DIBBARA,[418] A GOD OF PESTILENCE.
There does not appear to be an exception to the rule, that every people
has, to a greater or less extent, referred the causation of epidemic
and other diseases to supernatural powers.[419] In Oriental countries
evil spirits were believed to be accountable for it; and, indeed, in the
West, the Red Indians entertained the same notion, as the reader of Mr.
Dorman’s interesting book[420] is well aware. The uncultured mind cannot,
it would seem, grasp the idea that things which the senses cannot readily
perceive may, nevertheless, be entirely natural.
The Babylono-Assyrians, like the American Indians, believed in the
existence of innumerable bad as well as good spirits; in fact, to them
every object and force in nature was believed to have a _zi_, or spirit,
more or less subject to control.[421] The bad ones, of whom there were
seven emphatically such, delighted in injuring man and afflicting him
with diseases, often taking possession of him. Evidently this doctrine,
when fully developed,—that is, when the bad spirits were almost or quite
as free to act as the good ones, as among the Parsis,—afforded a simple
and very satisfactory explanation of the existence of apparent good and
evil in the world. The practice of medicine, based on such views, could,
at best, be little better than mere Shamanism.
I may here observe that the Chaldeans and others regarded imprecations
as effective in causing diseases, as well as other evils. In a quotation
from a tablet, given by Lenormant, it is said:—
“The malevolent imprecation acts on man like a wicked demon;
The voice which curses has power over him.”[422]
I need hardly say that a very similar belief is still all but universal.
It appears to be instructive. At any rate, it is practiced enormously.
From the “damn you” of the street-urchin to the formal and solemn
“anathema” of the Pope of Rome, we are familiar with all grades of it.
There has always and everywhere been a tendency to accord great
divinities power to dispense both evil and good. Men have made their
chief gods like themselves, anthropomorphic, variable in their feelings
and actions. Apollo could cause disease and he could remove it.[423]
Of the Hebrews’ God the same is true. Offense at the “sins” of men in
both cases inspires the infliction of pestilential and other diseases.
The numbering of the people by David, although forbidden, leads to the
occurrence of a destructive epidemic.[424] In “Ecclesiasticus” it is
explicitly said, “He that sinneth in the sight of his Maker shall fall
into the hands of the physician.”[425]
Among those who clothed one evil spirit with imperial power, so to speak,
that spirit has been mainly held accountable for the occurrence of
disease. The Iranian, Angra-Mainyu, furnishes an example. And since the
notion of the “devil” (our devil) began,[426] he has been often charged
with the offense. Thus, we are told in the Bible that it was he that
“smote Job with sores, from the sole of his foot unto his crown.”[427]
Still, in this case he was subject to orders, so to speak.
Now, it would be strange if, among the evil spirits the exuberant fancy
of uncultured man has called into existence, there were not a leading
one with the special function of causing, at least, pestilential
diseases. Such a one is not met with in the mythology of the Romans,
Greeks, or even the Egyptians;[428] but a remarkable one is found in the
Accadio-Sumerian, Dibbara, the leader of the plague-demons.[429] He was
subject to the orders of Ana and Hea. In the Izdhubar legend of the flood
it is said: “Let Dibbara appear, and let men be mown down.”
Our knowledge of Dibbara, or Lubara, is largely of modern date. Until
the recent translations of cuneiform inscriptions were made, the records
of him had almost faded out of sight. On his exploits there is an
interesting chapter in George Smith’s “Chaldean Account of Genesis.”[430]
His history promises to throw considerable light on passages in the Bible
and elsewhere. Thus, his title of “the darkening one” appears to have
suggested to the Psalmist the phrase, “The pestilence that walketh in
darkness.”[431] He was, probably, the prototype of the destroying “angel”
spoken of in the Bible.[432]
Dibbara, like many other personifications of evil, partook of the
serpentine form. Not unlikely he was originally, to a great degree,
similar to, if not identical with, the fabulous dragon combated by
Marduk. This was an embodiment of the chaos of the deep, the principle of
chaos and darkness. He was the serpent of the night, and may have been
primarily the darkness overcome by the sun.