BY M. T. NEDE.

THE HISTORY OF SHORTHAND.*

BY JOHN WESTBY-GIBSON, LL. D.

THE ORIGIN OF WRITING-CONTINUED.

Classical writers have attributed the highest civilization to the ancient Babylonians and Chaldeans,-by which names they proleptically called the inhabitants of the great Tigro-Euphrates Valley, that unquestionable nursery of mankind, to the central part of which the monuments give the Archaic name of Tintir, Seat of life, and Gom-Duniyar, Garden of delight. This civilization extended far beyond the Flood (B. C. 2349): therefore, without being liable to the charge of credulity, we may be permitted to gaze thoughtfully towards those historic lands looming far off, dim and mysterious, in the morning of Time, hoping to catch some glimpses of the truth. The spade and the pickaxe of the explorer have given irrefragable evidence that man, who had accomplished so many arts before the Deluge, and who, in a few centuries after, was master, by hand and thought, of the revived arts of a lost Atlantis, could not have been ignorant of writing, the trusty servant of human progress, during the sixteen evanished centuries: therefore, the story of the buried records of the Old World may have had a solid basis of truth,-something more than the thin end of the wedge,―to rest upon. We can even believe that the art had passed beyond its childish stage of pictorial and symbolical forms and reached the linear and cursive style, more fitted for the intercourse of minds, or to bear the weight of historical records and of those warnings and denunciations of Prophecy, attested alike by sacred and profane writers. Be this as it may, Tradition, ever speaking with a variable voice, has become Legend, and Legend has been accepted as History, and tells us, now of engraved columns, now of books, clay-tablets or papyrus-rolls, and we must give ear to its half-articulate language. Every great nation has some version of the story, adorned or disfigured by the genius or humor of the race; however, therefore, can the wonderfully wise men of these latter days assert these Old-World stories to be sheer invention!

The Greco-Chaldean priest Berosus, about B. C. 270, professes to have chronicled the oldest events of his country, taken from the inscriptions on the walls of the House of Bel, at Babylon, and from the temple archives as

*Continued from page 391, Vol. I, No. 11.

well as from the traditionary knowledge. Fragments of these have come down through Abydemus, Apollodorus and Polyhistor and then, by way of Josephus and Eusebius, to the pages of George the Syncellus, but in such chequered route have suffered much wear and tear. The wonderful cuneiform discoveries of recent years, however, have enhanced the value of these writings of Berosus, and shown that he had a most serious regard for truth. If we could have before us the originals, untouched by Greek authors or the Christian fathers with their officious emendations and reconciliations, our trust in his literary probity would probably be still greater.

Reviewing the Lists of the early Antidiluuian Kings, in Berosus, we find an indication of two lines. One line, evidently the Cainite, ruled at the city of Sippara, which the Greeks, deriving the name from the Semitic Sepher, a book, called Pantibiblon. This fanciful idea is only valuable to show that this ancient city was considered a resort of the learned, but the real meaning of its name was the place or city of the sun, otherwise known in classical history as the Babylonian Heliopolis, Sun-city, and in the Hebrew Scriptures as Sepharvaim, the Double-Sippara, or, the Two-Sipparas, from the fact that the city, as a whole, stood upon two sides of the Nahr-malka, King'swater, a canal to the East of Euphrates and Southwest of Bagdad. The chief portion, called Sippara-of-the-Sun, where Adrammelech was worshipped, (2 Kings, XVII, 31), is the modern Abu-Habba, traditionally said to be the most ancient mound of this land of wonders. It was explored a few years back by Mr. Hormwzd Rassam, and some 200,000 inscriptions, relating to the revenues and lands of the City of the Sun-god, Shamas, were discovered in a chamber of the temple called E-parra, house of the Sun, records that carry us back to nearly the days of Peleg, and the division of nations (B. C. 2247). One inscription tells of the restoration of the temple by Kham-murabi, who had driven out the Elamites, Kudur-mabug, Servant of the great goddess (the Scriptural Chedorlaomer, Servant of the goddess Lagamer,) and his son Eri-aku, Servant of the moon, and founded a new Cassite dynasty. Here we are brought to the days of the Babylo-Elamite confederacy of the four kings who invaded Palestine in the early days of Abraham (B. C. 1913). Some of these records are in the Boston Museum, and an expedition to Mesopotamia, due to American enterprise, has been fitted out to supplement Mr. Rassam's labors. How this gentleman, so famous as Layard's lieutenant, and, afterwards, on his own initiative, as an explorer at Babylon, Borsippa, Cutha and Abu-Habba, would delight (as we know from recent personal conversation) in obtaining a firman for further exploration in his native country, and how thoroughly we regret that this natural desire cannot be gratified so long as the stingy policy of governments ignores the claims of science and religion. Let us hope that

the privileges conceded to other countries, though at present denied to England, will eventuate in discoveries settling many vexed questions, and especially those on the antiquities of nations and the origin of the graphic arts. Probably an excavation of the second portion of the Double City,"Sippara of Anunit," (i. e., of the goddess who was a feminine counterpart of Anu), where Anammelech was worshipped, supposed to be lying in the neighboring mound of Dair, would lead to the discovery of much hidden treasure invaluable to scholars and archæologists.

Of the other or second royal line of the antidiluvian world, the Sethite, established at Laranche, or Larsha (the modern Senkereh), Xisuthrus was the eigth Chaldean monarch: and,-Berosus says,—in his time “happened the great deluge." Larsha, Royal City, is the Hebrew Ellasar, properly Atsar, also meaning the Royal City; it is otherwise called Sarippak, and "the Ship City" in the clay tablets, where the Elippu, ship of Noah, was built, and where the beneficient god Hea, "the Lord of Ships," and designer of the vessel, was supposed to dwell of old. The Lists of the ten antidiluvian kings of Chaldea, diversely noted by the old historians from Berosus's lost work, agree in the main points and exhibit chronological annals which, when systematically treated, will closely correspond with the period of nearly seventeen centuries covered in our authorised version of the Bible, and, of course, differ some six centuries from the elongated chronology of the Septuagint, which, as the work of Alexandrian Jews, more Hellenistic than Oriental in culture, was a combination of Hebrew truth and Egyptian fable, -the latter having expanded the time to fit certain Sothiac Cycles, originating in the peculiar phenomena of the NileValley, and joining them to a more lengthened period dependent upon the precession of the Equinoxes. The result is a mere compromise among the rival chronographers of the days of the early Ptolemies,—the years of the Mundane Era being changed from 4004 to 5557.

Now if Chaldean history is not at fault in so important a matter as chronology, which is the very backbone of History,-and we confidently assert it is not; for in the esoteric yet simple construction of their tables the ancients generally left a key in the lock for any of the outside world skilful and bold enough to handle it,—we venture to ask why there should be any failure in respect of the legendary or historical portion, in its chief particulars? Surely the world-wide story that ancient records, historical, religious and social, were carefully deposited in anticipation of the destruction of the world filled with the violence of commingled Sethite and Cainite races should command our belief. If monumental discovery and scholarly research have added so immensely to our knowledge of the past, it cannot be a mere flight of fancy to say that, in one or other of the cities

which were the seats of the earliest ruling dynasties, sprung from the first (so called) king Alorus, the great shepherd, or Adam, who, as the chronicle asserts, "gave out a report that he was appointed by God to be the shepherd of his people," and ending with Xisuthrus, or Noah, the still more eventful records we speak of, whether of divine origin or of heathen suggestion, were once buried, and must still remain in their hiding place, or have been recovered and removed in ages long vanished, yet at the same time have been copied for some of the great libraries of the later kingdoms.

In the long extract fortunately preserved by Alexander Polyhistor, and afterwards by Eusebius and the Syncellus, the Antidiluvian Books are three times mentioned by Berosus. He says the Babylonians had written accounts comprehending a term of fifteen myriads (150,000 years), -an expanded period, which we need not stay to explain. We then find details of the command of Cronus to Xisuthrus "to commit to writing a history of the beginning, procedure and final conclusion of all things down to the present term, and to bury these accounts securely in the city of Cronus." Then follows the story of the Deluge, which commenced on the 15th of the Babylonian month, Dosuis, which, as it exactly corresponds with the 17th day of the month Athyr, when, according to the Egyptian legend in Plutarch, the god Osiris entered into the ark, and to the 17th day of the second month when, according to our Bible, the Flood commenced.—all Synchronisms of the 16-17th June, B. C. 2349 (stated in Julian terms),—is a further proof of the trustworthiness of Berosus. The Hebrew and Babylonian years were on a Lunar reckoning, and the Egyptians had a kalendar of vague solar years: consequently, as this coincidence of dates for any event could not happen again in 1500 years, and could not have happened earlier within 1500 years, a more remarkable agreement of Sacred and Profane History could not be found in the annals of the world. It utterly discredits the statement of Baron Bunson and his followers that "the Egyptians knew nothing of the Deluge." Berosus afterwards gives the instructions of Xisuthrus to those in the Ark to search for the writings in Sippara, and concludes with an account of their recovery, and of the rebuilding of cities and temples.

The god Cronus is, of course, not the postdiluvian Cronus already mentioned. He is the Chaldean Hea, the mediatorial god, one of the Divine Triad, Anu, Hea and Ilu (or Bel), rulers of the Upper, Middle and Under Worlds, Love, Wisdom and Power, active in the creation, preservation and destruction of all things. Like the first Thoth of Egypt, Hea, as a continued avatar of the promised seed, was considered to be manifest in Enoch. His name is related to the Semitic Iah, Iahu, or the fourlettered name (the famous Tetragrammaton) Ihuh, which we write as "Jehovah." He is the Oes of Helladius, the Aos of Damascius, the