PREFATORY ESSAY
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This is not the place to suggest, even in the roughest outline, the social, ethical, and religious implications that were bound inseparably with the revolutionary conception as to man’s creation. It may not be amiss to add, however, that in establishing the broad fact of man’s antiquity, prehistoric archaeology as yet falls short of the power to estimate, even roughly, in terms of years the periods with which it deals; and history, in the narrower sense, can hardly be said to exist without chronology. On the other hand, some of the most remarkable advances for which the historian must thank the archaeologist have to do with the chronology of the early periods of Oriental history. Indeed, the greatest feat of the archaeologist has been the opening up to our observation, and the bringing within the scope of the historian, of long periods which, without his aid, must still have belonged to the vague realms of the prehistoric. If we go back in imagination to the beginning of the Victorian Era and ask what was then known of the history of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor, we find ourselves confronted with a startling paucity of knowledge. The key to the mysteries of Egyptian history had indeed been found, thanks to the recent efforts of Thomas Young and Champollion, but the deciphering of inscriptions had not yet progressed far enough to give more than a vague inkling of what was to follow. It remained, then, virtually true, as it had been for two thousand years, that for all that we could learn of the history of the Old Orient in pre-classical days, we must go solely to the pages of the Bible and to a few classical authors, notably Herodotus and Diodorus. A comparatively few pages summed up, in language often vague and mystical, all that the modern world had been permitted to remember of the history of the greatest nations of antiquity. To these nations the classical writers had ascribed a traditional importance, the glamour of which still lighted their names, albeit revealing them in the vague twilight of tradition rather than in the clear light of history. It would have been a bold, not to say a reckless, dreamer who dared predict that any future researches could restore to us the lost knowledge that had been forgotten for more than two millenniums. Yet the Victorian Era was scarcely ushered in before the work of rehabilitation began, which was to lead to the most astounding discoveries and to an altogether unprecedented extension of historical knowledge. Early in the ’forties the Frenchman Botta, quickly followed by Sir Henry Bayard, began making excavations on the site of ancient Nineveh, the name and fame of which were a tradition having scarcely more than mythical status. The spade of the discoverer soon showed that all the fabled glories of the ancient Assyrian capital were founded on realities, and evidence was afforded of a state of civilization and culture such as few men supposed to have existed on the earth before the Golden Age of Greece. Not merely were artistic sculptures and bas-reliefs found that demonstrated a high development of artistic genius, but great libraries were soon revealed,—books consisting of bricks of various sizes, or of cylinders of the same material, inscribed while in the state of clay with curious characters, which became indelible when baking transformed the clay into brick. No one was able to guess, even in the vaguest way, the exact interpretation of these odd characters; but, on the other hand, no one could doubt that they constituted a system of writing, and that the piles of inscribed tablets were veritable books. There were numerous sceptics, however, who did not hesitate to assert that the import of the message so obviously locked in these curious inscriptions must for ever remain an absolute mystery. Here, it was said, were inscriptions written in an unknown character and in a language that for at least two thousand years had been absolutely forgotten. In such circumstances nothing less than a miracle could enable human ingenuity to fathom the secret. Yet the feat pronounced impossible by mid-century scepticism was accomplished by contemporary scholarship, amidst the clamour of opposition and incredulity. Its success contains at once a warning to those doubters who are always crying out that we have reached the limitations of knowledge, and an encouragement and stimulus to would-be explorers of new intellectual realms. In a few words the manner of the discovery was this. It appears at a glance that the Assyrian written character consists of groups of horizontal, vertical, or oblique strokes. The characters thus composed, though so simple as to their basal unit, are appallingly complex in their elaboration. The Assyrians, with all their culture, never attained the stage of analysis which demonstrates that only a few fundamental S. Ill—6
