The Predominance of the Goddess.
{81}
The next clue that I propose to follow in our general comparison is
the relative prominence of the goddess-cult in the areas that we are
surveying. The subject is of importance and interest, partly because
it may throw some light on the question of the interdependence of the
adjacent religions, partly because it brings into view certain
striking facts of religious psychology. A religion without a goddess
is liable to differ markedly in tone and colour, and probably in
ritual, from those that possess one. Wherever anthropomorphism is
allowed free play, the same instinct which evolves the father-god will
evolve the mother-goddess; and when the religion is one of the type
which Tiele calls “Nature-religions,” one, that is, where ideas
reflecting the forces of the natural world lie on the surface of the
conception of the divine personality, some of these forces are so
naturally regarded as feminine that the evolution of a goddess appears
inevitable; and the only world-religions that have rejected this idea
are the Judaic, the Islamic, and Protestant Christianity. Now
goddess-cult is often found to exercise a powerful influence on the
religious emotion; and the religious psychology of a people devoted to
it will probably differ from those who eschew it; often it will be
likely to engender a peculiar sentiment of tenderness, of
sentimentality in {82} an otherwise austere and repellent religious
system; and the clinging entreaty of the child is heard in the prayers
or reflected in the ritual; and just as the mother frequently stands
between the children and the father as the mild intercessor, so the
goddess often becomes the mediator of mercy to whom the sinners turn
as their intercessor with the offended god. Such was Isis for the
Graeco-Roman world; such at times was Athena for the Athenians; such
is the Virgin for Mediterranean Christendom.
Or the goddess may be more merciless than any god, more delighting in
bloodshed, more savage in resisting progress: such often was Artemis
for the Greeks, such is Kala at this moment in India, a dangerous and
living force that threatens our rule. Again, the goddess may encourage
purity in the sexual relations; this was the potential value of the
ideal of Artemis in Greece, and perhaps the actual value of Mariolatry
in the Middle Ages. Or the goddess-cult may be the source of what to
us appears gross licentiousness, as was the case in Babylon and some
parts of Asia Minor. This discordance in the character of
goddess-cults may reflect the diversity of the masculine feeling
towards women, and also to some extent the position of women at
different stages of culture in the family and in the State. The whole
subject has many fascinating aspects, which relevance prevents me
presenting in detail. I have considered elsewhere the sociologic
questions involved in goddess-cult;[82.1] and I must limit my
attention here to its value as ethnic evidence.
In Mesopotamia the phenomenon presents itself at the very earliest
period of which we have record. The {83} monument already
described[83.1] on which the goddess Nini is presenting captives to
the King Annabanini, attests the prevalence of goddess-cult in the
third millennium; and Tiele supposes--without, I think, sufficient
evidence--that it was stronger in the Sumerian than in the Semitic
period. At all events, the conquering Semites may have found the cult
of goddesses well developed in the land; and in all probability they
brought at least one of their own with them, namely, Ishtar, whose
name has its phonetic equivalents in Semitic Anatolia. Also at least
by the second millennium B.C., the Babylonian pantheon was organised
after the type of the human family to this extent, that each male
divinity has his female consort; and it would not help us now to
consider the theorem put out by Jeremias and others that the various
Babylonian goddesses are all emanations and varieties of one original
All-mother. Only the mighty Ishtar remains for the most part aloof
from the marriage system, and her power transcends that of the other
goddesses. Originally the chief goddess of the Sumerian Erech, she was
raised by the Assyrians to the highest position next to their national
god Asshur;[83.2] and for them she is the great divinity of war, who,
armed with bow, quiver, and sword, orders the battle-ranks. In a
famous hymn,[83.3] perhaps the most fervent and moving of all the
Babylonian collection, she seems exalted to a supreme place above all
other divinities; another[83.4] displays the same ecstasy in
adoration of the goddess Belit, imputing omnipotence to her, as one to
whom the very gods offer prayers. The same idea may be expressed in a
difficult {84} phrase in a hymn to Nebo[84.1] which contains his
dialogue with Assurbanipal: “Nebo, who has grasped the feet of the
divine goddess, Queen of Nineveh,” the goddess who came to be regarded
as Ishtar.
From such isolated indications we might conclude that the
Babylonian-Assyrian religion was more devoted to the goddess than to
the god. We should certainly be wrong, as a more critical and wider
survey of the facts, so far as they are at present accessible, would
convince us. These hymns imputing supreme omnipotence to the goddess,
whether Ishtar or another, may be merely examples of that tendency
very marked in the Babylonian liturgies, to exalt the particular
divinity to whom worship is at that moment being paid above all
others. The ecstatic poet is always contradicting himself. To the
omnipotent Belit, in the last-mentioned hymn, a phrase is attached
which Zimmern interprets as “she who carries out the commands of Bel,”
as if after all she were only a vicegerent. In the beautiful prayer to
Ishtar proffered by the Assyrian King Asurnasirabal (18th cent. B.C.)
he implores her to intercede for him, “the Priest-King, thy favourite…
with Thy beloved the Father of the gods.”[84.2] The beloved wife
naturally plays the Madonna part of the intercessor; thus Sanherib
prays that Ninlil “the consort of Ashur, the mother of the great gods,
may daily speak a favourable word for Sanherib, the king of Assyria,
before Ashur.”[84.3] But the intercessor is not supreme; and in spite
of the great power of Ishtar and the fervent {85} devotion she
aroused, the state-pantheon is predominantly masculine.
Nor can we, looking at the ancient records of the other Semitic
peoples, which are often too scanty to dogmatise about, safely speak
of the supremacy of the goddess in any Semitic community, except in
Sidon. All that we find everywhere, except among the Israelites, is a
goddess by the side of a god. According to Weber, in his treatise,
“Arabien vor dem Islam,”[85.1] the aboriginal god of all the Semites
when they were in the nomadic condition was the moon-god; and the male
divinity is nowhere found to be displaced. He is prominent among the
polytheistic Arabs under the name Athtar.[85.2] Some of the Arab
deities in North Arabia are revealed to us in an inscription dating
probably from the fifth century B.C., which mentions the gods Salm,
Sangala, Asira, and of these Salm was evidently a war-god, as he is
represented on a relief with a spear.[85.3]
The Aramaic inscriptions only reveal the goddess Ishtar by the side of
many powerful gods such as Ramman, Adad the god of storms, Shamash the
sun-god, Reshef the god of lightning and war, Baal-charran the Lord of
Harran.[85.4] An eighth-century Aramaic inscription found at Sinjerli
in North Syria, written in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III., mentions
no goddess, but regards the kings as under the protection of Hadad,
Elreshef, and Shamash.[85.5] Even in Canaan and Phoenicia we have no
reason to say that Astarte rose above Baal; such an epithet as “the
Face of Baal” appears to maintain the supremacy of the God. In Moab we
have {86} the evidence of the Mesha stone, which mentions the divine
pair Ashtor-Chemosh, and in Numbers[86.1] the Moabites are called the
people of Chemosh. But we have Phoenician inscriptions of the period
of Persian supremacy in which the king of Byblos, Jachumelek, speaks
of himself as raised to the kingdom by the Baalat, the queen-goddess
of that state; and he prays to her that the queen may give him favour
in the eyes of the gods and in the eyes of the people of his
land.[86.2] Astarte was _par excellence_ the city-goddess of Sidon,
and on the later Imperial coinage we see her image drawn in a car. Two
representations of her have been found, in one of which she is seated
in front of the king,[86.3] the other shows her embracing him.[86.4]
King Tabnit of Sidon, whose sarcophagus is in the Museum of
Constantinople, styles himself “priest of Astarte, King of the
Sidonians.”[86.5] But in the other Phoenician settlements, such as
Tyre, Cyprus, and Carthage, the memorials of the male divinity,
whether Baal, Baal Samin, Baal Ammon, Reshef Mikal, Esmun-Melqart, are
at least as conspicuous. It is likely that at certain places in the
Mediterranean the Semites were touched by the influences of the
aboriginal Aegean goddess’s cult; this may well have been the case at
Sidon, and still more probably at Askalon, and it may have penetrated
as far as Bambyke.
Speaking generally, however, we may conclude that among the early
Semites the male divinity was dominant. And if we could believe that
this is a reflection in their theology of the patriarchal system in
society, let us observe that the earliest Babylonian {87} evidence
proves that the patriarchal type of family was dominant in Babylonia
in the third millennium.
Passing over to the non-Semitic group of Anatolian cults, and
considering first the Hittite, we have ample evidence in the great
relief of Boghaz-Keui of the importance of the goddess; and it may
well be, as Dr. Frazer has conjectured, that that monument, on which
we see the great god borne on the shoulders of his worshippers to meet
the goddess on the lion, gives us the scene of a Holy marriage.[87.1]
We find the male and female divinity united in a common worship on a
relief found near Caesarea in the middle of Cappadocia, on the left
side of which is depicted a warrior-god standing before a
pillar-shaped altar, while a man in the guise of a warrior is pouring
a libation before him; on the right is a similar scene, making
libation before a seated goddess, on whose altar a bird is
seated.[87.2] Besides this, we have another type of goddess shown us
on a Hittite votive-relief, on which is carved a large seated female
figure with a child on her knees; we may surely interpret this as a
θεὰ κουροτρόφος.[87.3] Again, on two of the reliefs at Euzuk we find
a seated goddess holding a goblet and approached with prayers,
libations, and other offerings by priest and priestess,[87.4] and we
may venture to add to this list of Hittite types the mysterious veiled
goddess found by Von Oppenheim at Tel-Halaf in Mesopotamia on the
Chabur, a branch of Euphrates, with an inscription containing the name
Asshur, a work which, on the evidence of other cuneiform inscriptions
found on the site, he would date near to {88} 900 B.C.[88.1] But this
evidence in no way amounts to any proof or affords any suggestion of
the predominance of the goddess--and the Tel-El-Amarna correspondence
of the Hittite kings implies that the male and female divinity were
linked in an equal union in the Hittite religion. The text of the
treaty between Rameses II. and the Kheta (_circ._ 1290 B.C.) includes
various sun-gods, Sutekh, the Egyptian name for the Hittite war-god,
and Antheret (possibly a form of the name Astoret), and other
goddesses called “the Queen of Heaven, the Mistress of the Soil, the
Mistress of Mountains.”[88.2] Can we draw any conclusions from that
extraordinary monument from Fassirlir[88.3] on the borders of
Lycaonia and Pisidia, representing a young god in a high cap that
suggests Hittite fashion, standing on the neck of a stooping goddess
at whose side are two lions? This might seem a naïve indication of
male supremacy; but the sex of the supporting figure does not seem
clear.[88.4]
Coming now to the Asia-Minor shore, where in the first millennium B.C.
the Hellenic colonisation and culture flourished, we find the traces
of a great goddess-cult discoverable on every important site; though
recorded only by later writers, as a rule, and interpreted to us by
the later Greek names, such as Artemis, Leto, Aphrodite, more rarely
Athena, we can still discern clearly that she belongs to a
pre-Hellenic stock. The evidence of this can be gathered from many
sources, and it is unnecessary {89} to detail it here. What is more
important, and not so easy, is to detect clear proof of the
predominance of the goddess over the god, a phenomenon that has not
yet presented itself clearly in the Semitic communities, except at
Sidon and perhaps Byblos. We find goddess-cult in Cilicia, where
“Artemis Sarpedonia” is a name that trails with it Minoan
associations;[89.1] but, as Dr. Frazer has pointed out,[89.2] at
least at Tarsos and Olba it appears that the male deity was the
dominant power. At the former city a long series of coins attests the
supremacy of Baal-Tars and Sandon-Herakles. At Olba the ruling
priesthood were called the Τευκρίδαι, and claim descent from Teukros
and Aias, but Greek inscriptions giving such names as “Teukros” the
priest, son of Tarkuaris, support the view that Teukros is a
Hellenisation of the divine Hittite name Tarku. It is in Lycia where
we ought, in accordance with a popular theory, to find the clearest
proof of goddess-supremacy; for we know that the Lycians had the
matrilinear family system, and this was supposed by Robertson Smith to
lead logically to that religious product.[89.3] And recently we have
heard Professor Wilamowitz[89.4] brilliantly expound the theory that
Leto was the aboriginal mother-goddess of Lycia, called there in the
Lycian tongue “Lada,” and worshipped as supreme with her son Apollo,
both of whom the Hellenes found there, and while they transformed Lada
“the Lady-goddess” into Leto, surnamed Apollo Λητοίδης, in obedience
to the Lycian rule of calling a son after his mother. And where a son
is worshipped merely as the son of his {90} mother, we may regard the
mother-goddess as supreme. The theory about Apollo’s Lycian origin,
which, I think, contradicts all the important facts, does not concern
us here. It is his view that Leto is the aboriginal and paramount
divinity of Lycia which we would wish to test. So far as it rests on
the equation between Leto and Lada, its philology is bad; for, as Dr.
Cowley has pointed out on the evidence of Lycian-Greek transcribed
names, the Greeks would not have transcribed Lada as Leto.
Furthermore, the geography of the Leto-cult gives no _vraisemblance_
to the theory of its Lycian origin; neither have we any proof at all
of the cult of any goddess in Lycia at an early period, though no
doubt it existed; the coin of Myra, showing a goddess emerging from
the split trunk of a tree,[90.1] is of the Imperial period, but
preserves an ancient legend and an archaic idol-type. But the earliest
fact of Lycian religion recorded is the predominance of Apollo, and
the Lycians maintained him as their chief divinity throughout their
history and long after the very early influences of Hellenic
colonisation had waned. The inscriptions of Lycia that mention Leto
are all of the later period; her temple near Xanthos and her two holy
groves on the coast that Strabo mentions[90.2] are just on the track
along which the earliest Hellenic influence travelled: and the most
tenable view is that the Hellenes introduced her. In Caria, at
Labranda, and again in the vicinity of Stratonikeia, we have proof of
the early supremacy of a great god whom the Hellenes called Zeus,
attaching to him in the latter centre of cult the Carian name of
Panamaros, and associating him with a native goddess called Hera or
{91} Hekate, who did not claim to be the predominant partner.[91.1]
It is not till we come to the neighbourhood of Ephesos that we can
speak positively of goddess-supremacy. Artemis, as the Greeks called
her here, is admittedly πρωτοθρονία, the first in power and in place.
Her brother Apollo himself served as the στεφανηφόρος of the Artemis
of Magnesia, that is, as her officiating magistrate,[91.2] and
Artemis of Magnesia we may take to be the same aboriginal goddess as
the Ephesian. Certain features of her worship will be considered later
in a comparative survey of ritual and cult-ideas. I will only indicate
here the absence of any proof of the Semitic origins of the Ephesian
Artemis,[91.3] and the associations that link her with the great
mother-goddess of Phrygia. When we reach the area within which this
latter cult and its cognate forms prevailed, we can posit the
predominance of the goddess as a salient fact of the popular religion
imprinting indelible traits upon the religious physiognomy of the
people. The god Attis was dear to the aboriginal Phrygian as to the
later generations, but he was only the boy-lover, the young son who
died and rose again. The great goddess was supreme and eternal; and
her power spread into Lydia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Galatia, and far
and wide in the later period across the sea. {92} Her counterpart in
Cappadocia was Mā, the great goddess of Comana, in whose worship we
hear nothing of the male divinity. In this wide area, governed by the
religion of the Great Mother, we can trace a similar ritual and
something of the same religious psychology in the various peoples:
orgiastic liturgy and ecstatic passion, a craving for complete
identification with the goddess that led to acts of sexual madness
such as emasculation; also a marked tone of sorrow and tenderness in
the legends and religious service. In following back to its
fountain-head the origins of this cult, we are led inevitably to
Minoan Crete.
There are many links revealed both by legend and cult that associate
Crete with the country adjacent to the Troad, with Lydia and Caria.
And we may tentatively hold to the dogma that Kybele-Rhea, Hipta of
Lydia, who appears now as a virgin, now as a mother-goddess, Mā who
appears in Caria, but whose chief historic centre was Comana of
Cappadocia, were all descended from or specialised forms of an
aboriginal Aegean or Anatolian goddess whose cult was also maintained
by the Hittites. Of her nature and ritual I may speak later. I am only
concerned here with the correctness of the view put forward by Sir
Arthur Evans.[92.1] “It is probable that in the Mycenaean religion as
in the later Phrygian, the female aspect of divinity predominated,
fitting on, as it seems to have, down to the matriarchal system. The
male divinity is not so much the consort as the son or the youthful
favourite.” If we put aside the suggestion of a matriarchal theory
here, the main idea in this judgment accords generally with the
evidence that the author of it has himself done most to accumulate and
to present to us. It is {93} not insignificant that the earliest type
of Aegean idol in existence is that of a goddess, not a god; and in
the more developed Minoan period the representations of the goddess
are more frequent and more imposing than those of the god; while in
the few scenes of cult where the male deity appears in her company, he
appears in a subordinate position, either in a corner of the field or
standing before her throne.[93.1] And a strong current of early Greek
legend induces us to believe that when the earliest Hellenes reached
Crete they found a powerful goddess-cult overshadowing the island,
associated with the figure of a young or infant god: hence spread the
Cretan worship of Rhea and the Μήτηρ τῶν θεῶν, and hence there came to
a few places on the Hellenic mainland, where Minoan influence was
strong, the cult and the cult-legend of the infant Zeus.[93.2] Yet we
must not strain the evidence too far; besides the youthful or infant
Cretan god, there may have been the powerful cult of a father-god as
well. On three monuments we catch a glimpse of the armed deity of the
sky.[93.3] What is more important is the prominence of the
double-headed axe in the service of the Minoan palace; and this must
be a fetichistic emblem mystically associated with the thunder-god,
though occasionally the goddess might borrow it. The prominence and
great vogue of this religious emblem detracts somewhat from the weight
of the evidence as pointing to the supremacy of the female divine
partner. It is Zeus, not Rhea, that inspired Minos, as Jahwé inspired
Moses, and Shamash Hammurabbi. Yet the view is probably right on the
whole that the mother-goddess was a more frequent figure in {94} the
Minoan service, and was nearer and dearer to the people.
May we also regard her as the prototype of all the leading Hellenic
goddesses? The consideration of this question will bring this
particular line of inquiry to a close.
If we find goddess-supremacy among the early Hellenes, shall we
interpret it as an Aryan-Hellenic tradition, or as an alien and
borrowed trait in their composite religion? If borrowed, are they more
likely to have derived it from the East or from their immediate
predecessors in the regions of Aegean culture? The latter question, if
it arises, we ought to be able to answer at last.
We might guard ourselves at the outset against the uncritical dogma
which has been proclaimed at times that the goddesses in the various
Aryan polytheisms were all alien, and borrowed from the pre-Aryan
peoples in whose lands they settled. Any careful study of the Vedic
and old-Germanic, Phrygo-Thracian religions can refute this wild
statement: the wide prevalence in Europe of the worship of “Mother
Earth,” which Professor Dieterich’s treatise establishes,[94.1] is
sufficient evidence in itself. Nor could we believe that the early
Aryans were unmoved by an anthropomorphic law of the religious
imagination that is almost universally operative. The Hellenic Aryans,
then, must be supposed to have brought certain of their own goddesses
into Greece, and perhaps philology will be able one day to tell us who
exactly they were. On linguistic and other grounds, Dione and Demeter
may be accepted as provedly old Hellenic: on the same grounds,
probably, Hera; also the name and cult of Hestia is certainly
“Aryan,”[94.2] only we {95} dare not call her in the earliest, and
scarcely at any period, a true personal goddess. Now, there is a
further important induction that we may confidently make: at the
period when the Aryan conquerors were pushing their way into Aegean
lands and the Indo-Iranians into the Punjaub and Mesopotamia, they had
a religious bias making for the supremacy of the Father-God and
against the supremacy of the goddess. We can detect the same instinct
also in the old Germanic pantheon.[95.1] Its operation is most
visible when the Thrako-Phrygian stock, and their cousins the
Bithynian, broke into the north of Asia Minor, and the regions on the
south of the Black Sea. The god-cult they bring with them clashes with
the aboriginal and--as it proved--invincible supremacy of the goddess
linked to her divine boy: we hear of such strange cult-products as
Attis-Παπαῖος, Father Attis, and one of the old Aryan titles of the
High God appears in the Phrygian Zeus Βαγαῖος, Bagha in old Persian
and Bog in Slavonic meaning deity. The Aryan hero-ancestor of the
Phrygian stock, Manes, whom Sir William Ramsay believes to be
identical with the god Men, becomes the father of Atys;[95.2] also we
have later proof of the powerful cult of Zeus the Thunderer, Zeus the
Leader of Hosts, in this region of the southern shore of the Black
Sea. Another induction that I venture, perhaps incautiously, to make,
is that in no Aryan polytheism is there to be found the worship of an
isolated or virgin-goddess, keeping apart from relations with the male
{96} deity: the goddesses in India, Germany, Ireland, Gaul,[96.1]
Thrace, and Phrygia are usually associated temporarily or permanently
with the male divinity, and are popularly regarded as maternal, if not
as wedded. Trusting to the guidance of these two inductions, and
always conscious of the lacunae in our records, we may draw this
important conclusion concerning the earliest religious history of
Hellas: namely, that where we find the powerful cult of an isolated
goddess, she belongs to the pre-Hellenic population. The axiom applies
at once and most forcibly to Artemis and Athena; the one dominant in
certain parts of Arcadia and Attica, the other the exclusive deity of
the Attic Acropolis. Their virginal character was probably a later
idea arising from their isolation, their aversion to cult-partnership
with the male deity.[96.2] The Aryan Hellenes were able to plant
their Zeus and Poseidon on the high hill of Athens, but not to
overthrow the supremacy of Athena in the central shrine and in the
aboriginal soul of the Athenian people. As regards Hera, the question
is more difficult: the excavations at the Heraeum have been supposed
by Dr. Waldstein to prove the worship of a great goddess on that site,
going back in time to the third millennium B.C.,[96.3] a period
anterior to the advent of the god-worshipping Aryan Hellenes. And this
goddess remained {97} dominant through all history at Argos and Samos.
But we have no reason for supposing that her name was Hera in that
earliest period. Phonetically, the word is best explained as “Aryan”:
if it was originally the name brought by the Hellenes and designating
the wife-goddess of the sky-god--and in spite of recent theories that
contradict it I still incline to this view--the Hellenes could apply
it to the great goddess of the Argolid, unless her aversion to
matrimony was a dogma, or her religious isolation a privilege, too
strong to infringe. This does not seem to have been the case. The
goddess of Samian cult, a twin-institution with the Argive, was no
virgin, but united with the sky-god in an old ἱερὸς γάμος.
Nevertheless, throughout all history the goddess in Argos, and
probably in Samos, is a more powerful cult-figure than the god.
As regards Aphrodite, few students of Greek religion would now assign
her to the original Aryan-Hellenic polytheism. Most still regard her
as coming to the Greek people from the Semitic area of the Astarte
cult. And this was the view that I formerly developed in the second
volume of my _Cults_. But at that time we were all ignorant of the
facts of Minoan-Mycenaean religion, and some of us were deceived
concerning the antiquity of the Phoenician settlements in Cyprus and
Hellas. The recently discovered evidence points, I think, inevitably
to the theory that Sir Arthur Evans supports; that the goddess of
Cyprus, the island where the old Minoan culture lived longest, is one
form of the great goddess of that gifted Aegean people, who had
developed her into various manifestations through long centuries of
undisturbed religious life. Let us finally observe that it is just
these names, Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, that have hitherto defied
linguistic {98} explanation on either Aryan or Semitic phonetic
principles. We do not yet know the language of King Minos.
A cursory and dogmatic answer may now be given to the two questions
posed above. The Aryan Hellenes did not bring with them the supremacy
of the goddess, for the idea was not natural to them: they did not
borrow it from any Semitic people in the second millennium, for at
that time it was not natural to the Semites: they found it on the soil
of the Aegean lands, as a native growth of an old Mediterranean
religion, a strong plant that may be buried under the deposits of
alien creeds, but is always forcing its head up to the light again.
Therefore in tracing goddess-cult from the Euphrates valley to the
western Aegean shores, as a test of the influence of the East on the
West, we are brought up sharply at this point. The Western world is
divided from the Eastern by this very phenomenon that the older
scholars used to regard as proving a connection. And it may well have
been the Western cult that influenced the western Semites.