Theological and Literary Itelligence [pp. 569-580]

570 THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY INTELLIGENCE. [Ju1y~
life a knowledge of it was needed when legal precedents or ancient leases and
contracts were in question. Down to the last days of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, every educated man had to be acquainted with this extinct language.
For this purpose, grammars, dictionaries, and phrase books of Accadian and Semitic Assyrian were compiled; and works written in Accadian were provided
with an Assyrian translation, which was sometimes in a parallel column, and
sometimes interlinear.
Babylonia has not yet been excavated; and our knowledge of these libraries is
accordingly confined to the contents of the libraries of Sennacherib and his grandson Assurbanipal, or Sardanapalus, the larger part of which has been brought
from Nineveh to the British Museum. Most of the works in the museum are
later editions of older Babylonian texts; very often there are several editions of
the same text, and where the original had become illegible, the copyist wrote "lacuna," or "recent lacuna." When a work was translated from Accadian, the
Accadian text was almost invariably given; and to these translations, together
with the grammars, dictionaries, and phrase books already alluded to, modern
scholars owe the recovery of the long-lost language of Accad. Among the most
curious of these works is a long one, in seventy tablets or books, on astronomy and
astrology, which was drawn up for a Babylonian monarch who reigned about 2,000
a. C. The catalogue of this work mentions separate treatises on the Pole star, on
comets, on the movements of Venus, etc., and at the end tells the reader to write
down the number of the table he wishes to consult, and the librarian will thereup.
on hand it to him. Even at this remote epoch, therefore, the modem system of
registering books was in use; indeed, every tablet had its press mark. Besides
the astrological tablets, there is a long work on omens, with formulae for averting
witchcraft or practising sorcery, which seem to be extremely ancient, as well as a
large collection of hymns to the gods, which formed the ritual of the Accadians.
Many of the passages in these hymns remind us of the Hebrew psalms. Closely
connected with the hymns are old legends and epics, which are thrown into a
poetical form. One of these epics came from Erech, and consisted of twelve
books, each answering to a sign of the Zodiac, and relating to the adventures
of a solar hero. The books were originally independent lays, and the eleventh is
the story of the Deluge, which bears a remarkable resemblance to the account in
Genesis. Another group of legends contains one which describes very fully the
building of the tower of Babel; while a third group presents us with a history of
the Creation and the Fall of Man, similar to that of the Bible. More details, however, are furnished than can be found in the Mosaic narrative, and an account is
also given of a war of the evil spirits against the gods. A very interesting legend
describes the descent of the goddess Istar into Hades, and another tells how the
seven wicked spirits fought against the moon.
But all this is but a small portion of the Assyrian and Babylonian literature now
in the British Museum. There are works on agriculture, collections of ancient
proverbs, tables of laws and precedents, contracts and leases, public dispatches
and private correspondence, prayers and beast fables, didactic treatises and hints
on government, tables of cube roots and other mathematical formul~, lists of ani
mals and stones, of countries and towns, of gods and temples, of foreign products
and classes of persons, and, above all, annals and other historical documents.
One of the latter is a catalogue of the kings and dynasties of Babylonia, another
an account of the relations between Assyria and its northern neighbor from the