Persian Literature, Ancient and Modern. Elizabeth A. Reed
murmurs of the wind, as it whispered to the closing flowers; they felt the benediction of the night, with its voices of peace, and the divine poem of earth’s beauty found an echo in their hearts.
The bloom of Accadian poetry may be placed about four thousand years before our own times, when the primeval teachings of Nature had become the theme of the poet, and been voiced in the measures of song.
But the scientific impulse of ancient Accad remained an impulse only, the methods of science were undiscovered, and the student was led astray by his own fancies and misconceptions; still amidst all the false science of a primitive Chaldea there were germs of truth, which have been developed even in our own times. The classic writers said truly that Babylonia was the birthplace of astronomy. It was also the birthplace of mathematics; and although their figures were simple, the Chaldeans attained quite a proficiency in their calculations. The library at Larsa or Senkereh was famous for its mathematical works, and it formed a nucleus for students from various portions the country.
LITERATURE OF NINEVEH.
On the banks of the Tigris, a great city lifted her battlements and arches towards the skies, and became the home of Assyrian Kings. According to Diodorus[5] her walls were an hundred feet high, and so broad that four chariots could be driven abreast upon them, while fifteen hundred towers, apparently impregnable, arose from their massive foundations. Nineveh was the home of imperial splendor, and twenty-two kings were taxed to supply the materials for her costly palaces where the finest sculptures of the East were found. Assyrian art covered her angles with graceful curves, and built her temples with their gilded domes, while the interior walls were adorned with sculptured slabs of white alabaster. The germs of Greek art, as well as Greek mythology, were found in the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates, for here were Doric and Ionic columns; here were Corinthian capitals, with architrave, frieze and cornice, and yet the latest of these must have been carved before the earliest date which has been assigned to any work of Grecian art. Though her culture was confined to certain classes, and the great mass of her population could not discern between their right hands and their left, still, for centuries Nineveh[6] was the mistress of the East, even Babylon being subject to her power.
She reached the zenith of her glory under the rule of Assur-bani-pal (the Sardanapalus of the Greeks). He was the grand monarch of Assyria, and under his reign the treasures of the world flowed to this common centre, while the name of Nineveh was feared from the frontiers of India to the shores of the Ægean sea. Ambitious in his schemes of conquest, and luxurious in the splendors of his court, he nevertheless confided his military movements largely to the hands of his ablest generals, and devoted much attention to the accumulation of his strange library at the capital city. Here he gathered the literary treasures of the Orient, and scribes were kept busy copying and translating early works, or writing original books, either in the Assyrian or the Accadian tongue. The decaying literature of Babylonia was forwarded to Nineveh, where it was copied and edited by the Assyrians. A new text was the most valuable present that any city could send to this literary king, and it was received with the enthusiasm exhibited by a modern scholar on the reception of a rare manuscript. It is to the library of Assur-bani-pal, that we are indebted for much of our knowledge of Babylonian literature—stored away in those curious vaults, were thousands of books written upon pages of clay. There were historical and mythological works, legal records, geographical and astronomical documents, as well as poetical productions. There were lists of stones and trees, of birds and beasts, besides the official copies of treaties, petitions to the king, and the royal proclamations. Strangers came from the court of Egypt, from Lydia, and from Cyprus to this ancient seat of learning. But while the king was absorbed in his favorite pursuits, the spirit of revolution was abroad in the land—Elam, Babylonia, Arabia, Palestine, Egypt and Lydia made a common cause against the reigning monarch, the insurrection being led by the king’s own brother, the viceroy of Babylon. This great revolt shook the very foundations of the Assyrian monarchy, and ushered in the decline of an empire which extended from the borders of India to the Nubian mountains, and from the sands of Arabia to the snowy peaks of the Caucasus.
In a few years even Nineveh was captured and utterly destroyed, while her empire was shared between Media and Babylon.
BABYLON.
This was “the golden city” that gathered unto herself the wealth of conquered kingdoms and the dominion of many tribes. The multitude of gods in her pantheon represented the ideals of the various races of men who laid their offerings at her feet.
Babylon was the “hammer of the whole earth,” and she forced the tributes of the nations into her treasury, and their legions into her armies. She was “the glory of kingdoms,” and she gathered the culture of a thousand years into a great historic result that contained the arts and science, the literature, the wealth, and the commerce of half the world. The culmination of her power was in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, who was the Augustus of the Babylonian age.
He reconstructed the fallen temples of her idols and carried the hideous images in triumphal processions to their palatial courts.
Gold, silver and precious stones made bright the altars and temples of Baal, of Merodach, of Nebo, of Molech, and of Ashtaroth.
The choicest cedars were brought from the mountains of Lebanon. “The cedar of the roofing of the walls of Nebo, with gold I overlaid. … Strong bulls of copper, and dreadful serpents standing upright on their thresholds I erected. The cell of the lord of the gods—Merodach, I made to glisten like suns the walls thereof, with large gold like rubble stone. … I had them made brilliant as the sun.” Nebuchadnezzar was the undisputed master of Western Asia, and the walls of his palace were hung with historic pictures of Chaldean thrones, and draped with the most gorgeous tapestries of the Eastern looms, while in his princely halls the cool air fell from glittering fountains, and the royal abode was filled with music, light, and costly perfume. He built the wondrous hanging gardens, where the almond trees waved their sprays of silvery blossoms, and the palms tossed their plumes in the sunlight—there the pink fingers of the dawn opened the hearts of the roses, and white lilies nestled amid the green slopes and fragrant shades, while the breezes came up from the great river laden with the breath of lotus blossoms and the soft music of her waves. This haughty king was also the patron of letters, and his inscriptions throw a vivid light upon his pride of power, and magnificence—his constant devotion to his idols, and his never ceasing admiration of his capital city—“this great Babylon which I have built.” His books were written largely upon stone, and stored away beyond the reach of conquering kings. The literary treasures, which may even yet lie buried beneath her soil, probably belong to the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, and owe their existence to him. In his days, too, there flourished the family of Egebi, who were tradesmen. This Jewish family is mentioned as early as the reign of Esar-haddon, and for five successive generations they deposited their legal documents in earthen jars which served the purpose of safes. These thrifty capitalists continued in prosperity even to the end of the reign of Darius the Great, and although coined money was then unknown and the precious metals[7] were reckoned by weight, they, like the Rothschilds of our own day, loaned money to the kings of their generation, and their well kept records are of great value as a chronological index of the times[8] in which they were written. The literature of the Babylonians, like that of the Hindūs, claims a fabulous antiquity. They enumerated ten kings who lived before the flood, whose reigns occupied four hundred and thirty-two thousand years, or more than forty-three centuries each, and during this immense cycle of time, there were strange creatures, half man and half fish, who ascended from the ocean and taught the tribes of Babylonia the rudiments of civilization. There were men with the bodies of birds and the tails of fishes, and men also with the beaks and faces of birds who in other respects wore the form of humanity.
But their literature was not all fable, though they really cared very little what the condition of their country had been before the deluge, for they were engaged in recounting the conquests of their own kings, and the power and splendor of their idols. Babylon, the Queen of the East, with her arts and sciences, with her painting and sculpture, was like other Asiatic cities, a hot-bed of moral corruption; even her religion was a craze of sorcery and enchantments—of witchcraft