world and all it holds as a matter of course, when it begins to wonder
and to question. The first, the great question naturally is--"Who made
it all? The sun, the stars, the sea, the rivers, the flowers, and the
trees--whence come they? who made them?" And to this question we are
very ready with our answer:--"God made it all. The One, the Almighty God
created the world, and all that is in it, by His own sovereign will."
When the child further asks: "_How_ did He do it?" we read to it the
story of the Creation which is the beginning of the Bible, our Sacred
Book, either without any remarks upon it, or with the warning, that, for
a full and proper understanding of it, years are needed and knowledge of
many kinds. Now, these same questions have been asked, by children and
men, in all ages. Ever since man has existed upon the earth, ever since
he began, in the intervals of rest, in the hard labor and struggle for
life and limb, for food and warmth, to raise his head and look abroad,
and take in the wonders that surrounded him, he has thus pondered and
questioned. And to this questioning, each nation, after its own lights,
has framed very much the same answer; the same in substance and spirit
(because the only possible one), acknowledging the agency of a Divine
Power, in filling the world with life, and ordaining the laws of
nature,--but often very different in form, since, almost every creed
having stopped short of the higher religious conception, that of One
Deity, indivisible and all-powerful, the great act was attributed to
many gods--"the gods,"--not to God. This of course opened the way to
innumerable, more or less ingenious, fancies and vagaries as to the part
played in it by this or that particular divinity. Thus all races,
nations, even tribes have worked out for themselves their own COSMOGONY,
i.e., their own ideas on the Origin of the World. The greatest number,
not having reached a very high stage of culture or attained literary
skill, preserved the teachings of their priests in their memory, and
transmitted them orally from father to son; such is the case even now
with many more peoples than we think of--with all the native tribes of
Africa, the islanders of Australia and the Pacific, and several others.
But the nations who advanced intellectually to the front of mankind and
influenced the long series of coming races by their thoughts and
teachings, recorded in books the conclusions they had arrived at on the
great questions which have always stirred the heart and mind of man;
these were carefully preserved and recopied from time to time, for the
instruction of each rising generation. Thus many great nations of olden
times have possessed Sacred Books, which, having been written in remote
antiquity by their best and wisest men, were reverenced as something not
only holy, but, beyond the unassisted powers of the human intellect,
something imparted, revealed directly by the deity itself, and therefore
to be accepted, undisputed, as absolute truth. It is clear that it was
in the interest of the priests, the keepers and teachers of all
religious knowledge, to encourage and maintain in the people at large
this unquestioning belief.
2. Of all such books that have become known to us, there are none of
greater interest and importance than the sacred books of Ancient
Babylonia. Not merely because they are the oldest known, having been
treasured in the priestly libraries of Agadê, Sippar, Cutha, etc., at an
incredibly early date, but principally because the ancestors of the
Hebrews, during their long station in the land of Shinar, learned the
legends and stories they contained, and working them over after their
own superior religious lights, remodelled them into the narrative which
was written down many centuries later as part of the Book of Genesis.
3. The original sacred books were attributed to the god Êa himself, the
impersonation of the Divine Intelligence, and the teacher of mankind in
the shape of the first Man-Fish, Oannes--(the name being only a Greek
corruption of the Accadian ÊA-HAN, "Êa the Fish")[AW] So Berosus informs
us. After describing Oannes and his proceedings (see p. 185), he adds
that "he wrote a Book on the Origin of things and the beginnings of
civilization, and gave it to men." The "origin of things" is the history
of the Creation of the world, Cosmogony. Accordingly, this is what
Berosus proceeds to expound, quoting directly from the Book, for he
begins:--"There was a time, _says he_, (meaning Oannes) when all was
darkness and water." Then follows a very valuable fragment, but
unfortunately only a fragment, one of the few preserved by later Greek
writers who quoted the old priest of Babylon for their own purposes,
while the work itself was, in some way, destroyed and lost. True, these
fragments contain short sketches of several of the most important
legends; still, precious as they are, they convey only second-hand
information, compiled, indeed, from original sources by a learned and
conscientious writer, but for the use of a foreign race, extremely
compressed, and, besides, with the names all altered to suit that race's
language. So long as the "original sources" were missing, there was a
gap in the study both of the Bible and the religion of Babylon, which no
ingenuity could fill. Great, therefore, were the delight and excitement,
both of Assyriologists and Bible scholars, when George Smith, while
sorting the thousands of tablet-fragments which for years had littered
the floor of certain remote chambers of the British Museum, accidentally
stumbled on some which were evidently portions of the original sacred
legends partly rendered by Berosus. To search for all available
fragments of the precious documents and piece them together became the
task of Smith's life. And as nearly all that he found belonged to copies
from the Royal Library at Nineveh, it was chiefly in order to enlarge
the collection that he undertook his first expedition to the Assyrian
mounds, from which he had the good fortune to bring back many missing
fragments, belonging also to different copies, so that one frequently
completes the other. Thus the oldest Chaldean legends were in a great
measure restored to us, though unfortunately very few tablets are in a
sufficiently well preserved condition to allow of making out an entirely
intelligible and uninterrupted narrative. Not only are many parts still
missing altogether, but of those which have been found, pieced and
collected, there is not one of which one or more columns have not been
injured in such a way that either the beginning or the end of all the
lines are gone, or whole lines broken out or erased, with only a few
words left here and there. How hopeless the task must sometimes have
seemed to the patient workers may be judged from the foregoing specimen
pieced together of sixteen bits, which Geo. Smith gives in his book.
This is one of the so-called "Deluge-tablets," i.e., of those which
contain the Chaldean version of the story of the Deluge. Luckily more
copies have been found of this story than of any of the others, or we
should have had to be content still with the short sketch of it given by
Berosus.
[Illustration: 61.--BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD. (Smith's
"Chaldean Genesis.")]
4. If, therefore, the ancient Babylonian legends of the beginnings of
the world will be given here in a connected form, for the sake of
convenience and plainness, it must be clearly understood that they were
not preserved for us in such a form, but are the result of a long and
patient work of research and restoration, a work which still continues;
and every year, almost every month, brings to light some new materials,
some addition, some correction to the old ones. Yet even as the work now
stands, it justifies us in asserting that our knowledge of this
marvellous antiquity is fuller and more authentic than that we have of
many a period and people not half so remote from us in point of place
and distance.
5. The cosmogonic narrative which forms the first part of what Geo.
Smith has very aptly called "the Chaldean Genesis" is contained in a
number of tablets. As it begins by the words "_When above_," they are
all numbered as No. 1, or 3, or 5 "of the series WHEN ABOVE. _The
property of Asshurbanipal, king of nations, king of Assyria._" The first
lines are intact:--"When the heaven above and the earth below were as
yet unnamed,"--(i.e., according to Semitic ideas, _did not exist_)--APSU
(the "Abyss") and MUMMU-TIAMAT (the "billowy Sea") were the beginning of
all things; their waters mingled and flowed together; that was the
Primeval Chaos; it contained the germs of life but "the darkness was not
lifted" from the waters, and therefore nothing sprouted or grew--(for no
growth or life is possible without light). The gods also were not; "they
were as yet unnamed and did not rule the destinies." Then the great gods
came into being, and the divine hosts of heaven and earth (the Spirits
of Heaven and Earth). "And the days stretched themselves out, and the
god Anu (Heaven.) ..." Here the text breaks off abruptly; it is
probable, however, that it told how, after a long lapse of time, the
gods Anu, Êa and Bel, the first and supreme triad, came into being. The
next fragment, which is sufficiently well preserved to allow of a
connected translation, tells of the establishment of the heavenly
bodies: "He" (Anu, whose particular dominion the highest heavens were,
hence frequently called "the heaven of Anu") "he appointed the mansions
of the great gods" (signs of the Zodiac), established the stars, ordered
the months and the year, and limited the beginning and end thereof;
established the planets, so that none should swerve from its allotted
track; "he appointed the mansions of Bel and Êa with his own; he also
opened the great gates of heaven, fastening their bolts firmly to the
right and to the left" (east and west); he made Nannar (the Moon) to
shine and allotted the night to him, determining the time of his
quarters which measure the days, and saying to him "rise and set, and be
subject to this law." Another tablet, of which only the beginning is
intelligible, tells how the gods (in the plural this time) created the
living beings which people the earth, the cattle of the field and the
city, and the wild beasts of the field, and the things that creep in the
field and in the city, in short all the living creatures.
[Illustration: 62.--BABYLONIAN CYLINDER, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE
TEMPTATION AND FALL.]
6. There are some tablets which have been supposed to treat of the
creation of man and perhaps to give a story of his disobedience and
fall, answering to that in Genesis; but unfortunately they are in too
mutilated a condition to admit of certainty, and no other copies have as
yet come to light. However, the probability that such was really the
case is very great, and is much enhanced by a cylinder of very ancient
Babylonian workmanship, now in the British Museum, and too important not
to be reproduced here. The tree in the middle, the human couple
stretching out their hands for the fruit, the serpent standing _behind
the woman_ in--one might almost say--a whispering attitude, all this
tells its own tale. And the authority of this artistic presentation,
which so strangely fits in to fill the blank in the written narrative,
is doubled by the fact that the engravings on the cylinders are
invariably taken from subjects connected with religion, or at least
religious beliefs and traditions. As to the creation of man, we may
partly eke out the missing details from the fragment of Berosus already
quoted. He there tells us--and so well-informed a writer must have
spoken on good authority--that Bel gave his own blood to be kneaded with
the clay out of which men were formed, and that is why they are endowed
with reason and have a share of the divine nature in them--certainly a
most ingenious way of expressing the blending of the earthly and the
divine elements which has made human nature so deep and puzzling a
problem to the profounder thinkers of all ages.
7. For the rest of the creation, Berosus' account (quoted from the book
said to have been given men by the fabulous Oannes), agrees with what we
find in the original texts, even imperfect as we have them. He says that
in the midst of Chaos--at the time when all was darkness and water--the
principle of life which it contained, restlessly working, but without
order, took shape in numberless monstrous formations: there were beings
like men, some winged, with two heads, some with the legs and horns of
goats, others with the hind part of horses; also bulls with human heads,
dogs with four bodies and a fish's tail, horses with the heads of dogs,
in short, every hideous and fantastical combination of animal forms,
before the Divine Will had separated them, and sorted them into harmony
and order. All these monstrous beings perished the moment Bel separated
the heavens from the earth creating light,--for they were births of
darkness and lawlessness and could not stand the new reign of light and
law and divine reason. In memory of this destruction of the old chaotic
world and production of the new, harmonious and beautiful one, the walls
of the famous temple of Bel-Mardouk at Babylon were covered with
paintings representing the infinite variety of monstrous and mixed
shapes with which an exuberant fancy had peopled the primeval chaos;
Berosus was a priest of this temple and he speaks of those paintings as
still existing. Though nothing has remained of them in the ruins of the
temple, we have representations of the same kind on many of the
cylinders which, used as seals, did duty both as personal badges--(one
is almost tempted to say "coats of arms")--and as talismans, as proved
by the fact of such cylinders being so frequently found on the wrists of
the dead in the sepulchres.
[Illustration: 63.--FEMALE WINGED FIGURES BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (From
a photograph in the British Museum.)]
8. The remarkable cylinder with the human couple and the serpent leads
us to the consideration of a most important object in the ancient
Babylonian or Chaldean religion--the Sacred Tree, the Tree of Life. That
it was a very holy symbol is clear from its being so continually
reproduced on cylinders and on sculptures. In this particular cylinder,
rude as the design is, it bears an unmistakable likeness to a real
tree--of some coniferous species, cypress or fir. But art soon took hold
of it and began to load it with symmetrical embellishments, until it
produced a tree of entirely conventional design, as shown by the
following specimens, of which the first leans more to the palm, while
the second seems rather of the coniferous type. (Figs. No. 63 and 65.)
It is probable that such artificial trees, made up of boughs--perhaps of
the palm and cypress--tied together and intertwined with ribbons
(something like our Maypoles of old), were set up in the temples as
reminders of the sacred symbol, and thus gave rise to the fixed type
which remains invariable both in such Babylonian works of art as we
possess and on the Assyrian sculptures, where the tree, or a portion of
it, appears not only in the running ornaments on the walls but on seal
cylinders and even in the embroidery on the robes of kings. In the
latter case indeed, it is almost certain, from the belief in talismans
which the Assyrians had inherited, along with the whole of their
religion from the Chaldean mother country, that this ornament was
selected not only as appropriate to the sacredness of the royal person,
but as a consecration and protection. The holiness of the symbol is
further evidenced by the kneeling posture of the animals which sometimes
accompany it (see Fig. 22, page 67), and the attitude of adoration of
the human figures, or winged spirits attending it, by the prevalence of
the sacred number seven in its component parts, and by the fact that it
is reproduced on a great many of those glazed earthenware coffins which
are so plentiful at Warka (ancient Erech). This latter fact clearly
shows that the tree-symbol not only meant life in general, life on
earth, but a hope of life eternal, beyond the grave, or why should it
have been given to the dead? These coffins at Warka belong, it is true,
to a late period, some as late as a couple of hundred years after
Christ, but the ancient traditions and their meaning had, beyond a
doubt, been preserved. Another significant detail is that the cone is
frequently seen in the hands of men or spirits, and always in a way
connected with worship or auspicious protection; sometimes it is held to
the king's nostrils by his attendant protecting spirits, (known by their
wings); a gesture of unmistakable significancy, since in ancient
languages "the breath of the nostrils" is synonymous with "the breath of
life."
[Illustration: 64.--WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith's
"Chaldea.")]
[Illustration: 65.--SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Perrot
and Chipiez.)]
9. There can be no association of ideas more natural than that of
vegetation, as represented by a tree, with life. By its perpetual growth
and development, its wealth of branches and foliage, its blossoming and
fruit-bearing, it is a noble and striking illustration of the world in
the widest sense--the Universe, the Cosmos, while the sap which courses
equally through the trunk and through the veins of the smallest leaflet,
drawn by an incomprehensible process through invisible roots from the
nourishing earth, still more forcibly suggests that mysterious
principle, Life, which we _think_ we understand because we see its
effects and feel it in ourselves, but the sources of which will never be
reached, as the problem of it will never be solved, either by the prying
of experimental science or the musings of contemplative speculation;
life eternal, also,--for the workings of nature _are_ eternal,--and the
tree that is black and lifeless to-day, we know from long experience is
not dead, but will revive in the fulness of time, and bud, and grow and
bear again. All these things _we_ know are the effects of laws; but the
ancients attributed them to living Powers,--the CHTHONIC POWERS (from
the Greek word CHTHON, "earth, soil"), which have by some later and
dreamy thinkers been called weirdly but not unaptly, "the Mothers,"
mysteriously at work in the depths of silence and darkness, unseen,
unreachable, and inexhaustibly productive. Of these powers again, what
more perfect symbol or representative than the Tree, as standing for
vegetation, one for all, the part for the whole? It lies so near that,
in later times, it was enlarged, so as to embrace the whole universe, in
the majestic conception of the Cosmic Tree which has its roots on earth
and heaven for its crown, while its fruit are the golden apples--the
stars, and Fire,--the red lightning.
[Illustration: 66.--EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith's
"Chaldea.")]
[Illustration: 67.--FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.
(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
10. All these suggestive and poetical fancies would in themselves
suffice to make the tree-symbol a favorite one among so thoughtful and
profound a people as the old Chaldeans. But there is something more. It
is intimately connected with another tradition, common, in some form or
other, to all nations who have attained a sufficiently high grade of
culture to make their mark in the world--that of an original ancestral
abode, beautiful, happy, and remote, a Paradise. It is usually imagined
as a great mountain, watered by springs which become great rivers,
bearing one or more trees of wonderful properties and sacred character,
and is considered as the principal residence of the gods. Each nation
locates it according to its own knowledge of geography and vague,
half-obliterated memories. Many texts, both in the old Accadian and the
Assyrian languages, abundantly prove that the Chaldean religion
preserved a distinct and reverent conception of such a mountain, and
placed it in the far north or north-east, calling it the "Father of
Countries," plainly an allusion to the original abode of man--the
"Mountain of Countries," (i.e., "Chief Mountain of the World") and also
ARALLU, because there, where the gods dwelt, they also imagined the
entrance to the Arali to be the Land of the Dead. There, too, the heroes
and great men were to dwell forever after their death. There is the land
with a sky of silver, a soil which produces crops without being
cultivated, where blessings are for food and rejoicing, which it is
hoped the king will obtain as a reward for his piety after having
enjoyed all earthly goods during his life.[AX] In an old Accadian hymn,
the sacred mount, which is identical with that imagined as the pillar
joining heaven and earth, the pillar around which the heavenly spheres
revolve, (see page 153)--is called "the mountain of Bel, in the east,
whose double head reaches unto the skies; which is like to a mighty
buffalo at rest, whose double horn sparkles as a sunbeam, as a star." So
vivid was the conception in the popular mind, and so great the reverence
entertained for it, that it was attempted to reproduce the type of the
holy mountain in the palaces of their kings and the temples of their
gods. That is one of the reasons why they built both on artificial
hills. There is in the British Museum a sculpture from Koyunjik,
representing such a temple, or perhaps palace, on the summit of a mound,
converted into a garden and watered by a stream which issues from the
"hanging garden" on the right, the latter being laid out on a platform
of masonry raised on arches; the water was brought up by machinery. It
is a perfect specimen of a "Paradise," as these artificial parks were
called by the Greeks, who took the word (meaning "park" or "garden")
from the Persians, who, in their turn, had borrowed the thing from the
Assyrians and Babylonians, when they conquered the latter's empire. The
_Ziggurat_, or pyramidal construction in stages, with the temple or
shrine on the top, also owed its peculiar shape to the same original
conception: as the gods dwelt on the summit of the Mountain of the
World, so their shrines should occupy a position as much like their
residence as the feeble means of man would permit. That this is no idle
fancy is proved by the very name of "Ziggurat," which means "_mountain
peak_," and also by the names of some of these temples: one of the
oldest and most famous indeed, in the city of Asshur, was named "the
House of the Mountain of Countries." An excellent representation of a
Ziggurat, as it must have looked with its surrounding palm grove by a
river, is given us on a sculptured slab, also from Koyunjik. The
original is evidently a small one, of probably five stages besides the
platform on which it is built, with its two symmetrical paths up the
ascent. Some, like the great temple at Ur, had only three stages, others
again seven--always one of the three sacred numbers: three,
corresponding to the divine Triad; five, to the five planets; seven, to
the planets, sun and moon. The famous Temple of the Seven Spheres at
Borsip (the Birs-Nimrud), often mentioned already, and rebuilt by
Nebuchadnezzar about 600 B.C. from a far older structure, as he explains
in his inscription (see p. 72), was probably the most gorgeous, as it
was the largest; besides, it is the only one of which we have detailed
and reliable descriptions and measurements, which may best be given in
this place, almost entirely in the words of George Rawlinson:[AY]
[Illustration: 68.--TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK. (British
Museum.)]
[Illustration: 69.--PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
11. The temple is raised on a platform exceptionally low--only a few
feet above the level of the plain; the entire height, including the
platform, was 156 feet in a perpendicular line. The stages--of which the
four upper were lower than the first three--receded equally on three
sides, but doubly as much on the fourth, probably in order to present a
more imposing front from the plain, and an easier ascent. "The
ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly by means of color. The seven
Stages represented the Seven Spheres, in which moved, according to
ancient Chaldean astronomy, the seven planets. To each planet fancy,
partly grounding itself upon fact, had from of old assigned a peculiar
tint or hue. The Sun (Shamash) was golden; the Moon (Sin or Nannar),
silver; the distant Saturn (Adar), almost beyond the region of light,
was black; Jupiter (Marduk) was orange; the fiery Mars (Nergal) was red;
Venus (Ishtar) was a pale yellow; Mercury (Nebo or Nabu, whose shrine
stood on the top stage), a deep blue. The seven stages of the tower gave
a visible embodiment to these fancies. The basement stage, assigned to
Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the
face of the masonry; the second stage, assigned to Jupiter, obtained the
appropriate orange color by means of a facing of burnt bricks of that
hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by the use of
half-burnt bricks formed of a bright-red clay; the fourth stage,
assigned to the Sun, appears to have been actually covered with thin
plates of gold; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale yellow
tint from the employment of bricks of that hue; the sixth, the sphere of
Mercury, was given an azure tint by vitrifaction, the whole stage having
been subjected to an intense heat after it was erected, whereby the
bricks composing it were converted into a mass of blue slag; the seventh
stage, that of the moon, was probably, like the fourth, coated with
actual plates of metal. Thus the building rose up in stripes of varied
color, arranged almost as nature's cunning hand arranges hues in the
rainbow, tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of
yellow, the yellow being followed by blue. Above this the glowing
silvery summit melted into the bright sheen of the sky.... The Tower is
to be regarded as fronting the north-east, the coolest side, and that
least exposed to the sun's rays from the time that they become
oppressive in Babylonia. On this side was the ascent, which consisted
probably of a broad staircase extending along the whole front of the
building. The side platforms, at any rate of the first and second
stages, probably of all, were occupied by a series of chambers.... In
these were doubtless lodged the priests and other attendants upon the
temple service...."
[Illustration: 70.--"ZIGGURAT" RESTORED. ACCORDING TO PROBABILITIES.
(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
12. The interest attaching to this temple, wonderful as it is in itself,
is greatly enhanced by the circumstance that its ruins have through many
centuries been considered as those of the identical Tower of Babel of
the Bible. Jewish literary men who travelled over the country in the
Middle Ages started this idea, which quickly spread to the West. It is
conjectured that it was suggested by the vitrified fragments of the
outer coating of the sixth, blue, stage, (that of Mercury or Nebo), the
condition of which was attributed to lightning having struck the
building.
[Illustration: 71.--BIRS-NIMRUD. (ANCIENT BORSIP.) (Perrot and
Chipiez.)]