As a matter of fact, each great sanctuary seems to have had its own

collection. These were added to from time to time; some of them were

amalgamated together, or parts belonging to one collection were

incorporated into another. Spells which had been found effective in

warding off disease or preventing evil, were introduced into a collection

which related to the same subject, whatever may have been their source,

and the list of gods invoked was continually being enlarged, in the hope

that some one at least among them might give the sufferer relief. The

older collections were modified in accordance with the requirements of the

State religion, and the animism that inspired them accommodated to the

orthodox belief; while new collections came into existence which breathed

the later Semitic spirit, and were drawn up under the supervision of the

Babylonian priesthood. Hymns and even penitential psalms were embodied in

them, like the verses of the Bible or the Quran, which are still used as

charms in Christian and Mohammedan countries; and it is sometimes

difficult to distinguish between the hymn that served merely as an

incantation and the hymn that was chanted in the service of the gods.

Indeed, incantatory formulæ are not unfrequently intermixed with the words

of the hymn or psalm, producing that grotesque and embarrassing medley of

exalted spiritual thought and stupid superstition which so often meets us

in the religious literature of Babylonia. How late some of the collections

are in the history of Babylonian religion, may be judged from the fact

that a time came when the old Sumerian language was no longer considered

necessary to ensure the efficacy of the charm, and collections of

incantations were made in the Semitic language of later Babylonia.

Criticism will hereafter have to sift and distinguish these collections

one from the other, and, above all, determine the earlier and later

elements contained in each. At present such a task is impossible. Few, if

any, of the collections have come down to us in a perfect state; there are

many more, doubtless, which future research will hereafter bring to light;

and as long as we are dependent solely on the copies made for the library

of Nineveh, without being able to compare them with the older texts of the

Babylonian libraries, the primary condition of scientific investigation is

wanting. Nevertheless there are certain collections which stand out

markedly from among the rest. They display features of greater antiquity,

and the animism presupposed by them is but thinly disguised. It is

comparatively easy to separate in them the newer and older elements, which

have little in common with each other. Most of them point to Eridu as the

source from which they have been derived, though there are others the

origin of which is probably to be sought at Nippur.

In these older incantations the gods of the official cult are absent,

except where their names have been violently foisted in at a later date,

and their place is taken by the spirits or ghosts of early Sumerian

belief. The _Zi_ or “spirit of the sky,” “the spirit of the earth,” “the

spirit of Ansar and Kisar,” such are the superhuman powers that are

invoked, and to whom the worshipper turns in his extremity. Even when we

come across a name that is borne by one of the deities of the later

Babylonian religion, we find that it is the name not of a god, but of a

denizen of the ghost-world. “O spirit of Zikum, mother of Ea,” we read in

one place; “O spirit of Nina, daughter of Ea”; “O spirit, divine lord of

the mother-father of En-lil; O spirit, divine lady of the mother-father of

Nin-lil”; “O spirit of the moon, O spirit of the sun, O spirit of the

evening star!” There is as yet neither Bel of Nippur, nor Sin and Samas

and Istar; the sorcerer knows only of the spirits that animate the

universe, and bring good and evil upon mankind. Nothing can be more

striking than the enumeration of the divine powers to whom the prayer is

directed, in an incantation of which I have given the translation in my

Hibbert Lectures (p. 450 sqq.)—

“Whether it be the spirit of the divine lord of the earths;

or the spirit of the divine lady of the earths;

or the spirit of the divine lord of the stars;

or the spirit of the divine lady of the stars;

or the spirit of the divine lord of progenies;

or the spirit of the divine lady of progenies;

or the spirit of the divine lord of ...;

or the spirit of the divine lady of ...;

or the spirit of the divine lord of the holy mound (Ea);

or the spirit of the divine lady of the holy mound (Damkina);

or the spirit of the divine lord of the dayspring of life;

or the spirit of the divine lady of the dayspring of life;

or the spirit of the divine chanter of the spirit-hosts

(En-me-sarra);

or the spirit of the divine chantress of the spirit-hosts.”(313)

Even the word “divine,” which I have used here in default of anything

better, imports theological ideas into the texts which were really foreign

to them. The original means nothing more than “superhuman” or perhaps

“non-human”; the Sumerian term is _dimmer_, of which _dimme_, “a ghost,”

and _dimmea_, “a spectre,” are but other forms; and the ideograph by which

it is symbolised is an eight-rayed star.(314) “The divine lord” and

“divine lady” of the incantation are but the _lil_ and its handmaid under

another guise; they are merely the ghost-like spirits who display

themselves at night in the points of light that twinkle and move through

the sky.

The theologians of a later day amused themselves by cataloguing the

Sumerian names of the spirits invoked in the ancient incantations, and

transforming them into titles of the deities of the official pantheon. The

same process had been followed in the Semitic translations which were

added to the incantatory texts. The spirit of the sun became Samas, the

spirit of the evening star became Istar. En-lil of Nippur was transmuted

into Bel, and Nin-lil, the lady of the ghost-world, into Bilat or Beltis.

The process was facilitated by the changes undergone at Eridu by the

magical texts themselves, even before the days of Semitic influence.

Maritime intercourse with other lands had already deeply affected the

theology of Eridu; the crude animism of an earlier epoch had made way for

the conception of a culture-god who taught men the elements of

civilisation, and wrote books for their instruction. He was still a

“spirit” rather than a god in the Semitic sense of the word, but he was a

spirit who had emerged above the rest, who had acquired those family ties

which formed the very foundation of civilised life, and to whom the

creation of the world was due. Ea was not indeed a Baal, but he was

already on the way to become a god in human form.

At the same time, both Ea and his son Asari still appear in animal shape.

Asari is, it is true, “the benefactor of man,” but he is also “the mighty

one of the princely gazelle,” and even “the gazelle” himself; while Ea is

“the antelope of the deep,” or more simply “the antelope.”(315) At other

times he is the “lord of the earth” which he has created, or the “king” of

that “holy mound” of waters which rose up against the sky like a mountain,

and behind which the sun appeared at dawn. The titles that he bears point

unmistakably to Eridu. Here alone Ea was the creator of the earth, and

here too, in the temple of the god, was a likeness of that “holy mound”

whereon the future destinies of mankind were declared. The oldest

incantations which have come down to us must have been composed at Eridu

in the days of its Sumerian animism.

There are other divine or semi-divine names in them which tell the same

tale. The pure waters which heal the sick and destroy the power of

witchcraft are brought by the water-spirit Nin-akha-kudda, “the mistress

of spells,” whom the theologians of a later time transformed into a

daughter of Ea. Bau, too, the heifer of the city of Isin,(316) appears

along with the water-spirit. Like Zikum, she was the mother of Ea and “the

generatress of mankind,” and she shared with Asari the honours of the New

Year’s festival. But Bau, it would seem, was not originally from Eridu.

She had come there from a neighbouring city, and her presence in the

incantations is a proof that even in these oldest monuments of a sacred

literature we are still far from the beginnings of Babylonian religion.

At Nippur it was the ghosts and vampires, who had their habitation beneath

the ground, that were objects of terror to the men who lived upon it. At

Eridu the demons were rather the raging winds and storm-clouds which

lashed the waters of Ea into fury, and seemed for a time to transform his

kingdom into a chaos of lawless destruction. The fisherman perished in his

bark, while the salt waves inundated the land and ravaged the fields of

the husbandman. It was here, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, that the

story of the great flood was perhaps first thrown into literary form, and

that conception of the universe grew up which found its last expression in

the legend of the struggle between Merodach and the forces of anarchy. At

any rate it was here that the spirits of evil were pictured as the seven

evil demons in whom the tempest was, as it were, incarnated—

“Seven are they, seven are they,

in the hollow of the deep seven are they!

Gleams (?) of the sky are those seven.

In the hollow of the deep, in a palace, they grew up.

Male they are not, female they are not.

Destructive whirlwinds are they.

Wife they have not, child they beget not;

compassion and mercy they do not know.

Prayer and supplication hear they not.

Horses bred in the mountains are they.

Unto Ea are they hostile.

The throne-bearers of the gods are they.

To work mischief in the street they settle in the highway.

Evil are they, evil are they!

Seven are they, seven are they, seven twice again are they!”

The seven evil spirits played an important part in the demonology of

ancient Eridu, and echoes of it survive in the later literature. They were

even transmuted into a god, and unified in his person under the name of

“the divine seven”;(317) while the last month of the year, the stormy

Adar, was dedicated to them. But in earlier days it needed all the wisdom

of Ea to counteract their wicked devices. The fire-god himself was sent to

drive them from their victims, and to disclose their nature and origin—

“In the mountain of the sunset, it is said, “those seven were

born;”

in the mountain of the sunrise those seven grew up;

in the hollows of the earth they have their dwelling;

on the high-places of the earth their names are proclaimed.

As for them, in heaven and earth they have no dwelling, hidden is

their name.

Among the sentient gods they are not known.

Their name in heaven and earth exists not.

Those seven from the mountain of the sunset gallop forth,

those seven in the mountain of the sunrise are bound to rest.

In the hollows of the earth they set the foot;

on the high-places of the earth they lift the neck.

They by nought are known; in heaven and earth there is no

knowledge of them.”

The hymn or incantation which thus describes them belongs to a late period

in the history of Babylonian religion. The animism of primitive times has

been replaced by the gods and goddesses of the later official faith. But

the belief in the seven evil spirits still lingered, not only in the

popular mind, but also in the ranks of the official hierarchy; and it was

still remembered that they had been at the outset the spirits of the

tempest, born in the clefts of the ravine or on the stormy mountain-top,

from whence they issued like wild horses. The flame of sacrifice could

alone avert their onset, and incantations were still composed under

official sanction, with the help of which they might be driven away. The

fact shows to how late an epoch the composition of spells and incantatory

hymns may come down, even when the atmosphere they breathe is still that

of Eridu, and the language in which they are written is still the sacred

Sumerian. But there are collections of magical hymns and formulæ which are

even yet later in date. The eight books of the so-called Maqlû or

“Burning” collection are written throughout in Semitic Babylonian;(318)

and though two out of the nine books of another collection—that of the

Surpu or “Consuming Fever”—are bilingual, they have been clearly

translated from the more original Babylonian into Sumerian, like the Latin

exercises of to-day.(319) The official canon of the magical texts, in

fact, was long in formation, and did not assume its final shape until the

age of Khammurabi or later, even though its roots go back to the earliest

period of Babylonia, to the age of animism and the medicine-man, when the

Sumerian was still dominant in the land, and the Semitic nomad or trader

was content to learn from him the elements of civilisation.

The official canon had been collected together from all sides. Most of the

great sanctuaries of the country had probably contributed to it; in most,

if not in all, of them there must have been magical rituals which had

grown up under the care and supervision of the priesthood, and in which

the old beliefs of the people were disciplined and harmonised with the

dogmas of the State creed. Up to the last, one of the classes into which

the priesthood was divided was known as the Êni or “Chanters,” whose name

was derived from the Sumerian _ên_, “an incantation.” It is this word

which is prefixed to the charms and incantatory hymns that constitute so

integral a part of the magical texts; and though in course of time it came

to denote little more than “recitation,” it was a recitation which

possessed magical powers, and for which, therefore, a special training was

necessary. A single mistake in pronunciation or intonation, a single

substitution of one word for another, was sufficient to destroy the charm

and necessitate the repetition of the ceremony. Some of the incantations

had even to be recited in a whisper, like certain parts of the Roman

missal; and a whole series or collection is accordingly termed the ritual

of “the whispered charm,” reminding us of the passage in the Book of

Isaiah where the prophet refers to “the wizards that peep and that

mutter.”(320)

By the side of the “Book of Incantations”—whether it ever existed or

not—there was another sacred book containing hymns to the gods. Here,

again, it is more than doubtful whether the various collections of hymns

compiled for use in the great sanctuaries of the country were ever

combined together and incorporated into a single volume. The tendency to

religious centralisation and unification in Babylonia was arrested before

it could produce in religion what the seventy-two books of the

“Illumination of Bel” were for astronomy and astrology, a compilation in

which the observations of the past were collected and brought

together.(321) Babylon, despite its political predominance, never

succeeded in absorbing the religious cults of the more venerable

sanctuaries of the country; the historical conservatism of the people was

too strong, and even Nabonidos was forced to lavish gifts on the shrine of

the sun-god at Sippara as well as upon that of Merodach at Babylon. The

priesthood of Babylon were content to be chief among their peers; there

was no monotheistic zeal to sweep away the rival temples, and the

intensely localised character of Babylonian religion prevented the rise of

monotheism. And without religious centralisation a common service-book and

canon are not very probable. Perhaps, moreover, the hymns to the gods were

too long in detaching themselves from the magical ritual, and too late in

acquiring a sacred character of their own, to attain the same degree of

divine authority as the incantations. Many of them are not only in Semitic

Assyrian, but were composed as late as the reigns of the last Assyrian

kings, while even those which are bilingual seem to have been in many

cases the work of Semitic poets, the Sumerian text being a translation

from the Semitic into the sacred language of theology.

At the same time, Lenormant was not far wrong in comparing the religious

hymns of Chaldæa with those of the Rig-Veda. Like the latter, they belong

to different periods of time, and comprise poems as unlike one another as

war-songs and incantations and philosophic addresses to the gods.

Moreover, as in the case of the incantations, there were collections of

hymns addressed to the god or gods of the sanctuary in whose service they

were used. Thus many of them belong to a collection that must have been

made for the temple of the sun-god at Sippara or Larsa; all alike are

addressed to the sun-god, the supreme judge of mankind; and the language

that is used of him is the same in each. Other hymns celebrate the

moon-god of Ur, while others belong to Nippur or to the sanctuary of

Merodach at Babylon. The hymn to the god was as much a necessary portion

of divine service as the incantation or the ceremonial rite.

The ritual texts tell us how and when it was employed. Thus on the

festival of the New Year the service in the temple of Bel-Merodach was

opened by a hymn in honour of his ark; and on the second of Nisan the

priest was ordered to go down to the Euphrates at the beginning of the

first hour of the night, and then, after putting on the prescribed

vestment, and taking the waters of the river in his hand, to “enter into

the presence of Bel,” and there recite a long hymn in praise of the god.

The hymn closed with a prayer—

“Show mercy to thy city of Babylon;

to Ê-Saggil thy temple incline thy face;

grant the prayers of thy people the sons of Babylon!”

But there is yet another proof of the sacred character that attached

itself to the hymns. Many of them were employed as incantations. Not only

were they introduced into the magical texts, like the verses of the Bible

when used as charms, but the magical element was inserted in the hymn

itself. The address to the deity was combined with spells and

incantations, producing a confused medley of spiritual expressions and

grovelling superstition that is at once repellent and grotesque to our

modern notions. The hymn, moreover, is prefaced by the word _ên_ or

“incantation,” which makes its words as authoritative and unalterable as

the rest of the magical ritual. The same sacredness that invests the

latter invests also the hymn. The hymn, in short, is as much verbally

inspired as the incantation or spell; indeed, between the hymn and the

incantation no clear line of demarcation was drawn by the Babylonian, and

it is questionable whether he would have recognised that there was any

such line at all.

It was in the use that was made of them, and not in their essential

nature, that the hymn to the god and the incantation differed from one

another. And as animism preceded the official religion of Babylonia, and

the belief in spirits preceded the worship of the gods, so too did the

incantation precede the hymn. The sacredness that was acquired by the hymn

was originally reflected from the incantation; it was not the contents of

the hymn, but the actual words of which it was composed, that gave it its

sacred and authoritative character, and consecrated its employment by the

priestly caste.

It is accordingly with good reason that I have described the hymns, like

the incantations proper, as verbally inspired. The inspiration lay in the

words more than in the sense they conveyed; an error of pronunciation was

more fatal than a misunderstanding of their meaning. As long as the words

were recited correctly, it mattered little whether either priest or people

understood precisely what they meant.

I have already in an earlier lecture quoted some lines from the hymn to

the moon-god which was probably composed for the services in the great

temple of Ur. The hymns in honour of the sun-god are much more numerous,

and formed part of a collection which seems to have been made by the

priests of Bit-Uri, the temple of the sun-god at Sippara. The sun-god they

celebrate is the incorruptible “judge of mankind,” the rewarder of the

innocent and the punisher of the guilty, who sees all that is done on

earth, and acts towards those who call upon him with justice and mercy.

“O lord, we read in one of them,(322) “illuminator of the

darkness, opener of the sickly face,”

merciful god, who setteth up the fallen, who helpeth the weak,

unto thy light look the great gods,

the spirits of earth all gaze upon thy face.

Tongues in unison like a single word thou directest,

smiting their heads they look to the light of the mid-day sun.

Like a wife thou standest, glad and gladdening.

Thou art their light in the vault of the far-off heaven.

Thou art the object of their gaze in the broad earth.

Men far and near behold thee and rejoice!”

The language of another hymn is in a similar strain—

“Direct the law of the multitudes of mankind!

Thou art eternal righteousness in the heavens!

Thou art of faithful judgment towards all the world!

Thou knowest what is right, thou knowest what is wrong.

O sun-god, righteousness hath lifted up its foot!

O sun-god, wickedness hath been cut down as with a knife!

O sun-god, the minister of Anu and Bel art thou!

O sun-god, the judge supreme of heaven and earth art thou!

O lord of the living creation, the pitiful one (who directest) the

world!

O sun-god, on this day purify and illumine the king the son of his

god!

Whatever worketh evil in his body let it be taken away!

Cleanse him like the goblet of the Zoganes!

Illumine him like a cup of ghee;

like the copper of a polished tablet let him be made bright!

Release him from the ban!”(323)

The last words illustrate that strange mixture of spiritual thought and

the arts of the sorcerer to which I have more than once alluded. The hymns

to the sun-god were not yet emancipated from the magical beliefs and

ceremonies in which they had had their origin; they were still

incantations rather than hymns in the modern sense of the word. The

collection to which they belonged must have been used by the class of

priests known as “Chanters” or “Enchanters,” who had succeeded to the

sorcerers and medicine-men of the pre-Semitic past; and the fact explains

how it is that in many of them we have an alternating antiphonal service,

portions of them being recited by the priest and other portions by the

worshipper. In some instances, indeed, the verses seem to have been

alternately intoned by the priest and the assistant ministers, like the

canticles or psalms in the Christian worship of to-day. The practice had

its origin in the magical ritual, where the sorcerer first recited the

incantation, and then called upon the individual to repeat it once or

oftener after him. It is another proof of the intimate connection that

existed between the hymns and the incantations out of which they had

sprung; like the Veda or the Zend-Avesta, the sacred books of ancient

Chaldæa mixed magic and the spiritual worship of the gods together in a

confusion which seems to us difficult to understand.

It was the same with the penitential psalms which constitute the third

division of the sacred literature of Babylonia. In many respects they

resemble the psalms of the Old Testament. Like them they are intended for

public use, in spite of their individualistic form; the individual

represents the community, and at times it is the national calamity and the

national sin to which reference is made. After the revolt and reconquest

of Babylon by Assur-bani-pal, when the city was still polluted by the

corpses of those who had perished by famine or the sword, the

prophets(324) ordered that its shrines and temple-roads should be

purified, that its “wrathful gods and angry goddesses” should be “appeased

by prayers and penitential psalms,” and that then, and only then, the

daily sacrifices in the temples should be offered once more.(325)

Doubtless the penitential psalms were in the first instance the

spontaneous outpouring of the heart of the individual; it was his

sufferings that they depicted, and his sins that they deplored; but as

soon as they had been introduced into the worship of the temple, and

become part of the public cult, the individual element in them fell into

the background, and in the sins and sufferings of the individual both

priest and laity saw those of the whole community.

Like the Hebrew psalms, again, they express the belief that sin is the

cause of suffering and calamity, and that it can be removed by penitence

and prayer to the offended deity. But whereas the Hebrew monotheist knew

of one God only who could inflict punishment and listen to the repentant

words of the sinner, the Babylonian polytheist was distracted by the

uncertainty as to what particular divinity he had offended, and to whom,

therefore, his penitent appeal should be addressed. In the penitential

psalms, accordingly, it is the vague and general “god” and “goddess” that

are invoked, rather than a particular deity. It is only occasionally that

the names of special gods are introduced, and then a long list of them is

sometimes given, in the hope that among them might be the divinity whose

anger had been excited, and whose wrath the sufferer was eager to appease.

Sin, it must be remembered, in the eyes of the Babylonian included a good

deal more than moral wrong-doing. There were ritual sins as well as moral

sins, offences against the ceremonial law as well as against the moral or

spiritual code. The sin was not unfrequently involuntary, and the sufferer

did not even know in what particular respect he had offended against the

divine laws. It may have been the eating of forbidden food, such as that

which drove Adam and Eve from the sinless garden of Paradise. Or, again,

it may have been a real sin, a sin of thought and word committed in the

secrecy of the heart. “Was he frank in speaking,” it is asked in a

confession which is put into the mouth of a suppliant, “but false in

heart? Was it ‘yes’ with his mouth, but ‘no’ in his heart?” So far as the

punishment was concerned, little distinction was made between moral and

ceremonial sin; both were visited alike, and the sin of ignorance was

punished as severely as the sin that was committed with deliberate intent.

The recitation of the penitential psalms was accompanied by fasting. “Food

I have not eaten,” the penitent is made to say, “pure water I have not

drunk.” And, as in the case of the incantations and hymns, the recitation

was antiphonal. Portions of the psalms were recited by the priest, who

acted as the mediator between the penitent and the offended deity; other

portions by the penitent himself, or a choir of attendant ministers. The

ideas which had been associated with the use of the incantations still

dominated the public cult. Indeed, the penitential psalm sometimes very

nearly approaches the incantation in character. On the one side, it is

difficult to distinguish from the psalm a confession like that from which

I quoted just now, and which nevertheless forms part of a magical ritual;

on the other side, the psalm itself at times degenerates into the language

of magic. Babylonia never shook off the influence of those collections of

incantations which constituted its first sacred book, and gave it its

first conception of a divinely-inspired literature; up to the last the

descendants of the old medicine-man occupied a recognised place in the

priestly hierarchy, and the “Chanter” and “Augur” stood on the same

footing as the “prophet” and the “priest.”

Perhaps it was the same influence which demanded that the language of the

penitential psalm should be the extinct Sumerian. That some of the psalms

went back to Sumerian times and were composed by Sumerians in their own

tongue, I have little doubt; but it seems also unquestionable that many of

the psalms which have come down to us were of Semitic origin, the Sumerian

version attached to them being really a translation of the original

Semitic text. At all events, penitential psalms were written in later

times in Assyria, whose authors either did not care or did not know how to

provide them with a Sumerian text. It may be that they did not possess the

same sacred authority as the older psalms, but, like the latter, they were

used in the public services of the northern kingdom with the authorisation

of the king. The king in Assyria, it must be remembered, exercised the

influence that was wielded by the priesthood in the southern kingdom. The

Assyrian psalms, in fact, were like our modern hymns; the sanctity that

surrounded the older penitential psalms of Babylonia was indeed denied

them, but they better suited the newer age and the character of the

Assyrian people, and there was no omnipotent priesthood to forbid their

introduction into the public cult. They stood, it is true, outside the

sacred canon of Babylonia, in the sense that no dogmas of religion could

be built on them, and it is probable that they never received the sanction

of the Babylonian priests; but for all that the spirit they breathe is

that of the older psalms; and had the Assyrian empire lasted longer, it is

possible that they too might have become a sacred book.

I will conclude my lecture with one of the penitential psalms, which, we

are told, might be addressed “to any god”—

“The heart of my lord is wroth; may it be appeased!

May the god that I know not be pacified!

May the goddess whom I know not be pacified!

May the god I know and (the god) I know not be pacified!

May the goddess I know and (the goddess) I know not be pacified!

May the heart of my god be appeased!

May the heart of my goddess be appeased!

May the god and the goddess I know and I know not be pacified!

May the god (who has smitten me be pacified)!

May the goddess (who has smitten me be pacified)!

The sin that (I sinned) I knew not;

the sin (that I committed I knew not).

The word of blessing (may my god pronounce upon me);

a name of blessing (may the god I know and I know not) record for

me!

The word of blessing (may the goddess pronounce upon me)!

Food I have not eaten,

pure water I have not drunk.

An offence against my god unknowingly have I committed;

an offence against my goddess unknowingly I have wrought.

O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

O my god, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

O my goddess, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!

O god whom I know and whom I know not, my sins are many, my

transgressions are great!

O goddess whom I know and whom I know not, my sins are many, my

transgressions are great!

The sin that I sinned I knew not,

the transgression I committed I knew not.

The offence I committed I knew not,

the offence that I wrought I knew not.

The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me;

god has visited me in the anger of his heart;

the goddess has been violent against me, and has put me to grief.

The god whom I know and whom I know not has oppressed me,

the goddess whom I know and whom I know not has brought sorrow

upon me.

I sought for help, and none took my hand;

I wept, and none stood at my side;

I cried aloud, and there was none that heard me.

I am in trouble and hiding, and dare not look up.

To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer,

the feet of my goddess I kiss and water with tears.

To the god whom I know and whom I know not I utter my prayer.

O lord, look upon (me; receive my prayer)!

O goddess, look upon (me; receive my prayer)!

O goddess whom I know (and whom I know not, receive my prayer)!

How long, O god, (must I suffer)?

How long, O goddess, (shall thy face be turned from me)?

How long, O god whom I know and whom I know not, shall the anger

(of thy heart continue)?

How long, O goddess whom I know and whom I know not, shall the

wrath of thy heart be unappeased?

Mankind is made to wander, and there is none that knoweth.

Mankind, as many as have a name, what do they know?

Whether he shall have good or ill, there is none that knoweth.

O lord, cast not away thy servant!

Overflowing with tears, take him by the hand!

The sins I have sinned, turn to a blessing;

the transgressions I have committed may the wind carry away!

Strip off my manifold transgressions as a garment.

O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my

sins!

O my goddess, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my

sins!

O god whom I know and whom I know not, seven times seven are my

transgressions; forgive my sins!

O goddess whom I know and whom I know not, seven times seven are

my transgressions; forgive my sins!

Forgive my sins, and let me humble myself before thee.

May thy heart be appeased as the heart of a mother who has borne

children!

May it be appeased as that of a mother who has borne children, as

that of a father who has begotten them!”

Lecture VIII. The Myths And Epics.

A lecture on the myths of Babylonia may perhaps seem out of place in a

course, the subject of which is Babylonian religion. But religion has its

mythology as well as its theology, and sometimes the mythology has had a

good deal to do with moulding or even creating its theology. Moreover, the

myths of Babylonia were intimately connected with its worship of the gods.

They all related, so far as we know, to the gods and spirits, or else, to

what Greek theology would have called heroes and demi-gods. They embody

religious beliefs and practices; they contain allusions to local cults;

above all, they not unfrequently reflect the popular conception of the

divine.

Only we must beware of basing theological conclusions on their unsupported

evidence. They have come to us in a literary form, and students of

folk-lore know how little trustworthy, even for the purposes of the

folk-lorist, a tale is which has undergone literary remodelling. It is

difficult to distinguish in it what is peculiar to the individual author

or the literary circle in which he moves, and what is really the belief of

the people or the traditional heritage of the past. In fact, all

mythology, whether literary or otherwise, suffers from the mixture within

it of old and modern ideas. The old ideas may be preserved in it like the

fossils in a geological formation, or they may have been coloured and

explained away in accordance with the conceptions of a later age; but in

either case they are mingled with the beliefs and notions of after

generations, which our ignorance necessarily prevents us from separating

with the requisite care. In dealing with the history of religion,

therefore, we ought to treat the language of a literary myth with extreme

caution, and refrain from drawing any far-reaching inferences from the

statements we find in it.

This is more especially true of the literary epics of ancient Babylonia.

They seem to have been numerous; at all events fragments of a good many

have been saved for us out of the wreckage of the past. But they belong

for the most part to the same period, the age of national revival which

began with the reign of Khammurabi, and continued for several centuries

after his death. It is possible that Sin-liqi-unnini, the author of the

great Epic of Gilgames, was a contemporary of Abraham; the story of Adapa,

the first man, was already in existence, and had become a standard

classic, when the Tel el-Amarna letters were written in the fifteenth

century B.C. Behind all these poems lay a long-preceding period in which

the myths and legends they embody had taken shape and formed the subject

of numberless literary works. The Epic of Gilgames is, for instance, but

the final stage in the literary development of the tales and myths of

which it is composed; older poems, or parts of poems, have been

incorporated into it, and the elements of which it consists are multiform

and of various origin. The story of the Deluge, which constitutes the

eleventh book, has been foisted into it by an almost violent artifice, and

represents a combination of more than one of its many versions which were

in circulation in Babylonia. When the early libraries of the country have

been explored, we shall know better than we do now how far the story in

the form we have of it in the Epic is original, and how far the author has

freely borrowed from his predecessors, using their language or combining

their work.

As a rule, the subject of a Babylonian poem is either some single god or

some single hero. When the god or hero is merely a central figure around

whose adventures those of other gods or heroes are made to revolve, the

poem becomes an Epic. It still retains its mythological shape, and the

world in which it moves is a world of supernatural powers, a divine

fairyland in which the gods play the part of men. But there is none of the

dull and crass euhemerism which distinguishes the Egyptian tales of the

gods. The gods do not become mere men with enlarged human powers; they

remain divine, even though their actions are human and the stage on which

they move is human also. It was the pantheism of the Egyptian, in

conjunction with the deification of the Pharaoh, that made him rationalise

the stories of his gods; in Babylonia there was no such temptation; each

deity retained his individual character, and from the outset he had worn

the likeness of a man. But it was a likeness only, behind which the

divinity revealed itself, though the likeness necessarily caused the

revelation to be made through individual features, clearly cut and sharply

defined. Bel was no human king possessed of magical powers, who had once

sat on the throne of Babylon; he remained the god who could, it is true,

display himself at times to his faithful worshippers, but whose habitation

was in the far-off heavens, from which he surveyed and regulated the

actions of mankind. The gods of Babylonian mythology still belonged to

heaven and not to earth, and its heroes are men and not humanised gods.

I have already referred to the story of the first man, Adapa, and his

refusal of the gift of immortality. The story, as we have it, has received

a theological colouring; like the narrative of the Fall in the Book of

Genesis, it serves to explain why death has entered the world. Man was

made in the likeness of the gods, and the question therefore naturally

arose why, like them, he should not be immortal. The answer was given, at

any rate by the priests of Eridu, in the legend of Adapa and his journey

to the sky.

There was yet another story which illustrated the punishment of human

presumption,—the attempt of man to be as a god,—and is thus a parallel to

the story of the tower of Babel. It is the legend of Etana and the eagle,

who tempts the hero to ascend with him to the highest heavens and there

visit the abodes of the gods. Borne accordingly on the breast of the bird,

Etana mounts upwards. At the end of two hours the earth looks to them like

a mere mountain, the sea like a pool. Another four hours and “the sea has

become like a gardener’s ditch.” At last they reach “the heaven of Anu”;

but even there they refuse to stay. Higher still they ascend to the heaven

of Istar, so that the sea appears to them “like a small bread-basket.” But

before they can reach their destination the destined penalty overtakes the

presumptuous pair. The eagle’s wings fail him, and he falls through space,

and both he and his burden are dashed to the ground.

With this story of Etana there has been coupled a legend, or rather fable,

of the eagle itself, which the mutilated state of our copies of it renders

extremely obscure. The eagle had devoured the young of the serpent, who

accordingly appealed to the sun-god, the judge of all things, for justice.

By the sun-god’s advice the serpent creeps into the carcase of a dead ox,

and there, when the eagle comes to feed upon the putrifying flesh, seizes

his enemy, strips him of his feathers, and leaves him to die of hunger and

thirst. This must have happened after the fall of the eagle from heaven;

and we may therefore conjecture that, while his human companion was

killed, like Icarus, by the fall, the punishment of the eagle was

deferred. But it came finally; not even the most powerful of the winged

creation could venture with impunity into the heaven of the gods.

While the celestial seat of Istar was beyond the reach of man, Istar

herself sought Tammuz, the bridegroom of her youth, in the underground

realm of Hades, in the hope that she might give him to drink of the waters

of life which gushed up under the throne of the spirits of the earth, and

so bring him back once more to life and light. The poem which told of her

descent into Hades was sung at the yearly festival of Tammuz by the women,

who wept for his untimely death. Like Baldyr, the youngest and most

beautiful of the gods, he was cut off in the flower of his youth, and

taken from the earth to another world. But while the myth embodied in the

poem, and illustrated by numberless engraved seals, makes him descend into

Hades, the older belief of Eridu, where he had once been a

water-spirit,—“the son of the spirit of the deep,”—transferred him to the

heaven above, where, along with Nin-gis-zida, “the lord of the upright

post,” he served as warder of the celestial gate. In my Hibbert Lectures I

have dealt so fully with the story of Tammuz in the various forms it

assumed, as well as with the myth of Istar’s pursuit of him in the world

below, that I need not dwell upon it now. All I need do is to insist upon

the caution with which we should build upon it theories about the

Babylonian’s conception of the other world, and the existence he expected

to lead after death.

The description of Hades with which the poem begins was borrowed from some

older work. We meet with it again almost word for word in what is probably

one of the books of the Epic of Gilgames. The fact illustrates the way in

which the poets and epic-writers of Babylonia freely borrowed from older

sources, and how the classical works of Chaldæa were built up out of

earlier materials. Perhaps if reproached with plagiarism, their authors

would have made the same answer as Vergil, that they had but picked out

the pearls from the dunghill of their predecessors. At all events the

description of Hades is striking, though it must be remembered that it

represents only one of the many ideas that were entertained of it in

Babylonia—

“To the land from which there is no return, the home of

[darkness],

Istar, the daughter of Sin, [turned] her mind,

yea, the daughter of Sin set her mind [to go];

to the house of gloom, the dwelling of Irkalla,

to the house from which those who enter depart not,

the road from whose path there is no return;

to the house where they who enter are deprived of light;

a place where dust is their nourishment, clay their food;

the light they behold not, in thick darkness they dwell;

they are clad like bats in a garb of wings;

on door and bolt the dust is laid.”

Through the seven gates of the infernal regions did Istar descend, leaving

at each some one of her adornments, until at last, stripped and helpless,

she stood before the goddess of the underworld. There no mercy was shown

her; the plague-demon was bidden to smite her with manifold diseases, and

she was kept imprisoned in Hades like the ordinary dead. But while the

goddess of love thus lay bound and buried, things in this upper world fell

into confusion. Neither men nor cattle produced offspring, and the gods in

heaven took counsel what should be done. Ea accordingly created an

androgyne, to whom the name was given “Bright is his light.” Before him

the gates of Hades opened, and the darkness within them was lighted up.

The infernal goddess was forced to obey the orders of heaven; and though

she cursed the messenger with deadly imprecations, the spirits of the

earth were seated on their golden throne while Istar was sprinkled with

the water of life, and she then returned once more to the world of light.

Ereskigal, the goddess of Hades, forms the subject of yet another poem,

fragments of which were found at Tel el-Amarna in Egypt, where the poem

had been used as a text-book for the students of the Babylonian language

and script. The poem recounts how she refused to come to a feast which the

gods had prepared in heaven, and how Nergal invaded her dominions, broke

through the gates that shut them in, and, seizing Ereskigal by the hair,

dragged her from her throne. But she begged for mercy, and Nergal

consented to be her husband, and to rule with her over the realm of the

dead. The “tablet of wisdom” was transferred to him, and she became a

Semitic Baalat, the mere reflection of her “lord.” The Sumerian “queen of

Hades” gave place to a Semitic Bel.

The “tablet of wisdom” was distinct from the “tablets of destiny,” which

gave their possessor a foreknowledge of the future course of events. The

possession of the latter implied supreme rule over gods and men; it

brought with it the right to be “Bel” in the fullest sense of the word.

Like the Urim and Thummim, they were hung upon the breast; and in the Epic

of the Creation, Tiamât is described as delivering them to her demon

husband Kingu, who thereby became the acknowledged ruler of the world. The

victory of Merodach over the powers of darkness transferred to him the

mystic tablets; from henceforth he was the Bel who had made, and who

directed, the existing universe; and once each year, at the New Year’s

festival, he sat enthroned above the mercy-seat in his temple at Babylon,

declaring the destinies of the coming year. But before the tablets were

given to Bel-Merodach of Babylon, they had belonged to the older Bel of

Nippur and Dur-ili; and a myth told how Zu, the storm-bird, had stolen

them while Bel was “pouring forth the pure water and mounting his throne”

at the beginning of day. “I will take,” he had said, “the divine tablets

of destiny, even I; the laws(326) of all the gods will I decree; my throne

will I establish and issue my commands, and direct all the angels (of

heaven).” The thief flew with his spoil to Mount Sâbu; and Anu called in

vain upon his brother gods to pursue and smite him, and recover the stolen

treasure. It was only at last by the help of stratagem that the nest of Zu

was found, and the tablets restored to Bel.

A myth of more transparent meaning is that which told of the ravages

wrought in land after land by Urra, the Pestilence. The description of the

plague-god reminds us of that angel of pestilence whom David saw with his

hand stretched forth over Jerusalem. No moral considerations moved him;

just and unjust, the sinner and the innocent, were alike involved in a

common destruction. Babylon was the first to be smitten, then Erech; and

Merodach and Istar mourned vainly over the ruin of their people. Then

Isum, the angel-messenger of Urra, was sent on a longer mission. The

pestilence spread over the whole civilised world; Syria and Assyria,

Elamite and Bedâwin, Kurd and Akkadian equally suffered. The vineyards of

Amanus and the Lebanon were rooted up, and those who cultivated them

perished from the earth. For “unnumbered years” the scourge lasted, for

Urra had “planned evil because of former wickedness,” and it was long

before his rage was appeased, and the world returned to its normal state.

Similarly transparent is the story of the assault of the seven evil

spirits upon the moon, resulting in its eclipse and threatened extinction.

En-lil in despair sends his messenger, the fire-god, to Ea for advice and

help, which are accordingly given, and the moon-god is saved. The poem,

however, is of a much older date than those we have hitherto been

considering. It goes back to the time when magic still held a foremost

place in the official religion of Babylonia; when Aṡari, the son of Ea,

had not as yet become Bel-Merodach of Babylon; and when the cult of Ea had

not been obscured by those of younger deities. In fact, it forms part of

one of the incantation texts, and is described as the sixteenth book of

the series on evil spirits. But the divine triads already make their

appearance in it; Ea does not stand alone, but shares his powers with

En-lil and Anu, while below them is the triad of Sin, Samas, and Istar. We

may look upon the story as belonging to the age which saw the

transformation of Sumerian animism into the syncretic State religion of

later days; the Semitic gods are there, but they still retain in part the

functions which distinguished them when they were “spirits” and nothing

more.

Between the legend of the assault upon the moon-god and the Epic of

Gilgames the distance is great. Centuries of thought and development

intervene between them, and there is a difference not only in degree, but

also in kind. While one reminds us of the legends of Lapps or Samoyeds,

the other finds its parallel in the heroic tales of Greece. Gilgames is a

hero in the Greek sense of the term; he is not a god, at least for the

poet of the Epic, even though he lived like Achilles and Odysseus in days

when the gods took part in visible form in the affairs of men. So far as

we know, it is the masterpiece of Babylonian epical literature,—a proof

that however deficient the pure-blooded Semite may have been in epical and

mythological genius, the mixed race of Babylonia was in this respect the

rival of the Greek. Like the story of the Trojan War, the story of

Gilgames attracted to it epical and mythological elements from all sides,

and became a veritable treasure-house of Babylonian mythology.

Its author divided it into twelve books. Long ago it was noticed that the

arrangement has an astronomical basis, and that the adventures of the hero

described in some at least of the books are made to correspond with the

current names of the months of the year. Thus the love and revenge of

Istar are the subject of the sixth book, answering to the name of the

sixth month, that of “the mission of Istar”; while the episode of the

Deluge is introduced into the eleventh book, where it fitly corresponds

with the eleventh month Adar, “the month of the curse of rain.” It is true

that the correspondence between the subject of the book and the name of

the month cannot be traced in all cases, but it must be remembered that

each month had many names, especially in the age of Khammurabi, and that

the poet would have more especially in his mind the religious festivals

which distinguished the months of the year. As was pointed out by Sir H.

C. Rawlinson, he must have regarded Gilgames, if not as a solar hero, at

all events as a representative of the sun-god. Not only is the Epic

divided into twelve books, but in the seventh, when the summer solstice is

passed and the year begins to wane, the hero is smitten with a sore

disease. It is not until the twelfth and last book is reached, that, after

bathing in the waters of the ocean which encircles the world, he is healed

of his sickness, and restored once more to health and strength.

But the solar character of Gilgames did not originally belong to him. His

name, like those of most of the Babylonian heroes, had come down from

Sumerian times, when as yet the gods did not exist, and the world of

living things was divided between “spirits” and men.(327) And Gilgames was

a man, the creation of the goddess Aruru, whose original birthplace seems

to have been Marad, and of whom a tale was told which may be the prototype

of that of Akrisios and Perseus.(328) He was the Hêraklês of Babylonia,

the embodiment of human strength, who saves his country from its foes, and

destroys the monstrous beasts that infest it,—a mighty prince, though not

an actual king. There is no reason why he should not have been like Cyrus,

a historical personage round whose name and deeds myths afterwards

gathered; an early inscription recording the restoration of the wall of

Erech states that it had been originally built by the deified

Gilgames.(329)

The Epic begins with a description of his rule at Erech, “the seat” of his

power. Between him and the inhabitants of the city there seems to have

been little goodwill. He had not left, they complained, the son to his

father or the wife to her husband. It may be that the legend contains a

germ of historical truth, and goes back to the days when Erech was still a

battleground between Sumerian and Semite.(330) At any rate the gods, we

are told, heard the cry of the people, and Aruru was instructed to create

a rival to Gilgames, who might overcome him in the contest of strength.

The goddess accordingly kneaded clay with her hands, and made it in the

form of Ea-bani, half-man and half-beast. His body was covered with hair;

“he knew neither kin nor country”; “with the gazelles he ate the grass” of

the field, and “satisfied his thirst with the cattle.” On the seals he is

represented as a satyr with a goat’s legs and human head.

Vainly “the Huntsman” endeavoured to capture him. Ea-bani broke through

the nets that were laid for him; and it was only when one of the

courtesans of Istar was sent to entice him that he yielded to the

temptation, and left his gazelles and cattle to lie with her seven nights.

When once more he turned back to them, they fled from him in terror; he

had become a man, knowing good and evil, and between him and the brute

beasts there was nothing more in common. He listened accordingly to the

courtesan, and went with her to Erech, “the seat of Gilgames, the giant in

strength, who like a wild ox is stronger than the strongest men.” There

Gilgames had dreamed three dreams relating to him; and Ea-bani, on hearing

the interpretation of them, gave up his design of wrestling with the hero,

and became instead his fast friend and ally.

The third book of the Epic describes the expedition of the two heroes

against the tyrant Khumbaba, whose home was in the cedar-forest of Elam.

They found a way into its magical depths, gazing in wonder at the height

of the trees, and beholding the mountain of the cedars, “the mystic” seat

of the gods, the shrine of Irnini; “before the mountain the cedars lifted

up their luxuriant foliage; deep was their shadow and full of pleasaunce.”

Khumbaba was overcome and slain; but Gilgames once more dreamed a dream,

wherein the heavens thundered, the lightning flashed, and the earth shook,

and which portended disaster to Ea-bani and his friend.

The sixth and following books describe how the dream was fulfilled. Istar

saw and loved Gilgames in the strength of his manhood, and asked him to be

her bridegroom. “If thou wilt be my husband,” she declared—

“I will let thee ride in a chariot of lapis-lazuli and gold,

thou shalt harness each day great mules (to thy yoke);

the odours of cedar shall enter our house ...

Kings, lords, and princes [shall bow] at thy feet;

[the increase] of mountain and plain shall they bring thee in

tribute.”

Gilgames, however, rejected the offer of the goddess in scorn, and taunted

her with her fickleness and cruelty and the miserable end of all who had

loved her in the past—

“Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,

thou ordainest weeping for him year by year.

The bright-coloured wood-pigeon didst thou love;

thou didst smite him and break his wings;

in the woods he sits and cries, ‘O my wings!’

Thou didst love a lion perfect in might;

seven times seven didst thou dig for him a pit.

Thou didst love a horse, glorious in battle;

whip and spur and bridle didst thou decree for him.

Fourteen hours didst thou make him gallop;

weariness and thirst didst thou lay upon him;

for his mother, the goddess Silili, thou ordainest weeping.

Thou didst love the shepherd Tabulu,

who poured out the salt continually for thee;

day by day did he slay for thee the sucklings.

Thou didst smite him, and change him into a wolf.

His own shepherd-boys drove him away,

and his own dogs bit his flesh.

Thou didst love Isullanu, the gardener of thy father,

who was ever bringing thee fruit;

day by day he made bright thy dish;

thou didst lift thine eyes to him, and speak softly to him:

‘Isullanu mine, let us eat the gourds together;

put forth thine hand and touch one ...’

Isullanu answered her:

‘Of me what requirest thou?

Has my mother not baked, have I not eaten,

that I should eat such food?

Thorns and thistles are hidden therein’ (?).

When thou didst hear these his words,

thou didst smite him, and change him into a column (?),

and didst plant him in the midst of [the garden?].”

Istar flew to her father Anu in heaven, and demanded from him vengeance

upon Gilgames for the slight he had put upon her. Accordingly a monstrous

bull was created, which ravaged the country, and threatened the life of

Gilgames himself. But Gilgames was more than a match for the monster. With

the help of Ea-bani the bull was slain, and its huge horns carried in

triumph through the streets of Erech; while Istar stood in impotent rage

on the walls of the city, lamenting the death of the bull, and calling on

her harlot priestesses to weep over it with her.

But the death of “the divine bull” had evil consequences for the two

heroes. The curse of Istar falls upon them; Gilgames himself is smitten

with a grievous sickness, and Ea-bani dies after lingering in pain for

full twelve days. Gilgames is inconsolable; vainly he protests against the

law of death which carries away the strong equally with the weak, the hero

equally with the common man. The ninth book thus begins—

“Gilgames for his friend Ea-bani

weeps bitterly and lies outstretched upon the ground.

“’Shall I not die like Ea-bani?

Grief has entered my body;

I fear death, and lie outstretched upon the ground.’ ”

Accordingly he determines to visit Xisuthros,(331) the hero of the Deluge,

who dwelt beyond the river of death, whither he had been translated

without dying, and learn from him the secret of immortality.

The road was long and difficult; mortal man had never trodden it before.

But there was divine blood in Gilgames; and as the Greek Hêraklês forced

his way to Hades, so he too forced his way beyond the limits of our human

world. First he had to pass the twin mountains of Mas, in the northern

desert of Arabia, which guard the daily rising and setting of the sun,

whose summit touches the “zenith of heaven,” while “their breast reaches

downwards to Hades.” Men with the bodies of scorpions guarded the gateway

of the sun, the horror of whose aspect was “awesome,” and whose look “was

death.” But “the scorpion-man” and his “wife” recognised that the stranger

was partly divine, and he was allowed to pass in safety through the open

doors. Once beyond them he entered a region of thick darkness. For the

space of twelve double hours he groped his way through this land without

light, when suddenly he emerged from it into the bright light of day. Here

grew a marvellous tree, whose fruit was the precious turquoise(332) and

lapis-lazuli, which hung from it like clusters of grapes.

At last Gilgames reached the shore of the ocean, which, like a serpent,

encircles the earth. Here Ṡiduri, or Ṡabitum “the lady of Saba,”(333) sat

upon “the throne of the sea.” But she locked the gate of her palace, and

forbade him to cross the ocean; none had ever passed over it except the

sun-god in his nightly voyage from west to east. Once more, however, the

element of divinity that was in Gilgames prevailed; Ṡabitum acknowledged

that he was more than a mere man, and allowed his right to seek his

ancestor beyond the river of death. Arad-Ea, the pilot of Xisuthros, was

summoned; trees were cut and fashioned into a boat, and for a month and

fifteen days Gilgames and his pilot pursued their voyage over the sea.

Then “on the third day” they entered “the waters of death.” The hero was

bidden to cling to the rudder and to see that the deadly water did not

touch his hand. Twelve strokes of the oar were needed before the rapids

were safely passed, and the boat reached the shore that lay beyond the

realm of death. Here Gilgames beheld Xisuthros “afar off” “at the mouth of

the rivers.” At once he communicated to him the object of his journey: how

and why had Xisuthros escaped the universal law of death? The answer is

contained in the eleventh book of the Epic, which recounts the story of

the great Deluge.

Ever since its discovery by George Smith in 1872, the Babylonian story of

the Deluge, which has thus been introduced into the Epic of Gilgames, has

attracted the special attention of both scholars and the public. On the

one side it agrees with the story of the Deluge handed down to us by the

copyists of the Chaldæan historian Berossos, and so is a witness to his

trustworthiness; on the other side, its parallelism with the account of

the Deluge in the Book of Genesis is at once striking and startling. But

the version of the story embodied by Sin-liqi-unnini in his Epic was but

one out of many that were current in Babylonia. We have a fragment of

another which so closely resembles that of the Epic, as to have been long

believed to form part of it; indeed, it is possible that it comes from a

variant copy of the Epic itself. Fragments of another version have lately

been found by Dr. Scheil in a Babylonian tablet which goes back to the

reign of Ammi-zadok, the fourth successor of Khammurabi.(334) Even the

version contained in the Epic seems to be a combination of two earlier

ones, or rather to be based upon at least two different versions of the

legend. The story, in fact, must have been of immemorial antiquity in

Babylonia; Xisuthros and his ship are depicted upon some of the earliest

seals, and Babylonian chronology drew a sharp line of division between the

kings who had reigned before and after the Flood. In the Epic Xisuthros is

a native of Surippak on the Euphrates, but the story must originally have

grown up at Eridu on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Like the story of the

struggle with Tiamât, it typifies the contest between the anarchic

elements of storm and flood and that peaceful expanse of water in which

the fishermen of Eridu plied their trade, and out of which the culture-god

had ascended. It is significant that up to the last it was En-lil of

Nippur who was represented as sending the Flood that destroyed mankind,

while Xisuthros was saved by Ea.

The Babylonian story of the Deluge has been so often translated and is so

well known, that there is no need for me to repeat it here. It is

sufficient to note that Xisuthros, like Noah, owed his preservation to his

piety. In the final scene, when Bel (En-lil) is enraged that any one

should have escaped from the destruction he had brought upon mankind, Ea

pacifies him with the words: “Punish the sinner for his sins, punish the

transgressor for his transgressions; be merciful that he be not [utterly]

cut off, be long-suffering that he be not [rooted out].” The Deluge was a

punishment for sin, and it was only just, therefore, that the righteous

man should be saved.

The translation of Xisuthros with his wife to the paradise beyond the

grave is evidently regarded by the author of the Epic as a further reward

for his piety. But we may suspect that this was not its original cause. In

the myth of Adapa, the first man, we find Anu laying down that the mortal

who has penetrated into the secrets of the gods must receive the gift of

immortality and become as one of the gods himself, and it would seem that

the same idea inspired the belief in the translation of the second father

of mankind. Xisuthros too had learned the secret counsels of the gods;

with the help of Ea he had outwitted Bel, and it was therefore needful

that the gift of immortality should be conferred on him, and that he

should dwell like them in the land which death cannot reach.

True to his primeval character, En-lil of Nippur was the author of the

Deluge. His ministers, Nin-ip, Nusku, and En-nugi, carry out his commands,

while “the spirits of the earth lift up their torches.” But the poet of

the Epic has spoilt the primitive symmetry of the picture by introducing

the triad into it along with the storm-god Hadad of later times, and so

making the destruction of mankind not the work of En-lil alone, but of the

gods generally in common council. The result has been a want of coherence

in the elements of the story; Istar(335) consents to the death of the

children she has borne, only to repent of it subsequently when she sees

them filling the sea “like fish,” and to weep with the rest of the gods

over the havoc that has been wrought. Perhaps Professor Jastrow is right

in his suggestion that two separate versions of the story have been united

together, in one of which it was the single city of Surippak and its

inhabitants that were destroyed, while in the other the Deluge was

universal. However that may be, Ea disclosed the determination of En-lil

to his faithful servant, “the son of Ubara-Tutu.” According to one part of

the story, the disclosure was made through a dream; according to another

part, by a device similar to that which gave the Phrygian Midas his ass’s

ears. The god whispered the meditated deed of Bel and the means of

escaping it to one of those reed-huts which stood by the shore of the

Persian Gulf, and in which Xisuthros—despite the fact that he is called “a

man of Surippak”—was born. The rustling reeds communicated to him the

secret, and he in turn told his “lord Ea” that he had understood the

message.

The ship was built, and by the advice of Ea the too-inquisitive inquirers

were informed that the builder was transferring his allegiance from Bel,

the lord of the land, to Ea, the god of the sea.(336) All sorts of

provisions were stored in it, together with “the seed of life,” each after

its kind—“cattle of the field, wild beasts of the field, and the sons of

the craftsmen.” Then the helm was placed in the hands of Buzur-Sadi-rabi,

the steersman, the door of the ark was closed, and the storm broke upon

the earth. For seven days and nights it raged; man and his works were

swept away, and the ark alone survived with its living freight. When at

last Xisuthros opened his window and looked out, a desolate waste of

waters was all that could be seen. Above it the lofty peak of the mountain

of Nizir(337) in the north-east finally appeared; here the ship grounded,

and seven days afterwards Xisuthros sent forth a dove to see if the earth

were dry. But the dove “went to and fro, and returned.” Next he sent forth

a swallow, which returned also to the ark; and lastly a raven, which “ate,

waded and croaked, and did not return.” So the Chaldæan Noah knew that the

waters of the Flood had subsided: and accordingly he opened the door of

the ark and let the animals within it depart towards “the four quarters of

heaven.” Then he offered sacrifice on the summit of the mountain, setting

beside it vases of smoking incense ranged “seven by seven.” The gods smelt

the sweet savour of the offering, and rejoiced that there were men still

left to prepare it for them. They gathered, we are told, “like flies above

the offerer,” while Beltis lifted up “the bow that Anu had made.”

En-lil alone refused to be reconciled. He vented his wrath at the escape

of Xisuthros and his family upon the Igigi or angels, who, as spirits,

were more under his control than the gods. But Ea took the blame upon

himself, and, after declaring that the righteous must not suffer with the

guilty, persuaded Bel to promise that though he might send the wild beast,

the famine, and the pestilence upon mankind, the earth should never again

be visited by the waters of a flood. Then Bel entered the ship, blessed

Xisuthros and his wife, and translated them to the other world.

After hearing the story, Gilgames fell into a deep sleep, which lasted six

days and seven nights, while the wife of Xisuthros prepared magic food,

which she placed at the head of the sleeper. When he awoke he ate it, and

his sickness departed from him. But his skin was still covered with sores,

and it was therefore necessary that he should bathe in the purifying

waters of the ocean before the full strength and beauty of his youth came

back to him.

Xisuthros now tells him of the plant of immortality which grows, covered

with thorns, at the bottom of the ocean. The hero accordingly ties heavy

stones to his feet, and dives for it; and though the thorns pierce his

hands, he brings a branch of it to the surface, and prepares to carry it

to the world of men. But the gift of immortality was not for men to

possess. On his voyage home Gilgames stops awhile at a fountain of cool

water, and while he bathes in it a serpent perceives the odour of the

plant, and steals it away. Vainly the hero laments its loss, the plant

that “changes age into youth ” could never be brought to a world the law

of which is death.

Man must die, but what is the lot of the dead? This is the question which

forms the burden of the twelfth and last book of the Epic. Gilgames

wanders from temple to temple, asking the god of each if the earth has

seized hold of Ea-bani, and if so, what is his fate below. But the gods

are silent; they give neither answer nor sign. At last, however, he

reaches the shrine of Nergal, the god of the dead, and Nergal causes the

earth to open and the spirit of Ea-bani to ascend out of it like a cloud

of dust. And then the answer is given. He who has friends to care for him

will “lie on a couch and drink pure water”; the hero too—

“who is slain in battle, as you and I have seen,

his father and his mother support his head,

and his wife [weeps] over him.

But he whose body lies forsaken in the field, as thou and I have

seen,

his ghost rests not in the earth.

He whose ghost has none to care for him, as thou and I have seen,

the garbage of the pot, the refuse of food,

which is thrown into the street, must he devour.”

With this dreary and materialistic picture of the other world the Epic

comes to an end. It is a curious contrast to the life in the fields of Alu

to which the Egyptian worshipper of Osiris looked forward; and there is

little need to wonder that the mind and religious cult of the Babylonian

should have been centred in the present life. The Hades in which he was

called upon to believe was more dreary even than the Hades of the Homeric

Greeks.

The Epic of Gilgames forces two questions upon our attention, both of

which have been often discussed. The one is the relation of the story of

the Deluge contained in it to the Biblical narrative of the Flood, the

other is the relation of Gilgames himself to the Greek Hêraklês. From the

outset it has been perceived that the connection between the Babylonian

and Hebrew stories is very close, and that the Babylonian is the older of

the two. The birds, for instance, sent out by Xisuthros are three instead

of two, as in the Biblical narrative, though the number of times they were

despatched is the same in both cases; and the ship of the Babylonian

version has been replaced by an ark in the Old Testament account. In fact

the Babylonian story has been modified in Palestine and under Western

influences. In an inland country an ark was naturally substituted for a

ship, more especially as the latter contained a house with window and

door; even in Babylonia itself, in the processions of the gods, an ark

came to take the place of the ship of primitive Eridu. The olive branch,

again, with which the dove returned, according to the Book of Genesis,

points to Palestine, where the olive grew; while the period of the

rainfall has been transferred from Sebet or January and February, when the

winter rains fall in Babylonia, to the “second month” of the Hebrew civil

year, our October and November, when the “former rains” began in Canaan.

Similarly, the subsidence of the waters is extended in the Hebrew

narrative to the middle of the “seventh month,” when the “latter rains” of

the Canaanitish spring are over.

But the most remarkable fact brought to light by a comparison of the

Babylonian story with that of Genesis is, that the resemblances between

them are not confined to one only of the two documents into which modern

criticism has separated the Biblical narrative. It is not with the

so-called Elohistic, or the so-called Yahvistic, account only that the

agreement exists, but with both together as they are found at present

combined, or supposed to be combined, in the Hebrew text.(338) The fact

throws grave doubt on the reality of the critical analysis. As I have said

elsewhere:(339) “Either the Babylonian poet had before him the present

‘redacted’ text of Genesis, or else the Elohist and Yahvist must have

copied the Babylonian story upon the mutual understanding standing that

the one should insert what the other omitted. There is no third

alternative.”

The Palestinian colouring of the Biblical version of itself excludes the

supposition that the story was borrowed by the Jews in the age of the

Babylonian exile. Such a supposition, indeed, would be little in

accordance with the feelings of hatred felt by the captives towards their

Babylonian conquerors and the religious beliefs and traditions of the

latter. But the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets has shown that the

culture and literature of Babylonia had made its way to Palestine and even

to Egypt long before the Mosaic age. The great literary works of Chaldæa

were already known and used as text-books in the West, and, like the story

of the first man Adapa, a portion of which was found in Egypt, the story

of the Deluge and the second founder of the human race must also have been

known there. Gunkel has made it clear(340) that the conceptions and

beliefs which underlie the history of the Flood, and find their expression

in the statement that “the fountains of the great deep” were broken up,

are not only of Babylonian origin, but are also met with in the earliest

fragments of Old Testament literature. Before the Israelites entered

Canaan, the cosmological ideas of Babylonia had already made their way to

it, and been adapted to the geographical conditions of “the land of the

Amorites.”

The story of a deluge was known to Greece as well as to Palestine. There,

too, it had been sent by Zeus as a punishment for the impiety of mankind;

and Deukalion, the Greek Noah, saved himself and his family in a

ship.(341) The peak of Parnassos played the same part in the Greek legend

that the mountain of Nizir played in the Babylonian; and the stones thrown

on the ground by Deukalion which became men, remind us of the images of

clay moulded by the goddess Mami in the mutilated Babylonian myth of

Atarpi, which similarly become men and women.

But it is not so much with the episode of the Deluge as with the whole

story of Gilgames and his adventures that Greek mythology claims

connection. The desire of finding the biblical Nimrod in the cuneiform

tablets long seduced Assyriologists into the impossible attempt to

identify him with Gilgames; it is not, however, to the Biblical Nimrod,

but to the Greek Hêraklês, that the Babylonian hero is related. The

curious parallelism between the twelve labours of Hêraklês and the twelve

adventures of Gilgames may be an accident; but it is no accident that

Gilgames and Hêraklês should alike be heroes who are not kings, and that

both alike should be tormented with a deadly distemper which destroyed the

flesh. Khumbaba is the tyrant Geryon, the bull slain by Gilgames is the

Kretan bull slain by Hêraklês, and the Nemæan lion reappears in the lion

which Gilgames is so often represented on the seals as strangling to

death. As Hêra persecuted Hêraklês, so Istar persecuted Gilgames; the

journey of the Greek hero into Hades is paralleled by the journey of

Gilgames beyond the waters of death; and the tree which he found on the

shores of the sea with its fruit of precious stones is the magical tree of

the Hesperides with its golden apples which grew in the midst of the

western ocean.

It is true that there are many elements in the legend of Hêraklês which

are not derived from Babylonia. But it is also true that, like the

cosmogonies of Hesiod or the cosmological philosophy of Thales, there are

also elements in it for which we must claim a Babylonian origin. Probably

they made their way to Greek lands at the same time as the Cyprian cult of

Aphroditê or the myth of Adônis, whose name indicates the road along which

the culture of Babylonia had travelled. Recent archæological discoveries

have revealed the fact that in the days when Canaan was a Babylonian

province, a civilisation already existed in the Ægean, and that an active

intercourse was carried on between Egypt and Asia on the one hand, and the

islands and shores of the Mediterranean on the other, in which Krete took

a leading share. Light is only just dawning on what until lately was the

“prehistoric” past of the European peoples; before long a new world will

doubtless be disclosed to us, such as that which the decipherment of the

cuneiform texts has brought to light.

It is not only in the mythology of primitive Greece that we can trace the

influence of the legends embodied in the Epic of Gilgames. The adventures

of Gilgames in search of immortality form part of the story of that

mythical Alexander who grew up in literature by the side of the Alexander

of history. He too had to make his way through a land of thick darkness,

and he too finally failed in his endeavour to secure the “waters of

life.”(342) Man is and must remain mortal; this is alike the teaching of

the old poet of Chaldæa and of the romance which the contact of Eastern

and Western thought called into existence in classical days.

Lecture IX. The Ritual Of The Temple.

The temple of the god was the centre and glory of every great Babylonian

city. The Babylonian States had been at the outset essentially theocratic;

their ruler had been a high priest before he became a king, and up to the

last he remained the vicegerent and adopted son of the god. It was round

the temple that the city had grown and its population clustered. The

artisans worked for it, and the agricultural labourers tilled its fields.

The art of Babylonia originated within the temple precincts; it was for

its adornment that the enamelled tiles were first made, and wood or stone

or metal carved into artistic shapes, while the endowments which thus

fostered the craftsman’s art were derived from landed property or from the

tithes paid to the priests upon the produce of the soil. The culture of

Babylonia was with good reason traced back to the god Ea.

The place occupied in Assyria by the army was filled in Babylonia by the

priesthood. The priests could make and unmake their kings. The last

monarch of Babylonia, Nabonidos, was a nominee of the priests of Babylon;

it was from them, and not from the rights of heritage, that he had derived

his title to the throne. The great sanctuaries of the country influenced

its destinies to the last. The influence of Nippur and Eridu, in fact, was

wholly religious; we know of no royal dynasties that sprang from them.

Even Nabonidos, with all his centralising zeal on behalf of Merodach of

Babylon, was constrained to lavish gifts and honours on the sun-god of

Sippara, at all events in the early part of his reign.

We must therefore look upon the temple as the oldest unit in the

civilisation of Babylonia. Babylonian culture begins with the temple, with

the worship of a deity or a spirit, and with the ministers attached to the

cult. Centuries before En-lil of Nippur had developed into a Semitic Bel,

an earthly dwelling-house had been provided for him which became in time

the temple of a god. Its first name, Ê-kur, “the house of the earth” or

“mountain,” continued always to cling to it, even though the original

meaning of the name was forgotten, and it had come to signify a temple in

the later sense of the word.

The temple was the sign and token of the reclamation of the primitive

Babylonian swamp. Before it could be erected, it was needful to construct

a platform of solid earth and brickwork, which should rise above the

pestiferous marsh, and serve as a foundation for the building. The

Sumerians called the platform the ki-gal or “great place”; it was the

first place of human or divine habitation wrested from the waters of the

swamp, and it marked the triumph of civilised man over nature.

Emphatically, therefore, it was a “great place,” a solid resting-place in

a world of water and slime.

On the platform the temple buildings were piled. There was no stone in

Babylonia; it was a land of mud, and of mud bricks, accordingly, baked in

the sun, the temple of the god was constructed. What was lost in beauty or

design was gained in solidity. The Babylonian temples were huge masses of

brick, square for the most part, and with the four corners facing the four

cardinal points. It was only exceptionally that the four sides, instead of

the four corners, were made to front the four “winds.”

These masses of brick were continually growing in height. The crude bricks

soon disintegrated, and the heavy rains of a Babylonian winter quickly

reduced them to their primeval mud. Constant restorations were therefore

needed, and the history of a Babylonian temple is that of perpetual

repairs. Efforts were made to keep the walls from crumbling away by

building buttresses against them, and the bricks were cemented together

with bitumen. But all precautions were in vain. A period of national decay

inevitably brought with it the decay also of the temples, and a return of

prosperity meant their restoration on the disintegrated ruins of the older

edifice. The artificial platform became a _tel_ or mound.

But the growth in height was not displeasing to the priestly builders. The

higher the temple rose above the level of the plain, the better they were

pleased. A characteristic of the Babylonian temple, in fact, was the

_ziggurat_ or “tower” attached to each, whose head it was designed should

“reach to heaven.” The word _ziggurat_ means a “lofty peak,” and the royal

builders of Babylonia vied with one another in making the temple towers

they erected as high as possible.

There was more than one reason for this characteristic feature of

religious Babylonian architecture. The first settlers in the plain of

Babylonia must soon have discovered that the higher they could be above

the surface of the ground the better it was for them. The nearer they

ascended to the clouds of heaven, the freer they were from the miasmata

and insects of the swamp. The same cause which led them to provide a

platform for their temples, would have also led them to raise the temple

as high as they could above the level of the plain. This, however, will

not explain the origin of the tower itself. It would have been a reason

for building the temple as high as possible, not for attaching to it a

tower. Nor was the tower suitable for defence against an enemy, like the

pylons of an Egyptian temple. At most it was a convenient watch-tower from

which the movements of a hostile band could be observed. There must have

been some other reason, more directly connected with religious beliefs or

practices, which found its outward expression in the sacred tower.

The sanctuary of Nippur, it will be remembered, was the oldest in Northern

Babylonia. And from time immemorial it had been known as Ê-kur, “the house

of the mountain-land.” It represented that underground world which was the

home of En-lil and his ghosts; and this underground world, we must

observe, was conceived of as a mountain. In fact, the cuneiform character

which signifies “country” also signifies “mountain,” and the hieroglyphic

picture out of which it developed is the picture of a mountain-range. The

land in which it was first drawn and stereotyped in writing must, it would

seem, have been a mountainous one, like the land in which the subterranean

realm of En-lil was regarded as a lofty hill. In other words, the

Sumerians must have been the inhabitants of a mountainous country before

they settled in the plain of Babylonia and laid the foundations of the

temple of Nippur.

And this mountainous country lay to the north or east, where the mountains

of Elam and Kurdistan border the Babylonian plain. In the story of the

Deluge the ark is made to rest on the summit of the mountain of Nizir,

which is probably the modern Rowandiz, to the north-east of Assyria; and

the gods were believed to have been born in “the mountain of the world,”

in the land of Arallu.(343) Here, too, they held their court; “I will

ascend into heaven,” the Babylonian monarch is made to say in the 14th

chapter of Isaiah, “I will exalt my throne above the stars of El; I will

sit also upon the mount of the assembly (of the gods), in the extremities

of the north;(344) I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will

be like the Most High.” More than one temple in both Babylonia and Assyria

took its name from this “mountain of the world”; the _ziggurat_ at Kis was

known as “the house of the mountain of mankind,” while a temple at Ur was

entitled “the house of the mountain,” and the shrine of Gula at Babylon

was “the house of the holy hill.”(345)

All over Babylonia, accordingly, the mountain is brought into close

connection with the religious cult. Not at Nippur only, but in other

cities as well, the home of the gods is on the summit of an Olympos,

within whose subterranean recesses they were born when as yet the

primitive ghost or spirit had not become a god. Sumerian religion must

have grown up rather among the mountains than in the plain, and the memory

of its birthplace was preserved by religious conservatism. The _ziggurat_

of the temple goes back to the days when the gods were still gods of the

mountain, and the builders of the temple sought to force a way into the

heavenly Olympos by raising artificially an imitation of the mountain on

the alluvial plain. The tower was a mimic representation of the Ê-kur, or

mountain of the earth itself, where En-lil, “the god of the great

mountain” (_sadu rabu_), had his seat. And the earth could have been

figured as a mountain only by the inhabitants of a mountainous land.

But this conception of the world of gods and men stands in glaring

contrast to the cosmology of Eridu. There the primeval earth was not a

mountain peak, but the flat lands reclaimed from the sea. The gods and

spirits had their home in the abysses of the ocean, not in the dark

recesses of a mountain of the north; the centre of the world was the

palace of Ea beneath the waves, not “the mountain-house” of En-lil, or the

dark caverns of “the mountain of Arallu.” Once more we are confronted by a

twofold element in Babylonian thought and religion, and a proof of its

compound nature. Like the contradictory elements in Egyptian religion,

which can best be explained by the composite character of the people, the

contradictory elements in Babylonian religion imply that mixture of races

which is described in the fragments of Berossos.

In the tower or _ziggurat_, accordingly, we must see a reflection of the

belief that this nether earth is a mountain whose highest peak supports

the vault of the sky. Around it float the stars and clouds, concealing the

heaven of the gods from the eyes of man. But this Olympian heaven was

really an afterthought. It was not until the ghosts of the lower world had

developed into gods, and been transferred from the heart of the mountain

to its summit, that it had any existence at all. It belongs to the age of

astro-theology, to the time when the moon and sun and host of heaven

became divine, and received the homage of mankind. This is an age to which

I shall have to refer again in my next and concluding lecture. It was the

time when the _ziggurat_ began to consist of seven storeys, dedicated to

the seven planets, when the _ziggurat_ of Erech was called “the house of

the seven black stones,” and that of Borsippa, “of the seven zones of

heaven and earth.”(346)

The _ziggurat_ occupied but a small part of the temple area. What the

temple was like we know to a certain extent, not only from the American

excavations at Nippur, but more especially from the accounts given us by

Herodotos and by a cuneiform tablet which describes the great temple of

Bel-Merodach at Babylon. The latter was called Ê-Saggila, “the house of

the exalted head”; and though the account of Herodotos is probably quoted

from an earlier author, while the cuneiform tablet, which was seen and

translated by Mr. George Smith at Constantinople, has unfortunately been

lost, there is nevertheless no ground in either case for mistrust. The

description given by Herodotos fully agrees with that of the tablet.

The visitor to the temple first entered the “Great” or Outer Court. It was

900 feet in breadth, and more than 1150 in length. If we may judge from

the analogy of Nippur and Lagas, an arcade ran round its interior,

supported on columns, and two larger, but detached, columns of brick or

stone stood on either side of the entrance. At Babylon a second court

opened out of the first, devoted to the worship of the goddesses Istar and

Zamâmâ. Six gates pierced the walls—the Grand Gate, the Gate of the Rising

Sun, the Great Gate, the Gate of the Colossi, the Gate of the Canal, and

the Gate of the Tower-view.(347) Then came the _kigallu_, or platform, of

the original temple, the sides, and not the corners of which faced the

four cardinal points, and which possessed four gates, each in the centre

of a side. In it was the _ziggurat_, “the house of the foundation of

heaven and earth,” as it was termed, with its seven stages, which rose one

above the other in gradually diminishing proportions to a height of 300

feet.(348) A winding ramp led upwards on the outside, connecting the

stages with each other, and allowing a chariot to be driven along it to

the top. Here in the last of the seven stages was the chamber of the god.

It contained no image of the deity, only a couch of gold and a golden

table for the shewbread.(349) None but a woman into whom the god had

breathed the spirit of prophecy was allowed to enter it, and it was to her

that Bel revealed himself at night on his golden couch and delivered his

oracles. As in Greece, so too in Babylonia and Assyria, women were

inspired prophetesses of the gods. It was from the priestesses and

serving-women of Istar of Arbela that Esar-haddon received the oracles of

the goddess; and we are reminded that in Israel also it was the prophetess

Deborah who roused her countrymen to battle, and Huldah, rather than

Jeremiah, to whom the high priest betook himself that he might hear “the

word of the Lord.”

It is significant that the place of the oracle was the topmost chamber of

the tower. The god is conceived as coming down from heaven;(350) it is

there that he lives, not in the underground recesses of the mountain of

the world or fathomless abysses of the sea. When the _ziggurat_ took its

final shape, the deities of Babylonia had already been transported to the

sky.

It is also significant that there was no image of the god. The spiritual

had been finally separated from the material, and where the god himself

came in spiritual form no material image of him was needed. Though none

might be able to see him with mortal eye save only his inspired priestess,

he was nevertheless as actually present as if he had embodied himself in

some statue of metal or stone. The denizen of heaven required no body or

form of earthly make; the divine spirits who were worshipped in the sun or

stars were seen only by the eye of faith.

But it was in the _ziggurat_ only that the deity thus came down from

heaven in spiritual guise. In the chapels and shrines that stood at its

foot images were numerous; here the multitude, whether of priests or

laymen, served and worshipped, and the older traditions of religion

remained intact. On the eastern side of the tower was the sanctuary of

Nebo, the “angel” or interpreter of the will of Merodach, with Tasmit, his

wife. To the north were the chapels of Ea and Nusku, and to the south

those of Anu and En-lil, while westward was the temple of Merodach

himself. It consisted of a double building, with a court between the two

wings. In the recesses of the inner sanctuary was the _papakhu_, or “Holy

of Holies,” with its golden image of the god. Here too was the golden

table of shewbread and the _parakku_, or mercy-seat, which at times gave

its name to the whole shrine.

The innermost sanctuary was known as the Du-azagga, or “Holy Hill,” after

which the month Tisri received one of its names.(351) But the name had

really come from Eridu. It was the dwelling-place of Ea on the eastern

horizon of the sea, where the sun rises from the deep,(352) and Asari

accordingly was entitled its “son.” When Asari became Merodach of Babylon,

the Holy Mound or Hill migrated with him, and the seat of the oracular

wisdom of Ea was transformed into the shrine of Merodach, where he in his

turn delivered his oracles on the festival of the New Year.(353)

Lehmann(354) has shown that originally it represented the mercy-seat, the

“golden throne” of the description of Herodotos, above which the deity

seated himself when he descended to announce the future destinies of man.

It was only subsequently that it was extended to the “Holy of Holies” in

which the mercy-seat stood.

A golden altar seems to have been raised close to the mercy-seat of the

god. If Herodotos may be trusted, lambs only were allowed to be sacrificed

upon it. But there was another and larger altar in the outer court. On

this whole sheep were offered, as well as frankincense.

The architectural arrangement of a Babylonian temple, however, was not

always the same. The orientation of the temple of Merodach, as we have

seen, differed from that of the majority of the Babylonian sanctuaries.

The number of chapels included within the sacred precincts varied greatly,

and even the position of the great tower was not uniform. But the general

plan was alike everywhere. There was first the great court, open to the

sky, and surrounded by cloisters and colonnades. Here were the houses of

the priests and other ministers of the temple, the library and school,

shops for the manufacture and sale of votive objects, even the stalls

wherein the animals were kept that were intended for sacrifice. In the

centre of the court stood an altar of sacrifice, with large vases for the

purposes of ablution by the side of it, as well as a “sea,” or basin of

water, which derived its name from the fact that it was a symbol of the

primeval “deep.” The basin was of bronze or stone, and was at times

supported on the backs of twelve oxen, as we learn from an old hymn which

describes the construction of one of them.(355) At other times, as at

Lagas, the basin was decorated with a frieze of female figures, who pour

water from the vases in their outstretched hands.(356) The purifying

effects of the water of the “deep” were transferred to that of the mimic

“sea,” and the worshipper who entered the temple after washing in it

became ceremonially pure.

The great court, with its two isolated columns in front of the entrance,

led into a second, from the floor of which rose the _ziggurat_ or tower.

The second court formed the approach to the temple proper, which again

consisted of an outer sanctuary and an inner shrine. Whether the laity

were admitted into its inner recesses is doubtful. No one, indeed, could

appear before the god except through the mediation of a priest; and on the

seal-cylinders a frequent representation is that of a worshipper whom the

priest is leading by the hand and presenting to the image of a deity. But

it is not certain that the image represented on them was that which stood

in the Holy of Holies, or innermost shrine; it may have been a second

image, erected in another part of the temple. On the other hand, the

numerous chapels of the secondary gods who formed the court of the chief

deity of a city, can hardly have been furnished with more than one statue,

and it is even questionable whether they consisted of more than one

chamber. Perhaps it was only from the topmost room of the tower that the

layman was absolutely excluded.

The Babylonian temple, it will be seen, thus closely resembled the temple

of Solomon. That, too, had its two courts, its chambers for the priests,

its sanctuary, and its Holy of Holies. Both alike were externally mere

rectangular boxes, without architectural beauty or variety of design. It

was only in the possession of a tower that the Babylonian temple differed

from the Israelite. They agreed even in the details of their furniture.

The two altars of the Babylonian sanctuary are found again in the temple

of Jerusalem; so too are the mercy-seat and the table of shewbread. Even

the bronze “sea” of Solomon, with its twelve oxen, is at last accounted

for; it was modelled after a Babylonian original, and goes back to the

cosmological ideas which had their source in Eridu. Yet more striking are

the twin pillars that flanked the gateway of the court, remains of which

have been found both at Nippur and at Tello. They are exactly parallel to

the twin pillars which Solomon set up “in the porch of the temple,” and

which he named Yakin and Boaz. In these, again, we may find vestiges of a

belief which had its roots in the theology of Eridu. When Adapa, the first

man, was sent by Ea to the heaven of Anu, he found on either side of the

gate two gods clothed in mourning, and weeping for their untimely removal

from the earth. Like the two cherubim who guarded the tree of life, they

guarded the gate of heaven. One of them was Tammuz, the other

Nin-gis-zida, “the lord of the firmly planted stake.” Each had perished,

it would seem, in the prime of life, and hence were fitly set to guard the

gates of heaven and prevent mortal man from forcing his way into the realm

of immortality. Yakin, it should be noticed, is a very passable

translation of the Sumerian Nin-gis-zida; perhaps Boaz preserves, under a

corrupted form, a reminiscence of Tammuz.

There was yet another parallelism between the temples of Babylonia and

Jerusalem. The Hebrew ark was replaced in Babylonia by a ship. The ship

was dedicated to the god or goddess whose image it contained, and was

often of considerable size. Its sides were frequently inlaid with gems and

gold, and it always bore a special name. One at least of the names

indicates that the ship goes back to the days when as yet the gods had not

assumed human forms; the ship of Bau is still that of “the holy cow.” In

early times the ship was provided with captain and crew; later, it was

reduced in size so that it could be carried like an ark on the shoulders

of men. But its original object is clear. On days of festival the god was

rowed in it on the sacred river, where he could enjoy the cool breeze, and

return, as it were, to the “pure” waters of the primeval deep. Gradually

it became merely his travelling home when he left his usual

dwelling-place. In Assyria its place was even taken by a throne or

platform borne upon the shoulders in the religious processions. The ship,

in fact, passed into an ark, the curtained palanquin or shrine wherein the

deity could conceal himself from the eyes of the profane when he left his

own sanctuary.

A discovery made by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam in the mounds of Balawât, some

fifteen miles from Mossul, shows that in Assyria the development of the

ship into the ark was as complete as it was in Israel. Here he found a

small chapel dedicated to the god of dreams. At the entrance of the

sanctuary was a stone coffer, which contained two small alabaster slabs

thickly covered with cuneiform writing. They proved to be records of the

conquests of Assur-nazir-pal, the builder of the chapel, and each tablet

contained the same text. It was not surprising that the native workmen

when they opened the coffer believed that they had discovered the

veritable tables of the Mosaic Law! We are told in the Old Testament that

the latter were kept in the ark. Not far from the coffer in the north-west

corner of the shrine was a stone altar the ascent to which was by a flight

of five steps.

The temples were served by an army of priests. At the head came the

_patesi_ or “high priest,” who in the early days of Babylonian history

performed the functions of a king. But the _patesi_ was essentially the

vicegerent of the god. The god delegated his powers to him, and allowed

him to exercise them on earth. It was the doctrine of priestly mediation

carried to its logical conclusion. Only through the priest could the deity

be approached, and in the absence of the deity the high priest took his

place. At Babylon, as we have seen, the divine rights were conferred by an

act of adoption; the vicegerent of Bel, by “taking the hand” and becoming

the son of the god, acquired the right to exercise his sovereignty over

men. An early king of Erech calls himself the son of the goddess Nin-ṡun.

From the outset the Babylonian monarchy was essentially theocratic; the

king was simply the high priest in a new form.

But with the rise of Semitic supremacy the king himself became a god. The

vicegerent had taken to himself all the attributes of the deity, the

adopted son succeeded to the rights and powers of his divine father. The

_patesi_ ceased to be the king himself, and became instead his viceroy and

lieutenant. Wherever the supreme monarch had a governor who acted in his

name, he had also a representative of his divine authority. There were

high priests of the god on earth as well as of the gods in heaven.

A new term was wanted to take the place of _patesi_, which had thus come

to have a secular as well as a religious signification. It was found in

_sangu_, which, more especially in the Assyrian period, meant a chief

priest. Every great sanctuary had its chief priests who corresponded to

the Hebrew “sons of Aaron,” with a “high priest” or _sangam-makhu_ at

their head.(357) Under them were a large number of subordinate priests and

temple ministers—the _kali_ or “gallos-priests,”(358) the _niṡakki_ or

“sacrificers,” the _ramki_ or “pourers of libations,” and the _pasisi_ or

“anointers with oil.” There was even a special class of bakers who made

the sacred cakes that were used in the temple service, as well as

“chanters” and “wailers,” “carriers of the axe” and “of the spear.” Above

all, there were the prophets and augurs, the soothsayers (_makhkhi_) and

necromancers (_musêli_), and those who “inquired” of the dead (_saili_).

The _asipi_ or “prophets” constituted a class apart. In some respects they

resembled the prophets of Israel. It was “by order of the college of

prophets” that Assur-bani-pal purified the shrines of Babylon after the

capture of the city, and the prophet accompanied even an army in the

field. At times they predicted the future; more often it was rather an

announcement of the will of Heaven which they delivered to mankind.(359)

As they prophesied they poured out libations; hence it is that the

purification of the shrines of the Babylonian temples was their special

care, and that an old ritual text commands the prophet to pour out

libations “for three days at dawn and night during the middle watch.”(360)

The word was borrowed by the writer of the Book of Daniel (ii. 10) under

the form of _ashshâph_, which the Authorised Version renders

“astrologers.” But the Babylonian _asip_ or “prophet” was not an

astrologer; he left to others the interpretation of the stars, and

contented himself with counselling or foretelling the destinies of men.

Like his master Bel-Merodach, he was the interpreter of the wisdom of Ea,

and the revealer of his counsels. The Holy of Holies in the great temple

of Babylon, where Bel uttered his oracles, was known as the “house of

prophecy,” like the ship also in which the image of the god was ferried

across the stream.(361) The prophet may have been part of the heritage

bequeathed by Eridu to the Babylonian people.

By the side of the prophet stood the seer (_sabrû_).(362) The seer and the

prophet were distinct from one another; there was no confusion between

their offices, as seems to have been at one time the case in Israel. The

seer was not the “speaker” who declared the will of the gods or the fate

that was decreed for man; it was, on the contrary, through visions and

trances that the future was made known to him. Assur-bani-pal tells us

how, on the eve of the Elamite war, after he had invoked the aid and

protection of Istar, “a seer slept and dreamed a prophetic dream; a vision

of the night did Istar reveal unto him; he repeated it to me, saying:

‘Istar, who dwelleth in Arbela, came down, and on the right hand and on

the left hung (her) quivers; in her hand she held the bow; she drew the

sharp war-sword and held it before her. Like a mother she speaketh with

thee, she calleth thee; Istar, the queen of the gods, appointeth for thee

a doom: ... “Eat food, drink wine, make music, exalt my divinity, until I

march and this work of mine be accomplished. I will give thee thy heart’s

desire; thy face shall not grow pale, thy feet shall not totter.” ’ ”

Here the message of the seer passes into a prophecy, and his office is

distinguished from that of the prophet only through the difference in the

mode of revelation. The seer went back to the earliest ages of Semitic

Babylonia. The “seer” of the palace of Sargon of Akkad is already

mentioned on a contemporaneous tablet by the side of “the king” and “the

queen.”(363) Like the other priests among whom he was reckoned, it was

necessary that he should be without bodily blemish. The leper, the blind,

and the maimed were excluded from the service of the gods.(364)

How far the Babylonian prophet resembled the Hebrew prophet it is at

present impossible to say. But there were certainly two important points

in which they differed. The Babylonian prophet was, on the one side, a

member of the priestly body; the mere peasant could not become an

“utterer” of the will of heaven without previous training and

consecration. There was, consequently, no such distinction between the

prophet and the priest as prevailed in Israel; Babylonia was a theocratic,

not a democratic State. On the other side, the prophet was closely linked

with the magician and necromancer. Magic had been taken under the

protection of the State religion, not repudiated and persecuted as among

the Israelites. Hence, while the prophet was a priest to whom the rites of

purification were specially entrusted, he was at the same time classed

with the _sailu_ who “inquired” of the dead, the _musêlu_ or necromancer,

and the _makhkhu_ or “soothsayer.”

On the other hand, there were prophetesses as well as prophets in both

Babylonia and Israel. The employment of women in the temple services

peculiarly characterised Babylonia. As we have seen, it was a woman only

who was privileged to enter the secret shrine of Bel-Merodach at Babylon;

while unmarried women were consecrated, not only to Istar, but also to the

sun-god, and, like the priests, formed a corporate community. We are told

that in the lower world of Hades there were female as well as male

soothsayers; it was the home of the black art, and so reflected the

constitution of the professors of sorcery in the upper world.

Along with the seer and the soothsayer, the prophet was thus annexed by

the temple. A definite duty was assigned to him there; he was “the pourer

out” of libations. The libations were doubtless originally of “pure”

water, to which was subsequently added wine, whether made from the palm or

the vine. Along with the libations all the first-fruits of the cultivated

land were offered to the gods. Milk and butter and oil, dates and

vegetables, were given in abundance. So too were the spices and incense

that were brought from the southern coast of Arabia, the corn that was

grown in the fields, garlic and other herbs from the garden, and honey

from the hive. But animal sacrifices were not forgotten. Oxen and calves,

sheep and lambs, goats and kids, fish and certain kinds of birds, were

slain upon the altar, and so presented to the gods. It is noticeable that

it was only the cultivated plant and the domesticated beast that were thus

offered to the deity. The dog and swine, or rather wild boar, are never

mentioned in the sacrificial lists. What man gave to heaven was what he

ate himself, and reared or grew with the sweat of his brow. The gazelle,

indeed, is named, but it is a scape-goat which is driven into the desert

like the Hebrew Azazel, carrying away with it the sins and sickness of

those who let it loose.(365) The gods of Semitic Babylonia were

essentially human, and what man lived upon they too required. They had,

moreover, given their worshippers all they most needed and prized—fruitful

fields, fat cattle, rain in its season, and the blessings of the sunshine.

In return they demanded the first-fruits of what was in reality their own;

they could, if they so chose, deprive man of the whole, but they were

generously satisfied with a part. The Semitic Baal was indeed like a

divine king; lord and master though he was of the cultivated soil and of

all that it produced, he was content only with a share.

Was the firstborn of man included among the sacrifices that were deemed

acceptable to heaven? Years ago I published an early text which seemed to

show that such was the case. My interpretation of the text has been

disputed, but it still appears to me to be the sole legitimate one. The

text is bilingual in both Sumerian and Semitic, and therefore probably

goes back to Sumerian times. Literally rendered, it is as follows: “Let

the _algal_ proclaim: the offspring who raises his head among men, the

offspring for his life he must give; the head of the offspring for the

head of the man he must give, the neck of the offspring for the neck of

the man he must give, the breast of the offspring for the breast of the

man he must give.”(366) It is difficult to attach any other meaning to

this than that which makes it refer to the sacrifice of children.

The question, however, is really settled by the evidence of archæology. On

the famous stela of the Vultures, now in the Louvre, a sort of wicker-work

cage is represented, filled with captives who are waiting to be put to

death by the mace of the king.(367) On a certain class of seal-cylinders,

moreover, a scene is engraved which Ménant seems to me to have rightly

explained as depicting a human sacrifice. In later times, it is true,

human sacrifice ceased to be practised; there are few, if any, references

to it in the inscriptions, and the human victim is replaced by an ox or

sheep. It was to the offended majesty of the Assyrian king rather than of

the god Assur that the Assyrian conqueror impaled or burnt the beaten foe;

and among the lists of offerings that were made to the deified rulers of

Babylonia, we look in vain for any mention of man or child. As in Israel,

so too in the kingdoms of the Euphrates and Tigris, human sacrifice seems

to have disappeared at an early date.

So, moreover, does another custom which has been revealed to us by the

archaic sculptures of Tello. That was the custom of approaching the deity

stripped of clothing;(368) and Professor Jastrow aptly compares with it

not only the scanty dress of the Mohammedan pilgrims on Mount Arafat, but

also Saul’s conduct when the spirit of prophecy fell upon him. A similar

custom prevailed in Keltic Ireland, and the Hindu still strips himself

when he sits down to eat.

The growth of culture, and it may be also the mixture of races, thus

deprived the gods of two of the prerogatives they had once enjoyed. They

could no longer claim the firstborn of men, nor require that the

worshipper should enter their presence naked and defenceless. But they

retained all their other kingly rights. A tithe of all that the land

produced was theirs, and it was rigorously exacted, for the support of the

temples and priests. Babylonia, in short, was the inventor of tithe.

Why it should have been a tenth we cannot say. The numerical system of the

Babylonians was sexagesimal and duodecimal, not decimal, and the year

consisted of twelve months, not of ten. Perhaps the institution went back

to a period when the year of twelve months had not yet been fixed, and,

like the lunar year of the modern Mohammedan, it still possessed but ten

months. However this may be, the tithe became a marked characteristic of

Babylonian religious life. It was paid by all classes; even the king and

his heir were not exempt from it. One of the last acts of the crown prince

Belshazzar was to pay the tithe, forty-seven shekels in amount, due from

his sister to the temple of the sun-god at Sippara, at the very moment

when Cyrus was knocking at the gates of Babylon.(369) It is probable that

the daily sacrifices were provided for in great measure out of the tithe;

at all events, Assur-bani-pal tells us that after the suppression of the

Babylonian revolt, he levied upon the people the provision needed for the

sacrifices made to Assur and Beltis and the gods of Assyria. They were,

however, often endowed specially; thus Nebuchadrezzar made special

provision for the daily sacrifice of eight lambs in the temple of Nergal

at Cuthah; and an earlier king of Babylonia describes how he had increased

the endowment of the stated offerings at Sippara.

The daily sacrifice was called the _ṡatttûku_, a term which goes back to

the age when the Semite was first mingling with the older Sumerian.(370)

There were other terms in use to denote the various kinds of offering that

were presented to the gods. The animal sacrifice had the name of _zîbu_,

the meal-offering being known as manitu.(371) The free-will offering was

_nidbu_; the “gift” or “benevolence” demanded by the god upon the produce

of the field being _qurbannu_, the Hebrew _qorbân_. Other terms also were

employed, the exact sense of which is still uncertain; among them is one

which probably means “trespass-offering.”

It is impossible not to be struck by the many points of similarity between

the Babylonian ritual and arrangement of the temples and that which

existed among the Israelites. The temple of Solomon, in fact, was little

more than a reproduction of a Babylonian sanctuary. And just as the palace

of the Hebrew king adjoined the temple in which he claimed the right of

offering sacrifice, so too at Babylon the palace of Nebuchadrezzar—who, it

must be remembered, was a pontiff as well as a king—stood close to the

temple of Merodach. Even the bronze serpent which Hezekiah destroyed finds

its parallel in the bronze serpents erected in the gates of the Babylonian

temples.(372) The internal decoration of the sanctuary, moreover, was

similar in both countries. The walls were made gorgeous with enamelled

bricks, or with plaques of gold and bronze and inlaid stones. Sometimes

they were painted with vermilion, the monsters of the Epic of the Creation

being pictured on the walls. But more often the painted or sculptured

figures were, as at Jerusalem, those of cherubim and the sacred tree or

other vegetable devices. At Erech, bull-headed colossi guarded the doors.

But the resemblance between the Babylonian and Hebrew rituals extends

beyond the ceremonial of the temple of Solomon into the Levitical Law. In

fact, the very term for law, the _torâh_, as the Israelites called it, was

borrowed from the Babylonian _tertu_, as was first pointed out by

Professor Haupt. It is even a question whether the word is not a

derivative from the verb _ahâru_, “to send” or “direct,” from which the

name of Aaron was also formed. However this may be, even the technical

words of the Mosaic Law recur in the ritual texts of early Babylonia. The

biblical _kipper_, “atonement,” is the Assyrian _kuppuru_; and the

_qorbân_, as we have seen, is the Assyrian _qurbannu_. A distinction was

made between the offerings of the rich and of the poor (_muskînu_),(373)

and the sacrificial animal was required to be “without blemish” (_salmu_).

The “right” thigh or shoulder of the victim was given to the priest, along

with the loins and hide, the rump and tendons, and part of the

stomach.(374) Still more interesting is it to find in the ritual of the

prophets instructions for the sacrifice of a lamb at the gate of the

house, the blood of which is to be smeared on the lintels and doorposts,

as well as on the colossal images that guarded the entrance.(375) To this

day in Egypt the same rite is practised, and when my dahabiah was launched

I had to conform to it. On this occasion the blood of the lamb was allowed

to fall over the sides of the lower deck.

There are other parallels between Babylonia and Mosaic Israel which have

been brought forward by Professor Zimmern. In the “Tabernacle of the

Congregation,” or “Tent of meeting,” he sees the place where “the proper

time” (_moêd_, Assyr. _adannu_) for an undertaking was determined by the

_barû_ or seer; at any rate, “to determine the proper time” (_sakânu sa

adanni_) was one of the functions of the Babylonian seer.(376) By the side

of the rituals for the seers and prophets, moreover, there was another for

the _zammâri_ or “singers.” The hierarchy of a Babylonian temple was, in

short, the same as that of Israel.

But in addition to the architecture of the temple and the regulations of

the ritual, there were yet other resemblances between the religious law of

Babylonia and that of the Israelites. They may be traced in the numerous

festivals of the calendar, and the time of year at which they were held.

Foremost among them was the festival of the New Year. Babylonia was

primarily an agricultural community, and the festivals of its gods, like

the names of the months, were determined by the necessities of

agriculture. Spring and autumn were marked by the sowing of the seed and

the garnering of the harvest. But neither the one nor the other took place

in all parts of the country at the same time of the year. In the south the

harvest might be gathered in when the corn was sown in the north, or the

seed sown when in colder regions the harvest was gathered in.

Hence it was that the same festival might commemorate either the beginning

or the end of the agricultural year. But in either case it was a period of

rejoicing and rest from labour, of thanking the gods for their benefits,

and offering them the first-fruits of the field. In the old days of Gudea

of Lagas the year commenced with the festival of the goddess Bau in the

middle of October; in the later Babylon of Khammurabi the feast was

transferred to the spring, and the first month of the year began in March.

But the older calendar of Babylonia had been already carried to the West,

and there preserved in a country to whose climatic and agricultural

conditions it was really inapplicable. The ancient Canaanitish year began

in the autumn in what the later calendar reckoned the seventh month. It

was not, however, till after the final unification of the country under

Khammurabi that a fixed and uniform calendar was imposed upon all the

sanctuaries of Babylonia. At an earlier epoch the great sanctuaries had

each its own calendar; the months were variously named, and the deities to

whom the festivals were dedicated were not always the same.(377) At Lagas

it was Bau to whom the festival of the New Year was sacred; at Babylon it

was Merodach.

Besides the festivals of the spring and autumn, there was yet a third

festival belonging to the agricultural year. This was the feast of the

summer solstice, which fell in the month of June. It marked the drying up

of the soil and the disappearance of the crops and vegetation of the

spring. In some of the early States of Babylonia it was consecrated to a

god Bil-’si;(378) in the calendar of Assyria, Tammuz took the place of the

older god. Tammuz had perished by an untimely death, and it was fitting

that the death of the god should be celebrated when nature also seemed to

die. There was a time, however, when the festival of Tammuz had been

observed, at all events in some parts of Babylonia, in October rather than

in June. The same month that had witnessed the feast of the New Year

witnessed also that of Tammuz risen again from the dead.

The three great feasts of the Babylonian agriculturist are found again in

Canaan. But it is noticeable that the third of them—the feast of Weeks, as

it was called by the Hebrews—was there the correspondent of the spring

festival in Babylonia. It was, in fact, a repetition of the festival of

spring. And the latter accordingly becomes a prelude and anticipation of

it. On the 16th of Nisan the Levitical Law ordered a sheaf of the

first-fruits of the harvest to be presented (Lev. xxiii. 10-14), and the

unleavened bread eaten at the festival itself symbolised the ingathering

of the corn which was thus dedicated to God in the form of consecrated

cakes.