Babylonian and Assyrian Literature
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION The great nation which dwelt in the seventh century before our era on the banks of Tigris and Euphrates flourished in literature as well as in the plastic arts, and had an alphabet of its own. The Assyrians sometimes wrote with a sharp reed, for a pen, upon skins, wooden tablets, or papyrus brought from Egypt. In this case they used cursive letters of a Phoenician character. But when they wished to preserve their written documents, they employed clay tablets, and a stylus whose bevelled point made an impression like a narrow elongated wedge, or arrow-head. By a combination of these wedges, letters and words were formed by the skilled and practised scribe, who would thus rapidly turn off a vast amount of "copy." All works of history, poetry, and law were thus written in the cuneiform or old Chaldean characters, and on a substance which could withstand the ravages of time, fire, or water. Hence we have authentic monuments of Assyrian literature in their original form, unglossed, unaltered, and ungarbled, and in this respect Chaldean records are actually superior to those of the Greeks, the Hebrews, or the Romans. The literature of the Chaldeans is very varied in its forms. The hymns to
"Yes, young man, I did the campaign of 1815. I was a captain at
Mont-Saint-Jean, and I retired to the Loire, after we were all
disbanded. Faith! I was disgusted with France; I couldn't stand it. In
fact, I should certainly have got myself arrested; so off I went, with
two or three dashing fellows,--Selves, Besson, and others, who are now
in Egypt,--and we entered the service of pacha Mohammed; a queer sort of
fellow he was, too! Once a tobacco merchant in the bazaars, he is now
on the high-road to be a sovereign prince. You've all seen him in that
picture by Horace Vernet,--'The Massacre of the Mameluks.' What a
handsome fellow he was! But I wouldn't give up the religion of my
fathers and embrace Islamism; all the more because the abjuration
required a surgical operation which I hadn't any fancy for. Besides,
nobody respects a renegade. Now if they had offered me a hundred
thousand francs a year, perhaps--and yet, no! The pacha did give me a
thousand talari as a present."
"How much is that?" asked Oscar, who was listening to Georges with all
his ears.
"Oh! not much. A talaro is, as you might say, a five-franc piece. But
faith! I got no compensation for the vices I contracted in that
God-forsaken country, if country it is. I can't live now without
smoking a narghile twice a-day, and that's very costly."
"How did you find Egypt?" asked the count.
SPECIAL INTRODUCTION The great nation which dwelt in the seventh century before our era on the banks of Tigris and Euphrates flourished in literature as well as in the plastic arts, and had an alphabet of its own. The Assyrians sometimes wrote with a sharp reed, for a pen, upon skins, wooden tablets, or papyrus brought from Egypt. In this case they used cursive letters of a Phoenician character. But when they wished to preserve their written documents, they employed clay tablets, and a stylus whose bevelled point made an impression like a narrow elongated wedge, or arrow-head. By a combination of these wedges, letters and words were formed by the skilled and practised scribe, who would thus rapidly turn off a vast amount of "copy." All works of history, poetry, and law were thus written in the cuneiform or old Chaldean characters, and on a substance which could withstand the ravages of time, fire, or water. Hence we have authentic monuments of Assyrian literature in their original form, unglossed, unaltered, and ungarbled, and in this respect Chaldean records are actually superior to those of the Greeks, the Hebrews, or the Romans. The literature of the Chaldeans is very varied in its forms. The hymns to