By Nile and Tigris, a narrative of journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on behalf of the British museum between the years 1886 and 1913

Front matter

The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.

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CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Preface

In 1907 I published a work entitled " The Egyptian Sudan," in which I gave some account of the history of that country in ancient and modern times, and a description of the excavations which I had made on the pyramidfields of Napata and the Island of Meroe, during the years 1899-1905, for the Trustees of the British Museum. After the pubUcation of that work, I decided to put on record, when circumstances should permit, a narrative of my three Missions to Mesopotamia in 1887, 1888 and 1890, and of my many Missions to Egypt to excavate and to acquire antiquities for the Trustees of the British Museum, and the present volume is the result of this decision. At the suggestion of friends I have prefaced my narrative by some notes on the influences and circumstances which led me to study the ancient languages of Western Asia, Eg5rpt, and Ethiopia, and determined the work of my life in the Department of Oriental Antiquities, ^ in the British Museum.

In the present volume, as in my work on the Egyptian Sudan, the narrative is based on series of letters written to my wife. With one exception, these letters all reached home, thanks to the arrangements that I made personally with the Tattariyin, or Turkish postal couriers ; and my note-books furnish the main facts in the period covered by the missing letter.

In the course of my narrative, I have often given the names of people who have helped me in my work abroad. But there are many others whom I have not named,

' The title of the Department was changed by the Trustees in 1886 to " Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities."

vi Preface.

both Europeans and natives, who also helped me there ; and to them all I offer my thanks. Furthermore, my grateful thanks are due to three devoted friends who read the proof-sheets of this book, and, though in their criticisms of it they dealt very faithfully with me, its completion is largely due to their encouragement and sympathy.

With regard to the illustrations, I beg to offer my thanks to the Trustees of the British Museum for permitting me to photograph some of the objects that I acquired for them in these journeys ; and to my colleague, Mr. Idris Bell, for selecting the most suitable passages in the Greek papyri. I would also thank my old friend, Mr. A. B. Holland, for placing at my disposal a number of photographs that he took on the Tigris, Euphrates and Karun, on which rivers his official position gave him unrivalled opportunities ; and likewise Captain the Rev. H. R. Cooke, M.C., Vicar of Princetown, for photographs of Mosul and Samarra.

Whilst writing the description of the "Arch" of Ctesiphon I asked Mr. Holland to make enquiries in Baghdad with the view of finding out when the side of it which is wanting collapsed, and the reason for its collapse. In a letter recently received from him he tells me that a friend of his in Baghdad has found in a diary kept by the late Mr. Svoboda of that city, a statement to the effect that one half of the "Arch " of Ctesiphon fell down in the spring of 1887. The Tigris rose in that year to a very great height, and its waters spread in all directions for miles, and flooded the site of the "Arch," causing one side of it to collapse.

E. A. WALLIS BUDGE.

British Museum.

January 2nd, 1920.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

PAGE

Prolegomena. Early Stxjdies in the British Museum ... 3

Cambridge 54

First Mission, 1886-87. Excavation of Tombs at AswAn ... 76

Second Mission, 1887-88. Egypt, BaghdAd and Babylon ... 123

Some Account of Baldak, Baldac, Baudas, Babylon, New

Babylon, Bagdet or Baghdad 185

Journey to Babil (Babylon), IJillah, and Birs-i-NimrGd

(Borsippa) 223

Native Views on Excavations in Mesopotamia and on the

Trade in Anticas 268

Some Account of Babi-ilu (Babylon), the " Gate of God,"

AND OF THE Excavations which HAVE been MADE there ... 275

Return to Baghdad via AbO Habbah and Der 311

Third Mission, 1888-89. Constantinople. Across the

Desert to MdsuL. Journey to Baghdad by Raft f.. 341

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME I.

Head of a portrait statue of Ptolemy XIII (?) Frontispiece

The Elysian Fields. From a painted coffin from

Al-Barshah To face page 92

Gravestone of Muhammad, son of 'UbM Allah,

with Kiifi inscription „ 97

Gravestone of Barakah, the daughter of Husen,

with Kufi inscription ,, 99

Monolithic shrine dedicated to Horus of Philae by

Ptolemy IX and Cleopatra ,, 102

Semicircular engraved ivory amulet of the lady

Seneb ,, 115

Wooden tablets of the waxen book inscribed with documents written with the stilus in tachygraphic symbols, and a few memoranda in Greek

Painted funerary stele of Sebek-hetep

Chapter and vignette from the Papyrus of Nu ...

Letter from Tushratta, King of Mitani, to Amenhetep III, King of Egypt

Portrait figure of Herui, a high official, wearing festal gold ornaments

The Creek at Basrah

The Toftib of Ezra

The Arch of Ctesiphon in its present state

The Arch of Ctesiphon. (From a drawing by

Flandin)

The Custom House at Baghdad

The Courtyard and Mosque of Shikh 'Abd al-

Kadar

The minaret of the Mosque of Jama' al-Ghazl ... The Tomb of Shekh Ma'ruf in Western Baghdad

Plan of Baghdad by Ta vernier

Plan of Baghdad by Niebuhr

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172 176

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194 196

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List of Illustrations in Volume 1. ix

The Tomb and Mosque of ShSkh 'Omar at Baghdad

Plan of Baghdad by Felix Jones

The Bridge of Boats at Baghdad

The Courtyard of the British Residency at Baghdad, with the Sikh Guard and Staff

Babylonian clay tablet and case

Khan Iskandariyah

The Mounds of Tall Ibrahim

The Mosque of Hasan and Husen at Karbala ...

The Tomb of 'Ajdshcih Khanum, the so-called " Tomb of Zubedah "

The Ruins of Birs-i-Nimrud

Remains of the ziggurat of the Temple of Nebo of Borsippa at Birs-i-Nimrud

The basalt lion at Babylon discovered by M. I'Abbe Beauchamps in 1782

Plan of Babylon (after Koldewey)

The Mosque and Tombs of the Imams Musa and Taki at Kazimen

The remains of the ziggurat of Dur Kurigalzu at

'Akar Kuf, near Baghdad „ 326

Bridge over the Karun River, built by the Emperor

Valerian ,, 330

Green basalt portrait figure of a king of the

Xlllth dynasty „ 332

Vignette from the Papyrus of Ani, Scribe and Chancellor of the Religious Endowments of Thebes and Abydos ,, 335

Introductory vignette from the Papyrus of Nekht,

a " real scribe," and Captain of the Royal

Bowmen ,, 336

A column of hieratic text from the papyrus

containing the Precepts of Amen-hetep ... ,. 337

Predynastic hunting scene „ 338

A page of the Karshuni Text of the Great Chronicle of the Patriarch Michael, who sat from A.D. 1166 to 1199 .. 415

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PROLEGOMENA (EARLY STUDIES)

1865-1883.

PROLEGOMENA.

(Early Studies.)

Love for the East and for the things of the East was born in me, and this is not surprising seeing that several generations of my forbears served the Honourable East India Company in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, and at Al-Basrah (Busra) on the Shatt-al-'Arab, and at various ports in the Persian Gulf. My earliest recollections are associated with figures of Indian gods, sandal wood and red lacquer boxes, inlaid stands, curious plaques inlaid with mother-of-pearl and coloured woods, carved brass vessels of weird shapes, strange objects from China, Japan, and Java, which filled me with wonder, and bundles of strips of inscribed palm leaves, which I was told were books. These last were a perpetual marvel to me, and even in those days I was fascinated by the strange-looking characters, and longed for someone to explain them to me, and help me to read and imderstand them.

In 1865 I was sent to school, and we were worked hard, for the masters spared neither themselves nor us. We began work at six in the morning, winter and summer, and the periods allowed for games and recreation were not so generous as those which schoolboys enjoy at the present time. The head master, who was a kinsman of mine, beheved that it Wcis good for boys to read books on any subject unconnected with their lessons when the tasks for the day were satisfactorily disposed of, and to a few of the older boys he practically gave the run of his own private library. This Ubrary he inherited from one of my Quaker forbears, who had been an eager but non-productive student of the Languages and Literatures of Semitic peoples, and it contained many hundreds of volumes, all connected with the subjects of his special study. The Greek, Latin, French and Italian classics,

A 2

4 A Quaker Library.

standard annotated editions of the works of ancient authors, etc., were kept in another of the school houses for general use. I looked for books which would tell me about India and China, and the things from these countries which I had been accustomed to see, but I looked in vain. More than one half of the books in the library were devoted to systems of religion invented by European theologians, whose views were of a very rigid and uncompromising character. Besides these there was a whole row of old hymn books, ^ chiefly of the eighteenth century, and scores of volumes and pamphlets explaining and commenting on the views and tenets of the Quakers, Muggletonians, Sandemaiiians, Glassites, Wesleyans, Swedenb'orgians, Calvinists, Scotch Covenanters, Welsh Evangelists, Baptists of many kinds, Plymouth Brethren, etc. Among the Oriental books were the famous Lexicons of Golius and Freytag (Arabic), Cast ell and Schaff (Syriac), Buxtorf and Gesenius (Hebrew), and Ludolf (Ethiopic), many printed editions of Semitic versions of the Old and New Testaments, Buxtorf's Treatise on the Hebrew Vowel Points, the Polyglot of Walton, a Latin translation of the Kur'an, and a number of elementary books and grammars by writers whose names are now rarely mentioned.

Every boy who had the run of this library was

* The books which treated of theology and systems of salvation I found dull, and a few of them were terrifying, but there was much in the hymn books which interested and amused me, and many verses of them I committed to memory. Thus Mr. John Peat, in singing of the end of the world, says : —

" The bishops will then lodge with devils and swine Instead of a silk gown to clothe the false rubbish,

Or bottle of claret to please his proud heart. Or fine high-cocked mitre to make him look bobbish,

The waters of death will new torments impart."

Of Eve Mr. J. Miller wrote : —

" Before she did a being come She was by God designed, A net to catch the Devil in, And propagate mankind."

Hebrew and Syriac Studies. 5

expected to choose a subject, and to study it systematically, and once a week the head master asked him questions about his reading, with the view of finding out if the books were being used by him to the best advantage. As I wanted to learn all I could about the wars of the kings of Israel and Judah, and as the idea of being able to read the Books of Samuel and the Books of the Kings in the original attracted me greatly, I determined to learn Hebrew. The head master consulted Mr. Charles W. Seager,^ the distinguished translator of the Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon of Simonis, at that time a famous work, and by his advice I was allowed to work regularly at Wolff's Hebrew Grammar, and at some of the easier passages in the Hebrew text of the Five Books of Moses. After I had worked at Hebrew for a couple of years, Mr. Seager added Syriac to my studies, and under his guidance I read the Four Gospels in the Peshitta Version, as edited by Dr. Lee for the British and Foreign Bible Society. He was a firm believer in the value of the study of Semitic languages educationally as well as theologically, and every one who was brought into close contact with him caught some of the fire of his enthusiasm, and worked willingly for him, and strove to win his approval.

During the last few years of his life Mr. Seager devoted much time and attention to the cuneiform inscriptions, which the translations of George Smith had helped to bring prominently before the learned public.

^ He was an Oxford man, and lectured on Hebrew and other Semitic dialects under Dr. Pusey. He went over to Rome, and in 1874 Monsignor Capel (died 191 1) appointed him to the chair of Hebrew and Comparative Philology in the College of Higher Studies at Kensington, which was intended to be the nucleus of a Roman Catholic University. From 1869-1877 he was one of the ablest and most trusted advisers of Dr. Samuel Birch on the affairs of the Society of BibUcal Archaeology. I continued to work under him for several years, and visited him at his house on Brook Green weekly for the purpose. I received my last lessons from him during the summer of the year in which he died (1878). I found in him a kind, helpful, and judicious friend. He made no attempt to modify or change my religious views, as he believed me to be " invincibly ignorant."

6 George Smith and the Deluge Tablet.

In the study of these he saw great educational advantages, but he was convinced that no student had any prospect of mastering their contents unless he was equipped with a good working knowledge of Biblical Hebrew and Syriac. By his advice I obtained in 1871 Smith's "Phonetic Values of Cuneiform Characters "^ and his " Annals of Ashur-bani-pal," and began to copy out the cuneiform characters, and to learn their values. In December, 1872, Smith read before the Society of BibHcal Archaeology his translation of the " Chaldean Account of the Deluge," three fragmentary copies of which existed in the British Museum. The value of the contents of several of the larger fragments had been recognized by Rawlinson and Oppert* some years previously, but Smith was the first to arrange the fragments in their proper order, and to give a connected rendering of the legend in English. The paper was read in the very large room at g. Conduit Street, which was usually employed for exhibitions of pictures. The portion of the room set apart for the general public was crowded, and the platform was packed with scholars, theologians, archaeologists, and politicians, including Mr. W. E. Gladstone and Mr. ChUders, and the audience listened breathlessly whilst Smith, with characteristic modesty, described the Legend of the Sumerian Noah. The discussion which followed was worthy of the paper, and was most unusually interesting.*

The immediate result of Smith's paper, which marks

* This list contained all cuneiform signs of which the values had been deduced by Hincks, and all the signs in the Ust which Sir Henry Rawhnson had compiled for his own private use, and the additions made to it by Smith himself.

' See The Times, December 8th, 1872, where Rawlinson is reported to have said that 12 or 15 years ago (i.e., between 1857 and i860) he had just escaped discovering the bit of the tablet which actually mentioned the Flood.

• Sir Henry Rawlinson presided, and among those on the platform were Dean and Lady Augusta Stanley, Mr. Giffard, Q.C. (the present Lord Halsbury), J. M. Rodwell, Samuel Birch, and Emmanuel Deutsch. The Times remarks (December 14th, 1872, p. 7) " The meeting concluded at a late hour."