Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/55

THE HISTORY OF CHALD.EA AND ASSYRIA. 35 time of Ourkam or Hammourabi with that of Nebuchadnezzar vill be avoided. When we attempt to mount the stream of history and to pierce the mists which become ever thicker as we near its source, what is it that we see ? We see the lower part of the basin through which the twin rivers make their way, entirely occupied by tribes of various origin and blood whose ethnic characteristics we have endeavoured to point out. These mixed populations are divided by the Tigris into two distinct groups. These groups often came into violent collision, and in spite of mutual relations kept up through a long series of years, the line of demarcation between them ever remained distinct. Towards the east, in the plain which borders the river, and upon the terraces which rise one above the other up to the plateau of Iran, we have the country called by the Greeks Susiana, and by the Hebrews the kingdom of Elam. West of the Tigris, in Mesopotamia, the first Chaldsean Empire is slowly taking shape. The eastern state, that of which Susa was the capital, was, at intermittent periods, a great military power, and more than once poured its hosts, not only over Babylonia, but over the Syrian provinces to the west of the Euphrates. But in these momentary successes, nevertheless, the part played by this state was, on the whole, a subordinate one. It spent itself in bloody conflicts with the Mesopotamian empires, to which it became subject in the end, while at no time does it appear to have done anything to advance civilization either by isolated inventions or by general perseverance in the ways of progress. We know very little of its internal history, and nothing to speak of about its religion and government, its manners and laws ; but the few monuments which have been discovered suffice to prove that its art had no independent existence, that it w^as never anything better than a secondary form of Chaldsean art, a branch broken off from the parent stem. We are better, or, rather, less ill, informed, in the case of the first Chaldee Empire. The fragments of Berosus give us some knowledge of its beginnings, so far, at least, as the story was preserved in the national traditions, and the remains by which tradition can be tested and corrected are more numerous than in the case of Susiana. The chronicles on which Berosus based his work began w r ith a