THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
teachers and librarians and publishers and notaries, physicians and astronomers and musicians. Gold, silver, copper, and ivory, and later bronze, glass, and lapis lazuli, were worked and employed in the useful and ornamental arts.
It is not improbable that the high scientific attainments of the first pre-Christian millennium
have been mistakenly read back into 10. Science, much earlier times. Doubtful is the
claim that eclipses were correctly predicted before the Assyrian age; though by that time the periodicity of these events was well known and records of eclipses and obscurations were kept at Borsippa and Sippar. Science was inaccurate, the fallacy of post hoc propter hoc being characteristic of this as of all early civilizations, most evident in the doctrine of omens.
The civilization thus described is Sumerian- Akkadian, not Semitic, as the preponderating weight of scholarship now affirms. The Semites came in upon this civilization and adopted and adapted it so that its ideals became theirs, — even the theology was taken over and remolded in the Semitic consciousness.
VI. History. 1 . Chronology : Babylonian chronology rests upon the same general facts as that of Assyria (q.v.). The absolute datum is the eclipse of the year 763 B.C. The other dates depend upon synchronisms, either stated or computed by means of comparison of native documents such as the King-list or the Babylonian Chronicle, or upon individual statements respecting date, genealogy, and the like. Besides these data, the form of the characters in the documents often gives a clue to the relative age of certain documents and therefore of the maker. The King-list gives the names of kings c. 2400-625 B.C. A second King-list gives the first and second dynasties of Babylon. The Babylonian Chronicle refers to members of the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh dynasties, and another Chronicle gives parts of
three dynasties, furnishing a check *■• The upon the first. The most important
isolated data are the following. A king named E-(dingir)nagin calls himself a son of Akurgal; Entena is named son of En-anna- turn and descendant of Ur-Nina, while En-anna-tum II is son of Entena; and the daughter of Ur-Bau is called the wife of Nammaghani. These items give the succession in a dynasty. Burnaburiash is shown by the Amarna Tablets (q.v.) to have been a contemporary of Thothmes III and IV of Egypt, and he is stated by Nabonidus to have reigned 700 years after Hammurabi. This datum places Hammurabi about 2100 B.C., which comes within a century of the date obtained from other sources. A king named Shagarakti-buriash is placed by Nabonidus c. 800 years before his own time, a date which agrees well with the character of the name and with other indications. A boundary-stone of the fourth regnal year of Bel-nadinapli (1118 B.C.) asserts that from Gulkishar, king of the Sea Lands, to Nebuchadrezzar I, was 696 years, which item locates Gulkishar c. 1818 B.C. Sennacherib asserts that 418 years before 689 B.C.,
Marduk-nadin-ahi of Babylon carried off two images from Assyria; this datum fixes the year of the victory as 1107 B.C., while the beginning of Marduk-nadin-ahi's reign is settled as 1117 by a stone telling of a victory over Assyria in his tenth regnal year. Asshurbanipal relates that in a certain year (known to be 640 B.C.) he brought back from Elam an image carried thither 1,635 years earlier by Kudur-nanhundi, an Elamite, thus placing the Elamite invasion c. 2275 B.C. This fits in exceedingly well with the datum about the date of Hammurabi referred to above. Nabonidus states in the inscription in which he dates Shagarakti-buriash (ut sup.) that he found the cornerstone of the temple of Shamash at Nippur laid by Naram-Sin 3,200 years earlier, thus placing Naram- Sin about 3750 B.C., and giving the date by which to locate early events.
There have been in recent years attempts to reduce the age of Sargon and Naram-Sin by from 318 to about 1,000 years. For the shorter reduction alone is there positive indication, the fact being that a dynasty which reigned 318 years is sometimes repeated, and it is supposed that Nabonidus included in his reckoning this doubled period. The round numbers which appear in Nabonidus 's statements are also the objects of suspicion. But there
are certain facts which lead to the
2. Value of conclusion that Nabonidus was not
Nabonidus's far out of the way. In the first place,
Dates. he was very much the antiquarian,
very little the king. His very care in going to the foundations of buildings he was engaged in restoring and his evident pride in recording his archeological discoveries is a prima facie testimony to his good faith. Moreover, the statements he makes are, in general, consistent with each other and with the results from other sources. Throwing light upon antiquarian methods in the time of this king is a squeeze of a tablet of Sargon I, i.e., an impress with raised letters reading backward. It is an example of scientific work done about 550 B.C. Moreover, as suggesting sources for the calculations of this king in records preserved till his time, there was found at Nippur a collection of tablets of different periods from the assumed date of Sargon to 615 B.C., this collection sealed up in a jar. It is not beyond the bounds of probability, therefore, that Nabonidus had access to documents similar to these upon which he based his calculations. Inasmuch as there is no positive evidence against the date for Sargon furnished by Nabonidus, and objections to it come principally from a distrust of statements involving high antiquity, and taking into account the indications derived (a) from depth of d6bris, (b) from the changes in the character of the writing, and (c) from allusions to Eridu as once situated on the Gulf, the probability is suggested that no great change is likely to be required in the general system of dates now adopted tentatively for early Babylonia.
2. The Pre-Sarg-onic Age, 4500-3800 B.C. History opens with the mention of En-shag-kushanna, who names himself king of Kengi, the name for South Babylonia or Sumer. He also calls him-