THE PRIESTESS OF MARDUK
Babylon, builded of brick, lay four-square in its fat plain. Fields of
the best grain in the world shimmered out and afar, westward, beyond
Euphrates to the desert edge, eastward to Tigris, to Akkad north, and
south to the sea where stood Eridu, city of Ea, the old Father-God.
Babylon was moated, Babylon was walled, a great, slow river ran through
Babylon. Houses stood thick in Babylon, and the narrow streets were
many, and every building was made of baked clay, for there was little
stone in the land, and where long and long since had waved uncounted
trees now waved the heavy-eared grain. The houses where the people
dwelled were small and low. The house where the king dwelled was not
high, but huge of breadth, and brazen-gated. Likewise the houses of the
gods were huge, where-ever they rose in the city. And hugest of all,
huge as two or three of the others put together, covering no mere hands’
breadth of earth floor, spread the house of Marduk, son of Ea, once god
of this city only, now strongest god of many gods in a wide land.
Many-courted and many-roomed was the house of Marduk.
A blue sky hung over Babylon, and the sun rode in strength with Marduk
and with Sharrâni the king. The sun and Marduk and Sharrâni the king
were somehow one....
Temple wall, palace wall, walls of tall gateways had a strange and
effective decoration of glazed tiles coloured blue and red and white and
black and yellow. On the tiles were painted, colour against colour, huge
winged men, genii, together with great beasts, unicorns, lions, bulls.
Repeated and repeated, these became processions, troops of creatures
inside and outside temple and palace. Sometimes, in the heated,
quivering air, they seemed to palpitate, to move in their places.
The vast house of Marduk, thus coloured and adorned, reared itself from
a yet vaster platform of earth and brick. Beside it, within the wide
temple enclosure, rose higher and higher yet, the “mountain of the god,”
the tower of seven stages. Each stage spread wider, rose taller than the
next that was built upon it, until at the top was only the chamber of
the god and the pathway around, and each stage was mounted by an outward
stair, a broad, gradual and parapetted ascent, and each stage contained
a ritual number of rooms, looking out upon a surrounding, guarded
walkway. From top to bottom the wall space glowed with those coloured
tile-pictures, with winged genii, trees of life, bull and lion and
dragon. The sunshine of Babylon lit them as with fire behind; in the
moonlight of Babylon they still showed. Then they were faintly-hued, but
they seemed vaster and more solemn than in the daytime. The “mountain of
the god,” the “lofty house of Marduk,” sprang two hundred feet and more
above the low roofs of Babylon. From its stages was watched the life of
the city, the movements on the plain, the glittering presence and solemn
actions of sun, moon and stars.
Iltani, the mother of Iltani, had died at Iltani’s birth. Lugal-naid,
her father, had taken another wife, Ramtû, who was kind enough to
Iltani, but a passionate and cruel mistress to Ina-banat and Belatum,
slaves and concubines of Lugal-naid. Iltani dwelled in the house with
the three women, and now took the side of one and now of another, though
for the most part secretly. Evil would it be if any of the three,
conceiving dislike to her, should blacken her forehead in the sight of
her father who owned her to do what he would with her! Lugal-naid was
not unkind, and Iltani fetched and carried for him, and regarded him
with awe, and with pride in his weight among the people, for he was
superintendent of the temple granaries.
“Iltani is leaving childhood,” said Ramtû to Lugal-naid.
“Let her be a little longer,” answered Lugal-naid. “She is use and
ornament in the house.”
Iltani grew for another year. “O Lugal-naid, you must be thinking what
you will do with Iltani!”
“I will think,” said Lugal-naid.
“There is Ninmar, son of Ur-Enlil--”
“I will think,” said Lugal-naid.
On the other side of Euphrates flowing through Babylon, dwelled the
brother of Lugal-naid, Ibni-Shamash, who had an office in the king’s
palace. Ibni-Shamash had sons and two daughters, Innina-nûri and
Tuda-Ishtar. The latter were older than Iltani, who had child’s
admiration for them and their ways and adornments. Ibni-Shamash gave
Innina-nûri for wife to Nanâ-iddin, son of the assistant of the
under-governor.
That had been in the spring time when the plain was green and there were
blossoms in every garden. When it was autumn, and all the land was brown
and dry and the heart longed for rain, Iltani heard Ramtû and Ina-banat
and Belatum talking all together.
It seemed that Innina-nûri was doing wrong.... It seemed that Nanâ-iddin
was going to accuse her before the judges in the temple court.... It
seemed that all the kindred of Ibni-Shamash were deeply concerned. It
seemed that they were angry with Innina-nûri, that they sent and
exhorted her, even pleaded with her.... It seemed that Innina-nûri had
listened, though with the air of the skies in rain and storm, and at
last, pushed against by all, had bowed her head before Nanâ-iddin.... It
seemed that there had followed a time of stillness and that the kindred
all had congratulated themselves.... It seemed that then, suddenly, with
a crash, all was wrong again! Nanâ-iddin and his father the assistant of
the under-governor were gone to the judges, who summoned before them
Innina-nûri.
A wind ran through the houses of Ibni-Shamash’s kindred. Iltani, too,
heard the wind.
“_Justice of Marduk and the King. Innina-nûri, that will not be wife to
her husband, Nanâ-iddin, shall be thrown into the river.... Mercy of
Marduk and the King. Two days are given to Innina-nûri for repentance
and returning to Nanâ-iddin._”
“O women!” said Lugal-naid when he returned to his house that eve. “See
what comes of wrong-doing!”
On a summer day, some time after Innina-nûri returned finally to
Nanâ-iddin, Iltani went with Ramtû across the river to Ibni-Shamash’s
house to see Gin-Enlil his wife and Tuda-Ishtar that was not yet wed.
The year before, Tuda-Ishtar was, indeed, to have been given for wife to
a very fine young man, son of one in favour with the King. But in a war
with Elam the man had been killed. And now Tuda-Ishtar would not be wed
until the savour of his death was gone from the general mind.
Tuda-Ishtar was beautiful, and who took her would give Ibni-Shamash a
good price, and out of this Ibni-Shamash would give to Tuda-Ishtar
herself garments, two slave women and a wheat field.
Ramtû and Iltani found at Ibni-Shamash’s door slaves waiting, staves in
hand. They had in keeping an ass with an embroidered cloth upon its
back, and strung along the bridle rein little silver bells. “For whom is
all this?” asked Ramtû. “For Tuda-Ishtar, mistress,” answered the old
man, the head slave.
Ramtû and Iltani, entering the house, met there an air of business and
excitement. Gin-Enlil and Lamazi, wives of Ibni-Shamash, and a dozen
handmaids were gathered in the next to the greatest room in the house
about Tuda-Ishtar who stood in the middle of the floor. They were
putting upon Tuda-Ishtar fine garments and ornaments of gold and silver
and gems. Tuda-Ishtar was more beautiful than ever for there was a red
stain upon her lips and cheeks and her eyes were quite like stars, and
on her head was a curious, crown-like headdress.
When Ramtû saw this she smote her hands together and cried: “Why did you
not send word that Tuda-Ishtar was going to-day to the temple of
Mylitta? I would have brought her my chain that I wore the day I sat
beneath the palm trees!--You, also, were there that day, Gin-Enlil!”
“Yes. Twenty years ago.... We did not have to return, Ramtû, day after
day, like some we know!”
“By Ishtar, no!--And Tuda-Ishtar will not have to return, nor, indeed,
have to wait at all! The first man that sees her--the bee and the
honey-bloom!--You should have let us know!”
“She would go now and have it over with, and her debt to Mylitta
paid.--After all, even though we are told it is a high duty, a woman
wants the day behind her and out of mind!”
Iltani, going home with Ramtû, crossing the river in a boat, looked at
the walls of the temple of Mylitta. There could be made out the court,
surrounded by palm trees, where, for one time in her life, every woman
of Babylon, saving only priestesses and votaries of a god, must sit
until there came some man, no matter whom, who dropped a piece of silver
in her lap. Then would the woman rise and go away with the man and pay
her debt to Mylitta, keeping the silver piece ever after to show
clearance.
The young Iltani saw behind her forehead Tuda-Ishtar sitting there under
palm trees. They said that she would not have long to wait. That was
because she was beautiful. Everybody admired that in Tuda-Ishtar, and
served her because of it.
The young Iltani did not think of all that; she only saw a picture of
her cousin sitting under the palm trees, and of a man coming near and
then standing still before Tuda-Ishtar. Her fancy made the man young,
and also beautiful.... Iltani looked at the palm tree and the blue sky
behind them, and then she looked over the side of the boat at her own
image in the still water. When she had regarded the image for some
moments, she glanced aside at Ramtû. She longed that Ramtû should say to
her, “Why you, too, Iltani, are beautiful!” But Ramtû talked to the
boatman of the price of food....
Iltani grew apace. Said Ramtû to Lugal-naid, “What will you do with this
girl? Younger than she have sat their day in the temple of Mylitta! And
Ninmar has wed Beligunu!--Do you mean to present Iltani to the god?”
“That is what I intend,” said Lugal-naid. “It is an old oath that I
swore if I prospered. I waited to see if I did so prosper. This year I
am made superintendent of superintendents. Now Iltani shall become bride
of Marduk!”
Iltani went with all her ornaments to the temple of Marduk. She went not
unhappily, though she wept at parting with Ramtû, Ina-banat and Belatum.
She was going to a life of honour that, so far as it went, and did she
always follow righteousness, would reflect honour upon her kindred. A
votary of Marduk gave up certain sweetnesses in life, but also she found
others. Iltani’s kindred and their friends brought her in procession to
the temple. Priests and priestesses ritually met her, Lugal-naid
ritually renounced his part in her to the god, her dower that she
brought was ritually spread around her, music was made, incense hung in
the air....
That had been some months ago. Now that part of the huge temple which
she inhabited was familiar to Iltani. Familiar were the rooms and rooms
within rooms, the courts in sun and shade, the rites and duties, service
of the temple, spirit of the hive!
Huge was the temple, many were its inmates, multifarious its activities.
The god and the king who ruled under his shield so merged that the king
was half-divine and the god more than half-royal. All life moved under
the glance of the god and his fingers pushed it here, withdrew it there,
or, resting underneath, held it steadfast. The fingers of the god,
clothed in flesh, became his most numerous priesthood. Learning was of
the god, judgement and law were of the god, administration was of the
god, though the king was named with him.
Marduk was served by a mighty host of priests. Priestesses there were
also and in number, but by no means in so great a number. But men and
women together, his servants swarmed in his enormous temple. The people
likewise filed or poured through the long series of temple rooms and
passageways and small and large courts. The people came to the temple
for knowledge, for law, for healing, for divination, for exorcism of the
innumerable evil ones, for directions as to paths through every thorny
desert, for comfort, for glow, for subtle excuses, for life anew, for
spiritual wine, and for direct, practical, everyday business. They
brought covenanted-for produce of every description, they poured into
the temple treasury the temple-tax, that was a broad and deep and
continuing stream.
Much life was there, centring in, flowing through the temple, for any to
view who had vision, and to grow by who had the seed of growth.
The priestesses of the temple taught, judged, divined, exorcised,
healed, performed work of scribe and notary, directed, executed, much as
did the priests, and as well. They received honour as did the priests.
From their status there fell a fairly broad shaft of warmth and light
upon all women of their land. In Egypt, too, fell by the goddess-way a
certain light and warmth and colour upon the entire mother hemisphere.
In Egypt there was Isis, in Babylonia, Ishtar. And all the Babylonian
gods had consorts, goddesses with powers and with devotees. There was
Ninlil for Ea, and Antum for Anu, and Sarpanit for Marduk.
That was all true. Yet all was in the convention. Ishtar, indeed,
remained dimly, hugely, outside, but Ishtar to an extent undefined,
general, like the air that you breathed without thinking of it. But all
the others were as wives of men, honourable, free in much, in much
powerful, but with distinctness secondary. All men and gods, by virtue
of manship, rose by a head above women and goddesses. That was held to
be the nature of things, fundamental and unalterable. Faint, old trails
of old, old story, old, inexplicable customs resting like crones in
nooks and corners, might breathe of a time when the indubitable truth
was hardly so firmly established. But the time must have been ancient,
ancient! Now ever the truth seemed to grow more established.
The young Iltani came to a wide corner of the temple quarter, rooms
below, small, low rooms above, twisting, outside stairs, passageways,
large court and small courts, and in the central court a well and old
trees. In many places the walls, within and without, had those great
pictures of gods and goddesses and sacred beasts and all their huge
adventure. It was like living, in a far later time, with a child’s gay
picture book or blocks. In the long hot summer, these pictures struck
like brands upon the tissues of the mind. In the short, chill winter,
with their red and their yellow, they gave out warmth and light.
Inmates of this part of the temple, and they were many, were not at all
without steady, even employment. The whole, huge place worked, religion
being so official, Marduk so actually pervading all that the land knew
of the actual.... Iltani found herself with others under the orders of
the votary Â-rishat, who kept the room where were kept the clay tablets
upon which were written, week by week, the simpler annals of the house
of the women of the deity. Iltani had been taught to write. Now with a
bride of Marduk a little older than herself, she copied defective
tablets upon fresher clay. She worked in a little room from which one
stepped into a little court in which there grew a great and old fig
tree.
Amat-Tashmit loved to talk. When the votary Â-rishat was near, when
other, older votaries passed or stood talking among themselves, the two
novices were silent enough. But when none was by, Amat-Tashmit talked,
and Iltani also, though less than the other.
Amat-Tashmit, having had the longer residence here, could instruct her
sister in devotion. Iltani learned the round of life, so far as
Amat-Tashmit had trodden it or could report upon others’ treading.
Iltani heard from Amat-Tashmit of the idiosyncrasies of her many and
many companion votaries of Marduk. There was a votary of Marduk for
every day and night of Marduk’s year. And Amat-Tashmit talked of the
bands and bands of priests, the huge number of servants of Marduk. She
talked of individual priests of fame, persons of high rank in the court
of Marduk. When she spoke of these reverence sat upon her tongue and in
the ears of Iltani. But she talked also of priests of no especial fame
whom she had chanced to observe. The most of these were young--young men
under guidance in the house of Marduk. If was all harmless talk enough
that Amat-Tashmit made, but around it and through it ran a haunting
warmth and colour.
Matters of fact, serenely accepted as the right and proper will of the
god, the king and all Babylon, came also into the talk of the two. As
they worked they might look up from the clay and from the fine
wedge-shaped stylus which each used, look up and forth, and beyond the
fig tree see the “mountain of the god,” the tower, rising by stages
high, high against the blue heaven. They saw the broad, winding way
leading from stage to stage, and the figures, small at that distance,
ascending, descending, ascending. And they might see the chamber atop,
room and shrine of Marduk, high up, high up, goal of the seven stairs!
The light struck against the bright pictures of the chamber’s outer
walls. Sometimes the tower top dazzled like the sun, sometimes it was
cosy or golden, a star of morn or eve.
Iltani with Amat-Tashmit watched with a kind of fascination this tower
of seven levels, one above the other. It was the “mountain of the god.”
Within that topmost room stood the great figure of the god, overlaid
with gold, and all around were ranged the most precious votive figures,
figures given by kings and by the queens of kings. And in the room was
the bed of the god, hung with gold, the bed of Marduk, god of gods, whom
to serve was honour and felicity, whom to represent was honour and
felicity, the bed of Marduk and the goddess Sarpanit, his spouse.
Each day the novices saw borne around the tower and upward the votary
whose name was set against that day in the year of Marduk. She was borne
in procession, with music and song. The two watched her and that sister
throng mount from stage to stage. Arrived upon the seventh the company
circled three times the mountain-top. Then the bride of Marduk went
alone into the freshly swept and garlanded Marduk-room. The two watching
from the court of the fig tree might see the company part from her it
had brought, reabsorb into itself the votary whose place she took, whose
day this year was passed, and again with music descend the spiral way.
The day went. Iltani and Amat-Tashmit, working with stylus and clay,
gave not much thought to the tower and the votary who praised Marduk
alone in the chamber where was reared the great gold-covered image.
But when the rays of the sun were slant they stepped from their own
small room into the court of the fig tree, for they heard trumpets and
knew that the priest who that night would represent the god now went to
the mountain-top. Small figures in the distance, they saw him and the
band that bore him thither. The strong chanting of the priests came to
them, the light glinted upon the lifted, waved, gilded, many-shaped
symbols and insignia of Marduk. They watched this company also from
stage to stage, to the tower height, watched the company part there from
the human Marduk, watched it descend in the red sunset light.... Up
there the votary was no longer alone. Up there were Marduk and Sarpanit.
The days passed, the weeks and the months. The temple, or her corner of
the temple, grew home-like to Iltani. Around her were much folk and
manifold business. She laboured with others, rested and played, ate and
drank and slept in a field of crowded bloom, of a thousand bees that
gathered honey. All was under rule, all that was done was done ritually,
arrows drawn to hit the sun. But many had forgotten the aim of the
arrows. The marked rhythm pleased Iltani. Her body seemed to move with
it, and that within her body, the worker that had spun the body from
itself....
Amat-Tashmit had been given by her parents to the god some months before
the coming of Iltani. Now Amat-Tashmit was shown her name written
against such a day “for the holy room in the lofty house of Marduk.”
Even the seeing of her name written made a gala day for the votary
concerned. That day she was excused from work, she was served first at
meal time, she was given a wreath of flowers. The next day she went to a
range of rooms across the great court of the well and the trees. There,
for so many days, would be training, instruction, purification, lasting
until the day they adorned her and bore her with timbrel and song to the
door of Marduk. As, every day, through the year of Marduk there wound
the procession to the “mountain of the god,” so, every day, there moved
through the courts of the votaries a woman crowned with flowers....
Iltani watched with a thrill Amat-Tashmit set the flower wreath upon her
head.
The next day Amat-Tashmit was gone across the court of the well. Iltani,
alone, copied accounts in the small room behind the great tree.
The thrill did not go away. Behind it arose a strange feeling that
turned the tree into a forest through which Iltani wandered. The young
Iltani, for all her copper-coloured hair, could not remember ever once
having been in any forest, but that was what she felt. She worked all
day in a dream; whether she sat alone, or found the humming of other
women about her, in a dream. When the sun’s rays came slant and the
trumpets blew Iltani turned face to the tower, and through her poured
and thrilled and pulsed something new in the forest that seemed to turn
red and purple and splendid.
At night, lying awake in a room with many young, sleeping women, the
glow seemed to Iltani to pass into glory.... In the morning one of her
companions said to her, “You look differently!”
That day the votary Â-rishat installed beside her two writers upon clay,
and there was no more loneliness in that kind. But Iltani wandered in
the forest of the inner world.
Lugal-naid had brought her to the temple in the spring of the year. She
had been given in the days just following the New Year high festival,
the god day of god days, the day when Marduk and Sarpanit remembered and
celebrated their eternal wedding, immortal, without beginning, without
ending, the day when out of his power and bliss Marduk portioned, for
the year to come, the lot of mankind, the high day, rising like a tower
out of ten preceding, marked days during which Babylonia remembered its
sins and cleansed its heart, the day of the Sun when he put off his
winter mourning. All the rest of the year fell away from that shining
point, then turned upon itself and climbed again to the golden mark. Six
months it fell away, six months it climbed.... The wreathed day, the
high day, looked forward to by all Babylon, the huge festival, the day
of mystic union and good omen, the day when to serve Marduk was fame and
joy, Marduk who came in fulness of power, raying light....
To Iltani the votary the forest seemed to fill with light, rose light.
Within it sprang desire like a strong tree, desire to be the Sarpanit of
that day.
So high an honour was the dream, the aspiration, vague or distinct of
every maiden in the house of the women. It was ever a maiden, chosen
halfway in the year, in the autumn, then at once set aside, honoured,
instructed, purified, made beautiful within and without against that
high New Year day. There were many in the continually fed house of the
women who might have that dream. Iltani, daughter of Lugal-naid, knew no
reason why Iltani should be chosen.
But now, day and night, she saw before her the winged Marduk, shining
one, god of gods! Desire held her, to be, that day, of the mountain-top.
It sprang like a strong tree in the rose-lit forest, or rather it stood
the forest itself....
Dav after day went by, and here was autumn. The votary Â-rishat spoke to
Iltani. “The rulers of the temple sit to-day in the room of the lion.
You and twenty more are chosen to pass before them.”
Priests and priestesses, chiefs in sanctity, sat in the room of the
lion. Iltani saw them as huge veiled forms, guardians of the way to
Marduk, god of gods, raying light--
Three days, and she went again to the room of the lion. One day more,
and voices told her that Iltani, daughter of Lugal-naid, was chosen for
the New Year Sarpanit. With trumpets it was proclaimed in the temple.
Babylon knew it presently.... Lugal-naid gave a feast.
Iltani went to a part of the temple mass that was called the house of
the New Year, and to a room therein that was named the room of Sarpanit.
This chamber was built high, and it gave upon the flat roof of a
congeries of attendant rooms. Upon the roof stood great earthen jars,
filled with growing plants, and around it ran a brick parapet. The outer
wall of the Sarpanit room was overpainted with a great tree of life, and
beside it, tall as the tree, the winged Marduk. The whole faced the
east, and when the sun had passed the zenith, stood in the shadow of the
“mountain of the god.”
From autumn to spring, throughout the winter that knew rain but not
snow, the New Year votary dwelled in the Sarpanit room, dwelled watched
by aged women who were now but as doorkeepers and gardeners in the great
house of the god, dwelled subject to much instruction by votary and
priestess, efficient, famed, appointed to that service, dwelled in the
midst of Sarpanit rites, a being set apart in the hive, symbolically,
esoterically, the hive itself.
Iltani lived six months in the Sarpanit room. When the rains fell a
great brazier filled with coals cast a dull glow upon pictured walls.
When the sky cleared and the sun shone out, she might spend hours upon
the roof warmed by the sun that again was Marduk. At night she might be
a watcher of the stars.
She faced the “mountain of the god.” If it rained, a silver veil fell
between her and it, or there was reared a leaden wall. If the weather
was bright, all its colours dazzled. In moonshine and starshine it
seemed to go yet higher, up among the stars.
Every morning she heard music and singing voices and watched the day’s
votary mount to the seventh stage. When the sun’s rays came slant she
heard the trumpets and watched the mounting priest of Marduk. When the
dark came there was a lamp there, far above, in the Marduk-room.... The
priest of the New Year.... She knew that he would be chosen for beauty
and strength.
Iltani sat beneath the parapet of the roof by the Sarpanit room. It was
night, mild as a spring night of more northern lands. The stars were
shining. A young moon gave pale light. The beams fell against the tiled
outer wall of the room and showed the huge, pictured forms.
Marduk was winged. He rose tall, tall and full of might! In his face, in
his form was what majesty, what beauty the art of Babylonia could put
there. He stood winged, his hand upon the tree of life.
Iltani had looked at him so long, saying, “God, God!” to herself, that
now the wings and the crowned head seemed to rise among the stars, to
rise from earth and become the firmament, the firmament overshadowing,
upholding, to be worshipped, and only that to be worshipped.... Iltani
of her own motion, bowed herself together, touched her forehead to the
ground.
Ishtar!... She did not know why Ishtar, not Sarpanit, should come into
her mind--save that Ishtar was in some way Mother Earth and all that
grew, and dimly, dimly very great! Ishtar was mother and children,
bearing and growing....
But Iltani looked again at Marduk, and was wrapped in magic, fold on
fold.
Spring came upon the plains that stretched from Euphrates. Verdure and
flowers arose from the dark. The watchers of the stars in the high house
of Marduk sent word to the king, and the king proclaimed the word to the
people. In the heavens was written the sign that meant rich harvests at
home, and abroad, in the king’s wars, victory. Marduk had thrown, before
his coming, a handful of jewels. At that the city so rejoiced that the
nine days before the high days that were officially days of
supplication, repentance and cleansing of heart, humbling and
propitiation, went themselves like festival.
In the house of Sarpanit the New Year votary was watched, tended, made
in all ways beauteous.... Marduk, coming in power, must find a Sarpanit
also in power, kindler of desire!
Babylon, in fresh heat, under a sky from which had passed all the rain
clouds, put on holiday garb. The people thronged the temple courts,
coming in groups and bands and processions, bringing the sacrifices.
There was heard, as on no other day, the bleating of sheep, the lowing
of cattle, the voices of doves. King Sharrâni came in procession, with
clangour and throb of instruments of music, with shouts of the populace.
The gods from their lesser temples came in procession to visit Marduk,
god of gods. Priest-borne, newly-decked, came the images by the Sacred
Street, came to huge chanting, to the bowing of the throng. From the
pictured walls looked the pictured genii, the pictured sacred beasts,
the pictured gods.
Babylon and the brimming river Euphrates and the plain that was to
thicken with wheat and barley, millet and sesame, waked through the
starlight of the night before the day. Cresset lamps burned in doorways,
the young men surged, singing, through the streets. Waned the spring
night, arose a breath of balm and spice, came the light in the east.
Trumpets blew from the city wall, trumpets blew from the king’s palace,
trumpets blew from the temple roofs. Dawned the high day of the round
year, the day when Marduk returned to his house in a golden mantle of
strength! The children and all the people leaped up to festival. When
Marduk the sun rose from where he slept, beyond Tigris, east of India,
he was met with ecstasy. All day Marduk the sun rained light upon
Babylonia, upon Babylon, and light intense upon his temple there. As
ever, on the New Year day, were found men and women who claimed to see
the winged Marduk, hovering in the heavens, above his lofty house....
At an early hour in the day the women votaries of the high god came with
music, with garlands, with burning frankincense, to the Sarpanit-room in
the shadow of the tower. They took Iltani and robed her in fine white
figured with gold. They put a veil upon her like the mist upon the
morning plain, and over it a twisted circlet of silver and gold. They
took her from the Sarpanit-room and in the court they placed her at the
head of their band, with only musicians going before her. They gave into
her hand a stalk with two flowers, they raised over her a red canopy.
The music swelled, the voices rose. In a blue, upcurling, incense cloud,
Iltani set her foot upon the broad, the worn, the clay and fire made
tower stair.
Stage by stage, stage by stage, and the city was below her and the
thronged and throbbing temple courts. Stage by stage, and a gulf of blue
light, thrilling, tingling was around. It weighed her down, it upheld
her. She looked to the sky and thought that she saw Marduk, winged,
coming from the sun.
The procession returned to the court whence sprang the tower. All day
the temple, all day the king and his chief men, all day Babylon and all
Babylonia praised Marduk and did rites before him. All day Marduk was to
be felt above the city, the river, the plain, above the temple quarter
and its smoking altars, above the tower, the “mountain of the god.” All
day the human Sarpanit awaited alone the slant rays of the sun and the
human Marduk.
Symbols--symbols that were warm and glowed.... Iltani-Sarpanit sat in
the gold-furnished temple room in the prescribed attitude of devotion.
She sat still, and light and fire ran through her being.
Marduk--Marduk--Marduk!
The sun’s rays came slant. At the mountain-top, she heard at the
mountain foot, trumpets blowing.... She veiled her eyes, she quivered.
All at once, her strong dream of ecstasy parted a little.... This was a
man coming to the mountain-top, a man as she was a woman. Terror
threatened, a depth of headlong fall. _O God, my God! O Marduk, raying
light!_
The lover was the winged Marduk--never, never must she lose him!... The
trumpets were more loudly blowing, and now she might hear rising to her
the strong chanting, the rhythmic tread. There was an altar in the room,
and upon it a burning fire. Now she rose and, as she had been taught to
do, heaped this with the richest spices, with sandalwood and
frankincense. The room filled with thin clouds, blue and fragrant, and
in the heart of these stood Iltani, and her soul beat about to repel the
terror and keep the ecstasy.
Lugal-naid, and Ibni-Shamash and Nanâ-iddin, Ramtû, Ina-banat and
Belatum, Innina-nûri, Tuda-Ishtar--teachings formal and informal,
conscious, unconscious, word of mouth and blow from hand, long, long,
long impressions, tellings and tellings and tellings, repetitions, as it
were, before she was born, and repetitions after she was born--very much
and very strong drew to themselves, whelmed and coloured the soul of the
votary.... Iltani would have still the ecstasy, the abandonment, the
feeling of god-presence. _If he were not the god, make him such--make
him such! Perhaps he was the god--perhaps he was_--With man and woman
man was highest always--Man was highest--Lugal-naid said it, Ramtû,
Ina-banat, Belatum said it! Man was highest--man to woman was as god to
votary!
She would not lose the winged Marduk, and she could not believe in her
own wings. So she spread the burning frankincense, and she turned the
altar of the god somewhat from the east, and in the blue smoke now
rising, now flattened to right or left, now rolling downward, she, of
her own movement, touched her forehead to the earth and beheld man as
god.
The human Marduk, too, was young and chosen for beauty and strength....