DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0070
46
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
we gather is that she, not Babylonia, was first supreme.
Elam, we remember, was the elder of the sons of Shem.
It was a king of Elam, Chedorlaomer, who fought with
Sodom and Gomorrah. Down to perhaps 2000 B.C. this
supremacy of Elam is maintained, then Babylonia, on
the western bank, begins to assert herself. Erech, Nip-
pur, and Ur fade into comparative insignificance, and
Babylon emerges as the chief town of Chaldaea—Babylon,
which, as we remember, is some three hundred miles up
the river. All this early period, as long as Chaldaea,
with its capital, Babylon, is supreme, belongs to the
period known as the first Chaldsean empire; it has left
countless monuments, chiefly of small size, signet cylin-
ders, and the like. But meanwhile out of this land of
the plain has gone forth Asshur, a band of colonists; a
tribe of younger, sterner, and more warlike spirits went
northward from Babylonia to the hill country. They
took with them the gods of Babylon, and the traditions
of her art; they were at one with her at first, later to be at
deadly issue (4). Here in this northern hill country were
founded three principal cities—first, and most southerly,
Asshur ; second, most northerly, Nineveh ; third, between
the two, Calah. Asshur, the earliest, was, as we should
expect, on the western, the Babylonian bank ; Nineveh
and Calah on the east. It is important that these cities
should stand out clearly in our minds, because to them
we have to attach the principal monuments that have
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
we gather is that she, not Babylonia, was first supreme.
Elam, we remember, was the elder of the sons of Shem.
It was a king of Elam, Chedorlaomer, who fought with
Sodom and Gomorrah. Down to perhaps 2000 B.C. this
supremacy of Elam is maintained, then Babylonia, on
the western bank, begins to assert herself. Erech, Nip-
pur, and Ur fade into comparative insignificance, and
Babylon emerges as the chief town of Chaldaea—Babylon,
which, as we remember, is some three hundred miles up
the river. All this early period, as long as Chaldaea,
with its capital, Babylon, is supreme, belongs to the
period known as the first Chaldsean empire; it has left
countless monuments, chiefly of small size, signet cylin-
ders, and the like. But meanwhile out of this land of
the plain has gone forth Asshur, a band of colonists; a
tribe of younger, sterner, and more warlike spirits went
northward from Babylonia to the hill country. They
took with them the gods of Babylon, and the traditions
of her art; they were at one with her at first, later to be at
deadly issue (4). Here in this northern hill country were
founded three principal cities—first, and most southerly,
Asshur ; second, most northerly, Nineveh ; third, between
the two, Calah. Asshur, the earliest, was, as we should
expect, on the western, the Babylonian bank ; Nineveh
and Calah on the east. It is important that these cities
should stand out clearly in our minds, because to them
we have to attach the principal monuments that have