THE ideas of a past generation respecting the education prevailing in the remotely ancient world have, for the most part, disappeared under the light of facts. We now know that in the dim past not only was writing common, but that the ordinary transactions of life―buying and selling, marrying and giving in marriage―were carefully guaranteed by duly witnessed writings. We know that literary men, under the instruction of kings, diligently preserved old traditions, and that their books were kept in royal libraries. Also, as moderns assort and classify works, so did these ancients. In fact―to use present day terms― civilization and education were in a very advanced state in those remote ages.
If our reader will consult the map given upon page 29, he will find Sippara, near which stood Akkad, or Agadé.
Akkad was the capital of the district of Upper Babylonia before the city of Babylon had risen to importance. In process of time Sargon, a celebrated king, reigned in Akkad. He beautified the city. He was a “great builder, as well as a warrior. . . . He also established a famous library, for which the standard Babylonian work on astronomy and astrology, in seventy-two books, was compiled.” When Sargon founded his library the ancient Akkadian language was nearly extinct, and translations of the old astronomical observations were, therefore, made. Similar translations “were made for the library of Erech” ―one “considerably older than those made for the library of Sargon.” Sargon, we find, had in his library various “grammars, phrase-books, and vocabularies, and other bilingual tablets, by means of which a knowledge of the old language of Akkad was conveyed to the Babylonian or Assyrian scholar.”
In later centuries, again, these ancient tablets were labelled and catalogued, and were placed in “libraries or chambers, probably on the upper floors of the palaces, appointed for the reception of the tablets, and custodians or librarians to take charge of them. These regulations were all of great antiquity, and, like the tablets, had a Babylonian origin.” But not only were the Babylonian regulations maintained, the very “texts of Rim-agu, Sargon, and Khammuragas, who lived at least a thousand years before Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus, are composed in the same language as the texts of these later kings, there being no sensible difference in style to match the long interval between them.”
The fact of a city or a nation establishing a library of such importance as that of the city of Akkad is evidence of its high state of mental power and cultivation, and necessarily dissipates the notions that used to prevail respecting the immaturity and ignorance of mankind in those primeval times. The ancient tablets “show the wonderful progress in culture and civilization already made by the people of Chaldea long before the age of Moses, or even Abraham.” Such a fact is of itself a sidelight on Scripture, for the stately manners of the patriarchs, and their general demeanor, as opened up in Scripture, are those of men of refinement and dignity.
The accompanying photograph of an ancient tablet will be interesting. The imprint of the “pen” into the clay surface is clearly shown; the letters are defined and sharp, and are easily read; indeed, the tablet does not seem to have suffered from age at all. Upon the reverse of the tablet are to be seen the impression of the seals of the scribes. The date of this writing is “Babylon, month Sebat, day 24th, year 2nd Nabû-na’id (Nabonidus), King of Babylon.” It is not, therefore, ancient as compared with the writings of Which we have been speaking; but, as the methods of the scribes changed so little in Babylonia, the tablet is an admirable illustration of the ancient books that have been the subject of these columns.