LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ASSYRIA.* Tins is an English
rendering of the interesting book (to a portion of which we called attention on June 27th last) in which M. Maspero strives with considerable success to make us familiar with social life in Egypt and Assyria at periods of two or three thousand years ago, according to his calculation.
He is assisted in this by a hundred and eighty-eight illustra- tions drawn by M. Faucher-Gudin, and taken with great fidelity from Egyptian and Assyrian monuments. The trans- lation is very readable, but there is in the description of the Assyrian wine-merchant Iddina what we conceive to be an amusing clerical error, for though willing to believe the asses of ancient Assyria to have been vastly superior to our own useful quadrupeds of the same species, we can hardly credit them with forming part of the crew of a boat. To re-
turn to the author, however, he explains in his preface that he has no intention of giving in the present work a record of ancient Oriental dynasties and nations, having already done this in his Ancient History :— " I only wish," he says, "to give the readers of this book some impression of life under its various phases amongst the two most civilised nations which flourished upon our earth before the Greeks. I have chosen for each of them the epoch we know the best, and of which we possess the greatest number of monuments ; for Egypt, that of Rameses II. (fourteenth century B.C.) ; for Assyria, that of Assurbanipal (seventh century). I have acted like those con- scientious travellers who do not like to enter a new country without some preparation, who study its customs and language before they start ; then I journeyed—or at least I believed so—two or three thousand years back, away from our present era. Once there, I looked round and endeavoured to see as well
• Life in Ancient Beset and Assyria. From the French of G. litusp6ro. London : Chapman and HalL
and as much as possible. I walked through the streets of the city, glanced through the half-opened doors, peered into the shops, noted down the remarks of the populace that I chanced to over- hear I have reproduced in Assyria the majority of the scenes described in Egypt ; the reader, by comparing them together, will easily realise upon what points the civilisations of the two countries are alike, and in what respects they differed."
Working on these lines, the author has given us a aeries of descriptions, to a certain extent fictitious, but wholly based on what has been found existing or delineated in the monuments that have been explored, and the book will doubtless prove to be—as M. Maspero intends it should—an assistance both to scholars and professors in their study of these sections of ancient life. When need in this way as a text-book, there will be no danger, as there may be in the case of a careless reader, of any occasional misunderstanding as to what relates to ancient and what to modern times, for without wishing to be hypercritical, we must say that in the early chapters M.
Maspero, to whom things Egyptian are so perfectly familiar, does not always make it clear whether he is alluding to the past or the present, so little have times changed in certain respects in the country of the Pharaohs.
Each section of M. Maspero's book contains ten chapters.
The two first of the Egyptian series deal with the popular life, markets, shops, &c. ; the three next, with Pharaoh, the great god Amen, and the Army. Then come life in the Castle, illness and death, the funeral and the tomb, the journey and the battle. The Assyrian part begins with the description of a Royal residence,—Dar-Surginu, the city and palace built in six years by Sargon. He meant it to belong to himself alone, and would have it contain no reminders of the glories of his predecessors, little thinking that shortly after its com- pletion he would be assassinated at the instigation of his own son, and that his work would pass immediately into the possession of others. In connection with this palace, we have some account not merely of the life of the monarchs and their wives—Sargon had three, to each of whom he allotted a separate establishment—but also that of the nobles, and are told that whereas women of the lower classes enjoyed complete independence and could go about with head and face uncovered, frequent the markets, visit their friends, buy and sell, inherit and dispose of property, bear witness in a Court of Justice, and were very nearly on an equality with their husbands, those of higher rank, though possessing all these rights in the eye of the law, were practically almost debarred from them ; while the Queens were completely slaves to their dignity, and were treated almost as prisoners during their whole life. The King, we are told, could reach the very door of his private apartments without quitting his chariot or his horse. He occupied about twenty small plain rooms, and in them he slept, took his meals, worked, received visitors, and superintended current affairs, surrounded by his eunuchs and secretaries ; while courtiers and ministers waited for their audiences in state drawing-rooms, in which scenes from the life of Sargon, executed in plaster bas-reliefs and painted in bright colours, extended along the walls for about nine feet of their height.
After the Royal life comes that of the merchant Iddina, before mentioned. He is represented as trading between Babylon and the Nairi, or upper basin of the Tigris ; and this chapter, which embraces the marriage and settlement of his son and many household customs, is of decided interest. Then Iddina falls ill and dies, and here especially will be perceived a great divergence between Egyptian and Assyrian ideas and customs. Assyria has no sacred school of medicine, only sorcerers and exorcists ; the Assyrians do not embalm their dead, nor have they vast temple sepulchres. The ancient coffins of baked clay, the brick vaults, and the mounds covered with sand and ashes, beneath which the remains of many suc- cessive deposits have mouldered away. attest very different methods of interment; and, in fact, the corpse was merely perfumed, hastily dressed, and buried as soon as a change took plaCe in it, although some attempt was usually made to provide the deceased with the food, clothes, ornaments, and utensils he might require in the next world.
Rameses IL, in his war-chariot, with his lion beside him, figures on the cover of M. Maspero's book, as well as in the illustrations. Special interest attaches to this King, both because we know a good deal about him, and can also see him sleeping under a glass case in the museum at Boulak. Though we have not a similar relic of the Assyrian potentate, Assur- banipal, we are able to picture him to ourselves very clearly from M. Maspero's description,—tall, vigorous, and well made, but indolent, voluptuous, and fond of luxury and the arts, yet a bold rider and mighty hunter. He is seen killing the auroch with his poignard from his chariot, and seizing the savage old lion by the ear and piercing him through with his lance. We also see him on his throne in the audience chamber preparing for war, again studying the tablets from his library, and afterwards taking part in the feastings and butchery of his triumph over the Elamites,—and here M. Maspero observes that war was not with the Assyrians simply a brutal ardour or a disinterested search for glory ; it was a commercial operation, springing from a desire to win profit and wealth. The Assyrians made war because war fed them, clothed them, and exempted them from industry. It replaced trade, and they would fight anywhere to fill their own coffers and those of their Prince with wealth. It is not a noble ambition, even for heathens, although the Court poet puts in the mouth of the King a recital of all his exploits, winding up with the declara- tion : " My power is everlastingly founded, the duration of my race is established ; they shall reign for many days, and for everlasting years ; " and side by aide with this M. Maspero places that perfectly fulfilled prophecy of the prophet Nahum relating to Nineveh, that reads in this connection with such startling effect.
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