WAR IN HEAVEN.
The 'Other'--Tiamat, Bohu, 'the Deep'--Ra and Apophis--Hathors--
Bel's combat--Revolt in Heaven--Lilith--Myth of the Devil at the
creation of Light.
In none of the ancient scriptures do we get back to any theory or
explanation of the origin of evil or of the enemies of the gods. In
a Persian text at Persepolis, of Darius I., Ahriman is called with
simplicity 'the Other' (Aniya), and 'the Hater' (Duvaisañt, Zend
thaisat), and that is about as much as we are really told about the
devils of any race. Their existence is taken for granted. The legends
of rebellion in heaven and of angels cast down and transformed to
devils may supply an easy explanation to our modern theologians, but
when we trace them to their origin we discover that to the ancients
they had no such significance. The angels were cast down to Pits
prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and before it, and
when they fell it was into the hands of already existing enemies eager
to torment them. Nevertheless these accounts of rebellious spirits
in heaven are of great importance and merit our careful consideration.
It is remarkable that the Bible opens with an intimation of the
existence of this 'Other.' Its second verse speaks of a certain
'darkness upon the face of the deep.' The word used here is Bohu,
which is identified as the Assyrian Bahu, the Queen of Hades. In the
inscription of Shalmaneser the word is used for 'abyss of chaos.' [47]
Bahu is otherwise Gula, a form of Ishtar or Allat, 'Lady of the House
of Death,' and an epithet of the same female demon is Nin-cigal,
'Lady of the Mighty Earth.' The story of the Descent of Ishtar into
Hades, the realm of Nin-cigal, has already been told (p. 77); in
that version Ishtar is the same as Astarte, the Assyrian Venus. But
like the moon with which she was associated she waned and declined,
and the beautiful legend of her descent (like Persephone) into Hades
seems to have found a variant in the myth of Bel and the Dragon. There
she is a sea-monster and is called Tiamat (Thalatth of Berosus),--that
is, 'the Deep,' over which rests the darkness described in Genesis
i. 2. The process by which the moon would share the evil repute of
Tiamat is obvious. In the Babylonian belief the dry land rested upon
the abyss of watery chaos from which it was drawn. This underworld
ocean was shut in by gates. They were opened when the moon was created
to rule the night--therefore Prince of Darkness. The formation by Anu
of this Moon-god (Uru) from Tiamat, might even have been suggested
by the rising of the tides under his sway. The Babylonians represent
the Moon as having been created before the Sun, and he emerged from
'a boiling' in the abyss. 'At the beginning of the month, at the rising
of the night, his horns are breaking through to shine on heaven.' [48]
In the one Babylonian design, a seal in the British Museum, [49] which
seems referable to the legend of the Fall of Man, the male figure
has horns. It may have been that this male Moon (Uru) was supposed
to have been corrupted by some female emanation of Tiamat, and to
have fallen from a 'ruler of the night' to an ally of the night. This
female corrupter, who would correspond to Eve, might in this way have
become mistress of the Moon, and ultimately identified with it.
Although the cause of the original conflict between the Abyss
beneath and the Heaven above is left by ancient inscriptions and
scriptures to imagination, it is not a very strained hypothesis that
ancient Chaos regarded the upper gods as aggressors on her domain
in the work of creation. 'When above,' runs the Babylonian legend,
'were not raised the heavens, and below on the earth a plant had not
grown ... the chaos (or water) Tiamat was the producing mother of the
whole of them.' 'The gods had not sprung up, any one of them.' [50]
Indeed in the legend of the conflict between Bel and the Dragon,
on the Babylonian cylinders, it appears that the god Sar addressed
her as wife, and said, 'The tribute to thy maternity shall be forced
upon them by thy weapons.' [51] The Sun and Moon would naturally be
drawn into any contest between Overworld (with Light) and Underworld
(with Darkness).
Though Tiamat is called a Dragon, she was pictured by the Babylonians
only as a monstrous Griffin. In the Assyrian account of the fight
it will be seen that she is called a 'Serpent.' The link between
the two--Griffin and Serpent--will be found, I suspect, in Typhonic
influence on the fable. In a hymn to Amen-Ra (the Sun), copied about
fourteenth century b.c. from an earlier composition, as its translator,
Mr. Goodwin, supposes, we have the following:--
The gods rejoice in his goodness who exalts those who are lowly:
Lord of the boat and barge,
They conduct thee through the firmament in peace.
Thy servants rejoice:
Beholding the overthrow of the wicked:
His limbs pierced with the sword:
Fire consumes him:
His soul and body are annihilated.
Naka (the serpent) saves his feet:
The gods rejoice:
The servants of the Sun are in peace.
The allusion in the second line indicates that this hymn relates to
the navigation of Ra through Hades, and the destruction of Apophis.
We may read next the Accadian tablet (p. 256) which speaks of the
seven Hathors as neither male nor female, and as born in 'the Deep.'
Another Accadian tablet, translated by Mr. Sayce, speaks of these
as the 'baleful seven destroyers;' as 'born in the mountain of the
sunset;' as being Incubi. It is significantly said:--'Among the
stars of heaven their watch they kept not, in watching was their
office.' Here is a primæval note of treachery. [52]
We next come to a further phase, represented in a Cuneiform tablet,
which must be quoted at length:--
Days of storm, Powers of Evil,
Rebellious spirits, who were born in the lower part of heaven,
They were workers of calamity.
(The lines giving the names and descriptions of the spirits are
here broken.)
The third was like a leopard,
The fourth was like a snake ...
The fifth was like a dog ...
The sixth was an enemy to heaven and its king.
The seventh was a destructive tempest.
These seven are the messengers of Anu [53] their king.
From place to place by turns they pass.
They are the dark storms in heaven, which into fire unite
themselves.
They are the destructive tempests, which on a fine day sudden
darkness cause.
With storms and meteors they rush.
Their rage ignites the thunderbolts of Im. [54]
From the right hand of the Thunderer they dart forth.
On the horizon of heaven like lightning they ...
Against high heaven, the dwelling-place of Anu the king, they
plotted evil, and had none to withstand them.
When Bel heard this news, he communed secretly with his own heart.
Then he took counsel with Hea the great Inventor (or Sage) of the
gods.
And they stationed the Moon, the Sun, and Ishtar to keep guard over
the approach to heaven.
Unto Anu, ruler of heaven, they told it.
And those three gods, his children,
To watch night and day unceasingly he commanded them.
When those seven evil spirits rushed upon the base of heaven,
And close in front of the Moon with fiery weapons advanced,
Then the noble Sun and Im the warrior side by side stood firm.
But Ishtar, with Anu the king, entered the exalted dwelling, and
hid themselves in the summit of heaven.
Column II.
Those evil spirits, the messengers of Anu their king ...
They have plotted evil ...
From mid-heaven like meteors they have rushed upon the earth.
Bel, who the noble Moon in eclipse
Saw from heaven,
Called aloud to Paku his messenger:
O my messenger Paku, carry my words to the Deep. [55]
Tell my son that the Moon in heaven is terribly eclipsed!
To Hea in the Deep repeat this!
Paku understood the words of his Lord.
Unto Hea in the Deep swiftly he went.
To the Lord, the great Inventor, the god Nukimmut,
Paku repeated the words of his Lord.
When Hea in the Deep heard these words,
He bit his lips, and tears bedewed his face.
Then he sent for his son Marduk to help him.
Go to my son Marduk,
Tell my son that the Moon in heaven is terribly eclipsed!
That eclipse has been seen in heaven!
They are seven, those evil spirits, and death they fear not!
They are seven, those evil spirits, who rush like a hurricane,
And fall like firebrands on the earth!
In front of the bright Moon with fiery weapons (they draw nigh);
But the noble Sun and Im the warrior (are withstanding them).
[The rest of the legend is lost.]
Nukimmut is a name of Hea which occurs frequently: he was the good
genius of the earth, and his son Marduk was his incarnation--a Herakles
or Saviour. It will be noted that as yet Ishtar is in heaven. The
next Tablet, which shows the development of the myth, introduces us
to the great female dragon Tiamat herself, and her destroyer Bel.
... And with it his right hand he armed.
His naming sword he raised in his hand.
He brandished his lightnings before him.
A curved scymitar he carried on his body.
And he made a sword to destroy the Dragon,
Which turned four ways; so that none could avoid its rapid blows.
It turned to the south, to the north, to the east, and to the west.
Near to his sabre he placed the bow of his father Anu.
He made a whirling thunderbolt, and a bolt with double flames,
impossible to extinguish.
And a quadruple bolt, and a septuple bolt, and a ... bolt of
crooked fire.
He took the thunderbolts which he had made, and there were seven
of them,
To be shot at the Dragon, and he put them into his quiver behind
him.
Then he raised his great sword, whose name was 'Lord of the Storm.'
He mounted his chariot, whose name was 'Destroyer of the Impious.'
He took his place, and lifted the four reins
In his hand.
[Bel now offers to the Dragon to decide their quarrel by single combat,
which the Dragon accepts. This agrees with the representations of
the combat on Babylonian cylinders in Mr. Smith's 'Chaldean Genesis,'
p. 62, etc.]
(Why seekest thou thus) to irritate me with blasphemies?
Let thy army withdraw: let thy chiefs stand aside:
Then I and thou (alone) we will do battle.
When the Dragon heard this.
Stand back! she said, and repeated her command.
Then the tempter rose watchfully on high.
Turning and twisting, she shifted her standing point,
She watched his lightnings, she provided for retreat.
The warrior angels sheathed their swords.
Then the Dragon attacked the just Prince of the gods.
Strongly they joined in the trial of battle,
The King drew his sword, and dealt rapid blows,
Then he took his whirling thunderbolt, and looked well behind
and before him:
And when the Dragon opened her mouth to swallow him,
He flung the bolt into her, before she could shut her lips.
The blazing lightning poured into her inside.
He pulled out her heart; her mouth he rent open;
He drew his (falchion), and cut open her belly.
He cut into her inside and extracted her heart;
He took vengeance on her, and destroyed her life.
When he knew she was dead he boasted over her.
After that the Dragon their leader was slain,
Her troops took to flight: her army was scattered abroad,
And the angels her allies, who had come to help her,
Retreated, grew quiet, and went away.
They fled from thence, fearing for their own lives,
And saved themselves, flying to places beyond pursuit.
He followed them, their weapons he broke up.
Broken they lay, and in great heaps they were captured.
A crowd of followers, full of astonishment,
Its remains lifted up, and on their shoulders hoisted.
And the eleven tribes pouring in after the battle
In great multitudes, coming to see,
Gazed at the monstrous serpent....
In the fragment just quoted we have the 'flaming sword which turned
every way' (Gen. iii. 24). The seven distinct forms of evil are but
faintly remembered in the seven thunderbolts taken by Bel: they are
now all virtually gathered into the one form he combats, and are
thus on their way to form the seven-headed dragon of the Apocalypse,
where Michael replaces Bel. [56] 'The angels, her allies who had come
to help her,' are surely that 'third part of the stars of heaven'
which the apocalyptic dragon's tail drew to the earth in its fall
(Rev. xii. 4). Bel's dragon is also called a 'Tempter.'
At length we reach the brief but clear account of the 'Revolt in
Heaven' found in a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, and
translated by Mr. Fox Talbot: [57]--
The Divine Being spoke three times, the commencement of a psalm.
The god of holy songs, Lord of religion and worship
seated a thousand singers and musicians: and established a choral
band who to his hymn were to respond in multitudes....
With a loud cry of contempt they broke up his holy song
spoiling, confusing, confounding his hymn of praise.
The god of the bright crown with a wish to summon his
adherents sounded a trumpet blast which would wake the dead,
which to those rebel angels prohibited return
he stopped their service, and sent them to the gods who were his
enemies.
In their room he created mankind.
The first who received life, dwelt along with him.
May he give them strength never to neglect his word,
following the serpent's voice, whom his hands had made.
And may the god of divine speech expel from his five thousand
that wicked thousand
who in the midst of his heavenly song had shouted evil blasphemies!
It will be observed that there were already hostile gods to whom
these riotous angels were sent. It is clear that in both the Egyptian
and Assyrian cosmogonies the upper gods had in their employ many
ferocious monsters. Thus in the Book of Hades, Horus addresses a
terrible serpent: 'My Kheti, great fire, of which this flame in
my eye is the emission, and of which my children guard the folds,
open thy mouth, draw wide thy jaws, launch thy flame against the
enemies of my father, burn their bodies, consume their souls!' [58]
Many such instances could be quoted. In this same book we find a great
serpent, Saa-Set, 'Guardian of the Earth.' Each of the twelve pylons
of Hades is surmounted by its serpent-guards--except one. What has
become of that one? In the last inscription but one, quoted in full,
it will be observed (third line from the last) that eleven (angel)
tribes came in after Bel's battle to inspect the slain dragon. The
twelfth had revolted. These, we may suppose, had listened to 'the
serpent's voice' mentioned in the last fragment quoted.
We have thus distributed through these fragments all the elements
which, from Egyptian and Assyrian sources gathered around the legend
of the Serpent in Eden. The Tree of Knowledge and that of Life are
not included, and I have given elsewhere my reasons for believing
these to be importations from the ancient Aryan legend of the war
between the Devas and Asuras for the immortalising Amrita.
In the last fragment quoted we have also a notable statement, that
mankind were created to fill the places that had been occupied by the
fallen angels. It is probable that this notion supplied the basis
of a class of legends of which Lilith is type. She whose place Eve
was created to fill was a serpent-woman, and the earliest mention
of her is in the exorcism already quoted, found at Nineveh. In all
probability she is but another form of Gula, the fallen Istar and
Queen of Hades; in which case her conspiracy with the serpent Samaël
would be the Darkness which was upon the face of Bahu, 'the Deep,'
in the second verse of the Bible.
The Bible opens with the scene of the gods conquering the Dragon of
Darkness with Light. There is a rabbinical legend, that when Light
issued from under the throne of God, the Prince of Darkness asked the
Creator wherefore he had brought Light into existence? God answered
that it was in order that he might be driven back to his abode of
darkness. The evil one asked that he might see that; and entering
the stream of Light, he saw across time and the world, and beheld the
face of the Messiah. Then he fell upon his face and cried, 'This is
he who shall lay low in ruin me and all the inhabitants of hell!'
What the Prince of Darkness saw was the vision of a race: beginning
with the words (Gen. i. 3, 4), 'God said, Let there be Light; and
there was Light; and God saw the Light that it was good; and God
divided between the Light and the Darkness;' ending with Rev. xx. 1,
2, 'And I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the
bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on
the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound
him a thousand years.'