The oldest traditions of the human race and the opening pages of inspired history agree in placing the first borne of the human family in the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris. Here first were cities built, kingdoms founded, armies organized, captives and spoils accumulated from conquered nations. Hence arose art, science, letters, law. Somewhere near the banks of these two great rivers Abraham kept his flock when he received the divine call to leave kindred and country, by obedience to which he became the father of the faithful to all succeeding generations. Babylon and Nineveh were the two great capital cities of the pagan power which cast their threatening shadows upon Jerusalem and Palestine from the East. The Hebrew psalmists and prophets exhaust all the resources of language in describing the greatness of their power, the terror of their arms, the splendor of their palace, the excesses of their pride and luxury and the desolation that should come upon them in their fall.
We should expect that in the ruins of such mighty cities there would be found some trace of their former greatness; and recent excavations and researches have abundantly justified that expectation. Forty years ago nothing but shapeless heaps, looking like natural mounds of earth, marked the spot where once "chariots raged in the broad ways" of Nineveh and the pavements shook with the "rattling of wheels and the prancing of horses." Villages had been built and barley had been sown, and grass and flowers had grown for centuries on the slopes and summits of these hills of ruin, and nobody knew that the ashes of mighty empires made the piles and covered the countless dead.
The work of examination begun by M. Botta was taken up and carried on by Layard, Rawlinson, Loftus and others, until it was found that vast palaces and colossal monuments and written records of glory and conquest and all the pride and pomp of the gorgeous East were entombed within those shapeless heaps. Living men within our time have lodged in the excavated chambers and walked through the halls and rested in the courts that were once tenanted by those mighty monarchs of the East upon whose heads the Hebrew prophets poured out the vials of their inspired wrath-Sargon and Sennacherib and Esarhaddon. There is no stone left of the house in which Hezekiah prayed for deliverance from Sennacherib in Jerusalem; but the mighty Assyrian conqueror, whose host was smitten by the angel of the Lord, went home to Nineveh to dwell in a house whose pictured walls and paved courts and tessellated floors remain to this day.
The British Museum in London and the Louvre in Paris are stored with records and sculptures and monuments which were taken from the heaps of ruin on the banks of the Tigris, and which reveal the inner life and the secret history of men that lived three thousand years ago; and those dumb, unimpeachable witnesses in clay and stone abundantly confirm all that the Hebrew prophets said about the pride and power, the riches and luxury, the cruelty and the superstition, of the great monarchs of the East.
The inner walls of the exhumed palaces were paneled to a great extent with slabs of stone on which long inscriptions were carefully cut, and the cuneiform letters are still in good preservation. Hollow cylinders of fine terra cotta were written all over with the campaigns of kings and the exploits of mighty hunters and with invocations to the gods, and the lines in the inscriptions are often as closely set as the letters on this printed page. The same writing is found upon colossal bulls and lions, stone obelisks, clay tablets and seals. The clay tablets, of which thousands have been recovered, were inscribed with a sharp style and then baked hard, so that the letters are as clear and as easily read to-day as when first written.
Dr. Grotefend of Hanover was the first to find a clue to the meaning of these strange inscriptions. His suggestions were followed up by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr. Hinks and many others, until now the interpretation of these ancient writings is established beyond question. We know what Sargon said and Shalmanezer planned and Esarhaddon built and Sennacherib boasted better than we should if we had lived at Jerusalem when their names were a terror to the people of Palestine. These stone and clay documents are historical; and even when they go beyond the truth, from the habit of Oriental boasting, they confirm the word of the prophets, who said that the city of Nineveh was full of lies.
The Hebrew exiles wept and hung their harps upon the willows by the river side when they remembered Zion in the strange land; and it only added bitterness and mockery to their grief when their cruel conquerors required of them a song. And it seems like the first strain of their song of exile which has been sounding through the world for seventy generations when we see upon the walls of the palace of Sennacherib the representation of a company of captives led by a military officer and compelled to play upon harps for the entertainment of their conquerors. This tablet, which is preserved in the British Museum, is as old as the memorable psalm in which the Hebrew captives poured forth the sorrows of exile in the strange land.
The founder of Nineveh is described in the Bible as a mighty hunter before the Lord. His successors in the monarchy retained the spirit and prowess of their great ancestor. Tiglath-pileser, who repeatedly overrun Palestine with his devastating armies, caused his exploits in the chase to be recorded upon a terra cotta cylinder which was found amid the ruins of his palace. In that inscription he claims to have killed 920 lions with his own hand. The bas-reliefs of other kings make them as mighty in conflict with the king of beasts. The walls of temples and palaces are covered with sculptures and inscriptions representing these mighty hunters engaged in hand-to-hand conflict with lions, bulls, buffaloes, wild boars. They claim the homage of their people and the admiration of mankind as lunch for victories over beasts as for the defeat of great armies and the capture of strong cities.
Nineveh is described by the Hebrew prophets as a bloody city. The people and princes are said to be cruel and to have no mercy; and the monarchs of the great conquering city have caused the counterpart of these declarations to be written and graven a thousand times over on the walls of their own palaces. As the king walked through his courts and halls he could see himself and his officers on the written tablets and sculptured marbles, represented in every act and attitude of cruelty. In these terrible decorations, which are now transferred to London, we see the successors of Nimrod impaling and flaying men alive, putting out the eyes of captives, plucking out the tongue by the roots, leading prisoners with chains thrust through the lips and nose, commanding the mutilation of the slain, the gathering of human heads into heaps as monuments of victory, trampling the wounded under the hoofs of horses, giving the dead to be devoured by dogs and vultures. Sargon and Sennacherib and Esarhaddon caused it to be written as the best memorial of their reign that they took captives and burned cities and desolated countries; that they tortured and cut off heads and crucified; that they piled up monuments of bleeding bodies and made spears and chariots float in blood. These records of cruelty, in which the monarchs of the bloody city gloried, have been taken from its ruins, and they may be read in confirmation of the prophets' words to-day.
In the awful "burdens," which Isaiah and Ezekiel and Nahum poured upon Nineveh, her kings and people are charged with excessive pride and arrogance; and all this is confirmed by the clay tablets and the marble panels which have been found in the palaces of the proud city, and which were written all over with the annals in which princes and people gloried. In these ancient records the Assyrian monarch styles himself the vicegerent of the gods. He is the commander of unnumbered legions, the possessor of all seas and lands. He rushes among his enemies like devouring flame, he lays waste like a devastating storm. The mightiest armies are swept away before him like chaff before the whirlwind. Among all the kings of the earth there is not one to compare with him in wisdom or glory or power. All this is said over and over again by the Ninevites themselves in stronger terms than it was charged upon them by the prophets of Judah.
It was foretold in Judea, years before it carne to pass, that the mighty city which had been for ages the terror of the nations should be brought to desolation. It should become "a place for beasts to lie down in," a lodgment for the cormorant and the bittern, a nesting-place for every unclean bird. For many centuries this prophecy has been fulfilled with awful exactness. The hyena, the wolf, the fox and the jackal lie down where Sennacherib and Esarhaddon maintained their royal state; the cormorant and the bittern croak among the reeds and wade in the pools of stagnant water where once gorgeous robes were trailed upon tessellated floors and silvery fountains played in palace-courts. Flocks of sheep and herds of camels seek their scanty pasturage among mounds that were made by the ruins of towers and temples and city walls, the wonder of the world for their magnificence and splendor.
The most recent discoveries among the ruins of Nineveh, and, to Bible students, the most interesting, were made by Mr. George Smith of the British Museum. He made two journeys, leaving London in January, 1873, for the first, and in November of the same year for the second. He had acquired great skill in the interpretation of the cuneiform inscriptions upon the clay and stone tablets stored in the Museum. Messrs. Layard, Loftus and Rassam had sent borne many boxes of fragments of tablets which had never been assorted and joined so as to make a connected record. Mr. Smith set himself to the task of arranging and deciphering these broken tablets until he discovered that they contained a Chaldean account of the deluge. He found that the fragments belonged to a series of twelve tablets, and it was with the hope of completing the series that he undertook his two journeys.
Mr. Smith was so far successful in his two expeditions as to recover many new portions of the original inscriptions. He has identified six out of the twelve tablets, and he has found a great number of fragments which serve to fill up and illustrate the legends. The whole series records the adventures of a hero who is supposed to be the Nimrod of the Bible. Mr. Smith is of the opinion that the tablets which he is now interpreting in London were written some five hundred years before the time of Moses.
The most perfect, and far the most interesting, of the twelve tablets is the eleventh. It contains the Chaldean account of the deluge. The leading incidents, and sometimes the very language, bear such a striking resemblance to the account in Genesis that the two must point to a common origin.
The cuneiform narrative takes us to Surripak, a city near the mouth of the Euphrates, whose name signifies the city of the ark," and whose inhabitants worship “the god of the deluge." Here lived Hasisadra, a holy man who had survived the great flood. He tells the story of the wide-wasting catastrophe and of his own escape. According to him, men were wicked, and the Deity resolved to destroy them for their sins. Hasisadra is forewarned of the coming judgment, and he is told to build an ark to save himself and family. The dimensions of the vessel are given, but the numbers are mutilated so that they can only be read conjecturally.
Hasisadra is afraid to build because the work is so great, and because it will expose him to the ridicule of those who believed not the prophecy. Nevertheless, he is persuaded to begin, and the details of the work are given. The mighty ship is stored with food, and at the command of the god Hea the beasts of the field gather in and are enclosed by the divine hand. The vessel is covered with three measures of bitumen within, and without, to make it water-tight. Hasisadra himself at last enters, taking with him his wife, his servants, his young men, and the door is shut.
Then it rained heavily from heaven. The raging of the storm went on from night to morning, and mighty thunder sounded upon the deep, and the horizon of waters widened until the bright earth was turned to a waste. The stormy deluge went over the people; brother knew not his brother; all life died, and all was turned to corruption.
Six days and nights the storm raged. On the seventh the deluge quieted, and the sea began to dry. The mountain of Nizir stopped the floating ship. On the seventh day after the ark rested Hasisadra sent forth a dove, which went, and turned, and carne back to his hand. Then he sent forth a swallow, and it returned as did the dove. Then he sent forth a raven, and it wandered away and did not return. Finally Hasisadra sent forth the animals, and carne down from the ark himself, and built an altar and offered sacrifice and prayed on the peak of the mountain.
Thus this old Chaldean record, written, as is supposed, five hundred years before Moses, agrees in several important particulars with the inspired narrative in Genesis. The wickedness of men, the divine anger against their wickedness, the command to build the ark, the gathering of birds and beasts into the ark, the tremendous rain, the resting of the ark en the mountain, the sending out of the birds, the building of an altar and the offering of sacrifice after the flood are in both accounts. The Chaldean tablets contain much which is not found in Genesis, and which can only be classed among fables. The Bible proves its divine origin as much by what it omits as by what it contains. The wonder is that Moses, having all the legends of the Chaldeans and other nations to select from in the composition of Genesis, should have had the wisdom to choose the good and true, and cast the bad and false away.
More recently, Mr. Smith has found among the treasures brought home from Nineveh a still more interesting and remarkable series of cuneiform inscriptions. He calls it "The Story of the Creation and Fall." He has not yet fully deciphered the tablets, but he has gone fax enough to learn that the Chaldean narrative begins with the period before the world, in its present form, was created. Vivid representations are given of the desolation and the chaos which vent before order and beauty. Some mighty celestial being "raises impious war in heaven, and battle proud with vain attempt." The great arch rebel rides upon the storm, and hurls thunderbolts with his hand. Nevertheless, he is overthrown, and cast out of heaven. The world is created in successive evolutions, and each step of advance is declared to be good. The divine hand finds its Last and best work in man. The new-made immortal is warned and instructed by his Creator; and the highest blessing is promised to him cm condition that he keeps his first estate. But he yields to temptation from the evil power that fell in heaven. Then the blessing is changed to a terrible curse, and the sinning creature is driven from the paradise where he had first found a happy home.
All this is doubtless mingled with much that is fabulous. But when we consider that there tablets, in all probability, date from a time five hundred years before Genesis was written, their coincidence with the words of Moses is startling and suggestive in the extreme. They give us the clearest and the most complete account of the opinions and traditions that prevailed among men in the earliest times. They seem to have been kept for so many centuries on purpose that they might be brought forth from the archives of ruin and be made to give their testimony to the inspired record in this most inquiring and critical age.
So we might go over all the lands named in the Bible, and search through all the museums that are stored with relies from the graves of the past, and we should gather from all our researches increasing light to throw upon the Page of divine revelation. The student of the Bible has nothing to fear, but everything to gain, from the in-crease of knowledge on all subjects, from all sources, among all classes of men. No matter how far the boldest and keenest inquirers may carry their investigations. Every real discovery, every established fact in science, in history, in nature, must be in harmony with the word of God, and must promote its mission of light and instruction in the world.
Let the astronomer explore the heavens and trace the pathway of worlds on the high fields of immensity. Let him analyze the floating fire-mist in the midnight sky, and conjecture the countless centuries that must pass while it is condensing and rounding itself into suns and systems. Let the geologist mine his way down to the foundations of the earth and read the inscriptions which the centuries have written on the eternal rocks. Let the naturalist trace connection and development along all the ascending grades of being from the floating slime of the sea to the full-formed and perfect man. Let the physiologist trace, if he can, the electric chain with which the immortal mind is darkly bound to its perishable prison of flesh. Let the linguist find out what he can from the study of all languages and all literature concerning the unity or diversity of race. Let the sacred record itself he subjected to the most severe and exhaustive criticism in every statement of fact and in every declaration of principle. Let tireless millions run to and fro through all the earth and increase all departments of human knowledge until the student stands aghast at the mountainous accumulation. Still the one book of divine revelation shall be in harmony with all truth. For its full, perfect vindication before the world it is only necessary that students, critics and common people shall become honest, diligent, candid disciples' of the truth.