READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE. TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER XI

THE INFLUENCE OF BABYLONIA

I.

LITERATURE: THE STORY OF GILGAMESH

To define the legacy which the world inherited from the three thousand years of Assyrian and Babylonian history is no easy task.

The Sumerians, preceding the Semitic Babylonians, spoke a language fundamentally different from the Semitic Assyrians, who were cousins to the Hebrews, Syrians, Arabs, and later Ethiopians. To the Sumerian was due the great invention of writing on clay, and the Semite, always ready to absorb benefits, recognized the value of this great discovery, and borrowed the whole Sumerian script of about 550 characters, of which 300 were in common use. Invented in the beginning for Sumerian speech, the syllabary was a poor vehicle for a Semitic tongue, and yet the Babylonians, like the Hittites and several others, adapted it fairly successfully to their own language, in contrast to the Kassites, who preferred to learn the native Babylonian tongue rather than write their own language in it. Then, towards the end of the third millennium, we begin to find Semitic-Babylonian ousting the old Sumerian. The ancient Sumerian legends of the land, the hymns, the prayers, all begin to be found in Semitic versions which are not infrequently adaptations, rather than literal translations. The Semites were now absorbing much of their masters’ literature, which was to spread westwards from Babylon, and the more western Semites incorporated the old legends, which thus strayed even to Greece.

The greatest of the Babylonian legends is undoubtedly the Epic of Gilgamesh. Written on twelve tablets according to the later Assyrian edition, it is a composition of great beauty, and there are now portions of tablets of it extant dating back to the end of the third millennium. Even part of the old Sumerian original is represented, and from the divergence between this and the Semitic version it is clear that the legends were sometimes altered slightly to suit more modern taste in style and metre.

As Ashurbanipal’s scribes knew it, the story begins with the description of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Erech, whose name is actually found on a tablet giving a list of the earlier kings. He is the fifth in the First Dynasty of Erech, living for 126 years, following Tammuz and Lugalbanda (or rather Lugalmaruda), the latter being, if not his father, at least his patron deity in the epic. It was the most popular legend in all Babylonia, for seals were constantly engraved with heroic scenes from his exploits; but he was not regarded as a god of the first rank, although the legend makes him part divine and part human, nor are personal names compounded with his. The legend spread to the Hittites and was translated into their tongue in cuneiform, the incident of Siduri having survived herein.

Sir Henry Rawlinson suggested that the whole story was a solar myth, but later writers, such as L. W. King, challenged this with some reason, considering the division into twelve sections as a comparatively late arrangement and not as an original series of chapters corresponding to the months of the year. Much of the tradition spread westwards, and Alexander, in the legends which sprang up about him, is often a shadowy Gilgamesh, the fate of Actaeon is the same as that of the shepherd who wedded the Goddess of Love, and the local episode of the Flood of Shuruppak has spread over Christendom as a Deluge submerging the world.

Erech, ‘Erech of the Encircling Wall,’ is the home of Gilgamesh, who, in these dim forgotten ages, when squalor and brutishness are but mistily remembered behind the glamour of years long dead, lords over men like a wild bull. The splendid city, now a paradise of faerie in the swelling phrases of the jongleur, is girt about with high massive walls, and over all, topping the low houses, the arched chambers and the little cabins of reeds, towers the Temple of E-Anna, the House of Heaven, where Ishtar plays the part of Goddess of Love, Mother-Goddess with bountiful breasts, even Goddess of War. As a faithful wife she seeks her husband Tammuz each winter, descending to the Lower World, like Orpheus for Eurydice, and bringing him back with the spring of the year in the mating season, when the desert begins to put forth its emerald carpet. As a Goddess of Love, her rites are crude and lustful, a fit token of a fiery country. As a Mother-Goddess, she offers her bounty of milk with both hands across the world from Babylon to Carchemish, be it as a little clay figure or life-size image; as a Goddess of War, the Semite Anubanini of Gutium had early pictured her on the cliffs of Siri-Pul in triumph over his wretched captives.

But Gilgamesh, ‘the shepherd of Erech, strong, splendid and wise,’ is a cruel tyrant who persecutes his flock, leaving no maid to her mother, forcing youths to his labour. So runs the first chapter of the story, setting the open-mouthed listeners against the hero; presently this shall be lost in the fresh hues woven into the web, as another strand of legend is shot across the embroidery. The land groans under his oppression, the sound reaches high heaven, and the gods in their pity turn to Aruru:

It is thou, O Aruru,

Who hast created the seed of mankind—do thou make his fellow,

So that the twain, when he pleaseth, shall quarrel, and Erech have freedom.

Aruru gives ear, and models a man of clay and gives him life, and thus the wild man Engidu comes into the world, ‘his body all hairy, his locks like a woman’s.’ He is a strange primitive creature—compared by some to Adam—who spends his days among the wild animals of the plains, sporting with them in the water, living as one of them, and rescuing them from the toils of the hunter. One of these hunters meeting with him suddenly is startled by his uncouth appearance, and hastens to his father to ask for advice, for he knows now who has prevented the game falling into his hands. The old man advises him to bring one of the singing­girls from the great Temple of the Goddess of Love in Erech, that she may entice this savage from his deserts by her wiles. Then the hunter goes to Gilgamesh who repeats the old man’s advice.

So, not without art, does the story-teller lead up to a meeting between Engidu and Gilgamesh. The hunter and the girl journey together into the desert to the haunts of Engidu, and there lie in wait, until at last he comes. She, with every art of coquetry known to the hetairai of the temple, goes forth alone to meet him, and so, after the fashion of the wild, he mates with her. But, with this ephemeral venture into matrimony, comes that strange old Eastern superstition, reaching back into far ages, that his mystic innocency has been lost, and were he to look into the crystal or the ink now, Engidu would see nothing of the future. The beasts, aforetime his friends, eye him now with terror, and flee at his approach; as a compensation for this, he is allowed to sit at his mistress’s feet, while she tells him of the delights of civilization, mocking him for wasting his life, and baiting her trap by daring him to fight Gilgamesh. So, playing on his imagination, in the end she lures him to Erech. She shall see what he will dare—why, those who are born in the open are the strongest of all!

In the city he is dumbfounded by the strangeness of all that his astonished eyes see. The very bread and wine set before him by the girl are a revelation, nor can the editor of the Epic resist a sly dig of contemptuous civilization at the savage; Engidu, forsooth, had only been wont to suck the milk of the cattle!

Engidu saw the food set before him, he gazed and he stared,

How to eat bread he did not understand, nor had he the knowledge

How to quaff mead.

‘Taste, O Engidu,’ says his woman, ‘taste the bread, the wonted use of the country, the treasure of life.’ Caliban is an apt pupil, especially when seven cups of wine have put a valiant spirit into him. He becomes the patron of the shepherds, killing the lions, catching the jackals, and in the end comes the encounter with Gilgamesh, but with a climax unforeseen by the gods.

The tyrant of Erech, restless on his couch one night, leaves his chamber to wander through the streets of his city. Engidu meets him, and the two grapple and fight, wrestling like bulls. So strong does each prove that in the other a respect for his foe is born, and after the tulzie they become fast friends, and with this ends this chapter of the story, for there is no further reference to the tyranny of Gilgamesh, who is now the hero of the legend whom the listeners’ sympathy henceforward follows.

The next episodes lead gradually to the great problem of life, death, and what is to come after death. The story-teller draws his hearers on to a primitive philosophy, pictured in the attitude of Gilgamesh when his friend Engidu dies, told with a simple and dramatic pathos: the death of his comrade, and the hero’s astonishment at the lifeless corpse gradually rising in a crescendo of terror lest the hero, too, should become like this dead thing. Then follows that great problem, the quest of mankind, eternal life.

These fresh strands leading to Engidu’s death begin with high adventure. The two comrades set forth to fight a monster called Khumbaba or Khuwawa, who lives in a cedar-forest. It is an exploit fraught with great danger, and the mother of Gilgamesh, in her anxiety for her son, climbs her roof and upbraids the Sun-god for implanting this restlessness in her son’s breast:

Why didst thou give this restlessness of spirit

Which now obsesseth Gilgamesh my son,

That so thou touchest him and straight he runneth

By distant pathways leading to Khumbaba,

To meet new warfare all unexercised?

The very elders of the city counsel prudence; let Engidu be the guide and go before Gilgamesh. On their way a vision comes to one of them:

Thunder was roaring in heaven which earth with her echo resounded,

Sombre the day in its travail, bringing forth darkness widespreading,

Blazed forth the lightnings—from heaven were kindled the fires celestial,

Pestilence sated its maw, yea Death was filled to o’erflowing.

Sank then to darkness the glare of the sky, sank also the fires,

Crashing to earth, the great molten masses turned into cinders.

With the acceptance of the dreams as omens, they encounter the monster in his cedar-forest, where his daily prowlings have worn smooth pathways, and slay him, hewing off his head in triumph. With the successful issue of this combat comes a little interlude.

Gilgamesh is washing himself after his exploit, and the goddess Ishtar, letting her eye fall upon him, is overwhelmed by his manly beauty and, although a goddess, she bids him marry her. ‘Marry thee, forsooth!’ says Gilgamesh, ‘not I! Why, forsooth, thou art a back door useless to keep out the wind, a palace which falls on the heroes within it, a hunter’s pit ready to engulf the unwary, pitch which defiles, a leaky skin bottle, a tripping shoe!’

Then follow his abusive taunts and a recital of her previous husbands, how evil befell each one of them. Was there not Tammuz, the husband of her youth, the Roller-bird whose wing she broke, the Lion who was trapped, the Horse whom she rode almost to death, the Shepherd whose own dogs tore him (like Actaeon), the Gardener whom she transformed by her black magic?—‘and me thou wouldst love and make me like them!’

Hysterical at his refusal, Ishtar makes her way furiously to heaven, to her father Anu, and bursts forth into reviling against Gilgamesh. Let Anu create a mighty bull to avenge her insults! The god, very human and very Eastern in his terror of a woman’s tantrums, grants her request, and the next exploit of Gilgamesh and Engidu is their slaying of the bull’. Ishtar beholds the deed, and ascends the walls of Erech; Engidu tears out the member from the carcase, and flings it at her. ‘Could I but reach thee, I’d serve thee like him!’ and she is left to mourn with her women for the dead bull.

But alas! now Engidu falls sick, perhaps through the curse of Ishtar, and Gilgamesh is distraught with anxiety for his friend, and muses on their good comradeship together, how they cap­tured the bull, how they killed Khumbaba:

O, what is this slumber

That hath o’ertaken thee? thus art thou dark, nor art able to hear me.

But he raised not his head, and his heart, when Gilgamesh felt it,

Made no beat.

Terrified by the sight of death, the hero cannot endure the thought that he, too, will die; he must set off on a journey to Uta-Napishtim, to whom the gods have given eternal life, a journey dangerous and difficult. The Sun-god, touched with compassion for the poor bewildered hero, warns him that he cannot find the life which he seeks, but the other only answers:

Shall I, after roaming the desert, up and down running,

Lay my head in the depths of the earth, and throughout the years slumber?

‘Let mine eyes see the light of the Sun,’ he pleads. Then he comes to the Scorpion-man and Scorpion-woman, who are sentinels of the mountains wherein the sun travels by night, and through this dark passage must he go until he emerges to daylight beyond, where the maiden Siduri is seated on a throne. Alarmed at the appearance of this rough travel-stained man she flies to her sanctuary; in his dire necessity to learn his road he pursues her, threatening to burst her door if she will not listen to him. Then only does she speak to him comfortably—what is the use of his seeking to escape the common lot?

Gilgamesh, why dost thou run? inasmuch as the life which thou seekest,

Thou canst not find, for the gods in their first creation of mortals

Death allotted to man, but life they retained in their keeping.

Gilgamesh: full be thy belly,

Each day and night be thou merry, and aye hold holiday revel....

Let thou thy head be clean washen, and bathe; and the little one cherish,

Holding thy hand; and let also thy spouse be rejoiced in thy bosom,

This is the mission of man.

Nevertheless she tells him what she knows. Uta-Napishtim lives across the sea, the Waters of Death; he must seek Ur-Shanabi, the boatman who may help him to cross them. Again with this guidance the hero starts off.

He finds the boat of Ur-Shanabi on the margin of the waters, and here we have to infer from a lacuna that he destroys an essential part of the boat, which he must replace with a hundred and twenty poles. They launch the boat, and Gilgamesh punts her with his poles, and, that the dread water may not touch him, he throws away each pole at the end of his thrust. Uta-Napishtim is waiting for him on the other side, and in answer to the hero’s request for eternal life, tells him the whole story of the Flood.

Shuruppak, the modern Fara, was the scene. The gods decided to bring a flood upon the world, but Ea, who was privy to their counsels, gave warning to Uta-Napishtim who was living there. Even he dared not warn him personally; he went therefore to the reed-hut in which Uta-Napishtim dwelt, and addressed his speech, not to the man, but to the hut: ‘O Reed-hut, give ear, O Wall, understand!’ and then bade the man pull down his house and build a boat, which, doubtless, in the early period when the story was invented, was merely a reed-raft such as is used to this day in Mesopotamia. On this he was to place his family and goods, and if any asked him why, he was to say Bel had cursed him and he could no longer dwell there. So did he, and entered his boat, and then the heavens opened, the rains poured down, the floods rose, and all the land was blotted out, the deluge lasting for six days; and when, on the seventh, Uta-Napishtim looked out of the window, all mankind had returned to their primitive clay. The boat grounded on an elevation called Mount Nisir, and after seven days more Uta-Napishtim let loose a dove, which flew back because it could find no resting-place: then he loosed a swallow, which also returned, and lastly a raven which flew away and returned not. Then he came forth from the ark and offered a sacrifice to the gods.

When Bel arrived on the scene he beheld the man who had escaped with his life, and burst into anger; but Ea, acting the part of mediator, soothed him, so that in the end the wrathful god let Uta-Napishtim dwell with his wife at ‘the mouth of the rivers’; they have now become as gods.

But how can Gilgamesh become like these? There is no solution, says Uta-Napishtim. Yet as he leaves the shore despondent, Uta-Napishtim calls to him, telling him that there is a magic herb at the bottom of the sea called ‘the-Old-Turned-Young.’ The hero, attaching a stone to his feet like the modern divers of the Persian Gulf, leaps into the water, finds the plant, and he and the boatman set forth on their way home. Then, as he stops near a pool of water, a snake darts forth and seizes the plant which it carries off, and Gilgamesh is left without his elixir, and he must perforce return home empty-handed, his quest fruitless.

Here the Epic should really end, but actually on the twelfth tablet we are given the picture of Engidu raised from the dead, to tell his friend of the Underworld. There is no escape from death and Hades.

II

THE DESCENT OF ISHTAR, THE CREATION EPIC, AND OTHER LEGENDS

Hell is described both in the Gilgamesh Epic and in the Legend of the Descent of Ishtar. Ishtar, whose husband Tammuz, the god of vegetation, dies every year with the summer droughts, goes down to Hell to seek him, a theme which dates back far into Sumerian times; and there are many hymns extant in Sumerian from which the wailing women can keen their laments. For the Underworld is a place of earth, dust, mud, where ghosts live miserably, and such forgotten shades, as are no longer fed by their descendants, must seek their food and drink amid the heaps of offal and the gutters. Thither the goddess descends, knocking at the outer gate, and the porter announces her arrival to the Queen Ereshkigal, whose very name held so much magic that Greek sorcerers used it in their charms. Ishtar has come to Hades like a mortal; naked she came into the world, naked she must leave it, and at each of the seven gates the porter takes away a garment. Ereshkigal mocks her as she stands naked before her, and the unhappy goddess loses her temper and is punished with every bodily ill the queen can inflict. But with the absence of the goddess of love, all creation on earth is at a stand­still; and unless Ereshkigal can be won over to release her, the world will come to an end. So Ea creates a kind of clown who is to descend into Hades, and by amusing the wrathful queen obtain the Water of Life from her. But she fathoms his intention, and curses him, but relents (why, exactly, is not clear), and forgives Ishtar, over whom Namtar, the god of pestilence, pours the Water of Life, so that she may return to earth with her husband. With the return of the faithful goddess, nature again becomes fruitful.

It is a beautiful legend which spread all over the Near East. Every year the women wailed for Tammuz, just as they wail at Muharram to this day with their shrill rapid utterance Ali, Ali, Ali, Ali! working themselves up into a frenzy.

From the Legend of Gilgamesh we can turn to the Epic of Creation which played so great a part in the Festival of the New Year. It was celebrated at Ashur, where the god represented was Ashur, and at Babylon, where Marduk played the chief role. It was a ritual which takes almost the character of a Passion Play, enacted during the first eleven days of Nisan, the first month of the year, including a recital of the career of the principal god in the drama of creation, the king himself taking part. The ceremonial tablets lay down the exact ritual to be observed in the temple, and the whole Epic of Creation containing the current theological beliefs about that great problem, the Beginning of All Things, was recited by the High Priest on the fourth day.

Before ever the heavens were made there existed Apsu and Mummu (and) Tiamat. Herein we meet at once the first difficulty; are there two or three beings? Later on in the Epic there is no doubt that Mummu and Tiamat are different monsters, but there does not appear to be that ease of distinction in the prologue, nor is it conventional to have three factors in primeval creation. However this may be, the original parents of the world appear to have been waters which mingled together, perhaps the great salt sea of the Persian Gulf and the wide brackish lakes of the southern Babylonian marshes, so stirred by the sea-tide that the daily ebb and flow up the river may have given rise to a belief in a great monster beneath, fertilized by the sea. For Tiamat, the tehom of Genesis, the great dragon of tamtu the sea, still seems to be vaguely pictured in the mind of the modern Arab in Basrah, who explains an earthquake as made by the monstrous buffalo of the jinn beneath the earth. Out of the primeval deeps gods were born, the mysterious Lakhmu and Lakhamu, who in turn spawned Anshar and Kishar; and then from Anshar came Anu, who ultimately is the Sky-god, and from him Ea, who perhaps first is Lord of the Earth, and then of the Waters. But now Apsu goes with his messenger Mummu to Tiamat (now they are clearly three) to plot against this multitude of noisy gods, to destroy them that they may again have peace. Ea, who is all-wise, tired of their iniquity, falls on Apsu and Mummu with magic, killing one and binding the other, and gives the divine world time to produce the great tutelary god of Babylon, Marduk (or, in the Assyrian story, Ashur), who is born of Lakhmu and Lakhamu in Apsu, now the name of the Hall of Ea, which is the sea.

Now rises Tiamat to avenge the defeat of Mummu and Apsu, creating a brood of wicked and devilish monsters, choosing as their leader Kingu; and with the bruit of this evil spawn Ea is stricken with fear, and hurries to take counsel with Anshar his father. Now is the time for a true champion! Anu is the first to take up the challenge, but the sight of the enemy sends him scurrying back in terror, to cast down the other gods to the lowest depths of fear. Marduk, then, let it be; prepare a feast, summon the gods, let us exalt to supreme power this god, if only he will champion us, for a god such as he can destroy or create at pleasure! Wherefore, to prove their confidence, the gods display a robe at the feast. ‘Command, and it shall vanish; again command, and it shall re-appear’. A poor trick, a trivial miracle, but one such as has always arrested Semitic interest; the conjurer succeeds, the champion proves his power. ‘Go and cut off the lip of Tiamat,’ and with this exhortation Marduk prepares his armour, and swoops down on the monster in his Chariot of the Resistless Storm, riding the whirlwind. The twain meet in fierce combat, the god, a very St George, casting a rampant wind into the mouth of the Dragon, and shooting her through and through; how the devils who helped her scattered to the four winds, hoping to escape his net, all unavailing! Marduk, triumphant, cleaves the dragon in twain, making one half the heavens wherein he set the stars and great lights, fixing their courses and their stations: and then comes the great creation, Man. Man shall be made, so that the service of the gods may be carried on, perhaps that he and his like may provide each day the divine daily food, offerings, wives. ‘Blood will I form, bone will I make,’ says Marduk. ‘I will create man.’ But Ea offers counsel. Kingu is the chief god who revolted against heaven, and he is now a prisoner; slay him, take his blood, and out of it make man. With the creation of man there is little more of anthropological interest, for woman is not included, and the text goes on to tell of the founding of Babylon, the city of Marduk, whose praise is hymned now throughout the rest of the Epic. It is an extraordinary poem, obviously (as even these few lines show) built up over several foundations, demanding long and patient disentanglement, but for our purpose here it is enough to give it as a legend of later Babylonian times.

There are many other legends. Etana, the hero of Kish, is carried up to the skies by an eagle; Adapa, the fisherman of Eridu, who provides food for his town in the marshes, breaks the wing of the south wind and in consequence is carried off to heaven to give an explanation of his crime; Irra, the god of pestilence, is the subject of a story which appears to contain a reference to an invasion which actually occurred; the Zu-bird steals the Tablets of Destiny. Through­ut the legends we see lurking incidents which call to mind the Greek stories, of Gilgamesh as Heracles, of Actaeon, of Ganymede, of Orpheus. Hebrew literature is still fuller of reminiscence, for the Flood is taken over almost bodily, and the Chaos-dragon was very well known.

III

DIDACTIC AND RELIGIOUS LITERATURE

From the legends to the Wisdom-literature is but a step. One of the most striking series of tablets in cuneiform is the so-called Lament of a Babylonian Job, the plaint of a sufferer attacked by demons, who in vain invokes the gods and consults the priests. He has always performed his religious devoirs, and yet, forsooth, he has been submerged by this woe: how, then, may one know what is pleasing to the gods? Written in a style superior to that of an ordinary incantation text, the pitiful protests of the suppliant sometimes remind us of the finest Hebrew literature. More didactic is the tablet which enjoins counsels of wisdom and moderation, to shun the company of harlots, to speak little and to be slow in rising in an assembly, to reverence one’s god each day. We might almost include here the Tablet of the Horse and the Ox, in which each animal discusses his superiority over the other.

The religious literature is enormous. Much of it is based on the principle that if a man has fallen sick he has broken some tabu, wittingly or unwittingly, and it is for him to call in the aid of a wizard to relieve him. The breach of tabu may have called down either the wrath of the gods, or it may have left the unfortunate man open to the attacks of some demon or ghost, whose name is legion. For this purpose was written the large number of incantations which use the ‘atonement-magic,’ whereby the evil influence can be transferred from the man to some other object, and here may be included the Shurpu series, and many of the texts for exorcising devils, as well as the series Maklu, which provides for counter-sorcery against wizards and witches who have cast their spells upon the sick man.

At all periods the great temples resounded with choirs singing hymns in praise of each deity, for the Babylonian had all the Semitic genius for written song. Yet we find an unpleasing humility in his supplications, to which he hastened to give voice as soon as he had become terror-stricken at the menace of bodily ill. Never was devil so likely to turn monk as the Babylonian devotee! Yet, on the other hand, there is often a simplicity about the prayers which is not unpleasant:

O goddess of men, goddess of women,

Thou whose counsel none may learn,

Where thy glance falls, live the dead,

The sick are healed, the sore made whole

Seeing thy face! So I, in stress,

Of sorrow sighing, woe, cry unto thee,

Thy servant!

O my lady, look on me,

Accept my prayer!

The ritual for all classes of priests is also carefully laid down with most meticulous formality. Mesopotamia seems to have always been thoroughly under the thumb of the priests, and it might almost be said that superstition had made men’s lives a burden, except that in modern days we find the Arabs holding so many similar beliefs, and yet undismayed by them. The king as head of the state was hedged about with religious formalities; he would ask oracles whenever he was undertaking a new expedition. But the innumerable omen-tablets which forecast events from the most trivial acts of daily life show how the common people trusted such Books of Fate, and it was clearly not only the king who tried to peer into the future.

History in a nation so proud of its bloodthirsty exploits became a fine art, and from the earliest times of Sumerian writing the kings glorified themselves in their records, both on stone and on clay. Ashur-Nasir-Pal had his inscriptions cut across the very pictures on his sculptures, but this fashion did not remain in vogue much later, and the best period of Assyrian art, the seventh century, is free from this ugly practice. It is clear that careful record was kept of events long past and of kings long dead, for the Assyrian monarchs are always able to provide dates for the exploits of their predecessors, with at least the appearance of accuracy. From the first, as soon as they had learnt to grave on stone, the kings left their records behind them, either on door-sockets in the palaces, or boundary stones, or on the face of mountain-rocks in far distant corners of their kingdoms. Yet the vainglorious story of conquest which every Assyrian monarch bequeaths of himself to posterity is a bloody record of cruelty and terror, and the disgusted reader loses sight of whatever literary excellence there may be in it in his loathing for the complacent story of slaughter. It is pleasanter to leave the endless tales of barbarism, which one might have hoped would never be surpassed, and turn to the records of more peaceful pursuits.

IV

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROLOGY

The domain of legend and fiction, of ecclesiastical literature and of bombastic prose, yields pride of place to science. With our increasing knowledge of the extraordinary capacity of the Babylonians comes a very real and great respect for their ability, which far outranged that of the other Semites who appear almost as provincials alongside this high civilization; and we can give unlimited admiration to the genius which plays so large a part in laying the foundations of modern science. The Babylonian observations of the stars were the beginning of astronomy; their knowledge of drugs, of our medicine; their patient lexicography is wonderful in its untiring care; their codes of laws are master­pieces of common sense and discrimination.

It was to astrology, rather than astronomy proper, that the Babylonians first owed the reputation which their knowledge of the stars had gained for them. Naturally they drew presages from the actions of the heavenly bodies; but the very fact of their seeking such omens made them very observant astronomers, and however much we may sneer at the fantasies into which astrology has led mankind, to it is due the whole of the science of astronomy. When, the men of Babylonia were observing the movements of the planets in order to forecast the future, they were laying the foundations of a sure philosophy which was already taking a very definite and scientific shape in the reign of Cambyses, and eliminating the old omen-search. By the end of the third millennium they had already recorded observations of Venus. It is not, however, until we reach the period of the Assyrian kings of Ashur and Nineveh that we can begin to appreciate what an enormous hold astrology had had in the past over the Babylonians. This period represents the culmination and decadence of astrology proper; with the downfall of Assyria we see the passing of what may be called ‘rule-of-thumb’ methods of an astrology groping towards the greater science which thoroughly deserves the name of astronomy under the later period, which survived in actual cuneiform until 10—9 BC.

At the same time, the star-gazers had early settled the duration of the year with its two equinoxes, and its difference in its solar and lunar periods. The ordinary year was lunar, the months being easily observable thus by anyone; but this compelled the insertion of an extra month from time to time, to make the period equal to the solar year. This must have originated with the Sumerians, but the fixed period for the insertion of intercalary months did not come in until the sixth century, when an eight-year cycle was in vogue which subsequently became a nine-year cycle. Indeed, in Hammurabi’s time we find the king writing to Sin-idinnam (twenty-first century BC), saying: ‘since the year hath a deficiency, let the month which is beginning be registered as a second Elul,’ clearly indicating how indefinite the duration of the year was in his time. Out of this observance of years and months arose the sexagesimal system for which the Babylonians were famous, and which was to lead ultimately to the division of the day into twelve here or double hours, each of which represented in arc 12 ammatu (30 degrees), and each ammatu (of 2° 30') 24 ubanu. These measurements, even by the ubanu, were employed in reckoning astronomical distance, certainly in the seventh century BC, and some of them long before.

By the seventh century there was an established system of observatories throughout Assyria for recording the movements of the heavenly bodies. Reports were regularly sent to the king, partly with the object of foretelling the future (which is explained to him hereon by formal and perfunctory quotations from the old astrological books), partly with the intention of foretelling the duration of the lunar month from the previous position of the sun and moon, which had now become an important study. The seven planets included the sun and moon; the word at this time is Lu.Bad, the comparison being to ‘sheep’; and the entry of these and other stars into the two halos of the moon, called ‘sheep-fold ’ and ‘cattle-pen,’ is a copious source of omens. ‘Planets,’ explains one astronomer to the king, ‘are those whose stars traverse their own path.’ The Ecliptic had by now been divided into the twelve signs of the Zodiac, which are almost the same as those in use today, some of the constellations having been marked out as early as the fourteenth century. Every possible incident, astro­nomical or atmospheric, was observed for its possible portents, even earthquakes playing their part.

Of the practical capacity of the astronomers to calculate eclipses at this period it is not easy to decide. They predicted them, it is true, and watched to see if their predictions were fulfilled. But it is not until the later time, after the fall of Nineveh, when the eighteen-year saros period shows itself, that there is an approach to real astronomy, when their knowledge of the eclipses, of the changes of the sun and the moon, is remarkable; and even by the middle of the second century they had no knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes. The details given on these later tablets show the immense care and trouble which were taken in their studies of the heavens, which was to be the mother of modern philosophy.

V

MEDICINE, GRAMMAR, LAW

Practical medicine must rank as high as astronomy in our assessment of Babylonian knowledge, and, if it be maintained that astrology was only a means to lead to astronomy, then we must give the physician the higher place. The texts from Ashur (which must certainly be put no later than the eighth century) show a systematic practice in medicine, a very wide and close knowledge of disease, and a deep knowledge of drugs—animal, vegetable and mineral. Above all, it must be explained that the practice of medicine proper in Assyria, as taught by the medical treatises, has one broad distinction from the methods of the demonologist. It deals definitely in a practical way with disease, reducing the mumbo-jumbo of the exorcist to a minimum, whereas in the magical texts, although drugs are frequently used, their employment is entirely subservient to the Word of Power and the knowledge of a personal devil. Five hundred pieces of tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection in the British Museum(perhaps equivalent to one-twentieth of the whole) represent the knowledge of the physician, empiric, of course, but practical; the greater part of the receipts have no concern with magic, but take the form ‘if a man has such and such a disease, then do thou give him to drink (or, apply) such and such drugs, and he will recover,’ a form retained in Syriac and late Hebrew medicine. Naturally, few tablets, except an occasional letter, instruct us in the use of the surgeon’s knife, but several introduce us to the use of instruments, and of course even in the third millennium we find careful enactments made in the Hammurabi Code for surgeons’ fees, and compensations to patients injured during treatment.

Diseases and ailments of every part of the body are dealt with in these texts, from the crown of the head wherein scabies is treated with sulphur, to feet which cannot walk. Arsenic, antimony, and copper were used for various forms of ophthalmia; mercury, alum, and other mineral drugs as yet unidentified for other diseases. Of the vegetable drugs we may reckon as the commonest the turpentines, followed by an enormous pharmacopoeia, including rosewater (as a medium), the gums, oils or other products of cedar, cypress and laurel, myrtle, tamarisk, and juniper; gums or gum-resins, such as styrax, galbanum, myrrh, liquidambar, asafoetida, opopanax; the narcotics hemp, opium, lolium temulentum, mandragora, and some of the solanaceae, the stomachic value of many of the umbelliferae; the peculiar use of the anemones and chamomiles, licorice, mustard, numerous alkalis, and perhaps a form of iodine from sea-weed; the medicinal value of fruits (juice or skins), pomegranate, lemon, apple, medlar.

The following table will show the approximate number of drugs in use:

Drugs Species Frequency of mention Percentages

Vegetable                  250             80

Mineral                     120              10

Others                         180            10

(without counting the various alcohols, fats and oils used as vehicles or solvents).

Of the instruments, a tube of bronze is recommended for blowing a compound of myrrh, styrax and ‘salt of Akkad’ into the eyes, or styrax in oil into the urinary organs; a bronze spatula or blade for applying drugs to the eyes. Cloths and leather (vellum, parchment) are prescribed for poultices.

It was doubtless the necessity for medicines which led to the Assyrian philologists’ care in tabulating the plants; and speaking generally they adhered to a botanical order of their own in composing these lists. Most interesting are the herbalists’ little comments interspersed amid the columns: how opium is ‘like mandrake’ (in its narcotic effects), and ‘is gathered by women and children,’ as it is to this day; that a poppy ‘is (called) a rose by the common people,’ as it is by the modern Arab; that cannabis (hemp, binj) is ‘an antidote to sorrow’; that sumach is ‘a dye for leather,’ as well as ‘an appetizer.’

From the plant-lists of the doctors to the other catalogues is but a step. Every possible word appears to have been included in these texts, with its Sumerian equivalent: gods and stars, stones, minerals, metals, wooden objects, besides a mass of lexicographical material, either as Sumerian glossaries, or as double-column lists of Assyrian synonyms. The Sumerian student could refer to numerous dictionaries of this kind, nay, there were even Sumerian phrase-books for him.

A nation which controlled so large an empire must needs codify its laws. The Sumerians appear to have done so: Hammurabi engraved his on stone on the magnificent column found at Susa; the Assyrians equally tabulated theirs. The latter have been already discussed, and it is unnecessary to reintroduce the subject here except as a reminder. The laws are, however, very different from their Babylonian predecessors, and the contrast between the two codes shows vividly the changes which the centuries had brought about.

As practical mathematicians the Babylonians of the First Dynasty (twenty-second century) have left us tablets which indicate no small capacity for geometry. In one, for instance, we find a series of problems concerning this calculation of areas presented to students of surveying, with diagrams: ‘1 Ush square, within it a square I have inscribed. The second square stands square (upon the first); 4 squares 1 circle I have inscribed. That field calculate (?).’

Lastly there are two classes of literature which tell us so much of the daily life, the immense quantity of contracts, and the letters. The demands of a business-like people make their scribes adepts at letter-writing, their attorneys careful in legal expression, their merchants shrewd in the essentials of an agreement. From the third millennium onward we find numerous records of sales, marriages, adoptions, all duly set forth and formally witnessed, indicating a long and gradual evolution from previous practice. Officers in the time of Hammurabi were able to write a concise letter to their king; by the middle of the next millennium letter­writing in cuneiform between foreign potentates throughout the Near East had become a habit. The letters of the later Assyrian period are numerous and cover all subjects, including the letters of Sennacherib himself who was conducting a campaign in the north while yet a prince, giving a précis which describes the events at various Assyrian outposts on the border. Moreover, there have survived from the late Babylonian period a great many private letters written by merchants, priests, officers, and even women. Except for the larger royal letters of the middle of the second millennium, it may be said that there is a marked tendency to reduce the size of the letters, although not perhaps the actual amount written. The letters of the Assyrian empire are half the size of those of Hammurabi’s time, and twice that of the letters of the Babylonian Renaissance. It is an indication of the introduction of the postman, limited in his capacity as a weight-carrier; indeed, although the Persians are said to have instituted a messenger service, the very word angaros, ‘messenger,’ owes its origin really to the Babylonian agiru, ‘hireling.’

VI

THE DECAY OF THE BABYLONIAN CIVILIZATION

And now, in summing up the relative position which the ancient dwellers of Mesopotamia hold amid the nations of the world, and the heritage which is the treasure amassed by their tremendous energy and efficiency, we have to watch the flickering light of the brilliant torch which they lighted die out. The ingenious cuneiform characters pressed in clay, not only by the Assyrians, but by many nations round about them, survived the Fall of Babylon, but not for long; decay set in, not decay of the language so much as the gradual disuse, first of the everyday speech, and then of the writing, which lingered on nearly to the Christian Era, kept alive by a small community tenacious of the ancient glories of their land under a few conservative priests, astronomers and attorneys. The story of its fall into oblivion is as pitiful as that of other lost tongues and scripts, the obvious cause being the subjugation of the Babylonians by foreigners from which they were never sufficiently powerful to free themselves. Persians and Macedonians introduced strange languages into the land in a way none had done since the coming of the Sumerians, and with these conquerors came a horde of foreign soldiery and merchants, so that the queer old legend, which the Jews in their philological juggling had seen depicted in the very word Babel, was now a reality, for Babylonia had become a melting-pot of foreign tongues, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Persian, Greek, a veritable macedoine of jargons. Conversely, the immense armies raised to fight the wars of the Persians drained the land of its native inhabitants.

It is the ordinary private letters, almost always written on business or professional subjects, which are the first documents to disappear from the cuneiform. Numerous before the Persian conquest, and existing even to the end of the reign of Darius, they drop out in the beginning of the fifth century; and it is this which indicates the first decay of the spoken language. In that variegated tapestry which cuneiform has woven we can follow two strands coloured by these little common letters. Every great period of vigour in Assyro-Babylonian history—Hammurabi, the later Assyrian empire, the Babylonian Renaissance—is marked by a corresponding encouragement of letter-writing, communications written not only by the king but by private people or officials. Under a successful ruler the country has ease, comfort, leisure; agriculture and trade increase, and business, no longer upset by foreign inroads, is carried on in security, and trade­intercourse between city and city is a necessary result. But when this peace, so essential for civilization, is rudely broken, and husbandmen, merchants, and particularly scribes, are hurried away to defend themselves in disastrous wars, letter-writing naturally ceases; there is little for patron or client to discuss, few are left who have reason to write, and still fewer who are able to write or even read. It is therefore reasonable for us to postulate that a period of national depression in a land where only a part of the population can write will be marked by a woeful lack of private correspondence. That is the first strand which blends its colours in the last fringes of the cuneiform web.

But the second is still clearer and more sombre. In the East, when a foreign invader speaking a different language from the defeated race occupies the conquered land permanently, the older inhabitants must of necessity sink into an inferior position. Everything combines to give the victors an advantage, their rights of conquest, their position as rulers, their very language which is now that of the upper classes. Only those of the old native population who barely hold their ancient lands by favour of the victors have need to carry on extensive business; only those who will trouble to learn the new speech can occupy positions of government. In the end the old landowners will be ousted, or at best bought out; their ancient language will live only as a means of intercourse between the lowest, it will be mummified, and will be preserved by the regretful conservatism of a dying stock.

So did it happen probably in Babylonia. The spoken language was moribund early in the fifth century BC, and the unsuccessful revolt of Nidintu-Bel gave it the coup-de-grâce (522 BC). There does not seem to be any reason to suppose that private correspondence was forbidden by the Persian censors, at any rate before the revolt; the Persians seem to have been so open-minded in their respect for foreign prejudices that they were probably content to ignore the opportunities for mischief and sedition which more primitive oriental races, swaddled in the incunabula of an arrested development, always ascribe to this mystery of writing. But, at all events, the letters cease about the beginning of the fifth century, and then within the next hundred years legal contracts and similar documents come almost entirely to an abrupt end, although a few do, it is true, survive in cuneiform to the last, a fact easily explicable, for there will always be professional scribes or attorneys whose business it is to know enough of the old language to be able to refer to ancient records. But with letters it is different, for no professional scribe will risk sending a letter in a dying language if there is any probability that the recipient cannot find someone to read it for him.

It is strange, however, that Persian cuneiform should have had no effect in helping to prolong Babylonian. The explanation probably is that not only are the scripts distinct, but that the two languages are more so. Indeed, Babylonia shows no trace of acceptance of the conqueror’s writing, the immense gulf between the extant literature of the two peoples showing how little they had in common. Of the Babylonians we have untold treasures in every branch of written document; of the Achaemenians there is hardly anything but a few monumental records. For that reason Babylonian cuneiform outlived Persian, which, as far as can be seen at present, springs into being suddenly, lasts for a mere couple of centuries, and then dies. So high a place did Babylonian hold even during the reign of Darius, at least academically, that the Persian king chose it as one of the three languages in which to perpetuate his exploits on a mountain side far out of reach of the ordinary traveller in a land where Babylonian was hardly known. But pregnant of meaning is the discovery that, not only has a fragmentary copy of the inscription been found in Babylonian at Babylon, but even one in Aramaic at Elephantine. Xerxes still used Babylonian when he wished to set up a trilingual inscription; and so, later, did Artaxerxes Mnemon. By this time it had probably reached the place of Latin in modern ecclesiasticism or monumental inscriptions.

From the beginning of the fourth century onwards until nearly the end of the first century BC the lamp was kept alight partly by the guilds of faithful priests, who carried on the old forms of worship after the universal manner of priesthoods with all the ancient formulas, partly by the astronomers, and partly by the professional scribes whose skill throughout this period is shown by some few hundred contracts. These poor relics show that there existed in the land down to the end what may probably be correctly described as a little community: the pathetic, exclusive remnant of an extinct power, who for the most part rejected new gods, and held to their old patronymics, Marduk-Shum-Iddin, Marduk-Zir-Ibni, even to the first century, and (since their contracts are written in good Babylonian) perhaps retained the ancient language. Nor have the astronomers and priests been more generous in their bequests to us, and here, too, our heritage is woefully sparse, for where the century of the Assyrian zenith has left us tablets in thousands, the whole period of the four centuries before Christ can offer them at best but in scores. Indeed, hardly a tablet has been left to represent cuneiform for almost the whole of the fourth century, a miserable period of invasion, of great unrest, wretched palace intrigues, and the murders of kings.

With the rise of the Seleucid power in 312 BC, however, there came what may be considered as a tolerant revival of the encouragement of ancient ritual and astronomy. As early as the time of Cambyses, if not before, astronomy had begun to oust her more charlatan mother astrology, and now, from the time of Seleucus Nicator (312—280), who did so much to raise Babylonia (along with the other parts of the East) from the slough of decadence into which it had sunk, we find a large series of tablets recording astronomical observations of high scientific merit, down to the latter half of the first century BC. Indeed, we can trace a renascent flicker of the old love of historical records in an astronomical tablet of the next king, Antiochus Soter (280-260), dated in ‘the thirty-eighth year of Antiochus and Seleucus’ (273—2), wherein are given little details of current events; how in 275—4 the king left his wife (probably Stratonice, who had been his father’s consort) with her retinue in Saparda (Sardes?), whither they had come, very likely to avoid the hot weather, and fought ‘the Egyptians across the River’; and how Bactria sent a present of twenty elephants. Herein, too, Seleucia is mentioned, the city so shortly to eclipse Babylon, now lying so flat and deserted opposite the great arch of Ctesiphon; there is also mention of Babylon, Borsippa, Cuthah, but it is Seleucia which is called ‘the Royal City.’ Most interesting of all is the little note that in Babylon they paid current prices in Greek copper coins. Indeed, Antiochus has left one record in cuneiform which stands out as unique for the period, a clay cylinder modelled on the old style, which he caused to be written to record his restorations at the old Temple of Nabu at Borsippa. Herein he calls himself the eldest son of Silukku (Seleucus) the Macedonian, and mentions Astar-Tanikku (Stratonice) his wife, and describes Nabu, the god of Borsippa, as ‘son of E-Sagil,’ the first-born of Marduk, child of Erua the queen. It is a last and very solitary specimen of a royal cuneiform document. But in spite of this artificial stimulus to cuneiform revival (if such it was), originality was confined to the astronomers; the only other serious cuneiform (besides the handful of contracts mentioned) were some few editions of old religious and ritual tablets made from time to time throughout the Seleucid and Arsacid Eras down to 84 BC, if not later. Hereon we find attention drawn to the piety of the copyist, together with the date; indeed, so keen was one priest that he made copies of texts in Persia which had long before been carried away from the Temple at Erech, and mentions it with pride in his colophon:

“Documents relating to the rules of the cult of the supreme divinity, to the sacred rites, to the observances of the (royal) ceremonial, as well as the divine (cult) of Bit-Resh, the great sanctuary of E-Anna, and of the temples of Tir-Anna; to the functions of the exorcists, choir, and musicians, and the servants of every kind behind the ... without reckoning the acolytes, according to the tablets which Nabopolassar, king of the Sea-Country, had carried off from Erech ... Kidin-Ani, of Uruk, an urigallu of Bit-Resh, having seen these tablets in Elam, and copied them in the reign of Antiochus and Seleucus the kings, and brought the copies back to Erech”.

Down to the last there existed at Erech an encouragement of cuneiform which we can only describe as academic.

Lastly must be mentioned the tablets which contain scrawling Greek transliterations of Babylonian words. Such as have survived show cuneiform on one side and Greek (assigned to the second century BC) on the other, and their peculiarity is that they are meant to be turned over horizontally and read like a western book, and not read vertically, as was done with all Babylonian tablets from time immemorial. If any inference can be drawn from this, it is that the Greek at least was written by a Greek and not by a Babylonian who had been accustomed to handling tablets.

It remains only to give the exact dates of the latest tablets. In dating them the Seleucid Era (312—311) was used alone until Seleucus IV, when a tablet is found given with the double dating 68 (Arsacid) and 132 (Seleucid), i.e. 179 BC. One of the latest double dates in existence is on an astronomical tablet dated at Babylon, 213 and 277, i.e. 35 BC. It may be that cuneiform struggled on to the end of the century; Kugler has ingeniously calculated the year 10—9 BC as the date of an astronomical text, and Strassmaier reckons 6 BC as the date of a tablet dated ‘242 Ar-ka-a the king’ (which must, he thinks, with reason, be for Ar-sha-ka-a). Hence, we may fix 10—9 and 6 BC as probable final dates for cuneiform, and 35 BC as one of the latest definite years in which a tablet was written.

VII.

THE DEBT OF EUROPE TO BABYLON

What, finally, does Europe owe to Babylon philologically? We do not yet know our full indebtedness to the great people who occupied the Land of the Two Rivers for so many thousands of years; reference has already been made to astronomy, but philology, also, is constantly showing us a Sumerian parentage for words of which the pedigree has long been lost.

The Greek rovers and merchants, long before the Fall of Babylon, had been founding colonies round the Mediterranean littoral. Indeed, curiously enough, Greek pirates in the beginning of the seventh century were better known to the Assyrians than Lydia itself. Sennacherib drew ‘Ionians’ like fish from the sea, but Ashurbanipal declares that an ambassador from Gyges of Lydia in his time was so foreign that none knew his language; although it would appear that after that first introduction Semites, chiefly Aramaeans, drifted westwards to Lydia, judging by the bilingual inscription discovered at Sardes. But the Greeks, trusting in the sea, preferred the coastlines to the interior, although the Egyptian delta, it is true, attracted them as far as Naucratis. Yet, although Greek travellers voyaged up the Nile, or Psammetichus added Greek mercenaries to the army, the earlier settlements of Greeks were never far from the sea. For them home, or the way home, was represented by the sea, summed up in the joyful shout ‘The Sea!’ of the war-worn exiles of the Ten Thousand. The depths of Mesopotamia had little attraction for them; stray Greek travellers, physicians, historians, or soldiers of fortune might find their way there, but there is little record of others until comparatively late. The poet Alcaeus had a brother Antimenidas in Nebuchadrezzar’s service, and even before him, Aristomenes, the hero of the Messenian wars, proposed visiting Sardes and Ecbatana to win over the peoples to his cause, while in 520 Democedes, the physician, was taken as a prisoner to Susa, where he acquired a great reputation. It is doubtless with the Macedonian invasion that the Greek influence came in; their art was introduced, even the Greek stage at Babylon not being omitted, where one Dioscurides had built a theatre, and the invaders even made attempts to learn the native language, as we have seen.

Yet it is not so much to the Greek rover that we owe our loans from Babylon, as to the Phoenician merchant and the ‘wandering Aramaean’, each an Autolycus among Semites, who cajoled the men of Javan with his queer desirable treasures, gold, frankin­cense and myrrh, weighed them out with his own weights, sold them in his own pots, and taught the wondering purchasers their Eastern names. Did they bring into Europe the twelve-month year, the week, the hour, the Zodiac and its stars?

Look down the list of words taken over into Greek, and the most striking of all is ‘gold’, found in Homer (ninth century?), from the Assyrian khurasu; at least three (or perhaps four) other words in Homer have Assyrian similarities: a tunic (kitu, flax; kitinnu, linen); the crocus (kurkanu, turmeric); an axe (pilakku); perhaps ‘hour’ (beru, ‘double hour’). If these affinities be true, then gold and wrought copper or bronze axe-heads, saffron-dye, and the minor division of the day (from lands where it is still customary to calculate distance by time) show how the traffic and small-talk of the merchant spread.

The treasure of the Babylonian sages lies close to the surface for those who seek it in Christendom. We have seen how Astronomy has inherited the lore of its stars and constellations, the division of time even down to the hour, the sexagesimal system which gives the 360 degrees, the 60 minutes, the 60 seconds. Medicine is rich with the tradition of the great medical schools which passed on their empiric doctrines with their pharmacopoeia. The Law dare not deny its debt to Hammurabi’s code, nay, it must concede even the invention of the seal which stamps the contract. The religion of Babylon has passed on its legends, from the very ‘babble’ of babes and the Noah’s Ark of the nursery to Nimrod of the hunting field and St George with his Dragon of the hostelry; from the mandragora of Shakespeare to the winking marybud which enshrines the name of the great Mother after its ancient forebears, the daisy of Venus, the ‘flower of Dilbat’; and from the Seven Gates of Hell which have led to the Seventh Heaven. Throughout the magico-religious literature of the priests is a wealth of evidence that the Babylonians, like other Semites, put their trust in the atonement-sacrifice which conjures the demon forth, the vicarious sacrifice by which a man may escape from his sins. Their fame in casting horoscopes, in calculating the future from a thousand and one little incidents in a man’s life, resounded throughout the west, whether seriously quoted by Diodorus or mentioned jestingly by Horace to Leuconoe. Can any one for certain deny that a hundred light superstitions of today, from the New Moon to the Three Magpies, ring like true Babylonian? Their very astrology was at the base of the starlore which guided Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar to the Founder of Christianity. Everywhere today the old wisdom of the Chaldaeans is quick to offer its counsel and its solace to the unthankful debtor of the present, whose civilization is so interwoven with its discoveries and errors.

CHAPTER XII

THE ECLIPSE OF EGYPT