History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 | Page 2

in the old
Sumerian way instead of spelling it phonetically, the result being that we do not know
how it was pronounced in their own language. The name of the Chaldæan Noab, for
instance, is written with two characters which ideographically signify "the sun" or "day of
life," and of the first of which the Sumerian values were ut, babar, khis, tarn, and par,
while the second had the value of zi. Were it not that the Chaldæan historian Bêrôssos
writes the name Xisuthros, we should have no clue to its Semitic pronunciation.
Professor Maspero's learning and indefatigable industry are well known to me, but I
confess I was not prepared for the exhaustive acquaintance he shows with Assyriological
literature. Nothing seems to have escaped his notice. Papers and books just published,
and half forgotten articles in obscure periodicals which appeared years ago, have all alike
been used and quoted by him. Naturally, however, there are some points on which I
should be inclined to differ from the conclusions he draws, or to which he has been led by
other Assyriologists. Without being an Assyriologist himself, it was impossible for him
to be acquainted with that portion of the evidence on certain disputed questions which is
only to be found in still unpublished or untranslated inscriptions.
There are two points which seem to me of sufficient importance to justify my expression
of dissent from his views. These are the geographical situation of the land of Magan, and
the historical character of the annals of Sargon of Accad. The evidence about Magan is
very clear. Magan is usually associated with the country of Melukhkha, "the salt" desert,
and in every text in which its geographical position is indicated it is placed in the
immediate vicinity of Egypt. Thus Assur-bani-pal, after stating that he had "gone to the
lands of Magan and Melukhkha," goes on to say that he "directed his road to Egypt and
Kush," and then describes the first of his Egyptian campaigns. Similar testimony is borne

by Esar-haddon. The latter king tells us that after quitting Egypt he directed his road to
the land of Melukhkha, a desert region in which there were no rivers, and which extended
"to the city of Rapikh" (the modern Raphia) "at the edge of the wadi of Egypt" (the
present Wadi El-Arîsh). After this he received camels from the king of the Arabs, and
made his way to the land and city of Magan. The Tel el-Amarna tablets enable us to carry
the record back to the fifteenth century b.c. In certain of the tablets now as Berlin
(Winckler and Abel, 42 and 45) the Phoenician governor of the Pharaoh asks that help
should be sent him from Melukhkha and Egypt: "The king should hear the words of his
servant, and send ten men of the country of Melukhkha and twenty men of the country of
Egypt to defend the city [of Gebal] for the king." And again, "I have sent [to] Pharaoh"
(literally, "the great house") "for a garrison of men from the country of Melukhkha, and...
the king has just despatched a garrison [from] the country of Melukhkha." At a still
earlier date we have indications that Melukhkha and Magan denoted the same region of
the world. In an old Babylonian geographical list which belongs to the early days of
Chaldsean history, Magan is described as "the country of bronze," and Melukhkha as "the
country of the samdu," or "malachite." It was this list which originally led Oppert,
Lenormant, and myself independently to the conviction that Magan was to be looked for
in the Sinaitic Peninsula. Magan included, however, the Midian of Scripture, and the city
of Magan, called Makkan in Semitic Assyrian, is probably the Makna of classical
geography, now represented by the ruins of Mukna.
As I have always maintained the historical character of the annals of Sargon of Accad,
long before recent discoveries led Professor Hilprecht and others to adopt the same view,
it is as well to state why I consider them worthy of credit. In themselves the annals
contain nothing improbable; indeed, what might seem the most unlikely portion of
them--that which describes the extension of Sargon's empire to the shores of the
Mediterranean--has been confirmed by the progress of research. Ammi-satana, a king of
the first dynasty of Babylon (about 2200 B.C.), calls himself "king of the country of the
Amorites," and the Tel el-Amarna tablets have revealed to us how deep and long-lasting
Babylonian influence must have been throughout Western Asia. Moreover, the vase
described by Professor Maspero in the present work proves that the expedition of
Naram-Sin against Magan was an historical reality, and such an expedition was only
possible if "the land of the Amorites," the Syria and Palestine of later days, had