held the city and country for two centuries (B.C. 358-566), until the Romans expelled them for ever. But he shows that these peoples did not use such fine Swords. When treating of the Kelts (chapter xiii.), I shall show that the long unmanageable slashing Claidab or Spatha of these peoples had nothing in common with the strong, bi-convex, and thoroughly-civilised rapier of Ceretolo.

Other blades like that of Ceretolo- long, narrow, and pointed-have been found in tombs notably Etruscan. Such, for instance, was that of Care, now in the Gregorian Museum, Rome. In December 1879 two other blades were produced by a necropolis in Valdichiana, between Chiusi and Arezzo, where a long Etruscan inscription was engraved upon the foot of a tazza. Two similar blades are also portrayed in relief and colour upon the stuccoed wall of a Cære tomb. Des Vergers' describes them as follows: 'La frise supérieure est ornée d'Épées longues à deux tranchants, à la lame large et droite avec garde à la poignée, se rapprochant de celle que les Romains désignaient par le nom de spatha. Les unes sont nues, les autres dans le fourreau.' Four such Swords were also produced at Pietrabbondante in the district of far-famed Isernia, and are preserved in the National Museum of Naples. Signor Campanari discovered in an Etruscan tomb a Sword-hilt in bronze attached to a blade of iron.2 Finally, the Benacci property near the Certosa of Bologna also yielded an iron blade and iron chisels like those of Ceretolo.

The late learned Prof. Conestabile truly asserts, 'Des Épées de même forme et de même dimension ont été trouvées dans d'autres localités étrusques, situées dehors la sphère des invasions Gauloises, notamment en Toscane.' It is certain that such blades have been discovered on both sides of the Alps. As the Romans adopted the Iberic or Spanish blade; so the Gauls may have substituted for their own imperfect arms the weapons taken from the Italians; in fact, we know from history that they did so. Moreover, the Etruscans extended their commerce, not only over Transalpine regions, but to that vast region extending from Switzerland to Denmark, and from Wallachia to England and Ireland.3 This has been proved by the investigations of many scholars in Germany by Lindenschmidt, Von Sacken, Virchow, Kenner, Weihold, Von Conhausen, and Genthe; by the Swiss Morlot, De Rougemont, Desor, and De Bonstetten; by the Dane Worsaäe; by Gray, Dennis, Hamilton, and Wyllie in England; by the Belgian Schuermans; and by the Italians Gozzadini, Conestabile, Garrucci, and Gamurrini. Desor, when receiving the drawing of an iron Sword with bronze handle discovered at Sion, and declared by Thioly to resemble exactly those of Hallstadt, declared: 'De pareilles Épées sont évidemment fabriquées à l'étranger et non dans le pays: elles nous conduisent donc vers ce grand commerce Étrusque qui se faisait pendant la

Matériaux pour l'Histoire primitive ae l'Homme; and the paper was entitled by the Editor (not by the author), L'Élément Etrusque de Marzabotto est sans mélange avec l'élément gaulois' (Jan. 1873).

› L'Etrurie et les Etrusques, vol. i. p. 93. Atlas, P. 2, Pl. II. 2 Genthe, Program, &c. p. 15.

2 The bronze is in the British Museum; the iron in the possession of Mr. H. S. Cuming (Meyrick).

première époque de fer, époque sur laquelle on s'est trompé si souvent.' Livy,' in fact, proves the extent of arms-manufactory in Etruria, when he relates that in B.C. 205, at which time the Boiian occupation of Felsina ended, Arezzo alone could furnish Scipio's fleet in forty-five days with three thousand helmets, as many Scuta and lances of three different kinds.

But the rapier was not the only form of Etruscan Sword. In Hamilton's 'Etruscan Antiquities,'' a human figure carries a cutting Sword like a 'hanger,' wearing the belt at the bottom of the thorax. The Ceramique of Etruria supplies copious illustrations of Swords and other weapons; but the art is somewhat mixed, and our safest information must be derived from actual finds.

We are justified by these finds in concluding that the Etruscans of Italy had from their earliest times a rapier which, for a cut-and-thrust weapon, is well-nigh perfect. The blade is long, but not too long; broad enough to be efficient without overweight, and strengthened to the utmost by the mid-rib which forms a shallow arch. In chapter xi. I shall compare the Etrurian Sword with that of Mycena; the latter is a marvel of its kind, but it is made of a far inferior metal -bronze.

1 XXVIII. cap. 45.

2 Vol. iv, Pl. XXX. ; it is copied by Meyrick.

199

CHAPTER X.

THE SWORD IN BABYLONIA, ASSYRIA AND PERSIA, AND ANCIENT INDIA

ALTHOUGH Professor Lepsius maintained and proved that the earliest Babylonian civilisation was imported from Egypt, Biblical leanings, and the fatal practice of reading myths and mysteries as literal history, have led many moderns to hold the Plain of Shinar (Babylon) and the ancient head of the Persian Gulf to be the cradle of culture and the origin of 'Semitism.' We still read, 'Babylonia stands prominent as highly civilised and densely populated at a period when Egypt was still in her youthful prime.' Only in Genesis (x. 10), a document treating of later ethnology, we find mention of Erech," Urukh being the oldest traditional king of Babylon. On the other hand, the Egyptians declared Belus and his subjects to have been an Egyptian colony which taught the rude Babylonians astrology and other arts. The monumental Babylonian or pre-Chaldæan Empire begins only in B.C. 2300, many a century-say a score-after Menes. The late Mr. George Smith warns us that some scholars would make the annals 'stretch nearly two thousand years beyond that time'; but he expressly declares no approximate date can be fixed for any king before Kara-Indas (circ. B.C. 1475?-1450?). Also, 'The great temples of Babylonia were founded by the kings who preceded the conquest by Hammu-rabi, King of the Kassi' Arabs (sixteenth century B.C.).3 The Burbur or Accad inscriptions found in Babylonia do not date before

FIG. 202. ASSYRIAN SWORD

Years.

432,000

34,080 (33,091

224 (160?) unknown 458 245

526

45 kings (7th dynasty) Nabonidus, the antiquary king (B. C. 555), according to a Cylinder found at Sipar (Sepharvaim, Sun-city) and studied by Mr. Pinches, assigns a date to the deified Sargina of about B. C. 3,800 years. He unburied,

1

B.C. 2000. Ninus, the builder of Nineveh (Fish-town) and the founder of the Assyrian dynasties, is usually placed between B.C. 2317 and 2116. An extract, by Alexander Polyhistor from the Armenian Chronicle, gives, by adding the dynasties, an origin-date of 2,317 years. Berosus the priest, declares from official documents, that Babylon (God's Gate) had regal annals 1,000 years before Solomon (B.C. 993-953), in whose reign dynastic Jewish history begins. Diodorus Siculus, quoting Ctesias (B.C. 395) makes the monarchy commence one thousand years before the Siege of Troy, which we may place about B.C. 1200. Æmilius Sura, quoted by Paterculus, proposes the date B.C. 2145, and Eusebius the Armenian 1340 years before the first Olympiad (B.C. 776), or B.C. 2116. The great kingdom of the Khita (Hittites) 2 was succeeded on the rich lowlands of the Tigris-Euphrates system by Babylon, which the Nilotes called Har,' and by the Assyrians, whom the Egyptians called Mat or the People, and hieroglyphs notice the 'Great King of the Mat.' But > Assur3 was little known till the decline of the Pharaohs in the Twenty-first Dynasty (B.C. 1100-966) of the priest Hirhor and his successors: one of the latter --Ramessu or Ramses XVI.-married, when dethroned, a daughter of Pallasharnes, the 'great king of the Assyrians,' whose capital was Nineveh,' and thus led to the Assyrian invasions of Egypt. We may, then, safely hold with Lepsius that early Babylonian civilisation was posterior to, if not imported from, Egypt.

In Babylonia a third element, the so-called 'Turanian' (Chinese), first emerged from Egyptian and began to take its part in the drama of progress. The almost unknown quantity has assumed magnificent proportions in the eyes of certain students, and great things are still expected from Akkadian revelation. Yet the race typified by the Chinese could have had no effect upon the learning of Egypt.

18 cubits below the surface, the Cylinder of Naramsin, son of Sargina (B. C. 3750?), which no king had seen for 3,200 years.' Sir Henry C. Rawlinson (the Athenæum, Dec. 9, 1882) is disposed to accept the date within certain limits.'

The word is Har-Minni, or Mountains of the Minni. The oldest Armenian inscriptions date from the eighth century B. C.

2 It was in attacking these Khita that Ramses II. (Sesostris) left his three columns' or tablets on the rocks near the Nahr el-Kalb of Bayrut (chap. ix.). Six Assyrian inscriptions were also known there, bearing the names of Assur-ris-ilîm, Tiglath-pileser, Assurnazirpal, Shalmanesar, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon. No epigraphs were found on the north side of the river, where an ancient aqueduct, overgrown with luxuriant verdure, turns a mill. About three years ago, however, the proprietor, when making a new channel, broke away part of the rock, and a fragment bearing cuneiforms attracted the attention of Dr. Hartmann, Chancellor of the German Consulate.

No other steps

were taken till October 10, 1881, when M. Julius Loytved, Danish Vice-Consul for Bayrut, bared the face of the cliff and discovered five cuneiform inscriptions, one containing 45 lines. They seem to have been hastily cut,

Brugsch, vol. i. chap. xvi., shows that Seshonk (Shishak) and other Pharaohs of the Twenty-first Dynasty were Assyrians who ruled Mat Muz-ur,' the people of Egypt.

The great scholar derives from Egypt the Cuneiform Syllabarium, which was originally pictorial :drawing everywhere preceded writing. The astronomy of Mesopotamia is Egyptian (the unit of measure being the ell of o525 mètre); and the architecture, that prime creation of the human mind, shows by temples, temple-towers, tombs, and especially pyramids (e.g. that at Birs Namrud), an imperfect imitation of the Nile Valley. Herodotus attributes to Babylon the discovery of the Pole, the Sun-dial, and the twelve hours of day, all well known to ancient Egypt. The Sabbaths' are Assyrian.

'At the time when the genealogical tables of Genesis were written (chap. x.) those regions were still so unknown and barbarous that the writer excluded them from the civilised world,'1

Our factual knowledge of Mesopotamian civilisation is mostly due to the labours of the present century. Professor Grotefend of Bonn, in 1801-1803, discovered the clue to the Persian cuneiform,2 cuneatic or arrow-headed character. This great step in advance opened the labyrinth to a host of minor explorers— Heeren (1815), Burnouf (1836), Lassen (1836-44), Hincks, who attacked the Assyrian cuneiform, and, to mention no more, Rawlinson, whose 'Reading made Easy' popularised the study in England. Actual exploration of the Mesopotamian ruins was begun by the learned Consul Botta (Dec. 1842) who, after failing at Koyunjik opposite Mosul, worked successfully at Khorsabad, some ten miles to the north-east four years afterwards (Dec. 1846) the first collection of Assyrian antiquities reached the Louvre. He was followed (Nov. 8, 1845) by Mr. (now Sir) H. A. Layard, who unfortunately was not an Orientalist: his various discoveries of a stamped-clay literature, and his popular publications, introduced to the public Koyunjik and Kal'at Ninawi (Nineveh), Hillah (Babylon), Warká, Sippara (Abu Nabbah) sixteen miles south-west of Baghdad, and a variety of Biblical sites.

This 'recovery' of antiquities buried twenty centuries ago, and a whole literature of bas-reliefs, enables us to compare the Nile Valley, the cradle and mother-country of science and art, with its rival-successor on the Tigris-Euphrates. The original workmanship of Assyria, like that of Egypt, is still unknown; and, though she borrowed from Nile-land, her art is rather a decadence than a rise. The difference, indeed, is between the porphyries, the granites, and the syenites of Egypt, and the mud-bricks, the coarse black marbles, the rough basalts, and the undurable alabasters (a calcareous carbonate) of Interamnian Assyria. But the industrious valley-men made the best of their poor material. The ruins show the true Egyptian arch; the so-called Ionic capital, the original volutes being goats' horns; the Caryatides and Atlantes, or human figures acting columns; the cornice, corbel, and bracket; with a host of architectural embellishments to fill up plain fields. Apparently all migrated from Nile-land. Such were the winged circle, the lotus, the fir-cone, and the rosette: the latter, also found by Dr. Schliemann at 'Troy' 'The Athenæum, July 24, 1880.

? That the Assyrians had books appears plainly from the inscriptions: In the night-time bind round the sick man's head a sentence taken from a good book' (a soporific!). Parchment was most probably the first material (Trans. of Soc. Bib. Archaology, vols. ii. 55, and iii. 432); and the language proves that the papyrus-scroll (Duppu-ga-zu) was known.

3 We find in Assyria the wild goat standing upon a capital, now the arms of Istria. The same appears at Palmyra (Prof. Socin's Collection). The winged bulls probably suggested, like the Egyptian Cherubs, our angels' wings. These motors should now be for

3

bidden in statuary by Act of Parliament; or the artist should be compelled to supply the pinions with the muscles necessary for working them. I need hardly say that the required development would convert the human dorsum to the appearance of the twohumped camel. The late Gustave Doré's admirable illustrations of Dante (Purgat. xix. 51) sin greatly in this way.

A goddess in alabaster has in each hand a lotus flower, which she holds against her breasts. This is characteristic of old Egypt, which derived the plant from the Equatorial African Lake-region. The same figure again wears a large Egyptian wig, the hair falling n ringlets upon the shoulders.