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AX 
 
 ESSAY 
 
 ON- THE 
 OF 
 
 THE BOOK 
 
 OF 
 
 MBATH^AN AGRICULTURE. 
 
 TO WHICH IS ADDED 
 
 Jin Jitfiir^ur^il Stchn^ 
 
 ON THE 
 
 POSITION OP THE SHEMITIC NATIONS 
 
 IN THE 
 
 HISTOEY OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 MEMERE DE L'INSTITTJT, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND THE SHEMITIC LANGUAGES IN THE COLLEGE OF 
 
 FRANCE ; AND AUTHOR OF l'HISTOIRE DES LANGUES SEMITIQUES ; 
 
 ETUDES DE L'hISTOIRE RELIGIEUSE ; ESSAIS DE MORALE ET DE 
 
 CRITIQUE ; A TRANSLATION OF THE SONG OF SONGS, 
 
 AND OF THE BOOK OF JOB, ETC. ETC. 
 
 TETJBNEE & CO., 60, PATERNOSTEE EOW. 
 
 1862. 
 
ej^fi- 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 WIU.TAM STEVENS. PRTNTKR, 3", BKLL YART, TrurLF BAR. 
 
(2>i 
 
 p ' 
 
 PEEFACE, 
 
 rjIHE Book of ISTabath^an Agricultuee 
 -*- was first introduced to the notice of 
 Europe by St. Thomas Aquinas, towards the 
 middle of the thirteenth century, though 
 it had abeady been cited by Moses Mai- 
 monides in the More NevocJiim some hun- 
 dred years previously, from whence, no 
 doubt, it had become known to most of the 
 learned Spanish Jews who, at the period, 
 shed so great a lustre upon Hebrew Litera- 
 ture and Biblical Science. 
 
 Startling as it is to find in its pages 
 mention of a literature and civilization so 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 far beyond the earliest records of the Bible 
 and other known sources of information, it 
 has ever since been treated, when not passed 
 over in utter oblivion, more as one of the 
 curiosities of literature than as a valuable 
 record of the past ; and though slightly 
 referred to by Salmasius, about two cen- 
 turies ago, in a Avay which might have 
 opened up a controversy as to the authen- 
 ticity and date of its supposed antiquity 
 and authorship, the matter seems to have 
 been allowed to fall still-born fi'om the 
 press. This may in some way be accounted 
 for by the ignorance of scholars before our 
 day of the principles of Comparative Gram- 
 mar, that ingenious art of criticism which 
 becomes the key by which modern philology 
 is enabled to enter the deep recesses of the 
 past, and expose to view records which, for 
 want of it, were inaccessible to the ancient 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 Greeks and Eomans and the great scholars 
 of the last three centuries; as, ignorant of 
 it, the former were eyen unable to decipher 
 the earliest remains of their own language, 
 and the latter could only supply its place 
 by conjectural guesses. 
 
 One of the most successful workers in 
 this new field of criticism is Dr. Daniel 
 Chwolson, Professor of Hebrew in the Uni- 
 versity of St. Petersburgh, who first made 
 himself known to Oriental scholars by the 
 publication of one of the most able and pro- 
 found works connected with the history and 
 literature of the East which has ever ap- 
 peared. Die Ssabier unci der Ssahismus — the 
 Sabians and Sabian Worship — has for ever 
 settled many doubtful and long-disputed 
 points in religion ; has thrown new and 
 irresistible light upon earlier Eastern his- 
 tory; and placed its author at once in the 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 highest rank as one of the deepest thinkers 
 and most painstaking critics of the day. 
 
 The real Sabians, the as-Sabitin of the 
 Koran, were an Aramaic or Syro-Chaldsean 
 race, on the borders of Persia, inhabiting 
 the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. 
 These heathen had El-Hasaih as the founder 
 of their religion. He is the 'HX;^a<rat of 
 Hippolytus, the Elkesai of Theodoretus, and 
 the 'Hx|a/ or 'Hx|a/o^ of Epiphanius, and 
 taught the doctrine of two principles in the 
 Creation, a male and a female, active and 
 passive power, mind and matter. Mani was 
 brought up in this creed, but, drawing- 
 nearer to the doctrines of Zoroaster or 
 Parsee-ism, preached a second duality. Good 
 and Evil, and thus became the founder oi 
 Manichseism, which still lingers amongst the 
 resides^ and is so graphically portrayed by 
 Mr. Layard. The Sabians derive their name 
 
PREFACE. Vn 
 
 from the Hebrew word yy^, Ho dip,' and it 
 was applied to the followers of El-Hasaih 
 in reference to their frequent ablutions. 
 Their present representatives are the Men- 
 daites, Gnostics, Nazoreans, or, incorrectly, 
 Christians of St. John, so called from their 
 frequent lustrations with water, who dwell 
 in the swamps on the banks of the Tigris 
 near Bassora. 
 
 Besides the Sabians, there were others 
 who took the name, about the year 830 
 of our era, to escape the persecutions of 
 the Chalifs, particularly of El-Ma'mtin, who 
 threatened them with extermination ; as- 
 suming at the same time something of the 
 dress and forms of the persecuting Mussul- 
 mans. These pseudo-Sabians are repre- 
 sented by the modern Yesidis and the 
 Shemsiya, both of whom are fire-worship- 
 pers, or perhaps, rather, worshippers of 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 tte sun and the planets, at heart, though 
 the first profess a kind of bastard Islamism, 
 and the latter, since about the year 1762, 
 a mongrel Christianity. These pseudo- 
 Sabians dwelt in the land of Harran, and 
 their descendants have become familiar to 
 us by the narratives of Layard and South- 
 gate, and some recent discussions as to the 
 site of the well of Harran in the Athenceum, 
 In collecting together and examining his 
 materials for this important work. Professor 
 Chwolson necessarily had to dip deeply into 
 the sources of old Babylonian or Naba- 
 thsean literature, greatly encouraged in the 
 pursuit by the previous labours of M. 
 Quatremere ; ^ and men, who were fully 
 competent to judge of his high linguistic 
 attainments, began to look anxiously for- 
 
 ^ Memoire sur les Nabate'ens, in the Journal Asiatique, 1835 
 reprinted in the Melanges d'Histoire et de J*hilologie Orientate, 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 ward to the time when the fruits of this 
 industry should be placed before them. To 
 quiet the many enquiries on that head, in 
 1859 there appeared in the 3femoirs des 
 Savants Etrangers of St. Petersburgh, and 
 also in a separate form, Ueher die Ueherreste 
 der AUhahylonischen Liter atur in AraMschen 
 Ueherset^ungen^ a curious and startling work 
 "On the Eemains of Old Babylonian Litera- 
 ture, preserved in Arabic translations;" and 
 it is that work which has given rise to this 
 essay of M. Ernest Eenan, which is now 
 presented to the EngKsh reader, with his 
 sanction, in its present form. 
 
 In his introductory chapter. Dr. Chwolson 
 puts forth two questions : — 1. Could the 
 Babylonians have possessed an extensive 
 literature of high order in the time of 
 Nebuchadnezzar, or of the earlier Nebon- 
 iissar ? 2. Was it possible that in Babylon 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 there should have existed an advanced state 
 of science, at a time when Grecian litera- 
 ture and science were both in their infancy ? 
 Professor Chwolson answers both questions, 
 knowingly and advisedly, in the affirmative. 
 Such a deduction would go far to shake the 
 faith of Jews and Christians in the Divine 
 origin of the sacred books of the Old Testa- 
 int^nt, and hence the cartel thrown down 
 by the Professor has brought forth many 
 replies on the Continent, to wliich reference 
 IS made in the pages of M. Eenan's unan- 
 swerable essay ; and also three important 
 reviews of the work in this country, of 
 w^hicli that in the Christian Remembrancer 
 of April, 18 GO, claims precedence as to 
 date, and that in the Saturday Revietv oi 
 September, in the same year, as to matter ; 
 both, however, highly instructive papers to 
 all who take interest in a subject of such 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 paramount importance. M. Eenan's essay- 
 is contemporary Tvith the latter, and ap- 
 peared in the Memoir es de VAcademie des 
 Inscriptions^ et Belles-Lettres^ Tome XXIY., 
 in 1860. The third review is a notice of 
 this memoir, which appeared in the Times 
 on the last day of January in the present 
 year, imder the heading of ^^ Pre -Adamite 
 Literature," which gives a masterly analysis 
 of the whole subject.^ 
 
 Husbandry was the first and earliest of 
 the sciences to which man turned his atten- 
 tion, and our common father, when he 
 
 ^ The translator of the Strange Surprising Adventures of the 
 Venerable Gooro Simple, published in 1860, in reference to the 
 antiquity of Eastern legends, says : " Dr. Chwolson has recently 
 issued a very curious and interesting volume on the remains of 
 ancient Babylonian literature. According to it, a person named 
 Kuthami compiled a well-planned and ably executed work on 
 general literature fourteen centuries before the Christian era, 
 gi\dng us glimpses of a previous civilization of some three thou- 
 sand years. We are promised the Arabic text accompanied by a 
 translation. When these appear we shall have more certain data 
 than mere conjectural criticism for fixing dates. Kuthami, it 
 seems, speaks of ' the ancients,^ the writers of periods then long 
 passed away, as we do of the authors of classical antiquity." 
 
XU PREFACE. 
 
 began to ^^ eat bread in the sweat of his 
 face," the first husbandman. Hence it is 
 but natural to suppose that the earliest of 
 the sciences should have been handed down 
 from generation to generation in a religious 
 form ; and, when first reduced to writing, 
 that it should have retained that form. 
 So we arrive at the conclusion that the 
 earliest literature of which we have any 
 traces, very properly combined in itself the 
 principles of worship and progress, of reli- 
 gion and civilization. It is just this form 
 which gives such an air of high antiquity 
 to ^'The Book of Nabathsean Agriculture," 
 and which has induced Dr. Chwolson to 
 ask : ^^Had Greek literature been completely 
 lost to the world during the dark ages 
 which followed the fall of the Eoman Em- 
 pire, and now, for the first time, the Avorks 
 of Plato and Aristotle, of Hippocrates and 
 
PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 Galen, of Euclid and others, become known 
 to us only by Arabic versions in which 
 they really exist, should we not probably 
 suspect them to be forgeries, and exclaim 
 against the possibility of the Greeks having 
 had so cultivated a literature four centuries 
 before Christ, when our own forefathers were 
 in a state of dense darkness, in which they 
 continued comparatively for some fifteen 
 centuries afterwards, though their connec- 
 tion with classical antiquity was by no 
 means dissolved ?" As this might well have 
 happened in regard to Greek literature, 
 he asks us not to look upon as forgeries 
 authentic documents, brought to light by 
 similar agency, respecting a pre-existing 
 ante-Grecian culture. 
 
 In M. Ernest Eenan, Professor Chwolson 
 has met an opponent at all points his equal 
 in rank and in erudition. The Oriental 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 Professor of the College of France has 
 raised to himself a name no less celebrated 
 as the author of the Histoire des Langues 
 Semitiques^ than his rival did by his pub- 
 lication of the Ssahier und der Ssahismus. 
 Bom in Brittany in 1823, he was educated 
 for holy orders, and all his impulses are 
 essentially the results of that education, 
 though very early he found that he could 
 not pursue his studies for the priesthood 
 with a clear conscience. Since the age of 
 twenty-four, when in 1847 he gained the 
 Volney prize for his essay on the Shemitic 
 languages, he has devoted himself to letters, 
 and ranks as one of the greatest French 
 writers now living. Under the present 
 Emperor of the French he has been em- 
 ployed to carry out researches in Phoenicia, 
 and is at this moment engaged in preparing 
 for press a great work on Phoenician An- 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 tiquities. M. Eenan belongs to those reli- 
 gious thinkers who are known as the 
 ^^ advanced school." Hence the public, 
 generally, in France, heard with something 
 like astonishment of his appointment to the 
 chair of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Syriac 
 Languages in the College of France, as 
 the successor of M. Quatremere. They 
 were partly prepared, also, for the result 
 of his inaugural lecture — the suspension of 
 further lectures. This proceeding is one of 
 much importance in the literary history of 
 Europe, and that importance has been the 
 sole inducement to add an English version 
 of the lecture to the present volume. M. 
 Eenan is compiling a life of Christ, and 
 the history of the origin of Christianity, 
 a great portion of which was written amidst 
 the scenes to which it has immediate refer- 
 ence. His peculiar views are as well known 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 to the educated classes of France and 
 Germany, from his Etudes cVHistoire Reli- 
 gieuse and his Essais de Morale et de Critique^ 
 as are those of Professor Jowett in this 
 country, from his contribution to the Essays 
 and Reviews. With these the translator no 
 way identifies the presentation to the reader, 
 in an English dress, of M. Eenan's Essay 
 on ^^The Book of Nabathsean Agriculture," 
 and of the '' Inaugural Lecture on the Posi- 
 tion of the Shemitic Nations in the History 
 of Civilization." All the merit claimed is 
 an earnest endeavour to reproduce both 
 works in a faithful rendering of the 
 originals. 
 
 June, 1862. 
 
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XVI 
 
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 country, from his 
 
 and Reviews. 'Y^ 
 
 way identifies th| 
 
 in an English ȣ 
 
 on '^The Book | 
 
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 tion of the She; o 
 
 of Civilization.' J J3 
 
 an earnest 
 
 works in 
 
 originals. 
 
 June, 1862 
 
 c>5 
 c 
 
AGE A]^D AjS-TIQUITY 
 
 OF THE BOOK OP 
 
 nabathj:an ageicultuee. 
 
 There is no longer any dcU^i)t''iii tile pyb- 
 sent age, that a BabyloAi^n/ literatiire^ did . 
 existj composed of works connected Syit'li' 
 the arts and sciences, which are nearly 
 always written in a religious form. The 
 age and the character of the intellectual 
 labours of the Chaldaeans are uncertain ; but 
 there are many evidences, more especially 
 in the monuments that have descended to 
 our days, to prove that Babylon was, from 
 the most remote antiquity, the centre of 
 civilization for all the East. Indeed, al- 
 though it might appear at the first glance 
 that the literature of Babylon had disap- 
 
^ BABYLONIAN LITERATTEE. 
 
 peared ; altliough there is no original text 
 remaining of writings composed by the dif- 
 ferent schools of Chaldsea; still, the litera- 
 ture of neighboiu'ing nations, \Yhich met 
 "with a better fate, has preserved to ns con- 
 siderable remains of the culture it replaced. 
 "Without mentioning those Greek authors 
 who have written 'AcrG-upLaxd and Ba^uXcovixd 
 from original sources ; or Armenian Avriters, 
 especially Moses Chororensis, who frequently 
 .;m*ejitio]\s/G5Ii^^8pan writings; or the Syrian 
 'jChiis^tiauSj.whom'^e continually find, duiing 
 tte''foVii'tli,' fi'fth','and sixth centuries, waging 
 never ending controversies against the Chal- 
 dseans ; or the Talmud, and kindred writings, 
 which contain large portions of astronomical, 
 and possibly of medical principles borrowed 
 from Babylon ; or the Cabbala, of which 
 both the principles and the most ancient 
 forms, although imder many transformations, 
 can be traced to Chaldeea ; or Gnosticism, 
 which, in one of its branches, shews the 
 degree of influence that Babylonian doc- 
 trines possessed in the midst of that vast 
 
BABYLONIAN LITEEATURE. 3 
 
 chaos of ideas into wliich the East was 
 plimgecl during the first centuries of our 
 era, — we have still, in three or four forms, 
 writings of Babylonian origin. And fii*st, 
 Berosus, although of the epoch of the 
 Seleucides, was not the less a purely Baby- 
 lonian writer, and the fragments which have 
 come down to us of his works, although 
 they require to be treated with the greatest 
 caution, are, with the cosmogonies pre- 
 served by Damascius and: by ;the^ autjior 
 of the 4>tAoo-o(poujuisva, invaluable rejiiciiias of 
 Chaldsean philosophy. Secondly, a claSs ]of 
 writings — very contemptible certainly if we 
 only regard the depth of their ideas, — the 
 writings composed in Greek and Arabic on 
 astrology, magic, oneirocriticism, such as the 
 Cyi'anides, the works of the false Zoroaster, 
 the books attributed to Seth, and to ^oah, 
 the fragments of Paxamus, of Teucer the 
 Babylonian, and of Lasbas the Babylonian,^ 
 
 1 Fabricii Bibl. Gr. Harles IV. p. 148, 166, etc. See hereafter 
 my conjecture on Teucer. On Lasbas on MeVAas, and on the 
 book, certainly a Babylonian one, called SeA-ex )8i/8Aos, see Miller, 
 " Journal des Savans," October 1839, p. 607, note. 
 
4 BABYLONIAN LITERATrEE. 
 
 are frequently translations or copies of Clial- 
 daean works. Thirdly, the works of the sect 
 knoAYn as Mendaites, ^azoreans, Chiistians 
 of St. John, who must be classed generally 
 nnder the name Sabians, represent to ns, 
 to a certain degree, in their method of 
 thought, and possibly in their language, the 
 remains of Babylonian literature ; though 
 the flights of imagination from Avhicli the 
 ancient Chaldseans never appear to have 
 :l?&en whoBiy^^empt, assume in them such 
 *a' poiiit..of .extravagance, that it would 
 iBfe ^^y^t•]l reluctance' that we would acknow- 
 ledge these fanciful wanderings to be the 
 actual remains of an intellectual cultivation 
 which has exercised so considerable an in- 
 fluence on the mind of man. 
 
 A som-ce more fertile, however, than any 
 which we have hitherto pointed out, has 
 been opened to us in these last few years. 
 Ingenious criticism has shcAvn that it is 
 in the heart of Arabian literature that we 
 must seek for the most precious collection 
 of Babylonian writings. Independently of 
 
BABYLONIAN LITEEATVEE. 6 
 
 tlie numerous facts which can be deduced 
 from Arabian historians and general writers 
 on ancient Babylon, there exists in Arabic 
 a series of writings translated from the Ba- 
 bylonian or ISTabathaean language. All these 
 translations were the work of one man. To- 
 wards the year 900 of our era, a descendant 
 of those ancient Babylonian families who 
 had fled to the marshes of Wasith and of 
 Bassora, where their posterity still dwell, 
 was struck with profound admiration for the 
 works of his ancestors, whose language he 
 understood, and probably spoke. Ibn AYah- 
 shiya al-Kasdani, or the Chaldeean (such 
 was the name of this individual), was a 
 Mussulman, but Islamism only dated in his 
 family from the time of his great-grand- 
 father; he hated the Arabs, and cherished 
 the same feeling of national jealousy towards 
 them as the Persians also entertained against 
 their conquerors. A piece of good fortune 
 threw into his hands a large collection of 
 l^abath^ean writings, which had been rescued 
 from Moslem fanaticism. The zealous Chal- 
 
b BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 deean devoted his life to their translation, and 
 thus created a ]N'abath8eo- Arabic library, of 
 which three complete works — to say nothing 
 of the fragments of a fourth — have de- 
 scended to our days. The three complete 
 works are, first, LkJl l^^m l^^ "The 
 Eook of Xabathsean Agriculture;" second, 
 f.^\ L^VJ "The Book of Poisons;" third, 
 JjU\ U.^- l^\:^ ''The Book of Tenkelusha 
 tiie Babylonian." The incomplete work is 
 ^'i\\^ ^jjj,^.\ j\jj\ L^'^c^ "A work on the Secrets 
 of the Sun and Moon." ^ Of these four books, 
 ^'The Book of ISTabathsean Agriculture" is 
 by far the most important and the most 
 interesting. It is this one which will now 
 principally occupy our attention. 
 
 ^ The first is a cyclopaedia of agricultiu'c, containing also remarks 
 and dissertations on subjects incidentally mentioned, and it is these 
 which give it the pre-eminence. The second, which is older than 
 the first, treats of poisons and their antidotes. The third is a 
 genethlialogic work. The foui-th treats of plants and metals. — 
 Translator's note. 
 
EABYLONIAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 "The Book of IN'abatlisean Agriculture," first 
 referred to in Europe by St. Thomas Aquinas, 
 was first known among Christian scholars, 
 thanks to the quotations made from it by 
 Jewish writers of the middle ages, particu- 
 larly by Moses Maimonides in his ^^More 
 Nevochim." The impression formed of it, 
 from this source of information, was, how- 
 ever, very imperfect. Some supposed that 
 the book treated of the religion of the 
 IS'abathseans, the word r\'l)'2'^^ by which the 
 Hebrew translator of Moses Maimonides 
 rendered l^li^ permitting the double sense 
 of ciiltus, or cultiira. Others supposed there 
 were two distinct works, one on ISTabathpean 
 Agriculture, and one on the Eeligion of the 
 I^abathfeans. Moreover, by a confusion easily 
 made between the name of the Copts (kj) 
 
8 BABYLOIS^IAN LITERATURE. 
 
 and that of the IN'abathseaiis^ 0^\ the title 
 of Egyptian Agriculture was frequently sub- 
 stituted for l^abathsean Agriculture, and the 
 editor of the Greek Geoponica,^ J. 'N, Kiclas, 
 even supposed, in 1781, that '^The Book of 
 ITabathsean Agriculture" was nothing but a 
 translation of the work of wliich he pub- 
 lished the original text. 
 
 A more exact idea was given of ^' The 
 Book of ISTabathsean Agriculture," when Don 
 Josef Antonio Banqueri published at Madrid, 
 in 1802, the Treatise on Agriculture of Ibn- 
 el-Awwam, which is a kind of abridgment 
 from ^^The [N'abath^an Agricultiu-e." But 
 the historical interest of the original work 
 entirely disappeared in the abridgment of 
 Ibn-el-Awwam. 
 
 It was my learned brother, M. Quatre- 
 mere, who first ^ studied in its original text 
 
 ^ These ancient errors are collected and discussed in Stanley, 
 "Ilistoirc de la Philosophic Orientale," with notes, by J. Leclerc. 
 pp. 120-121, and Index, at the word Kahateen. 
 
 2 Geoponica, sive Lihri de Re Rustica; 4 vols. Lips. 1781. 
 
 3 Herbelot had examined the maniLscript, but in an extremely 
 superficial manner. See " Bibliotlieque Orientale," at the words 
 Valiashiah, Nabathi, Cothai, Falahat, Democratis. 
 
BABYLOXIAN LITEEATUEE. 9 
 
 the work wliicli now engages onr attention.^ 
 Unfortunately, out of the nine parts or books 
 into which ^' The Book of ^abatheean Agri- 
 culture" is cliyidecl, the Paris manuscript 
 (Ancien Fonds Arabe, 'No. 913), only contains 
 two, being about one-third of the entire 
 work. By examining the portion thus at 
 his disposal, M. Quatremere ascertained the 
 various features of the work. He saw that 
 ^' The Book of l^abathaean Agriculture" was 
 a translation from a Chaldsean author. He 
 fixed, Avith much hesitation however, the 
 name of the original author as Kuthami. He 
 gathered from the treatise in question much 
 cimous information as to the civilization of 
 the I^abath^eans. He shewed that ''The Agri- 
 culture" contained much more than its mere 
 title promised, and threw most valuable light 
 on the ancient literature of Babylon. Finally, 
 he promulgated an opinion as to the epoch 
 of the composition of the work, which ap- 
 
 1 "Meraoire sur les Xabateens," inserted in the "Journal 
 Asiatique," 1835. Since reprinted in the " Melanges d'Histoire et 
 de Philologie Orientale," edited by M. Barthelemcy Saint Ililaire. 
 
10 , BABYLONIAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 peared at first sight altogether paradoxical. 
 Surprised at the omission, in the midst of 
 ample information as to the religions of 
 Asia, of one word which directly or indi- 
 rectly bore reference to Christianity ; struck 
 by the perfection of the agricultural theories 
 which are developed in every page ; and not 
 being able to find any one period in Baby- 
 lonian history after Alexander where such 
 prosperity could correctly be placed, — remark- 
 ing : 1st, that the author speaks of Babylon 
 as being, in his own day, a flourishing city, 
 and the seat of the principal religion of the 
 East ; 2nd, that he speaks of Mneveh as a 
 city still in existence ; 3rd, that among the 
 cities situated in Babylon and the neigh- 
 bouring provinces, he makes no mention of 
 Seleucia, Apamea, Ctesiphon, and other 
 cities founded by the Seleucides, the Arsa- 
 cides, the Sassanides ; and not recognising 
 the possibility that, at a time when that 
 vast cyclopeedia of agriculture was wiitten, 
 Babylon could be under a foreign yoke, M. 
 Quatremere finds himself compelled to ^ 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 11 
 
 the composition of ^'The Book of l^abathfean 
 Agriculture" at an extremely early date. 
 ^^It is/' he says, ^'very probable, if I am 
 not altogether mistaken, that this book was 
 wiitten during the period which elapsed be- 
 tween the emancipation of Babylon fi'om the 
 Median yoke, by Belesis, and the taking of 
 Babylon by Cyrus. Perhaps even one might 
 venture to fix the exact date as in the reign 
 of ]N"ebuchadnezzar the Second. It is a very 
 natural hypothesis, that a great prince, who 
 carried his victorious arms to such remote 
 lands ; who embellished his capital by im- 
 mense, works ; who ordered the construc- 
 tion of numberless canals, destined to spread 
 fertility and abundance over the most dis- 
 tant parts of his hereditary states ; should 
 wish to complete and perpetuate his work 
 by ordering the composition of a vast library, 
 which should comprise all that the experi- 
 ence of many centuries had taught, as to the 
 productions of Chaldeea, and the means of 
 developing and increasing its natural re- 
 
12 BABYLONIAX LITERATURE . 
 
 Such a deduction was certain to excite 
 astonisliment. It was contradicted first by 
 the learned historian of botany, Prof. E. H. 
 F. Meyer, of the University of Konigsberg.^ 
 Prof. Meyer refused to acknowledge the 
 remote antiquity of a composition so 
 scientifically arranged, so diffuse, and 
 bearing the marks of science rather in 
 its decay than in its early rise. Various 
 peculiarities ap^oeared to him to add great 
 weight to this theory. For instance, one oi 
 the works quoted in " The Agriculture" was 
 written in rhyme ; now rhyme is never 
 found among the Shemitic nations, till fi'om 
 the end of the fifth to the sixth centiuy 
 of oui' era; many names of plants in the 
 translation of Ibn Wahshiya are taken from 
 the Greek ; the whole theory of the book 
 bears a strong resemblance to that of the 
 Greek and Latin agriculturists ; the astro- 
 nomy which it promulgates contains notions 
 which were not popular till the Eoman 
 
 1 "Geschiohte dcr Botanik," t. III. (Koiiigsberg, 1856), p. 43 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 1 
 
 o 
 
 epoch ; and finally, the perpetual boastings 
 of Kiithami, his national vanity, his jealousy 
 of foreign nations, traits which recall to 
 mind forcibly the tendency of the spirit 
 of the East at the opening of our era, 
 convince Prof. Meyer that the author had 
 consulted Greek authors, but that he de- 
 signedly ignored their names, in order to 
 secure for the Babylonians the credit of 
 priority in all scientific and industrial in- 
 ventions. Prof. Meyer declares that, if he 
 were obliged to fi:s: a date for '' The Book of 
 Xabathsean Agriculture," he should fix it in 
 the first century of our era, consequently 
 seven or eight centuries after the period 
 in which M. Quatremere has placed it. 
 
 It seems natural, in such a state of things, 
 to split up the question, and apply to it a 
 method, generally successful, when the great 
 works of antiquity are subjected to it. It 
 might be possible that, in regarding ''The 
 Book of N'abathsean Agriculture" as a compo- 
 sition of the materials of difi'erent ages — 
 modern in its latest form, but ancient as re- 
 
14 BABYLONIAN LITERATrEE. 
 
 garcls its source, the apparent contradictions 
 of the work could be reconciled. It was in 
 pursuance of this idea that I ventured^ to 
 throw some doubt on the antiquity of the 
 compilation of '' The Book of ^N'abatheean 
 Agriculture/' while willingly admitting 
 that it might contain a certain amount 
 of very ancient matter. Professor Ewald 
 agrees with me in thinking that the book 
 might be considered as the work of suc- 
 cessive hands and many revisions.^ It is, 
 he contends, the sole method of defend- 
 ing the antiquity of some parts of the book 
 against the overwhelming objections which 
 arise from some others where the influence 
 of Alexandrian Hellenism cannot possibly 
 be ignored. As to the conjecture of M. 
 Paul de Lagarde,^ formerly hazarded by M. 
 J. IS'iclas, according to which ^^ The ISTabathoean 
 Agriculture" was nothing but a translation 
 
 ^ "Histoire gcnerale dcs Lanques Seinitiqiies" (1855), 1. Ill, c. 
 ii. sect. 1 ; and in the " Menioires de rAcademie des Inscriptions," 
 t. XXIII., 2nd part, p. 330 (1858). 
 
 2 "Gcettingen gel. Anzeigen" (1857, Nos. 9 and 10) ; 1859, p. 
 1456. 
 
 3 "De Geoponica vers. SjTiaca" (Lipsifc, 1855), pp. 18, 19 and 24. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 15 
 
 of the Greek Geoponica, of which there is a 
 Syriac yersion in the British Museum, being 
 founded on a misunderstanding, it may be 
 dismissed at once. 
 
 A scholar, ah^eady known by one of the 
 most important works \Yhich Oriental learn- 
 ing has produced of late years, Prof. Chwol- 
 son, of St. Petersburgh, the author of a 
 work on the Sabian Eeligion and the School 
 of Harran, has just taken a decisive step 
 towards the solution of the question which 
 occupies us. Haying had access to and con- 
 sulted all the manuscripts of ''The Book of 
 ^N'abathsean Agriculture" which exist in the 
 yarious libraries of Eiu'ope, Dr. Chwolson has 
 made the most perfect copy of it possible,^ 
 and, in order to quiet the impatience of the 
 literary world till the publication of this 
 reyised text, he has embodied in a memoir 
 an abstract of the results of his researches.^ 
 
 1 Dr. Chwolson has infonned me by a letter, that the laciima 
 which remained in his copy at the time of the publication of his 
 memoir has been filled up. The existence of foiu- new manuscripts 
 of "The Xabathfean Agricultiu'e" at Constantinople has been an- 
 nounced. 
 
 2 "Ueber die Ueberreste der Altbabylonischen Literatm- in 
 
16 BABYLOXIAN LITER ATUEE. 
 
 There is reason to regret, hoTreverj that 
 this eminent Oriental scholar, instead of 
 giving us a treatise on the text, which he 
 alone has consulted, should not have rather 
 first published the text itself. The posi- 
 tion of a critic is extremely painful when 
 he is obliged to combat the opinions 
 which a conscientious scholar has formed 
 on a work which he alone has read in its 
 entirety, and from which he only gives 
 extracts which bear out his own theory. 
 Until '' The Book of Xabatheean Agricul- 
 ture" is published in its full integrity, 
 the judgment brought to bear on the sub- 
 ject must be received Avith great allowance. 
 IN'oA^ertheless, so great is the interest of the 
 question, that thanks are due to Dr. Ch^^ol- 
 son for having forestalled the tedious delay 
 inseparable from a publication so volumin- 
 ous as that of ^' The Book of Xabatheean 
 
 Arabischen Uebcrsotzungcn" (1859), extracted from vol. VIII. of 
 " Memoii-es des Savants etraiigers," of the Academy of St. Peters- 
 burg. Dr. Cliwolson has abeady announced these results in his 
 "Ssabier" (1856), vol. I., p. 705, and vol. IL, pp. 910 and 911 ; 
 and in the " Zeitschrift der Deutschen IMorgcnlandcn GesolLschaft," 
 1857, pp. 583 fF. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 17 
 
 Agriculture." Besides, so strong is the 
 conviction of Dr. Chwolson ; so great the 
 sincerity Avith which he lays bare the ob- 
 jections which may be made to it, that 
 his work furnishes the means of criticising 
 his own opinions. It is needless, to add, 
 that to dissent from him on such a subject 
 cannot diminish those sentiments of acknow- 
 ledfirment and esteem which are due to a 
 scholar who was the first to open up such 
 a series of inyestigations. Dr. Chwolson, 
 in turning the attention of critics to facts 
 and texts too much disregarded before, 
 fully merits to be called their originator; 
 and it would be imjust to forget, that if his 
 opinions are combatted, it is mth weapons 
 which he himself . has furnished, and on 
 ground which he himself has prepared. And 
 even if his opinion as to the age of the 
 jS"abath9ean books should hereafter be giyen 
 up, it will be no more a discredit to him than 
 is a similar bold opinion a stain on the glory 
 of the great Indian scholars of Calcutta, 
 regarding the antiquity of works, which they 
 
18 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 had the rare merit of first making known 
 to Europeans. 
 
 The statement of the opinion of Dr. 
 Chwolson as to the period of the composi- 
 tion of ''The Book of Nabatheean Agricul- 
 ture " will J no doubt, excite the greatest 
 astonishment among persons who have 
 already been startled by the less bold 
 hypothesis of M. Quatremere. It resolves 
 itself into two propositions : firstly, that 
 Kuthami, the Babylonian, is the sole author 
 of the Avork in question ; that the work itself 
 is not the compilation of various hands ; and 
 that it has received from the Arabian trans- 
 lator only alterations of very little import- 
 ance ; secondly, that Kuthami could not have 
 written it later than the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century before Christ. 
 
 It is not, however, a priori that such an 
 opinion can be combatted. In the field 
 of historical criticism, all should be ad- 
 mitted as possible. Civilization and litera- 
 ture flourished in Babylon at a very ancient 
 period. Entire systems of civilization have 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 19 
 
 disappeared without leaying any traces ; 
 literatiu-es of high antiquity are only 
 represented by shreds, passed through a 
 thousand transformations, and are scarcely 
 recognisable. I willingly admit that Ba- 
 bylon may have had books and schools 
 fifteen centuries before Christ. The title 
 of ^^The Book of :N'abath£ean Agriculture" 
 to the hio^h antiquity which Dr. Chwolson 
 attributes to it, must be sifted without bias 
 of any kind. 
 
 Dr. Chwolson' s principal argument is 
 derived from the information furnished by 
 ^^The Book of ]N'abatheean Agriculture" as 
 to the political condition of Babylonia at 
 the time when the work was composed. He 
 agrees with M. Quatremere, that it contains 
 no trace of the existence of Christianity, 
 or of the existence of Arsacidan, Seleucidan, 
 and Sassanidan rule. Twenty Babylonian 
 kings are enumerated in ^' The Agriculture," 
 and of these twenty names, there is not one 
 which coincides with that of a king of any 
 known Babylonian dynasty. In the chapter 
 
20 BABYLONIAN LITER ATUEE. 
 
 on Canals [Canalisation)^ there is not a 
 single allusion to Nebuchadnezzar, who did 
 so much for the irrigation of the comitry ; 
 not one word of the Jews, who, in the be- 
 ginning of that monarch's reign, filled so 
 important a part in the East. A Canaanite 
 dynasty, resulting from some recent con- 
 quest, reigned in Babylon in Kuthami's 
 time. Kuthami frequently alludes to this 
 main point. The founder of this Canaanite 
 dynasty was IN'umruda, whom Dr. Chwolson 
 considers identical with the IN'imrod of 
 the Book of Genesis. The Canaanites are 
 represented as a people originally inhabit- 
 ing the South of Syria and the country 
 of Jordan. The author speaks of these con- 
 querors with marked reserve ; at times he 
 even appears to wish to flatter them, and 
 to soften the prejudices which his own 
 countrj^men entertain against them. He 
 gives the names of the Canaanite kings, 
 ^N'umi'uda, Zahmuna, Susikya, Salbama ; 
 he quotes Canaanite authors, Aniiha, 
 Thamithri, etc. At what epoch, then, must 
 
BABYLOXIAN LITERATURE. 21 
 
 this Canaanite dynasty be placed, which, 
 pretty much as the Hyksos did in Egypt, 
 must have interrupted the series of native 
 dynasties of Chakleea ? Eor various reasons 
 Dr. Chwolson has concluded to identify it 
 with the fifth of Berosus, composed of 
 nine Arabian kings, of which he fixes the 
 commencement between the years 1540 and 
 1488 before Christ. Kuthami appears to 
 have TVTitten one or two himdi^ed years 
 after the Canaanite invasion ; the year 
 1300 is therefore the latest which can be 
 suggested as that of the composition of the 
 , work which bears his name. 
 / The astonishment excited by this conclu- 
 -— sion is heightened by the circumstance that 
 the author of "The Book of Xabathaean 
 Agriculture '' quotes a great number of 
 works, which themselves, again, have quo- 
 tations from other authors ; thus suggesting 
 whole centuries of culture and civilization 
 before the time of Kuthami. Professor 
 Chwolson considers that a culture of some 
 3000 years must be admitted before his 
 
22 BABYLONIAN LITERATLEE. 
 
 author flourished. In separating into their 
 respective classes the quotations which are 
 mingled together in the ^^Agriculture," 
 he finds at Babylon a rich and varied 
 literature, fully equal to that which was 
 developed among the Greeks one or two 
 thousand years later; a matured literature, 
 full of controversies of schools, of sects, and 
 of disputes between religion and philosophy. 
 It is not here a question, in fact, as to 
 one of those primitive literatures, which 
 do not discover the identity of an author, 
 and where an abstract genius seems to 
 wield the pen for an entire nation. The 
 writers of Babylon must have been thinkers 
 with distinct views, discussing step by step, 
 and in the minutest details, the opinions 
 of their adversaries. The founders of Baby- 
 lonian religions must have been philosophers 
 gifted Avith clear perceptions, amicably op- 
 posing each other, and debating one and 
 all, like academical professors. The work 
 of Kuthami is, in this wise, not a first 
 book, but a work of recapitulation and 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 23 
 
 criticism. In the foreground appears the 
 chief personage of Babylonian literature, a 
 certain Yanbushadh, founder of natural 
 sciences and originator of a kind of Mono- 
 theism. He is separated from Kuthami by- 
 four or five centuries. Some ages before 
 Yanbushadh, appears Daghrith, founder of 
 another school, which had some disciples, 
 even after Yanbushadh. This Daghrith 
 lived, according to Dr. Chwolson, two thou- 
 sand years before Christ ; and speaks of 
 various persons of Babylonian tradition in 
 a manner which shows that he then con- 
 sidered them as men of early antiquity. In- 
 deed, long before Daghrith, there is another 
 age of literature, of which the representa- 
 tives are Ma si the Suranian, his disciple 
 Jernana, and the Canaanites, Anuha, Tha- 
 mithri, and Sardana (towards 2500). All 
 these sages appear at once as priests, 
 founders of religions, moralists, naturalists, 
 astronomers, agriculturalists {agronomeB\ and 
 as universally endeavouring to introduce a 
 worship freed from idolatrous superstitions. 
 
24 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 A short time before them Ishitha flourished, 
 the founder of a religion which Kuthami 
 vehemently opposes, though he acknow- 
 ledges that it exercised, in his own time, 
 a salutary influence. Before Ishitha, Adami 
 appears as the founder of agricultiu-e in Ba- 
 bylon, acting the part of a civilizer {civili- 
 sateiir) and hence named ^' The Father of 
 Mankind." Before him we find Azada, the 
 founder of a religion which the higher 
 ...jslasses persecuted, but which was cherished 
 by the lower ; Ankebutha, Samai-Xahari, 
 the poet Huhushi, whose attention was 
 already directed to agricultural science ; 
 Askiilebitha, a benefactor of mankind and 
 the earliest astronomer; and finally Dewanai, 
 the most ancient lawgiver of the Shemites, 
 who had temples, was honoiu-ed as a god, 
 and was called ''Master of Mankind." The 
 age of Dewanai is, according to Dr. CliAVol- 
 son, strictly historical, and Babylon was 
 already, at that time, a completelj^ or- 
 ganised state. There are indications, before 
 Dewanai, of great efforts towards civiliza- 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 25 
 
 tion; and it is in that distant period that 
 Professor Chwolson places Kamash-I^ahari, 
 the author of a work on agriculture; the 
 saints and favourites of the gods, Aami, 
 Sulina, Thuluni, Eesai, Kermana, etc. ; and 
 finally the martyr Tammtizi, the first to 
 found the religion of the planets, who was 
 put to death, and afterwards lamented by 
 his followers. Dr. Chwolson stops here : 
 he acknowledges that before that period all 
 fades into the mist of fabulous antiquity. ^ y' 
 
 Certainly, to many persons, the promul- 
 gation of such a system would be its surest 
 refutation. Indeed, the assertions of Prof. 
 Chwolson assume an aspect to which per- 
 sons who adopt the usual principles of 
 criticism are quite unaccustomed. Such, 
 however, is the singular chain of evidence 
 which has led Dr. Chwolson to adopt this 
 system ; so great is the authority which his 
 opinion seems to derive from that of M. 
 Quatremere ; that it becomes the duty of 
 criticism to examine his assertions step by 
 step, without resting on the improbability 
 
26 BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 which they offer at a first glance. I shall 
 now j)roceed to place before you the objec- 
 tions which, on a careful perusal of Dr. 
 Chwolson's Memoir, I have to urge against 
 the position which he endeavours to main- 
 tain. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 27 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 To begin, one circumstance, foreign to, and 
 no way conducive to the examination of the 
 book itself, is of a nature to inspire doubts 
 as to the legitimacy of the deductions of 
 M. Quatremere and Dr. Chwolson. Ibn 
 Wahshiya translated '^ The Book of Naba- 
 thsean Agriculture " into Arabic in the year 
 904 of our era. The original text is uni- 
 versally admitted to have been in Aramaic. 
 Two thousand two hundi^ed years, therefore, 
 according to Prof. Chwolson's theory, — • 
 seventeen hundred years according to that 
 of M. Quatremere, — must have elapsed be- 
 tween the composition of the work and its 
 translation. Such an instance is without 
 parallel at any period before philology 
 is organised into a regular science. Only 
 
28 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 consider of what an archaical character the 
 Aramaic text must have appeared to a 
 Chaklsean in the tenth century of our era. 
 Though it may be urged that the Shemitic 
 languages varied very little in the course 
 of their prolonged existence ; or to quote, 
 as a case in point, the Moallakats, as being 
 still well understood among Ai^abs, after the 
 lapse of 1300 years: the political and re- 
 ligious revolutions of Chaldsea have been too 
 sweeping for the possibility of its language 
 preserving such an identity. The philolo- 
 gists of antiquity, and those of the middle 
 ages, being ignorant of the principles of 
 comparative grammar, were not able to in- 
 terpret the archaical remains of their own 
 language. I might add also that the pre- 
 servation of a work of the nature of ^'The 
 Book of IS'abathsean Agriculture," during 
 two or three thousand years, is extremely 
 improbable. Such a preservation may be 
 credited, in the case of scriptui^al writings, 
 when they have become classical, but not in 
 that of an ordinary work, written in a care- 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 29 
 
 less, diffuse, bald style, full of minute dis- 
 cussions and extraneous matter. Books of 
 this kind do not remain intact during many 
 generations of copyists. They grow with 
 the times ; or, to speak more correctly, they 
 have only a limited fame, and are replaced 
 by other treatises which are found more 
 suitable, or believed to be more complete. 
 
 This is but a prejudicial view of the case ; 
 it is from the examination of the book it- 
 self that one must expect more convincing 
 arguments. It will be confessed, however, 
 that the opinion which attributes such re- 
 mote antiquity to '^ The Book of ^N'abathsean 
 Agricultiu-e " must be abandoned, if I suc- 
 ceed in proving that its author imderstood 
 Greek science, the institutions of more ad- 
 vanced [achimedienne) Persia, and the Jewish 
 traditions in their apocryphal and legendary 
 form. Now these three points I trust to be 
 able to prove. 
 
 Prof. Chwolson acknowledges that a great 
 number of Greek words occur in the trans- 
 lation of Ibn Wahshiya, especially when 
 
30 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 it treats of the nomenclature of plants ; ^ but 
 he meets the difficulties which this peculi- 
 arity presents, difficulties Avliich Prof. Meyer 
 has already insisted on, with a general plea 
 of rejection. He thinks that it is Ibn Wah- 
 shiya who has substituted the names in use 
 in his o^Ti time for JSTabathsean names, and 
 that he has added to them their various 
 synonymes. That is certmnly by no means 
 impossible. It must be remembered, how- 
 ever, that Ibn "Wahshiya is neither a 
 botanist nor an agronomist by profession. 
 He is a translator, proud of the ancient 
 literary glory of his race, and who translates 
 alike every ISTabathsean work which comes 
 to hand. What would be natural in an 
 agronomist, pre-occupied with the practical 
 utility of his book, cannot be attributed to 
 him. He never appears to endeavour to 
 accommodate his translation to the exigency 
 of his age, as is the usual case in an ordi- 
 nary work. The Greek names given by Ibn 
 Wahshiya, moreover, are not the vulgar, but 
 
 1 Pp. 81, 82. 
 
EABYLOXIAX LITERATURE. 31 
 
 scientific names, which those alone could be 
 acquainted with who were accustomed to 
 handle those polyglot "Dioscorides" of which 
 we possess copies. The Greek names of 
 plants given by Ibn Wahshiya are found 
 in the Syriac glossaries of Bar-Ali and of 
 Bar-Bahlul, who probably had taken them 
 from books analogous to the one translated 
 by Ibn Wahshiya. 
 
 In all that treats of the names of to^yiis 
 and cities, M. Quatremere affirms that he 
 has not found in '^ The Book of ^abathaean 
 Agriculture" the name of any of the Greek 
 cities of the East. Dr. Chwolson^ confesses 
 that he has discovered one, — that of Antioch 
 [AnthaJcia)\ but he thinks, according to his 
 usual method, that it is only a modern name 
 which Ibn "Wahshiya has substituted for one 
 more ancient : nothing can be more gratuit- 
 ous. The Orientals have never made the 
 name of AnthaJcia respond to any city but 
 that founded by Seleucus Mcator; and we 
 know, in the most precise manner, that 
 
 1 Paffe 36. 
 
32 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 when Seleuciis founded his capital on the 
 banks of the Orontes, he only found an 
 insignificant place there, whose name even 
 has not descended to us.^ 
 
 Proofs stronger still establish satisfac- 
 torily, in my opinion, the fact that the 
 author of "The Book of IS^abathsean Agri- 
 culture" had acquaintance with the writings 
 of the Greeks. In various passages of " The 
 Book of JSTabathaean Agriculture," which 
 seem to have escaped the attention of M. 
 Quatremere, there are allusions to the 
 Yunanis, and it is well known that it is by 
 that name that the Arabs designate the 
 ancient Greeks, in distinction to the Eoumis, 
 or modern Greeks. Dr. Chwolson gives a 
 very unsatisfactory explanation of this diffi- 
 culty. Starting from the supposition that 
 the Hellenic race arrived in Asia Minor at 
 a very remote period, he deduces from this 
 supposed fact, that from the year 2500 be- 
 fore Cluist — it will be seen presently that 
 
 ^ See Pausanias Damasus, Uepl 'Avrioxda^, in Miiller's "Frag- 
 nienta Historite Gra^cse," vol. iv. p. 467 tf. 
 
BABYLONIAIS' LITERATURE. 33 
 
 M. Cliwolson needs that especial date — the 
 lonians may have had dealings with the 
 Babylonians.^ Bnt the passages, where there 
 is mention of the Yunanis, are qnite at 
 variance with such an explanation. The sub- 
 ject there is, in fact, that the Grreeks were 
 a learned nation, possessing a cultivated 
 literature. Such passages do not carry us, 
 I maintain, to the days of the Heraclituses 
 and the Thales', who wrote scarcely any- 
 thing, and whose writings had but little 
 publicity ; but to an epoch when the 
 works of the Greek authors were spread 
 throughout the East. In the chapter 
 on the mallow,^ the author, speaking of 
 the properties of the plant and its uses 
 in medicine, says that it belongs to cold 
 plants, and adds : ^' The Greeks (^^.JU^') are 
 of another opinion ; they think that this 
 plant is moderately warm, that it alleviates 
 pain, and that it softens hard tumours." 
 Dr. Chwolson makes vain efforts to prove 
 that we should not conclude from this that 
 
 1 Page 86. 2 p^ge 88. 
 
34 babylonia:n" literature. 
 
 the Greeks had a scientific system of medi- 
 cine at the time when '^ The Agricultiu'e " 
 was composed. Greece, he observes, might 
 very well have had a popular pharmacopoeia 
 and such receipts as are found in the heroic 
 age, 1500 years before Christ. Doubtless ; 
 but such popular pharmacopoeias are not 
 precisely such as are quoted in scientific 
 books, and form a school. It is evident 
 that it here treats of a written Botany, and 
 posterior to Theophrastus. In the chapter 
 on garlic, the author himself says : ^ ^'Con- 
 cerning this plant, the Chaldseans tell manj^ 
 tales, in some of which the Greeks agree 
 with them." Elsewhere the author exults 
 in the coincidence which exists between the 
 opinions of the Greeks and the Chaldeeans 
 as regards the influence of the moon on 
 plants.^ It is not clear that he treats here 
 of a written, regular science no less of the 
 Greeks than of the Chaldseans. 
 
 But the most striking passage in ''The 
 Book of l^abathsean Agriculture" relating 
 
 1 Pp. 88, 89. 2 Pp. 89-91. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 35 
 
 to the Greeks is this. Concerning a plant 
 called huMsid^^ the author adds : ^' This 
 plant was brought to the climate of Babylon 
 from the country of Ephesus, a city of the 
 Greeks." It is astonishing that Dr. Chwol- 
 son was not struck by such a passage, 
 and that he has ventured to maintain that 
 Ephesus could haye been mentioned in a 
 Babylonian document of the 12th century 
 before Christ. It is of little importance 
 whether Ephesus might have existed before 
 that epoch, and even before the colony of 
 Androcles, the son of Codrus, to whom its 
 origin is ordinarily attributed. Criticism 
 which entrenches itself obstinately in pos- 
 sibilities, careless of thus accumulating 
 against itself improbabilities, is undoubtedly 
 irrefutable ; but it is no longer criticism. 
 The difficulty which results to Dr. Chwol- 
 son by these allusions to the Greeks, which 
 are foimd in ^^ The IS'abathsean Agriculture," 
 becomes the more grave, from the fact, 
 that the Greeks are mentioned not only 
 
 1 P^e89. 
 
36 BABYLONIAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 by Kuthami, but by one of tlie authors 
 whom he quotes, Masi the Suranian. Ac- 
 cording to Dr. Chwolson's theory, Masi 
 cannot have lived later than two thousand 
 years before Christ.^ One is natui'ally curi- 
 ous to know at what day the Greeks could 
 have shewn themselves to the eyes of a 
 Babylonian at so remote a period. Here is 
 the passage : ""What I say to thee, Tamithri,^ 
 I say also to thy neighbours, the lonians 
 [Yundnis)^ whom, except for the great aver- 
 sion that I have to abuse, I should not 
 hesitate to call mere brutes, although ex- 
 cellent men have appeared among them ; 
 they outbid one another in vaunting up 
 themselves as to be preferred to the natives 
 of Babylon.''^ ^'Twenty years ago," says 
 
 ^ Page 92. Besides, p. 173, Dr. Chwolsoii speaks of 2,500 
 years. 
 
 2 The treatise of Masi, from wliicli this passage is extracted, was, 
 according to Dr. Chwolson, addi-essed to TSimithri, the Canaanite, 
 and turns upon the literary precedence of the Canaauites and Chal- 
 daeans. I cannot pass hy the improbability which a belief in the 
 high antiquity of such writings calls foi-th. 
 
 3 Page 91, note. ilS'Aj^ Jy^ 4:0^*^ V.^-^ (^^^ J^J 
 
 r 
 
 Jl li^aI Lv^l C^J^ J ^:t\J y ^. JJl ^^l3jJ' 
 
BABYLO:^fIAN LITERATURE. 37 
 
 Dr. Chwolson, ^^wlieii negative criticism was 
 still at its height, it would no doubt have 
 been concluded from this passage that 
 Masi lived after Alexander ; but now no 
 one would do so." I confess that I am 
 strongly tempted to draw the conclusion 
 which Prof. Chwolson rejects so disdain- 
 fully. How is it possible to place at an 
 ante-historical date a passage which betrays 
 so plainly that national rivalry, which was 
 the characteristic trait of the epoch of the 
 Seleucides, and which assuredly did not 
 exist before the Median war ; that is, earlier 
 than the fifth century before Christ ? 
 
 The passages v,^here the Yunanis are ex- 
 pressly mentioned are not the only ones 
 which prove that Kuthami had felt the 
 influence of the Greeks. There are other 
 passages more embarrassing still to scholars 
 who attribute to ^^ The I^abatheean Agricul- 
 ture" a remote antiquity. In the chapter 
 
38 BABYLONIAN LITEEATUEE. 
 
 which treats of the cultivation of beans, 
 these words occur : '^ This is why Ar- 
 misa (L^^J) {Hermes) and Aghathadimun 
 ( . ,y^i jIj U \ ) {Aga tJiodcemon ^) have forbidden 
 persons of their country the use of fish and 
 beans, and have strongly insisted on this 
 prohibition."^ Here Dr. Chwolson admits 
 the difficulty, and tries various solutions of 
 it ; but all equally unsatisfactory. He who 
 rebutted so energetically elsewhere, in the 
 case of the composition of ^' The Book of 
 Nabathsean Agriculture,'- all idea of succes- 
 sive compilation, has recourse this time to 
 the hypothesis of an interpolation. Then, 
 falling back on this concession, he volunteers 
 a high antiquity to the philosophical and 
 religious part of Hermes and Agathodoemon, 
 though it is obvious that these are I^eo- 
 Platonic fictions, adopted, among others, by 
 the Sabians or Modern Babylonians.^ Finally, 
 
 1 For the part assigned to Agathodfemon in Arabian traditions, 
 •which are but an echo of Sabian fables, see Ibn-Abi-Oceibia, in 
 the " J ournal Asiatique," August- September, 1854, p. 186, in Dr. 
 Sanguinetti's translation. 
 
 2 Pp. 93, 94. 
 
 •■^ Ibn-Abi-Oceibia says that the Xabathseans looked upon Ilermcs 
 
BABYLOXIAN LITERATURE. 39 
 
 lie attempts to deny the identity of Armisa 
 and Hermes. Armisa was a sage of Ba- 
 bylon ; and, indeed, Armisa is represented 
 in many Sabian traditions as a Cbaldsean 
 philosopher. Bnt nothing can be deduced 
 from that circumstance. The Hermesian 
 books were accepted by all the East, and at 
 Babylon as if their second country ; it was 
 from them that the Arabs derived all their 
 traditions respecting Hermes; and this ex- 
 plains the singular transfer by means of 
 
 Trismegister as their countrymen ("Joui-nal Asiatique," March- 
 April, 1854, p. 263). Now the works attributed by Ibn-Abi- 
 Oceibia to this Hermes are astrological. Besides, Ibn-Abi-Oceibia 
 connects Hermes Trismegister with the Babylonians and the Har- 
 ranians {ibid. August-Sept. 1854, pp. 185, 187, 189, 191, 192). I 
 find in the Eitab thabacat al-umen of Said (p. 20, 21 of M. 
 Schefer's manuscript) the following passage, where Hermes is 
 represented as a modern Babylonian sage, contemporary with 
 Socrates, and devoting his life to revising and correcting the 
 ■writings of his predecessors : 
 
 This is in accordance with various legends in which Hermes is con- 
 nected with Babylon. Hermes appears agaia in the chapter on 
 
 Egypt. 
 
40 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Avhicli a crowd of the traits of Greek m}^- 
 thology are applied to Babylon by Arabian 
 writers. If the name of Hermes appears 
 here under a diiferent form from that in 
 which it is found in other Arabian authors 
 (^^-.<yb), it should be remembered that nearly 
 all the proper names in ''The Eook of ISTa- 
 bathaean Agriculture " have the emphasised 
 termination a. Ibn-Abi-Oceibia^ wishing to 
 describe the pronunciation of this word, 
 writes it thus, ^Ju-.-^Jl } 
 
 I have no doubt that many of the ex- 
 traordinary names, which " The Book of 
 Nabathaean Agriculture" presents to us, 
 might be traced, in the same manner, to 
 Greek forms, if we had their true reading. 
 Tamithri (^^^.i^lir) who figures also in Ibn-el- 
 Awwam's writings, is, in the opinion of 
 both Banqueri and Wenrich, identical with 
 Demetrius.^ I believe, also, that Askolabita 
 or Asbulubita, to whom is assigned the part of 
 
 ^ "Journal Asiatique," August-Sept. 1854, p. 95. 
 2 Wenrich, De Auct. Grmc. vers. p. 93. Banqueri, Libro de 
 Ayricidtura, t. 1, p. 61 of the introduction, 9, etc. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 41 
 
 founder of a religion and benefactor of man- 
 kind, is ^Aa-Kkyi-miog (^sculapius)/ or rather 
 * K(rK'Ky\7ri6L^yi^ . The part which is assigned 
 to Asclepius in the apocr5rphal Hermesian 
 legends is well known. Ibn-Abi-Oceibia^ takes 
 a singular mythology of ^sculapius from a 
 Syriac work; in another place ^ he connects 
 him expressly with Babylon. It is strange 
 that Dr. Chwolson attaches any importance 
 to such chimeras. He even supposes that 
 his Askolabita* must be considered as the 
 prototype of the Asklepios of the Greeks. 
 In the same ephemeral spirit he asks in 
 another place ^ whether Asklepios and Hermes 
 were not, in reality, ancient sages deified 
 after their death.® 
 
 1 The termination ^•*-' causes very diverse readings. I think 
 that here is to be seen a schin, remains of the final os. M. Quatre- 
 mere reads it Kalousha. 
 
 ■- "Journal Asiatique," August-Sept. 1854, p. 181. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 185. 4 Page 19. s p^gg 96. 
 
 6 Ibn Wahshiya is often quoted as having translated the Book 
 on Agricultui-e of Democrates or Democrites, surnamed' ^, J^ 
 
 (Herbelot, Bibl. Orientale, at the word Bemocratis ; Wenrich, Be 
 Auct. Grcec. vers. p. 92, 93 ; Larsow, Be Bialect Syr. reliquus, 
 p. 12, note). But the conclusions which are attempted to be drawn 
 fi'om this fall to the ground, since the ascribing to Ibn Wahshiya 
 
42 BABYLOXIAiS^ LITERATURE. 
 
 Kuthdini, however, does not only make 
 allusions to Greece. I find also in ^^ The 
 Book of Xabathsean Agriculture" e\ddent 
 traces of Persian influence. The author 
 speaks of a people of Pehleyis (^jJl^\); he 
 describes the Pehleyian language as a Per- 
 sian dialect.^ Dr. Chwolson gets out of this 
 difficulty by remarking that nothing posi- 
 tive is kno^vn as to the Pehlevian. But, 
 most assuredly,^ sufficient is known to prove 
 that this language did not exist fourteen 
 centuries before Christ. Prof. Chwolson 
 settles the matter by affecting to believe 
 that the passage cited is an interpolation. 
 I have already shown how imsatisfactory 
 is this style of defence, especially when it 
 is repeated and applied to every similar 
 characteristic passage. The progress which 
 criticism has effected during the last half 
 century consists precisely in discarding, in 
 the majority of cases, those very convenient 
 
 of the translation of that work, rests on an ciTor of Herbelot, who 
 seems to have confounded the Avork of Kuth^mi Avith that of Ibn- 
 el-Awwara. (See the article Vahashiah.) 
 ' Taffc 40. 
 
BAYBLOXIAN LITERATURE. 43 
 
 solutionSj AYhich would explain.eyery puzzling 
 passage in ancient writings by characterising 
 them as interpolations : it is more willing 
 to admit of the hypothesis of successive re- 
 touching and remodelling carried on from 
 age to age. It is certain that the remains 
 of early antiquity have been altered much 
 oftener in this way than by the frauds of 
 copyists — copyists in all ages have pro- 
 ceeded more machanically. 
 
 But why dwell further on this passage, 
 when Dr. Chwolson admits that the author 
 of ^^ The Book of ISTabathsean Agriculture" 
 speaks in many places of the PersianSj their 
 religion, theii' philosophy, and their science ; 
 and always with an expression of the 
 greatest respect.^ How is it possible to 
 doubt that he was acquainted with the 
 doctrines of the Zend Avesta, when he 
 speaks of the plant which the ^^Magi term 
 iro7n^^^ (^yb), calling this plant thus by the 
 most modern form of its name. Dr. Chwolson 
 
 1 Page 41. 
 
 2 See Anquetil-Duperron, Zivres Sacres de Zoroaster, Index, at 
 the word Horn, 2. 
 
44 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 explains away the objection whicli arises out 
 of these passages in the same way as he does 
 those which result from the mention of Ephe- 
 sus and Hermes. "The Iranians," he says, 
 '^ and their institutions, existed full thirteen 
 centuries before Christ ; the Babylonians were, 
 therefore, probably acquainted with them." 
 In the first place, it is very doubtful 
 whether the Zend institutions did exist at 
 so remote a period ; but, waiving that ob- 
 scure point, I boldly assert that these insti- 
 tutions, confined for centuries to Bactria, 
 could not have exercised any infiuence in 
 Babylonia before Cyrus. Then let us add, 
 that the Persian priests are called Magi in 
 "The I^abathoean Agriculture;" and that 
 it is certain that there is no trace of such 
 a word in the Zend Avesta, the priests there 
 being termed athravo^ and that the name 
 of Magi does not appear to have been given 
 to the Zoroastrian priests till after the esta- 
 blishment of the Persians at Babylon.^ I 
 do not insist much on this last point ; 
 
 ' I reserve the discxissiou of tliis point for a future essay. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 45 
 
 for Dr. Cbwolson might reply that the term 
 (jM^* {magi) may have replaced a more an- 
 cient title, in this version of Ibn Wahshiya. 
 JN'eyertheless it must be confessed that, in 
 general, Magi-ism, or the Magian faith, 
 as it is found in Xuthami, bears a much 
 stronger resemblance to apocryphal Parsee- 
 ism, altered by the Hostanes and the Astram- 
 psyches, than the old Zoroasterism of the 
 Zend writings. Besides, there is a word, 
 given as the title of an agricultural work 
 composed by one of the most ancient sages 
 of Babylon, of which it seems to me that 
 its Pehlevian origin cannot be mistaken ; it 
 is the word jLiLij. It is well kno^^Ti that 
 all Persian words ending in h are termi- 
 nated in Pehlevian by k} It is also certain 
 that the word LX^^ '^ rules, directions," is 
 not Arabic.^ It appears, then, very probable 
 
 1 See "Hist. gen. des Langues Semitic," 1. iii., chap. 4, sec. 1. 
 
 2 Sacy Chrest. Arab. t. ii. p. 160 ff., 184 ff. It is very remarkal3le 
 that the word yasa, from which the Arabic philologists deiive it, 
 and which they consider Tartar, an error, I believe, as the v/ord 
 iL:Lwj is found in Arabian authors much anterior to the Tartar 
 influence, had also the form ifasaJc. 
 
46 BABYLONIAN LITERAXrEE. 
 
 that j-il:-^ is only the Pehlevian form of 
 ^L-;. The word L:L^ has been used as a 
 title to a host of moral treatises, or ^orks 
 on ordinary and common subjects. 
 
 The Greeks and Persians are not the 
 only foreign nations mentioned by Kuthami. 
 He speaks also of the Indians and the 
 Egyptians.^ I do not lay so much stress 
 on his allusion to the Eg^'ptians, who may 
 have had organized sciences at the remote 
 period ^ to which Dr. Chwolson refers. But 
 it may be safely asserted that this was not 
 the case mth the Indians. The Brahman 
 race were, at that time, scarcely established 
 in the valley of the Ganges. In many 
 widely differing ways we arrive at the con- 
 clusion that positive science is of modern 
 introduction into Brahman India, and that 
 it has been introduced from abroad. 
 
 The JcAVS are only once named in '^ The 
 Book of Nabathsean Agriculture," and I 
 
 1 Page 90.~ 
 
 2 For the same reason, I do not advert to the mention of 
 China, p. 81. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 47 
 
 freely admit, with Dr. Chwolson, that the 
 passage where they are mentioned is an in- 
 terpolation of Ibn "Wahshiya.^ But, if their 
 name does not appear in the work of Kuthami, 
 it is impossible not to perceive their influ- 
 ence. Can it be doubted after haying read 
 the passage which is here giyen : ^ JjU Jli' ^li 
 
 ilft^Ls'li tU^jj ^ bw-;! * Uwj' 1^ J^ l.*w; j^iJl ^j\ JJ 
 
 Previous to these words, the text treats of 
 a puerile contest as to the name of a certain 
 plant, as to which the Assyrians of the 
 North and the Chaldseans or Babylonians 
 were not agreed ; the author, always full of 
 
 1 Page 43, note. ^ Page 44, note. 
 
48 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 his ideas of disputed precedence, then pro- 
 ceeds to say : 
 
 ^' There are persons who believe that the 
 Chaldseans began the attack on the Assyrians ; 
 but it is not so. The Assyrians, in fact, are 
 not of the race of Adam, while the Chaldseans 
 are his descendants. Thus, the language of 
 the Assyrians, and the names by which they 
 call different objects, cannot be older than 
 Adam, who first gave to everything its name, 
 and was the first who established and or- 
 ganized language itself. Therefore it is not 
 the Chaldseans whom the Assyrians oppose, 
 but Adam ; for Adam named this plant 
 aJcerma'i. Now, it is universally acknow- 
 ledged that what Adam ordained is true 
 and wise ; and what others have ordained 
 is without foundation. Then, too, the As- 
 syrians are the children of Shabrikan the 
 First, who is neither comparable nor equal 
 to Adam, and who cannot even come near 
 to him." 
 
 Now, is it possible not to sec the allusion 
 made here to what is related in Genesis, 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 49 
 
 chap. ii. V. 19 : ^^ God formed every beast 
 of the fieldj and eyery fowl of the air, and 
 brought them nnto Adam, to see what he 
 would call them, and whatsoever Adam called 
 every living creature, that was the name 
 thereof. '^ Now Dr. Chwolson, who has not 
 failed to perceive this coincidence,^ does not 
 accept the conclusion, but contents himself 
 with saying that he shall afterwards explain 
 what is here said of Adam, by quoting 
 another more elaborate {ansfuhrlicliere) pas- 
 sage on the subject. Certainly such a pas- 
 sage ought to have been given. I am no 
 less surprised to see that Prof. Chwolson 
 quotes, without the slightest hesitation, 
 without perceiving that it furnishes a seri- 
 ous objection to his own theory, another pas- 
 
 sage :' ^^ 
 
 I3lij ^j1 .xJj ^ ^^jrul 
 
 J^ er* ^j 
 
 J- 
 
 UJ. 
 
 
 c^\ ^,S} 
 
 ^^ i^j^ij ^\ 
 
 ^' 
 
 ' L^.>r^J ^^^ '^J ^^ 
 
 ) ^J^ ^1^ ' 
 
 ^^Ib \^\ 
 
 JL. 
 
 ^^J (^ 
 
 A^ jf^\ ^ L_^Jlcli^J 
 
 
 
 
 V'J'JV 
 
 j^J ^-is 
 
 ^yi^^U^^ijJj 
 
 
 iPp. 
 
 44, 45, note. 
 
 2 Pp. 
 
 49, 60. 
 3 
 
50 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 '^ These two nations (the Canaanites and 
 the Chaldoeans) are descended from two 
 brothers, both sons of Adam, and of the 
 same mother, one of the wives of Adam ; 
 for Adam, according to those skilled in 
 genealogy, had sixty-four children, of whom 
 twenty-two were daughters and forty-two 
 sons. These forty-two sons left eighty heirs. 
 The others had no posterity which has de- 
 scended to our times." In a third passage^ 
 the question is again as to the nations which 
 were the posterity of the children of Adam 
 and as to those which were not descended 
 from them.^ 
 
 This direct form is not the only one under 
 which the Biblical or apocryphal traditions 
 of the Hebrews seem to have found their 
 
 1 Page 61. See Ewald, Jahrbiiclier der Biblischen Wiss. 1857, 
 p. 153. The name of Adam appears to have been known among the 
 Babylonians and the Phoenicians (See Mem. de I'Acad. t. xxiii. 
 2nd part, pp. 267, 268 ; Hippolyti (ut aiunt) Refutationes Iloeresium, 
 Duncker ct Schneidemn), p. 136; but the particulars cited here 
 are evidently Biblical. 
 
 2 In the book of Tenkclush^, which Dr. Chwolson believes much 
 more modern than the Agriculture, but which, in my opinion, is 
 of the same school, Cain, son of Adam, is also made to figure 
 (pp. 142, 143). In the same book, there is mention of the 
 Cherubins {ibid). 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 51 
 
 way into Babylon. The same influence is 
 met mth in a more indirect, but not less 
 unmistakeable form, in other passages of 
 ^^The Book of E'abathsean Agriculture." I 
 have not the least doubt, in fact, that 
 most of the personages, adduced as ancient 
 sages of Babylon, and whose names are 
 strikingly like those of the Hebrew patri- 
 archs, are those very patriarchs themselves. 
 Dr. Chwolson denies it; but his efforts ap- 
 pear to me quite inadequate to disprove this 
 identity, which has so forcibly struck both 
 M. Quatremere^ and Prof. Ewald.^ Let me 
 endeavour to prove that Adam, Seth, 
 Enoch, [N'oah, Abraham, are to be found in 
 ''The Book of IN'abathsean Agriculture," 
 with legends analogous to those which they 
 have in the apocryphal writings of Jews 
 and Christians, and subsequently in those 
 of the Mussulmans. 
 
 One of the ancient sages who fills the 
 
 1 "Memoire siu* les Nabateens," p. 109 ff. "Journal des 
 Savants," Mars, 1857, p. 147. 
 
 2 Jahrbiicher der Biblischen Wissencbaften, 1857, pp. 153, 
 290, 291. 
 
52 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 most important part in ''The Book of Na- 
 bathsean Agriculture " is Adami. Adami 
 was considered as tlie founder of agricul- 
 ture in Chaldaea ; ^ to him are attributed cer- 
 tain books of which Kuthami doubts the 
 authenticity, and which he found altered or 
 interpolated. Kuthami, a zealous monotheist, 
 quotes him among his authorities. We 
 know that many apocryphal writings were 
 attributed to Adam,^ that the Mendaites 
 ascribed their chief book to him, and that 
 the ancient Sabians had books under his 
 name. Our Adami is thus most undoubtedly 
 the Adamas or apocryphal Adam of the 
 Babylonian sects.^ Can there remain any 
 doubt about this identity, when it is seen 
 that Adam bears, in '' The Agricultui-e," 
 the title of y^l^ ^\ Father of Manldnd^^ a 
 title which all the Moslem East gives to 
 Adam.^ 
 
 1 p. 27. 
 
 2 See Herbelot Bibliotlieque Orientale, art. Adam ; Fabricii 
 Codex Pseudopigi-aphus Vet. Test. t. i. p, 1 ff. ; t. ii. p. 1 fF. 
 
 3 See Hippolyti Refutaliones Ilueresium, ind. p. 557. 
 * Page 174. 
 
 5 Dr. Chwolson himself seems to confound, at times, what relates 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 5S 
 
 Ishitha,' the son of Adami, described as a 
 religious legislator, as the founder of astro- 
 logy and of astrolatria, is undeniably Seth. 
 We know that among all the apocryphal 
 legends of the antediluvian patriarchs, that 
 of Seth is the most ancient, and appears 
 already in Josephus.^ Ishitha, according to 
 ^' The Agriculture," had followers called 
 Ishithians ; an organised sect are descended 
 from him, having a sort of high-priest ; and 
 numerous writings were circulated under 
 his name. These Ishithians are very pro- 
 bably the sect of the Sethians, which played 
 an important part in the first centuries of 
 our era.^ All the fables which the Mussul- 
 mans connect with Seth, in looking upon 
 him as the prophet of an age of mankind 
 which they call the age of Seth, come 
 doubtless from the same source. Ibn-Abi- 
 
 to Adami and Adam (pp. 44, 45, note; 49, 50, note; 190). See 
 Banqueri, i. p. 9. 
 
 1 Page 27. ^ Antiquitates, I. ii. 3. 
 
 3 The fheology of the Sethians appears to have been of true 
 Babylonian doctrine, which they sought to blend with Biblical 
 teaching. (See Hippolyti Refutationes Haeresium, edit. Duncker 
 et Schneidewin, p. 198 ff.) 
 
54 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Oceibia ascribes expressly to the Sabians 
 the notion that Seth taught the art of 
 medicine, and that he had received it as 
 an heritage from Adam.^ 
 
 Akhnukha (IrLy^l) or Hamikha (is^^us^f is 
 Enoch.^ Ibn-Abi-Oceibia, drawing from 
 Sabian sources, calls Enoch (^^r^l).* We 
 know the part of ^'inventor" which this 
 patriarch filled of old. The Arabs, also 
 following these Sabian traditions, identify 
 him with Hermes.^ 'No doubt the Baby- 
 Ionian Akhnukha, often quoted in the same 
 line with Armisa, is the legendary Enoch, 
 who rises into such high favour towards 
 the commencement of our era. 
 
 Antiha, the Canaanite (U-yl),^ another of 
 
 1 See Herbelot Bibl. Orient, art. Sheith. We find traces of the 
 Sethians even lower ; see Chwolson's Ssabier, 11. p. 269. 
 
 2 Page 99, note. 
 
 3 Banqueri has noticed, I. p. 9, that Adam, Enoch, etc., are 
 mentioned in every page of Ibn-el-Awwam. 
 
 * "Journal Asiatiquc," August-Sept., 1854, pp. 185, 187. 
 
 5 Ibn-Abi-Oceibia, "Journal Asiatique," August-Sept., 1854, 
 pp. 185, 189. 
 
 s Akhntikha must not be confounded with Anuh^. The or- 
 thography of the two words is different, and in one passage, the 
 two names are quoted as distinct, following one another (p. 62, 
 95, note). 
 
BABYLONIAN LITEEATURE. 55 
 
 the founders, represented as the apostle of 
 monotheism, is undoubtedly Noah. Indeed, 
 a great deluge happened in his time. More- 
 over, Anuha planted the vine, and he is 
 always cited as an authority in speaking of 
 the making of wine.^ 
 
 Finally, Ibrahim, the Canaanite (that is 
 to say of Palestine), is certainly, in spite 
 of what Dr. Chwolson^ says about it, the 
 patriarch Abraham. He is represented in 
 '^The Agriculture" as an apostle of mono- 
 theism, and as having denied the divinity 
 of the sun. Who can fail to recognise in 
 this the rabbinical fable, where Abraham, 
 filling the part of confessor of the faith, 
 holds victorious controversies against 'Nivo.- 
 rod and the idolatrous Chaldseans ? Be- 
 sides,^ Ibrahim, the Canaanite, is an Imam 
 who undertakes long journies to avoid the 
 famine which occurred in the days of the 
 
 1 Page 62, note. See Ewald, Jahrbiicher, 1857, p. 291. Sama, 
 anotlier Babylonian sage, classed with Hanukh^, Adami, etc., in 
 the book of Tenkelusha, appears to me identical with Shem. 
 
 2 Page 43. 
 
 3 See especially Koran, xxxvii. 83 fF ; Ix. 4 fF. 
 
56 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Canaanite king Salbania.^ Then,^ too, lie is 
 brought into connection with I^umruda, and 
 represented as an emigrant from the land 
 of Canaan. Generally speaking, the stories 
 founded on his life correspond perfectly 
 with his legend, as received among the 
 Jews a little before our era. Josephus^ of 
 old, somewhat in an arbitrary manner, iden- 
 tifies Abraham with an ancient Babylonian 
 sage mentioned by Berosus ; the reputation 
 of Abraham as a Chaldeean sage was esta- 
 blished at that period no less than in that 
 of Philo.^ 
 
 As to the part which ^N'umruda plays in 
 ^'The Book of ^abathaean Agriculture,'' as 
 a Canaanite priest,^ and as founder of the 
 Canaanite dynasty at Babylon, it would be 
 presumptuous to say that this idea only has 
 its origin in a plagiarism from the Bible. 
 It is very possible that there might be some 
 
 ^ Page 45 ff. ^ Page 49. ^ Antiquities, I. vii. 2. 
 
 ^ Philonis Jiidoei Opera, edit. Mangey, ii. 13. See Ewald, 
 Geschiclite des Volkes Israel, i. 436, 437 (2nd edition) ; Winer, 
 Biblisthcs Realwa?rterbuch, i. p. 12 (3rd edition). 
 
 5 Page 49. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 57 
 
 national tradition respecting him. IS'imrod, 
 as we shall presently see, was a popular 
 personage in Chaldsea in the first centuries 
 of our era. It is difficult to unravel, amidst 
 the confusion of ideas which then prevailed 
 in the East, the origin of legends so de- 
 nuded of true character, and over which 
 is thrown that general level of mere plati- 
 tude Avhich gives such a singular air of 
 monotony and conventionalism to all the 
 traditions transmitted to us by Arabian 
 writers. 
 
 Certainly, if either of these facts were an 
 isolated one, one might hesitate to draw 
 from it any deduction. But they form alto- 
 gether a mass of evidence which appears to 
 me most solid. One subtle reply may be 
 true, but ten subtle replies cannot be so. 
 I must therefore consider it as an esta- 
 blished fact, that each one of the personages 
 I have enumerated, all of whom are given 
 in ^^The Agriculture" as ancient Babylo- 
 nian sages, is the representative of one of 
 those classes of apocryphal writings of Ba- 
 
 3* 
 
58 BABYLONIAN LITERATTJEE. 
 
 bylonian or Syrian origin, whicli bear the 
 name of a patriarch, and round which are 
 grouped a greater or less number of fol- 
 lowers. ''The Book of ISTabathsean Agri- 
 culture" is of a period when these writings 
 possessed full authority, and this exxDlains 
 why the Jews, who furnished the originals 
 of all these fictions, are not mentioned in 
 the work of Kuthami. The apocryphal tra- 
 ditions of which I am speaking were, in 
 fact, in such general circulation, that they 
 passed at Babylon for Babylonian, in the 
 same manner as the Arabs, who, when re- 
 lating their fables of Edris and Lokman, 
 never acknowledge that they owe them to 
 the Jews, but always seem to forget or ig- 
 nore the fact.^ 
 
 If we look at the general character of 
 ''The Book of Nabathsean Agriculture," in- 
 
 1 It is Dr. Chwolson himself ("Die Ssabier," t. i., 1. i., c. 13) 
 who has most clearly shown how the Jewish pati'iarchs were adopted 
 by the Sabians, the Harranians, and other sects of the East. Dr. 
 Chwolson describes, elsewhere (pp. 186, 187 of his new memoir), 
 a very curious passage of a JcAvish apocryphal tale, fathered on 
 Noah, which has the most complete affinity to those of the Na- 
 bathsean text. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 59 
 
 dependent] y of the peculiarities which have 
 still to be adduced, as much, at least, as it 
 is possible to do, from the extracts of M. 
 Quatremere and Dr. Chwolson,^ we shall 
 find in it all the evidences of lower an- 
 tiquity : — no grandeur of expression; a 
 flimsy method of reasoning, bordering on 
 puerility, in a word, strikingly analogous 
 to that of Arabian authors ; and, above all, 
 that flat and prolix style of those periods of 
 much writing consequent upon an influx 
 of paper or other writing materials ; whilst 
 throughout the whole work the style is 
 essentially personal and reflective, so con- 
 trary to that of works of high antiquit}^ 
 There the author keeps ever in the back- 
 ground, to render more prominent the doc- 
 
 ^ The Paris Manuscript, which had been sent to the Russian 
 minister for Dr. Chwolson's use, was only returned to the Biblio- 
 theque Imperiale when the present memoir was nearly finished. I 
 have not thought it necessary to devote further time to the perusal 
 of this manuscript, already examined by M. Quatremere, and which 
 only could furnish me an imperfect text of one thu'd of the work, 
 of which Dr. Chwolson possesses a complete and collated copy. 
 We must wait for the promised edition of Prof. ChAvolson in 
 order to make a consecutive and comparative examination of the 
 work. 
 
60 BABYLONIAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 trines which he enunciates, and the facts 
 which he relates; here, on the contrary, 
 tlu-oughout the whole composition we find 
 pitiful squabbles, polemics, a class of 
 ^yritings belonging to those forms of litera- 
 ture which mark the decay of human intel- 
 lect. A great number of controyersial books 
 are mentioned in ^'The Book of IS'abathsean 
 Agriculture:'' Masi, the Suranian, at least 
 two thousand years before Christ, according 
 to Dr. Chwolson, addresses an epistle in 
 verse to his son Kenked:^ Tamithii, the 
 Canaanite, writes a book against Anuha, 
 the Canaanite : Dewanai, three thousand 
 years before Cluist, ^\Tote against the 
 Syrian Mardaiad, who gave Syria the 
 preference over Eabylonia; and threatened 
 him with a speedy death if he did not 
 retract this impious heresy : ^ Masi and 
 Tamithri are in scientific correspondence 
 with one another; and in another place are 
 made to write against each other. ^ Kuthami, 
 
 1 Pp. 60, 90. 
 
 2 Page 91, note. The Syrian name Mardaiad ( . . . »ajSD) ap- 
 pears less ancient. ^ pp, go, 90. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 61 
 
 in the name of tlie Chaldseans, disputes their 
 literary priority with the Canaanites on the 
 most futile subjects ; thorough and engross- 
 ing national vanity throws an insipid air 
 over the whole work. I am willing to 
 admit that this disease is a very old one in 
 the world ; but it betrays itself, with art- 
 lessnesSj in truly ancient works ; while here 
 it is absurdly paraded, as in Sanchoniathon 
 and other writings of this intermediate age, 
 when the East was brought into contact 
 with Greece. ^' The Book of Nabathaean 
 Agriculture " thus appears to me to be im- 
 bued with all the blemishes which afflicted 
 the human intellect towards the third and 
 fourth centuries : charlatanism, astrology, 
 sorcery, and a taste for the apocryphal. 
 It is very far removed from Greek science 
 of the period of Alexander, so free from 
 all superstition, so fixed in method, so 
 infinitely beyond all those idle chimeras 
 which afterwards led astray and retarded 
 the scientific progress of the mind for 
 nearly sixteen centuries. 
 
62 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 I leave the examination of tlie scientific 
 theories of ^^ The Book of l^abathsean Agri- 
 culture" to those who are familiar with the 
 history of the natural sciences. Such an 
 examination will not be possible till the 
 work of Kuthami is published in its en- 
 tiret}^ I shall only make one observation 
 on this head : the classification of plants 
 into cold and warm occurs incessantly in 
 ^^The Book of IN'abathgean Agricultm^e." ^ 
 It is kno^vn that this classification is later 
 than Theophrastus, who, in that general 
 theory, lays bare one basis of Greek Botany.^ 
 I shall only point out to astronomical 
 scholars two passages^ where there are allu- 
 sions to the division of the zodiac into 
 twelve signs, and to the seven planets. The 
 philosophy of Kuthami, indeed, is not of a 
 character to bespeak great antiquity for the 
 work in Avhich it is found. This philosophy 
 is a kind of monotheism, which induces the 
 author to repudiate the established creeds of 
 
 1 Page 88. 2 Theophrasti Uistoria Plantarum, I. ii. 
 
 ' Pp. 51, 53, note. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 63 
 
 his time, and vigorously to attack idolatry. 
 I am perfectly aware that professions of a 
 more theistic tendency were common among 
 the Shemetic nations ; but it would certainly 
 not be at Babylon where Shemetism, ^o to 
 say, was of so mingled a character, that one 
 would most expect to find it. But whenever 
 these professions of faith occur in remote 
 antiquity, it is never in the polemical, re- 
 flective, and systematic forms which they 
 assume in ^'The Book of IN'abatheean Agri- 
 culture." Prof. Ewald is right in believing 
 that such passages bespeak the full develop- 
 ment of a monotheistical religion.^ The kind 
 of incredulity towards the received religion 
 which peeps out in Kuthami and several of 
 his countrymen, and the atheism of which 
 some traces are perceptible in his writings, 
 point to the works of Berosus and San- 
 choniathon, and belong to the epoch of the 
 Seleucides. It is well known that the re- 
 ligious creeds in Babylon were much shaken 
 at that period, and that many persons 
 
 1 Pao^e 100. 
 
64 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 affected a sort of materialism and impiety, 
 in the belief that by so doing they were 
 following Grecian style and manner.^ 
 
 1 I think that the Arabian legend of Empedocles, and the mate- 
 rialist \#itiugs which are ascribed to him are of Babylonian origin, 
 and belong to this movement. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 65 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 The author of '' The Book of ISTabathseapi 
 Agriculture" was acquainted with Greek 
 science; an echo of the Bible, or at the 
 very least, of Jewish belief, is found in his 
 writings ; he allows full authority to the 
 apocryphal writings ascribed to Hebrew 
 patriarchs ; he believes in those half-trickish 
 writings which pretended to represent the 
 science of the Indians, Egyptians, and Per- 
 sians, in the first centuries of our era ; and 
 he admits Hermes and Agathedsemon 
 amongst Babylonian sages. The date of 
 the ^'ISTabathsean Agriculture," at least a 
 parte ante is from these facts sufficiently 
 determined. It remains now to be seen 
 whether we do not possess other works, the 
 bringing of which into juxtaposition may 
 
66 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 assist us in fixing yet more precisely tlie 
 character of the singular work which en- 
 gages our attention. 
 
 It is Dr. Chwolson himself who shall fur- 
 nish the means of our doing so. One of 
 Dr. Chwolson's merits indeed is to have 
 drawn attention to the fact that ''The Book 
 of K'abatheean Agricultui^e " is not the only 
 work of its kind/ and that we possess three 
 other works of the same nature, all trans- 
 lated by Ibn Wahshiya. The first of these 
 books, the *^a^\ l^[^ or ^' Book of Poisons /' 
 is composed of three works, which accord- 
 ing to Dr. Chwolson, have been blended 
 together by Ibn Wahshiya. The authors 
 of the three works are Suhab-Sath, Yar- 
 buka, and Eewatha ; Suhab-Sath is more 
 ancient than Yarbuka, and Yarbuka is 
 quoted in '' The Book of ^N'abathsean Agri- 
 culture." All the peculiarities, therefore, 
 which denote Yarbuka to be an author of 
 
 ^ M. Weyers had preriously given this bihliographical infor- 
 mation most fully. (" Specimen eriticum exhibens locos Ibn 
 Khacanis," Lugd. Bat,, 1831, pp. 100, 101, note. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 67 
 
 very moderate antiquity, must also destroy 
 tlie pretensions which are raised with regard 
 to the name of Kuthami. Now numberless 
 traits prove that Yarbuka is a Chaldsean of 
 comparatively modern times. He speaks of 
 the city of Kazvin, which appears to have 
 been founded in the time of the Sassinides ;^ 
 
 ^ M. Barbier de Meynard has kindly communicated to me the 
 following information on this subject : " The accounts furnished by 
 Mahometan chroniclers as to the origin of Kaz'V'in, will not allow 
 our assigning a date to this city anterior to the Chi'istian era. 
 The national vanity of the Persians, we know, neglects no occasion 
 of placing the founding of their old capital cities in the obscurity 
 of primitive ages. Their historians have adopted a naive form on 
 this point, which constitutes at once the disorder and the vitality 
 of their memorials. They attribute the foundation of such towns 
 as Balkh, Ehages, Susa, etc., to the m^-thical kings Taomiu-s and 
 Houchgen of the fabulous dynasty of the Pichdadiens. The 
 silence which they preserve as to Kazvin has, therefore, a sig- 
 nificance which criticism cannot ignore. A very popular cos- 
 mographer in the East, Hamd- Allah, of Kazvin, has compiled a 
 sketch of his native city, for which he has consulted local legends 
 no less than the writings of his predecessors. Among the records 
 that he brings forward, one only quotes Shahpur, son of Ardechir 
 (Sapor I.), as the founder of a little town named Shadpur, which 
 was the cradle of Kazvin. Hamza of Ispahan names Behram I., 
 without resting his assertion on any proof. On the contrary, 
 Shahpur Zul-Aktaf (Sapor II.) is almost universally considered as 
 the founder of this city. That prince, wishing to subdue his 
 warlike neighbours, before attacking the Roman empire, con- 
 structed a fortified town, about A.D. 330, a sort of outpost des- 
 tined to hold the hordes of Deilem in awe. The ruins, of which 
 {Hamd-AUah) Kazvini has not ventured to fix the date, have 
 
68 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 he quotes a certain Babekai as an ancient 
 Babylonian sage. The science of '' The 
 Book of Poisons " is imbued with charla- 
 tanism ; sorcery abounds in its pages ; — we 
 feel that these are the fruits of an art in its 
 decay, which, no longer sustained by the 
 traditions of true science, degenerates into 
 superstition. Yerbiage, trivial personalities, 
 so unlike the style of ancient writers, are 
 here even more rife than in the work of 
 Kuthami. 
 
 We have, then, a work, anterior to ^^ The 
 Book of IS'abathsean Agriculture," which 
 throughout presents evident marks of 
 modern origin. But another l^abathaean 
 work, also translated by Ibn "Wahshiya, 
 gives rise to yet more important deductions. 
 This work is entitled Jl^yiJl J^Ul li,^^ i^^ 
 ^^ The Book of Tenkelusha, the Babylonian, 
 the Kukanian." It is a genethlialogical 
 
 doubtless no other origin. In a word, from such scanty evidence of 
 the Oriental traditions, as well as the absolute silence of the Greek 
 historians, one is justified in coming to the conclusion that the opinion 
 which would assign a remote antiquity to Kazvin only rests on 
 doubtful documents or on merely gratuitous conjectures. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 69 
 
 work, one of those books whichj on going 
 out into the world towards the close of the 
 age of the Seleucides, made the word 
 Chaldsean synonymous with charlatan. 
 Here there can be no doubt. Dr. Chwol- 
 son gives up all idea of putting " The Eook 
 of Tenkelusha in the same rank with those 
 of Yarbuka and Kuthami. He places it in 
 the period of the Arsacides, at the latest 
 towards the first century after Christ.^ 
 Greek influence betrays itself here indeed 
 in an unmistakeable manner; a certain 
 (^jl^lk-^1 is cited in this work, a name in 
 which one may trace Aristohulus^ and which 
 in any case, is certainly that of a Greek. 
 
 I shall prove, presently, that the work 
 of Tenkelusha is not alone known to us 
 through the translation of Ibn Wahshiya, 
 and that the Greeks have often quoted it. 
 Let it suffice for the present, that Dr. 
 Chwolson recognizes that Tenkelusha is a 
 Chaldaean of the lower period. How is it 
 that Prof. Chwolson has not perceived 
 
 1 R 136 flf. 
 
70 BABYLONIAN LITERATIJRE. 
 
 the important deductions which follow this 
 admission ? The work of Tenkelusha, by Dr. 
 Chwolson's own confession, must be posterior 
 by fifteen centuries to the "Agriculture," 
 and " The Book of Poisons." There should, 
 therefore, be a marked difference between 
 the book of Kuthami (? Tenkelusha) and 
 these two works ; but there is scarcely 
 any. The work of Tenkelusha is exactly 
 of the same physiognomy as those of Ku- 
 thami and Yarbuka. There is similar 
 science ; a similar state of religion ; the 
 same celebrities ; the same authorities ; ^ 
 similar apocryphal traditions ; and, in one 
 word, it is of the same school. Tenke- 
 lusha, like the ancient sages of " The Book 
 of I^abathsean Agriculture," is surrounded 
 by fabulous legends, mingled with the old 
 mythology of the country.^ The state of 
 prosperity and political independence, that 
 flourishing cultivation,^ that rich and varied 
 literature, that art so fully developed, 
 which induces M. Quatremere to fix the 
 
 1 Pp. 99, 136, 156 ff. 2 P. 132. 3 Pp. 150, 150 ff. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 71 
 
 publication of ^'The Nabathsean Agricul- 
 ture " in the times of IN'ebucliadnezzar, is 
 met again feature for feature in the Arsa- 
 cidan or Sassinidan book of Tenkelusha. 
 Can it be admitted that in fifteen, or even 
 in eight centuries (to confine ourselves to 
 the calculation adopted by our deceased 
 brother, M. Quatremere, nothing should 
 have been altered in Babylon, and that 
 two works composed at such a long interval 
 should evince so striking a resemblance ? 
 A deduction of the same kind, and decisive, 
 may be drawn from the very title of the 
 work. The author, after the epithet ^J^*y^, 
 puts that of <jl^yl^. Dr. Chwolson considers 
 that this epithet designates a School ; ^ and 
 I will not argue the point with him. But 
 Kuthami too assumes the title of ci^yjl^. 
 Yarbuka, much more ancient, according to 
 Prof. Chwolson, also bears the same epithet 
 of (Jljjyil^. Can any one conceive it probable 
 that the same school should have continued 
 for two thousand years, and that, by some 
 
 1 p. 31 flf. 
 
72 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 extraordinary accident, the only three Ba- 
 bylonian writers, whose works have come 
 down to us, should, at such immense inter- 
 vals, have been attached to the same insti- 
 tution ? 
 
 The fourth ISTabathsean Avork, entitled ^^-^ 
 ^^\j ^^^,.^\j\j^\ which sets forth the opinions 
 of the pretended Eabylonian sages, Adami, 
 Ankebutha, and Askolabita, on the artificial 
 production of living beings, appears anterior, 
 at least in point of ideas, to '' The Book of 
 IS'abathsean Agriculture,-' since Kuthami 
 constantly appeals to the principles which 
 are there developed J IN'ow it is very diffi- 
 cult to allow that this novel composition 
 belongs to high antiquity. The science 
 which it contains, is that which we find in 
 Berosus and Sanchoniathon ; a sort of athe- 
 ism, professing to explain the formation of 
 beings after a materialist fashion, and with- 
 out the intervention of the Godhead. This 
 idea appears to have been one of the funda- 
 mental principles of Babylonian science. 
 
 1 p. 165 ff. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 73 
 
 Can one see in it anytliing but a plagiarism 
 from the atomist theories of the Greeks? 
 Or, must it be admitted that the materialist 
 cosmogonies of the East and of Greece had 
 their rise in Babylon? Surely here, we 
 are permitted to hesitate. But I do not 
 think, that any enlightened reader would 
 entertain any doubts as to the age and 
 character of the scholars referred to, after 
 perusing pages 265 to 268 of Dr. Chwol- 
 son's memoir. In seeing them boldly give 
 rules for the formation at will of plants and 
 animals, affirm manifest impossibilities; in 
 following the relation of one of them, An- 
 kebutha, of the manner by which he had 
 succeeded in forming a man, and kept him 
 alive for a year; in reading the story of 
 another who maintains that he, too, had 
 succeeded in the same experiment, but that 
 the king, for political reasons, had forbid- 
 den him to repeat it ; — one is tempted, I 
 imagine, to class them, not among the 
 ancient founders of real science, but among 
 those more modern charlatans, who imder 
 
 4 
 
74 BABYLOJ^IAN LITERATURE. 
 
 cover of tlie formularies of a worn out 
 science, inundate the world with idle fancies, 
 and contributCj in a deplorable manner, to 
 the abasement and perversion of the human 
 intellect.^ 
 
 One deduction appears to me to arise 
 from the analysis to which we have sub- 
 jected " The Book of IN'abathsean Agricul- 
 ture," and the other IN'abathsean writings, 
 and that is that the School to which they 
 belong, taken altogether, cannot be anterior 
 to the third or fourth century of our era; 
 and that the literary movement which they 
 suggest as earlier, does not allow us to 
 place it before Alexander. I am far from 
 insisting that the Avork of Kuthami could 
 not have preserved to us many most ancient 
 fragments, remodelled in the course of time 
 in all sorts of way. It may be that the art 
 which it teaches in its procedui'e can be 
 traced back to the most ancient epochs of 
 
 • In the Sanscrit Pantchatantra is allusion to similar pseudo- 
 science. See Bcnfey's Pantscliatantra, fuenf Bueclier Indischcr 
 Fabelu, vol. II. p. 332 ff. Translator's Note. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 75 
 
 Assyria/ in the same way that the Cyrimen- 
 sores Latini^ recently published for the first 
 time, have preserved to ns usages and rites, 
 which can only be explained by reference 
 to the Brahmanas of India ; and which be- 
 long, therefore, to the most ancient periods 
 of the Arian race. The question now under 
 discussion is a question of literary history ; 
 such questions, it is well known, are quite 
 apart from historical criticism. In con- 
 fining the problem, within these limits, I 
 venture to believe that the proofs adduced 
 above are conclusive. Peculiarities which 
 mark a modern age, are found in the very 
 heart of "' The Book of J^abathaean Agri- 
 culture ;" the theories of the book, taken 
 altogether, are those of the Hellenic period ; 
 the authors cited by Kiithami, themselves 
 quote the Greeks ; the point to which the 
 book carries us, is that of the Sabiasm of 
 the first centuries of our era. Eefore draw- 
 ing this statement to a close, however, I 
 ought, 1st, to endeavour to account for some 
 
 1 See Berosi Fragmenta, 1. iai*-. 
 
76 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 of the singularities whicli have led Dr. 
 Chwolson to ado23t his theory ; and, 2nd5 to 
 explain how the composition of such writings 
 was possible in Babylon, at the period which 
 I have assigned to them. 
 
 Two strange peculiarities give an un- 
 doubted appearance of solidity to Dr. 
 Chwolson' s hypothesis : the first is the 
 term Canaanite, applied to the reigning 
 dynasty of Babylon at the period of the 
 composition of '^The Book of JSTabatheean 
 Agriculture;" and the second, that there 
 are names of Babylonian kings mentioned 
 in the '^Agriculture" which are not found 
 in any known dynasty. The assertion of 
 Kuthami as to what concerns the Canaanite 
 dynasty, is not so isolated as it appears at 
 first sight. Many Arabian historians and 
 geographers, some of whom are anterior to 
 the Arabic translation of " The Book of Na- 
 bathoean Agriculture," speak of Canaanite 
 kings reigning at Babylon, and l^emrod is 
 expressly mentioned as the founder of this 
 dynasty, which they connect by the most 
 
BABYLONIAIS' LITERATURE. 77 
 
 contradictory and absurd genealogies to 
 Canaan, son of Ham. Nemrod^ is, accord- 
 ing to thenij a title common to all the 
 sovereigns of the IS'abathseans, on Avhich 
 account they have made a plural to it 
 idj\^\ ^ An Ai-abian geography, which M. 
 Quatremere believes to be anonymous, but 
 which M. Eeinaud ^ has shown to be the 
 work of Dimeshki, enumerating the nations 
 comprised under the name of Nabathseans, 
 places among them the Chaldseans, Cas- 
 dseans, Jenbans, Garmseans, Kutaris, and 
 Canaanites.^ M. Quatremere* quotes at the 
 same time a passage from the ^' Agricul- 
 ture" where the Canaanites and the inhabi- 
 tants of Syria are comprehended among the 
 Nabathgeans. The total want of judgment 
 and accuracy which characterises Arabian 
 historians, when treating of ancient history, 
 does not however admit of any safe conclu- 
 sions being drawn from these passages. 
 
 » Chwolson, pp. 67-68 ; Quatremere, pp. 57-58, 62. 
 
 2 Introd. a la Geographie d'Aboulfeda, p. 150 ff. 
 
 3 Quatremere, pp. 62-63. * P. 61. 
 
78 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Besides wliicli, one fact is sure to spoil 
 every hypothesis Avhich might be formed 
 from them ; and that is, that the Hebrew 
 patriarchs Anuha and Ibrahim are called 
 Canaanites, which would seem to make that 
 word synonymous with Israelites. We must 
 wait for the solution of this enquiry till the 
 entire publication of the ^'Agriculture." 
 Two things, however, appear certain. The 
 first, that the name of Canaanites with the 
 Babylonians did not always refer to the 
 ancient inhabitants of Phoenicia; and the 
 second, that this theory of a Canaanite dy- 
 nasty of which Mmrod was the founder, is 
 of Biblical origin. ''After the deluge," 
 says Masoudi, "mankind established them- 
 selves in different countries ; such were the 
 Nabathoeans, who founded the city of Ba- 
 bylon, and those of the descendants of Ham, 
 who settled in the same province, under the 
 guidance of Ximrod, son of Kanaan, son of 
 Sinkharib, son of Ham, and grandson of 
 ISToah." "The IS'abathoeans," says Di- 
 meshki, ''descended from Nabit, son of 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 70 
 
 Kanaan, son of Kusli, son of Ham. They 
 inhabited the province of Babylon, and 
 had for their king Mmrod the great. ^ The 
 same thing is found in the Kitdh tahacdth al- 
 umemj the Said of Toledo : ''The Chaldseans 
 are a nation illustrious from the antiquity 
 of their empire, and the celebrity of their 
 kings, who were descended from the !N"im- 
 rods the giants, of whom the first was 
 Mmrod, son of Cush, son of Ham."^ M. 
 Chwolson himself thinks that Masoudi has 
 borrowed what he says of his Mmrodian 
 dynasty, from Cluistian sources. "Who 
 knows, that the name of Canaanites Id 
 not in this instance one of those con- 
 
 ' Quatremere, pp. 56, 57, 62. 
 
 2 Here is the entire passage, according to the MS. of M. 
 Schefer, p. 19 : c^jLO (^^JLsKil ^j idllill ii^^^l \^\j 
 
 J[<ii\}ji^\ <L^[^ ti ^^ ^J^^ t/j.!\,etc. According to the 
 passage in the Koran, xvi. 28, The plurals '^ i[^:>~ and ^ J ,1^ 
 formed, after the same analogy, from "1311 and Tip^ (Gen. x. 8-9), 
 betray in themselves a biblical origin. Some lines below there is, 
 in the Said, the identical genealogies given by Masoudi. 
 
80 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 ventional words, by which, in the East, 
 it was often sought to escape from getting 
 embroiled with suspected powers ; something 
 in the way in which the Jews successively 
 designated the nations which persecuted 
 them by the name of Edomites or Ama- 
 lekites^ and the capitals of nations which 
 were hostile to them by that of Babylon. 
 The reserve with which Kuthami speaks of 
 the Canaanites, confi.rms this hypothesis. 
 The histories of the Jews, Samaritans, Men- 
 daites, Harranians, Xosairis, and Yezidis, 
 offer examples of this kind of falsification. 
 Possibly, too, many of the singular names 
 which surprise us in ^' The Book of !N'aba- 
 thsean Agriculture," proceed from some 
 form of the cabbala or secret writing. 
 The use of these forms is very ancient in 
 the East; since we find at least two very 
 probable examples in the text of Jeremiah.^ 
 
 1 Since the completion of this memoir, I have received some 
 communications from M. Kunik, Member of tlie Academy at St. 
 Petersburgli, which confirm me in this hypothesis. M. Kunik is 
 tempted to believe that the Mussulmans appear in the " Agricul- 
 ture" under some pseudonyme. lie has taken up some extremely 
 ingenious views as to the part which must there be assigned to 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 81 
 
 The names of the Babylonian kings fur- 
 nished by l^abathsean writings cause at first 
 the greatest astonishment. Here are the seven- 
 teen names of kings which I have gathered 
 from Dr. Chwolson : Abed-Fergila, Bedina, 
 Salbama, Harmati, Hinafa, Kamash, Mari- 
 nata, Numruda, Kerusani, Kijama, Eiccana, 
 Saha, Shamaja, Shemuta, Susikya, Thiba- 
 tana, Zahmuna. Only one of these names 
 positively corresponds with those known to 
 us elsewhere, and that is IN'umruda, which, 
 as we have seen, carries us back to a fabu- 
 lous antiquity. Another name, that of Ke- 
 rusani, may possibly, I think, correspond 
 with pre -historical traditions. A hero, 
 common to the literature of the Yedas, 
 and in the Zend-Avesta, and who there- 
 fore may be carried back to ancient Arian 
 mythology, is Kerusani, who, like Nimrod, 
 
 Gnosticism. He thinks (and a similar idea had already occuiTed to 
 me) that Jesus Christ is concealed under the name of Azada ; that 
 Saturn arrayed in black (Chwolson, pp. 115, 135) is the God of the 
 Jews, the Sathaneal of the Anti- Christian gnostics ; that the pre- 
 tended Babylonian anchorites (Chwolson, p. 159) are Christian 
 monks ; so that the antipathy of the Gnostics to the Christians 
 betrays itself in many places. 
 
 4* 
 
82 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 fills the part of an archer and a hnnter.^ 
 It is even very possible, that Kerusani, like 
 Zohak (the Persian Ajdahak), and like 
 Zoroaster himself, may be a personage of 
 the Iranian mythology, adopted by Baby- 
 lonia. As to the other names, they are 
 too obscm^e to allow either of objections 
 or proofs to invalidate the authority of 
 Kuthami. Shamaja and Susikya have an 
 Hebrew look; Abed-Fergila (^^^..-ilDy)? Sal- 
 bama, Kijama, and Eiccana,^ appear She- 
 mitic. With the exception of these, it 
 would be difficult to find a series of names 
 which are so obscure to the philologist and 
 the historian. 
 
 It is doubtful whether all these singula- 
 rities will be explained even by an acquaint- 
 ance with the entire ^^Book of I^abathoean 
 Agriculture." It is well kno^vn that one fatal 
 cu'cumstance throws a grievous uncertainty 
 
 1 Weber, Indische StucHen, II. pp. 313-314; Kiilm, Die Ilerab- 
 kunft des Feuers, pp. 131, 138 ff., 146, 147, 171 ff. 
 
 2 Compare the name of the Babylonian sage Na^ovpiaySs 
 (jn'^'lIU) in Strabo, (XVI. i. 6). But this name of Riccana, ac- 
 cording to Prof. Chwolson, must be much more modern than the 
 others, and of the period of the Arsacides. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 83 
 
 on particulars with respect to foreign na- 
 tions which have adopted the Arabic alpha- 
 bet. I allude to the indecisiye form of 
 certain letters ; the absence of any diacritic 
 points in proper names, or the inaccurate 
 way in which the points are placed. All 
 Shemitic alphabets are bad channels of 
 transcription, owing to the absence of 
 vowels. How then is this difficulty to be 
 overcome, when to this source of inaccu- 
 racy, we have to add another, even more 
 serious^ that of the uncertainty as to the 
 letters themselves ; the same character, for 
 example, being, perchance, either h^ n^ tj y} 
 
 ^ The name of Jwa-^-o , for instance, which previously was read : 
 Yanbushadh, at the time when " The Book of Nabatha^an Agri- 
 culture" came to the knowledge of the Jews in the 12th century 
 (v. ante^ p. 7), and which would give the key to the problem, if it 
 could be clearly ascertained — this Yanbushadh, in fact, should be a 
 personage whom we know under some other name, — is susceptible 
 of such a variety of renderings, that we may say that the forms or 
 letters of which it consists are of no value. The first three forms may 
 be taken each for four difi'erent letters ; the j which follows them is 
 easily confounded with the J ; the three forms of the \^ may be 
 like the strokes at the beginning, three different letters, each read- 
 ing in four ways ; the \ is often confounded with the {j and the j 
 with the J . 
 
84 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 The perplexity which one experiences in 
 certain chapters of Masoudi or Ibn-Abi- 
 Oceibia, whenever the subject relates to 
 Greece and Assyria, is scarcely less than 
 that which ^^The Book of Nabathsean Agri- 
 culture '' occasions. There are the same 
 difficulties in seeking to establish the list 
 of forty-two Babylonian kings, beginning 
 with Nimrod, and ending with Darius, 
 which is given by the first of these 
 authors, as in finding the key to the his- 
 tory contained in the work of Xuthami. 
 The geography of " The Book of ISTaba- 
 theean Agriculture," which one would 
 imagine must be more easy to settle, is 
 not a bit less obscure. It is impossible to 
 form equally sound deductions from such 
 faulty records, as from faithful docu- 
 ments. Besides which, nearly the same 
 effect is produced on historical facts by 
 the poverty and scantiness of Arabic prose, 
 as by their alphabet or proper names. Not 
 one of the circumstances which they have 
 handed down to us respecting Greece is 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 85 
 
 recognisable. Their translations themselves 
 are nothing more than free reproductions, 
 accommodated to their habits of writing, and 
 we are told expressly that all the transla- 
 tions of Ibn Wahshiya were dictated by 
 him to one of his disciples, who subse- 
 quently adapted them to the taste of his 
 times. ^ 
 
 I would ask permission to hazard, if only 
 under the form of a mere conjecture, a sup- 
 position which, however, it is very difficult 
 not to entertain — I mean the possibility of a 
 literary fraud, or some degree of bad faith, 
 on the part of the author. Most un- 
 doubtedly the book is of an epoch which 
 always gives rise to suspicions, and not 
 without cause. The instance of the Desatir 
 occurs to me, as a case in point, whether 
 we like it or not, to confuse the mind 
 of a critic. The hypothesis of the Desatir 
 being apocryphal is surrounded by as many 
 difficulties as that which declares the history 
 fabricated upon which ^^ The Book of IN'aba- 
 
 » Pp. 15-16. 
 
86 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 thoean Agriculture" is founded, rendering it 
 necessary to find at some point in history, 
 the reality of that series of sects, of pro- 
 phets, and founders of religion, which the 
 book of the Parsee enumerates. To recon- 
 cile other portions, gives rise to equal 
 doubts. Kuthami, like Berosus or San- 
 choniathon, like Josephus, or Mar Abas Ca- 
 tina, or Moses Choronensis, appears to have 
 been afflicted to the greatest degree with 
 the faults of all Oriental writers from the 
 time of Alexander to about our fifth cen- 
 tury, a total want of judgment, unmeasured 
 syncretism, silly deductions ( evhemerisme ) ^ 
 and exaggerated national vanity.^ Un- 
 truths, apocryphal fabrications, all sorts 
 of confusion ; — sticking at nothing, in order 
 to establish their favourite position, proof of 
 the high antiquity of their doctrines, and 
 superiority of those doctrines over those of 
 the Greeks. That position was sometimes 
 true, at least so far as the antiquity of 
 
 ^ See, for fuller details, my Mcmoire snr Sanolioniatlion, in the 
 Memoires dc I'Acad. tome XXIIL 2nd part, p. 317 ff. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 87 
 
 the doctrines is concerned ; but the argu- 
 ments brought forward to proye it, were 
 almost always detestable. An imaginary- 
 history, formed by artful contrivances, ob- 
 tained credit, and after some centuries, 
 became an authority. From this air of 
 folly and extravagance, which pervades 
 ancient Eabylonian histories in Arabian 
 writers of the school of Bagdad, often 
 led away themselves by the false method 
 of their predecessors, ''The Book of ]^a- 
 bathsean Agriculture " appears to have been 
 written at the date of this apocryphal and 
 trickish literature. The author is not a 
 forger himself, but he appears to be misled 
 by forgers. The true descendants of the 
 IN'abathseans, the Mendaites, continued 
 until the Mussulman epoch, and almost up 
 to our own times, to practise similar frauds, 
 from which small communities free them- 
 selves with such difficulty. Many of their 
 mythological personages have thus become 
 Hebrew patriarchs.^ The Yezidis have 
 
 ^ Chwolson, Die Ssabier, I. p. 651. 
 
88 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 fallen into the same errors.' The Par- 
 sees, likewise, in order to elude the pursuit 
 of Mussulman fanaticism, have more or 
 less Shemiticised their entire mythology. 
 The treatise of Hyde^ on the religion of 
 the ancient Persians, so imperfect as a pic- 
 ture of the true Zoroastrian institutions, 
 unknown at the time when Hyde wrote in 
 1700, but so curious as a jDicture of old 
 Persian traditions disfigured by Islamism, 
 presents at every step, names of Hebrew 
 patriarchs, substituted for those of the 
 heroes of Persia. Finally, the Ardai Viraf 
 Nameh^ of the period of the Sassanides, 
 presents the extraordinary phenomenon of 
 a Jewish book, ^'The Ascension of Isaiah," 
 changed bodily into full-bloAvn Mazdeism, 
 and applied to a pretended sage, contem- 
 porary with Ardishir Babikan, Ardai Yiraf. 
 The habit of fraud and untruth which in- 
 fested the East towards the close of the 
 
 i Chwolson, Die Ssabier, I. p. 648 ff. 
 
 2 Hist, llcligionis Vett. Persarum, eorumque Magorum, etc. 
 Lond. 1760. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 89 
 
 period of the Seleucides, has furnished 
 criticism with enigmas which cannot be 
 explained ; for those natural deductions, 
 which are so sure a guide, in considering 
 honest productions of the mind, are entirely 
 at fault, when dealing with these equivocal 
 and artificial compositions, the fruit of en- 
 feebled reason and sordid passions. 
 
 To the best of my belief, then, a very 
 limited range must be assigned to the IS'aba- 
 thaean school. This school presents to us the 
 last phase of Babylonian literature, that which 
 extends from the first centuries of our era, 
 or, if you will, from the period of the Seleu- 
 cides or Arsacides, to the Mussulman inva- 
 sion. This literature, stricken to death by 
 Islamism, dragged out a miserable existence 
 during the Middle Ages, among the poor 
 sect of the Sabians, IN'azoreans, or Christians 
 of St. John, and sank to an unheard-of 
 degree of degradation and extravagance in 
 their writings. The works translated by 
 Ibn "Wahshiya, and the books of the Men- 
 da'ites, are to us productions of one and 
 
90 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 the same literature, witli this difference, 
 that the books preserved and probably re- 
 written or re-modelled by the Mendaites 
 have suffered from the influence of Parseeism, 
 and followed that fatal growth of imbecility 
 which the East was not able to resist. As 
 to the l^'abatha^an language, it is no longer 
 doubtful that it was identical with that of 
 the Mendaites;^ and it Avas probably from 
 manuscripts, analogous to those which are 
 termed Sabian in our libraries, that Ibn 
 
 "Wahshiya made his translations. 
 
 Who can assert that we have here an 
 intellectual group of which it is impossible 
 to prove its origin and unity ? Take away, 
 to avoid the appearance of begging the 
 question, the four Nabathoean works which 
 have come down to us, still what Arabian 
 writers inform us concerning the Sabians ; 
 what we know of the School of Harran, 
 which perpetuated the traditions of the 
 Syro-Babylonian school, improved by hard 
 
 ^ See Histoire Generale des Langues Semitiqucsj 1. III., c. ii., 
 sect. 82. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 91 
 
 study, to the twelfth century of our era ; ^ 
 what we read of science and philosophy in 
 Arabian historians, — Said of Toledo,^ Mo- 
 hammed Ibn Ishak, Jemal-eddin Ibn al- 
 Kifti, Ibn Abi-Oceibia, Abul Pharagius — 
 on the origin of various branches of know- 
 ledge, and concerning the lives of certain 
 philosophers who have become subjects of 
 fiction, together with the Mussulman legends 
 of Edris, identified with Enoch, Hermes, 
 Otarid ; a sort of scientific mythology re- 
 -eeived by all learned Arabs, and which 
 is not of Moslem origin ; all proceed, I 
 maintain, evidently from the same homoge- 
 neous school, sici generis^ the TVTitings of 
 which were composed in an Aramaic dia- 
 lect.^ A host of facts prove that Babylon 
 was the theatre of a great upheaving of ideas 
 
 ^ See the learned work of M. Chwolson : Die Ssabier und der 
 Ssabismus, St. Petersburgh, 1856. 
 
 ' This source, less known than the others, will appear one of the 
 most important, when M. Schefer has published the Kitdb tabacdth 
 ul-umem, of which he possesses a maniiscript, the only complete 
 one, I believe, in Em-ope. 
 
 3 Journal Asiatique, March- April, 1854, p. 263 ; August-Sept., 
 1854, pp. 181, 187-188 ; Bar Hebrai Cliron. SjTiacum, pp. 176-177 
 of the text ; pp. 180-181 of the translation. 
 
92 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 
 
 in the first centuries of our era/ The Jews 
 displayed a literary activity -which, beyond 
 doubt, did not remain shut up in the bosom 
 of their communities. The Gnostic sects, 
 Perates, Elchasaites, etc., developed them- 
 selves with a boldness and liberty which 
 mark at least an awakened intellect. The 
 wrestling of the Syrian Chiistians — St. 
 Ephraim, the Syrian,^ for instance — against 
 the Chaldseans, presumes that Christianity 
 found there the most formidable resistance 
 which it had yet encoimtered. Finally, I 
 do not doubt that an attentive analysis of 
 Greek manuscripts on astrology, on geneth- 
 liacs, etc., made with a preoccupation of 
 ideas awakened by the labours of Dr. 
 Chwolson, may show this result, that our 
 
 ^ On the various Schools of Babylonia, and on the Babylonian 
 sages, Cidenas, Nabdrianus, Sudinus, Seleucus, see Strabo (XVL 
 i. 6) ; Pliny (VI. xxx. 6) ; the Kitdb el-fihrist (Zeitschrift der 
 Morgenl. Gesellschaft, 1859, p. 628) ; the work before cited of 
 Said (pp. 21-22 of the MS. of M. Schefer). See also Stanley, 
 Histoire de la Philosophic Orient., p. 14 fF. Brucker, Ilistoria 
 Critica Philosophic, I. p. 130 ff. Unfortunately the dates put us 
 completely at fault here. 
 
 2 Bp. Jeremy Taylor hence calls Ephraim, the Syrian, the De- 
 struction of Heresies. — Translator's note. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 93 
 
 libraries, in Greek no less than in Arabic 
 manuscripts, contain considerable fragments 
 of I^abathsean literature. I will only offer 
 one example, because it presents the sin- 
 gular instance of a discovery made with 
 extraordinary penetration, by a scholar of 
 the great French school of the early part of 
 the seventeenth century, and which, buried 
 in oblivion for nearly two hundred years, 
 has acquired an unexpected importance 
 from the researches of modern criticism. 
 In the preface ^ to his treatise, De Annis 
 Climactericis et Antiqua Astrologia (Leyde, 
 1648), Salmasius, after having quoted Ten- 
 kelusha according to l^asireddin Tousi, adds : 
 " Li^:^' autem sive Tenkelus ille Babylonius 
 quem memorat jS'asirodinus, is omnino est 
 qui TauKpog Baj^uT^couiog Grascis vocatur, et 
 fortasse in scriptis Greecorum perperam 
 hodie legitur Ts6xpos pro Tivxpog, idque 
 deflexum ex illo nomine Babylonio Tenclus. 
 Msi sit verius Grsecos ad nomen sibi 
 familiare propter adfinitatem soni vocabulum 
 
 1 This preface is not paged ; the catch word of the leaf is c. 3, 
 
94 BABYLONIAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 Chaldeeorum deflexisse, ut mos est illis. 
 Nam Tivxpog Grcecum nomen est, non Tivxpog 
 nee TevKTiog.^^ One is struck with admii^a- 
 tion at the quick perception of a scholar, 
 who deduced from the aspect alone of this 
 singular name of the author, what Dr. 
 Chwolson, with all his tact, has failed to 
 do from the work itself, after having read 
 the whole of it. There is, indeed, no room 
 to doubt that this Tenkelusha al-Eabeli of 
 Arabic and Persian manuscripts^ is the 
 Tsuicpog Ba^uXwviO^, called also Teux^pog^ 
 Teucer, Zeuc/iriis, Zeuclius^ author of geneth- 
 liacs, quoted by Psellus, by Antiochus the 
 Apotelesmatist, and by many others,^ and 
 
 ^ The work of Tenkelusli^ is often represented as a book of 
 paintings by the Arabs and Persians (See Chwolson, p. 140 ff. 
 Hyde, de Vett. Pers. Eel., pp. 282-283). This is easily under- 
 stood, on looking at the manuscripts on genethliacs still in voo-ue 
 in the East (our Paris manuscript, 8uppUmcnt Turc, No. 93, for 
 instance). The numerous illustrations with which they are deco- 
 rated make them resemble albums at the first glance. 
 
 2 See Salmasii Opera Critica, prajf. leaf, c ; and his Exercitationes 
 Plinianoe in Solinum (Paris, 1629), pp. 651-655 ; Brucker, Ilis- 
 toria Crit. Philos. t. I. p. 130 ; Fabricii Biblioth. Gra?ca, Ilarles, 
 torn. IV pp. 148, 166 ; Paradox ographi Westermanni, praef. p. 
 47 ff.; Miller, Journal des Savants, Oct., 1839, p. 607, note. 
 M. Miller has pointed out to me other quotations from the same 
 author in the great astronomical compilation contained in the MSS. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITEEATURE. 96 
 
 of whom, at least, extracts exist in our 
 collections of Greek manuscripts/ The con- 
 tents of these extracts tally precisely with 
 what we know, from Dr. Chwolson, of the 
 work of Tenkelusha. All tends to the be- 
 
 2420, 2424 of the Bibliothique Imperiale (fol. 82 of the 2n(l part 
 of the first manuscript, and fo. 31 of the second), and in the 
 abridgement of the Thesaurus Talism. of Antiochus, abridged by 
 Ehetorius (Xo. 1991 of the Bibl. Imp., fol. 118). The quotation 
 from Porphyry, mentioned by Salmasius and Westermann, is erro- 
 neous : the work which they had in -view is by this Antiochus. 
 (See Fabricii Bibl. Grfeca, Harles, tom. IV. pp. lol, 166; torn. 
 V. p. 741). I do not know why Fabricius proposes to identify 
 Teucer with Lasbas. 
 
 1 In particular one fragment entitled Tevxpov Uepl rS>v irapava- 
 reWovTcov, in the grand asti'ological collection of manuscripts 
 2420, 2424 of the Bibl. Imp. fol. 89 of the 3rd part of the first, 
 fol. 134 of the 5th part of the second. This second reference cor- 
 responds with that of Labbe, Nova Bibl. MSB, Libror. (Paris, 
 16o3), p. 278. The same fragment is mentioned by Bandini 
 (Catal. Codd. Gr. Bibl. Laiu-ent. II. col. 60, No. xiii.), under this 
 title : Hep] rwv irapavareWovTbiV tois i&' C^Slois Kara TevKpop. 
 It appears more fully in the manuscript of Florence. M. Miller, to 
 whom I addressed myself to discover the manuscript cited by 
 Labbe, and to whom I owe the preceding information, adds the 
 following note : " According to the passage of Michel Psellus, 
 quoted by Salmasius (Exerc. Plin. p. 654), without saying fi-om 
 whence he took it, and which I have also found in the Greek 
 manuscript 1630, fol. 228, Teucer must have written many works 
 (;3ij8Aiw^), among others : 1st, Hefjl rau iv ovpavca ^cfiSicov ; 2ud, 
 riepl Tcbv irapavaTeXKovTcav (this is the work already mentioned) ; 
 3rd, riepl tS^v Aeyo/xevwu BsKaucov." We should also examine 
 Philosophumena, cura Duncker and Schneidewin, p. 84, etc., and 
 Bardesanus, in Ciu*eton's SpicH. Syriac, p. 24 if. 
 
96 BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 lief that the true name of this Helleno- 
 Baby Ionian was Tsvxpog, and that Tenklush 
 is an alteration.^ What proves this, and 
 gives, at the same time, a remarkable con- 
 firmation to the preceding opinion, is, that 
 in the Kitdh el-Jihnst, by the side of 
 Tenklus, figures a ^j^^jkJb=Tmcrus, whose 
 legend has a wonderful resemblance to that 
 of Tenklus, and to whom a work is ascribed 
 identical in title with that of Tenklus. It 
 is evident that these two authors are but 
 one and the same, and that their names re- 
 present two forms of the primitive Tsvxpog.^ 
 There is nothing surprising in such a name, 
 when borne by a Eabylonian sage, since in 
 
 ^ In fact, the termination ush is that of all the Greek names 
 which have passed into the Arabic and Persian. It is known that 
 I and r are confounded in Babylonian, and that these two letters 
 only make one in Pehlevi. The termination a is the Aramaic 
 emphasis. The Kitdb el-fihrist gives the form Tcnkelush. 
 
 2 Look to the analysis of Kitdh cJ-fhrist given by M. Fluegel, 
 in the Zeitschrift der Morgenl. Gesellschaft, 1859, p. 628. M 
 Fluegel reads erroneously Tinacrius. The titles given in the Kitdb 
 
 el-fihrist are: 1st, for Tenklus, J.^Xs^L ^%^J^ i--?l:i^ ' 2nd, 
 for Tincrus, J.J^^^^ ^^^^ lJ^ >^i^^^^^^ C_-jI::^» ^oth o 
 which correspond sufficiently Avith the Greek titles referred to 
 above. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 97 
 
 the work of Said, entitled Kitdh tabacdth aU 
 umen, we find a Babylonian scholar figuring 
 as Istefcm al-Baheli^^ whom the Arabian 
 author places confidently in the times of 
 Jethro, in spite of his Greek name and 
 Christian prefix of Stephanus. If some 
 Hellenistic scholar were to take the trouble 
 of carefully examining the Greek manu- 
 scripts on astrology and magic which have 
 come doAvn to us, I have no doubt that he 
 would find there a host of texts, really Baby- 
 lonian, kindred to those to which Dr. Chv/ ol- 
 son has drawn oui' attention. 
 
 From all this we may deduce, I imagine, 
 a complete idea of the intellectual state of 
 Babylonia, in the first centuiies of our era ; 
 but it will not, as Dr. ChAVolson believes, 
 furnish us with science at all equal to that 
 of the Greeks. What was deficient in this 
 movement was neither activity nor extent ; 
 it lacked earnestness and method. If we seek 
 to appreciate, as a whole, the part which 
 Babylon took in the grand work of civili- 
 
 1 Pp. 21-22 of the manuscript of M. Schefer. 
 
 5 
 
98 BABYLONIAiS^ LITERATURE. 
 
 zation, we are astonished to find all tlie pro- 
 ductions of the Babylonian mind tainted by 
 one radical vice. Judicial astrology, sorcery, 
 a branch of gnosticism, and the first germs 
 of the Cabbala — such are the wretched 
 gifts which Babylon has presented to the 
 world. There is no doubt that Babylon 
 is gravely responsible for the enfeeblement 
 of the mind in the first centuries of our era, 
 and that the epidemic of superstition and 
 chimerical science, which prevailed at that 
 epoch, must, in a great measure, be set 
 down to Chaldsean influence. It is cer- 
 tainly possible that Babylon may have pos- 
 sessed real science, before the time at which 
 she devoted herself to this unhappy propa- 
 gation of error. Judicial astrology leads to 
 the belief of an earlier regular astronomy ; 
 magic, which pretends to direct the secret 
 forces of Nature, presupposes a certain de- 
 velopment of the physical sciences.^ But we 
 
 1 Similar results have happened to alehemy. The alchemy of 
 the middle ages, judged according to the extravagance of the six- 
 teenth century, was universally in the West, since the thirteenth 
 century, a chemical labour firmly established, but which at present 
 is allowed to lie all but forgotten in manuscripts. 
 
BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 99 
 
 cannot allow ourselves to doubt that Baby- 
 lonian studies had greatly degenerated at the 
 time of the Seleucides ; one cannot, in fact, 
 conceiye that Babylonia should have spread 
 abroad nothing but chimerical science/ had 
 she possessed a sound philosophy. We can- 
 not, then, shut our eyes to the exaggeration 
 of the part which Dr. Chwolson ascribes to 
 Babylonia in the history of the human mind. 
 Eectitude of thought, surety of judgment, 
 exclusive love of truth — without which 
 science cannot keep itself from degenerating 
 into routine, and interested self-complacency 
 — are the essential qualities of philosophical 
 creation. It is because she possessed these 
 qualities, to a degree of originality which 
 constitutes genius, that Greece holds a place 
 in the education of the mind, of which it is 
 not probable that she will ever be dispossessed. 
 
 ^ The same may be said of Egypt. Egyptian and Babylonian 
 science appear to have had analogous destinies. Lacking that 
 purely analytical, experimental, and rational principle which gave 
 force to the Greek, as it still does to the modern mind, they 
 have not been able to defend themselves from the charge of 
 charlatanism, a term fatal to all culture which rests on anything 
 but purely scientific researches. 
 
THE 
 
 POSITION 
 
 SHEMITIC NATIONS 
 
 HISTOEY OP CIYILIZATIOTyT. 
 
 Jin Jnaugural Muhre, 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE, 
 
 ON ASStTMING THE CHAIR OF THE 
 
 HEBKEW, CHALDAIC, & SYEIAC PEOEESSOESHIP, 
 
 BY 
 
 M. EENEST EENAJN', 
 
 MEMBBE DE L'INSTITUT, ETC. ETC. 
 
ADYEETISEMEISTT. 
 
 '^A YEAR or two ago/' says a writer in the 
 London Redew of the 8th of March last, '' a lady 
 who was an intimate friend of Queen Hortense, 
 and who had known Louis Napoleon from his 
 boyhood, drew his attention to the great literary 
 merit of Monsieur Ernest Kenan. The Emperor, 
 ever anxious to attract to his side the leading 
 minds of France, listened with interest, and lost 
 no time in casting about for some means to get 
 Monsieur Eenan into his service. This, however, 
 was not so easy, for Monsieur Eenan was a 
 member of what we may call the party of the 
 Institut, and was utterly opposed to the existing 
 state of things. At length, however, an interview 
 was arranged, and a series of negotiations com- 
 menced, which ended in Monsieur Eenan's agree- 
 ing to go to Syria, with a view to carrying out, 
 under the auspices of the French Government, 
 explorations and excavations amongst the old 
 Phcenician cities. He went thither, and he re- 
 turned thence, unpledged to the Government. 
 His journey was saddened by a most melancholy 
 event in his family, but he accomplished his 
 
104 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 object, and has come back to prepare for the 
 press a great work on Phoenician antiquities, and 
 to put into shape the numerous new ideas which 
 lie had gained in the East. 
 
 ''A month or two after his return, the Imperial 
 Government appointed him to the chair of Hebrew. 
 His fitness for the post is beyond dispute. He is 
 incomparably the first Shemitic scholar in France, 
 and is one of the very few Frenchmen whom the 
 proudest of German literati allow to be on a level 
 with themselves in learning', w^hile they speak with 
 the highest admiration of his immeasurably greater 
 sliill in clothing his ifleas in simple and eloquent 
 language. On this point we may speak with some 
 certainty, because it is only a few weeks since we 
 had the pleasure of conveying to Monsieur Kenan 
 the cordial congratulations of the greatest German 
 scholar whose line of study has coincided with 
 his labours. Some symptoms of disapprobation 
 having reached the ears of Government, when 
 Monsieur Kenan's appointment was first talked of, 
 it was proposed that the title of the chair to which 
 he was nominated should be the Professorship of the 
 Shemitic Languages as compared with each other,' 
 and not the old title of ' Professorship of Hebrew.' " 
 
 '' It was understood," adds a writer in the 
 Literary Gazette of the same date, ''when the 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 105 
 
 chair was offered him, that he was to be careful 
 of entering on the arena of religious discussion. 
 It would seem that in the broad generalizations 
 which he has made on the distinctive characters 
 of the Indo-Germanic and Shemitic races, he has 
 handled a very delicate topic with great freedom. 
 The delivery of the lecture gained for him a most 
 gratifying and unexpected exhibition of feeling on 
 the part of the Paris students, so prompt and 
 decided, and sometimes so despotic in their ver- 
 dicts on public characters, whose manifestations, 
 however, are delightful even to professors, and 
 whose opinions have to be considered, no less by 
 journalists, as a power in the country. 
 
 '^ M. Eenan's friends were not without some 
 apprehensions about his reception, as the student- 
 population of the present time is passionately 
 sensitive on all topics of a religious nature, owing 
 to the interest which is felt on the Italo-Roman 
 question. The lecturer, however, though he came 
 out triumphantly from this ordeal, met with less 
 favour from the authorities of the College de 
 France and the Government, for his lectures have 
 been suspended."^ 
 
 1 Since this was written M. Eenan has been allowed to resume 
 his lectures. Thm'sdays are to be devoted to Philological Lectures, 
 without political or religious discussion, and Saturdays to Illascra- 
 tions of the Book of Job. 
 
 5* 
 
106 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The translator does not enter the arena either 
 in defence of M. Renan or of the French Govern- 
 ment. In England his appointment would either 
 never have been made, or never have been re- 
 scinded upon the mere pressure of any set of men 
 of extreme opinions, whatever their rank or profes- 
 sion. As it is, the London Review is not far wrong 
 in saying, " It is difficult to say how much harm 
 may be done to the Imperial Government by too 
 frequently yielding to the noisy protests of ene- 
 mies who vent their spite by interrupting plays 
 and lectures. Not to have appointed Professor 
 Renan, would have been but a small matter. 
 ' Here is another instance,' people would have 
 said, ' of an able man passed over on account of 
 his political opinions.' First, however, to appoint 
 him, and then to suspend him in deference to the 
 clamour of the Ultramontane faction, is to give 
 the bitterest enemies of the present regime a most 
 unnecessary triumph." 
 
 The lecture is here presented to the reader as 
 sent forth by the author in print, being simply a 
 faithful translation of the French original. Truth 
 has nothing to fear from error ; constant friction 
 does but improve its polish, even as it removes 
 the rust from steel. 
 
 May, 1862. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 In reproducing this discourse, it is a 
 pleasing duty to me to express my thanks 
 to the kind and enlightened audience, 
 which, perceiving with much tact that it 
 involved a question of liberty, upheld me 
 during its delivery. To interrupt an in- 
 tellectual exercise at which one is not 
 compelled to be present, appears to me, 
 at all times, to be an illiberal action ; 
 it is to oppose oneself with violence to 
 the opinion of another; to confound two 
 things, totally distinct r the admitted right 
 of fault-finding, according to liking or con- 
 science ; and the pretended right of stifling, 
 by one's own authority, notions which are 
 looked upon as objectionable. Who does 
 not see that this last pretension is the 
 source of all violence and all oppression ? 
 
108 PREFACE. 
 
 In the teachings of the College of France, 
 surrounded by so many safeguards, this 
 suppression of speech seems to me par- 
 ticularly out of place. The nomination of 
 the Professors to that institution is made 
 on the presentation of the Professors of 
 the College, met together for the purpose, 
 and on that of the requisite class of the 
 Institute. This double presentation is not 
 an indisputable authorit}^ ; but it suffices, at 
 least, to show that he who is honoured with 
 it cannot be accused of presumptuous inten- 
 tions, when he ascends a chair to wliich he has 
 been appointed by suffrages so empowered. 
 
 I was desirous that the form of this first 
 lecture should not mislead the public as 
 to the nature of my teaching. Do^Ynwards, 
 fi'om Yatable and Mercier to M. Quatre- 
 mere, the chair to which I have had the 
 honour to be presented and named, has 
 borne a scientific {technique) and special 
 character. Without fettering in any way 
 my liberty or that of my successor, I should 
 
PEEFAOE. 109 
 
 feel that I was doing an injury to science by 
 an appearance of disregard to tliis honoured 
 tradition. What would become of our 
 graver studies, if they had not an in- 
 violable sanctuary in the College of France ? 
 What of high cultivation of the intellect, 
 if mere general expositions, well enough, 
 perhaps, when delivered in the presence 
 of a numerous audience, are to stifle in- 
 struction in a more severe form in an insti- 
 tution which, above all others, is destined 
 to endure as the School of deep scientific 
 research? I should be most culpable, if 
 the futui'e could charge me with having 
 contributed to such a change. The pro- 
 gress of science is compromised, if we do 
 not profit by deep thought and reflection ; 
 if any one thinks he fulfils the duties of 
 life in holding blindly the opinions of any 
 party on all things ; if fickleness, exclusive 
 opinions, abrupt and peremptory forms, sup- 
 press problems, instead of solving them. 
 Oh, that the fathers of modern intellect 
 
110 PBEFACE. 
 
 comprehended better the holiness of thought ! 
 Noble and venerable shades of Eeuchlin, 
 of Henry Stej)hens, of Casaubon, of Des- 
 cartes, rise np and teach us what price you 
 put upon truth ; by what toil you attained 
 it ; what you suifered for it ! It was the 
 comprehensive speculations of twenty per- 
 sons in the seventeenth century which en- 
 tirely changed the notions of civilized nations 
 throughout the world ; it was the obscure 
 labours of some ^^oor scholars of the six- 
 teenth century which founded historical 
 criticism, and opened up a total revolution 
 in ideas on the past history of man. 
 
 I have had too sensible an experience 
 of the intellectual discernment of the 
 public, not to feel certain that all those 
 who supported me yesterday ^vill apj)rove 
 of my following a like course, the most 
 profitable assuredly for science and the 
 wholesome discipline of the mind. 
 
 Paris, Fehruary 23rd, 1862. 
 
AN 
 
 INAUGUEAL LECTUEE, 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 I am proud to ascend into this chair, 
 the most ancient in the College of France, 
 conspicuous for eminent men in the six- 
 teenth century, and occupied in our own 
 day by a scholar of such merit as M. 
 Quatremere. In founding the College of 
 France as a sanctuary for free science and 
 learning, King Francis the First laid down 
 as a constitutive law of this great establish- 
 ment, complete independence of criticism, 
 unbiased search after truth and impartial 
 discussion, bounded by no rules but those 
 of good taste and sincerity. Such, gentle- 
 men, is precisely the spirit which I would 
 
112 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 bring into m}^ teaching. I know the diffi- 
 culties which are inseparable from the chair 
 which I have the honour to occupy. It is 
 the privilege and the danger of Shemitic 
 studies to touch on the most important 
 problems in the history of the human race. 
 Freedom of thought knows no limit ; but 
 it necessitates that mankind should have 
 reached that degree of calm contemplation., 
 where it is not required to recognise God in 
 each particular order of facts, simply because 
 He is seen in all things. Liberty, gentle- 
 men, when thoroughly imderstood, allows 
 these opposing claims to exist side by side. 
 1 hope, by youi- aid^ that this com^se will 
 be a proof of it. As I shall not introduce 
 any dogmatism into my teaching ; as I shall 
 always confine myself to a^Dpealing to youi- 
 reason, while proposing to you, what I 
 believe to be the most probable, leaving 
 you always the most perfect freedom of 
 judgment, who can complain ? Only those 
 who believe they have a monopoly of truth. 
 Eut such persons must renounce now their 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 113 
 
 claims to the mastery of the world. The 
 Galileo of our day will not retract what he 
 knows to be the truth, on bended knee. 
 
 You will permit me, in the performance 
 of my task, to descend to the smallest 
 details, and to be habitually technical ; and 
 Science, gentlemen, only attains its sacred 
 object, the discovery of truth, on condition 
 of being special and rigorous. Everyone 
 is not intended to be a chemist, physician, 
 philologist ; to shut himself up in his 
 laboratory, to follow up for years an ex- 
 periment, or a calculation; everyone, how- 
 ever, participates in the great philosophical 
 results of chemistry, medicine, and philology. 
 To present these results, divested of the pro- 
 cesses which have served to discover them, 
 is a useful thing which Science should not 
 forbid. But such is not the mission of the 
 College of France : all the most special and 
 most minute processes of Science should be 
 here laid bare. Laborious demonstrations, 
 patient analysis, excluding it is true no 
 general development, no legitimate digres- 
 
114 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 sion : such is the programme of our course. 
 It is, so to speak, the laboratory of philo- 
 logical science tlii'own open to the public, 
 that it may call into being special yoca- 
 tions, and that the world may form an idea 
 of the means employed to arrive at Truth. 
 
 To-day, gentlemen, I should depart from 
 what is customary, and disappoint your ex- 
 pectations, were I to inaugurate this course 
 by mere technical developments. I would 
 fiiin recall to you the memory of that eminent 
 scholar whom I have the honour to succeed 
 — M. Stephen Quatremere. But this duty 
 having been already fulfilled in a manner 
 which does not allow me to repeat it, I 
 shall dedicate this first lecture to conversing 
 with you on the general character of the 
 nations whose language and literature we 
 shall study together ; on the part they have 
 fiUed in history ; and on the portion which 
 they have contributed to the common work 
 of civilization. 
 
 The most important results to which his- 
 torical and philological science has arrived 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 115 
 
 during the last half century, have been to 
 shew, in the general development of our 
 races, two elements of such a natiu'e which, 
 mixing in unequal proportions, have made 
 the woof of the tissue of history. From the 
 seventeenth century — and, indeed, almost 
 from the middle ages — it has been acknow- 
 ledged that the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, 
 the Carthagenians, the Syrians, the Baby- 
 lonians (at least from a certain period), the 
 Arabs, and the Abyssinians, have spoken 
 languages most intimately connected. Eich- 
 horn, in the last century, proposed to call 
 these languages Shemitic, and this name, 
 most inexact as it is, may still be used. 
 
 A most important and gratifying dis- 
 covery was made in the beginning of our 
 century. Thanks to the knowledge of Sans- 
 crit, due to English scholars at Calcutta, 
 German philologists, especially M. Bopp, 
 have laid down sure principles, by means 
 of which it is shown that the ancient 
 idioms of Brahmanic India, the different 
 dialects of Persia, the Armenian, many dia- 
 
116 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 lects of the Caucasus, the Greek and Latin 
 languages, with their deriyatiyes, the Sla- 
 yonic, German, and Celtic, form one yast 
 family entirely distinct from the Shemitic 
 group, under the name of Indo-Germanic, 
 or Indo-European. 
 
 The line of demarcation, revealed by the 
 oomparatiye stud}' of languages, was soon 
 strengthened by the study of literatures, 
 institutions, manners, and religions. If we 
 know how to assume the right point of 
 view in such a careful comparison, it is seen 
 that the ancient literatures of India, Greece, 
 Persia, and the German or Teutonic nations, 
 are of a common stock, and exhibit deeply 
 rooted similarity of mind. The literature of 
 the Hebrews and that of the Arabs, have 
 much in common ; while on the contrary they 
 have as little as possible with those which 
 I have just named. We should search irj 
 vain for an epic or a tragedy among thv^ 
 Shemitic nations ; as vainly should w 
 search among the Indo-European nations 
 for anything analogous to the Kasida of 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 117 
 
 the ArabSj and that species of eloquence 
 which distinguishes the Jewish prophets 
 and the Koran. The same must be said 
 of their institutions. The Indo-European 
 nations had, fi'om their beginning, an old 
 code, of which the remains are found in 
 the Erahmanas of India, in the forms of 
 the Eomans, and in the laws of the Celts, 
 the Germans, and the Slaves ; the patri- 
 archal life of the Hebrews and Arabs was 
 governed, beyond contradiction, by laws 
 totally different. Finally, the comparison 
 of religions has thro^vn decisive light on 
 this question. By the side of comparative 
 philology in Germany there has of late 
 years arisen the science of comparative 
 mythology, which has shown that all the 
 Indo-European nations had, in their be- 
 ginning, with the same language also the 
 same religion, of which each carried away 
 scattered fragments on leaving their common 
 cradle ; this religion, the worship of the 
 powers and phenomena of ITature leading 
 by philosophical development to a sort of 
 
118 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Pantheism. The religious development of 
 the Shemitic nations obeyed laws totally 
 different. Judaism, Clmstianity, Islamism, 
 possess a character of dogmatism, absolutism, 
 and severe monotheism which distinguishes 
 them radically from the Indo -European, — 
 or, as Ave term them, the Pagan religions. 
 
 Thus we see two individualities, perfectly 
 recognizable, which occupy between them, in 
 some manner, nearly the whole field of 
 history, and which are, as it were, tire two 
 poles of the axis of civilization. I say 
 nearly the whole field of history ; for be- 
 sides these two great individualities, there 
 are still two or three, which are yet suffi- 
 ciently palpable for the purposes of science, 
 and of which the action has been consider- 
 able. Puttmg China aside, as a world by 
 itself, and the Tartar races, which have 
 only acted as inherent scourges to destroy 
 the Avorks of others, Egypt has had a con- 
 siderable part in the history of the Avorld ; 
 yet Egypt is neither Shemitic nor Indo- 
 Eiaopean ; nor is Babylon a purely Shemitic 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATIOJ?^. 119 
 
 creation. There was there, it seems to me, 
 a first type of civilization analogous to that 
 of Egypt. It may be said even, generally, 
 that before the entrance of the Indo-Euro- 
 pean and Shemitic nations on the field of 
 history, the world had already very ancient 
 civilizations, to which wo arc indebted, if 
 not for moral, at any rate for the elements 
 of industry, and a long experience of mate- 
 rial life. But all this is yet but dimly 
 shadowed by history ; all this fades before 
 such facts as the mission of Moses, the 
 invention of alphabetical writing, and the 
 conquests of Cyrus and Alexander ; the rule 
 of the world by the genius of the Greeks, 
 Christianity, and the Eoman Empire ; Islam- 
 ism, the Germanic conquest, Charlemagne, 
 and the Eevival of letters ; the Eeformation, 
 Philosophy, the French Eevolution, and the 
 conquest of the world by modem Europe. 
 Here, then, is the great current of history ; 
 this great current is formed by the mingling 
 of two streams, in comparison with which 
 all its other confluents are but rivulets. 
 
120 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Let us try to trace in this complex whole 
 the part played by each of the two great 
 races, which, by their combined action^ and 
 more often by their antagonism, have con- 
 ducted the course of the world to the point 
 on which we stand. 
 
 Let me explain. ^Hien I speak of the' 
 blending, of the two races, it is simply in 
 respect to the blending of ideas, and, if I 
 may venture to express myself, to fellow 
 labour historically considered, that I would 
 use the term. The Indo-EuropcjJi and the 
 Shemitic nations are 'in oiii' day still per- 
 fectly distinct. I say nothing of the Jews, 
 whose singular and wonderful historical des- 
 tiny, has given them an exceptional position 
 among mankind, and who, except in France, 
 which has set the world an example in 
 upholding the principle of a purely ideal 
 civilization, disregarding all difference of 
 races, form everyAvhere a distinct and sepa- 
 rate society. The Arab, and, in a more 
 general sense, the Mussulman, are sepa- 
 rated from us in the present day more than 
 
SHEMITIC CIYILIZATIOX. 121 
 
 they have ever been. The Mussulman (the 
 Shemitic mind is everywhere represented in 
 our times by Islamism) and the European, 
 in the presence of one another, are like 
 beings of a different species, having no one 
 habit of thought and feeling in common. 
 But the progress of mankind is accomplished 
 by the contest of contrary tendencies ; by a 
 sort of polarisation, in consequence of which 
 each idea has its exclusive representatives 
 in this world. It is as a whole, then, that 
 these contradictions harmonise, and that 
 profound peace results from the shock of 
 apparently inimical elements. 
 
 This admitted, if we seek out what the 
 Shemitic nations have contributed to that 
 organic and living Avhole, which we call 
 civilization, we shall find, first, that in 
 Political Economy we owe them nothing. 
 Political life is, perhaps, that which is 
 most innate and peculiar to Indo-European 
 nations ; for these nations alone have kno^\^i 
 liberty, and comprehended, in fact, the con- 
 stitution of the State and the liberty of the 
 
 6 
 
122 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Subject. It is true they have by no means 
 at all times reconciled these two opposite 
 necessities equally well. But we never find 
 amongst them those great single despotisms, 
 destroying all individuality, and reducing 
 man to a sort of abstract state and name- 
 less function, as we see him in Egypt, 
 Babylonia, China, and in Mussulman and 
 Tartar despotisms. Take, one after another, 
 the little municipal republics of Greece and 
 Italy, the Germanic feudality, the grand 
 centralized organizations of which Eome 
 gave the first model, and of which the 
 French Eevolution reproduced the ideal, 
 and you will always find a vigorous moral 
 element, a strong sense of the public weal, 
 and sacrifice to one general end. Indi- 
 viduality was but little secured in Sparta ; 
 the petty democracies of Athens, and of 
 Italy in the middle ages, were nearly as fero- 
 cious as the most venal tyrant ; the Eoman 
 Empire reached (partly, it is true, through 
 the influence of the East) to an intolerable 
 despotism ; German feudality bordered upon 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 123 
 
 brigandage ; the French monarchy, under 
 Louis XIV., almost emulated the excesses 
 of the Sassanidan or Mongol dynasties ; the 
 French Eevolution, while calling into being 
 with incomparable vigour the principle of 
 unity in the State, frequently compromised 
 liberty in no trifling degree. But prompt 
 reactions have always saved these nations 
 from the consequences of their errors. 
 
 IS'ot so in the East. The East, especially 
 the Shemitic East, has never knoAvn any 
 medium between the complete anarchy of 
 the wandering Arabs and sanguinary and 
 unmitigated despotism. The idea of public 
 weal, of public good, is completely wanting 
 among these nations. True and complete 
 liberty, such as the Anglo-Saxon race has 
 realized, and grand State organizations, 
 such as the Eoman • Empire and France 
 have engendered, have been equally un- 
 known to them. The ancient Hebrews and 
 the Arabs have been, and are at short in- 
 tervals, the most free of men; but condi- 
 tionally subject to the chance of having on 
 
124 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 the morrow a chief who takes off their 
 heads at pleasure. And when that happens, 
 no one complains of violated rights. David 
 ittained his kingdom by means of a sort 
 c^f energetic brigandage (condoUure\ which 
 was not inconsistent with his being a very 
 religious man, and a king after God's own 
 oTVTi heart ; Solomon succeeded to and main- 
 tained the throne by the same means as 
 are used by Sultans in every age, which 
 did not prevent his passing for the wisest 
 of kings. When the Prophets attacked 
 royalty, it was not in the name of a political 
 right ; it was in the name of the Theocracy. 
 Theocracy, anarchy, despotism — such, gen- 
 tlemen, is, in few words, the epitome of 
 Shemitic political economy ; happily it is 
 not ours. Political economy deduced from 
 Holy Scriptui'e (very imperfectly deduced, it 
 is true) by Possuet, is a detestable sj^stem. 
 In politics as in poetry, in religion, and 
 in philosophy, the duty of the Indo-Euro- 
 pean nations is to search out subtleties, to 
 reconcile antagonistic claims, and that com- 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 125 
 
 plexity of ideas, so utterly unknown to 
 Sliemitic nations, whose organizations have 
 always been of distressing and fatal sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 In Ai't and Poetry, what do we owe to 
 them? Nothing in Art. These nations 
 have but little of Ai't in them; our Art 
 comes entirely from Greece. In Poetry, 
 however, without being their dependents, 
 we hold in common with them more than 
 one point of resemblance. The Psalms have 
 become, in some respects, one of our sources 
 of poetry. Hebrew poetry has taken its 
 place among us, by the side of Greek 
 poetry, not as furnishing any positive school, 
 but as constituting a poetical ideality, a sort 
 of Olympus, where, by dint of an accepted 
 prestige, everything is tinted by a lam- 
 bent glory. Milton, Lamartine, Lamennais, 
 would not have existed at all, or certainly 
 not as they are, without the Psalms. 
 Here, again, all the shadows that are deli- 
 cate, all that are profound, are our own 
 work. The subject which is essentially 
 
126 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 poetic is the destiny of man ; his melan- 
 choly vicissitudes, his nneasy search into 
 causes, his just complaint against Heaven. 
 We have no need to learn this from any 
 ont\ The eternal school for this is the soul 
 of each individual. 
 
 In Science and Philosophy we are ex- 
 clusively Greek The search into causes, 
 knowledge for the sake of knowledge, is 
 a thing of which there is no trace pre- 
 vious to Greece ; a process we have learnt 
 from her alone. Babylon had Science, but 
 not the real element of science, an absolute 
 fixidity of the laws of IN'ature. Egypt had 
 knowledge of geometry, but she did not 
 produce the Elements of Euclid. As to th*^ 
 old Shemitic mind, it was in its nature anti- 
 philosophical and anti-scientific. In Job, 
 the search into causes is almost represented 
 as impiety. In Ecclesiastes, science is de- 
 clared a vanity. The author, prematurely 
 disgusted, vaunts his having learnt all that 
 is under the sun, and of having found no- 
 thing but weariness, Arist.:>tle, nearly hi< 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 127 
 
 contemporary, and who had more right to 
 say that he had exhausted the universe, 
 never speaks of weariness. The wisdom of 
 Shemitic nations never rises above parables 
 and proverbs. Arabian science and Arabian 
 philosophy are often alluded to, and, in fact, 
 during one or two centuries in the middle 
 ages, the Arabs were our teachers; but it 
 was only until we were acquainted with the 
 Greek originals. This Arabian science and 
 philosophy was only a puerile rendering 
 of Greek science and philosophy. Erom 
 the time when Greece herself reappeared, 
 these pitiful versions became valueless ; 
 and it was not without cause that all 
 scholars at the revival of letters com- 
 menced a real crusade against them. When 
 closely examined, moreover, this Arabian 
 science has nothing Arabian in it. Its 
 foundation is purely Greek ; among its ori- 
 ginators there is not a single true Shemite ; 
 they were all Spaniards and Persians who 
 wrote in Arabic. The philosophical part 
 filled by the Jews in the middle ages was 
 
128 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 that of simple interpreters. The Jemsh 
 philosophy of that period is Ai^abian philo- 
 sophy, without modification. One page of 
 Eoger Bacon contains more of the true 
 spirit of Science than all this second hand 
 knowledge, devoid of true originality, and 
 respectable only as a link in the chain of 
 tradition. 
 
 If we examine the question in a moral 
 and social point of view, we shall find 
 that Shemitic morality is, at times, very 
 high and very pure. The code attributed 
 to Moses contains exalted ideas of right. 
 The prophets are sometimes most eloquent 
 tribunes. The moralists, Jesus the son of 
 Sirach, and Hillel, rise to a surprising 
 loftiness. !N"or must we forget that the 
 morality of the Gospel was first preached 
 in a Shemitic tongue. On the other hand 
 the Shemitic character is generally hard, 
 narrow, egotistical. In this race we find 
 strong passions, perfect devotion, and in- 
 comparable qualities. It rarely possesses 
 that delicacy of moral feeling which seems 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 129 
 
 to be the peculiar inheritance of the Ger- 
 manic and Celtic races. The tender, deep, 
 melancholy emotions, those dreams of the 
 infinite in which all the powers of the soul 
 are mingled, that great consciousness of 
 duty, which alone gives a solid basis to 
 our faith and our hopes, are the work of 
 our race and oiu^ climate. Here, then, the 
 labour is mingled. The moral education of 
 mankind is not the exclusive merit of any 
 race. The reason of this is perfectly simple. 
 Morality does not teach more than Poetry ; 
 beautiful aphorisms do not make an honest 
 man. Everyone finds good in the loftiness 
 of his nature, and in the immediate revela- 
 tion of his own heart. 
 
 As regards industry, invention, material 
 civilization, we owe, beyond contradiction, 
 much to the Shemitic nations. Oui* race, 
 gentlemen, did not begin with a taste for 
 comfort and for business. It was a moral, 
 brave, and warlike race, jealous of liberty 
 and honour, loving Nature, capable of self- 
 devotion, preferring many things to life. 
 
 6* 
 
130 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Commerce and the industrial arts were first 
 carried on on a grand scale by a Shemitic 
 people, or at least by a people speaking a 
 Shemitic tongue, — the Phoenicians. In the 
 middle ages, the Arabs and the Jews were 
 also our masters in point of commerce. All 
 European luxuries, from ancient times to 
 the seventeenth century, came from the 
 East. I speak of luxury, not of Art ; there 
 is a vast difference between the two. 
 Grreece, which, as regards taste, had an 
 immense superiority over the rest of man- 
 kind, was not a land of luxury ; there 
 the vain magiiiiiccnce of the palace of the 
 great king was spoken of with contempt ; 
 and if we could be allowed to see the house 
 of Pericles, we should probably scarcely 
 think it habitable. I do not insist on this 
 point ; for then we should have to examine 
 whether this Asiatic luxmy, that of Ba- 
 bylon, for instance, were really the work 
 of the Shemites ? I, for one, doubt it. 
 But one indisputable gift they made us, 
 a gift of the highest order, and which 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 131 
 
 ought to place the Phoenicians nearly on a 
 par with their brothers, the Hebrews and 
 Arabs, in the history of progress, — our 
 alphabet. You know that the characters 
 which we now use are, through a thousand 
 transformations, the same with which the 
 Shemites first expressed the sounds of their 
 language. The Greek and Latin alphabets, 
 from which our European alphabets are all 
 derived, are no other than the Phoenician 
 alphabet. Phonetic writing, that luminous 
 idea of expressing each articulation by a 
 sign, and reducing these articulations to a 
 small number — twenty-two, — was an inven- 
 tion of the Shemites. But for them, we 
 should, perhaps, still be draggling on pain- 
 fully with hieroglyphics. It may, therefore, 
 be said, in one sense, that the Phoenicians, 
 whose literatiu'c has so unhappily entirely 
 disappeared, have thus fixed the essential 
 condition to all firm and precise exercise of 
 thought. 
 
 But I hasten to pass on, gentlemen, to 
 the chief service which the Shemitic race 
 
132 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 has rendered to the world, to its especial 
 work J and, if one may be allowed the ex- 
 pression, its Providential mission. We do 
 not owe to the Shemitic race our political 
 existence, onr Art, onr Poetry, our Philo- 
 sophy, nor our Science. For what, then, 
 are we indebted to it ? We owe to them 
 Eeligion.A^The whole world, with the ex- 
 ception of India, China, Japan, and na- 
 tions yet altogether savage, has adopted 
 Shemitic religions. The civilized world 
 numbers only Jews, Christians, and Mussul- 
 mans. The Indo-European race, in par- 
 ticular, except the Brahmanic family and 
 the feeble remnants of the Parsees, has 
 passed entirely over to Shemitic creeds. 
 Wliat has been the cause of this remark- 
 able phenomenon ? How is it that nations, 
 which hold the guidance of the world, have 
 abdicated their own creed to adopt that of ^ 
 those whom they have overcome ? ^"'W^ 
 
 The primitive worship of the Indo-Eiux)- ^ 
 pean race, gentlemen, was as beautiful and 
 full of depth as the imagination of the 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 133 
 
 people themselyes. It was like an eclio of 
 Nature — a sort of Nature's hymn, — in wHcli 
 the idea of a single Cause appeared but 
 fleetingly and with great indistinctness. It 
 was a religion of childhood, fall of simplicity 
 and poetry, but which was sure to crumble 
 away as thought became more active. Persia 
 first effected its reform, which is connected 
 with the name of Zoroaster, under influ- 
 ences, and at a period, of which we know 
 nothing. Greece, in the time of Pisistratus, 
 was even then dissatisfied with her religion, 
 and cast her look towards the East./ In / 
 the Eoman epoch, the old Pagan worsliip 
 had become altogether insufficient. It no 
 longer appealed to the imagination; it ad- 
 dressed itself but feebly to the moral senti- 
 ment. The early embodiments of the powers 
 of Nature had become but legends, at times 
 amusing and pointed, but destitute of all 
 religious value. It was exactly at this 
 epoch that the civilised world found itself 
 face to face with the Jewish religion.^ 
 
 ^ il. Kenan's views of Judaism and Christianity are peculiar, 
 
134 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Founded on the clear and simple dogma of 
 Divine Unity, scattering naturalism and 
 pantheism to the winds, by this phrase of 
 marvellous precision: '^In the beginning 
 God created the Heaven and the Earth;" 
 possessing a Law, a Book, the repository 
 of elevated moral teachings and lofty reli- 
 gious poetry, Judaism had an incontestible 
 superiority, and at that time it might have 
 seemed possible to predict that some day 
 the world would worship as the Jews ; that 
 is, leave its ancient mythology for mono- 
 theism. An extraordinary movement which 
 took place at that moment, in the bosom of 
 Judaism itself, decided the victory/*7Side /' 
 by side with these grand and incomparable / 
 portions, Judaism contained the principle 
 of a narrow formalism and fanaticism, both 
 exclusive and disdainful of the foreigner. 
 This was the Pharisaical spirit; in later 
 times it engendered the Talmudical spirit. 
 
 belonging to the extreme advanced school of theology ; and the 
 expression of these views in the following passages led to the sup- 
 pression of his course of lectures at the College of France, for 
 a time. — Translator's Note. 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 135 
 
 If Judaism had been nothing but Phari- 
 saism, it would have had no future. But 
 this race possessed in itself a religious ac- 
 tivity truly extraordinary. Moreover, like 
 all great races, it nurtured opposite tenden- 
 cies : it knew how to re-act against itself, 
 and to acquire, where needed, qualities the 
 most opposed to its defects. In the very 
 midst of the tumultuous fermentation in 
 which the Jewish nation was plunged, 
 -under the last Aramean princes,/the most 
 extraordinary moral event recorded in his- 
 tory came to pass in Galilee. 
 
 A man, to be compared with none other — 
 so great indeed that, although every thing 
 in these studies and in this place, should 
 be viewed only by the light of Positive 
 Science, I should be unwilling to contra- 
 dict those who, struck by the exceptional 
 character of his work, call him God — 
 worked out a reform of Judaism, a reform 
 of such depth, so individualized (si indi- 
 viduelle)^ that it was in truth a new crea- 
 tion in all its parts. Having attained a 
 
136 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 higher degree of religious eminence than 
 man had ever reached before, having come 
 to look upon God in the relation of a son 
 to a father, devoted to his work, mth an 
 oblivion of all beside, and an abnegation 
 never before so loftily carried out, the 
 victim at last of his idea, and deified by 
 his death, Jesus founded the eternal reli- 
 gion of mankind, -r-the religion of the soul 
 set free from all priesthood, all worship, 
 all observances; accessible to all races, su- 
 perior to the distinctions of caste — in one 
 word — absolute. ''Woman, the time is 
 come when they will not worship any 
 more in this mountain, nor at Jerusalem, 
 but when the true worshippers will wor- 
 ship in spmt and in truth." ^ The genial 
 centre to which man, for centuiies to come, 
 should trace back his joy, his hopes, his 
 consolation, and his motives for well-doing. 
 
 1 Our version : — •'*' Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when 
 ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship 
 
 the Father But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true 
 
 worshippers shall worship the Father in spiiit and in truth" 
 (John iv. 21 and 23). — Translatoi^s Note. 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 137 
 
 was established. The most abundant source 
 of virtue which the sympathetic contact of 
 a sublime perception has made to well up 
 in the heart of man, was opene d. ^ The 
 lofty conception of Jesus, scarcely compre- 
 hended by his disciples, sustained consider- 
 able diminution. 
 
 IN'evertheless, Christianity prevailed from 
 the first, and prevailed without limit 
 above all other existing forms of faith. 
 Those forms which did not aspire to any 
 absolute worth, which had no solid or- 
 ganization, and which responded to no- 
 thing moral, made but feeble resistance. 
 Some efforts made to reform them, in ac- 
 cordance with the new requirements of 
 mankind, and to introduce into them an 
 element of earnestness and morality, — the 
 attempt of Julian, for instance, — completely 
 failed. The Empire, which believed, not 
 without reason, that its very element was 
 threatened by the growth of a ncAV power — 
 the Church — resisted at first most energeti- 
 cally : it finished by adopting the faith 
 
138 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 which it had battled against. All the 
 people influenced by the culture of Greece 
 and Eome, became Christians ; the Ger- 
 manic nations and the Slaves^ followed some- 
 what later. Persia and India alone, of the 
 Indo-European race, preserved, much altered 
 it is true, the old faith of their ancestors, 
 owing to their religious institutions being 
 strongly and closely allied to the State. 
 The Brahmanic race, above all, rendered to 
 the world a scientific service of the highest 
 order, by the preservation, with an exuber- 
 ance of minute and touching precaution, 
 of the most ancient hymns of that worship, 
 the Vedas. 
 
 The religious fertility of the Shemitic 
 race was not yet exhausted. After this un- 
 equalled victory, Christianity, taken up by 
 Greek and Latin civilization, had become the 
 property of the West; the East, its birth- 
 place, was just the place where it encoun- 
 tered the greatest obstacles. Arabia espe- 
 cially, towards the seventh century, could 
 
 ^ The Slaves or the Slavonic race. 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 139 
 
 not make up its mind to become Ckristian. 
 "Wavering between Judaism and Christianity, 
 between native superstition and memories of 
 the old patriarchal worship, disgusted by 
 the mythological elements which the Indo- 
 European race had introduced into the heart 
 of Christianity, she would return to the re- 
 ligion of Abraham. She founded Islamism. 
 Islamism rose up in its turn with an im- 
 mense superiority in the midst of the debased 
 religions of Asia. With a single blow it 
 overturned Parsee-ism, which had been 
 strong enough to triumph over Christianity 
 under the Sassanides, and reduced it to the 
 position of a petty sect. India also saw, 
 in turn, but without being converted, the 
 Divine Unity proclaimed victoriously in the 
 midst of her ancient Pantheon. Islamism, 
 in a word, brought over to Monotheism, 
 nearly all those pagan lands which Chris- 
 tianity had not yet converted. It is finish- 
 ing its mission in our times by the conquest 
 of Africa, which is now becoming almost 
 entirely Mahometan. Thus with a few 
 
140 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 exceptions of minor importance, the world 
 in a manner has been entirely subdued by 
 the spreading of Shemitic Monotheism. 
 
 Are Ave to admit, then, that the Indo- 
 European nations have completely renounced 
 their individuality in adopting the Shemitic 
 creed ? By no means. While adopting the 
 Shemitic religion, we have greatly modified 
 it. Christianity, in its usual acceptation, is 
 in reality our own work ; Primitive Chris- 
 tianity, consisting essentially, in the apoca- 
 lyptic belief, of a kingdom of God yet to 
 come, Christianity such as it appeared to 
 the mind of a St. James, a Papias, was 
 very different from our Christianity, overlaid 
 with metaphysics by the Greek Fathers, 
 and the Scholastic teaching of the middle 
 ages, reduced to a system of morality and 
 charity by the enlightenment of modern 
 times. The victory of Chiistianity was 
 only secured when it completely cast aside 
 its Jewish clothing; when it became again 
 what it had been in the lofty conception 
 of its Pounder, a creation divested of 
 
/^ 
 
 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 141 
 
 the firm trammels of the Shemitic spirit. 
 This is so true that Jews and Mahometans 
 have nothing but aversion for this religion, 
 the sister of their own; but which, in the 
 hands of another race, has clothed itself with 
 exquisite poetry, the enchanting adornment 
 of romantic legends. Beings, gentle, sensi- 
 tive, and imaginative, such as the author of 
 The Imitation of Christy such as the mystics of 
 the middle ages, such as the saints in general, 
 have professed a religion proceeding in truth 
 from the Shemitic mind, but transformed in 
 all its parts, by the genius of modern na- 
 tions, especially by the Celtic and Germanic 
 races. That depth of sentiment, that tender 
 melancholy, found in the religion of a 
 Francis of Assisi, of a Fra Angelico, were 
 every way opposed to Shemitic genius, 
 essentially hard and dry. 
 
 As for the future, gentlemen, I foresee, 
 more and more, the triumph of Indo-Euro- 
 pean genius. From the sixteenth century, 
 one great fact, till then doubtful, continues 
 to manifest itself with striking energy ; it 
 
142 SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 
 
 is the decided victory of Europe, it is the 
 accomplishment of the old Shemitic saying : 
 ^ ' God^ shall enlarge Japheth. and he shall 
 dwell in the tents of Shem^ and Canaan shall 
 be his ser vant.''^ 
 
 Until that period, Shemitism was master 
 on its own ground. The Mussulman East 
 surpassed the West, had better armies, and 
 a better policy, and supplied the latter with 
 wealth, learning, and civilization. Now 
 their respective parts are changed. Euro- 
 pean genius has been developing itself with 
 incomparable grandeur ; Islamism, on the 
 contrary, has been as slowly crumbling 
 away ; in our times it is falling Avith a crash. 
 In the present day, the one essential con- 
 dition for the expansion of European civili- 
 zation is the destruction of the principle 
 of Shemitic action (chose) — the destruction 
 of the theocratic power of Islamism, and 
 fionsequently the destruction of Islamism it- 
 self; for Islamism can only exist as an 
 official religion : reduce it to the position of 
 
 ^ Genesis ix. 27. 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 143 
 
 a religion, free and individual, and it will 
 perish. Islamism is not a merely State re- 
 ligion, like Catholicism was in France under 
 Louis XIY, and still is in Spain ; it is a re- 
 ligion which excludes the State, an organi- 
 zation of which the Papal States offer the 
 only type in Europe. War miceasing is 
 there, — war which will only cease when the 
 last son of Ismael shall have died with 
 misery, or been driven by terror to the 
 depths of the desert. Islamism is the perfect 
 negative of Europe ; Islamism is fanaticism, 
 such as Spain in the time of Philip II., and 
 Italy in the time of Pius Y., scarcely knew. 
 Islamism is contempt of science, suppression 
 of civil society ; it is the frightful weakness 
 of the Shemitic spirit, narrowing the mind of 
 man ; closing it against every delicate con- 
 ception, every fine feeling, every rational 
 research, to place it immovably in front of 
 one unceasing tautology : God is God, 
 
 The future, gentlemen, then belongs to 
 Europe, and to Europe alone. Europe will 
 subdue the world, and will spread over it its 
 
144 SHEMITIC CTYILIZATIOX. 
 
 religion, which, is individual right, liberty, 
 respect, — that belief which breathes a 
 something divine into the heart of man. In 
 the course of events, the progress of Indo- 
 European nations will consist in separating 
 itself more and more from the Shemitic 
 mind. Our religion will retain less and 
 less of Judaism ; more and more will it 
 i"esist all political organization in matters 
 concerning the soul. It will become the re- 
 ligion of the heart, — the inmost poetry of 
 each human being. In morality we shall at- 
 tain to a delicate nicety unkno^vn to the 
 beings of the Old Alliance ; we shall become 
 more and more Christians. In politics we 
 shair\j*e€oncile two things always ignored 
 Ijy Shemitic nations, — liberty, and a strong 
 political organization. In poetry, we shall 
 require an expression of that instinct of 
 infinity which is at once our delight and 
 our dread : in either case, our true no- 
 ')ility. In philosophy, instead of scholastic 
 dogmatism, we shall open up vistas of thr 
 <;;cneral system of the world. In short, 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION'. 145 
 
 we must study every delicacy of shade, 
 require subtilty instead of dogmatism, the 
 relative instead of the absolute. This is, in 
 my opinion, oiu^ future, if the future mean 
 progress. Shall we attain to a more certain 
 knowledge of the destiny of Man and his 
 connection with the Infinite ? Shall we un- 
 derstand more clearly the law of the origin 
 of being, the nature of perception, what life 
 is, and what personality ? Will the world, 
 without returning to credulity, and while 
 persisting in the path of positive philosophy, 
 find again true joy, ardour, hope, calm con- 
 templation ? Will it some day be worth 
 while to live ; and will ihe man who believes 
 in duty, find in that duty his rcAv ard ?/ Will 
 that science to which we devote our lives 
 repay us for what we sacrifice to her ? I 
 know not. All that is certain is this : in 
 seeking for Truth in a scientific way we 
 shall have performed our duty. If Truth 
 is sad, we shall at least have the consolation 
 of having found it by recognized rules; it 
 may be said that we deserved to find it 
 
 7 
 
146 SHEMITIO CIVILIZATION. 
 
 more consoling; we shall bear this testi- 
 mony, that we have been true and sincere 
 at heart. 
 
 Truth to say, I may not linger on such 
 thoughts. History proves this truth, that 
 there is a transcendent instinct in human 
 nature, which urges it to a nobler goal. 
 The development of mankind is not to be 
 explained by the hj^othesis that man is 
 only a finite being ; virtue but a refinement 
 of egoism ; religion but a cheat. Our toil is 
 not in vain, gentlemen. Whatever the author 
 of The Boole of Ecclesiastes may have said, in 
 a moment of depression, science is not the 
 worst pursuit which God has given to 
 the sons of men. It is the best. If all is 
 vanity, he who devotes his life to Truth will 
 not be more deceived than others. If Truth 
 and well-being are real, and of that we are 
 assured beyond all contradiction, they who 
 search for them and love them, are they 
 who will have lived best. 
 
 Gentlemen, we shall not meet again: in 
 my next lecture I shall go into the depths 
 
SHEMITIC CIVILIZATION. 147 
 
 of Hebrew Philology, where the greater part 
 of you will not accompany me. But you 
 who are young, to whom I may allow my- 
 self to offer counsel and adyice, will be here 
 to listen to me. The active zeal which ani- 
 mates you, and which has shewn itself more 
 than once during this lecture in a manner so 
 flattering to me, is praiseworthy in principle, 
 and of good omen ; but do not let it degene- 
 rate into frivolous agitation. Turn to solid 
 studies ; believe that true science is, above 
 all, the result of cultivation of the mind, no- 
 bility of heart, independence of judgment. 
 Prepare for our country generations ripe in 
 all things which constitute the glory and 
 ornament of life. Guard against unreflect- 
 ing impulses, and remember that liberty can 
 only be achieved by seriousness, respect for 
 yourselves and for others, devotion to the 
 public weal, and to that special work which 
 each of us is sent into the world to com- 
 mence or to continue. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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