pedestals to uphold shrines, but as observatories by the priestly
astronomers and astrologers, was quite in accordance with the strong
mixture of star-worship grafted on the older religion, and with the
power ascribed to the heavenly bodies over the acts and destinies of
men. These constructions, therefore, were fitted for astronomical uses
by being very carefully placed with their corners pointing exactly to
the four cardinal points--North, South, East and West. Only two
exceptions have been found to this rule, one in Babylon, and the
Assyrian Ziggurat at Kalah, (Nimrud) explored by Layard, of which the
sides, not the corners, face the cardinal points. For the Assyrians, who
carried their entire culture and religion northward from their ancient
home, also retained this consecrated form of architecture, with the
difference that with them the Ziggurats were not temple and observatory
in one, but only observatories attached to the temples, which were built
on more independent principles and a larger scale, often covering as
much ground as a palace.
14. The singular orientation of the Chaldean Ziggurats (subsequently
retained by the Assyrians),--i.e., the manner in which they are placed,
turned to the cardinal points with their angles, and not with their
faces, as are the Egyptian pyramids, with only one exception,--has long
been a puzzle which no astronomical considerations were sufficient to
solve. But quite lately, in 1883, Mr. Pinches, Geo. Smith's successor in
the British Museum, found a small tablet, giving lists of signs,
eclipses, etc., affecting the various countries, and containing the
following short geographical notice, in illustration of the position
assigned to the cardinal points: "The South is Elam, the North is Accad,
the East is Suedin and Gutium, the West is Phoenicia. On the right is
Accad, on the left is Elam, in front is Phoenicia, behind are Suedin
and Gutium." In order to appreciate the bearing of this bit of
topography on the question in hand, we must examine an ancient map, when
we shall at once perceive that the direction given by the tablet to the
_South_ (Elam) answers to our _South-East;_ that given to the _North_
(Accad) answers to our _North-West;_ while _West_ (Phoenicia, i.e.,
the coast-land of the Mediterranean, down almost to Egypt) stands for
our _South-West_, and _East_ (Gutium, the highlands where the Armenian
mountains join the Zagros, now Kurdish Mountains,) for our _North-East_.
If we turn the map so that the Persian Gulf shall come in a
perpendicular line under Babylon, we shall produce the desired effect,
and then it will strike us that the Ziggurats _did_ face the cardinal
points, according to Chaldean geography, _with their sides_, and that
the discovery of the small tablet, as was remarked on the production of
it, "settles the difficult question of the difference in orientation
between the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments." It was further suggested
that "the two systems of cardinal points originated no doubt from two
different races, and their determination was due probably _to the
geographical position of the primitive home of each race._" Now the
South-West is called "the front," "and the migrations of the people
_therefore_ must have been from North-East to South-West."[AZ] This
beautifully tallies with the hypothesis, or conjecture, concerning the
direction from which the Shumiro-Accads descended into the lowlands by
the Gulf (see pp. 146-8), and, moreover, leads us to the question
whether the fact of the great Ziggurat of the Seven Spheres at Borsip
facing the North-East with its front may not have some connection with
the holiness ascribed to that region as the original home of the race
and the seat of that sacred mountain so often mentioned as "the Great
Mountain of Countries" (see p. 280), doubly sacred, as the meeting-place
of the gods and the place of entrance to the "Arallu" or Lower
World.[BA]
15. It is to be noted that the conception of the divine grove or garden
with its sacred tree of life was sometimes separated from that of the
holy primeval mountain and transferred by tradition to a more immediate
and accessible neighborhood. That the city and district of Babylon may
have been the centre of such a tradition is possibly shown by the most
ancient Accadian name of the former--TIN-TIR-KI meaning "the Place of
Life," while the latter was called GAN-DUNYASH or KAR-DUNYASH--"the
garden of the god Dunyash," (probably one of the names of the god
Êa)--an appellation which this district, although situated in the land
of Accad or Upper Chaldea, preserved to the latest times as
distinctively its own. Another sacred grove is spoken of as situated in
Eridhu. This city, altogether the most ancient we have any mention of,
was situated at the then mouth of the Euphrates, in the deepest and
flattest of lowlands, a sort of borderland between earth and sea, and
therefore very appropriately consecrated to the great spirit of both,
the god Êa, the amphibious Oannes. It was so much identified with him,
that in the Shumirian hymns and conjurings his son Meridug is often
simply invoked as "Son of Eridhu." It must have been the oldest seat of
that spirit-worship and sorcerer-priesthood which we find crystallized
in the earliest Shumiro-Accadian sacred books. This prodigious antiquity
carries us to something like 5000 years B.C., which explains the fact
that the ruins of the place, near the modern Arab village of
Abu-Shahrein, are now so far removed from the sea, being a considerable
distance even from the junction of the two rivers where they form the
Shat-el-arab. The sacred grove of Eridhu is frequently referred to, and
that it was connected with the tradition of the tree of life we see from
a fragment of a most ancient hymn, which tells of "a black pine, growing
at Eridhu, sprung up in a pure place, with roots of lustrous crystal
extending downwards, even into the deep, marking the centre of the
earth, in the dark forest into the heart whereof man hath not
penetrated." Might not this be the reason why the wood of the pine was
so much used in charms and conjuring, as the surest safeguard against
evil influences, and its very shadow was held wholesome and sacred? But
we return to the legends of the Creation and primeval world.
[Illustration: 72.--BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON--TIAMAT (ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.)
(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
16. Mummu-Tiamat, the impersonation of chaos, the power of darkness and
lawlessness, does not vanish from the scene when Bel puts an end to her
reign, destroys, by the sheer force of light and order, her hideous
progeny of monsters and frees from her confusion the germs and
rudimental forms of life, which, under the new and divine dispensation,
are to expand and combine into the beautifully varied, yet harmonious
world we live in. Tiamat becomes the sworn enemy of the gods and their
creation, the great principle of opposition and destruction. When the
missing texts come to light,--if ever they do--it will probably be found
that the serpent who tempts the woman in the famous cylinder, is none
other than a form of the rebellious and vindictive Tiamat, who is called
now a "Dragon," now "the Great Serpent." At last the hostility cannot be
ignored, and things come to a deadly issue. It is determined in the
council of the gods that one of them must fight the wicked dragon; a
complete suit of armor is made and exhibited by Anu himself, of which
the sickle-shaped sword and the beautifully bent bow are the principal
features. It is Bel who dares the venture and goes forth on a matchless
war chariot, armed with the sword, and the bow, and his great weapon,
the thunderbolt, sending the lightning before him and scattering arrows
around. Tiamat, the Dragon of the Sea, came out to meet him, stretching
her immense body along, bearing death and destruction, and attended by
her followers. The god rushed on the monster with such violence that he
threw her down and was already fastening fetters on her limbs, when she
uttered a great shout and started up and attacked the righteous leader
of the gods, while banners were raised on both sides as at a pitched
battle. Meridug drew his sword and wounded her; at the same time a
violent wind struck against her face. She opened her jaws to swallow up
Meridug, but before she could close them he bade the wind to enter into
her body. It entered and filled her with its violence, shook her heart
and tore her entrails and subdued her courage. Then the god bound her,
and put an end to her works, while her followers stood amazed, then
broke their lines and fled, full of fear, seeing that Tiamat, their
leader, was conquered. There she lay, her weapons broken, herself like a
sword thrown down on the ground, in the dark and bound, conscious of her
bondage and in great grief, her might suddenly broken by fear.
[Illustration: 73.--BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON--TIAMAT (BABYLONIAN
CYLINDER).]
17. The battle of Bel-Marduk and the Dragon was a favorite incident in
the cycle of Chaldean tradition, if we judge from the number of
representations we have of it on Babylonian cylinders, and even on
Assyrian wall-sculptures. The texts which relate to it are, however, in
a frightful state of mutilation, and only the last fragment, describing
the final combat, can be read and translated with anything like
completeness. With it ends the series treating of the Cosmogony or
Beginnings of the World. But it may be completed by a few more legends
of the same primitive character and preserved on detached tablets, in
double text, as usual--Accadian and Assyrian. To these belongs a poem
narrating the rebellion, already alluded to, (see p. 182,) of the seven
evil spirits, originally the messengers and throne-bearers of the gods,
and their war against the moon, the whole being evidently a fanciful
rendering of an eclipse. "Those wicked gods, the rebel spirits," of
whom one is likened to a leopard, and one to a serpent, and the rest to
other animals--suggesting the fanciful shapes of storm-clouds--while one
is said to be the raging south wind, began the attack "with evil
tempest, baleful wind," and "from the foundations of the heavens like
the lightning they darted." The lower region of the sky was reduced to
its primeval chaos, and the gods sat in anxious council. The moon-god
(Sin), the sun-god (Shamash), and the goddess Ishtar had been appointed
to sway in close harmony the lower sky and to command the hosts of
heaven; but when the moon-god was attacked by the seven spirits of evil,
his companions basely forsook him, the sun-god retreating to his place
and Ishtar taking refuge in the highest heaven (the heaven of Anu). Nebo
is despatched to Êa, who sends his son Meridug with this
instruction:--"Go, my son Meridug! The light of the sky, my son, even
the moon-god, is grievously darkened in heaven, and in eclipse from
heaven is vanishing. Those seven wicked gods, the serpents of death who
fear not, are waging unequal war with the laboring moon." Meridug obeys
his father's bidding, and overthrows the seven powers of darkness.[BB]
[Illustration: 74.--BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND THE DRAGON (TIAMAT). (Smith's
"Chaldea.")]
18. There is one more detached legend known from the surviving fragments
of Berosus, also supposed to be derived from ancient Accadian texts: it
is that of the great tower and the confusion of tongues. One such text
has indeed been found by the indefatigable George Smith, but there is
just enough left of it to be very tantalizing and very unsatisfactory.
The narrative in Berosus amounts to this: that men having grown beyond
measure proud and arrogant, so as to deem themselves superior even to
the gods, undertook to build an immense tower, to scale the sky; that
the gods, offended with this presumption, sent violent winds to
overthrow the construction when it had already reached a great height,
and at the same time caused men to speak different languages,--probably
to sow dissension among them, and prevent their ever again uniting in a
common enterprise so daring and impious. The site was identified with
that of Babylon itself, and so strong was the belief attaching to the
legend that the Jews later on adopted it unchanged, and centuries
afterwards, as we saw above, fixed on the ruins of the hugest of all
Ziggurats, that of Borsip, as those of the great Tower of the Confusion
of Tongues. Certain it is, that the tradition, under all its fanciful
apparel, contains a very evident vein of historical fact, since it was
indeed from the plains of Chaldea that many of the principal nations of
the ancient East, various in race and speech, dispersed to the north,
the west, and the south, after having dwelt there for centuries as in a
common cradle, side by side, and indeed to a great extent as one
people.
FOOTNOTES:
[AW] See Fr. Lenormant, "Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldäer," p.
377.
[AX] François Lenormant, "Origines de l'Histoire," Vol. II., p. 130.
[AY] "Five Monarchies," Vol. III., pp. 380-387.
[AZ] See "Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology," Feb.,
1883, pp. 74-76, and "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," Vol. XVI.,
1884, p. 302.
[BA] The one exception to the above rule of orientation among the
Ziggurats of Chaldea is that of the temple of Bel, in Babylon,
(E-SAGGILA in the old language,) which is oriented in the usual way--its
sides facing the _real_ North, South, East and West.
[BB] See A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 35.
VII.
MYTHS.--HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS.
1. The stories by which a nation attempts to account for the mysteries
of creation, to explain the Origin of the World, are called, in
scientific language, COSMOGONIC MYTHS. The word Myth is constantly used
in conversation, but so loosely and incorrectly, that it is most
important once for all to define its proper meaning. It means simply _a
phenomenon of nature presented not as the result of a law but as the act
of divine or at least superhuman persons, good or evil powers_--(for
instance, the eclipse of the Moon described as the war against the gods
of the seven rebellious spirits). Further reading and practice will show
that there are many kinds of myths, of various origins; but there is
none, which, if properly taken to pieces, thoroughly traced and
cornered, will not be covered by this definition. A Myth has also been
defined as a legend connected more or less closely with some religious
belief, and, in its main outlines, handed down from prehistoric times.
There are only two things which can prevent the contemplation of nature
and speculation on its mysteries from running into mythology: a
knowledge of the physical laws of nature, as supplied by modern
experimental science, and a strict, unswerving belief in the unity of
God, absolute and undivided, as affirmed and defined by the Hebrews in
so many places of their sacred books: "The Lord he is God, there is none
else beside him." "The Lord he is God, in Heaven above and upon the
earth beneath there is none else." "I am the Lord, and there is none
else, there is no God beside me." "I am God and there is none else." But
experimental science is a very modern thing indeed, scarcely a few
hundred years old, and Monotheism, until the propagation of
Christianity, was professed by only one small nation, the Jews, though
the chosen thinkers of other nations have risen to the same conception
in many lands and many ages. The great mass of mankind has always
believed in the personal individuality of all the forces of nature,
i.e., in many gods; everything that went on in the world was to them the
manifestation of the feelings, the will, the acts of these gods--hence
the myths. The earlier the times, the more unquestioning the belief and,
as a necessary consequence, the more exuberant the creation of myths.
2. But gods and spirits are not the only actors in myths. Side by side
with its sacred traditions on the Origin of things, every nation
treasures fond but vague memories of its own beginnings--vague, both
from their remoteness and from their not being fixed in writing, and
being therefore liable to the alterations and enlargements which a story
invariably undergoes when told many times to and by different people,
i.e., when it is transmitted from generation to generation by oral
tradition. These memories generally centre around a few great names, the
names of the oldest national heroes, of the first rulers, lawgivers and
conquerors of the nation, the men who by their genius _made_ it a nation
out of a loose collection of tribes or large families, who gave it
social order and useful arts, and safety from its neighbors, or,
perhaps, freed it from foreign oppressors. In their grateful admiration
for these heroes, whose doings naturally became more and more marvellous
with each generation that told of them, men could not believe that they
should have been mere imperfect mortals like themselves, but insisted on
considering them as directly inspired by the deity in some one of the
thousand shapes they invested it with, or as half-divine of their own
nature. The consciousness of the imperfection inherent to ordinary
humanity, and the limited powers awarded to it, has always prompted this
explanation of the achievements of extraordinarily gifted individuals,
in whatever line of action their exceptional gifts displayed themselves.
Besides, if there is something repugnant to human vanity in having to
submit to the dictates of superior reason and the rule of superior power
as embodied in mere men of flesh and blood, there is on the contrary
something very flattering and soothing to that same vanity in the idea
of having been specially singled out as the object of the protection and
solicitude of the divine powers; this idea at all events takes the
galling sting from the constraint of obedience. Hence every nation has
very jealously insisted on and devoutly believed in the divine origin of
its rulers and the divine institution of its laws and customs. Once it
was implicitly admitted that the world teemed with spirits and gods,
who, not content with attending to their particular spheres and
departments, came and went at their pleasure, had walked the earth and
directly interfered with human affairs, there was no reason to
disbelieve _any_ occurrence, however marvellous--provided it had
happened very, very long ago. (See p. 197.)
3. Thus, in the traditions of every ancient nation, there is a vast and
misty tract of time, expressed, if at all, in figures of appalling
magnitude--hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of years--between the
unpierceable gloom of an eternal past and the broad daylight of
remembered, recorded history. There, all is shadowy, gigantic,
superhuman. There, gods move, dim yet visible, shrouded in a golden
cloud of mystery and awe; there, by their side, loom other shapes, as
dim but more familiar, human yet more than human--the Heroes, Fathers of
races, founders of nations, the companions, the beloved of gods and
goddesses, nay, their own children, mortal themselves, yet doing deeds
of daring and might such as only the immortals could inspire and favor,
the connecting link between these and ordinary humanity--as that
gloaming, uncertain, shifting, but not altogether unreal streak of time
is the borderland between Heaven and Earth, the very hot-bed of myth,
fiction and romance. For of their favorite heroes, people began to tell
the same stories as of their gods, in modified forms, transferred to
their own surroundings and familiar scenes. To take one of the most
common transformations: if the Sun-god waged war against the demons of
darkness and destroyed them in heaven (see p. 171), the hero hunted wild
beasts and monsters on earth, of course always victoriously. This one
theme could be varied by the national poets in a thousand ways and woven
into a thousand different stories, which come with full right under the
head of "myths." Thus arose a number of so-called HEROIC MYTHS, which,
by dint of being repeated, settled into a certain defined traditional
shape, like the well-known fairy-tales of our nurseries, which are the
same everywhere and told in every country with scarcely any changes. As
soon as the art of writing came into general use, these favorite and
time-honored stories, which the mass of the people probably still
received as literal truth, were taken down, and, as the work naturally
devolved on priests and clerks, i.e., men of education and more or less
literary skill, often themselves poets, they were worked over in the
process, connected, and remodelled into a continuous whole. The separate
myths, or adventures of one or more particular heroes, formerly recited
severally, somewhat after the manner of the old songs and ballads,
frequently became so many chapters or books in a long, well-ordered
poem, in which they were introduced and distributed, often with
consummate art, and told with great poetical beauty. Such poems, of
which several have come down to us, are called EPIC POEMS, or simply
EPICS. The entire mass of fragmentary materials out of which they are
composed in the course of time, blending almost inextricably historical
reality with mythical fiction, is the NATIONAL EPOS of a race, its
greatest intellectual treasure, from which all its late poetry and much
of its political and religious feeling draws its food ever after. A race
that has no national epos is one devoid of great memories, incapable of
high culture and political development, and no such has taken a place
among the leading races of the world. All those that have occupied such
a place at any period of the world's history, have had their Mythic and
Heroic Ages, brimful of wonders and fanciful creations.
4. From these remarks it will be clear that the preceding two or three
chapters have been treating of what may properly be called the Religious
and Cosmogonic Myths of the Shumiro-Accads and the Babylonians. The
present chapter will be devoted to their Heroic Myths or Mythic Epos, as
embodied in an Epic which has been in great part preserved, and which is
the oldest known in the world, dating certainly from 2000 years B.C.,
and probably more.