first to the cults and legends of the higher divinities of Hellas, we
cannot affirm that the death and resurrection of the deity is a
primitive tradition of the Hellenes. We may suspect it to have been a
leading motive in some of the local Arcadian cults of Artemis, if, for
instance, we interpret the Arcadian Kallisto as a form of the great
goddess herself; but it is very probable that Artemis in Arcadia and
many other of her cult-centres represents the pre-Hellenic divinity of
birth and fruitfulness. What we may dare to call the Hellenic spirit
seems to speak in the answer given by Xenophanes to the people of Elea
when they asked him whether they ought to sacrifice to Leukothea and
bewail her: “If you regard her as a deity, do not bewail her; if as
human, do not sacrifice.”[261.4]
But when we descend from the higher religion to {262} the old Hellenic
agrarian cults associated with the heroes or daimones of the soil and
field, we find evidence of sorrowful rites, ceremonies of bewailing,
which belong to the same type as that of Tammuz; and in the Greek, as
in the Babylonian, the personage to whom they are attached is a
youthful hero or heroine of vegetation: such are Linos, perhaps the
earliest theme of a melancholy harvest-song of pre-Homeric days;
Hyakinthos, the “youth” of the Laconian land who may or may not have
been Hellenic, to whom the greater part of the Hyakinthia were
consecrated; Eunostos of Tanagra; Erigone, “the early-born,” of
Ikaria. The life of all these passes away as the verdure passes, or as
the crops are gathered in; and to one of them at least, Hyakinthos,
and perhaps to the others, the idea of an annual resurrection was
attached. But none of these came like Tammuz to play a world-part;
they remain the naïve, half-realised forms of poetic folk-religion.
Like to them is Bormos of Bithynia,[262.1] whose death was bewailed
at the harvest-time with melancholy songs, accompanied by sad
flute-music, and Lityerses of Phrygia, whom the reapers lamented
around the threshing-floor.
Shall we say that all these are merely reflections cast afar by the
great cult-figure of Babylon?
Then we must say the same of the peasant-hero “German” whom the modern
Bulgarians adore and bewail, of the Russian Yarilo,[262.2] and our
own John Barleycorn. And at this point we shall probably fall back on
the theory of independent similar developments, and shall believe that
peasant religion in different parts of the world is capable of
evolving strikingly parallel {263} figures in obedience to the
stimulus of similar circumstances and needs.
We have no surety, then, for a belief that Tammuz, or any shadow of
Tammuz, was borne to the western shores of the Aegean in the days
before Homer. And we know that Adonis, his nearest Anatolian
representative, only arrived late in the post-Homeric period.
Meantime, whatever view we may hold concerning prehistoric religious
commerce between East and West, this vital difference between
Mesopotamian and Hellenic religion must be strongly emphasised:
Babylonian liturgy is mainly a service of sorrow, and part of that
sorrow is for Tammuz; Hellenic worship was mainly cheerful and social,
and only in a few chthonian cults is a gloomier tone discernible, nor
can we anywhere hear the outbursts of violent and ecstatic grief. In
this respect, and in its remoteness from any idea of the death and
resurrection of the deity, Hellenic religion was further removed from
that of Catholic Europe than was the old Phrygian or the Sumerian.
The Babylonian temple-service was complex and varied, and offers many
problems of interest to the comparative student. We gather that a Holy
Marriage was part of a religious drama perhaps performed annually; for
instance, we find reference to the solemn nuptials of Ninib and Bau,
and to the marriage presents given to Bau.[263.1] In every
anthropomorphic polytheism, especially when idolatry provides images
that could be used for religious drama, this ritual act is likely to
occur. It is recorded of the southern Arabians in the days before
Islam, an ancient inscription speaking of the marriage ceremony of
Athtar.[263.2] It is a marriage of the great God {264} and Goddess
that according to the most reasonable interpretation is represented on
the Hittite reliefs of Boghaz-Keui. We may conjecture that it was a
ceremony of Minoan worship; a Mycenaean signet-ring shows us a seated
goddess with a young god standing before her and joining his forearm
to hers, while both make a peculiar gesture with their fingers that
may indicate troth-plighting;[264.1] also, the later legends and the
later ritual commemorating the marriages of Aphrodite and Ariadne may
descend from the pre-Hellenic religious tradition. Finally, we have
fairly full evidence of the same religious act in purely Hellenic
cult. The ἱερὸς γάμος of Zeus and Hera was enacted in many communities
with certain traits of primitive custom;[264.2] the nuptials of Kore
and the lower-world god might be found in the ceremonies of certain
temples;[264.3] while the central scene of the Eleusinia, the greater
if not the lesser, included a Holy Marriage.[264.4] The Roman
religion, in the original form of which there may have been no
marrying or giving in marriage, no family ties or genealogies of
divinities, no doubt borrowed its “Orci nuptiae” from the Greek. But
for the other cases, there is no need to resort to any theory of
borrowing to explain a phenomenon so natural at a certain stage of
religion.
Nor is it an important phenomenon, so long as the ceremony was enacted
merely by puppets or idols, as in the Boeotian Daidala.[264.5] It
only begins to be of higher significance for the history of religious
practice and thought, when the part of one of the divinities in this
drama is played by a human representative. For not only does this
offer indefinite possibilities of exaltation {265} for the mortal, but
it may engender the mystic ideal and practice of communion with the
divinity through sexual intercourse, which played a great part in
Phrygian religion, and left a deep impress on early Christian
symbolism. The question whether the Mesopotamian religion presents us
with evidence of a “holy marriage” solemnised between a mortal and the
divinity must finally involve the more difficult question as to the
function and purpose of that strange Mesopotamian institution of
temple-prostitutes. But, leaving this latter alone for the moment, we
find explicit testimony in Herodotus to the fact with which we are
immediately concerned. In describing the great temple of Bel at
Babylon,[265.1] he asserts, on the authority of his “Chaldean
priests,” that the deity chose as his nightly partner some native
woman, who was supposed to pass the night on the couch with him, and
who was obliged to abstain from all other intercourse with men; and he
compares a similar practice of belief found in the temple of Zeus in
Egyptian Thebes, and in the oracular shrine of Apollo at Patara in
Lycia. Now Herodotus’ trustworthiness in this matter has been doubted
by Assyriologists;[265.2] nevertheless, a phrase used in the code of
Hammurabi concerning a holy woman dedicated to temple service, calling
her “a wife of Marduk,” seems to give some colour to the Herodotean
statement.[265.3] Only, this term might have merely a
spiritual-symbolic significance, like the designation of a nun as “the
bride of Christ”; for the original Babylonian documents have supplied
as yet, so far as I am aware, no evidence of a woman fulfilling the
rôle of Belit, the wife of Bel.
{266}
As regards the adjacent religions, the idea that a mortal might enter
into this mode of communion with the divinity was probably an ancient
heritage of the Phrygian religions, for it crops up in various forms.
The priest of Attis was himself called Attis, and, therefore, probably
had loving intercourse with the goddess, and the later mysteries of
Kybele extended this idea and offered to every votary the glory of a
mystic marriage;[266.1] it was the unconscious stimulus of an
immemorial tradition that prompted the Phrygian heresiarch Montanus to
give himself out as the husband of the Virgin Mary.[266.2] It also
appears as a fundamental tenet of the Sabazian mystery and of the
Hellenistic-Egyptian Hermetic theosophy. The simple ritual-fact,
namely, that a woman serves as the bride of the god, could probably be
traced far afield through many widely distant peoples. According to
Sahagun,[266.3] the human sacrifices of the Mexicans had sometimes
the purpose of sending away a woman victim into divine wedlock. In
pre-Christian Sweden we find a priestess generally regarded as the
wife of the god Freyr, and enjoying considerable power from the
connection.[266.4] Similar examples can be quoted from modern savage
communities. Therefore if we find the same institution in the
Mediterranean, we shall not think it necessary to suppose that it was
an import from Babylon or from any Semitic people. As regards the
Minoan worship, it is legitimate at least to regard the legend of
Pasiphaë and her amour with the bull-god as an unfortunate {267}
aetiologic myth distorting the true sense of a ritual in which a
mortal woman enjoyed this kind of divine communion, and here again we
should mark a religious affinity between Crete and Phrygia. And it is
likely that the idea was not unfamiliar to the Hellenes, though the
record of it is scanty and uncertain. According to the early Christian
fathers, the inspiration of the Pythia of Delphi was due to a
corporeal union with Apollo akin at least to--if not identical
with--sexual intercourse. Of more value is Herodotus’ definite
assertion that the priestess of Patara gained her inspiration by her
nuptial union with Apollo. In the rare cases where the cult of a
Hellenic god was administered by a priestess we may suspect that a
ἱερὸς γάμος was part of the temple-ritual; in the two examples that I
have been able to find, the cults of Poseidon at Kalaureia and of
Heracles at Thespiai, the priestess must be a maiden, as on this
theory would be natural.[267.1] The maiden-priestesses of the
Leukippides, the divine brides of the Dioskouroi at Sparta, were
themselves called Leukippides; in all probability because they were
their mortal representatives in some ceremony of holy
marriage.[267.2] But the most salient and explicitly recorded example
is the yearly marriage of the Queen-Archon at Athens with Dionysos,
the bull-god, in the feast of Anthesteria, the significance of which I
have discussed elsewhere.[267.3] It seems that the Queen by uniting
her body with the god’s, unites to him the whole Athenian state and
secures its prosperity and fruitfulness; this historic fact may also
explain the myth of the union {268} of Althaia, Queen of Kalydon, with
the same god. Finally, let us observe that nothing in any of these
Hellenic records suggests any element of what we should call impurity
in the ritual; we are not told that these holy marriages were ever
consummated by the priest as the human representative of the god; or
that the ceremony involved any real loss of virginity in the
maiden-priestess. The marriage could have been consummated
symbolically by use of a puppet or image of the deity. We may believe
that the rite descends from pre-Homeric antiquity; the ritual which
the Queen-Archon performed might naturally have been established at
the time of the adoption into Athens of the Dionysiac cult, and there
are reasons for dating this event earlier than 1000 B.C.[268.1]
We now come to a very difficult and important question concerning the
position of women in the old Mesopotamian temple-ritual. Our first
document of value is the code of Hammurabi, in which we find certain
social regulations concerning the status of a class of women
designated by a name which Winckler translates doubtfully as
“God’s-sisters,” regarding it, however, as equivalent to consecrated,
while Johns translates it merely as “votary.”[268.2] At least, we
have proof of a class of holy women who have certain privileges and
are under certain restrictions. They were the daughters of good
families dedicated by their fathers to religion; they could inherit
property, which was exempt from the burden of army-tax; they could not
marry, and were prohibited from setting-up or even entering a
wine-shop under penalty of death. It is something to know even as much
as this about them, {269} but we would very gladly learn more. Is it
to their order that the personage described as “the wife of
Marduk”[269.1] belongs, who has been considered above? Is it from
among them that the priestesses of Ishtar were chosen, who interpreted
the oracles of the goddess?[269.2] It seems clear that a father could
dedicate his daughter to any divinity, that their position was
honourable, and that they are not to be identified with the
temple-prostitutes of Babylon or Erech, who excited the wonder and
often the reprobation of the later Greek world. This peculiar order of
temple-harlots is also recognised--according to some of the best
authorities[269.3]--in Hammurabi’s code, where they are mentioned in
the same context with the “consecrated” or the “God-sisters,” and yet
are clearly distinct from them; another clause seems to refer to male
prostitutes (§ 187). Certain rules are laid down concerning their
inheritance of property, and concerning the rearing of their children,
if they had any, who might be adopted into private families. Evidently
these “Qadishtu” were a permanent institution, and there is no hint of
any dishonour. There may be other references in Babylonian literature
to these temple-women; in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the courtesan who won
over Eabani evidently belongs to the retinue of Ishtar of Erech.
From these two institutions we must distinguish that other, for which
Herodotus is our earliest authority:[269.4] according to his explicit
statement, once in her lifetime every Babylonian woman, high or low,
had to stand in the temple-precincts of the goddess Mylitta--probably
a {270} functional appellative of Ishtar, meaning “the helper of
childbirth”--and to prostitute herself to any stranger who threw money
into her lap and claimed her with the formula, “I invoke the goddess
Mylitta for you.” Herodotus hastens to assure us that this single act
of unchastity--which took place outside the temple--did not afterwards
lower the morality of the women, who, as he declares, were otherwise
exemplary in this respect. But he is evidently shocked by the custom,
and the early Christian and modern writers have quoted it as the worst
example of gross pagan or Oriental licentiousness. Some devoted
Assyriologists have tried to throw doubt on the historian’s
veracity:[270.1] the wish is father to the thought: and it is indeed
difficult for the ordinary civilised man to understand how an ancient
civilisation of otherwise advanced morality could have sanctioned such
a practice. But Herodotus’ testimony ought not to be so impugned; nor
is it sufficient evidence for rejecting it that no reference to the
custom which he describes has been found hitherto in the cuneiform
literature. Strabo merely repeats what Herodotus has said; but
independent evidence of some value is gathered from the apocryphal
Epistle of Jeremias:[270.2] “The women also with cords about them sit
in the ways, burning bran for incense; but if any of them, drawn by
some that pass by, lie with them, she reproacheth her fellow that she
was not thought as worthy as herself, nor her cord broken.” The
context is altogether religious, and this is no ordinary secular
immorality; certain details in the narrative remind us of Herodotus,
and make it clear that the writer has in mind the same social usage
that the historian vouches for. This usage may be described as the
consecration to the goddess of {271} the first-fruits of the woman’s
virginity before marriage; for, though Herodotus does not explicitly
say that it was a rite preliminary to marriage, yet the records of
similar practices elsewhere in Asia Minor assure us on this point.
We have now to begin the comparative search in the adjacent regions,
keeping distinct the three types of consecration which I have
specified above, which are too often confused.[271.1]
The first type has its close analogies with the early Christian,
mediaeval, and modern conventual life of women. The code of Hammurabi
presents us with the earliest example of what may be called the
religious sisterhood; the Babylonian votaries were dedicated to
religion, and while the Christian nuns are often called the brides of
Christ, their earliest prototypes enjoyed the less questionable title
of “God’s-sisters.” We find no exact parallel to this practice in
ancient Greece; from the earliest period, no doubt, the custom
prevailed of consecrating individual women of certain families as
priestesses to serve certain cults, and sometimes chastity was
enforced upon them; but these did not form a conventual society; and
usually, apart from their occasional religious duties, they could lead
a secular life. In fact, the monastic system was of Eastern origin and
only reached Europe in later times, being opposed {272} to the civic
character of the religion of the old Aryan states.
The second class of consecrated women served as temple-harlots in
certain cult-centres of Asia Minor. We cannot say that the custom in
all cases emanated from Babylon; for there is reason to think that it
was a tradition attaching to the cult of the goddess among the
polytheistic Semitic stocks. We have clear allusions in the Bible to
temple-prostitution practised by both sexes in the Canaanite
communities adjacent to the Israelites, who were themselves sometimes
contaminated by the practice.[272.1] We hear of “hierodouli” among
the pagan Arabs,[272.2] of women “of the congregation of the people
of Astarte” at Carthage,[272.3] of numbers of dedicated slave women
in the cult of Aphrodite at Eryx,[272.4] which was at least
semi-Semitic; and it is likely that some of these at least were
devoted to the impure religious practice. As regards non-Semitic
worships, it is only clearly attested of two, namely, of the worship
of Mā at Comana in Pontos,[272.5] and of Aphrodite Ourania in
Corinth.[272.6] In these cases we have the right to assume Semitic
influences at work; for we do not find traces of this practice in the
ancient cult of Kybele; and Ma of Cappadocia and Pontus, who had
affinities with her, was partly contaminated with Anahita, a Persian
goddess, who had taken on Babylonian fashions. Nor can we doubt that
the practice gained recognition at Corinth in post-Homeric times
through its Oriental trade; for it was attached to the cult of
Aphrodite {273} Ourania, whose personality, partly at least, was
identical with that of the Semitic goddess. The practice survived in
Lydia in the later period of the Graeco-Roman culture. For a woman of
Tralles, by name Aurelia Aemilia, erected a column with an inscription
that has been published by Sir William Ramsay,[273.1] in which she
proclaims with pride that she had prostituted herself in the temple
service “at the command of an oracle,” and that her female ancestors
had done likewise. Finally, we may find the cult-practice reflected in
certain legends; in the legend of Iconium, for instance, of the woman
who enticed all strangers to her embraces and afterwards slew them,
but was herself turned to stone by Perseus, and whose stone image gave
the name to the State.[273.2]
The other custom recorded by Herodotus of Babylon, the consecration of
the first-fruits of virginity to the goddess before marriage, which I
have considered as distinct from the foregoing, may often have been
combined or confused with it; for the temple-harlotry, carried on for
some considerable period, might be occasionally a preliminary to
marriage. The most exact parallels to the Babylonian custom are found
in the records of Byblos, Cyprus, and the Syrian Heliopolis or
Baalbec. Lucian attests the rule prevailing at Byblos, that in the
festival of Adonis women exposed themselves for purchase on one single
day, and {274} that only strangers were allowed to enjoy them; but
that this service was only imposed upon them if they refused to cut
off their hair in lamentation for Adonis.[274.1] Similarly the
Byzantine historian Sozomenos declared that at Heliopolis (Baalbec),
in the temple of Astarte, each maiden was obliged to prostitute
herself before marriage, until the custom and the cult were abolished
by Constantine.[274.2] The statements about Cyprus, though less
explicit, point to the same institution: Herodotus, having described
at length the Babylonian practice, declares that it prevailed in
Cyprus also, and Justin[274.3] that it was a custom of the Cyprians
“to send their virgins before marriage on fixed days to the shore, to
earn their dowry by prostitution, so as to pay a first-offering to
Venus for their virtue henceforth (pro reliqua pudicitia libamenta
Veneri soluturas).” The procession to the shore may indicate the rule
that intercourse was only allowed them with strangers,[274.4] and
nothing points to prolonged prostitution. It is probably the same rite
that the Locrians of the West vowed to perform in honour of Aphrodite
in the event {275} of deliverance from a dangerous war.[275.1] But in
the worship of Anaitis at Akilisene in Armenia, according to
Strabo,[275.2] the unmarried women served as temple-harlots for an
indefinite time until they married; and Aurelia Aemilia of Tralles may
have been only maintaining the same ancient ritual in Lydia. In these
two countries, then, it seems as if there had been a fusion of two
institutions that elsewhere were distinct one from another,
harlot-service for a prolonged period in a temple, and the
consecration of each maiden’s virginity as a preliminary to marriage.
Such institutions mark the sharpest antagonism between the early
religious sentiment of the East and the West. Of no European State is
there any record, religious or other, that the sacrifice before
marriage of a woman’s virginity to a mortal was at any time regarded
as demanded by temple ritual. Such a rite was abhorrent to the genuine
Hellenic, as it was to the Hebraic, spirit; and only in later times do
we find one or two Hellenic cult-centres catching the taint of the
Oriental tradition: while such legends as that of Melanippos and
Komaitho and the story of Laokoon’s sin express the feeling of horror
which any sexual licence in a temple aroused in the Greek.[275.3]
{276}
It is imperative to try to understand the original purpose or
significance of the Semitic and Anatolian rites that we have been
dealing with. To regard them as the early Christian and some modern
writers have done, as mere examples of unbridled Oriental lust
masquerading in the guise of religion, is a false and unjust view.
According to Herodotus, the same society that ordained this sacrifice
of virginity upon the daughters of families maintained in other
respects a high standard of virtue, which appears also attested by
Babylonian religious and secular documents. Modern anthropology has
handled the problem with greater insight and seriousness; but certain
current explanations are not convincing. To take the rite described by
Herodotus first, which is always to be distinguished from the
permanent institution of “hierodulai” in the sense of temple-harlots:
Mannhardt, who was the first to apply modern science to the problem,
explained it as a development of vegetation-ritual.[276.1] Aphrodite
and Adonis, Ishtar and Tammuz, represent vegetation, and their yearly
union causes general fertility; the women are playing the part of the
goddess, and the stranger represents Adonis! The Babylonian rite,
then, is partly religious μιμησις, the human acting of a divine drama,
partly religious magic good for the crops. But in spite of Mannhardt’s
great and real services to science, his vegetation-theory leads him
often astray, and only one who was desperately defending a thesis
would explain that stranger, a necessary personage in the ritual at
Babylon, Byblos, Cyprus, and Baalbec, as the native god. There is no
kind of reason for connecting the Babylonian rite with Tammuz, or for
supposing that the women were representing {277} the goddess,[277.1]
or that their act directly influenced the crops, except in the sense
that all due performance of religious ceremonies has been considered
at certain stages of belief as favouring the prosperity of the land.
Sir William Ramsay, in his _Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_,[277.2]
would explain the custom as preserving the tradition of the communism
of women before regular marriage was instituted. Dr. Frazer, who has
dealt more fully with the question, accepts this explanation,[277.3]
as he also accepts Mannhardt’s in full; and, while he associates--as I
think, wrongly--the Babylonian rite with general temple-prostitution,
he adds a third suggestion, prompted by his theory of kingship: the
king himself might have to mate with one or more of the temple-harlots
“who played Astarte to his Adonis”:[277.4] such unions might serve to
maintain the supply of human deities, one of whom might succeed to the
throne, and another might be sacrificed in his father’s stead when
religion demanded the life of the royal man-god. I do not find this
theory coherent even with itself; and, like the others, it fails to
explain all the facts, and, on the other hand, it imagines data which
are not given us by the records.
That state of communism when sexual union was entirely promiscuous is
receding further and further into the anthropological background: it
is dangerous to predicate it of the most backward Anatolian State in
any period which can come into our ken. When the Byzantine Sokrates
gravely tells us that the men of Heliopolis {278} had their wives in
common, he does not know what he is saying. And if this sacrifice of
virginity before marriage was a recognition of the original rights of
all the males of the community, why did not some representative of the
community take the virginity, the priest or some head-man? This
ill-considered sociologic hypothesis shipwrecks on that mysterious
stranger.[278.1]
Prof. Westermarck, in his _Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas_,[278.2] regards the Mylitta-rite as intended to ensure
fertility in women through direct appeal to the goddess of fertility,
and he explains the formula which the stranger uttered--ἐπικαλέω τοι
τὴν θεὸν Μύλιττα--as signifying generally “May the goddess Mylitta
prosper thee.” Obviously the phrase, “I invoke the goddess for thee,”
could as naturally mean, “I claim thee in the name of the goddess,”
the stranger basing his right to the woman on this appeal. But his
general theory appears not so unsound as those which have just been
noted.
The comparative method ought to help us here; and though we have no
exact parallel, as far as I am aware, recorded of any people outside
the Mediterranean area to the Babylonian custom, we find usages
reported elsewhere that agree with it in one essential. Lubbock quotes
instances from modern India of the rule imposed upon women of
presenting themselves before marriage in the temple of Juggernaut for
the purpose--as he implies--of offering up their virginity, though no
such custom is recorded in the Vedic period of religion;[278.3] cases
also are chronicled of the rule prevailing among {279} uncultured or
semi-cultured tribes that the medicine-man or the priest should take
the virginity of the bride before the marriage ceremony.[279.1] These
are probably illustrations of the working of the same idea as that
which inspired the Babylonian custom. Marriage involves the entering
upon a new state; change of life is generally dangerous, and must be
safeguarded by what Van Gennep has called “rites de passage”; more
especially is the sexual union with a virgin dangerous and liable to
be regarded with awe by primitive sentiment; before it is safe to
marry her, the tabu that is upon her must first be removed by a
religious act securing the divinity’s sanction for the removal; just
as the ripe cornfield must not be reaped before religious rites, such
as the consecration of first-fruits, have loosened the tabu upon it:
we may believe that Hellenic marriage ritual secured the same end as
the Babylonian by what seems to us the more innocent method of
offering the προτέλεια. So the Babylonian safeguards the coming
marriage by offering the first-fruits of his daughter to the goddess
who presides over the powers and processes of life and birth. Under
her protection, after appeal to her, the process loses its special
danger; or if there is danger still, it falls upon the head of the
stranger.[279.2] For I can find no other way of accounting {280} for
his presence as a necessary agent, in the ritual of at least four
widely separate communities of Semitic race: this comparative ubiquity
prevents us explaining it as due to some capricious accidental impulse
of delicacy, as if the act would become less indelicate if a stranger
who would not continue in the place participated in it.
In his essay on the question, Mr. Hartland explains the Babylonian
rite as belonging to the class of puberty-ceremonies; nor would this
account of it conflict with the view here put forth, if, as he
maintains, primitive puberty-ceremonies to which girls are subjected
are usually preliminary to the marriage which speedily
follows.[280.1] But puberty-ceremonies are generally performed at
initiation-mysteries, and none of the rites that we are considering
appear to have been associated with mysteries except, perhaps, at
Cyprus, where the late record speaks of mysteries instituted by
Kinyras that had a sexual significance, and which may have been the
occasion of the consecration of virginity that Justin
describes;[280.2] but the institution of mysteries has not {281} yet
been proved for any purely Semitic religion. In any case, Mr.
Hartland’s statement does not explain why the loss of virginity should
be considered desirable in a puberty-ceremony or as a preliminary to
marriage.
The significance of the action, as I have interpreted it, is negative
rather than positive, the avoidance of a vague peril or the removal of
a tabu rather than the attainment of the blessing of fertility, as Dr.
Westermarck would regard it. And this idea, the removal of a tabu,
seems expressed in the phrase of Herodotus[281.1] by which he
describes the state of the woman after the ceremony--ἀποσιωσαμένη τῇ
θεῷ; and the parallel that I have suggested, the consecration of the
first-fruits of the harvest to remove the tabu from the rest of the
crop, is somewhat justified by the words of Justin already
quoted--“pro reliqua pudicitia libamenta Veneri soluturas.”
As regards the other institution, the maintenance of “hierodoulai” in
temples as “consecrated” women, “kadeschim,” unmarried, who for a
period of years indulged in sexual intercourse with visitors, the
original intention and significance of it is hard to decide. We may be
sure that it did not originate in mere profligacy, and the inscription
of Tralles shows that even in the later Roman period it had not lost
its religious prestige.[281.2] Such a custom could naturally arise in
a society that allowed freedom of sexual intercourse among young
unmarried persons--and this is not uncommonly found at a primitive
level of culture--and that was devoted to the worship of a goddess of
sexual fertility. The rituals in the temples of Ishtar of Erech,
Anaitis of {282} Armenia, Mā of Comana, must have been instituted for
some national and social purpose; therefore Mr. Hartland’s suggestion,
that the original object of the Armenian rite was to give the maidens
a chance of securing themselves a suitable husband by experience,
seems insufficient. Dr. Frazer’s theory, that connects the institution
with some of the mystic purposes of kingship,[282.1] floats in the
air; for there is not a particle of evidence showing any relation
between these women and the monarch or the royal harem or the
monarchical succession or the death of a royal victim. A simpler
suggestion is that the “hierodoulai,” or temple-women, were the human
vehicles for diffusing through the community the peculiar virtue or
potency of the goddess, the much-coveted blessing of human fertility.
Thus to consecrate slaves or even daughters to this service was a
pious social act.
The significance of the facts that we have been examining is of the
highest for the history of religious morality, especially for the
varied history of the idea of purity. We call this temple-harlotry
vile and impure; the civilised Babylonian, who in private life valued
purity and morality, called the women “kadistu,” that is, “pure” or
clean in the ritualistic sense, or as Zimmern interprets the ideogram,
“not unclean.”[282.2] In fact, the Mediterranean old-world religions,
all save the Hebraic, agreed in regarding the processes of the
propagation of life as divine, at least as something not alien or
abhorrent to godhead. But the early Christian propagandists, working
here on Hebraic lines, intensified the isolation of God from the
simple phenomena of birth, thereby engendering at times an anti-sexual
bias, and preparing a discord between any possible biological {283}
view and the current religious dogma, and modern ethical thought has
not been wholly a gainer thereby.
The subject that has been discussed at some length is also connected
with the whole question of ritual-purity and purification. The
primitive conception of purity had at an early stage in its evolution
been adopted by higher religion; and the essential effect of impurity
was to debar a person from intercourse with God and with his
fellow-men. Hence arises a code of rules to regulate temple-ritual. So
far as I am aware, the Babylonian rules for safeguarding the purity of
the shrines were not conspicuously different from the Greek or the
Hebraic.[283.1] The taint of bloodshed and other physical impurities
was kept aloof; and it is in the highest degree probable that the
function of the “hetairai” was only performed outside the temple, for
Herodotus specially tells us that this rule was observed in the
Mylitta-rite. The cathartic methods of East and West agree in many
points. The use of holy water for purifying purposes was known to the
early Greeks.[283.2] It was still more in evidence in the Babylonian
ritual: the holy water of the Euphrates or Tigris was used for a
variety of purposes, for the washing of the king’s hands before he
touched the statues, for the washing of the idol’s mouths,[283.3]
{284} perhaps also for baptism. For we hear of some such rite in a
hymn to Enlil translated by Dr. Langdon[284.1]--the line that he
renders “Son whom in the sacred bowl she baptized,” seems to refer to
a human child. Ablution was prominent also in the exorcism-ritual, and
the “House of Washing” or “House of Baptism” was the centre of a
liturgy that had for its object deliverance from demons.[284.2] The
whole State was at times purified by water.[284.3] And in all this
ritual the water must itself be of a peculiar purity--rain-water, for
instance,[284.4] or the water of the Euphrates, whence came probably
the Water of Life that was kept in Marduk’s temple with which the Gods
and the Annunaki washed their faces, and which was used in the feast
of the Doom-fixing.[284.5] According to the Babylonian view ordinary
water was naturally impure (we may well believe that it was so at
Babylon, where the river and canals were so pressed into the service
of man), and a person incurred impurity by stepping over a puddle or
other unpurified water.[284.6] The Greek did not need to be so
scrupulous, for most water in his land was naturally pure, being
spring or brook; yet in his cathartic rules we find often that only a
special water was suitable for the religious purpose, running water
especially, or sea-water, or in a particular locality one sacred
fountain only.[284.7] But though it was to him as to most {285}
peoples, the simple and natural means of purification, he did not
apply it to such various cathartic purposes as the Babylonian. Nor as
far as we can discover had he developed in old days the interesting
rite of baptism: we hear of it first in the records of the fifth
century, and in relation to alien cults like that of the Thracian
goddess Kotytto.[285.1]
Equally prominent in the cathartic ritual of Mesopotamia was the
element of fire: in the prayer that followed upon the
purification-ceremonies we find the formula, “May the torch of the
gleaming Fire-God cleanse me.”[285.2] The Fire-God, Nusku, is
implored “to burn away the evil magicians,”[285.3] and we may believe
that he owes his development and exalted position as a high spiritual
god to the ritual use of fire, just as in the Vedic religion did Agni.
The conception of fire as a mighty purifying element, which appears in
the Old and New Testaments and in Christian eschatology, has arisen,
no doubt, from the cathartic ritual of the ancient Semites. Doubtless
also the spiritual or magic potency of this element was known in
ancient Europe: it is clearly revealed in the primitive ceremonies of
the old German “Notfeuer,” with which the cattle, fields, and men were
purified in time of pestilence.[285.4] And there are several
indications of its use in Greek cathartic ritual; a noteworthy example
is the purification of Lemnos by the bringing of holy fire from
Delos;[285.5] the curious Attic ritual of running with the new-born
babe round the {286} hearth, called the Amphidromia, may have had a
similar intention;[286.1] even the holy water, the χέρνιψ, seems to
have been hallowed by the insertion of a torch;[286.2] and in the
later records fire is often mentioned among the usual implements of
cleansing.[286.3] The Eleusinian myth concerning Demeter holding the
infant Demophon in the flame to make him immortal was suggested
probably by some purificatory rite in which fire was used. Finally,
the fire-ordeal, which was practised both in Babylonia and
Greece,[286.4] may have been associated at a certain period with the
cathartic properties of fire. Nevertheless, the Hellenic divinities
specially concerned with this element, Hestia and Hephaistos, had
little personal interest in this ritual, and did not rise to the same
height in the national theology as Nusku rose in the Babylonian.
We might find other coincidences in detail between Hellenic and
Assyrian ritual, such as the purificatory employment of salt, onions,
and the sacrificial skin of the animal-victim.[286.5] One of the most
interesting phenomena presented by the cathartic law of old Babylonia
{287} is a rule that possessed an obvious moral value; we find,
namely, on one of the cylinders of Gudea, that during the period when
Gudea was purifying the city the master must not strike the slave, and
no action at law must be brought against any one; for seven days
perfect equality reigned, no bad word was uttered, the widow and the
orphan went free from wrong.[287.1] The conception underlying this
rule is intelligible: all quarrelling and oppression, being often
accompanied with bloodshed and death, disturbs the general purity
which is desired to prevail; and I have indicated elsewhere a similar
law regulating the conduct of the Eleusinian mysteries and the
Dionysiac festival at Athens, both ceremonies of cathartic
value,[287.2] and I have pointed out a similar ordinance observed
recently by a North-American Indian tribe, and formerly by the
Peruvians; to these instances may be added the statement by
Livy,[287.3] that in the Roman “lectisternia,” when a table with
offerings was laid before the gods, no quarrelling was allowed and
prisoners were released, and the historian gives to the institution of
the lectisternia a piacular significance.
We must also bear in mind certain striking differences between the
Hellenic and the Babylonian cathartic systems. In certain
purification-ceremonies of Hellas, those in which the homicide was
purged from his stain, the washing with the blood of the piacular
victim was the most potent means of grace.[287.4] We may find
analogies in Vedic, Roman, and Hebraic ritual, but hitherto none have
been presented by the religious documents {288} of Babylon, where, as
has been already pointed out, scarcely any mystic use appears to have
been made of the blood of the victim.[288.1] Again, the Babylonian
purification included the confession of sins, a purgation unknown and
apparently unnatural to the Hellene;[288.2] and generally the
Babylonian, while most of its methods, like the Hellenic, are modes of
transference or physical riddance of impurity, had a higher spiritual
and religious significance; for it includes lamentations for sin and
prayers to the divinity that are not mentioned in the record of any
Greek “katharsis.”
A long ritual-document is preserved containing the details of the
purification of the king:[288.3] certain forms agree with the
Hellenic, but one who was only versed in the latter would find much
that was strange and unintelligible both in the particulars and in
general atmosphere. We discern an interesting mixture of magic and
religion. The gods are partly entreated, partly bribed, partly
constrained; and at the end the evil is physically expelled from the
palace. The purifier puts on dark garments, just as the ministers of
the underworld-deities did occasionally in Greece. The king himself
performs much of the ceremony, and utters words of power: “May my sins
be rent away, may I be pure and live before Shamash.” The ordering of
the cathartic apparatus is guided partly by astrology. It is curious
also to find that every article used in the process is identified by
name with some divinity: the cypress is the god Adad, the fragrant
spices the god Ninib, the censer the god Ib, etc.; and the commentary
that accompanies the ritual-text explains that these {289} substances
compel the deities thus associated with them to come and give aid.
In fact, the differences between East and West in this religious
sphere are so important that we should not be able to believe that the
cathartic system of Greece was borrowed from Babylonia, even if the
points of resemblance were much more numerous and striking than they
are. For it would be possible to draw up a striking list of
coincidences between Hellenic and Vedic cathartic rites, and yet no
one would be able on the strength of it to establish a hypothesis of
borrowing.
In any case, it may be said, the question of borrowing does not arise
within the narrow limits of our inquiry, which is limited to the
pre-Homeric period, since all Greek “katharsis” is post-Homeric. The
latter dictum is obviously not literally true, as a glance through the
Homeric poems will prove. Homer is aware of the necessity of
purification by water before making prayer or libation to the gods:
Achilles washes his hands and the cups before he pours forth wine and
prays to Zeus,[289.1] Telemachos washes his hands in sea-water before
he prays to Athena[289.2]; and there is a significant account of the
purification of the whole Achaean host after the plague;[289.3] as
the later Greeks would have done, the Achaeans throw away into the sea
their λύματα, the infected implements of purification, wool or
whatever they used, that absorbed the evil from them. But it has been
generally observed that Homer does not appear to have been aware of
any need for purification from the stain of bloodshed or from the
ghostly contagion of death. It is true that Odysseus purifies his hall
with fire and sulphur after slaying the suitors, but we are not sure
that the act had any further significance than {290} the riddance of
the smell of blood from the house. Sulphur is there called κακῶν
ἄκος,[290.1] “a remedy against evil things”; but we cannot attach any
moral or spiritual sense to κακὰ, nor is Homeric κάθαρσις related, as
far as we can see, to any animistic belief. There is one passage where
Homer’s silence is valuable and gives positive evidence; Theoklumenos,
who has slain a man of his own tribe and fled from his home, in
consequence approaches Telemachos when the latter is sacrificing and
implores and receives his protection: there is no hint of any feeling
that there is a stain upon him, or that he needs purification, or that
his presence pollutes the sacrifice.[290.2] All this would have been
felt by the later Greek; and in the post-Homeric period we have to
reckon with a momentous growth of the idea of impurity and of a
complex system of purification, especially in regard to homicide,
leading to important developments in the sphere of law and morality
which I have tried to trace out on other occasions.[290.3] But Homer
may well be regarded as the spokesman of a gifted race, the Achaeans,
as we call them, on whom the burden of the doctrine of purification
lay lightly, and for whom the ghostly world had comparatively little
terror or interest. Besides the Achaeans, however, and their kindred
races there was the submerged population of the older culture who
enter into the composition of the various Hellenes of history.
Therefore the varied development in the post-Homeric period of
cathartic ideas may be only a renaissance, a recrudescence of forces
that were active enough in the second millennium. {291} Attica may
have been the home where the old tradition survived, and cathartic
rites such as the Thargelia and the trial of the axe for murder in the
Bouphonia have the savour of great antiquity. May not the Minoan
religion of Crete have been permeated with the ideas of the impurity
of bloodshed and the craving for purification from sin? For at the
beginning of the historic period Crete seems to have been the centre
of what may be called the cathartic mission; from this island came
Apollo Delphinios, the divine purifier _par excellence_, to this
island the god came to be purified from the death of Python; and in
later times, Crete lent to Athens its purifying prophet
Epimenides.[291.1] If we believe, then, that the post-Homeric
blood-purification was really a recrudescence of the tradition of an
older indigenous culture, we should use this as another argument for
the view that the Greece of the second millennium was untouched or
scarcely touched by Babylonian influence. For, as we have seen,
purification by blood or from blood appears to have been wholly alien
to Babylonian religious and legal practice.
The ritual of purification belongs as much to the history of magic as
religion. Now, the student of religion is not permitted to refuse to
touch the domain of magic; nor can we exclude its consideration even
from the highest topics of religious speculation. Some general remarks
have already been made[291.2] concerning the part played by magic
both in the worship and in the {292} social life of the peoples that
we are comparing. Any exact and detailed comparison would be fruitless
for our present purpose; for, while the knowledge of early Babylonian
magic is beginning to be considerable, we cannot say that we know
anything definite concerning the practices in this department of the
Hellenic and adjacent peoples in the early period with which we are
dealing. From the Homeric poems we can gather little more than that
magic of some kind existed; and that Homer and his gifted audience
probably despised it as they despised ghosts and demons. It is only by
inference that we can venture to ascribe to the earliest period of the
Greek race some of the magic rites that are recorded by the later
writers. It would require a lengthy investigation and treatise to
range through the whole of Greek ritual and to disentangle and expose
the magic element which was undoubtedly there, and which in some
measure is latent in the ritual of every higher religion yet examined.
By way of salient illustration we may quote the ceremonies of the
scapegoat and the φαρμακός,[292.1] modes of the magic-transference of
sin and evil; the strewing of sacred food-stuff that is instinct with
divine potency over the fields in the Thesmophoria; the rain magic
performed by the priests of Zeus Lykaios;[292.2] we hear at Kleonai
of an official class of “Magi” who controlled the wind and the weather
by spells, and occasionally in their excitement gashed their own
hands, like the priests of Baal;[292.3] such blood-magic being
explicable as a violent mode of discharging personal energy upon the
outer objects which one wishes to subdue to one’s will. Another and
more {293} thrilling example of blood-magic is the process of
water-finding by pouring human blood about the earth, a method
revealed by an old legend of Haliartos in Boeotia about the man who
desired water, and in order to find it consulted Delphi, and was
recommended by the oracle to slay the first person who met him on his
return; his own young son met him first, and the father stabbed him
with his sword; the wounded youth ran round about, and wherever the
blood dripped water sprang up from the earth.[293.1] No one will now
venture to say that all these things are post-Homeric; the natural
view is that they were an inheritance of crude and primitive thought
indigenous to the land. Many of them belong to world-wide custom; on
the other hand, some of the striking and specialised rites, such as
the blood-magic and the ritual of the φαρμακός, are not found at
Babylon.
But before prejudging the question, some salient and peculiar
developments of Babylonian magic ought to be considered. One great
achievement of Mesopotamian civilisation was the early development of
astrology, to which perhaps the whole world has been indebted for good
and for evil, and which was associated with magic and put to magic
uses. Astrological observation led to the attachment of a magic value
to numbers and to certain special numbers, such as number seven.
Whether the Judaic name and institution of the Sabbath is of
Babylonian origin or not, does not concern our question. But it
concerns us to know that the seventh days, the 14th, the 21st, and
28th of certain months, if not of all, were sacred at Babylon, and
were days of penance and piacular duties when ordinary occupation was
suspended.[293.2] We can discern the origin of the sanctity of this
number: the observation of the {294} seven planets, and the division
of the lunar month into four quarters of seven days. The early Greeks,
doubtless, had their astrological superstitions, as most races have
had; the new moon is naturally lucky, the waning moon unlucky; but no
one can discover any numerical or other principle in the Hesiodic
system, which is our earliest evidence of Hellenic lucky and unlucky
days. His scheme is presented in naïve confusion, and he concludes
humorously, “one man praises one day, one another, and few know
anything about it.”[294.1] His page of verse reflects the anarchy of
the Greek calendars; and we should find it hard to credit that either
Hesiod or the legislators that drew up those had sat attentively at
the feet of Babylonian teachers. But a few coincidences may be noted.
Hesiod puts a special tabu on the fifth day of the month; in fact, it
is the only one in his list that is wholly unlucky, a day when it
would seem to be best to do nothing at all, at least outside the
house, for on this day the Erinyes are wandering about.[294.2] Now, a
Babylonian text published by Dr. Langdon contains the dogma that on
the fifth day of Nisan “he who fears Marduk and Zarpanit shall not go
out to work.”[294.3] This Babylonian rule is the earliest example of
what may be strictly called Sabbatarianism, abstinence from work
through fear of offending the high god. Such would probably not be the
true account of Hellenic feeling concerning the “forbidden days,”
which were called ἀποφράδες or μιαραί.[294.4] The high god had issued
to the Hellene no moral commandment about “keeping the Sabbath-day
holy”; his reluctance to do certain work on certain days rested on a
more primitive sentiment {295} concerning them. Thus it was unlucky
both for himself and the city that Alcibiades should return to the
Piraeus when the Plynteria were going on; for this latter was a
cathartic ceremony, and evil influences were abroad. Nor, as Xenophon
declares, would any one venture to engage in a serious work on this
day.[295.1] Nor were these μιαραὶ ᾑμέραι, like the seventh days of
the Babylonian months, necessarily days of gloom when offended deities
had to be propitiated; on the contrary, the day of Χόες was a day of
merry drinking and yet μιαρά: in fact, we best understand the latter
phrase by translating it “tabooed,” rather than “sad” or
“gloomy.”[295.2]
Another coincidence that may arrest attention is that in Hesiod’s
scheme the seventh day of the month was sacred because Apollo was born
on it; and throughout the later period this god maintains his
connection with the seventh day, also apparently with the first, the
fourteenth, and the twentieth of the month.[295.3] This almost
coincides with the Sabbatical division of the Babylonian months. But
we cannot suppose that in Hellas these were days of mortification as
they were in the East; else they would not have been associated with
the bright deity Apollo.
Such dubious coincidences, balanced by still more striking
diversities, are but frail supports for the hypothesis of
race-contact.
In Babylonian thaumaturgy nothing is more significant than the magic
power of the Word, whether spoken or written: and the Word, as we have
noted, was raised to a cosmic divine power and possessed inherent
creative force.[295.4] This is only a reflection upon the heavens of
the human use of the magical or mesmeric word or set {296} of words.
This use of them is found, indeed, all round the globe. What seems
unique in the Mesopotamian culture is that religion, religious
literature, and poetry should have reached so high a pitch and yet
never have risen above or shaken off the magic which is its constant
accompaniment. Men and gods equally use magic against the demons; the
most fervid hymn of praise, the most pathetic litany, is only part of
an exorcism-ritual; and so inevitably does the shadow of magic dog
religion here that Dr. Langdon is justified in his conjecture[296.1]
that in a great hymn to Enlil, which contains scarcely a prayer but
chiefly ecstatic description of his power, the worshipper is really
endeavouring to charge himself with higher religious magic by this
outpouring. In fact, here and elsewhere, a magic origin for the
practice of theologic exegesis may be obscurely traced; narrative
might acquire an apotropaeic effect; thus tablets containing the
narrative of the achievements of the plague-god, hung up before the
houses, could avert pestilence,[296.2] or, again, the reading aloud
the tablet narrating the victory of Shamash and Ramman over the seven
demons who attacked the moon-god Sin served to defeat the seven demons
by the same sympathetic magic as would be worked by a dramatic
representation of that event.[296.3]
There is no record or hint that the Hellenes recited hymns to Demeter
or wrote up passages of Homer to avert demons.
It belongs to the magic use of formulae that minute exactness in
respect of every syllable is necessary to the power of the spell or
the spell-prayer. An Assyrian {297} king who is consulting the sun-god
concerning success in a war with which he is threatened, prays that
the ritual which the enemy may be employing may go wrong and fail; and
in this context occurs the curious petition, “May the lips of the
priest’s son hurry and stumble over a word.”[297.1] The idea seems to
be that a single slip in the ritual-formulae destroyed their whole
value; and such a view belongs to magic rather than to religion.
Now it is probable that in his earliest mental stage the Hellene had
been in bondage to the religious magic of sacred formulae and sacred
names; and as a tradition of that stage, the divine epithet whereby he
appealed to his deities according to his needs retained always for him
a mysterious potency; but otherwise we have no proof that he worked
word-magic by means of his sacred texts.
Babylonian sorcery, whether legitimate or illegitimate, was intended
to work upon or through demons; and its familiarity with the names and
special qualities of demons is its peculiar mark. In the ritual of
exorcism of the demons, idols play a prominent and often singular
rôle. The following performance is probably unique: in the exorcism
of disease two idols, male and female, were set up before the sick
man, then the evil spirits of sickness are invited thus: “Oh ye all
wicked, all evil, who pursue so-and-so, if thou art male, here is thy
wife; if thou art female, here is thy husband.”[297.2] The intent of
the exorciser seems to be to attract the demon of disease, of whose
sex he is not sure, into one or the other of these images, and he
lures it by amorous enticement into the figure of opposite sex to its
own; {298} having got the demon into the image, he doubtless takes it
out and burns or buries it. Or the evil spirit may be attracted from
the patient by means of its own image placed near him. One document
prescribes various images of bestial form, all of which are to be
taken by night to the bank of the river, probably that they may be
thrown in and carry the impurity of sickness away.[298.1] Another
shows us how to deal with Labartu, the daughter of Anu;[298.2] her
image, made of clay, is placed above the head of the sick man, so as
to draw her or her power out from him; it is then taken out, slain,
and buried. And this exorcism is all the more notable because Labartu
is rather an evil goddess than a mere demon, being styled in another
text “August lady,” “Mistress of the dark-haired men.”[298.3] Such
magical drama, in which the demon-image might be slain to annul its
potency, seems characteristically Babylonian: it entered also into the
ritual of the high gods. For, at the feast of the New Year, when Nebo
arrived from Borsippa, two images are brought before him and in his
presence decapitated with the sword. Dr. Langdon interprets
them[298.4] as representing probably “the demons who aided the dragon
in her fight with Marduk; they are the captive gods of darkness which
ends with the Equinox.” This is dramatic magic helpful to the gods.
The elaboration of exorcism must have led to a minuter articulation of
the demon-world; the exorciser is most anxious to know and discover
all about his unseen foes: he gives them a name, a sex if possible,
and a number: he says of the powerful storm-demons {299} Utuk “they
are seven, they are seven, they are neither male nor female, they take
no wife and beget no children;”[299.1] for knowledge of the name or
nature of the personality gives magic power.
Many of these examples, which might easily be multiplied, show us
magic applied to private but beneficent purposes, the healing of
disease, the exorcism of spirits of moral and physical evil. It was
also in vogue for national purposes--for instance, for the destruction
of the enemies of the king; one of our documents describes such a
process as the making of a tallow-image of the enemy of the king and
binding his face with a cord, so as to render the living foe impotent
of will and speech.[299.2]
We have already noticed that the Babylonian gods themselves work
magic, and that it was also worked on behalf of the gods.[299.3] And
in the ritual-records much that might be interpreted as religion may
find its truer account from the other point of view; for instance, the
ritual of placing by the bedside of a sick man the image of Nergal or
those of the “twins who overthrow the wicked Gallu”[299.4] might
appear at first sight as a religious appeal to the deities to come to
his aid; but as in form it is exactly similar to the use made on the
same occasion, as noted above, of the images of demons, we may rather
suppose that the intention was magical in this act also, and that the
divine idols were supposed to combat the demon of sickness by their
magical influence. Or, again, in part of the ritual of exorcism we
find acts that bear the semblance of sacrifice, such as throwing
onions and dates into the fire; but they were charged with a curse
before thrown, and the act {300} is more naturally interpreted as a
magic transference of evil.[300.1]
For the purpose of the exorcism, to deliver a “banned” person, the
high god, Marduk or another, might be called in; but Marduk also works
the effect by magic: a rope is woven by Ishtar’s maidens, which Marduk
(or his priest) turns round the head of the sufferer, then breaks it
through and throws it out into the desert.[300.2] This looks like
symbolic magic; the knotted rope represents the ban, which is then
broken and thrown away.
There are many features in these methods of exorcism, such as the
apotropaeic use of idols, that are common to other peoples at a
certain stage of culture; there remains much also that seems peculiar
to Babylon.
But what is uniquely characteristic of this Mesopotamian people, and
at the same time most un-Hellenic, is the all-pervading atmosphere of
magic, which colours their view of life and their theory of the
visible and invisible world. Babylonia, at least, was the one salient
exception to the historic induction that a distinguished
writer[300.3] has recently sanctioned--“religion once firmly
established invariably seeks to exclude magic; and the priest does his
best to discredit the magician.” The psalmody of Babylon, with its
occasional outbursts {301} of inspiration and its gleams of spiritual
insight, would have appealed to an Isaiah; its magic would have
appealed to many a modern African. The Babylonian prophet does not
frown on it; the high gods accept it, the priest is its skilled and
beneficent practitioner. And at no other point, perhaps, is the
contrast between the Hellenic and the Mesopotamian religions so
glaring as at this.
This comparison of Eastern and Western ritual may close with some
observations on another religious function that may be of some value
for the question of early ethnic influence.
It has been remarked that divination played an important, perhaps a
dominant part in the Babylonian ritual of sacrifice, divination, that
is, by inspection of the victim’s entrails, especially the liver; and
that this method was adopted in Greece only in the later
centuries.[301.1] But there are other salient differences between the
Babylonian and the more ancient mantic art of Hellas.[301.2] Another
method much in vogue in the former was a curious mode of divining by
mixing oil and water and watching the movements and behaviour of the
two liquids.[301.3] The first and only indication of a similar
practice in Hellas is a passage in the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, of
which the true meaning has hitherto escaped the interpreters.[301.4]
And here, as usual, an obvious example of Mesopotamian influence on
Hellenic custom belongs only to a late epoch. It is also true {302}
that the ancient divination of the two peoples agreed in certain
respects, namely, in that both used, like most communities at a
certain stage of culture, the auguries of birds and the revelations of
dreams. As regards the facts relating to the former, we know more
about Greece than at present about Babylon. But in the matter of
dream-oracles, it is manifest that the Hellenic phenomena are entirely
independent of Mesopotamian fashion. The Assyrian and Babylonian
documents reveal the fashion of dream-prophecy in its simplest and
highest form: the high deity of his own pleasure sends a dream, and
the divining priest or skilled interpreter interprets it. No hint has
so far been detected of that artificial method of provoking prophetic
dreams by “incubation” or ἐγκοίμησις, the fashion of laying oneself
down in some sacred shrine and sleeping with one’s ear to the ground,
that was much in vogue in ancient Hellas and still survives in parts
of the modern Greek world and which may be regarded as an immemorial
tradition. In this divination, the divine spokesman was the power of
the underworld. And this was the most important difference between the
Western and the Eastern society in respect of the divine agency. In an
early period of Hellenic history that may be called pre-Apolline, the
earth-mother was conspicuously oracular by the vehicle of dreams; and
this power of hers was generally shared by the nether god and buried
heroes. Nor could the religion of Apollo suppress this “chthonian”
divination. But in Mesopotamia the earth-powers and the nether world
have no part or lot in this matter. It is almost the prerogative of
Shamash, the sun-god, though Adad is sometimes associated with
him;[302.1] {303} both being designated as “Bēlē-Biri” or “Lords of
Oracles.”[303.1]
Another remarkable distinction is the fact that the ecstatic or
enthusiastic form of prophecy, that of the Shaman or Pythoness
possessed and maddened by the inworking spirit of god, is not found in
the Babylonian record, which only attests the cool and scientific
method of interpreting by signs and dreams and the stars. Perhaps
Mesopotamia from the third millennium onward was too civilised to
admit the mad prophet and prophetess to its counsels. But such
characters were attached to certain Anatolian cults, especially to
those of Kybele,[303.2] and also to the Syrian goddess at
Hierapolis;[303.3] we have evidence of them also in a record of the
Cretan Phaistos in the service of the Great Mother.[303.4] Some
scholars have supposed that prophetic ecstasy was only a late
phenomenon in Hellas, because Homer is silent about it. But there are
reasons for suspecting that demoniac possession was occasionally found
in the pre-Homeric divination of Hellas,[303.5] an inheritance
perhaps from the pre-Hellenic period.
In any case, the theory that primitive Hellas was indebted to
Babylonia for its divination-system is strongly repugnant to the
facts.