Legends of Babylon and Egypt(古巴比伦与埃及传奇)

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LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

LEGENDS OF

BABYLON AND EGYPT

IN RELATION TO HEBREW

TRADITION

By Leonard W. King, M.A., Litt.D., F.S.A.

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

PREPARER'S NOTE

This text was prepared from a 1920 edition of the book, hence the

references to dates after 1916 in some places.

Greek text has been transliterated within brackets "{}" using an

Oxford English Dictionary alphabet table. Diacritical marks have been

lost.

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

PREFACE

In these lectures an attempt is made, not so much to restate familiar

facts, as to accommodate them to new and supplementary evidence which

has been published in America since the outbreak of the war. But even

without the excuse of recent discovery, no apology would be needed for

any comparison or contrast of Hebrew tradition with the mythological and

legendary beliefs of Babylon and Egypt. Hebrew achievements in the

sphere of religion and ethics are only thrown into stronger relief when

studied against their contemporary background.

The bulk of our new material is furnished by some early texts, written

towards the close of the third millennium B.C. They incorporate traditions

which extend in unbroken outline from their own period into the remote

ages of the past, and claim to trace the history of man back to his creation.

They represent the early national traditions of the Sumerian people, who

preceded the Semites as the ruling race in Babylonia; and incidentally they

necessitate a revision of current views with regard to the cradle of

Babylonian civilization. The most remarkable of the new documents is

one which relates in poetical narrative an account of the Creation, of

Antediluvian history, and of the Deluge. It thus exhibits a close

resemblance in structure to the corresponding Hebrew traditions, a

resemblance that is not shared by the Semitic-Babylonian Versions at

present known. But in matter the Sumerian tradition is more primitive than

any of the Semitic versions. In spite of the fact that the text appears to

have reached us in a magical setting, and to some extent in epitomized

form, this early document enables us to tap the stream of tradition at a

point far above any at which approach has hitherto been possible.

Though the resemblance of early Sumerian tradition to that of the

Hebrews is striking, it furnishes a still closer parallel to the summaries

preserved from the history of Berossus. The huge figures incorporated in

the latter's chronological scheme are no longer to be treated as a product of

Neo-Babylonian speculation; they reappear in their original surroundings

in another of these early documents, the Sumerian Dynastic List. The

sources of Berossus had inevitably been semitized by Babylon; but two of

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

his three Antediluvian cities find their place among the five of primitive

Sumerian belief, and two of his ten Antediluvian kings rejoin their

Sumerian prototypes. Moreover, the recorded ages of Sumerian and

Hebrew patriarchs are strangely alike. It may be added that in Egypt a new

fragment of the Palermo Stele has enabled us to verify, by a very similar

comparison, the accuracy of Manetho's sources for his prehistoric period,

while at the same time it demonstrates the way in which possible

inaccuracies in his system, deduced from independent evidence, may have

arisen in remote antiquity. It is clear that both Hebrew and Hellenistic

traditions were modelled on very early lines.

Thus our new material enables us to check the age, and in some

measure the accuracy, of the traditions concerning the dawn of history

which the Greeks reproduced from native sources, both in Babylonia and

Egypt, after the conquests of Alexander had brought the Near East within

the range of their intimate acquaintance. The third body of tradition, that

of the Hebrews, though unbacked by the prestige of secular achievement,

has, through incorporation in the canons of two great religious systems,

acquired an authority which the others have not enjoyed. In re-examining

the sources of all three accounts, so far as they are affected by the new

discoveries, it will be of interest to observe how the same problems were

solved in antiquity by very different races, living under widely divergent

conditions, but within easy reach of one another. Their periods of contact,

ascertained in history or suggested by geographical considerations, will

prompt the further question to what extent each body of belief was

evolved in independence of the others. The close correspondence that has

long been recognized and is now confirmed between the Hebrew and the

Semitic-Babylonian systems, as compared with that of Egypt, naturally

falls within the scope of our enquiry.

Excavation has provided an extraordinarily full archaeological

commentary to the legends of Egypt and Babylon; and when I received the

invitation to deliver the Schweich Lectures for 1916, I was reminded of

the terms of the Bequest and was asked to emphasize the archaeological

side of the subject. Such material illustration was also calculated to bring

out, in a more vivid manner than was possible with purely literary

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

evidence, the contrasts and parallels presented by Hebrew tradition.

Thanks to a special grant for photographs from the British Academy, I was

enabled to illustrate by means of lantern slides many of the problems

discussed in the lectures; and it was originally intended that the

photographs then shown should appear as plates in this volume. But in

view of the continued and increasing shortage of paper, it was afterwards

felt to be only right that all illustrations should be omitted. This very

necessary decision has involved a recasting of certain sections of the

lectures as delivered, which in its turn has rendered possible a fuller

treatment of the new literary evidence. To the consequent shifting of

interest is also due a transposition of names in the title. On their literary

side, and in virtue of the intimacy of their relation to Hebrew tradition, the

legends of Babylon must be given precedence over those of Egypt.

For the delay in the appearance of the volume I must plead the

pressure of other work, on subjects far removed from archaeological study

and affording little time and few facilities for a continuance of

archaeological and textual research. It is hoped that the insertion of

references throughout, and the more detailed discussion of problems

suggested by our new literary material, may incline the reader to add his

indulgence to that already extended to me by the British Academy.

L. W. KING.

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

LECTURE I

EGYPT, BABYLON, AND PALESTINE, AND

SOME TRADITIONAL ORIGINS OF

CIVILIZATION

At the present moment most of us have little time or thought to spare

for subjects not connected directly or indirectly with the war. We have put

aside our own interests and studies; and after the war we shall all have a

certain amount of leeway to make up in acquainting ourselves with what

has been going on in countries not yet involved in the great struggle.

Meanwhile the most we can do is to glance for a moment at any discovery

of exceptional interest that may come to light.

The main object of these lectures will be to examine certain Hebrew

traditions in the light of new evidence which has been published in

America since the outbreak of the war. The evidence is furnished by some

literary texts, inscribed on tablets from Nippur, one of the oldest and most

sacred cities of Babylonia. They are written in Sumerian, the language

spoken by the non-Semitic people whom the Semitic Babylonians

conquered and displaced; and they include a very primitive version of the

Deluge story and Creation myth, and some texts which throw new light on

the age of Babylonian civilization and on the area within which it had its

rise. In them we have recovered some of the material from which Berossus

derived his dynasty of Antediluvian kings, and we are thus enabled to test

the accuracy of the Greek tradition by that of the Sumerians themselves.

So far then as Babylonia is concerned, these documents will necessitate a

re-examination of more than one problem.

The myths and legends of ancient Egypt are also to some extent

involved. The trend of much recent anthropological research has been in

the direction of seeking a single place of origin for similar beliefs and

practices, at least among races which were bound to one another by

political or commercial ties. And we shall have occasion to test, by means

of our new data, a recent theory of Egyptian influence. The Nile Valley

was, of course, one the great centres from which civilization radiated

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

throughout the ancient East; and, even when direct contact is unproved,

Egyptian literature may furnish instructive parallels and contrasts in any

study of Western Asiatic mythology. Moreover, by a strange coincidence,

there has also been published in Egypt since the beginning of the war a

record referring to the reigns of predynastic rulers in the Nile Valley. This,

like some of the Nippur texts, takes us back to that dim period before the

dawn of actual history, and, though the information it affords is not

detailed like theirs, it provides fresh confirmation of the general accuracy

of Manetho's sources, and suggests some interesting points for

comparison.

But the people with whose traditions we are ultimately concerned are

the Hebrews. In the first series of Schweich Lectures, delivered in the year

1908, the late Canon Driver showed how the literature of Assyria and

Babylon had thrown light upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin

and early history of the world. The majority of the cuneiform documents,

on which he based his comparison, date from a period no earlier than the

seventh century B.C., and yet it was clear that the texts themselves, in

some form or other, must have descended from a remote antiquity. He

concluded his brief reference to the Creation and Deluge Tablets with

these words: "The Babylonian narratives are both polytheistic, while the

corresponding biblical narratives (Gen. i and vi-xi) are made the vehicle of

a pure and exalted monotheism; but in spite of this fundamental difference,

and also variations in detail, the resemblances are such as to leave no

doubt that the Hebrew cosmogony and the Hebrew story of the Deluge are

both derived ultimately from the same original as the Babylonian

narratives, only transformed by the magic touch of Israel's religion, and

infused by it with a new spirit."[1] Among the recently published

documents from Nippur we have at last recovered one at least of those

primitive originals from which the Babylonian accounts were derived,

while others prove the existence of variant stories of the world's origin and

early history which have not survived in the later cuneiform texts. In some

of these early Sumerian records we may trace a faint but remarkable

parallel with the Hebrew traditions of man's history between his Creation

and the Flood. It will be our task, then, to examine the relations which the

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

Hebrew narratives bear both to the early Sumerian and to the later

Babylonian Versions, and to ascertain how far the new discoveries support

or modify current views with regard to the contents of those early chapters

of Genesis.

[1] Driver, /Modern Research as illustrating the Bible/ (The Schweich

Lectures, 1908), p. 23.

I need not remind you that Genesis is the book of Hebrew origins, and

that its contents mark it off to some extent from the other books of the

Hebrew Bible. The object of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua is to

describe in their origin the fundamental institutions of the national faith

and to trace from the earliest times the course of events which led to the

Hebrew settlement in Palestine. Of this national history the Book of

Genesis forms the introductory section. Four centuries of complete silence

lie between its close and the beginning of Exodus, where we enter on the

history of a nation as contrasted with that of a family.[1] While Exodus

and the succeeding books contain national traditions, Genesis is largely

made up of individual biography. Chapters xii-l are concerned with the

immediate ancestors of the Hebrew race, beginning with Abram's

migration into Canaan and closing with Joseph's death in Egypt. But the

aim of the book is not confined to recounting the ancestry of Israel. It

seeks also to show her relation to other peoples in the world, and probing

still deeper into the past it describes how the earth itself was prepared for

man's habitation. Thus the patriarchal biographies are preceded, in

chapters i-xi, by an account of the original of the world, the beginnings of

civilization, and the distribution of the various races of mankind. It is, of

course, with certain parts of this first group of chapters that such striking

parallels have long been recognized in the cuneiform texts.

[1] Cf., e.g., Skinner, /A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on

Genesis/ (1912), p. ii f.; Driver, /The Book of Genesis/, 10th ed. (1916),

pp. 1 ff.; Ryle, /The Book of Genesis/ (1914), pp. x ff.

In approaching this particular body of Hebrew traditions, the necessity

for some caution will be apparent. It is not as though we were dealing with

the reported beliefs of a Malayan or Central Australian tribe. In such a

case there would be no difficulty in applying a purely objective criticism,

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

without regard to ulterior consequences. But here our own feelings are

involved, having their roots deep in early associations. The ground too is

well trodden; and, had there been no new material to discuss, I think I

should have preferred a less contentious theme. The new material is my

justification for the choice of subject, and also the fact that, whatever

views we may hold, it will be necessary for us to assimilate it to them. I

shall have no hesitation in giving you my own reading of the evidence; but

at the same time it will be possible to indicate solutions which will

probably appeal to those who view the subject from more conservative

standpoints. That side of the discussion may well be postponed until after

the examination of the new evidence in detail. And first of all it will be

advisable to clear up some general aspects of the problem, and to define

the limits within which our criticism may be applied.

It must be admitted that both Egypt and Babylon bear a bad name in

Hebrew tradition. Both are synonymous with captivity, the symbols of

suffering endured at the beginning and at the close of the national life. And

during the struggle against Assyrian aggression, the disappointment at the

failure of expected help is reflected in prophecies of the period. These

great crises in Hebrew history have tended to obscure in the national

memory the part which both Babylon and Egypt may have played in

moulding the civilization of the smaller nations with whom they came in

contact. To such influence the races of Syria were, by geographical

position, peculiarly subject. The country has often been compared to a

bridge between the two great continents of Asia and Africa, flanked by the

sea on one side and the desert on the other, a narrow causeway of highland

and coastal plain connecting the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.[1]

For, except on the frontier of Egypt, desert and sea do not meet. Farther

north the Arabian plateau is separated from the Mediterranean by a double

mountain chain, which runs south from the Taurus at varying elevations,

and encloses in its lower course the remarkable depression of the Jordan

Valley, the Dead Sea, and the `Arabah. The Judaean hills and the

mountains of Moab are merely the southward prolongation of the Lebanon

and Anti-Lebanon, and their neighbourhood to the sea endows this narrow

tract of habitable country with its moisture and fertility. It thus formed the

LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION

natural channel of intercourse between the two earliest centres of

civilization, and was later the battle- ground of their opposing empires.

[1] See G. A. Smith, /Historical Geography of the Holy Land/, pp. 5 ff.,

45 ff., and Myres, /Dawn of History/, pp. 137 ff.; and cf. Hogarth, /The

Nearer East/, pp. 65 ff., and Reclus, /Nouvelle G 閛graphie universelle/, t.

IX, pp. 685 ff.

The great trunk-roads of through communication run north and south,

across the eastern plateaus of the Haur 鈔 and Moab, and along the coastal

plains. The old highway from Egypt, which left the Delta at Pelusium, at

first follows the coast, then trends eastward across the plain of Esdraelon,

which breaks the coastal range, and passing under Hermon runs northward

through Damascus and reaches the Euphrates at its most westerly point.

Other through tracks in Palestine ran then as they do to-day, by Beesheba

and Hebron, or along the `Arabah and west of the Dead Sea, or through

Edom and east of Jordan by the present Hajj route to Damascus. But the

great highway from Egypt, the most westerly of the trunk-roads through

Palestine, was that mainly followed, with some variant sections, by both

caravans and armies, and was known by the Hebrews in its southern

course as the "Way of the Philistines" and farther north as the "Way of the

East".

The plain of Esraelon, where the road first trends eastward, has been

the battle-ground for most invaders of Palestine from the north, and

though Egyptian armies often fought in the southern coastal plain, they too

have battled there when they held the southern country. Megiddo, which

commands the main pass into the plain through the low Samaritan hills to

the southeast of Carmel, was the site of Thothmes III's famous battle

against a Syrian confederation, and it inspired the writer of the Apocalypse

with his vision of an Armageddon of the future. But invading armies

always followed the beaten track of caravans, and movements represented

by the great campaigns were reflected in the daily passage of international

commerce.

With so much through traffic continually passing within her borders, it

may be matter for surprise that far more striking evidence of its cultural

effect should not have been revealed by archaeological research in

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LEGENDSOFBABYLONANDEGYPTINRELATIONTOHEBREWTRADITION1LEGENDSOFBABYLONANDEGYPTINRELATIONTOHEBREWTRADITIONByLeonardW.King,M.A.,Litt.D.,F.S.A.LEGENDSOFBABYLONANDEGYPTINRELATIONTOHEBREWTRADITION2PREPARER'SNOTEThistextwaspreparedfroma1920editionofthebook,hencethereferencestodatesafter1916insomeplaces.Gree...

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Legends of Babylon and Egypt(古巴比伦与埃及传奇)

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