THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3598, 2 April 1924, Page 2

THE INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY.

THE STORY OF BABYLON W.E.A. LECTURE. The fourth of the winter series of University extension lectures (under the W.E.A. scheme) was given at Spooner’s Buildings last evening. Mr T. R. Hodder presided, and there was again an excellent attendance. The lecturer, Mr Ernest Mander, be. gan by describing the., geographical and climatic conditions under which civilisation had developed in Mesopotamia beside and between the two great rivers, the- Tigris and the Euphrates. “ The people whom we find in possession of the country at the dawn of History,” ho continued—"arc people of that widespread, swarthy, dusky-white Iberian or Mediterranean race, which seems to have extended across the warm temperate zone of the Old World from Ireland to, India. In the first glimmerings of the dawn we think wo see the peoples of this breed coming on the scone and driving out or' destroying a still earlier Negroid or Blackfollow race. Butt ~y B.C. GOuo at latest, the dusky-white peoples seem to be in full possession and developing a civilisation of their own."

“We found last week,’’ Mr Mander continued—“that Egypt was too isolated, too safe. Egypt wont to sleep: the life of Egypt became one long, unchanging ritual and routine; for Egypt—for \ thousands of years at a stretch —lacncd the "timulus of contact with other peoples. and the new life which would have been given her if fresh blood /had icomo into the country.- Egypt lacked the stimulus of contact with other peoples: in Babylonia, at any rate, they never lacked that, a ucy had peaceful intercourse with peoples East and West of them, trading with all the countries from the Mediterranean coast to India. And they- had warlike inter, course with other peoples too; for tame after time the virile desert folk rolled in upon them from Arabia and then, later on, time after time the hardy mountaineers arid then the Aryan tribesmen from the Northern plains came down with fire and sword—ard with fresh blood to rc-invigorate the people. When the flooding of the rivers is brought under control and with a proper system of irrigation, the land of Mesopotamia is of amazing- fertility. In ancient times, wo are told, it could raise two, or even throe crops of wheat a. year. But there are no metals, no minerals and —in Babylonia—no stone. All the buildings of Babylon, for thousands of year.-; had to be built of brick. But in Assyria, higher up the rivers and among the foothills of the Armenian ranges, there ,is stone in abundance. So Babylon is the brick city, and Nineveh is the city of stone. COMING OF THE SEMITES. After discussing briefly the evidence of earlier civilisation near the head of the Persian Gulf, in such cities as Sumer, the lecturer wont on to say that the first acrinite happening that we know of in this part .of the world occurred about 3000 8.0. “About this time the first wave of Semitic desert folk was thrown off by Arabia. Some of them settled in Akkad, up-river from Sumer and the other ’cities ftf the Sumerian (Iberian) folk. Then, under Sargpn 1., they attacked and conquered the Sumerians. They seem, however, to have been quickly absorbed by the Sumerian people.

“ Seven or eight centuries pass; and then another and much larger wave of Semitic Desert Men is thrown off by Arabia. These become the Canaanilos and Phoenicians, the Shepherd Kings and the Israelites who drift down into Egypt, and the Amorites who drift across into Mesopotamia and make themscives a town, about halfway between tillo Persian Gulf -and the Assyrian highlands, which is the beginning of Babylon. A few generations later, under their loader, Hammurabi, they attack and conquer the Sumerians; they go northward and conquer the Semitic Assyrians at Asshur; and so they establish, about B.C. 2000, the First Babylonian Empire.

Gradually the Semitic Amoritcs and the Sumerian (Iberian) peoples seem to have intermarried, thus producing the true Babylonians as we know them in history. Their slave class was probably composed at first mainly of such people as Elamites, who seem to have been isolated survivors of the original Negroid or Blackfellow race that inhabited these regions before the coming of the Iberians. But the civilisation, the institutions, the religion the traditions of Babylon were'the result of the fusion of the- Semitic and Iberian breeds. CODE OP HAMMURABI. Somewhere about B.C. 200 0, the laws of Babylon were codified, and those laws give us some idea of the kind of civilisation it was at that time. The law was administered by judges, who were sworn to ignore even the direct command of the King if it-conflicted with the Code. The punishments inflicted by the courts were lines, imprisonment, loss of civil rights and death—but the death penalty, in the case of citizens, was rare. The land tenure was much like our own to-day; there were freeholds, leaseholds, and mortgages. There were stringent building restrictions and fix. ed taxes—a property tax, a tax on those exempted from military service, and tolls on the main roads and canals. Provision was made for either civil or religious marriage. Women could possess property in their own right: indeed, tlheir right in this respect were greater than they had in England forty years ago. There were.regulations governing the practice of surgery and fixing the fees which the surgeons might legally charge. With regard to slavery, a distinction was made between individual slaves find slaves who worked' in gangs. The former seem to have been privileged and welltreated, enjoying many legal rights. The gang-slaves, like the galley slaves of the West in later days, were not regarded as being men at all. They corresponded, not with the working class, but with the machinery of today. Ifl appears that every citizen was taught to read and write; and there were libraries and museums open to the public. Indeed, the life of Babylom in B.C. 1900 was different from that of London in A.D. 1900 —• different, but not a bit less highlyorganised. There was even. ' graft ’ and political corruption: and stories have come down to us, through forty centuries, of officials, embezzling government "funds, ■ and their bribing the inspectors and auditors sent to check their accounts.

THE RELIGION OF BABYLON. " I cannot deal fully to-night with the religion of the Babylonians," Mr Mander continued. “ It will suffice now for me to remind you that all the dusky.white Iberian peoples were ve'ry usperstltious. Wherever the Iberian race extended, from Ireland to India, there, even, to-day, to the extent that their blood and. traditions persist, yo.u find supernaturalism, belief in magic and witchcraft, superstition of all kinds, ramnant. Belief in ghosts and

bogeys and demons and spirits; belief in charms and spells and magic—all that sort of thing is always found, and always has been, among the peoples Of this Iberian race. “ So the religion of Babylon was a mixture. Or rather, superimposed upon this mass of dark superstition and evil imagining of the Sumerian folk, was the higher, cleaner Sun Worship of the Semites. The Sun God was known to the Babylonians as Baal; and really it seems that to his own worshippers, Baal was the One God. It is true that they recognised other supernatural be. ings as well—a ' god ’ of the air, a ‘ goddess ’ of marriage, a patron ‘ god’ of thq harvest and oEcvcry city and village. But it seems clear that these were not really gods at all —in the same sense as Baal was a god—but | rather that they corresponded with the angels and patron saints of the Roman Catholic Church to-day. The religion of the Semitic Babylonians seems to have been,at any rate as monotheistic as that of the modern Catholics. “ The belief in One God is common, wo find, to all those peotples and all those religions which originated around the borders of the Arabian Desert. The idea of the Trinity originated in Egypt; but this conception of One God was the achievement of the Semitic peoples. All the great momrthcistic religions—first the Baal worship of the Babylonians, Cauaanites and Phoenicians: then Judaism; then Christianity; then Mohammedanismall of them were born on the edges of Arabia.”

THE EMPIRES. “ For six centuries life in Babylon went on steadily and prosperously. But there was no stagnation like mat in Egypt. Babylon was engaged in foreign trade, from the Mediterranean coast to India; and she was, moreover, constantly beset by raiders and in. vaders. Assyria' was still a part of the Babylonian Empire, but a restless and unruly part.” The lecturer then described the conditions of life under the First Empire and give an outline of the history of the period. Ho described also the beginning of the great' race movement that was going on during those corn turies—the coming of the Aryan§ from off the plains of Europe, their drive (as Aryan Hindus) eastward into India, as Hellenes into Greece and Asia Minor, as Latins in Italy, and aa Kelts westward into France and Britain. These Northern peoples seem to have adopted the use of war chariots and horsemen; and when they came into contact with the Assyrians, the latter in turn adapted these now means of warfare from them. This enabled the Assyrians, so long subject to Babylon, to turn the tables, to cap. lure and sack the city, and to establish ■the First Assyrian Empire with Nineveh as its capital. The story continued through the centuries until B.C. 600. About that year, two important’ events occurred. First, the Persians —Aryans from the Northern plains, a baenwash of the Aryan Hindus who had gone on to India—over-ran Assyria. The second event was the coming of another Arabian tribe, the Chaldeans, who set up a new king in Babylon and started an audacious career of conquest and expansion. This Second (or Chaldean) Empire of Babylon, under King Nebuchadnezzar, went to war with Egypt and conquered her, conquered all Syria and Canaan anu Palestine, and made the City of Babylon more prosperous, more wealthy and more magnificent than ever. “ But this magnificent Second Empire,” .said the lecturer, “was but a single vivid splash on the pages o£ history. It lasted only sixty years, and then the Modes and Persians rolled over it and blotted it out for over. Mr Mander then gave a brief sketch of tho character of these Persian peoples and of their mushroom empire. “ Two hundred years after these hardy, hare.living, leather-clad men had swept on to tho scene,” he concluded—“ their descendants had become so spoilt by easy success, so enervated by the sudden change of climate, so softened by luxury, that they forgot how to live, how to work, and how to fight; and so they lingered on as an empire only until somebody —Alexander the Great —came along witii his Macedonians to put an end to their follies.”