ANCIENT RELIGIONS.
Egypt--Book of the Dead--Its Morality--Metaphysical
Character--Origins of Religions--Ghosts--Animism--Astronomy
and Astrology--Morality--Pantheism and Polytheism--Egyptian
Ideas of Future Life and Judgment--Egyptian Genesis--Divine
Emanations--Plurality of Gods and Animal Worship--Sun Worship
and Solar Myths--Knowledge of Astronomy--Orientation of
Pyramids--Theory of Future Life--the Ka--the Soul--Confession of
Faith before Osiris.
Chaldæan Religion--Oldest Form Accadian--Shamanism--Growth
of Philosophical Religion--Astronomy and Astrology--Accadian
Trinities--Anu, Mull-il, Ea--Twelve great
Gods--Bel-Ishtar--Merodach--Assur--Pantheism--Wordsworth--Magic
and Omens--Penitential Psalms--Conclusions from.
The religious ideas of a nation afford a pretty good test of the
antiquity of its civilization. Thus, if 5000 years hence all traces
of England being lost except a copy of the Athanasian Creed, it would
be a legitimate inference that the race who retained such a creed
as part of their ritual, had long passed the primitive period of
fetichism or animism, had schools of priests and philosophers, and
that their religion had developed into a stage of subtle and profound
metaphysical speculations. If this would be true in the hypothetical
case of England, it is equally true in the actual case of Egypt.
In its sacred book, the Todtenbuch, or Book of the Dead, which we
meet with at the earliest periods of Egyptian history, we find
conceptions of the Great First Cause of the Universe, which are in
many respects identical with those of Athanasius. In fact, with some
slight alterations of expression, his creed might be a chapter of the
Todtenbuch, and it is clear that in his controversy with Arius he got
his inspiration from his native Alexandria, and from the old Egyptian
religion stripped of its polytheistic and idolatrous elements, and
adapted to the modern ideas of the Neo-Platonic philosophy and of
Christianity.
The Egyptian religion, as disclosed to us in the earliest records, is
one which of itself proves its great antiquity. There is an extensive
literature of a religious character; the Book of the Dead, which
contains many of the principal prayers and hymns, and descriptions
of the Last Judgment, is already a sacred book. Portions of it are
certainly older than the time of Menes, and it had already acquired
such an authority in the times of Pepi, Teta, and Unas, of the sixth
dynasty, about 3800 B.C., that the inner walls of their pyramids are
covered with hieroglyphics of chapters taken from it. From this time
forward, almost every tomb and mummy-case contains quotations from
it, just as passages of the Bible are quoted on our own gravestones.
The Book of Isis, and hymns to various gods, are of the same
nature and early date; and in addition to these, there are ethical
treatises, ascribed to kings of the oldest dynasties, as well as
works on medicine, geometry, mensuration, and arithmetic. Education
was very general, as is proved by the fact that the workmen at the
mines of Wady Magarah could scrawl hieroglyphic inscriptions on the
walls of their tunnels, and on their blocks of dressed stone. Birch,
in his _Ancient History of Egypt from_ _the Monuments_, which I
prefer to quote from as, being published by the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, it cannot be suspected of any bias to discredit
orthodoxy, says that, "In their moral law the Egyptians followed the
same precepts as the Decalogue (ascribed to Moses 2500 years later),
and enumerated treason, murder, adultery, theft, and the practice
of magic as crimes of the deepest dye." The position of women is
one of the surest tests of an advanced civilization; for in rude
times, and among savage races, force reigns supreme, and the weaker
sex is always the slave or drudge of the stronger one. It is only
when intellectual and moral considerations are firmly established
that the claims of women to an equality begin to be recognized. Now
in the earliest records of domestic and political life in Egypt, we
find this equality more fully recognized than it is perhaps among
ourselves in the nineteenth century. Quoting again from Birch, "The
Egyptian woman appears always as the equal and companion of her
father, brethren, and husband. She was never secluded in a harem, sat
at meals with them, had equal rights before the law, served in the
priesthood, and even mounted the throne."
In fact the state of civilization in Egypt 6000 years ago appears
to have been higher in all essential respects than it has ever been
since, or is now, in any Asiatic and in many European countries.
And it has every appearance of being indigenous, and having grown
up on the soil. There are no traces in the oldest traditions of any
foreign importation, such as we find in the early traditions of other
countries. There is no fish-man who comes up out of the Persian Gulf
and teaches the Chaldæans the first elements of civilization; no
Cadmus who teaches the Greeks their first letters; no Manco-Capac
who lands on the shore of Peru. On the contrary, all the Egyptian
traditions are of Egyptian gods, like Osiris and Thoth, who reigned
in the valley of the Nile, and invented hieroglyphics and other arts.
These are lost in a fabulous antiquity, and the only trace of a
link to connect the historical Egyptians with the neolithic races
whose remains are found in abundance in the form of flint knives and
arrows, and are brought up by borings through thick deposits of Nile
mud, or the still older palæolithic savages, whose rude implements
were found by General Pitt-Rivers and other explorers in quaternary
gravels near Thebes of geological antiquity, is furnished by the use
of a stone knife to make the first incision on the corpse in turning
it into a mummy, and by the animal worship, which may have been a
relic of primitive fetichism and totemism.
The highly metaphysical nature of the Egyptian creed is another
conclusive proof of the antiquity of the religion. Among existing
races we find similar religions corresponding to similar stages of
civilization. With the very rudest races, religion consists mainly of
ghost worship and animism. Herbert Spencer has shown how dreams lead
to the belief that man consists of two elements, a body and a spirit,
or shadowy self, which wanders forth in sleep, meets with strange
adventures, and returns when the body awakes. In the longer sleep of
death, this shadowy self becomes a ghost which haunts its old abodes
and former associates, mostly with an evil intent, and which has to
be deceived or propitiated, to prevent it from doing mischief. Hence
the sacrifices and offerings, and the many devices for cheating
the ghost by carrying the dead body by devious paths to some safe
locality. Hence also the superstitious dread of evil spirits, and the
interment with the corpse of food and implements to induce the ghost
to remain tranquilly in the grave, or to set out comfortably on its
journey to another world.
Animism is another tap-root of savage superstition. As the child
sees life in the doll, so the savage sees life in every object,
animate or inanimate, which comes in contact with him, and affects
his existence. Animals, and even stocks and stones, are supposed to
have souls, and who knows that these may not be the souls of departed
ancestors, and have some mysterious power of helping or of hurting
him? In any case the safer plan is to propitiate them by worship and
sacrifice.
From these rude beginnings we see nations as they advance in
civilization rising to higher conceptions, developing their ghosts
into gods, and confining their operations to the greater phenomena
of Nature, such as the sky, the earth, the sea, the sun, the stars,
storms, seasons, thunder, and the like. And by degrees the unity of
Nature begins to be felt by the higher minds; priestly castes are
established who have leisure for meditation; ideas are transmitted
from generation to generation; and the vague and primitive Nature
worship passes into the phase of philosophical and scientific
religion. The popular rites and superstitions linger on with the mass
of the population, but an inner circle of hereditary priests refines
and elevates them, and begins to ask for a solution of the great
problems of the universe; what it means, and how it was created; the
mystery of good and evil; man's origin, future life and destiny; and
all the questions which, down to the present day, are asked though
never answered by the higher minds of the higher races of civilized
man. In this stage of religious development metaphysical speculations
occupy a foremost place. Priests of Heliopolis, Magi of Eridhu and of
Ur, reasoned like Christian fathers and Milton's devils of
"Fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,"
and like them
"Found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
Theories of theism and pantheism, of creations and incarnations,
of Trinities and atonements, of polarities between good and evil,
free-will and necessity, were argued and answered, now in one
direction and now in another. Science contributed its share,
sometimes in the form of crude cosmogonies and first attempts at
ethnology, but principally through the medium of astronomy. An
important function of the priests was to form a calendar, predict
the seasons, and regulate the holding of religious rites at the
proper times. Hence the course of the heavens was carefully watched,
the stars were mapped out into constellations, through which the
progress of the sun and planets was recorded; and myths sprang into
existence based on the sun's daily rising and setting, and its annual
journey through the seasons and the signs of the zodiac. Mixed up
with astronomy was astrology, which, watching the sun, moon, and five
planets, inferred life from motion, and recognized Gods exerting
a divine influence on human events. The sacred character of the
priests was confirmed by the popular conviction that they were at
the same time prophets and magicians, and that they alone were able
to interpret the will of personified powers of Nature, and influence
them for good or evil.
The element of morality is one of the latest to appear. It is only
after a long progress in civilization that ideas of personal sin
and righteousness, of an overruling justice and goodness, of future
rewards and punishments, are developed from the cruder conceptions
and superstitious observances of earlier times. It was a long road
from the jealous and savage local god of the Hebrew tribes, who
smelt the sweet savour of burnt sacrifices and was pleased, and who
commanded the extermination of enemies, and the slaughter of women
and children, to the Supreme Jehovah, who loved justice and mercy
better than the blood of bulls and rams. It is one great merit of the
Bible, intelligently read, that it records so clearly the growth and
evolution of moral ideas, from a plane almost identical with that of
the Red Indians, to the supreme height of the Sermon on the Mount and
St. Paul's definition of charity.
There is one phenomenon which appears very commonly in these ancient
religions, that of degeneration. After having risen to a certain
height of pure and lofty conception they cease to advance, branch
out into fanciful fables accompanied by cruel and immoral rites, and
finally decay and perish. This is an inevitable consequence of the
law of birth, growth, maturity, decay and death, which underlies all
existence.
"The old order changes, giving place to new."
Environment changes, and religions, laws, and social institutions
change with it. Empires rise and fall, old civilizations disappear,
old creeds become incredible, and often, for a time, the course of
humanity seems to be retrograde. But as the flowing tide rises,
though the successive waves on the shore advance and recede,
evolution, or the law of progress, in the long run prevails, and
amidst the many oscillations of temporary conditions, carries the
human race ever upwards towards higher things.
In the case of ancient religions it is easy to see how this
process of degeneration is carried out. Priests who were the
pioneers of progress, and leaders of advanced thought, became first
conservatives, and then obscurantists. Pantheistic conceptions,
and personifications of divine attributes, lead to polytheism. As
religions become popular, and pass from the learned few to the
ignorant many, they become vulgarized, and the real meaning of myths
and symbols is either lost or confined to a select inner circle.
But for my present purpose, which is mainly chronological, these
vicissitudes in religious beliefs are not important. If, at the
earliest date to which authentic history extends, we find a national
religion which has already passed from the primitive into the
metaphysical stage, and which embodies abstract ideas, astronomical
observations, and a high and pure code of morals, it is a legitimate
inference that it is the outcome of a long antecedent era of
civilization. This is eminently the case with regard to the ancient
religions of Egypt and Chaldæa.
The ancient Egyptians were the most religious people ever known.
Their thoughts were so fixed on a future life that, as Herodotus
says, they looked upon their houses as mere temporary inns, and their
tombs as their true permanent homes. The idea of an immediate day of
judgment for each individual soul after death was so fixed in their
minds that it exercised a constant practical influence on their life
and conduct. Piety to the gods, loyalty to the throne, obedience to
superiors, justice and mercy to inferiors, and observance of all
the principal moral laws, and especially that of truthfulness, were
enforced by the conviction that no sooner had the breath departed
from the body, and it had been deposited as a mummy, with its Ka or
second shadowy self, in the tomb, than the soul would have to appear
before the supreme judge Osiris, and the forty-two heavenly jurors,
where it would have to confess the naked truth, and be tried and
rewarded or punished according to its merits. It is very interesting,
therefore, to learn what the religion was which had taken such a firm
hold of the minds of an entire nation, and which maintained that hold
for the best part of 5000 years.
[Illustration: JUDGMENT OF THE SOUL BY OSIRIS.--WEIGHING GOOD AND
BAD DEEDS. (From Champollion's _Egypt_.)]
Our authority for the nature of this religion is derived mainly
from the Todtenbuch or Book of the Dead, which was the Egyptian
bible. This sacred Book was of immense antiquity, and much of it was
certainly in existence before the time of Menes. We know it from the
multiplied copies which were frequently deposited in tombs, and from
the innumerable extracts and quotations which appear on almost every
mummy-case and sarcophagus, as well as from the many manuscripts of
works on religious subjects which have been preserved in papyri.
The fundamental idea was that of a primitive ocean, or, if you like
to call it chaos, of nebulous matter without form and void, and of
a one infinite and eternal God who evolved himself and the Universe
from his own essence. He is called in the Todtenbuch "the one only
being, the sole Creator, unchangeable in his infinite perfection,
present in all time, past and future, everywhere and yet nowhere."
But although one in essence, God is not one in person. He exists as
Father, but reproduces himself under another aspect as Mother, and
under a third as Son. This Trinity is three and yet one, and has
all the attributes of the one--infinity, eternity, and omnipotence.
Thus far the Athanasian Creed might be a chapter of the Todtenbuch,
and it is very evident where the Alexandrian saint got those subtle
metaphysical ideas, which are so opposed to the rigid monotheistic
creeds of Judaism and Mahometanism.
But the Egyptian religion was more logical, and carried these
ideas much further than an original Trinity. It is evident that
if we admit the two fundamental ideas, 1st, that God is the only
real existence, author of and identical with the universe; 2nd,
that this incomprehensible essence or First Cause can be made
more comprehensible by personifying his various qualities and
manifestations, there is no reason why we should stop at three. If
we admit a Trinity of Father, Mother, and Son, why not admit a
daughter and other descendants; or if you personify the Power to make
a universe, the Knowledge how to make it, and the Will to do it, as
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, why not the Benevolence to do it well,
the Malevolence to do it badly, and a hundred other attributes which
metaphysical ingenuity can devise to account for the complication of
the known, and the mysteries of the unknown facts of existence?
The Egyptian priests accepted this view, and admitted a whole
Pantheon of secondary gods who were either personifications of
different attributes of the Supreme God, or separate portions of the
one Divine Essence. Thus Ammon was God considered in his attribute of
the first Generative power; Pthah the supreme Artist who fashioned
all things wisely; Osiris the good and benevolent aspect of the
Deity; Set or Typhon his opposite or the Author of Evil, and so on.
And once personified, these attributes soon came to be considered as
separate beings; to have a female principle or wives added to them,
and to be worshipped as the patron gods of separate temples and
provinces. Finally, the pantheistic idea became so prevalent, and
that of separate personifications of the Deity was carried so far,
that portions of the Divine essence were supposed to be incarnated
in the sun and heavenly bodies, in the Pharaoh and his family, and
even in bulls, cats, and other sacred animals. In the latter case
it may be a question whether we do not see a survival of the old
superstitious fetiches and totems of semi-savage times, adopted by
the priests into their theology, as so many pagan superstitions
were by the early Christian missionaries. At any rate such was the
result, a mixture of the most childish and absurd forms of popular
superstition, with a highly philosophical and moral creed, held by
the educated classes and stamped upon the mass of the nation by the
firmly established belief in a future life and day of judgment.
Among the more philosophical articles of this creed, astronomy
assumed a prominent place from a very early date. The sun, it is
true, was described in the original Cosmogony as having been called
into existence by the word of the Supreme God, but it came to be
taken as his visible representative, and finally worshipped as a god
itself. Its different phases were studied and received different
names, as Horus when on the horizon rising or setting, Ra in its
midday splendour, Osiris during its journey in the night through
the underground world of darkness. Of these Ra naturally had the
pre-eminence; the title of Pharaoh, or Pi-ra, was that given to
kings, who were assumed to be semi-divine beings descended from the
Sun. The Osiris myth which was the basis of the national belief
in a future life and day of judgment was clearly solar. Egyptian
astronomy, like that of the Chaldees and all early nations, assumed
that the sky was a crystal dome or firmament which separated the
waters of the upper world from the earth and waters below, and
corresponded with a similar nether world of darkness below the earth.
The Sun was born or rose into the upper world every morning, waxed
in strength and glory as his bark navigated the upper waters until
noon, then declined and finally sank into the nether world or died,
slain by an envious Typhon, but to be born again next morning after
traversing the perils and encountering the demons of the realm of
darkness. The same idea was repeated by the annual course of the sun
through Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, and it translated itself
as applied to man into the ideas of birth, growth, manhood, decline,
and death, to be followed by a sojourn in Hades, a day of judgment,
and a resurrection.
The Egyptian religion, however, seems never to have been so largely
astronomical as that of Chaldæa, and to have concentrated itself
mainly on the Sun. The planets and signs of the zodiac did not, as
with the Chaldees, afford a principal element of their sacred books
and mythologies. The Egyptian priests had doubtless long studied
astronomy; they had watched the stars, traced the annual course of
the sun, divided the year into months and the circle into 360°, and
constructed calendars for bringing the civil into correspondence
with the sidereal year. They not only had intercalated the five
supplemental days, bringing the duration of the year from 360 to 365,
but they had invented a sothic cycle for the odd quarter of a day, by
which at the end of every 1460 years a year was added, and the sun
brought back to rise on the first day of the first month of Thoth in
the same place in the heavens, determined by the heliacal risings of
the brightest of the stars, Sothis or Sirius.
But they applied this knowledge, which must have been gathered from
long observations, mainly to practical purposes, such as the reform
of the calendar and the orientation of the pyramids, temples, and
tombs, rather than to mythology. The idea of a future life, which
took such a firm hold of all classes of ancient Egypt, is that to
which we are indebted for the preservation of these wonderful records
of the remote past. The theory was that man consisted of three parts;
the body or ordinary living man; the Ka or Double, which was a sort
of shadowy self which came out of the body and returned to it as in
dreams; and the soul, a still more subtle essence, which at death
went to the gods, was judged, and either rewarded for its merits by
living with them in heaven, or punished for its sins by being sent
to the nether world of torment. But this soul still retained such a
connection with its former body as to come down from time to time
to visit it; while the Ka or Double retained the old connection so
closely as to live habitually in it, only coming out to eat, drink,
and repeat the acts of its former life, but incapable of existing
without a physical basis in the old body or some likeness of it.
The same doctrine of the Double was applied to all animated and
even to inanimate objects, so that the shadowy man could come out
of his mummy, live in his own shadowy house, feed on shadowy food,
be surrounded by shadowy geese, oxen, and other objects of his
former possessions. Hence arose the extraordinary care in providing
a fitting tomb and preserving the mummy, or, failing the mummy,
which in course of time might decay, providing a portrait-statue or
painted likeness, which might give a _point d'appui_ for the Ka, and
a receptacle for the occasional visits of the soul. While these were
preserved, conscious personal life was continued beyond the grave,
and the good man who went to heaven was immortal. But if these were
destroyed and the physical basis perished, the Ka and soul were
left without a home, and either perished also, or were left to flit
like gibbering ghosts through the world of shadows without a local
habitation or a name. The origin of this theory as regards the Ka
is easily explained. It is, as Herbert Spencer has conclusively
shown, a natural inference from dreams, and is found everywhere, from
interments of the stone period down to the crude beliefs of existing
savages. It even survives among many civilized races in the belief
in ghosts, and the precautions taken to prevent the Ka's of dead men
from returning to haunt their former homes and annoy their posterity.
The origin of the third element or soul is not so clear. It may
either be a relic of the animism, which among savage races attributes
life to every object in nature, or a philosophical deduction of more
advanced periods, which sees an universal spirit underlying all
creation, and recognizing in man a spark of this spirit which is
indestructible, and either migrates into fresh forms, or into fresh
spheres of celestial or infernal regions, and is finally absorbed in
the great ocean from which it sprang.
It is singular that we find almost the precise form of this Egyptian
belief among many existing savage or semi-civilized men separated
by wide distances in different quarters of the world. The Negroes
of the Gold Coast believe in the same three entities, and they call
the soul which exists independently of the man, before his birth
and after his death, the Kra, a name which is almost identical with
the Egyptian Ka. The Navajos and other tribes of Red Indians have
precisely the same belief. It seems probable that as we find it in
the earliest Egyptian records, it was a development, evolved through
ages of growing civilization by a succession of learned priests,
from the primitive fetichism and fear of ghosts of rude ancestors;
and in the animal worship and other superstitions of later times we
find traces of these primitive beliefs still surviving among the
mass of the population. Be this as it may, this theory of a future
life was firmly rooted at the dawn of Egyptian history, and we are
indebted to it, and to the dryness of the climate, for the marvellous
preservation of records which give us such an intimate acquaintance
with the history, the religion, the literature, and the details of a
domestic and social life which is distant from our own by an interval
of more than 6000 years.
No other nation ever attained to such a vivid and practical belief
in a future existence as these ancient Egyptians. Taking merely the
material test of money, what an enormous capital must have been
expended in pyramids, tombs, and mummies; what a large proportion of
his income must every Egyptian of the upper classes have spent in the
preparations for a future life; how shadowy and dim does the idea
of immortality appear in comparison among the foremost races of the
present day!
The elevated moral code of the Todtenbuch is another proof of the
great antiquity of Egyptian civilization. Morality is a plant of slow
growth which has hardly an existence among rude and primitive tribes,
and is only slowly evolved either by contact with superior races or
by long ages of settled social order. How many centuries did it take
before the crude and ferocious ideas of the Hebrew tribes wandering
in the desert or warring with the Canaanites, were transformed into
the lofty and humane conceptions of the later prophets, of Hillel and
of Jesus! And yet we find all the best maxims of this later morality
already existing 5000 years before the Sermon on the Mount, in the
Sacred Book of ancient Egypt. The prayer of the soul pleading in the
day of judgment before Osiris and the Celestial Jury, which embodies
the idea of moral perfection entertained by the contemporaries of
Menes, contains the following articles--
"I have told no lies; committed no frauds; been good to widows; not
overtasked servants; not lazy or negligent; done nothing hateful to
the gods; been kind to slaves; promoted no strife; caused no one to
weep; committed no murder; stolen no offerings to the dead; made
no fraudulent gains; seized no lands wrongfully; not tampered with
weights and measures; not taken the milk from sucklings; not molested
sacred beasts or birds; not cut off or monopolized watercourses; have
sown joy and not sorrow; have given food to the hungry, drink to the
thirsty, and clothed the naked:
"I am pure, I am pure."
It is evident that such an ideal of life, not imported from foreign
sources, but the growth of an internal civilization, must be removed
by an enormous time from the cannibal feasts and human sacrifices of
the first glimpses of ideas of a future life in the stone ages.
It is to be observed also that the religion of ancient Egypt seems
to be of native growth. No trace is to be found, either in record
or tradition, of any importation from a foreign source, such as may
be seen in the Chaldæan legend of Oannes and other religions of
antiquity. On the contrary, all the Egyptian myths and traditions
ascribe the invention of religion, arts, and literature, to Thoth,
Osiris, Horus, and other native Egyptian gods.
The invention of the art of writing by hieroglyphics affords
strong confirmation of this view. It is evidently a development on
Egyptian soil, in prehistoric times, of the picture-writing of a
primitive period. The symbols are taken from Egypt and not from
foreign objects, and are essentially different from those of the
Chaldæan cuneiform, which is the only other form of writing which
might possibly compare in point of antiquity with the Egyptian
hieroglyphics and hieratic. These were certainly known prior to the
time of Menes, and they are the parents of the Phoenician, Hebrew,
Greek, and all more modern alphabets.
In all other ancient systems of writing, such as Chaldæan and
Chinese, we see the development from the original picture-writing
into conventional signs, syllabaries, and finally into ideographs and
phonetics; but in the case of Egyptian, when we first get sight of it
in the earliest dynasties, it is already fully formed, and undergoes
no essential changes during the next 5000 years. Even the hieratic,
or cursive hieroglyphic for ordinary purposes, was current in the Old
Empire, as is proved by the celebrated Prisse papyrus.
The Chaldæan religion is not so easily described as that of Egypt,
for it started from a lower level, and went through more changes
in the course of its evolution. In the case of Egypt, the earliest
records show us a highly intellectual and moral religion, with only
a few traces remaining of primitive barbarism in the form of animal
worship, and this religion remained substantially unchanged until the
conversion of the country to Christianity. The influences of Semitic
and other foreign conquests and intercourse left few traces, and
the only serious attempt at a radical religious revolution by the
heretic king who endeavoured to dethrone the old Egyptian gods, and
substitute a system more nearly monotheistic under the emblem of the
winged solar-disc, produced no permanent effect, and disappeared in
one or two generations. But in Chaldæa, Semitic influences prevailed
from a very early period, and when we reach the historical periods
of the great Babylonian and Assyrian empires, the kings, priests,
and nobles were Semite, and the Accadian had become a dead language,
which could only be read as we read Latin or Hebrew, by the aid of
translations and of grammars and dictionaries. Still its records
remained, as the Hebrew Bible does to us, and the sacred books of the
old religion and its fundamental ideas were only developed and not
changed.
In the background of this Accadian religion we seem to see a much
nearer approach than we do in that of Egypt to the primitive
superstitions peculiar to the Turanian race. To this day the religion
of the semi-barbarous races of that stock is essentially what is
called "Shamanism"; a fear of ghosts and goblins, a belief that the
universe swarms with myriads of spirits, mostly evil, and that the
only escape from them is by the aid of conjuror-priests, who know
magical rites and formulas which can baffle their malevolent designs.
These incantations, and the interpretation of omens and auguries,
occupy a great part of the oldest sacred books, and more than 100
tablets have been already recovered from the great work on Astronomy
and Astrology, compiled from them by the priests of Agade, for the
royal library of Sargon I. They are for the most part of the most
absurd and puerile character; as, for instance, "if a sheep give
birth to a lion there will be war "; "if a mare give birth to a dog
there will be disaster and famine"; "if a white dog enter a temple
its foundation will subsist; if a gray dog, the temple will lose its
possessions," and so on. This character of magicians and soothsayers
clung to the Chaldæan priests even down to a later period, and under
the Roman Empire Chaldæan rites were identified with sorcery and
divination.
But out of this jungle of silly superstitions the elements of an
enlightened and philosophical religion had evolved themselves in
early Accadian times, and were continually developed as Semitic
influences gradually fused themselves with Accadian, and formed
the composite races and religions which came to be known in later
times as Babylonian and Assyrian. The fundamental principle of this
religion was the same as that of Egypt, and of most of the great
religions of the East, viz. Pantheism. The great underlying First
Cause, or Spirit of the universe, was considered as identical with
his manifestations. The subtle metaphysical conceptions which still
survive in the Creed of St. Athanasius, were invoked to make the
incomprehensible comprehensible, by emanations, incarnations, and
personified attributes. These again were attached to the striking
phenomena of the universe, the sun, moon, and planets, the earth and
sky, the winds, rains, and thunder. And ever as more phenomena were
observed more gods were invented, who were thought to be symbols,
or partial personifications, of the one great Spirit, and not more
inconsistent with his unity than the "and yet there are not three
Gods, but one God" of Athanasius.
But the Chaldæan, like the Egyptian priests, did not stop at one
Trinity, but invented a whole hierarchy of Trinities, rising one
above the other to form the twelve great gods, while below them
were an indefinite number of minor gods and goddesses personifying
different aspects of natural phenomena, and taken for the most part
from astronomical myths of the sun, moon, planets, and seasons.
For the religion of the Chaldees was, even more than that of the
Egyptians, based on astronomy and astrology, as may be seen in their
national epic of Izdubar, which is simply a solar myth of the passage
of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, the last chapter
but one being a representation of the passage through the sign of
Aquarius, in the fable of a universal deluge.
The first Accadian triad was composed of Anu, Mull-il, and Ea. Anu,
or Ana, is the word for heaven, and the god is described as the
"Lord of the starry heavens," and "the first-born, the oldest, the
Father of the gods." It is the same idea in fact as that expressed
by the Sanscrit Varuna, the Greek Ouranus. Mull-il, the next member
of this triad, is the god of the abyss and nether world, while
Ea is the god of the earth, seas, and rivers, "the Lord of the
Deep," and personifies the wise and beneficent side of the Divine
Intelligence, the maintainer of order and harmony, the friend of
man. Very early with the introduction of Semitic influences Mull-il
dropped out of his place in the Trinity, and was superseded by Bel,
who was conceived as being the son of Ea, the personification of
the active and combative energy which carries out the wise designs
of Ea by reducing the chaos to order, creating the sun and heavenly
bodies, and directing them in their courses, subduing evil spirits
and slaying monsters. His name simply signifies "the Lord," and
is applied to other inferior deities as a title of honour, as
Bel-Marduk, the Lord Marduk or Merodach, the patron god of Babylon.
In this capacity Bel is clearly associated with the midday sun, as
the emblem of a terrible yet beneficent power, the enemy of evil
spirits and dragons of darkness.
The next triad is more distinctly astronomical. It consists of Uruk
the moon, Ud the sun, and Mermer the god of the air, of rain and
tempest. These are the old Accadian names, but they are better known
by the Semitic translations of Sin, Shamash, and Raman. The next
group of gods is purely astronomical, consisting of the five planets,
Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, personified as Nergal,
Nebo, Marduk, Ishtar, and Nindar. The number of gods was further
increased by introducing the primary polarity of sex, and assigning
a wife to each male deity. Thus Belit, or "the Lady," was the wife
of Bel, he representing the masculine element of Nature, strength
and courage; she the feminine principle of tenderness and maternity.
So also Nana the earth was the wife of Anu, the god of the strong
heavens; Annunit the moon the wife of Shamash the sun; and Ishtar
(Astarte, Astoreth, or Aphrodite), the planet Venus, the Goddess of
Love and Beauty, though a great goddess in her own right, was fabled
to have had Tammuz or Thammuz, one of the names of the sun, as a
husband, whence in later times came the myth of Nature mourning for
the sun-god, slain by the envious boar, winter.
But of these only Belit and Istar were admitted into the circle of
the twelve great gods, consisting of the two triads and the planets,
who held the foremost place in the Chaldæan and Assyrian mythology.
Of the minor gods, Meri-dug or Marduk, the Merodach of the Bible,
is the most remarkable, for he represents the idea which, some 5000
years later, became the fundamental one of the Christian religion;
that of a Son of God, "being of one substance with the Father,"
who acts the part of Mediator and friend of man. He is the son of
Ea and Damkina, _i.e._ of heaven and earth, and an emanation from
the Supreme Spirit considered in its attribute of benevolence. The
tablets are full of inscriptions on which he is represented as
applying to his father Ea for aid and advice to assist suffering
humanity, most commonly by teaching the spells which will drive away
the demons who are supposed to be the cause of all misfortunes and
illness. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that he and Istar,
the lovely goddess, were the favourite deities, and occupied much
the same position as Jesus and the Virgin Mary do in the Catholic
religion of the present day, while the other deities were local gods
attached to separate cities where their temples stood, and where they
occupied a position not unlike that of the patron saints and holy
relics of which almost every considerable town and cathedral boasted
in mediæval Christianity. Thus they rose and fell in rank with the
ascendancy or decline of their respective cities, just as Pthah and
Ammon did in Egypt according as the seat of empire was at Memphis
or Thebes. In one instance only in later times, in Assyria, which
had become exclusively Semitic, do we find the idea of one supreme
god, who was national and not local, and who overshadowed all other
gods, as Jahve in the later days of the Jewish monarchy, and in the
conception of the Hebrew prophets, did the gods of the surrounding
nations. Assur, the local god of the city of Assur, the first capital
of Assyria, became, with the growth of the Assyrian Empire, the one
supreme god, in whose name wars were undertaken, cities destroyed,
and captives massacred or mutilated. In fact the resemblance is very
close between Assur and the ferocious and vindictive Jahve of the
Israelites during the rude times of the Judges. They are both jealous
gods, delighting in the massacre and torture of prisoners, women and
children, and enjoining the extermination of nations who insult their
dignity by worshipping other gods. We almost seem to see, when we
read the records of Tiglath-Pileser and Sennacherib and the Books of
Judges and of Samuel, the origin of religious wars, and the spirit
of cold-blooded cruelty inspired by a gloomy fanaticism, which is so
characteristic of the Semitic nature, and which in later times led
to the propagation of Mahometanism by the sword. With the Hebrews
this conception of a cruel and vindictive Jahve was beaten out of
them by persecutions and sufferings, and that of a one merciful god
evolved from it, but Assyria went through no such schooling and
retained its arrogant prosperity down to the era of its disappearance
from history with the fall of Nineveh; but it is easy to see that
the course of events might have been different, and Monotheism might
have been evolved from the conception of Assur. These, however, are
speculations relating to a much later period than the primitive
religion with which we are principally concerned.
It is remarkable how many of our modern religious conceptions find an
almost exact counterpart in those of this immensely remote period.
Incarnations, emanations, atonements, personifications of Divine
attributes, are all there, and also the subtle metaphysical theories
by which the human intellect, striving to penetrate the mysteries of
the unknowable, endeavours to account for the existence of good and
evil, and to reconcile multiplicity of manifestation with unity of
essence. If Wordsworth sings of a
"sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interposed,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things,"
he conveys the fundamental idea which was at the bottom of these
earliest religions, and which has been perpetuated in the East
through their successors, Brahmanism and Buddhism--the idea of
Pantheism, or of an universe which is one with its First Cause,
and not a mechanical work called into existence from without by a
personal Creator.
An ancient priest of Egypt or Chaldæa might have written these verses
of the philosophic poet of the nineteenth century, only he would have
written Horus or Bel for the "setting sun"; Ea for the "round ocean";
Anur for the "sky," and so on. Side by side with these intellectual
and philosophical conceptions of these ancient religions, we find
the element of personal piety occupying a place which contrasts
wonderfully with the childish and superstitious idea of evil spirits,
magical spells, and omens. We read in the same collections of
tablets, of mares bringing forth dogs and women lions; and psalms,
which in their elevation of moral tone and intensity of personal
devotion might readily be mistaken for the Hebrew Psalms attributed
to David. There is a large collection of what are known as "the
Penitential Psalms," in which the Chaldæan penitent confesses his
sins, pleads ignorance, and sues for mercy, almost in the identical
words of the sweet singer of Israel. In one of these, headed "The
complaints of the repentant heart," we find such verses as these--
"I eat the food of wrath, and drink the waters of anguish."
* * * * *
"Oh, my God, my transgressions are very great, very great my sins.
"The Lord in his wrath has overwhelmed me with confusion."
* * * * *
"I lie on the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. I am silent and
in tears, and none takes me by the hand. I cry out, and there is none
who hears me."
* * * * *
"My God, who knowest the unknown,[4] be merciful to me. My Goddess,
who knowest the unknown, be merciful."
[4] Or, as some translators read, "Who knowest that I knew not,"
_i.e._ that I sinned in ignorance.
* * * * *
"God, who knowest the unknown, in the midst of the stormy waters take
me by the hand; my sins are seven times seven, forgive my sins!"
Another hymn is remarkable for its artistic construction. It is in
regular strophes, the penitent speaking in each five double lines,
to which the priest adds two, supporting his prayer. The whole is in
precisely the same style as the similar penitential psalms of the
Hebrew Bible, as will appear from the following quotation of one of
the strophes from the translation of Zimmern.
_Penitent._ "I, thy servant, full of sighs call to thee. Whoso is
beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou acceptest. If thou
lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth. Ruler of all, mistress
of mankind, merciful one to whom it is good to turn, who dost receive
sighs."
_Priest._ "While his god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls
on thee. Thy countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand."
These hymns are remarkable, both as showing that the sentiments
of personal piety and contrition for sin as a thing hateful to
the Supreme Being, might be as intense in a polytheistic as in a
monotheistic religion; and as illustrating the immense interval
of time which must have elapsed before such sentiments could have
grown up from the rude beginnings of savage or semi-civilized
superstitions. The two oldest religions of the world, those of Egypt
and Chaldæa, tell the same story; that of the immense interval which
must have elapsed prior to the historical date of 5000 B.C. when
written records begin, to allow of such ideas and such a civilization
having grown up from such a state of things as we find prevailing
during the neolithic period, and still prevailing among the inferior
races of the world, who have remained isolated and unchanged in the
hunting or nomad condition.
I have dwelt at some length on the ancient religions, for nothing
tends more to open the mind, and break down the narrow barriers of
sectarian prejudice, than to see how the ideas which we have believed
to be the peculiar possession of our own religion, are in fact the
inevitable products of the evolution of the human race from barbarism
to civilization, and have appeared in substantially the same forms
in so many ages and countries. And surely, in these days, when faith
in direct inspiration has been so rudely shaken, it must be consoling
to many enlightened Christians to find that the fundamental articles
of their creed, trinities, emanations, incarnations, atonements, a
future life and day of judgment, are not the isolated conceptions of
a minority of the human race in recent times, but have been held from
a remote antiquity by all the nations which have taken a leading part
in civilization.
To all enlightened minds also, whatever may be their theological
creeds, it must be a cheering reflection that the fundamental axioms
of morality do not depend on the evidence that the Decalogue was
written on a stone by God's own finger, or that the Sermon on the
Mount is correctly reported, but on the evolution of the natural
instincts of the human mind. All advanced and civilized communities
have had their Decalogues and Sermons on the Mount, and it is
impossible for any dispassionate observer to read them without
feeling that in substance they are all identical, whether contained
in the Egyptian Todtenbuch, the Babylonian hymns, the Zoroastrian
Zendavesta, the sacred books of Brahmanism and Buddhism, the Maxims
of Confucius, the Doctrines of Plato and the Stoics, or the Christian
Bible.
None are absolutely perfect and complete, and of some it may be
said that they contain precepts of the highest practical importance
which are either omitted or contradicted in the Christian formulas.
For instance, the virtue of diligence, and the injunction not to be
idle, in the Egyptian and Zoroastrian creeds contrast favourably
with the "take no thought for the morrow," and "trust to be fed like
the sparrows," of the Sermon on the Mount. But in this, and in all
these summaries of moral axioms, apparent differences arise not from
fundamental oppositions, but from truth having two sides, and passing
over readily into
"The falsehood of extremes."
Even the injunction to "take no thought for the morrow," is only an
extreme way of stating that the active side of human life, strenuous
effort, self-denial, and foresight, must not be pushed so far as
to stifle all higher aspirations. Probably if the same concrete
case of conduct had been submitted to an Egyptian, a Babylonian or
Zoroastrian priest, and to the late Bishop of Peterborough, their
verdicts would not have been different. Such a wide extension does
the maxim take, "One touch of Nature makes the world akin," when we
educate ourselves up to the culture which gives some general idea of
how civilized man has everywhere felt and believed since the dawn of
history very much as we ourselves do at the close of the nineteenth
century.