AAELM, cognate if not identical ■with the Persians, are Ariah. It seems to us, however,
that Lowenstern’s solution is satisfactory. He shows how the primitive Elamites
were of Semitic extraction, hut that, in after times, Scythic conquerors superimposed
in Elam their extraneous blood, tongues, and traditions; as the reader can verify in
this author’s learned papers. In the meanwhile, He Saulcy has read upon cuneatic
inscriptions of the age of Asar-haddon, eighth century b. c., that this monarch was
“ rex populi Assur,” and “ rex populi Elam” : and this is confirmed by Layard’s
Second Expedition, for “ Sennacherib speaks of the army which defended the workmen
being attacked by the king of Elam and the king of Babylon.”
Our confidence in the compiler of Xth Genesis stands unshaken. If, as we have
proved, his tabulation of the distant Samites is so correct, how much better must a
Chaldcean chorographer have been acquainted with the legendary origins of a Semitisk
AaiLM-aw? 630
47. "YlSi'N— ASTIR— ‘ Asshtir.’
While "admitting the equivocal nature of the text of Genesis x. 11, we have given
reasons [supra, p. 509] for reading — “ From this land (Shinar) he himself (NiMRoD)
went forth (to) ASUR (Assyria) and builded Nineveh,” ;&c. Such lesson indicates
that we have now before us a geographical name.
“ It would be strange,” critically remarks He Sola, “ if Ashtjr, a son of Shem
(Gen. x. 22) were mentioned among the descendants of Cham, of whom Nimrod was
one. It would be equally strange if the deeds of Ashur were spoken of (in verse 11)
before his birth and descent had been mentioned.” The writer of Xth Genesis, a plain
sensible man, compiling the Assyrian department of his chart not impossibly In ASUR
itself, was not likely to have committed such a needless anachronism. Let us examine
another text.
King James’s version, Genesis ii. 14—“ And the name of the third river is Hiddekel:
that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria.” This text has opportunely received
recent ventilation at Paris, in discussions between He Longp^rier, an Orientalist as
profound in biblical as in all archaic lore, and a learned dogmatist, M. Hoeffer. , The
ante-diluvian river, miswritten Hiddekel in our version/is, in the Text, H-HKL, ¿Ae-
HiKLe— a name that, through various historical transmutations, such as HiGLe,
HidJLeh, TiGLe, and TiGRE (Tigrdm, in Persepolitan inscriptions), is inherited by us
in its euphonized Latin form — the TIGRIS.
The Text therefore reads literally — the T ig r i s , “ ipse vadens KDMTtf (ante) ASUR ;”
Parisian debate turned upon the meaning of KHMTt; by English interpreters rendered
“ East;” — a translation which, if true, (as dogmatism had maintained,) would
place the city of Nineveh, built in the land of ASUR {Gen. x. 11), on the west b a n k
of that river; supposing always that the river lay to the east of it (Assyria). And
thus “ Holy Scripture” was triumphantly.quoted to prove that, inasmuch as Nineveh
was situate west of the Tigris, the vast exhumations of Botta, Layar’d, Place, and
Rawlinson, on the eastern bank, which people fondly supposed to have been executed
in ante-diluvian Assyria, not having been made on the site of Nineveh at all, the whole
of these discoveries, in regard to Nineveh, fell to the ground!
But, Mrs. Rich and St. Jerome naively tell u s— “ It is one thing to write history,
and another to write prophecy under the immediate effect of inspiration.” If “ a
prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in
his own house ” (Mark vi. 4); that is, among those mortals who happen to know him
b e st; — the unfortunate scholar alluded to can hope for little elsewhere; since He
Longp^rier established!,—^ ( ;
1st. That Herodotus has nowhere connected the Tigris with Assyria.
2d. That neither the Septuagint, nor the Yulgate, any more than the Hebrew Text,
justifies such a reading as “ East” in Genesis ii. 14.
3d. That KHMTi here meaning simply “ en avant vers,” the true signification of
this passage must be, in English, “ the Tigris, flowing in front towards (say opposite)
Assyria.”
Our digression introduces another difficulty. Between the land of ASUR in lid Genesis,
and ASUR in Genesis Xth, rolls the Flood; which, contrary to the sophistries of
the Rev. Hr. J. Pye Smith, we wholly agree with the “ Friend of Moses,” and the
writer of Genesis Vllth, in considering to have been universal. If geology, in the XlXth
century after Christ, discovers phenomena which prove Piluvian momentaneous universality
to be impossible, so much the worse for geologists. But to attribute to Hebrew
authors living long subsequently to the XlXth century b . c ., the intrepid conceptions
of modern geology, is to commit a most gross historical anachronism; besides
inventing a doctrine utterly irreconcilable with the plain square-letters of the Hebrew
Text. We would therefore merely inquire of the orthodox geologist whether he considers
the land of ASUR, along which ran the river Tigris before the universal Flood,
to have been specified (by Moses) proleptically or retroleptically ? His reply would
enlighten us upon one of two propositions. If this Hebrew “ scholar and statesman,”
as the Friend of Moses terms him, had before his eyes, as some maintain, certain documents
written by ante-diluvian patriarchs, then ASUR, in such manuscripts, must
have been the geographical appellative of a country existing before the Flood; which
country, after the waters had passed away, emerged as ASUR, along with its river Tigris,
on the same terrestrial area, in order to be catalogued by the writer of Xth Genesis
among other countries existing in his later day. Or, if Moses was enlightened upon events
anterior to his lifetime through “ Hivine inspiration,” then we possess the authority of
the Most High (through Moses) for sustaining that, ASUR, having been the geographical
name of a country years before the Heluge, and centuries before “ A s h u r , son of
S h em , ” was b o r n , the writer of Xth Genesis was right in mapping the “ land of
ASUR ” as a country, according to its ante-fluviatile acceptation in Genesis ii. 14 — a
country, too, wherein the masterly geological researches of Ainsworth could discover no
traces of any Noachian Flood. That which remains certain is* that ASUR was already
a country, according to the letter of Scripture itself, whensoever, or by whomsoever,
or wheresoever} Xth Genesis, was written; and, for our researches, “ for us, that is
enough.” — “ That you should wish to call M o s e s author of the Pentateuch, or E sd r a s
the restorer of this same work, I do not object,” philosophically wrote St. Jerome.
The name of ASUR, in unpunctuated Hebrew, becomes ASAUR through rabbinical
marks; and passing through different dialects and ages, as ATiUR, ATUR, ATURm,
A2AURA, ASSURm, &c., it is now written Assyria by ourselves. But, while modern
Chaldee Jews have preserved in Athour the correspondent of Ashour as intonated by
their forefathers, cuneiform scholars have discovered, in the land of ASAUR itself, the
indigenous name, petroglyphed Assour, upon innumerable, records disinterred from the
mounds of Khorsabad and Nimroud.
Kings of the “ country of ASUR” are now well-known personages to readers of
Botta, Layard, Rawlinson, He Longp&rier, He Saulcy, Hincks, Birch, Grotefend, Lowen-
stern, Oppert, Norris, Vaux, Eadie, or Bonomi; and having been found upon sculptures
coeval with the epoch of Jehu, king of Israel, ASUR was already the name of Assyria
early in the ninth century b . c . : an age, we think, nearly parallel with the compilation
of Xth Genesis. These now-familiar topics need no pause; but some of those things
which are less so demand notice in tracing ASUR to its primeval source. Rawlinson
finds in Assarac, (Assarak, Asserah,) “ god of Assyria” —-the deified proto-patriarch
of that land — called in the inscriptions “ father of the gods,” “ king of the gods,”
“ great ruler of the gods; ” whose mythological characteristics are those of Kronos
or Saturn. “ I should suppose him, as head of the Pantheon, to be represented by that
particular device of a winged figure in a circle, which was subsequently adopted by the
Persians to denote O rm u zd , the chief deity of their religious system.” And we may now
leave hagiography to rejoice over possible connections between the divine Assarac and
Ashur the son of S h em , among those of other genealogies of Xth Genesis; which doc