The 12th Planet (3 page)

At about the same time as Ashur was being excavated, teams under R. Koldewey were completing the excavation of Babylon, the biblical Babel—a vast place of palaces, temples, hanging gardens, and the inevitable ziggurat. Before long, artifacts and inscriptions unveiled the history of the two competing empires of Mesopotamia: Babylonia and Assyria, the one centered in the south, the other in the north.

Rising and falling, fighting and coexisting, the two constituted a high civilization that encompassed some 1,500 years, both rising circa 1900
B.C.
Ashur and Nineveh were finally captured and destroyed by the Babylonians in 614 and 612
B.C.
, respectively. As predicted by the biblical prophets, Babylon itself came to an inglorious end when Cyrus the Achaemenid conquered it in 539
B.C.

Though they were rivals throughout their history, one would be hard put to find any significant differences between Assyria and Babylonia in cultural or material matters. Even though Assyria called its chief deity Ashur ("all-seeing") and Babylonia hailed Marduk ("son of the pure mound"), the pantheons were otherwise virtually alike.

Many of the world's museums count among their prize exhibits the ceremonial gates, winged bulls, bas-reliefs, chariots, tools, utensils, jewelry, statues, and other objects made of every conceivable material that have been dug out of the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia. But the true treasures of these kingdoms were their written records: thousands upon thousands of inscriptions in the cuneiform script, including cosmological tales, epic poems, histories of kings, temple records, commercial contracts, marriage and divorce records, astronomical tables, astrological forecasts, mathematical formulas, geographic lists, grammar and vocabulary school texts, and, not least of all, texts dealing with the names, genealogies, epithets, deeds, powers, and duties of the gods.

The common language that formed the cultural, historical, and religious bond between Assyria and Babylonia was Akkadian. It was the first known Semitic language, akin to but predating Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, and Canaanite. But the Assyrians and Babylonians laid no claim to having invented the language or its script; indeed, many of their tablets bore the postscript that they had been copied from earlier originals.

Who, then, invented the cuneiform script and developed the language, its precise grammar and rich vocabulary? Who wrote the "earlier originals"? And why did the Assyrians and Babylonians call the language Akkadian?

Attention once more focuses on the Book of Genesis. "And the beginning of his kingdom: Babel and Erech and Akkad." Akkad—could there really have been such a royal capital, preceding Babylon and Nineveh?

The ruins of Mesopotamia have provided conclusive evidence that once upon a time there indeed existed a kingdom by the name of Akkad, established by a much earlier ruler, who called himself a
sharrukin
("righteous ruler"). He claimed in his inscriptions that his empire stretched, by the grace of his god Enlil, from the Lower Sea (the Persian Gulf) to the Upper Sea (believed to be the Mediterranean). He boasted that "at the wharf of Akkad, he made moor ships" from many distant lands.

The scholars stood awed: They had come upon a Mesopotamian empire in the third millennium
B.C.
! There was a leap—backward—of some 2,000 years from the Assyrian Sargon of Dur Sharrukin to Sargon of Akkad. And yet the mounds that were dug up brought to light literature and art, science and politics, commerce and communications—a full-fledged civilization—long before the appearance of Babylonia and Assyria. Moreover, it was obviously the predecessor and the source of the later Mesopotamian civilizations; Assyria and Babylonia were only branches off the Akkadian trunk.

The mystery of such an early Mesopotamian civilization deepened, however, as inscriptions recording the achievements and genealogy of Sargon of Akkad were found. They stated that his full title was "King of Akkad, King of Kish"; they explained that before he assumed the throne, he had been a counselor to the "rulers of Kish." Was there, then—the scholars asked themselves—an even earlier kingdom, that of Kish, which preceded Akkad?

Once again, the biblical verses gained in significance.

   And Kush begot Nimrod;

He was first to be a Hero in the Land....

And the beginning of his kingdom:

Babel and Erech and Akkad.

Many scholars have speculated that Sargon of Akkad was the biblical Nimrod. If one reads "Kish" for "Kush" in the above biblical verses, it would seem Nimrud was indeed preceded by Kish, as claimed by Sargon. The scholars then began to accept literally the rest of his inscriptions: "He defeated Uruk and tore down its wall ... he was victorious in the battle with the inhabitants of Ur ... he defeated the entire territory from Lagash as far as the sea."

Was the biblical Erech identical with the Uruk of Sargon's inscriptions? As the site now called Warka was unearthed, that was found to be the case. And the Ur referred to by Sargon was none other than the biblical Ur, the Mesopotamian birthplace of Abraham.

Not only did the archaeological discoveries vindicate the biblical records; it also appeared certain that there must have been kingdoms and cities and civilizations in Mesopotamia even before the third millennium
B.C.
The only question was: How far back did one have to go to find the
first
civilized kingdom?

The key that unlocked the puzzle was yet another language.

•

Scholars quickly realized that names had a meaning not only in Hebrew and in the Old Testament but throughout the ancient Near East. All the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian names of persons and places had a meaning. But the names of rulers that preceded Sargon of Akkad did not make sense at all: The king at whose court Sargon was a counselor was called Urzababa; the king who reigned in Erech was named Lugalzagesi; and so on.

Lecturing before the Royal Asiatic Society in 1853, Sir Henry Rawlinson pointed out that such names were neither Semitic nor Indo European; indeed, "they seemed to belong to no known group of languages or peoples." But if names had a meaning, what was the mysterious language in which they had the meaning?

Scholars took another look at the Akkadian inscriptions. Basically, the Akkadian cuneiform script was syllabic: Each sign stood for a complete syllable
(ab, ba, bat,
etc.). Yet the script made extensive use of signs that were not phonetic syllables but conveyed the meanings "god," "city," "country," or "life," "exalted," and the like. The only possible explanation for this phenomenon was that these signs were remains of an earlier writing method which used pictographs. Akkadian, then, must have been preceded by another language that used a writing method akin to the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

It was soon obvious that an earlier language, and not just an earlier form of writing, was involved here. Scholars found that Akkadian inscriptions and texts made extensive use of loanwords—words borrowed intact from another language (in the same way that a modern Frenchman would borrow the English word
weekend).
This was especially true where scientific or technical terminology was involved, and also in matters dealing with the gods and the heavens.

One of the greatest finds of Akkadian texts was the ruins of a library assembled in Nineveh by Ashurbanipal; Layard and his colleagues carted away from the site 25,000 tablets, many of which were described by the ancient scribes as copies of "olden texts." A group of twenty-three tablets ended with the statement: "23rd tablet: language of Shumer not changed." Another text bore an enigmatic statement by Ashurbanipal himself:

The god of scribes has bestowed on me the gift of the knowledge of his art.

I have been initiated into the secrets of writing.

I can even read the intricate tablets in Shumerian;

I understand the enigmatic words in the stone carvings

from the days before the Flood.

The claim by Ashurbanipal that he could read intricate tablets in "Shumerian" and understand the words written on tablets from "the days before the Flood" only increased the mystery. But in January 1869 Jules Oppert suggested to the French Society of Numismatics and Archaeology that recognition be given to the existence of a pre-Akkadian language and people. Pointing out that the early rulers of Mesopotamia proclaimed their legitimacy by taking the title "King of Sumer and Akkad," he suggested that the people be called "Sumerians," and their land, "Sumer."

Except for mispronouncing the name—it should have been Simmer, not Sumer—Oppert was right. Sumer was not a mysterious, distant land, but the early name for southern Mesopotamia, just as the Book of Genesis had clearly stated: The royal cities of Babylon and Akkad and Erech were in "the Land of Shin'ar." (Shinar was the biblical name for Shumer.)

Once the scholars had accepted these conclusions, the flood gates were opened. The Akkadian references to the "olden texts" became meaningful, and scholars soon realized that tablets with long columns of words were in fact Akkadian-Sumerian lexicons and dictionaries, prepared in Assyria and Babylonia for their own study of the first written language, Sumerian.

Without these dictionaries from long ago, we would still be far from being able to read Sumerian. With their aid, a vast literary and cultural treasure opened up. It also became clear that the Sumerian script, originally pictographic and carved in stone in vertical columns, was then turned horizontally and, later on, stylized for wedge writing on soft clay tablets to become the cuneiform writing that was adopted by the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other nations of the ancient Near East. (Fig. 7)

The decipherment of the Sumerian language and script, and the realization that the Sumerians and their culture were the fountainhead of the Akkadian-Babylonian—Assyrian achievements, spurred archaeological searches in southern Mesopotamia. All the evidence now indicated that the beginning was there.

The first significant excavation of a Sumerian site was begun in 1877 by French archaeologists; and the finds from this single site were so extensive that others continued to dig there until 1933 without completing the job.

Called by the natives Telloh ("mound"), the site proved to be an early Sumerian city, the very Lagash of whose conquest Sargon of Akkad had boasted. It was indeed a royal city whose rulers bore the same title Sargon had adopted, except that it was in the Sumerian language: EN.SI ("righteous ruler"). Their dynasty had started circa 2900
B.C.
and lasted for nearly 650 years. During this time, forty-three
ensi's
reigned without interruption in Lagash: Their names, genealogies, and lengths of rule were all neatly recorded.

The inscriptions provided much information. Appeals to the gods "to cause the grain sprouts to grow for harvest ... to cause the watered plant to yield grain," attest to the existence of agriculture and irrigation. A cup inscribed in honor of a goddess by "the overseer of the granary" indicated that grains were stored, measured, and traded. (Fig.8)

An
ensi
named Eannatum left an inscription on a clay brick which makes it clear that these Sumerian rulers could assume the throne only with the approval of the gods. He also recorded the conquest of another city, revealing to us the existence of other city-states in Sumer at the beginning of the third millennium
B.C.

Eannatum's successor, Entemena, wrote of building a temple and adorning it with gold and silver, planting gardens, enlarging brick-lined wells. He boasted of building a fortress with watchtowers and facilities for docking ships.

One of the better-known rulers of Lagash was Gudea. He had a large number of statuettes made of himself, all showing him in a votive stance, praying to his gods. This stance was no pretense: Gudea had indeed devoted himself to the adoration of Ningirsu, his principal deity, and to the construction and rebuilding of temples.

His many inscriptions reveal that, in the search for exquisite building materials, he obtained gold from Africa and Anatolia, silver from the Taurus Mountains, cedars from Lebanon, other rare woods from Ararat, copper from the Zagros range, diorite from Egypt, carnelian from Ethiopia, and other materials from lands as yet unidentified by scholars.

When Moses built for the Lord God a "Residence" in the desert, he did so according to very detailed instructions provided by the Lord. When King Solomon built the first Temple in Jerusalem, he did so after the Lord had "given him wisdom." The prophet Ezekiel was shown very detailed plans for the Second Temple "in a Godly vision" by a "person who had the appearance of bronze and who held in his hand a flaxen string and a measuring rod." Ur-Nammu, ruler of Ur, depicted in an earlier millennium how his god, ordering him to build for him a temple and giving him the pertinent instructions, handed him the measuring rod and rolled string for the job. (Fig. 9)