Lafcadio Hearn - "Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan"

Voltaire - "Candido, o El Optimismo"

Basil King - "The Letter of the Contract"

Fa'iz El Ghusein - "Martyred Armenia"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A General History for Colleges and High Schools

P >> P. V. N. Myers >> A General History for Colleges and High Schools




We have now the Ritual, or Book, of the Dead, a sort of guide to the soul
in its journey through the underworld; romances, and fairy tales, among
which is "Cinderella and the Glass Slipper"; autobiographies, letters,
fables, and epics; treatises on medicine, astronomy, and various other
scientific subjects; and books on history--in prose and verse--which fully
justify the declaration of the Egyptian priests to Solon: "You Greeks are
mere children, talkative and vain; you know nothing at all of the past."

ASTRONOMY, GEOGRAPHY AND ARITHMETIC.--The cloudless and brilliant skies of
Egypt invited the inhabitants of the Nile valley to the study of the
heavenly bodies. And another circumstance closely related to their very
existence, the inundation of the Nile, following the changing cycles of
the stars, could not but have incited them to the watching and predicting
of astronomical movements. Their observations led them to discover the
length, very nearly, of the sidereal year, which they made to consist of
365 days, every fourth year adding one day, making the number for that
year 366. They also divided the year into twelve months of thirty days
each, adding five days to complete the year. This was the calendar that
Julius Caesar introduced into the Roman Empire, and which, slightly
reformed by Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582, has been the system employed by
almost all the civilized world up to the present day.

The Greeks accounted for the early rise of the science of geometry among
the Egyptians by reference to the necessity they were under each year of
re-establishing the boundaries of their fields--the inundation
obliterating old landmarks and divisions. The science thus forced upon
their attention was cultivated with zeal and success. A single papyrus has
been discovered that holds twelve geometrical theorems.

Arithmetic was necessarily brought into requisition in solving
astronomical and geometrical problems. We ourselves are debtors to the
ancient Egyptians for much of our mathematical knowledge, which has come
to us from the banks of the Nile, through the Greeks and the Saracens.

MEDICINE AND THE ART OF EMBALMING.--The custom of embalming the dead,
affording opportunities for the examination of the body, without doubt had
a great influence upon the development of the sciences of anatomy and
medicine among the Egyptians. That the embalmers were physicians, we know
from various testimonies. Thus we are told in the Bible that Joseph
"commanded the _physicians_ to embalm his father." The Egyptian doctors
had a very great reputation among the ancients.

Every doctor was a specialist, and was not allowed to take charge of cases
outside of his own branch. As the artist was forbidden to change the lines
of the sacred statues, so the physician was not permitted to treat cases
save in the manner prescribed by the customs of the past; and if he were
so presumptuous as to depart from the established mode of treatment, and
the patient died, he was adjudged guilty of murder. Many drugs and
medicines were used; the ciphers, or characters, employed by modern
apothecaries to designate grains and drams are of Egyptian invention.

The Egyptians believed that after a long lapse of time, several thousand
years, the departed soul would return to earth and reanimate its former
body; hence their custom of preserving the body by means of embalmment. In
the processes of embalming, the physicians made use of oils, resin,
bitumen, and various aromatic gums. The body was swathed in bandages of
linen, while the face was sometimes gilded, or covered with a gold mask.
As this, which was the "most approved method" of embalming, was very
costly, the expense being equivalent probably to $1000 of our money, the
bodies of the poorer classes were simply "salted and dried," wrapped in
coarse mats, and laid in tiers in great trenches in the desert sands.

[Illustration: PROFILE OF RAMESES II. (From a photograph of the mummy.)]

Only a few years ago (in 1881) the mummies of Thothmes III., Seti I., and
Rameses II., together with those of nearly all of the other Pharaohs of
the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Dynasties, were
found in a secret cave near Thebes. It seems that, some time in the 12th
century B.C., a sudden alarm caused these bodies to be taken hastily from
the royal tombs of which we have spoken (see p. 31), and secreted in this
hidden chamber. When the danger had passed, the place of concealment had
evidently been forgotten; so the bodies were never restored to their
ancient tombs, but remained in this secret cavern to be discovered in our
own day.

The mummies were taken to the Boulak Museum, at Cairo, where they were
identified by means of the inscriptions upon the cases and wrappings.
Among others the body of Seti I. and that of Rameses II. were unbandaged
(1886), so that now we may look upon the faces of the greatest and most
renowned of the Pharaohs. The faces of both Seti and Rameses are so
remarkably preserved, that "were their subjects to return to earth to-day
they could not fail to recognize their old sovereigns." Both are strong
faces, of Semitic cast, that of Rameses bearing a striking resemblance to
that of his father Seti, and both closely resembling their portrait
statues and profiles. Professor Maspero, the director-general of the
excavations and antiquities of Egypt, in his official report of the
uncovering of the mummies, writes as follows of the appearance of the face
of Rameses: "The face of the mummy gives a fair idea of the face of the
living king. The expression is unintellectual, perhaps slightly animal;
but even under the somewhat grotesque disguise of mummification, there is
plainly to be seen an air of sovereign majesty, of resolve, and of pride."
[Footnote: On the finding and identification of the Pharaohs, consult two
excellent articles in _The Century Magazine_ for May, 1887.]




CHAPTER III.

CHALDAEA.


1. POLITICAL HISTORY.

BASIN OF THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES.-The northern part of the Tigris and
Euphrates valley, the portion that comprised ancient Assyria, consists of
undulating plains, broken in places by considerable mountain ridges.

But all the southern portion of the basin, the part known as Chaldaea, or
Babylonia, having been formed by the gradual encroachment of the deposits
of the Tigris and Euphrates upon the waters of the Persian Gulf, is as
level as the sea. During a large part of the year, rains are infrequent;
hence agriculture is dependent mainly upon artificial irrigation. The
distribution of the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates was secured, in
ancient times, by a stupendous system of canals and irrigants, which, at
the present day, in a sand-choked and ruined condition, spread like a
perfect network over the face of the country (see cut, p. 41).

The productions of Babylonia are very like those of the Nile valley. The
luxuriant growth of grain upon these alluvial flats excited the wonder of
all the Greek travellers who visited the East. Herodotus will not tell the
whole truth, for fear his veracity may be doubted. The soil is as fertile
now as in the time of the historian; but owing to the neglect of the
ancient canals, the greater part of this once populous district has been
converted into alternating areas of marsh and desert.

THE THREE GREAT MONARCHIES.--Within the Tigris-Euphrates basin, three
great empires--the Chaldaean, the Assyrian, and the Babylonian--
successively rose to prominence and dominion. Each, in turn, not only
extended its authority over the valley, but also made the power of its
arms felt throughout the adjoining regions. We shall now trace the rise
and the varied fortunes of these empires, and the slow growth of the arts
and sciences from rude beginnings among the early Chaldaeans to their
fuller and richer development under the Assyrian and Babylonian
monarchies.

THE CHALDAEANS A MIXED PEOPLE.--In the earliest times Lower Chaldaea was
known as Shumir, the Shinar of the Bible, while Upper Chaldaea bore the
name of Accad. The original inhabitants were conjecturally of Turanian
race, and are called Accadians.

[Illustration: ANCIENT BABYLONIAN CANALS.]

These people laid the basis of civilization in the Euphrates valley, so
that with them the history of Asian culture begins. They brought with them
into the valley the art of hieroglyphical writing, which later developed
into the well-known cuneiform system. They also had quite an extensive
literature, and had made considerable advance in the art of building.

The civilization of the Accadians was given a great impulse by the arrival
of a Semitic people. These foreigners were nomadic in habits, and
altogether much less cultured than the Accadians. Gradually, however, they
adopted the arts and literature of the people among whom they had settled;
yet they retained their own language, which in the course of time
superseded the less perfect Turanian speech of the original inhabitants;
consequently the mixed people, known later as Chaldaeans, that arose from
the blending of the two races, spoke a language essentially the same as
that used by their northern neighbors, the Semitic Assyrians.

SARGON (SHARRUKIN) I. (3800? B.C.).--We know scarcely anything about the
political affairs of the Accadians until after the arrival of the Semites.
Then, powerful kings, sometimes of Semitic and then again of Turanian, or
Accadian origin, appear ruling in the cities of Accad and Shumir, and the
political history of Chaldaea begins.

The first prominent monarch is called Sargon I. (Sharrukin), a Semitic
king of Agade, one of the great early cities. An inscription recently
deciphered makes this king to have reigned as early as 3800 B.C. He
appears to have been the first great organizer of the peoples of the
Chaldaean plains.

Yet not as a warrior, but as a patron and protector of letters, is
Sargon's name destined to a sure place in history. He classified and
translated into the Semitic, or Assyrian tongue the religious,
mythological, and astronomical literature of the Accadians, and deposited
the books in great libraries, which he established or enlarged,--the
oldest and most valuable libraries of the ancient world. The scholar Sayce
calls him the Chaldaean Solomon.

CONQUEST OF CHALDAEA BY THE ELAMITES (2286 B.C.).--While the Chaldaean kings
were ruling in the great cities of Lower Babylonia, the princes of the
Elamites, a people of Turanian race, were setting up a rival kingdom to
the northeast, just at the foot of the hills of Persia.

In the year 2286 B.C., a king of Elam, Kudur-Nakhunta by name, overran
Chaldaea, took all the cities founded by Sargon and his successors, and
from the temples bore off in triumph to his capital, Susa, the statues of
the Chaldaean gods, and set up in these lowland regions what is known as
the Elamite Dynasty.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES REGION.]

More than sixteen hundred years after this despoiling of the Chaldaean
sanctuaries, a king of Nineveh captured the city of Susa, and finding
there these stolen statues, caused them to be restored to their original
temples.

The Chedorlaomer of Genesis, whose contact with the history of the Jewish
patriarch Abraham has caused his name to be handed down to our own times
in the records of the Hebrew people, is believed to have been the son and
successor of Kudur-Nakhunta.

CHALDAEA ECLIPSED BY ASSYRIA.--After the Elamite princes had maintained a
more or less perfect dominion over the cities of Chaldaea for two or three
centuries, their power seems to have declined; and then for several
centuries longer, down to about 1300 B.C., dynasties and kings of which we
know very little as yet, ruled the country.

During this period, Babylon, gradually rising into prominence,
overshadowed the more ancient Accadian cities, and became the leading city
of the land. From it the whole country was destined, later, to draw the
name by which it is best known--Babylonia.

Meanwhile a Semitic power had been slowly developing in the north. This
was the Assyrian empire, the later heart and centre of which was the great
city of Nineveh. For a long time Assyria was simply a province or
dependency of the lower kingdom; but about 1300 B.C., the Assyrian monarch
Tiglathi-nin conquered Babylonia, and Assyria assumed the place that had
been so long held by Chaldaea. From this time on to the fall of Nineveh in
606 B.C., the monarchs of this country virtually controlled the affairs of
Western Asia.


2. ARTS AND GENERAL CULTURE.

TOWER-TEMPLES.--In the art of building, the Chaldaeans, though their
edifices fall far short of attaining the perfection exhibited by the
earliest Egyptian structures, displayed no inconsiderable architectural
knowledge and skill.

The most important of their constructions were their tower-temples. These
were simple in plan, consisting of two or three terraces, or stages,
placed one upon another so as to form a sort of rude pyramid. The material
used in their construction was chiefly sun-dried brick. The edifice was
sometimes protected by outer courses of burnt brick. The temple proper
surmounted the upper platform.

All these tower-temples have crumbled into vast mounds, with only here and
there a projecting mass of masonry to distinguish them from natural hills,
for which they were at first mistaken.

CUNEIFORM WRITING.--We have already mentioned the fact that the Accadians,
when they entered the Euphrates valley, were in possession of a system of
writing. This was a simple pictorial, or hieroglyphical system, which they
gradually developed into the cuneiform.

In the cuneiform system, the characters, instead of being formed of
unbroken lines, are composed of wedge-like marks; hence the name (from
_cuneus_, a wedge). This form, according to the scholar Sayce, arose
when the Accadians, having entered the low country, substituted tablets of
clay for the papyrus or other similar material which they had formerly
used. The characters were impressed upon the soft tablet by means of a
triangular writing-instrument, which gave them their peculiar wedge-shaped
form.

The cuneiform mode of writing, improved and simplified by the Assyrians
and the Persians, was in use about two thousand years, being employed by
the nations in and near the Euphrates basin, down to the time of the
conquest of the East by the Macedonians.

BOOKS AND LIBRARIES.--The books of the Chaldaeans were in general clay
tablets, varying in length from one inch to twelve inches, and being about
one inch thick. Those holding records of special importance, after having
been once written over and baked, were covered with a thin coating of
clay, and then the matter was written in duplicate and the tablets again
baked. If the outer writing were defaced by accident or altered by design,
the removal of the outer coating would at once show the true text.

The tablets were carefully preserved in great public libraries. Even
during the Turanian period, before the Semites had entered the land, one
or more of these collections existed in each of the chief cities of Accad
and Shumir. "Accad," says Sayce, "was the China of Asia. Almost every one
could read and write." Erech was especially renowned for its great
library, and was known as "the City of Books."

[Illustration: CHALDAEAN TABLET.]

THE RELIGION.--The Accadian religion, as revealed by the tablets, was
essentially the same as that held today by the nomadic Turanian tribes of
Northern Asia--what is known as Shamanism. It consisted in a belief in
good and evil spirits, of which the latter held by far the most prominent
place. To avert the malign influence of these wicked spirits, the
Accadians had resort to charms and magic rites. The religion of the
Semites was a form of Sabaeanism,--that is, a worship of the heavenly
bodies,--in which the sun was naturally the central object of adoration.

When the Accadians and the Semites intermingled, their religious systems
blended to form one of the most influential religions of the world--one
which spread far and wide under the form of Baal worship. There were in
the perfected system twelve primary gods, at whose head stood Il, or Ra.
Besides these great divinities, there were numerous lesser and local
deities.

There were features of this old Chaldaean religion which were destined to
exert a wide-spread and potent influence upon the minds of men. Out of the
Sabaean Semitic element grew astrology, the pretended art of forecasting
events by the aspect of the stars, which was most elaborately and
ingeniously developed, until the fame of the Chaldaean astrologers was
spread throughout the ancient world, while the spell of that art held in
thraldom the mind of mediaeval Europe.

Out of the Shamanistic element contributed by the Turanian Accadians, grew
a system of magic and divination which had a most profound influence not
only upon all the Eastern nations, including the Jews, but also upon the
later peoples of the West. mediaeval magic and witchcraft were, in large
part, an unchanged inheritance from Chaldaea.

THE CHALDAEAN GENESIS.--The cosmological myths of the Chaldaeans, that is,
their stories of the origin of things, are remarkably like the first
chapters of Genesis.

[Illustration: ASSYRIAN TABLET WITH PARTS OF THE DELUGE LEGEND.]

The discoveries and patient labors of various scholars have reproduced, in
a more or less perfect form, from the legendary tablets, the Chaldaean
account of the Creation of the World, of an ancestral Paradise and the
Tree of Life with its angel guardians, of the Deluge, and of the Tower of
Babel. [Footnote: Consult especially George Smith's _The Chaldaean
Account of Genesis_; see also _Records of the Past_, Vol. VII. pp.
127, 131.]

THE CHALDAEAN EPIC OF IZDUBAR.--Beside their cosmological myths, the
Chaldaeans had a vast number of so-called heroic and nature myths. The most
noted of these form what is known as the Epic of Izdubar (Nimrod?), which
is doubtless the oldest epic of the race. This is in twelve parts, and is
really a solar myth, which recounts the twelve labors of the sun in his
yearly passage through the twelve signs of the Chaldaean zodiac.

This epic was carried to the West, by the way of Phoenicia and Asia Minor,
and played a great part in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. "The
twelve labors of Heracles may be traced back to the adventures of
Gisdhubar [Izdubar] as recorded in the twelve books of the great epic of
Chaldaea." (Sayce.)

SCIENCE.--In astronomy and arithmetic the Chaldaeans made substantial
progress. The clear sky and unbroken horizon of the Chaldaean plains,
lending an unusually brilliant aspect to the heavens, naturally led the
Chaldaeans to the study of the stars. They early divided the zodiac into
twelve signs, and named the zodiacal constellations, a memorial of their
astronomical attainments which will remain forever inscribed upon the
great circle of the heavens; they foretold eclipses, constructed sun-dials
of various patterns, divided the year into twelve months, and the day and
night into twelve hours each, and invented or devised the week of seven
days, the number of days in the week being determined by the course of the
moon. "The 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the lunar month were
kept like the Jewish Sabbath, and were actually so named in Assyria."

In arithmetic, also, the Chaldaeans made considerable advance. A tablet has
been found which contains the squares and cubes of the numbers from one to
sixty.

CONCLUSION.-This hasty glance at the beginnings of civilization among the
primitive peoples of the Euphrates valley, will serve to give us at least
some little idea of how much modern culture owes to the old Chaldaeans. We
may say that Chaldaea was one of the main sources--Egypt was the other--of
the stream of universal history.




CHAPTER IV.

ASSYRIA.


1. POLITICAL HISTORY.

TIGLATH-PILESER I. (1130-1110 B.C.).--It is not until about two centuries
after the conquest of Chaldaea by the Assyrian prince Tiglathi-Nin (see p.
43), that we find a sovereign of renown at the head of Assyrian affairs.
This was Tiglath-Pileser I., who came to the throne about 1130 B.C. The
royal records detail at great length his numerous war expeditions, and
describe minutely the great temples which he constructed.

For the two centuries following the reign of Tiglath-Pileser, Assyria is
quite lost to history; then it is again raised into prominence by two or
three strong kings; after which it once more almost "drops below the
historical horizon."

TIGLATH-PILESER II. (745-727 B.C.).--With this king, who was a usurper,
begins what is known as the Second Empire. He was a man of great energy
and of undoubted military talent,--for by him the Assyrian power was once
more extended over the greater part of Southwestern Asia.

But what renders the reign of this king a landmark in Assyrian history, is
the fact that he was not a mere conqueror like his predecessors, but a
political organizer of great capacity. He laid the basis of the power and
glory of the great kings who followed him upon the Assyrian throne.

SARGON (722-705 B.C.).--Sargon was one of the greatest conquerors and
builders of the Second Empire. In 722 B.C., he took Samaria and carried
away the Ten Tribes into captivity beyond the Tigris. The larger part of
the captives were scattered among the Median towns, where they became so
mingled with the native population as to be inquired after even to this
day as the "lost tribes."

During this reign the Egyptians and their allies, in the first encounter
(the battle of Raphia, 720 B.C.) between the empires of the Euphrates and
the Nile valley, suffered a severe defeat, and the ancient kingdom of the
Pharaohs became tributary to Assyria.

Sargon was a famous builder. Near the foot of the Persian hills he founded
a large city, which he named for himself; and there he erected a royal
residence, described in the inscriptions as "a palace of incomparable
magnificence," the site of which is now preserved by the vast mounds of
Khorsabad.

SENNACHERIB (705-681 B.C.).--Sennacherib, the son of Sargon, came to the
throne 705 B.C. We must accord to him the first place of renown among all
the great names of the Assyrian Empire. His name, connected as it is with
the story of the Jews, and with many of the most wonderful discoveries
among the ruined palaces of Nineveh, has become as familiar to the ear as
that of Nebuchadnezzar in the story of Babylon.

The fulness of the royal inscriptions of this reign enables us to permit
Sennacherib to tell us in his own words of his great works and military
expeditions. Respecting the decoration of Nineveh, he says: "I raised
again all the edifices of Nineveh, my royal city; I reconstructed all its
old streets, and widened those that were too narrow. I have made the whole
town a city shining like the sun."

Concerning an expedition against Hezekiah, king of Judah, he says: "I took
forty-six of his strong fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were
scattered about I took and plundered a countless number. And from these
places I captured and carried off as spoil 200,150 people, old and young,
male and female, together with horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen
and sheep, a countless multitude. And Hezekiah himself I shut up in
Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round
the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so
as to prevent escape." [Footnote: Rawlinson's _Ancient Monarchies_,
Vol. II. p. 161.]

While Sennacherib was besieging Jerusalem, the king of Egypt appeared in
the field in the south with aid for Hezekiah. This caused Sennacherib to
draw off his forces from the siege to meet the new enemy; but near the
frontiers of Egypt the Assyrian host, according to the Hebrew account, was
smitten by "the angel of the Lord," [Footnote: This expression is a
Hebraism, meaning often any physical cause of destruction, as a plague or
storm. In the present case, the destroying agency was probably a
pestilence. ] and the king returned with a shattered army and without
glory to his capital, Nineveh.

Sennacherib employed the closing years of his reign in the digging of
canals, and in the erection of a splendid palace at Nineveh. He was
finally murdered by his own sons.

[Illustration: SIEGE OF A CITY, SHOWING USE OF BATTERING-RAM. (From
Nimrud.)]

ASSHUR-BANI-PAL (668-626? B.C.).--This king, the Sardanapalus of the
Greeks, is distinguished for his magnificent patronage of art and
literature. During his reign Assyria enjoyed her Augustan age.

But Asshur-bani-pal was also possessed of a warlike spirit. He broke to
pieces, with terrible energy, in swift campaigns, the enemies of his
empire. All the scenes of his sieges and battles he caused to be
sculptured on the walls of his palace at Nineveh. These pictured panels
are now in the British Museum. They are a perfect Iliad in stone.

SARACUS OR ESARHADDON II. (?-606 B.C.).--Saracus was the last of the long
line of Assyrian kings. His reign was filled with misfortunes for himself
and his kingdom. For nearly or quite seven centuries the Ninevite kings
had lorded it over the East. There was scarcely a state in all Western
Asia that had not, during this time, felt the weight of their conquering
arms; scarcely a people that had not suffered their cruel punishments, or
tasted the bitterness of their servitude.

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