The Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions
9781465670502
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The first six chapters which follow, embody the Rhind Lectures in Archæology which I delivered at Edinburgh in October 1906. The seventh chapter appeared as an article in the Contemporary Review for August 1905, and is here reprinted by the courtesy of the Editor to whom I render my thanks. The book is the first attempt to deal with what I would call the archæology of cuneiform decipherment, and like all pioneering work consequently claims the indulgence of the reader. For the sake of clearness I have been forced to repeat myself in a few instances, more especially in the sixth chapter, but what has thereby been lost in literary finish will, I hope, be compensated by an increase of clearness in the argument. If what I have written serves no other purpose, I shall be content if it draws attention to the miserably defective state of our archæological knowledge of Babylonia and Assyria, and to the necessity of scientific excavations being carried on there similar to those inaugurated by Mr. Rhind in Egypt. We have abundance of epigraphic material; it is the more purely archæological material that is still wanting. The need of it is every year becoming more urgent with the ever-growing revelation of the important and far-reaching part played by Babylonian culture in the ancient East. Excavation is just commencing in Asia Minor, and there are many indications that it has startling discoveries and surprises in store for us. Even while my manuscript was in the printer’s hands, Professor Winckler has been examining the cuneiform tablets found by him last spring at Boghaz Keui, on the site of the old Hittite capital in Cappadocia, and reading in them the records of the Hittite kings, Khattu-sil, Sapaluliuma, Mur-sila and Muttallu. Most of the tablets, though written in cuneiform characters, are in the native language of the country, but among them is a version in the Babylonian language of the treaty between the “great king of the Hittites” and Riya-masesa Mai or Ramses II., the Egyptian copy of which has long been known to us. The two Arzawan letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection no longer stand alone; the Boghaz Keui tablets show that an active correspondence was carried on between Egypt and Cappadocia. We must revise our old ideas about an absence of intercourse between different parts of the ancient Oriental world: there was quite as much intercommunication as there is to-day. Elam and Babylonia, Assyria and Asia Minor, Palestine and Egypt, all were linked together by the ties of a common culture; there were no exclusive religions to raise barriers between nation and nation, and the pottery of the Hittites was not only carried to the south of Canaan, but the civilization of Babylonia made its way through Hittite lands to the shores and islands of Greece. On the south, the Ægean became a highway from Asia Minor to Europe, while northward the Troad formed a bridge which carried the culture of Cappadocia to the Balkans and the Danube.
