMBERS IN COLUMN 3
2. SUCCESSIVE MULTIPLICATION OF SEXAGESIMAL NUMBERS BY 2, FROM 11.5=675 (OR 3/16) IN LINE 2 TO 3.00.00 (=3X60X60=10800) IN LINE 6

 

MS in Old Sumerian on clay, Sumer, 27th c. BC, 1 tablet, 7,2x7,1x2,0 cm, 28 compartments in cuneiform script.

Commentary: The oldest known mathematical text. Only one nearly as old mathematical table text is known, a table of squares of length measures, with the products expressed as area measures, Berlin VAT 12593. There is a big difference between this kind of multiplication table with explicit lengths and areas and the 1000 years younger Old Babylonian multiplication tables with abstract sexagesimal numbers.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 1844

SUM OF A GEOMETRIC PROGRESSION COMPUTED FROM THE BOTTOM UP. THE FIRST TERM IS 2, THE SECOND TERM IS 2X(1+1/6) = 2 1/3, WRITTEN AS 2;20. THE SUM IS GIVEN IN LINE 1, IN SEXAGESIMAL PLACE VALUE NOTATION; SCHOOL TEXT REPRESENTING AN INHERITANCE PROBLEM FOR 7 BROTHERS

MS in Neo Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 20th c. BC, 1 round tablet, 11,0x3,5 cm, 9 lines in cuneiform script. Binding: tasut

Context: No other Old Babylonian mathematical text is written from the bottom up in this way.

Commentary: According to the subscript, the number in each line should be equal to the number in the line above it, minus a seventh of that number. Actually, the 7 numbers in lines 2-8 have been computed from the bottom up, beginning with 2 and then making the number in each line equal to the number in the line below it plus a sixth of that number. The sum of the 7 numbers is recorded in line 1. A numerical error in line 3 is propagated upwards, to lines 2 and 1. The recorded numbers look like very large integers, but are actually all a small integer plus a sexagesimal fraction. The youngest of the 7 brothers gets 2, the next gets 2x(1+1/6), the next 2.20x(1+1/6), etc., or read from the top each brother gets 1/7 less than the brother before him. The tablet certainly has been re-used, and there are traces of possible numerical notation from its previous use.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 3866

MULTIPLICATION TABLE FOR 1.12(=72), IN THE SUMERIAN SEXAGESIMAL SYSTEM

 MS on clay, Babylonia, 19th c. BC, 1 tablet, 7,8x4,7x1,8 cm, single column, 15+8 lines in cuneiform script.

Commentary: The number 72 or 1 1/5 is the sexagesimal reciprocal of 50, which appears in the standard tables of reciprocals. Scholars have used the absence of any multiplication tables of 1 1/5 as evidence that they did not exist, and that Babylonians did not have multiplication tables for all sexagesimal numbers appearing in their standard table of reciprocals. The present unique tablet proofs that making such assumptions is groundless.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 2351

EXTREMELY LARGE 15-PLACE SEXAGESIMAL NUMBER 13 22 50 54 59 09 29 58 26 43 17 31 51 06 40, EQUALLING THE 20TH POWER OF 20, WHICH IS 104,857,600,000,000,000,000,000

MS on clay, Babylonia, 19th c. BC, 1 tablet, 4,5x11,7x2,8 cm, single column, 2 lines in cuneiform script.

Commentary: The number 104 quintillions, 857 quadrillions and 600 trillions is so large that it occupies 2 lines on the obverse and continues on the reverse, being one of the largest numbers recorded on a cuneiform tablet.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 2221

MATHEMATICAL CALCULATIONS ON CARRYING BRICKS AND MUD, THE 4X4 TABLE LISTS CONSTANTS FOR CARRYING THE 3 MOST COMMON BRICK SIZES AND MUD, THE LOAD OF 6 BRICKS, 50 MINAS (25 KG), THAT ONE WORKER CAN CARRY, AND THE DAILY CARRYING DISTANCE, 45.60 LENGTH UNITS = CA. 10,8 KM

 

MS on clay, Babylonia, 19th c. BC, 1 tablet, 5,0x5,2x2,3 cm, 3 + 4 columns, 9+6 lines in cuneiform script.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

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Algebra

MS 3048

TABLE WITH DATA FOR SOLVING CUBIC EQUATIONS, IN THE SUMERIAN SEXAGESIMAL SYSTEM

MS on clay, Babylonia, 19th c. BC, 1 tablet, 7,6x4,4x2,3 cm, 3 columns, 30 lines in cuneiform script.

Context: The only similar text known before is a Late Babylonian table text, where the numbers m at left take the values nxnx(n+1). Problems of the mentioned type are known from a large Old Babylonian clay tablet (BM 85200+VAT 6599).

Commentary: Every line of the table says, 'm has the root n'. The numbers n at right take the values 1 to 30. The numbers m at left take the corresponding values nx(n+1)x(n+2). In the 6th line, for instance, n = 6 and m = 6x7x8 = 336 = 5x60 + 36. The table was probably used to set up a series of problems leading to cubic equations guaranteed to have integers as solutions. The problems would have been of the form 'An excavated room. Its length equals its width plus 1 cubit. Its height equals its length. Its volume plus its bottom area is ... (a given number).'

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 2317

THREE NUMBERS ARE RECORDED: 1 1 1 1 (60 CUBED + 60 SQUARED + 60 + 1), AND 13 AND 4 41 37

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, 19th c. BC, 1 tablet, 2,9x2,9x1,4 cm, single column, 2 lines in cuneiform script.

Commentary: The meaning of the text is that the first number, 1 01 01 01 in sexagesimal place value notation, is exactly divisible by 13, and that the quotient is 4 41 37. A dressed up version is known from an early Old Babylonian tablet from Ur, where 1 01 01 01 sheep are divided between 13 shepherds.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 5112

1.	EQUATIONS FOR THE SIDES OF ONE, TWO, OR MORE SQUARES
2.	EQUATIONS FOR THE SIDES OF A RECTANGLE

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, probably later than 1700, upper half of a tablet, 8,9x9,8x2,7 cm, 2+2 columns, 125 lines in a clear minute cuneiform script.

Commentary: A collection of 16, originally 23, mathematical problem texts. The problem texts were the higher mathematics of the time, and for the better students only. The tablet is probably post-Old Babylonian.

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Geometry

MS 3052

EIGHT MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS WITH DRAWINGS OF SUBDIVIDED TRAPEZOIDS AND TRIANGLES

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, ca. 19th c. BC, 1 tablet, 21,0x8,2x2,9 cm, 92 lines in cuneiform script, drawings to each problem.

Commentary: Problems about trapezoids or triangles divided into two or more smaller parts by transversals parallel to the base were popular in Old Babylonian mathematics. Such problems led to systems of linear or quadratic equations. One particular type of problems for divided trapezoids led to the equation square a + square b = 2 square c. Old Babylonian mathematicians could find solutions in integers to both this equation and the similar equation square a + square b = square c, at least 1200 years before Pythagoras.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 3049

PROPERTIES OF CHORDS OF CIRCLES, HERE CALLED BOW STRINGS, AND DIAMETERS IN CIRCLES

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, ca. 17th c. BC, upper left quarter of a tablet, 11,5x6,4x2,2 cm, single column, 43 lines in an expert cuneiform script, signed by the scribe, drawings of 2 circles with diameters and chords indicated.

Commentary: This is a high quality tablet possibly from a royal library.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

MS 2192

GIVEN 2 CONCENTRIC AND PARALLEL EQUILATERAL TRIANGLES WITH THE AREA BETWEEN THEM DIVIDED INTO 3 EQUALLY SHAPED TRAPEZOIDS; COMPUTE THE AREA BETWEEN THE 2 TRIANGLES AS THE SUM OF THE AREAS OF THE 3 TRAPEZOIDS; SCHOOL TEXT

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, 19th c. BC, 1 tablet, diam. 7,1x2,5 cm, 8+3 lines in cuneiform script, drawing of 2 concentric and parallel equilateral triangles with the sides given as 60 and 10.

Commentary: The sides of the trapezoids are correctly computed. The text may have been an assignment to a student, but the answer to the problem is not given. No parallel to this text has been published before.

Published: To be published by Jan Friberg in the Manuscripts in The Schen Collection series, ed. Jens Braarvig.

Historical and Literary letters

MS 2199/2

LETTER TO KING SHULGI FROM A HIGH OFFICIAL NAMED IRMU OR ARADMU HAVING BEEN SENT TO A PROVINCE TO ENSURE THAT THE LOCAL GOVERNOR, ABA-ANDA-SA, WAS ACTING ACCORDING TO INSTRUCTIONS SENT TO HIM, REPORTING BACK THAT THE GOVERNOR WAS ACTING LIKE AN INDEPENDENT KING; AND THE REPLY FROM KING SHULGI TO IRMU, 2095-47 BC, COPY DATED 9TH MONTH, 5TH DAY, YEAR SAMSU-ILUNA THE KING AT THE COMMAND OF ENLIL

MS in Neo Sumerian on clay, Babylonia, 28th regnal year of King Samsu-iluna, 1722 BC, 1 tablet, 10,5x7,1x2,7 cm, single column, 29 lines in cuneiform script by Marduk-mushallim.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 1996, yellow cloth gilt folding case by Aquarius.

Context: A belle lettre to King Iter Pisha of Isin, see MS 2287.

Commentary: This correspondence had become belles-lettres, 8 letters are published. The present one is unpublished.

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 Lexical texts

MS 3173

LEXICAL LIST OF TREES, WOODEN OBJECTS, GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES AND TYPES OF SPADES

MS in Sumerian on clay, Sumer, Uruk III, 3100-3000 BC, lower 1/2 of a tablet, 10,5x24,5x4,5 cm (originally ca. 25x24,5x4,5 cm), 9 columns, 120 lines in pictographic script.

Commentary: This is by far the largest pictographic tablet known. It represents a new lexical tradition different from the 13 Uruk lists of titles (MS 2429/4), animals, fish, plants, jars, cities, etc. The present list would have had no less than 230 geographical names compared to the Uruk city list of 88 entries. The later Tell Abu Salabikh (ca. 2500 BC) and Ebla (ca. 2400 BC) lists had 289 entries, but entirely different from the present one.

See also MS 2429/4 , Lexical list of titles, Sumer, 31st c. BC

See also MS 2340 , Lexical list of harp strings, Sumer, 26th c. BC

MS 2462

LEXICAL LIST OF BIRDS, ANIMALS AND OBJECTS, PRECEDED BY NUMBERS, 'THE TRIBUTE'

MS in Sumerian on clay, Sumer, ca. 2500 BC, 1 tablet, 12,6x13,4x2,5 cm, 6 columns, 96 compartments in a fine professional cuneiform script.

Binding: Barking, Essex, 1998, blue quarter morocco gilt folding case by Aquarius.

Commentary: 'The Tribute' dates to ca. 2900 BC; the present tablet is an Early Dynastic version of the text, the only one so far attested.

See also MS 3030 , Lexical list of buildings, Assyria, 681-669 BC

See also MS 1816, Isidorus Hispalensis: Etymologiarum sive originum, Germany, ca. 800

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 Medical texts

MS 2670

DIAGNOSES OF MEDICAL CONDITIONS WITH PROGNOSES OF THE OUTCOME, SUCH AS:

IF A MAN'S EPIGASTRIUM IS LOOSE, HE IS IN A CRITICAL STATE.

IF A MAN'S EYELIDS THICKEN AND HIS EYES SHED TEARS, IT IS A 'BLAST OF THE WIND'.

IF A SICK MAN IS RELAXED DURING THE DAY, BUT FROM DUSK HE IS SICK FOR THE NIGHT, IT IS AN ATTACK OF A GHOST.

IF A SICK MAN'S ADAM'S APPLE IS LOOSE, HIS SINEWS ARE DISEASED AND HIS NOSTRILS CLOSED, HE IS IN A CRITICAL STATE

MS in Old Babylonian on clay, Babylonia, ca. 1900-1700 BC, 1 tablet, 10,4x7,8x3,2 cm, 45 lines (originally 66) in cuneiform script.

Commentary: Medical texts of this category are well known from Neo Babylonian literature, while from the over 1000 year older, Old Babylonian period, few survive. Many of the Babylonian diagnoses and prognoses still hold true in modern medicine.

MS 4575

IF A YOUTH WHO HAS NOT KNOWN A WOMAN SUFFERS A PROLAPSE OF THE RECTUM, YOU CRUSH A ... AND A ... AND YOU HAVE HIM DRINK IT IN BEER, AND/OR MASSAGE HIM WITH IT IN OIL. IF IT IS NOT RELIEVED BY POTIONS OR SALVES, IF IT IS HIS RIGHT TESTICLE APPLY HEAT TO HIS LEFT SHOULDER BLADE; IF IT IS HIS LEFT TESTICLE, APPLY HEAT TO HIS RIGHT SHOULDER BLADE.

IF A YOUTH WHO HAS NOT KNOWN A WOMAN SUFFERS A PROLAPSE OF THE RECTUM, YOU BOIL UP A LIZARD; HE DRINKS THE FLUID AND HE WILL RECOVER.

IF A YOUTH WHO HAS NOT KNOWN A WOMAN SUFFERS A PROLAPSE OF THE RECTUM, YOU SIT HIM UP TO HIS WAIST IN STALE FINE FLOUR AND WHEAT FLOUR IN A ... OF ... SESAME, AND HE WILL RECOVER.

IF A YOUTH'S TESTICLES ARE INFLAMED, YOU MIX TOGETHER EQUAL QUANTITIES OF POWDERED ROAST BARLEY, AND POWDERED ...; IF IT IS SUMMER YOU KNEAD IT IN KASU-JUICE; IF IT IS WINTER, IN HOT WATER.

IF A YOUTH'S TESTICLES ARE INFLAMED, YOU 'IT IS BROKEN' IN HOT WATER WHICH ...; YOU ANOINT HIM WITH OIL; YOU REPEAT THIS FOR 10 DAYS. YOU REPEAT THIS FOR 20 DAYS AS WITH INFLAMMATION OF THE INTESTINES, AND HE WILL RECOVER.

IF A YOUTH SUFFERS FROM PROLAPSE OF THE RECTUM, YOU BOIL UP ... ..., UP TO HIS ANUS; HE SHOULD SQUAT DOWN, AND ... IN FRESH CRESS, YOU WASH IT IN WATER, STEEP IT, AND AFTERWARDS CRUSH FINE, AND MIX IT UP WITH THE CRESS; YOU BANDAGE AS A POULTICE WHEN HOT TO THE ANUS AND 'IT IS BROKEN' -.

IF A YOUTH'S HIPS HURT HIM, OR HE SUFFERS FROM STRANGURY, OR HIS KIDNEYS HURT HIM, OR HIS ... ARE INFLAMED, OR HE CANNOT SIT(?) DUE TO HIS ..., OR HE IS BLOATED WITH WIND, OR A TENDON IN HIS HIP, OR TESTICLE, OR HIS -

MS in Babylonian on clay, Uruk, ca. 300 BC, 1 tablet, 7,4x5,8x2,3 cm, 31 lines in cuneiform script by one of the leading Uruk scribes, Anu-Iksur or Iqisha.

Context: Other medical tablets are MSS2670and 3277. This tablet is written by a member of the well-known families of leading Uruk scribes, such as Anu-iksur or Iqisha. The excavations at Warka have produced whole archives of medical, magical and scholarly texts in identical script and format. The present tablet must come from one of those archives. All the other texts from this archive are now in international museums. Thus it must represent the work of one of Mesopotamia's leading medical practitioners of the late 4th c. BC.

Commentary: Part of the text is quite new, and part duplicates, restores and even clarifies a medical text from Assurbanipal's library.

The text has some very unusual contents, with both unusual words and interesting ideas. The first recipe treats a problem that appears on one side of the body with an action to the other side. This peculiar Mesopotamian concept first makes its appearance in a pre- Hammurabi medical text that treats toothache, and also in some later cuneiform cures for nose-bleeds, and may be interpreted as illustrating an underlying philosophy. The action in the present instant is the application of heat, which is not known in any other medical tablet, but which we now know, may have therapeutic benefit.

There is also an interesting procedural parallel with certain therapeutic recipes in Aramaic in the Babylonian Talmud. The vehicle prescribed here for applying the medicament varies according to the time of year; i.e. in summer it should be administered cold, in a kind of juice, but in the winter it must be steeped in hot water. Exactly the same point occurs in the Talmud, implying that this, and other curative procedures, have their roots in the more ancient Babylonian praxis.

Twice the scribe has written the signs he-pi in very small script, once on the obverse, and once on the reverse. The literal meaning of this expression is 'it is broken', and it serves to indicate that the medical tablet from which he was copying these recipes was itself fragmentary or damaged in certain places, implying that it was, even then, a recovered text of some antiquity. This is a very revealing point. It is clear that in both instances there is a word or two missing in the received text. The first is some element of materia medica, so we cannot be sure what it was, but in the second case, it is quite evident that the missing words at the end of the recipe must have been '... he will get better.' It must have been entirely obvious to the scribe himself. Nevertheless, his deep-seated reverence for traditional textual sources and the nature of his training meant that as a copyist, his responsibility was only to transmit the text as received, and not to add to it, or improof it, or even restore it.

There is no clearer sort of evidence available from the tablets themselves than this miniature scribal gloss to highlight this characteristic attitude in ancient Mesopotamian thinking. The scribes were rigorously trained to think in this way: the texts that came down from Antiquity were to be copied and preserved just as they were received. There was no room for individual input, or creative development.

Pseudepigrapha books

Pseudepigrapha are spurious works ostensibly written by a biblical figure. Deuterocanonical works are those that are accepted in one canon but not in all.

Old Testament Pseudepigrapha are extremely numerous and offer accounts of patriarchs and events, attributed to various biblical personages from Adam to Zechariah. Some of the most significant of these works are the Ascension of Isaiah, the Assumption of Moses, the Life of Adam and Eve, the First and Second Books of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Letter of Aristeas, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.

All the New Testament apocrypha are Pseudepigraphal, and most of them fall into the categories of acts, gospels, and epistles, though there are a number of apocalypses and some can be characterized as wisdom books. The apocryphal acts purport to relate the lives or careers of various biblical figures, including most of the apostles; the epistles, gospels, and others are ascribed to such figures. Some relate encounters and events in mystical language and describe arcane rituals. Most of these works arose from sects that had been or would be declared heretical, such as, importantly, the Gnostics. Some of them argued against various heresies, and a few appear to have been neutral efforts to popularize the life of some saint or other early leader of the church, including a number of women. In the early decades of Christianity no orthodoxy had been established, and various parties or factions were vying for ascendancy and regularity in the young church. All sought through their writings, as through their preaching and missions, to win believers. In this setting virtually all works advocating beliefs that later became heretical were destined to denunciation and destruction.

Herodotus

Xerxes Invades Greece

from The Histories

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In this section, Herodotus relates the invasion of the Greek mainland by the Persian king Xerxes in 480 B.C. According to this account, what are the differences between the Greeks and the Persians?

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After Egypt was subdued, Xerxes, being about to take in hand the expedition against Athens, called together an assembly of the noblest Persians to learn their opinions, and to lay before them his own designs. So, when the men were met, the king spake thus to them:-

"Persians, I shall not be the first to bring in among you a new custom- I shall but follow one which has come down to us from our forefathers. Never yet, as our old men assure me, has our race reposed itself, since the time when Cyrus overcame Astyages, and so we Persians wrested the sceptre from the Medes. Now in all this God guides us; and we, obeying his guidance, prosper greatly. What need have I to tell you of the deeds of Cyrus and Cambyses, and my own father Darius, how many nations they conquered, and added to our dominions? Ye know right well what great things they achieved. But for myself, I will say that, from the day on which I mounted the throne, I have not ceased to consider by what means I may rival those who have preceded me in this post of honour, and increase the power of Persia as much as any of them. And truly I have pondered upon this, until at last I have found out a way whereby we may at once win glory, and likewise get possession of a land which is as large and as rich as our own nay, which is even more varied in the fruits it bears- while at the same time we obtain satisfaction and revenge. For this cause I have now called you together, that I may make known to you what I design to do.

My intent is to throw a bridge over the Hellespont and march an army through Europe against Greece, that thereby I may obtain vengeance from the Athenians for the wrongs committed by them against the Persians and against my father. Your own eyes saw the preparations of Darius against these men; but death came upon him, and balked his hopes of revenge. In his behalf, therefore, and in behalf of all the Persians, I undertake the war, and pledge myself not to rest till I have taken and burnt Athens, which has dared, unprovoked, to injure me and my father. Long since they came to Asia with Aristagoras of Miletus, who was one of our slaves, and, entering Sardis, burnt its temples and its sacred groves; again, more lately, when we made a landing upon their coast under Datis and Artaphernes, how roughly they handled us ye do not need to be told. For these reasons, therefore, I am bent upon this war; and I see likewise therewith united no few advantages. Once let us subdue this people, and those neighbours of theirs who hold the land of Pelops the Phrygian, and we shall extend the Persian territory as far as God's heaven reaches. The sun will then shine on no land beyond our borders; for I will pass through Europe from one end to the other, and with your aid make of all the lands which it contains one country.

For thus, if what I hear be true, affairs stand: the nations whereof I have spoken, once swept away, there is no city, no country left in all the world, which will venture so much as to withstand us in arms. By this course then we shall bring all mankind under our yoke, alike those who are guilty and those who are innocent of doing us wrong. For yourselves, if you wish to please me, do as follows: when I announce the time for the army to meet together, hasten to the muster with a good will, every one of you; and know that to the man who brings with him the most gallant array I will give the gifts which our people consider the most honourable. This then is what ye have to do. But to show that I am not self-willed in this matter, I lay the business before you, and give you full leave to speak your minds upon it openly."

Xerxes, having so spoken, held his peace.

Whereupon Mardonius took the word, and said: "Of a truth, my lord, thou dost surpass, not only all living Persians, but likewise those yet unborn. Most true and right is each word that thou hast now uttered; but best of all thy resolve not to let the Ionians who live in Europe- a worthless crew- mock us any more. It were indeed a monstrous thing if, after conquering and enslaving the Sacae, the Indians, the Ethiopians, the Assyrians, and many other mighty nations, not for any wrong that they had done us, but only to increase our empire, we should then allow the Greeks, who have done us such wanton injury, to escape our vengeance. What is it that we fear in them?- not surely their numbers?- not the greatness of their wealth? We know the manner of their battle- we know how weak their power is; already have we subdued their children who dwell in our country, the Ionians, Aeolians, and Dorians. I myself have had experience of these men when I marched against them by the orders of thy father; and though I went as far as Macedonia, and came but a little short of reaching Athens itself, yet not a soul ventured to come out against me to battle.

And yet, I am told, these very Greeks are wont to wage wars against one another in the most foolish way, through sheer perversity and doltishness. For no sooner is war proclaimed than they search out the smoothest and fairest plain that is to be found in all the land, and there they assemble and fight; whence it comes to pass that even the conquerors depart with great loss: I say nothing of the conquered, for they are destroyed altogether. Now surely, as they are all of one speech, they ought to interchange heralds and messengers, and make up their differences by any means rather than battle; or, at the worst, if they must needs fight one against another, they ought to post themselves as strongly as possible, and so try their quarrels. But, notwithstanding that they have so foolish a manner of warfare, yet these Greeks, when I led my army against them to the very borders of Macedonia, did not so much as think of offering me battle. Who then will dare, O king! to meet thee in arms, when thou comest with all Asia's warriors at thy back, and with all her ships? For my part I do not believe the Greek people will be so foolhardy. Grant, however, that I am mistaken herein, and that they are foolish enough to meet us in open fight; in that case they will learn that there are no such soldiers in the whole world as we. Nevertheless let us spare no pains; for nothing comes without trouble; but all that men acquire is got by painstaking."

When Mardonius had in this way softened the harsh speech of Xerxes, he too held his peace.

The other Persians were silent; all feared to raise their voice against the plan proposed to them. But Artabanus, the son of Hystaspes, and uncle of Xerxes, trusting to his relationship, was bold to speak:- "O king!" he said, "it is impossible, if no more than one opinion is uttered, to make choice of the best: a man is forced then to follow whatever advice may have been given him; but if opposite speeches are delivered, then choice can be exercised. In like manner pure gold is not recognised by itself; but when we test it along with baser ore, we perceive which is the better. I counselled thy father, Darius, who was my own brother, not to attack the Scyths, a race of people who had no town in their whole land. He thought however to subdue those wandering tribes, and would not listen to me, but marched an army against them, and ere he returned home lost many of his bravest warriors. Thou art about, O king! to attack a people far superior to the Scyths, a people distinguished above others both by land and sea. 'Tis fit therefore that I should tell thee what danger thou incurrest hereby.

Thou sayest that thou wilt bridge the Hellespont, and lead thy troops through Europe against Greece. Now suppose some disaster befall thee by land or sea, or by both. It may be even so; for the men are reputed valiant. Indeed one may measure their prowess from what they have already done; for when Datis and Artaphernes led their huge army against Attica, the Athenians singly defeated them. But grant they are not successful on both elements. Still, if they man their ships, and, defeating us by sea, sail to the Hellespont, and there destroy our bridge- that, sire, were a fearful hazard.

And here 'tis not by my own mother wit alone that I conjecture what will happen; but I remember how narrowly we escaped disaster once, when thy father, after throwing bridges over the Thracian Bosphorus and the Ister, marched against the Scythians, and they tried every sort of prayer to induce the Ionians, who had charge of the bridge over the Ister, to break the passage. On that day, if Histiaeus, the king of Miletus, had sided with the other princes, and not set himself to oppose their views, the empire of the Persians would have come to nought. Surely a dreadful thing is this even to hear said, that the king's fortunes depended wholly on one man.

"Think then no more of incurring so great a danger when no need presses, but follow the advice I tender. Break up this meeting, and when thou hast well considered the matter with thyself, and settled what thou wilt do, declare to us thy resolve. I know not of aught in the world that so profits a man as taking good counsel with himself; for even if things fall out against one's hopes, still one has counselled well, though fortune has made the counsel of none effect: whereas if a man counsels ill and luck follows, he has gotten a windfall, but his counsel is none the less silly.

Seest thou how God with his lightning smites always the bigger animals, and will not suffer them to wax insolent, while those of a lesser bulk chafe him not? How likewise his bolts fall ever on the highest houses and the tallest trees? So plainly does He love to bring down everything that exalts itself. Thus ofttimes a mighty host is discomfited by a few men, when God in his jealousy sends fear or storm from heaven, and they perish in a way unworthy of them. For God allows no one to have high thoughts but Himself. Again, hurry always brings about disasters, from which huge sufferings are wont to arise; but in delay lie many advantages, not apparent (it may be) at first sight, but such as in course of time are seen of all. Such then is my counsel to thee, O king!

Artabanus loses the argument, and Xerxes prepares to invade Greece.

Here his first care was to send off heralds into Greece, who were to prefer a demand for earth and water, and to require that preparations should be made everywhere to feast the king. To Athens indeed and to Sparta he sent no such demand; but these cities excepted, his messengers went everywhere. Now the reason why he sent for earth and water to states which had already refused was this: he thought that although they had refused when Darius made the demand, they would now be too frightened to venture to say him nay. So he sent his heralds, wishing to know for certain how it would be.

Xerxes, after this, made preparations to advance to Abydos, where the bridge across the Hellespont from Asia to Europe was lately finished. Midway between Sestos and Madytus in the Hellespontine Chersonese, and right over against Abydos, there is a rocky tongue of land which runs out for some distance into the sea. This is the place where no long time afterwards the Greeks under Xanthippus, the son of Ariphron, took Artayctes the Persian, who was at that time governor of Sestos, and nailed him living to a plank. He was the Artayctes who brought women into the temple of Protesilaus at Elaeus, and there was guilty of most unholy deeds.

Towards this tongue of land then, the men to whom the business was assigned carried out a double bridge from Abydos; and while the Phoenicians constructed one line with cables of white flax, the Egyptians in the other used ropes made of papyrus. Now it is seven furlongs across from Abydos to the opposite coast. When, therefore, the channel had been bridged successfully, it happened that a great storm arising broke the whole work to pieces, and destroyed all that had been done.

So when Xerxes heard of it he was full of wrath, and straightway gave orders that the Hellespont should receive three hundred lashes, and that a pair of fetters should be cast into it. Nay, I have even heard it said that he bade the branders take their irons and therewith brand the Hellespont. It is certain that he commanded those who scourged the waters to utter, as they lashed them, these barbarian and wicked words: "Thou bitter water, thy lord lays on thee this punishment because thou hast wronged him without a cause, having suffered no evil at his hands. Verily King Xerxes will cross thee, whether thou wilt or no. Well dost thou deserve that no man should honour thee with sacrifice; for thou art of a truth a treacherous and unsavoury river." While the sea was thus punished by his orders, he likewise commanded that the overseers of the work should lose their heads.

Then they, whose business it was, executed the unpleasing task laid upon them; and other master-builders were set over the work. . .

And now when all was prepared- the bridges, and the works at Athos, the breakwaters about the mouths of the cutting, which were made to hinder the surf from blocking up the entrances, and the cutting itself; and when the news came to Xerxes that this last was completely finished- then at length the host, having first wintered at Sardis, began its march towards Abydos, fully equipped, on the first approach of spring. At the moment of departure, the sun suddenly quitted his seat in the heavens, and disappeared, though there were no clouds in sight, but the sky was clear and serene. Day was thus turned into night; whereupon Xerxes, who saw and remarked the prodigy, was seized with alarm, and sending at once for the Magians, inquired of them the meaning of the portent. They replied- "God is foreshowing to the Greeks the destruction of their cities; for the sun foretells for them, and the moon for us." So Xerxes, thus instructed, proceeded on his way with great gladness of heart.

The army had begun its march, when Pythius the Lydian, affrighted at the heavenly portent, and emboldened by his gifts, came to Xerxes and said- "Grant me, O my lord! a favour which is to thee a light matter, but to me of vast account." Then Xerxes' who looked for nothing less than such a prayer as Pythius in fact preferred, engaged to grant him whatever he wished, and commanded him to tell his wish freely. So Pythius, full of boldness, went on to say:-

"O my lord! thy servant has five sons; and it chances that all are called upon to join thee in this march against Greece. I beseech thee, have compassion upon my years; and let one of my sons, the eldest, remain behind, to be my prop and stay, and the guardian of my wealth. Take with thee the other four; and when thou hast done all that is in thy heart, mayest thou come back in safety."

But Xerxes was greatly angered, and replied to him: "Thou wretch! darest thou speak to me of thy son, when I am myself on the march against Greece, with sons, and brothers, and kinsfolk, and friends? Thou, who art my bond-slave, and art in duty bound to follow me with all thy household, not excepting thy wife! Know that man's spirit dwelleth in his ears, and when it hears good things, straightway it fills all his body with delight; but no sooner does it hear the contrary than it heaves and swells with passion. As when thou didst good deeds and madest good offers to me, thou wert not able to boast of having outdone the king in bountifulness, so now when thou art changed and grown impudent, thou shalt not receive all thy deserts, but less. For thyself and four of thy five sons, the entertainment which I had of thee shall gain protection; but as for him to whom thou clingest above the rest, the forfeit of his life shall be thy punishment." Having thus spoken, forthwith he commanded those to whom such tasks were assigned to seek out the eldest of the sons of Pythius, and having cut his body asunder, to place the two halves. one on the right, the other on the left, of the great road, so that the army might march out between them.

Then the king's orders were obeyed; and the army marched out between the two halves of the carcase.

As Xerxes leads his troops in Greece, he asks a native Greek if the Greeks will put up a fight.

Now after Xerxes had sailed down the whole line and was gone ashore, he sent for Demaratus the son of Ariston, who had accompanied him in his march upon Greece, and bespake him thus:-

"Demaratus, it is my pleasure at this time to ask thee certain things which I wish to know. Thou art a Greek, and, as I hear from the other Greeks with whom I converse, no less than from thine own lips, thou art a native of a city which is not the meanest or the weakest in their land. Tell me, therefore, what thinkest thou? Will the Greeks lift a hand against us? Mine own judgment is, that even if all the Greeks and all the barbarians of the West were gathered together in one place, they would not be able to abide my onset, not being really of one mind. But I would fain know what thou thinkest hereon."

Thus Xerxes questioned; and the other replied in his turn,- "O king! is it thy will that I give thee a true answer, or dost thou wish for a pleasant one?"

Then the king bade him speak the plain truth, and promised that he would not on that account hold him in less favour than heretofore.

So Demaratus, when he heard the promise, spake as follows:-

"O king! since thou biddest me at all risks speak the truth, and not say what will one day prove me to have lied to thee, thus I answer. Want has at all times been a fellow-dweller with us in our land, while Valour is an ally whom we have gained by dint of wisdom and strict laws. Her aid enables us to drive out want and escape thraldom. Brave are all the Greeks who dwell in any Dorian land; but what I am about to say does not concern all, but only the Lacedaemonians. First then, come what may, they will never accept thy terms, which would reduce Greece to slavery; and further, they are sure to join battle with thee, though all the rest of the Greeks should submit to thy will. As for their numbers, do not ask how many they are, that their resistance should be a possible thing; for if a thousand of them should take the field, they will meet thee in battle, and so will any number, be it less than this, or be it more."

When Xerxes heard this answer of Demaratus, he laughed and answered:-

"What wild words, Demaratus! A thousand men join battle with such an army as this! Come then, wilt thou- who wert once, as thou sayest, their king- engage to fight this very day with ten men? I trow not. And yet, if all thy fellow-citizens be indeed such as thou sayest they are, thou oughtest, as their king, by thine own country's usages, to be ready to fight with twice the number. If then each one of them be a match for ten of my soldiers, I may well call upon thee to be a match for twenty. So wouldest thou assure the truth of what thou hast now said. If, however, you Greeks, who vaunt yourselves so much, are of a truth men like those whom I have seen about my court, as thyself, Demaratus, and the others with whom I am wont to converse- if, I say, you are really men of this sort and size, how is the speech that thou hast uttered more than a mere empty boast? For, to go to the very verge of likelihood- how could a thousand men, or ten thousand, or even fifty thousand, particularly if they were all alike free, and not under one lord- how could such a force, I say, stand against an army like mine? Let them be five thousand, and we shall have more than a thousand men to each one of theirs. If, indeed, like our troops, they had a single master, their fear of him might make them courageous beyond their natural bent; or they might be urged by lashes against an enemy which far outnumbered them. But left to their own free choice, assuredly they will act differently. For mine own part, I believe, that if the Greeks had to contend with the Persians only, and the numbers were equal on both sides, the Greeks would find it hard to stand their ground. We too have among us such men as those of whom thou spakest- not many indeed, but still we possess a few. For instance, some of my bodyguard would be willing to engage singly with three Greeks. But this thou didst not know; and therefore it was thou talkedst so foolishly."

Demaratus answered him- "I knew, O king! at the outset, that if I told thee the truth, my speech would displease thine ears. But as thou didst require me to answer thee with all possible truthfulness, I informed thee what the Spartans will do. And in this I spake not from any love that I bear them- for none knows better than thou what my love towards them is likely to be at the present time, when they have robbed me of my rank and my ancestral honours, and made me a homeless exile, whom thy father did receive, bestowing on me both shelter and sustenance. What likelihood is there that a man of understanding should be unthankful for kindness shown him, and not cherish it in his heart? For mine own self, I pretend not to cope with ten men, nor with two- nay, had I the choice, I would rather not fight even with one. But, if need appeared, or if there were any great cause urging me on, I would contend with right good will against one of those persons who boast themselves a match for any three Greeks. So likewise the Lacedaemonians, when they fight singly, are as good men as any in the world, and when they fight in a body, are the bravest of all. For though they be free-men, they are not in all respects free; Law is the master whom they own; and this master they fear more than thy subjects fear thee. Whatever he commands they do; and his commandment is always the same: it forbids them to flee in battle, whatever the number of their foes, and requires them to stand firm, and either to conquer or die. If in these words, O king! I seem to thee to speak foolishly, I am content from this time forward evermore to hold my peace. I had not now spoken unless compelled by thee. Certes, I pray that all may turn out according to thy wishes." Such was the answer of Demaratus; and Xerxes was not angry with him at all, but only laughed, and sent him away with words of kindness.

Of course, Demaratus was correct, and the Greeks did put up a fight. In one of the famous battles of ancient history, the Persian force met a much smaller Greek army at a narrow mountain pass called Thermopylae.

King Xerxes pitched his camp in the region of Malis called Trachinia, while on their side the Greeks occupied the straits. These straits the Greeks in general call Thermopylae (the Hot Gates); but the natives, and those who dwell in the neighbourhood, call them Pylae (the Gates). Here then the two armies took their stand; the one master of all the region lying north of Trachis, the other of the country extending southward of that place to the verge of the continent.

The Greeks who at this spot awaited the coming of Xerxes were the following:- From Sparta, three hundred men-at-arms; from Arcadia, a thousand Tegeans and Mantineans, five hundred of each people; a hundred and twenty Orchomenians, from the Arcadian Orchomenus; and a thousand from other cities: from Corinth, four hundred men; from Phlius, two hundred; and from Mycenae eighty. Such was the number from the Peloponnese. There were also present, from Boeotia, seven hundred Thespians and four hundred Thebans.

Besides these troops, the Locrians of Opus and the Phocians had obeyed the call of their countrymen, and sent, the former all the force they had, the latter a thousand men. For envoys had gone from the Greeks at Thermopylae among the Locrians and Phocians, to call on them for assistance, and to say- "They were themselves but the vanguard of the host, sent to precede the main body, which might every day be expected to follow them. The sea was in good keeping, watched by the Athenians, the Eginetans, and the rest of the fleet. There was no cause why they should fear; for after all the invader was not a god but a man; and there never had been, and never would be, a man who was not liable to misfortunes from the very day of his birth, and those misfortunes greater in proportion to his own greatness. The assailant therefore, being only a mortal, must needs fall from his glory." Thus urged, the Locrians and the Phocians had come with their troops to Trachis.

The various nations had each captains of their own under whom they served; but the one to whom all especially looked up, and who had the command of the entire force, was the Lacedaemonian, Leonidas. Now Leonidas was the son of Anaxandridas, who was the son of Leo, who was the son of Eurycratidas, who was the son of Anaxander, who was the son of Eurycrates, who was the son of Polydorus, who was the son of Alcamenes, who was the son of Telecles, who was the son of Archelaus, who was the son of Agesilaus, who was the son of Doryssus, who was the son of Labotas, who was the son of Echestratus, who was the son of Agis, who was the son of Eurysthenes, who was the son of Aristodemus, who was the son of Aristomachus, who was the son of Cleodaeus, who was the son of Hyllus, who was the son of Hercules.

Leonidas had come to be king of Sparta quite unexpectedly.

Having two elder brothers, Cleomenes and Dorieus, he had no thought of ever mounting the throne. However, when Cleomenes died without male offspring, as Dorieus was likewise deceased, having perished in Sicily, the crown fell to Leonidas, who was older than Cleombrotus, the youngest of the sons of Anaxandridas, and, moreover, was married to the daughter of Cleomenes. He had now come to Thermopylae, accompanied by the three hundred men which the law assigned him, whom he had himself chosen from among the citizens, and who were all of them fathers with sons living. On his way he had taken the troops from Thebes, whose number I have already mentioned, and who were under the command of Leontiades the son of Eurymachus. The reason why he made a point of taking troops from Thebes, and Thebes only, was that the Thebans were strongly suspected of being well inclined to the Medes. Leonidas therefore called on them to come with him to the war, wishing to see whether they would comply with his demand, or openly refuse, and disclaim the Greek alliance. They, however, though their wishes leant the other way, nevertheless sent the men.

The force with Leonidas was sent forward by the Spartans in advance of their main body, that the sight of them might encourage the allies to fight, and hinder them from going over to the Medes, as it was likely they might have done had they seen that Sparta was backward. They intended presently, when they had celebrated the Carneian festival, which was what now kept them at home, to leave a garrison in Sparta, and hasten in full force to join the army. The rest of the allies also intended to act similarly; for it happened that the Olympic festival fell exactly at this same period. None of them looked to see the contest at Thermopylae decided so speedily; wherefore they were content to send forward a mere advanced guard. Such accordingly were the intentions of the allies.

The Greek forces at Thermopylae, when the Persian army drew near to the entrance of the pass, were seized with fear; and a council was held to consider about a retreat. It was the wish of the Peloponnesians generally that the army should fall back upon the Peloponnese, and there guard the Isthmus. But Leonidas, who saw with what indignation the Phocians and Locrians heard of this plan, gave his voice for remaining where they were, while they sent envoys to the several cities to ask for help, since they were too few to make a stand against an army like that of the Medes.

While this debate was going on, Xerxes sent a mounted spy to observe the Greeks, and note how many they were, and see what they were doing. He had heard, before he came out of Thessaly, that a few men were assembled at this place, and that at their head were certain Lacedaemonians, under Leonidas, a descendant of Hercules. The horseman rode up to the camp, and looked about him, but did not see the whole army; for such as were on the further side of the wall (which had been rebuilt and was now carefully guarded) it was not possible for him to behold; but he observed those on the outside, who were encamped in front of the rampart. It chanced that at this time the Lacedaemonians held the outer guard, and were seen by the spy, some of them engaged in gymnastic exercises, others combing their long hair. At this the spy greatly marvelled, but he counted their number, and when he had taken accurate note of everything, he rode back quietly; for no one pursued after him, nor paid any heed to his visit. So he returned, and told Xerxes all that he had seen.

Upon this, Xerxes, who had no means of surmising the truth- namely, that the Spartans were preparing to do or die manfully- but thought it laughable that they should be engaged in such employments, sent and called to his presence Demaratus the son of Ariston, who still remained with the army. When he appeared, Xerxes told him all that he had heard, and questioned him concerning the news, since he was anxious to understand the meaning of such behaviour on the part of the Spartans. Then Demaratus said-

"I spake to thee, O king! concerning these men long since, when we had but just begun our march upon Greece; thou, however, didst only laugh at my words, when I told thee of all this, which I saw would come to pass. Earnestly do I struggle at all times to speak truth to thee, sire; and now listen to it once more. These men have come to dispute the pass with us; and it is for this that they are now making ready. 'Tis their custom, when they are about to hazard their lives, to adorn their heads with care. Be assured, however, that if thou canst subdue the men who are here and the Lacedaemonians who remain in Sparta, there is no other nation in all the world which will venture to lift a hand in their defence. Thou hast now to deal with the first kingdom and town in Greece, and with the bravest men."

Then Xerxes, to whom what Demaratus said seemed altogether to surpass belief, asked further "how it was possible for so small an army to contend with his?"

"O king!" Demaratus answered, "let me be treated as a liar, if matters fall not out as I say."

But Xerxes was not persuaded any the more. Four whole days he suffered to go by, expecting that the Greeks would run away. When, however, he found on the fifth that they were not gone, thinking that their firm stand was mere impudence and recklessness, he grew wroth, and sent against them the Medes and Cissians, with orders to take them alive and bring them into his presence. Then the Medes rushed forward and charged the Greeks, but fell in vast numbers: others however took the places of the slain, and would not be beaten off, though they suffered terrible losses. In this way it became clear to all, and especially to the king, that though he had plenty of combatants, he had but very few warriors. The struggle, however, continued during the whole day.

Then the Medes, having met so rough a reception, withdrew from the fight; and their place was taken by the band of Persians under Hydarnes, whom the king called his "Immortals": they, it was thought, would soon finish the business. But when they joined battle with the Greeks, 'twas with no better success than the Median detachment- things went much as before- the two armies fighting in a narrow space, and the barbarians using shorter spears than the Greeks, and having no advantage from their numbers. The Lacedaemonians fought in a way worthy of note, and showed themselves far more skilful in fight than their adversaries, often turning their backs, and making as though they were all flying away, on which the barbarians would rush after them with much noise and shouting, when the Spartans at their approach would wheel round and face their pursuers, in this way destroying vast numbers of the enemy. Some Spartans likewise fell in these encounters, but only a very few. At last the Persians, finding that all their efforts to gain the pass availed nothing, and that, whether they attacked by divisions or in any other way, it was to no purpose, withdrew to their own quarters.

During these assaults, it is said that Xerxes, who was watching the battle, thrice leaped from the throne on which he sate, in terror for his army.

Next day the combat was renewed, but with no better success on the part of the barbarians. The Greeks were so few that the barbarians hoped to find them disabled, by reason of their wounds, from offering any further resistance; and so they once more attacked them. But the Greeks were drawn up in detachments according to their cities, and bore the brunt of the battle in turns- all except the Phocians, who had been stationed on the mountain to guard the pathway. So, when the Persians found no difference between that day and the preceding, they again retired to their quarters.

Now, as the king was in great strait, and knew not how he should deal with the emergency, Ephialtes, the son of Eurydemus, a man of Malis, came to him and was admitted to a conference. Stirred by the hope of receiving a rich reward at the king's hands, he had come to tell him of the pathway which led across the mountain to Thermopylae; by which disclosure he brought destruction on the band of Greeks who had there withstood the barbarians. . .

The Greeks at Thermopylae received the first warning of the destruction which the dawn would bring on them from the seer Megistias, who read their fate in the victims as he was sacrificing. After this deserters came in, and brought the news that the Persians were marching round by the hills: it was still night when these men arrived. Last of all, the scouts came running down from the heights, and brought in the same accounts, when the day was just beginning to break. Then the Greeks held a council to consider what they should do, and here opinions were divided: some were strong against quitting their post, while others contended to the contrary. So when the council had broken up, part of the troops departed and went their ways homeward to their several states; part however resolved to remain, and to stand by Leonidas to the last.

It is said that Leonidas himself sent away the troops who departed, because he tendered their safety, but thought it unseemly that either he or his Spartans should quit the post which they had been especially sent to guard. For my own part, I incline to think that Leonidas gave the order, because he perceived the allies to be out of heart and unwilling to encounter the danger to which his own mind was made up. He therefore commanded them to retreat, but said that he himself could not draw back with honour; knowing that, if he stayed, glory awaited him, and that Sparta in that case would not lose her prosperity. For when the Spartans, at the very beginning of the war, sent to consult the oracle concerning it, the answer which they received from the Pythoness was "that either Sparta must be overthrown by the barbarians, or one of her kings must perish."

The remembrance of this answer, I think, and the wish to secure the whole glory for the Spartans, caused Leonidas to send the allies away. This is more likely than that they quarrelled with him, and took their departure in such unruly fashion.

To me it seems no small argument in favour of this view, that the seer also who accompanied the army, Megistias, the Acarnanian- said to have been of the blood of Melampus, and the same who was led by the appearance of the victims to warn the Greeks of the danger which threatened them- received orders to retire (as it is certain he did) from Leonidas, that he might escape the coming destruction. Megistias, however, though bidden to depart, refused, and stayed with the army; but he had an only son present with the expedition, whom he now sent away.

So the allies, when Leonidas ordered them to retire, obeyed him and forthwith departed. Only the Thespians and the Thebans remained with the Spartans; and of these the Thebans were kept back by Leonidas as hostages, very much against their will. The Thespians, on the contrary, stayed entirely of their own accord, refusing to retreat, and declaring that they would not forsake Leonidas and his followers. So they abode with the Spartans, and died with them. Their leader was Demophilus, the son of Diadromes.

At sunrise Xerxes made libations, after which he waited until the time when the forum is wont to fill, and then began his advance. Ephialtes had instructed him thus, as the descent of the mountain is much quicker, and the distance much shorter, than the way round the hills, and the ascent. So the barbarians under Xerxes began to draw nigh; and the Greeks under Leonidas, as they now went forth determined to die, advanced much further than on previous days, until they reached the more open portion of the pass. Hitherto they had held their station within the wall, and from this had gone forth to fight at the point where the pass was the narrowest. Now they joined battle beyond the defile, and carried slaughter among the barbarians, who fell in heaps. Behind them the captains of the squadrons, armed with whips, urged their men forward with continual blows. Many were thrust into the sea, and there perished; a still greater number were trampled to death by their own soldiers; no one heeded the dying. For the Greeks, reckless of their own safety and desperate, since they knew that, as the mountain had been crossed, their destruction was nigh at hand, exerted themselves with the most furious valour against the barbarians.

By this time the spears of the greater number were all shivered, and with their swords they hewed down the ranks of the Persians; and here, as they strove, Leonidas fell fighting bravely, together with many other famous Spartans, whose names I have taken care to learn on account of their great worthiness, as indeed I have those of all the three hundred. There fell too at the same time very many famous Persians: among them, two sons of Darius, Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, his children by Phratagune, the daughter of Artanes. Artanes was brother of King Darius, being a son of Hystaspes, the son of Arsames; and when he gave his daughter to the king, he made him heir likewise of all his substance; for she was his only child.

Thus two brothers of Xerxes here fought and fell. And now there arose a fierce struggle between the Persians and the Lacedaemonians over the body of Leonidas, in which the Greeks four times drove back the enemy, and at last by their great bravery succeeded in bearing off the body. This combat was scarcely ended when the Persians with Ephialtes approached; and the Greeks, informed that they drew nigh, made a change in the manner of their fighting. Drawing back into the narrowest part of the pass, and retreating even behind the cross wall, they posted themselves upon a hillock, where they stood all drawn up together in one close body, except only the Thebans. The hillock whereof I speak is at the entrance of the straits, where the stone lion stands which was set up in honour of Leonidas. Here they defended themselves to the last, such as still had swords using them, and the others resisting with their hands and teeth; till the barbarians, who in part had pulled down the wall and attacked them in front, in part had gone round and now encircled them upon every side, overwhelmed and buried the remnant which was left beneath showers of missile weapons.

Thus nobly did the whole body of Lacedaemonians and Thespians behave; but nevertheless one man is said to have distinguished himself above all the rest, to wit, Dieneces the Spartan. A speech which he made before the Greeks engaged the Medes, remains on record. One of the Trachinians told him, "Such was the number of the barbarians, that when they shot forth their arrows the sun would be darkened by their multitude." Dieneces, not at all frightened at these words, but making light of the Median numbers, answered "Our Trachinian friend brings us excellent tidings. If the Medes darken the sun, we shall have our fight in the shade." Other sayings too of a like nature are reported to have been left on record by this same person.

Next to him two brothers, Lacedaemonians, are reputed to have made themselves conspicuous: they were named Alpheus and Maro, and were the sons of Orsiphantus. There was also a Thespian who gained greater glory than any of his countrymen: he was a man called Dithyrambus, the son of Harmatidas.

The slain were buried where they fell; and in their honour, nor less in honour of those who died before Leonidas sent the allies away, an inscription was set up, which said:-

Here did four thousand men from Pelops' land
Against three hundred myriads bravely stand.

This was in honour of all.

Another was for the Spartans alone:-

Go, stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell

That here, obeying her behests, we fell.

The Rosetta Stone

 

Translation of the Greek Section

1. In the reign of the young one who has succeeded his father in the kingship, lord of diadems, most glorious, who has established Egypt and is pious

2. Towards the gods, triumphant over his enemies, who has restored the civilised life of men, lord of the Thirty Years Festivals1, even as Hephaistos2 the Great, a king like the Sun3,

3. Great king of the Upper and Lower countries4, offspring of the Gods Philopatores, one of whom Hephaistos has approved, to whom the Sun has given victory, the living image of Zeus5, son of the Sun, Ptolemy

4. Living for ever, beloved of Ptah, in the ninth year, when Aetos son of Aetos was priest of Alexander, and the Gods Soteres, and the Gods Adelphoi, and the Gods Euergetai, and the Gods Philopatores6 and

5. The God Epiphanes Eucharistos; Pyrrha daughter of Philinos being Athlophoros of Berenike Euergetis; Areia daughter of Diogenes being Kanephoros of Arsinoe Philadelphos; Irene

6. Daughter of Ptolemy being Priestess of Arsinoe Philopator7; the fourth of the month of Xandikos, according to the Egyptians the 18th Mekhir. DECREE. There being assembled the Chief Priests and Prophets and those who enter the inner shrine for the robing of the

7. Gods, and the Fan-bearers and the Sacred Scribes and all the other priests from the temples throughout the land who have come to meet the king at Memphis, for the feast of the assumption

8. By Ptolemy, the ever-living, the beloved of Ptah, the God Epiphanes Eucharistos, the kingship in which he succeeded his father, they being assembled in the temple in Memphis this day declared:

9. Whereas king Ptolemy, the ever-living, the beloved of Ptah, the god Epiphanes Eucharistos, the son of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoe, the Gods Philopatores, has been a benefactor both to the temples and

10. To those who dwell in them, as well as all those who are his subjects, being a god sprung from a god and goddess (like Horus the son of Isis and Osiris, who avenged his father Osiris)8 (and) being benevolently disposed towards

11. The gods, has dedicated to the temples revenues in money and corn and has undertaken much outlay to bring Egypt into prosperity, and to establish the temples,

12. And has been generous with all his own means; and of the revenues and taxes levied in Egypt some he has wholly remitted and others he has lightened, in order that the people and all the others might be

13. In prosperity during his reign; and whereas he has remitted the debts to the crown being many in number which they in Egypt and in the rest of the kingdom owed; and whereas those who were

14. In prison and those who were under accusation for a long time, he has freed of the charges against them; and whereas he has directed that the gods shall continue to enjoy the revenues of the temples and the yearly allowances given to them, both of

15. Corn and money, likewise also the revenue assigned to the gods from vine land and from gardens and the other properties which belonged to the gods in his fathers time;

16. And whereas he directed also, with regard to the priests, that they should pay no more as the tax for admission to the priesthood than what was appointed them throughout his fathers reign and until the first year of his own reign; and has relieved the members of the

17. Priestly orders from the yearly journey to Alexandria; and whereas he has directed that impressment for the navy shall no longer be employed; and of the tax in byssus9 cloth paid by the temples to the crown he

18. Has remitted two-thirds; and whatever things were neglected in former times he has restored to their proper condition, having a care how the traditional duties shall be fittingly paid to the gods;

19. And likewise has apportioned justice to all, like Hermes10 the great and great; and has ordained that those who return of the warrior class, and of others who were unfavourably

20. Disposed in the days of the disturbances11, should, on their return be allowed to occupy their old possessions; and whereas he provided that cavalry and infantry forces and ships should be sent out against those who invaded

21. Egypt by sea and by land, laying out great sums in money and corn in order that the temples and all those who are in the land might be in safety; and having

22. Gone to Lycopolis12 in the Busirite nome, which had been occupied and fortified against a siege with an abundant store of weapons, and all other supplies (seeing that disaffection was now of long

23. Standing among the impious men gathered into it, who had perpetrated much damage to the temples and to all the inhabitants of Egypt), and having

24. Encamped against it, he surrounded it with mounds and trenches and elaborate fortifications; when the Nile made a great rise in the eighth year (of his reign), whichusually floods the

25. Plains, he prevented it, by damming at many points the outlets of the channels (spending upon this no small amount of money), and setting cavalry and infantry to guard

26. Them, in a short time he took the town by storm and destroyed all the impious men in it, even as Hermes and Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, formerly subdued the rebels in the same

27. District13; and as to those who had led the rebels in the time of his father and who had disturbed the land and done wrong to the temples, he came to Memphis to avenge

28. His father and his own kingship, and punished them all as they deserved, at the time that he came there to perform the proper ceremonies for the assumption of the crown; and whereas he remitted what

29. Was due to the crown in the temples up to his eighth year, being no small amount of corn and money; so also the fines for the byssus

30. Cloth not delivered to the crown, and of those delivered, the several fees for their verification, for the same period; and he also freed the temples of (the tax of) the artabe14 for every aroura15 of sacred land and likewise

31. The jar of wine for each aroura of vine land; and whereas he bestowed many gifts upon Apis and Mnevis and upon the other sacred animals in Egypt, because he was much more considerate than the kings before him of all that belonged to

32. The gods; and for their burials he gave what was suitable lavishly and splendidly, and what was regularly paid to their special shrines, with sacrifices and festivals and other customary observances;

33. And he maintained the honours of the temples and of Egypt according to the laws; and he adorned the temple of Apis with rich work, spending upon it gold and silver

34. And precious stones, no small amount; and whereas he has founded temples and shrines and altars, and has repaired those requiring it, having the spirit of a beneficent god in matters pertaining to

35. Religion; and whereas after enquiry he has been renewing the most honourable of the temples during his reign, as is becoming,; in requital of which things the gods have given him health, victory and power, and all other good things,

36. And he and his children shall retain the kingship for all time. WITH PROPITIOUS FORTUNE: It was resolved by the priests of all the temples in the land to increase greatly the existing honours of

37. King PTOLEMY, THE EVER-LIVING, THE BELOVED OF PTAH, THE GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS, likewise those of his parents the Gods Philopatores, and of his ancestors, the Gods Euergetai and

38. The Gods Adelphoi and the Gods Soteres and to set up in the most prominent place of every temple an image of the EVER-LIVING King PTOLEMY, THE BELOVED OF PTAH, THE GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS,

39. An image which shall be called that of PTOLEMY, the defender of Egypt, beside which shall stand the principal god of the temple, handing him the weapon of victory16, all of which shall be manufactured (in the Egyptian)

40. fashion; and that the priests shall pay homage to the images three times a day, and put upon them the sacred garments, and perform the other usual honours such as given to the other gods in the Egyptian

41. festivals; and to establish for King PTOLEMY, THE GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS, sprung of King Ptolemy and Queen Arsinoe, the Gods Philopatores, a statue and golden shrine in each of the

42. Temples, and to set it up in the inner chamber with the other shrines; and in the great festivals in which the shrines are carried in procession the shrine of the GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS shall be carried in procession with them.

43. And in order that it may be easily distinguishable now and for all time, there shall be set upon the shrine the ten gold diadems of the king, to which shall be added a uraeus17 but instead of

44. The uraeus-shaped diadems which are upon the other shrines, in the centre of them shall be the crown called Pschent18 which he put on when he went into the temple at Memphis

45. To perform therein the ceremonies for assuming the kingship; and there shall be placed on the square surface round about the diadems, beside the aforementioned crown, golden symbols (eight in number signifying)

46. That it is (the shrine) of the king who makes manifest the Upper and Lower countries. And since it is the 30th of Mesore on which the birthday of the king is celebrated, and likewise (the 17th of Paophi)

47. On which he succeeded his father in the kingship, they have held these days in honour as name-days in the temples, since they are sources of great blessings for all; it was further decreed that a festival shall be kept in the temples throughout Egypt

48. On these days in every month, on which there shall be sacrifices and libations and all the ceremonies customary at the other festivals (and the offerings shall be given to the priests who)

49. Serve in the temples. And a festival shall be kept for King PTOLEMY, THE EVER-LIVING, THE BELOVED OF PTAH, THE GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS, yearly in the temples throughout the

50. Land from the 1st of Thoth for five days, in which they shall wear garlands and perform sacrifices and libations and the other usual honours, and the priests (in each temple) shall be called

51. Priests of the GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS in addition to the names of the other gods whom they serve; and his priesthood shall be entered upon all formal documents (and engraved upon the rings which they wear);

52. And private individuals shall also be allowed to keep the festival and set up the aforementioned shrine and have it in their homes, performing the aforementioned celebrations

53. Yearly, in order that it may be known to all that the men of Egypt magnify and honour the GOD EPIPHANES EUCHARISTOS the king, according to the law. This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of

54. Hard stone in sacred [that is hieroglyphic] and native [that is demotic] and Greek characters and set up in each of the first, second, and third [rank] temples beside the image of the ever living king.16

 

NOTES

1 The Sed Festival, originally held at thirty-year intervals after a kings coronation, in order to renew a kings physical powers.

2 In the Egyptian version Ptah.

3 In the Egyptian version Ra.

4 The South and North of Egypt, the two great predynastic kingdoms, we always remembered in the royal title.

5 In the Egyptian version Amun.

6 Alexander the Great, Ptolemy I and Berenike I, Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, Ptolemy III and Berenike II, and Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III respectively.

7 Eponymous priests; priests and priestesses, always with Greek names, attached to the royal cult, who served in their office for a year and were arranged in two colleges in a completely Greek institution.

8 Ie Horus-avenger-of-his-father, in Greek Harendotes.

9 Fine linen.

10 In the Egyptian version Thoth.

11 A reference to the years since 205 BC, during which Upper Egypt had been ruled by two rebel native

pharaohs, first Hor-Wennefer (previously misread as Hor-em-akhet) and since 199 BC, Ankh-Wennefer

(misread as Ankh-em-akhet).

12 A town in the ninth nome (administrative area) of the Delta, probably near Busiris but not identified with certainty.

13 According to one version of the Osiris legend, his followers under Horus and Thoth defeated the supporters of Seth nearby at Hermopolis Parva.

14 A measure of grain.

15 A measurement of land equal to about 2/3 of an acre (about 2,735 sq. m.).

16 The khepesh, or scimitar, the royal weapon often depicted being given by a god to the king.

17 The cobra, symbol of kingship.

18 From the Egyptian Pa-sekhemty, the two powers, that is the Double Crown which incorporated the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and the White Crown of Upper Egypt.

CRITIAS

by Plato

360 BC

translated by Benjamin Jowett

New York, C. Scribner's Sons, [1871]

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: CRITIAS;

Those who actually take part in the dialogues:

Timaeus - there is no historical record of him.

Critias - Plato's great grandfather.

Socrates - Plato's mentor and teacher. He was condemned to death by authorities in Athens for "corrupting the moral of Athenian youth"; He lived from 469 to 399 BC.

Hermocrates - statesman and soldier from Syracuse.

Those mentioned in the dialogues:

Solon - Athenian traveler, poet, and lawgiver who lived from approximately 638-559 BC. According to Plato it was he who learned of the story of Atlantis from an Egyptian priest.

Dropides - Critias' great grandfather who was told the story of Atlantis by Solon, a distant relative and close friend.

Critias - Son of Dropides and grandfather of the Critias who takes part in the dialogues. It was he who related the story of Atlantis to the Critias of the dialogues.

 

Timaeus. How thankful I am, Socrates, that I have arrived at last, and, like a weary traveller after a long journey, may be at rest! And I pray the being who always was of old, and has now been by me revealed, to grant that my words may endure in so far as they have been spoken truly and acceptably to him; but if unintentionally I have said anything wrong, I pray that he will impose upon me a just retribution, and the just retribution of him who errs is that he should be set right. Wishing, then, to speak truly in future concerning the generation of the gods, I pray him to give me knowledge, which of all medicines is the most perfect and best. And now having offered my prayer I deliver up the argument to Critias, who is to speak next according to our agreement.

Critias. And I, Timaeus, accept the trust, and as you at first said that you were going to speak of high matters, and begged that some forbearance might be shown to you, I too ask the same or greater forbearance for what I am about to say. And although I very well know that my request may appear to be somewhat and discourteous, I must make it nevertheless. For will any man of sense deny that you have spoken well? I can only attempt to show that I ought to have more indulgence than you, because my theme is more difficult; and I shall argue that to seem to speak well of the gods to men is far easier than to speak well of men to men: for the inexperience and utter ignorance of his hearers about any subject is a great assistance to him who has to speak of it, and we know how ignorant we are concerning the gods. But I should like to make my meaning clearer, if Timaeus, you will follow me. All that is said by any of us can only be imitation and representation. For if we consider the likenesses which painters make of bodies divine and heavenly, and the different degrees of gratification with which the eye of the spectator receives them, we shall see that we are satisfied with the artist who is able in any degree to imitate the earth and its mountains, and the rivers, and the woods, and the universe, and the things that are and move therein, and further, that knowing nothing precise about such matters, we do not examine or analyze the painting; all that is required is a sort of indistinct and deceptive mode of shadowing them forth. But when a person endeavours to paint the human form we are quick at finding out defects, and our familiar knowledge makes us severe judges of any one who does not render every point of similarity. And we may observe the same thing to happen in discourse; we are satisfied with a picture of divine and heavenly things which has very little likeness to them; but we are more precise in our criticism of mortal and human things. Wherefore if at the moment of speaking I cannot suitably express my meaning, you must excuse me, considering that to form approved likenesses of human things is the reverse of easy. This is what I want to suggest to you, and at the same time to beg, Socrates, that I may have not less, but more indulgence conceded to me in what I am about to say. Which favour, if I am right in asking, I hope that you will be ready to grant.

Socrates. Certainly, Critias, we will grant your request, and we will grant the same by anticipation to Hermocrates, as well as to you and Timaeus; for I have no doubt that when his turn comes a little while hence, he will make the same request which you have made. In order, then, that he may provide himself with a fresh beginning, and not be compelled to say the same things over again, let him understand that the indulgence is already extended by anticipation to him. And now, friend Critias, I will announce to you the judgment of the theatre. They are of opinion that the last performer was wonderfully successful, and that you will need a great deal of indulgence before you will be able to take his place.

Hermocrates. The warning, Socrates, which you have addressed to him, I must also take to myself. But remember, Critias, that faint heart never yet raised a trophy; and therefore you must go and attack the argument like a man. First invoke Apollo and the Muses, and then let us hear you sound the praises and show forth the virtues of your ancient citizens.

Crit. Friend Hermocrates, you, who are stationed last and have another in front of you, have not lost heart as yet; the gravity of the situation will soon be revealed to you; meanwhile I accept your exhortations and encouragements. But besides the gods and goddesses whom you have mentioned, I would specially invoke Mnemosyne; for all the important part of my discourse is dependent on her favour, and if I can recollect and recite enough of what was said by the priests and brought hither by Solon, I doubt not that I shall satisfy the requirements of this theatre. And now, making no more excuses, I will proceed.

Let me begin by observing first of all, that nine thousand was the sum of years which had elapsed since the war which was said to have taken place between those who dwelt outside the Pillars of Heracles and all who dwelt within them; this war I am going to describe. Of the combatants on the one side, the city of Athens was reported to have been the leader and to have fought out the war; the combatants on the other side were commanded by the kings of Atlantis, which, as was saying, was an island greater in extent than Libya and Asia, and when afterwards sunk by an earthquake, became an impassable barrier of mud to voyagers sailing from hence to any part of the ocean. The progress of the history will unfold the various nations of barbarians and families of Hellenes which then existed, as they successively appear on the scene; but I must describe first of all Athenians of that day, and their enemies who fought with them, and then the respective powers and governments of the two kingdoms. Let us give the precedence to Athens.

In the days of old the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. There was no quarrelling; for you cannot rightly suppose that the gods did not know what was proper for each of them to have, or, knowing this, that they would seek to procure for themselves by contention that which more properly belonged to others. They all of them by just apportionment obtained what they wanted, and peopled their own districts; and when they had peopled them they tended us, their nurselings and possessions, as shepherds tend their flocks, excepting only that they did not use blows or bodily force, as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stern of the vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure;-thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now different gods had their allotments in different places which they set in order. Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister, and sprang from the same father, having a common nature, and being united also in the love of philosophy and art, both obtained as their common portion this land, which was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue; and there they implanted brave children of the soil, and put into their minds the order of government; their names are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of the destruction of those who received the tradition, and the lapse of ages. For when there were any survivors, as I have already said, they were men who dwelt in the mountains; and they were ignorant of the art of writing, and had heard only the names of the chiefs of the land, but very little about their actions. The names they were willing enough to give to their children; but the virtues and the laws of their predecessors, they knew only by obscure traditions; and as they themselves and their children lacked for many generations the necessaries of life, they directed their attention to the supply of their wants, and of them they conversed, to the neglect of events that had happened in times long past; for mythology and the enquiry into antiquity are first introduced into cities when they begin to have leisure, and when they see that the necessaries of life have already been provided, but not before. And this is reason why the names of the ancients have been preserved to us and not their actions. This I infer because Solon said that the priests in their narrative of that war mentioned most of the names which are recorded prior to the time of Theseus, such as Cecrops, and Erechtheus, and Erichthonius, and Erysichthon, and the names of the women in like manner. Moreover, since military pursuits were then common to men and women, the men of those days in accordance with the custom of the time set up a figure and image of the goddess in full armour, to be a testimony that all animals which associate together, male as well as female, may, if they please, practise in common the virtue which belongs to them without distinction of sex.

Now the country was inhabited in those days by various classes of citizens;-there were artisans, and there were husbandmen, and there was also a warrior class originally set apart by divine men. The latter dwelt by themselves, and had all things suitable for nurture and education; neither had any of them anything of their own, but they regarded all that they had as common property; nor did they claim to receive of the other citizens anything more than their necessary food. And they practised all the pursuits which we yesterday described as those of our imaginary guardians. Concerning the country the Egyptian priests said what is not only probable but manifestly true, that the boundaries were in those days fixed by the Isthmus, and that in the direction of the continent they extended as far as the heights of Cithaeron and Parnes; the boundary line came down in the direction of the sea, having the district of Oropus on the right, and with the river Asopus as the limit on the left. The land was the best in the world, and was therefore able in those days to support a vast army, raised from the surrounding people. Even the remnant of Attica which now exists may compare with any region in the world for the variety and excellence of its fruits and the suitableness of its pastures to every sort of animal, which proves what I am saying; but in those days the country was fair as now and yielded far more abundant produce. How shall I establish my words? and what part of it can be truly called a remnant of the land that then was? The whole country is only a long promontory extending far into the sea away from the rest of the continent, while the surrounding basin of the sea is everywhere deep in the neighbourhood of the shore. Many great deluges have taken place during the nine thousand years, for that is the number of years which have elapsed since the time of which I am speaking; and during all this time and through so many changes, there has never been any considerable accumulation of the soil coming down from the mountains, as in other places, but the earth has fallen away all round and sunk out of sight. The consequence is, that in comparison of what then was, there are remaining only the bones of the wasted body, as they may be called, as in the case of small islands, all the richer and softer parts of the soil having fallen away, and the mere skeleton of the land being left. But in the primitive state of the country, its mountains were high hills covered with soil, and the plains, as they are termed by us, of Phelleus were full of rich earth, and there was abundance of wood in the mountains. Of this last the traces still remain, for although some of the mountains now only afford sustenance to bees, not so very long ago there were still to be seen roofs of timber cut from trees growing there, which were of a size sufficient to cover the largest houses; and there were many other high trees, cultivated by man and bearing abundance of food for cattle. Moreover, the land reaped the benefit of the annual rainfall, not as now losing the water which flows off the bare earth into the sea, but, having an abundant supply in all places, and receiving it into herself and treasuring it up in the close clay soil, it let off into the hollows the streams which it absorbed from the heights, providing everywhere abundant fountains and rivers, of which there may still be observed sacred memorials in places where fountains once existed; and this proves the truth of what I am saying.

Such was the natural state of the country, which was cultivated, as we may well believe, by true husbandmen, who made husbandry their business, and were lovers of honour, and of a noble nature, and had a soil the best in the world, and abundance of water, and in the heaven above an excellently attempered climate. Now the city in those days was arranged on this wise. In the first place the Acropolis was not as now. For the fact is that a single night of excessive rain washed away the earth and laid bare the rock; at the same time there were earthquakes, and then occurred the extraordinary inundation, which was the third before the great destruction of Deucalion. But in primitive times the hill of the Acropolis extended to the Eridanus and Ilissus, and included the Pnyx on one side, and the Lycabettus as a boundary on the opposite side to the Pnyx, and was all well covered with soil, and level at the top, except in one or two places. Outside the Acropolis and under the sides of the hill there dwelt artisans, and such of the husbandmen as were tilling the ground near; the warrior class dwelt by themselves around the temples of Athene and Hephaestus at the summit, which moreover they had enclosed with a single fence like the garden of a single house. On the north side they had dwellings in common and had erected halls for dining in winter, and had all the buildings which they needed for their common life, besides temples, but there was no adorning of them with gold and silver, for they made no use of these for any purpose; they took a middle course between meanness and ostentation, and built modest houses in which they and their children's children grew old, and they handed them down to others who were like themselves, always the same. But in summer-time they left their gardens and gymnasia and dining halls, and then the southern side of the hill was made use of by them for the same purpose. Where the Acropolis now is there was a fountain, which was choked by the earthquake, and has left only the few small streams which still exist in the vicinity, but in those days the fountain gave an abundant supply of water for all and of suitable temperature in summer and in winter. This is how they dwelt, being the guardians of their own citizens and the leaders of the Hellenes, who were their willing followers. And they took care to preserve the same number of men and women through all time, being so many as were required for warlike purposes, then as now-that is to say, about twenty thousand. Such were the ancient Athenians, and after this manner they righteously administered their own land and the rest of Hellas; they were renowned all over Europe and Asia for the beauty of their persons and for the many virtues of their souls, and of all men who lived in those days they were the most illustrious. And next, if I have not forgotten what I heard when I was a child, I will impart to you the character and origin of their adversaries. For friends should not keep their stories to themselves, but have them in common.

Yet, before proceeding further in the narrative, I ought to warn you, that you must not be surprised if you should perhaps hear Hellenic names given to foreigners. I will tell you the reason of this: Solon, who was intending to use the tale for his poem, enquired into the meaning of the names, and found that the early Egyptians in writing them down had translated them into their own language, and he recovered the meaning of the several names and when copying them out again translated them into our language. My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my possession, and was carefully studied by me when I was a child. Therefore if you hear names such as are used in this country, you must not be surprised, for I have told how they came to be introduced. The tale, which was of great length, began as follows:-

I have before remarked in speaking of the allotments of the gods, that they distributed the whole earth into portions differing in extent, and made for themselves temples and instituted sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving for his lot the island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman, and settled them in a part of the island, which I will describe. Looking towards the sea, but in the centre of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all plains and very fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the centre of the island at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain not very high on any side.

In this mountain there dwelt one of the earth born primeval men of that country, whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife named Leucippe, and they had an only daughter who was called Cleito. The maiden had already reached womanhood, when her father and mother died; Poseidon fell in love with her and had intercourse with her, and breaking the ground, inclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making alternate zones of sea and land larger and smaller, encircling one another; there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a lathe, each having its circumference equidistant every way from the centre, so that no man could get to the island, for ships and voyages were not as yet. He himself, being a god, found no difficulty in making special arrangements for the centre island, bringing up two springs of water from beneath the earth, one of warm water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food to spring up abundantly from the soil. He also begat and brought up five pairs of twin male children; and dividing the island of Atlantis into ten portions, he gave to the first-born of the eldest pair his mother's dwelling and the surrounding allotment, which was the largest and best, and made him king over the rest; the others he made princes, and gave them rule over many men, and a large territory. And he named them all; the eldest, who was the first king, he named Atlas, and after him the whole island and the ocean were called Atlantic. To his twin brother, who was born after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the island towards the Pillars of Heracles, facing the country which is now called the region of Gades in that part of the world, he gave the name which in the Hellenic language is Eumelus, in the language of the country which is named after him, Gadeirus. Of the second pair of twins he called one Ampheres, and the other Evaemon. To the elder of the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus, and Autochthon to the one who followed him. Of the fourth pair of twins he called the elder Elasippus, and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair he gave to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger that of Diaprepes. All these and their descendants for many generations were the inhabitants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; and also, as has been already said, they held sway in our direction over the country within the Pillars as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia.

Now Atlas had a numerous and honourable family, and they retained the kingdom, the eldest son handing it on to his eldest for many generations; and they had such an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings and potentates, and is not likely ever to be again, and they were furnished with everything which they needed, both in the city and country. For because of the greatness of their empire many things were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island itself provided most of what was required by them for the uses of life. In the first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there, solid as well as fusile, and that which is now only a name and was then something more than a name, orichalcum, was dug out of the earth in many parts of the island, being more precious in those days than anything except gold. There was an abundance of wood for carpenter's work, and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island; for as there was provision for all other sorts of animals, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, so there was for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of all. Also whatever fragrant things there now are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or essences which distil from fruit and flower, grew and thrived in that land; also the fruit which admits of cultivation, both the dry sort, which is given us for nourishment and any other which we use for food-we call them all by the common name pulse, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks and meats and ointments, and good store of chestnuts and the like, which furnish pleasure and amusement, and are fruits which spoil with keeping, and the pleasant kinds of dessert, with which we console ourselves after dinner, when we are tired of eating-all these that sacred island which then beheld the light of the sun, brought forth fair and wondrous and in infinite abundance. With such blessings the earth freely furnished them; meanwhile they went on constructing their temples and palaces and harbours and docks. And they arranged the whole country in the following manner:

First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, making a road to and from the royal palace. And at the very beginning they built the palace in the habitation of the god and of their ancestors, which they continued to ornament in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who went before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and for beauty. And beginning from the sea they bored a canal of three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress. Moreover, they divided at the bridges the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, leaving room for a single trireme to pass out of one zone into another, and they covered over the channels so as to leave a way underneath for the ships; for the banks were raised considerably above the water. Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two zones, the one of water, the other of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia. All this including the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall on every side, placing towers and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the centre island, and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One kind was white, another black, and a third red, and as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out double docks, having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were simple, but in others they put together different stones, varying the colour to please the eye, and to be a natural source of delight. The entire circuit of the wall, which went round the outermost zone, they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed with the red light of orichalcum.

The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed on this wise:-in the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold; this was the spot where the family of the ten princes first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to be an offering to each of the ten. Here was Poseidon's own temple which was a stadium in length, and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance. All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot-the charioteer of six winged horses-and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of them by the men of those days. There were also in the interior of the temple other images which had been dedicated by private persons. And around the temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the descendants of the ten kings and of their wives, and there were many other great offerings of kings and of private persons, coming both from the city itself and from the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an altar too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to this magnificence, and the palaces, in like manner, answered to the greatness of the kingdom and the glory of the temple.

In the next place, they had fountains, one of cold and another of hot water, in gracious plenty flowing; and they were wonderfully adapted for use by reason of the pleasantness and excellence of their waters. They constructed buildings about them and planted suitable trees, also they made cisterns, some open to the heavens, others roofed over, to be used in winter as warm baths; there were the kings' baths, and the baths of private persons, which were kept apart; and there were separate baths for women, and for horses and cattle, and to each of them they gave as much adornment as was suitable. Of the water which ran off they carried some to the grove of Poseidon, where were growing all manner of trees of wonderful height and beauty, owing to the excellence of the soil, while the remainder was conveyed by aqueducts along the bridges to the outer circles; and there were many temples built and dedicated to many gods; also gardens and places of exercise, some for men, and others for horses in both of the two islands formed by the zones; and in the centre of the larger of the two there was set apart a race-course of a stadium in width, and in length allowed to extend all round the island, for horses to race in. Also there were guardhouses at intervals for the guards, the more trusted of whom were appointed-to keep watch in the lesser zone, which was nearer the Acropolis while the most trusted of all had houses given them within the citadel, near the persons of the kings. The docks were full of triremes and naval stores, and all things were quite ready for use. Enough of the plan of the royal palace.

Leaving the palace and passing out across the three you came to a wall which began at the sea and went all round: this was everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest zone or harbour, and enclosed the whole, the ends meeting at the mouth of the channel which led to the sea. The entire area was densely crowded with habitations; and the canal and the largest of the harbours were full of vessels and merchants coming from all parts, who, from their numbers, kept up a multitudinous sound of human voices, and din and clatter of all sorts night and day.

I have described the city and the environs of the ancient palace nearly in the words of Solon, and now I must endeavour to represent the nature and arrangement of the rest of the land. The whole country was said by him to be very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which descended towards the sea; it was smooth and even, and of an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand stadia, but across the centre inland it was two thousand stadia. This part of the island looked towards the south, and was sheltered from the north. The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their number and size and beauty, far beyond any which still exist, having in them also many wealthy villages of country folk, and rivers, and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild or tame, and much wood of various sorts, abundant for each and every kind of work.

I will now describe the plain, as it was fashioned by nature and by the labours of many generations of kings through long ages. It was for the most part rectangular and oblong, and where falling out of the straight line followed the circular ditch. The depth, and width, and length of this ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that a work of such extent, in addition to so many others, could never have been artificial. Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred, feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain and meeting at the city, was there let off into the sea. Further inland, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from it through the plain, and again let off into the ditch leading to the sea: these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth-in winter having the benefit of the rains of heaven, and in summer the water which the land supplied by introducing streams from the canals.

As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had to find a leader for the men who were fit for military service, and the size of a lot was a square of ten stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was sixty thousand. And of the inhabitants of the mountains and of the rest of the country there was also a vast multitude, which was distributed among the lots and had leaders assigned to them according to their districts and villages. The leader was required to furnish for the war the sixth portion of a war-chariot, so as to make up a total of ten thousand chariots; also two horses and riders for them, and a pair of chariot-horses without a seat, accompanied by a horseman who could fight on foot carrying a small shield, and having a charioteer who stood behind the man-at-arms to guide the two horses; also, he was bound to furnish two heavy armed soldiers, two slingers, three stone-shooters and three javelin-men, who were light-armed, and four sailors to make up the complement of twelve hundred ships. Such was the military order of the royal city-the order of the other nine governments varied, and it would be wearisome to recount their several differences.

As to offices and honours, the following was the arrangement from the first. Each of the ten kings in his own division and in his own city had the absolute control of the citizens, and, in most cases, of the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. Now the order of precedence among them and their mutual relations were regulated by the commands of Poseidon which the law had handed down. These were inscribed by the first kings on a pillar of orichalcum, which was situated in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, whither the kings were gathered together every fifth and every sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to the odd and to the even number. And when they were gathered together they consulted about their common interests, and enquired if any one had transgressed in anything and passed judgment and before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to one another on this wise:-There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might capture the victim which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, without weapons but with staves and nooses; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of it so that the blood fell upon the sacred inscription. Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had burnt its limbs, they filled a bowl of wine and cast in a clot of blood for each of them; the rest of the victim they put in the fire, after having purified the column all round. Then they drew from the bowl in golden cups and pouring a libation on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the laws on the pillar, and would punish him who in any point had already transgressed them, and that for the future they would not, if they could help, offend against the writing on the pillar, and would neither command others, nor obey any ruler who commanded them, to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This was the prayer which each of them-offered up for himself and for his descendants, at the same time drinking and dedicating the cup out of which he drank in the temple of the god; and after they had supped and satisfied their needs, when darkness came on, and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground, at night, over the embers of the sacrifices by which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of them had an accusation to bring against any one; and when they given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden tablet, and dedicated it together with their robes to be a memorial.

There were many special laws affecting the several kings inscribed about the temples, but the most important was the following: They were not to take up arms against one another, and they were all to come to the rescue if any one in any of their cities attempted to overthrow the royal house; like their ancestors, they were to deliberate in common about war and other matters, giving the supremacy to the descendants of Atlas. And the king was not to have the power of life and death over any of his kinsmen unless he had the assent of the majority of the ten.

Such was the vast power which the god settled in the lost island of Atlantis; and this he afterwards directed against our land for the following reasons, as tradition tells: For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well-affectioned towards the god, whose seed they were; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, uniting gentleness with wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. They despised everything but virtue, caring little for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased by virtue and friendship with one another, whereas by too great regard and respect for them, they are lost and friendship with them. By such reflections and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, the qualities which we have described grew and increased among them; but when the divine portion began to fade away, and became diluted too often and too much with the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, they then, being unable to bear their fortune, behaved unseemly, and to him who had an eye to see grew visibly debased, for they were losing the fairest of their precious gifts; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness, they appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when they were full of avarice and unrighteous power. Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things. And when he had called them together, he spake as follows-*

* The rest of the Dialogue of Critias has been lost.

-THE END-