Ancient Writings Shed Light on Past Civilizations

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Ancient Writings Shed Light on Past Civilizations

Overview

In 1901 a team of French archaeologists discovered a black stone pillar bearing the Code of Hammurabi. Inscribed in Babylon over 3,700 years ago, it is one of the earliest known compilations of law. Almost half a century after its discovery, Bedouin shepherds found a collection of ancient scrolls stored in jars and hidden away in a cave near the Dead Sea. Eventually more than 800 manuscripts were discovered in the area, most of which were fragmentary. They were written between about 250 b.c. and a.d. 68, and provide unique insight into the time and place from which both rabbinic Judaism and Christianity emerged.

Background

The civilizations of the ancient Middle East had an immense impact on world history. In fact, history itself may be said to have begun in the "fertile crescent" of Mesopotamia. It was there that writing emerged among the Sumerians, who lived in the world's first cities more than 5,000 years ago. With writing came the ability to record business transactions, codify laws and religion, and chronicle events. Writing provides a measure of immortality, as it makes known the names and exploits of people who moved through history thousands of years before us.

One of the prominent figures we know of from ancient writings is King Hammurabi, who ascended the throne of Babylon in about 1792 b.c.. By this time, Mesopotamia had experienced a number of invasions and migrations from surrounding areas, but the more advanced local culture, based on Sumerian civilization, remained dominant. Many of the newcomers belonged to nomadic tribes, speaking Semitic languages with origins in the Arabian peninsula. Hammurabi was a member of one such group, the Amorites. The language of his kingdom was Akkadian, a Semitic tongue related to Hebrew and Arabic. Hammurabi was arguably the greatest king ever to rule Babylonia. He transformed a beleaguered city-state into a large empire. Arts, sciences, commerce, and government all prospered during his reign.

In 1901 a team of French archaeologists under the direction of Jacques de Morgan (1857-1924) was excavating the town of Susa (the biblical Shushan) at the foot of the Zagros Mountains in Persia. They came upon a 7-foot (2.13 m) tall black basalt pillar with almost 4,000 lines of inscriptions in the wedge-shaped cuneiform script of Mesopotamia. When the text was translated by the Dominican friar and Orientalist Jean-Vincent Scheil, it was found to be a compilation of 282 laws. Scholars knew of older Sumerian legal codes, including the laws of Eshnunna and the even more ancient laws of Ur-Nammu, dating from around 2,100 b.c., but the Code of Hammurabi was the most complete listing that had ever been found. The column is believed to have once rested in the center of Babylon's temple of Marduk, the national god, whence it was carried off to Persia as booty by the invading Elamites. Today it is exhibited in the Louvre museum in Paris.

The 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was very different. Rather than a team of archaeologists, the discoverers were a pair of young Bedouins looking for a lost goat. In a cave nestled among cliffs above the Dead Sea, 13 miles (21 km) east of Jerusalem, they found seven ancient scrolls hidden away in tall clay jars. During the 1950s, archaeologists and Bedouin tribesmen alike scoured the area for more manuscripts. Eventually about 25,000 fragments were found, some no bigger than a postage stamp. Altogether more than 800 manuscripts were at least partially pieced together. Meanwhile, excavations continued at the nearby site of Qumran, as scholars attempted to understand the Jewish sect that had hidden this library away.

Impact

Scholars studying the Code of Hammurabi quickly noticed many similarities to the Mosaic laws recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, both in form and in content. In addition, a relief carving at the top of the pillar from Susa showed Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice, dictating the laws to Hammurabi. The scene is reminiscent of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, which were also carved in stone.

Such echoes can be explained by the Sumerian influence both on later civilizations of Mesopotamia and on Hebrew culture and thought. For example, some of the Creation accounts in the Hebrew scriptures closely parallel Mesopotamian writings, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. Abraham, whom the Jewish and Arab peoples regard as their common patriarch, is believed to have been one of a tribe of Semitic nomads living in the Mesopotamian city of Ur. It was from there that the Hebrews migrated westward to Canaan. In their travels around the Mediterranean area, and especially through the influence of the Bible, they helped make Sumerian culture one of the foundation stones of the Western world.

Like the laws of the Hebrews, the Code of Hammurabi bears the marks of both the Sumerian legal codes and the tribal customs of their Semitic adopters. From the vantage point of a society that takes the Bill of Rights for granted, even while arguing over its interpretation, these ancient legal systems seem extremely primitive. The criminal law in the Code of Hammurabi, for example, was based on the principle of lex talionis, or the law of retaliation. This is familiar from the Hebrew scriptures as "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." However, it is important to realize that such formulations, by setting a limit to retaliation, were a major advance over allowing feuds to continue indefinitely.

We also tend to forget how recently we arrived at our own civil rights-based concept of the rule of law. The basics of Hammurabi's criminal code, complete with trial by physical ordeal and a hair-raising catalog of execution methods—drowning, burning, hanging, impaling—for a variety of offenses, held sway in Europe until the eighteenth century. Many of the laws, criminal and otherwise, survived to influence Islamic jurisprudence as well.

The entire concept of a legal code was made necessary by cities in which people lived in close quarters. Laws allowed the existence of an ordered society. In addition to the criminal code, the laws of Hammurabi dealt with commerce, the treatment of slaves and other workers, and family relations. They assumed the division of society into three social classes, each with its own rights and responsibilities. Like the laws of Moses, they reflect the subordinate status of women in the ancient Middle East even while providing some measure of protection for widows and orphans. The inscriptions found at Susa refer to another copy, and additional fragments of a similar pillar have been discovered, as well as copies of the laws on clay tablets at Nineveh. The repetition suggests a concerted attempt to standardize the legal system across Hammurabi's kingdom. This effort may have been prompted by a desire to assimilate recently conquered territories into the empire.

The impact of the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls was even greater than that of the Code of Hammurabi. It was perhaps the most important archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. The manuscripts include biblical texts, previously unknown psalms, commentaries, laws and liturgies, and elaborations of biblical stories. While some of the material was actually composed in the earliest days of Israelite history, the texts were written onto the scrolls between the third century b.c. and the first century a.d.. The sudden appearance of a large number of texts dating from a time when great changes were occurring in Judaism, and shortly before the emergence of Christianity, was unprecedented in Biblical scholarship.

Controversy soon erupted over who was to have access to the scrolls. The manuscripts were mostly in Hebrew, and the remainder were in Aramaic, a closely related language commonly spoken in the Jewish community 2,000 years ago and still used in some Jewish prayers and texts. So the more-or-less intact scrolls, of which there were about a dozen, could be read without much difficulty. In 1958, they were published by Israeli and American scholars. However, the bulk of the material was fragmentary, and had to be pieced together like a collection of jigsaw puzzles. In order to accomplish this, all the fragments needed to end up in the same place.

With an antiquities dealer in Bethlehem acting as a middleman, the fragments found their way from their Bedouin discoverers to what was then called the Palestine Archaeological Museum in east Jerusalem. At that time the Old City of Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan, and it was under Jordanian auspices that a team of international scholars were assembled.

Because both Jordan and the president of the museum were hostile to the state of Israel at that time, no Jews were permitted to participate in the study of these Jewish documents. Most of the team consisted of Catholic priests, who accomplished the impressive feat of arranging, deciphering, and transcribing the many thousands of fragments over the course of about seven years beginning in 1953. Since the scrolls date from 250 b.c. to a.d. 68, the Catholic scholars were naturally most interested in the extent to which the texts anticipated or depicted the events recounted in the New Testament, specifically the life and ministry of Jesus.

Unfortunately, the team refused to release the text of the fragmentary scrolls, and this caused a bitter academic scandal. The information void was filled with angry speculation by excluded scholars and sensational conjecture by the media. Many suggested that the largely Catholic team was not releasing the material because of content that in some way conflicted with the Christian faith. However, scholarly tradition held that those working on an ancient text controlled access to it until they published it, and the tradition specified no time limit. After 1987, a few Jewish researchers were finally admitted to the team, but access remained confined to this inner circle. At last, after a 30-year struggle, the "secret" texts were published in 1991, and their study has become an academic discipline in its own right.

The scrolls tell us a great deal about Judaism at a time of great social and religious upheaval. They date from a time when traditional Jews felt threatened by Hellenistic influence. The Greek way of life had been introduced to the Middle East after much of it was conquered by Alexander in 332 b.c.. When the scrolls were written, the Second Temple still stood in Jerusalem, but was soon to be destroyed by another wave of conquerors, the Romans. The synagogue-centered, rabbinical religion beginning to emerge was that which would sustain the Jewish people during their long exile. The "official," or canonical version of the Bible was not yet established, and slightly different versions of its various books were still in circulation. Jewish sects, such as the one centered at Qumran, experimented with ways of living in the world that was changing around them.

Contrary to some of the sensationalist accounts that circulated before their public release, the scrolls do not mention Jesus, nor are they the documents of an early Christian sect. Nonetheless, they remain important to Christians as well as Jews. Most Christian scholars agree that, in order to understand the life and teachings of Jesus, and the rise of the Christian movement, it is necessary to understand the religious and social context in which these events occurred. The Dead Sea scrolls, in illuminating the Jewish culture out of which Jesus and his message came, have much to tell New Testament scholars. Many are choosing to learn Hebrew and Aramaic as a result.

Ancient writings like the Code of Hammurabi and the Dead Sea Scrolls provide a unique view of the cultural developments and historical events that have shaped the world. In learning about them, we learn about the origins of our own civilization and way of life.

SHERRI CHASIN CALVO