The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Part 18

Nevertheless this human G.o.d was recognised as one with the sun-G.o.d. Or rather, perhaps, the sun was regarded as his visible manifestation, the mark or symbol under which he displayed himself. a.s.sur was thus essentially a Semitic Baal, but a warlike Baal, who was the G.o.d of a nation and not of a particular place.

Where the nation and its army were, accordingly, their G.o.d was as well.

And when a.s.syria claimed to rule the whole civilised world, the power and authority of its G.o.d became world-wide. It was in his name that the a.s.syrian troops went forth to fight, and it was "through trust in" him that they gained their victories. Those who resisted them were his enemies, those who submitted were incorporated into his empire, and became his subjects and wors.h.i.+ppers. All other G.o.ds had to yield to him; he was not only paramount over them, but to wors.h.i.+p them instead of him was an act of impiety. The sacrifice might continue to be made to them and the prayer offered, but it was on condition that the first-fruits of both sacrifice and prayer were given to a.s.sur.

This, however, was not all. a.s.sur was not only jealous of other G.o.ds, there was no G.o.ddess who could share with him his power. In the eyes of the a.s.syrian people he was wifeless, like Yahveh of Israel or Chemosh of Moab. It is true that some a.s.syriologists, with more zeal than knowledge, have found for him a wife, but they are not agreed as to who she was.

Sometimes we have been told it was Serua, sometimes Istar, sometimes Belit. The very fact that such a difference of opinion exists is sufficient to condemn the whole supposition. It is based on the pedantry of certain of the a.s.syrian scribes, who, educated in the literature and religion of Babylonia, were naturally anxious to fit their national G.o.d into the Babylonian system of theology. The G.o.ds of Babylonia had each his wife; they were each the head of a divine family, and consequently the chief G.o.d of a.s.syria must be the same. But it was difficult to find for him a female consort. Once or twice the help of the grammar is invoked, and the feminine a.s.surit is made to take her place by the side of a.s.sur.

But she was too evidently an artificial creation, and accordingly Belit was borrowed from Bel-Merodach, or Nin-lil from Bel of Nippur, and boldly claimed as the wife of a.s.sur. But this too was acceptable neither to Babylonians nor to a.s.syrians, and, as a last resource, Istar, the virgin G.o.ddess, was transformed into a married wife. It might have been thought that the idea, once started, would have met with ready acceptance; for Istar was the G.o.ddess of Nineveh, as a.s.sur was of the older capital which was superseded by Nineveh in the later days of the a.s.syrian empire. That it did not do so is a proof how firmly rooted was the wifelessness of a.s.sur in the a.s.syrian mind; he was no Babylonian Bel who needed a helpmeet, but a warrior's G.o.d, who entered the battle wifeless and alone.

I can but repeat again of him what I said years ago in my Hibbert Lectures: "a.s.sur consequently differs from the Babylonian G.o.ds, not only in the less narrowly local character that belongs to him, but also in his solitary nature. He is 'king of all the G.o.ds' in a sense in which none of the deities of Babylonia were. He is like the king of a.s.syria himself, brooking no rival, allowing neither wife nor son to share in the honours which he claims for himself alone. He is essentially a jealous G.o.d, and as such sends forth his a.s.syrian adorers to destroy his unbelieving foes.

Wifeless, childless, he is mightier than the Babylonian Baalim; less kindly, perhaps, less near to his wors.h.i.+ppers than they were, but more awe-inspiring and more powerful. We can, in fact, trace in him all the lineaments upon which, under other conditions, there might have been built up as pure a faith as that of the G.o.d of Israel." That none such was ever built, may be accepted as a sign and token that between the Semites of a.s.syria and those of Israel there lay a difference which no theories of evolution are able to explain.

Lecture VI. Cosmologies.

Man was made in the likeness of the G.o.ds, and, conversely, the G.o.ds are in the likeness of man. This belief lies at the root of the theology of Semitic Babylonia, and characterises its conception of divinity. It follows from it that the world which we see has come into existence like the successive generations of mankind or the products of human art. It has either been begotten by the creator, or it has been formed out of pre-existing materials. It did not come into being of itself; it is no fortuitous concurrence of atoms; no self-evolved product out of nothing, or the result of continuous development and evolution. The doctrines of spontaneous generation and of development are alike foreign to Babylonian religious thought. That demanded a creator who was human in his attributes and mode of work, who could even make mistakes and experiments, and so call into existence imperfect or monstrous forms which further experience was needed to rectify. There was an earlier as well as a later creation, the unshapely brood of chaos as well as the more perfect creations of the G.o.ds of light.

As we have seen, the culture of primitive Babylonia radiated from two main centres, the sanctuary of Nippur in the north, and the seaport of Eridu in the south. The one was inland, the other maritime; and what I may term the geographical setting of the two streams of culture varied accordingly. The great temple of Nippur was known as e-kur, "the house of the mountain-land"; it was a model of the earth, which those who built it believed to be similarly shaped, and to have the form of a mountain whose peak penetrated the clouds. Its supreme G.o.d was the lord of the nether earth, his subjects were the demons of the underworld, and the theology of his priests was a.s.sociated with sorcery and witchcraft, and with invocations to the spirits who ruled over the world of the dead.

Eridu, on the contrary, was the dwelling-place of the G.o.d of the deep. Its temple, e-Saggila, "the house of the high head," was, we are told, "in the midst" of the encircling ocean on which the whole earth rested, and in it was the home of Ea, "the lord of the holy mound."(291) Its G.o.d was the author of Babylonian writing and civilisation, and his son and interpreter was A?ari, "the benefactor of man." While the theology of Nippur concerned itself with the dead, that of Eridu was pre-eminently occupied with the living. Asari is invoked as the G.o.d who raised the dead to life, and the arts which make life pleasant were the gifts of Ea himself. It is perhaps not without reason that, while En-lil of Nippur appears as the destroyer of mankind, Ea is their creator and instructor. He not only created them, but he taught them how to live, and provided for them the spells and remedies which could heal the sick and ward off death.

Like Khnum of Egypt, he was called "the potter," for he had moulded mankind from the clay which his waters formed on the sh.o.r.es of the Persian Gulf.(292) Nor was it mankind only that was thus made. The whole world of created things had been similarly moulded; the earth and all that dwelt upon it had risen out of the sea. The cosmology of Eridu thus made water the origin of all things; the world we inhabit has sprung from the deep, which still encircles it like a serpent with its coils.

But the deep over which the creator-G.o.d presided was a deep which formed part of that orderly framework of nature wherein the G.o.ds of light bear rule, and which obeys laws that may not be broken. It is not the deep where the spirit of chaos held sway, and of which she was an impersonation; that was a deep without limits or law, whose only progeny was a brood of monsters. Between the deep of Ea and the chaos of Tiamat the cosmology of historical Babylonia drew a sharp line of distinction; the one excluded the other, and it was not until the deep of Tiamat had been, as it were, overcome and placed within bounds, that the deep wherein Ea dwelt was able to take its place.

The two conceptions are antagonistic one to the other, and can hardly be explained, except on the supposition that they belong to two different schools of thought. The brood of Tiamat, it must be remembered, were once the subjects of En-lil of Nippur, and the Anunna-ki, or "spirits of the earth," though they became the orderly ministers of the G.o.ds of light, nevertheless continued to have their dwelling-place in the underground world, and to serve its mistress Allat. The motley host that followed Tiamat in her contest with Bel-Merodach were essentially the ghosts and goblins of the theology of Nippur; and it is with the latter, therefore, that we must a.s.sociate the theory of the divine world with which they are connected. The world of Nippur was a world from which the sea was excluded; it was a world of plain and mountain, and of the hollow depths which lay beneath the surface of the earth. The cosmology of Nippur would naturally concern itself with the land rather than with the sea; the earth and not the water would have been the first in order of existence, and habitation of the G.o.ds would be sought on the summit of a Mount Olympus rather than in the depths of an encircling ocean.(293)

In the chaos of Tiamat, accordingly, I see the last relics of a cosmology which emanated from Nippur, and was accepted wherever the influence of Nippur prevailed. It has been modified by the cosmological ideas of Eridu; and in the story of the struggle between Tiamat and Merodach an attempt has been made to harmonise the two conflicting conceptions of the universe, and to weld them into a compact whole. The world of Tiamat has first been transformed into a watery abyss like that which the theologians of Eridu believed to be the origin of the universe, and then has been absorbed by the deep over which Ea held sway. The creator Ea has taken the place of the spirit of destruction, the culture-G.o.d of the dragon of darkness.

But a curious legend, which has been much misunderstood, still preserves traces of the old cosmology of the great sanctuary of Northern Babylonia.

It describes the war made against a king of Babylonia by the powers of darkness, the gnome-like beings who dwelt "in the ground," where Tiamat had suckled them, and where they had multiplied in the cavernous depths of a mountain land. They were, we are told, composite monsters, "warriors with the bodies of birds, men with the faces of ravens," over whom ruled a king and his wife and their seven sons.(294) Year after year the war continued, and, in spite of charms and incantations, host after host sent forth from Akkad was annihilated by the unclean and superhuman enemy. The Babylonian king was in despair; in vain he appealed to the G.o.ds, and declared how "terror and night, death and plague, earthquake, fear and horror, hunger, famine, and destruction," had come upon his unfortunate people. "The plain of Akkad" seemed about to become the prey of the demons of the night. How it was rescued from the danger that threatened it we do not know; the story is unfortunately broken, and the end of it has not been found. But the origin and character of the superhuman enemy is not difficult to discover; their dwelling-place is in the tomb-like recesses of the mountains, their mother was Tiamat herself, and they have the monstrous shapes of the ghosts and spirits of the ancient animism of Nippur.(295)

The legend was fitly preserved in the sanctuary of Nergal, the G.o.d of the dead, at Kutha. It too has undergone the harmonising process of later times: the cosmologies of Nippur and Eridu are again set in antagonism, one against the other, and there is a first creation as well as a second engaged in the same struggle as that which under a different form is described in the legends of Eridu and Babylon. But the antagonists in it are alike the inhabitants of the dry land; there is no watery abyss from which they have sprung, whether it be the chaotic deep of Tiamat or the ocean home of the G.o.d of culture. The conceptions on which it rests belong to the inland plain of Babylonia rather than to the sh.o.r.es of the sea.

Influenced though it has been by the cosmology of Eridu, the elements of which it is composed go back to an inland and not to a maritime State.

It will be seen that our knowledge of the cosmology of Nippur is still scanty and uncertain. The world which it presupposed had the form of a mountain, on the peak of which the G.o.ds lived among the clouds of heaven, while the cavernous depths below it were peopled with hosts of spirits and demons, the shades of the dead and the ghosts of a primitive animism.

There was no encircling ocean, no abysmal deep on which it floated, and from which it had been produced. What its origin, however, was believed to be we do not yet know, or to what creative _Zi_ or _Lil_ it was held to owe its existence. For an answer to these questions we must wait until the ancient libraries of Nippur have been thoroughly excavated and explored.(296)

It is otherwise with the cosmology of Eridu. We know a good deal about it, thanks to the theologians of Babylon, whose G.o.d Merodach was the successor and representative of the G.o.d of Eridu. It is true that its form has been changed and modified in part for the greater glory of Merodach and his city, that Merodach has even taken the place of Ea as the creator, and that the cosmology of Nippur-or at all events of a similar school of thought-has been combined with that of Eridu, with the result that there are two creations, the first chaotic, and the second that of the present world. But it is still easy to disentangle the earlier from the later elements in the story, and to separate what is purely Babylonian from what belongs to Eridu.

One of the versions of the story that have come down to us has been preserved in a spell, of which, like verses of the Bible in modern times, it has been used to form a part. Its antiquity is shown by the fact that it is written in the ancient language of Sumer. It is thus that it begins-

"No holy house, no house of the G.o.ds in a holy place had as yet been built, no reed had grown, no tree been planted, no bricks had been made, no structure formed, no house had been built, no city founded, no city built where living things could dwell.

Nippur was unbuilt, its temple of e-kur was unerected; Erech was unbuilt, its temple of e-ana was unerected;(297) the deep sea was uncreated, Eridu unbuilt.

The site of (its) holy house, the house of the G.o.ds, existed not, all the earth was sea, while in the midst of the sea was a water-course.

In those days was Eridu built and the temple of e-Saggil founded, e-Saggil wherein dwells the divine king of the holy mound in the midst of the deep;- Babylon was built, e-Saggil completed;- the spirits of the earth were created together, they called it by the mighty name of the holy city, the seat of their well-being.(298) Merodach(299) tied (reeds) together to form a weir in the water, he made dust and mixed it with the reeds of the weir, that the G.o.ds might dwell in the seat of (their) well-being.(300) Mankind he created,- the G.o.ddess Aruru created the seed of mankind with him,(301)- the cattle of the field, the living creatures in the field, he created; the Tigris and Euphrates he made, and set them in their place, giving them good names.

Moss and seed-plant of the marsh, reed and rush he created, he created the green herb of the field, the earth, the marsh, the jungle, the cow and its young, the calf, the sheep and its young, the lamb of the fold, the grove and the forest, the goat, (and) the gazelle multiplied (?) for him.

Bel-Merodach(302) filled a s.p.a.ce at the edge of the sea, [there] he made an enclosure of reeds, he constructed [a site?], he created [the reeds], he created the trees, he laid [a platform] in the place, [he moulded bricks], the structure he formed; [he built houses], he founded cities, [cities he founded and] filled them with living things; Nippur he built, e-kur he erected, Erech he built, e-ana he erected,(303) [the deep he created, Eridu he built]."

It is evident that the poem was written by one who lived on the marshy sh.o.r.es of the Persian Gulf, and had watched how land could be formed by tying the reeds in bundles and building with them a weir. It was in this way that the first cultivators of Eridu protected their fields from the tide, or reclaimed the land from the sea. None but those who had actually seen the process could have devised a cosmology which thus applied it to the creation of the world. To the question-"How did this world come into existence?" the primitive inhabitant of Eridu seemed to have a ready answer: he too was able to create new land, out of which the rush and the herb could grow, where the cattle could be pastured, and the house built.

What he could do, the G.o.ds had doubtless done at the beginning of time; all things must have come from the primeval deep, and the earth itself was but an islet rescued from the tides and created by obstructing their ebb and flow.

But it is also evident that the old poem has been revised and re-edited by the priesthood of Babylon. e-Saggil, the temple of Bel-Merodach of Babylon, has been confounded with the earlier e-Saggil of Eridu, and the creator-G.o.d Ea has been supplanted by Merodach. The supplanter, however, cannot conceal his foreign origin. The "enclosure" or "dwelling-place,"

"at the edge of the sea," must have been made in the first instance by the G.o.d of the deep, not by the sun-G.o.d of Babylon. Merodach had nothing to do with the sea and marshland, with cities that stood on the margin of the ocean, or reeds that grew by its sh.o.r.es. He was the G.o.d of an inland city, and he symbolised the sun and not the sea.

It is possible that even before its alteration at the hands of the theologians of Babylon, the old cosmological poem of Eridu had been modified in accordance with the requirements of a theology which resulted from a fusion of Sumerian and Semitic ideas. The doctrine of the triad is already presupposed by it; Nippur, Erech, and Eridu, with their sanctuaries of Bel, Anu, and Ea, already represent Babylonia, and the temples of Bel and Anu even take precedence of that of Ea. At the same time the parallelism between Nippur and Erech on the one side, and Eridu on the other, is imperfect. The uncreated "deep," on the margin of which Eridu stood, has nothing corresponding with it in the two preceding lines, while the place of the temples of Nippur and Erech is occupied by the name of the city of Eridu. It seems clear, that the reference to the two great sanctuary-cities of Northern and Central Babylonia is an interpolation, which breaks and injures the sense. Originally, we may conclude, the poem named Eridu only; its author knew nothing of the other shrines of Babylonia; for him the temple of Ea at Eridu was the house of all "the G.o.ds."

Ea, under the mask of Merodach, is the creator of mankind, as of all things else. In this act of creation the G.o.ddess Aruru is coupled with him; we have no materials at present for explaining why she should have been introduced, or whether the introduction formed part of the original legend. It is not the only pa.s.sage, however, in which she appears as a creatress. According to the Epic of Gilgames, she had created the great hero of Babylonia, and it was she also who moulded Ea-bani, the companion of Gilgames, out of clay which she had kneaded with her hands. Like Ea, therefore, she was a modeller in clay, and there was good reason for a.s.sociating her with the divine potter who had made man. Had she been a G.o.d she would doubtless have been identified with him; as it was, she had to remain his companion and a.s.sociate, whose name could not be forgotten even by a wors.h.i.+pper of Ea. Probably she was the G.o.ddess of some Babylonian city where she played the part that Ea played at Eridu; it may be that her sanctuary was at Marad, which claimed, as it would seem, to be the birthplace of Gilgames.

The name of the first man was Adapa, "the son of Eridu." Ea had created him without a helpmeet; he had endowed him with wisdom and knowledge, but had denied to him the gift of immortality. Each day he baked the bread and poured pure water into the bowl; at night he drew the bolts of the gates of Eridu, and at dawn he sailed forth in his bark to fish in the waters of the Persian Gulf. Once, so the story ran, the south wind upset his skiff, and in revenge he broke its wings. But the south wind was a servant of Anu, and the G.o.d of the sky demanded the punishment of the daring mortal.

Ea, however, intervened to save the man he had created. He clad Adapa in a mourner's robe, and showed him the road to heaven, telling him what he was to do in the realm of Anu, but forbidding him to eat or drink there. The gate of heaven was guarded by the G.o.ds Tammuz and Nin-gis-zida, who asked him the meaning of the mourner's garment which he wore.(304) When he answered that it was for their own selves, because they had vanished from the earth, their hearts were softened, and they became his intercessors with Anu. Anu listened, and forgave; but that a mortal man should behold the secrets of heaven and earth was so contrary to right, that he ordered the food and water of life to be offered him. Adapa, however, remembered the commands of Ea, and, unlike the biblical Adam, refused the food of immortality. Man remained mortal, and it was never again in his power to eat of the tree of life. But in return, sovereignty and dominion were bestowed upon him, and Adapa became the father of mankind.

The legend is a Babylonian attempt to explain the existence of death. It is like, and yet unlike, the story in Genesis. The biblical Adam lost the gift of immortality because his desire to become as G.o.d, knowing good and evil, had caused him to be driven from the Paradise in which grew the tree of life. Adapa, on the other hand, was already endowed with knowledge by his creator Ea, and his loss of immortality was due, not to his disobedience, but to his obedience to the commands of the G.o.d. Adam was banished from the Garden of Eden, "lest he should put forth his hand and take of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever"; while in the Babylonian legend it was Anu himself who was reluctant that one who had entered the gate of heaven should remain a mere mortal man. Babylonian polytheism allowed the existence of divided counsels among the G.o.ds; the monotheism of Israel made this impossible. There was no second Yahveh to act in contradiction to the first; Yahveh was at once the creator of man and the G.o.d of heaven, and there was none to dispute His will. There is no room for Anu in the Book of Genesis; and as Ea, the creator of Adapa, was unwilling that the man he had created should become an immortal G.o.d, so Yahveh, the creator of Adam, similarly denied to him the food of immortal life.

That there is a connection between the Biblical story and the Babylonian legend is, however, rendered certain by the geography of the Biblical Paradise. It was a garden in the land of Eden, and Edin was the Sumerian name of the "plain" of Babylonia in which Eridu stood. Two of the rivers which watered it were the Tigris and Euphrates, the two streams, in fact, which we are specially told had been created and named by Ea at the beginning of time. Indeed, the name that is given to the Tigris in the Book of Genesis is its old Sumerian t.i.tle, which survived in later days only in the religious literature. Even the strange statement that "a river went out of Eden," which "was parted and became into four heads," is explained by the cuneiform texts. The Persian Gulf was called "the Salt River," and, thanks to its tides, was regarded as the source of the four streams which flowed into it from their "heads" or springs in the north.

On early Babylonian seals, Ea, the G.o.d of the sea, is depicted as pouring sometimes the four rivers, sometimes only the Tigris and Euphrates, from a vase that he holds in his hands. Years ago I drew attention to a Sumerian hymn in which reference is made to the garden and sacred tree of Eridu, the Babylonian Paradise in the plain of Eden. Dr. Pinches has since discovered the last line of the hymn, in which the picture is completed by a mention of the rivers which watered the garden on either side. It is thus that the text reads-

"In Eridu a vine(305) grew over-shadowing; in a holy place was it brought forth; its root was of bright lapis, set in the world beneath.

The path of Ea was in Eridu,(306) teeming with fertility.

His seat (there) is the centre of the earth; his couch is the bed of the primeval mother.(307) Into the heart of its holy house, which spreads its shade like a forest, hath no man entered.

In its midst is Tammuz, between the mouths of the rivers on both sides."(308)

The sacred tree of the garden of Eridu was, however, not the tree of life.

It was rather the tree of knowledge. This is shown by an inscription of Eri-Aku or Arioch, in which he describes himself as "the executor of the oracle of the sacred tree of Eridu." Perhaps it is to the same tree that reference is made in a magical text, in which a man possessed of "the seven evil spirits" is healed with the help of "the tree which shatters the power of the incubus, and upon whose core the name of Ea is recorded."(309) But Ea was not only the G.o.d of wisdom, he was also the G.o.d of "life," and the trees of both wisdom and life might therefore be fitly placed under his protection.

When Babylon became the supreme head of Babylonia under Khammurabi and his successors, the creative functions of Ea were usurped by Merodach. A long poem celebrating the glories and power of Merodach, his struggle with chaos and creation of the world, and, finally, his formal invest.i.ture with the names and prerogatives of Ea, has been preserved to us in part. Ever since its discovery by Mr. George Smith it has been known as the Epic of the Creation, and the parallelism between the first tablet composing it and the first chapter of Genesis has long attracted attention. But the poem is of late date. It belongs to an age of religious syncretism and materialistic philosophy; the mythological beings of popular belief are resolved into cosmological principles, and the mythological dress in which they appear has a theatrical effect. The whole poem reminds us of the stilted and soulless productions of the eighteenth century, in which commonplace ideas and a prosaic philosophy masquerade as Greek nymphs or Roman G.o.ds. It is only here and there, as in the description of the contest with Tiamat, or in the concluding lines,-if, indeed, they belong to the poem at all,-that it rises above the level of dull mediocrity.

But mediocre as it may be from a literary point of view, it is of considerable value to the student of Babylonian cosmology. The author is fortunately not original, and his materials, therefore, have been drawn from the folk-lore or the theology of the past. A welcome commentary on the first tablet has been preserved, moreover, in the _Problems and Solutions of First Principles_, written by the philosopher Damascius, the contemporary of Justinian, whose accuracy and acquaintance with Babylonian sources it proves. Unfortunately the tablet is broken, and the final lines of it are consequently lost-

"When above unnamed was the heaven, the earth below by a name was uncalled, the primeval deep was their begetter, the chaos of Tiamat was the mother of them all.

Their waters were embosomed in one place, the corn-stalk was ungathered, the marsh-plant ungrown.

At that time the G.o.ds had not appeared, any one of them, by no name were they called, no destiny [had they fixed].

Then were the [primeval] G.o.ds created, Lakhmu and Lakhamu came forth [the first].

Until they grew up ...

Ansar and Kisar were created ...

Long were the days ...

Anu [Bel and Ea were made]."

To the Babylonian, name and existence were one and the same. Nothing could exist unless it had a name, and whatever had a name necessarily existed.

That the heaven and earth were unnamed, therefore, was equivalent to saying that they were not yet in being. The words with which the Book of Genesis begins are a curious contradiction of the statement of the Babylonian cosmologist. But the contradiction ill.u.s.trates the difference between the Hebrew and the Babylonian points of view. The Hebrew was not only a monotheist; he believed also that everything, even from the beginning, had been made by the one supreme G.o.d; the Babylonian, on the contrary, started with a materialistic philosophy. There are no G.o.ds at the outset; the G.o.ds themselves have been created like other things; all that existed at first was a chaos of waters. The Babylonian cosmology is that of Genesis without the first verse.