Myths of Babylonia and Assyria Part 17

There is a deluge also in Egyptian mythology. When Ra, the sun G.o.d, grew old as an earthly king, men began to mutter words against him. He called the G.o.ds together and said: "I will not slay them (his subjects) until I have heard what ye say concerning them." Nu, his father, who was the G.o.d of primeval waters, advised the wholesale destruction of mankind.

Said Ra: "Behold men flee unto the hills; their heart is full of fear because of that which they said."

The G.o.ddess Hathor-Sekhet, the Eye of Ra, then went forth and slew mankind on the hills. Thereafter Ra, desiring to protect the remnant of humanity, caused a great offering to be made to the G.o.ddess, consisting of corn beer mixed with herbs and human blood. This drink was poured out during the night. "And the G.o.ddess came in the morning; she found the fields inundated, she rejoiced thereat, she drank thereof, her heart was rejoiced, she went about drunken and took no more cognizance of men."[231]

It is obvious that the Egyptian myth refers to the annual inundation of the Nile, the "human blood" in the "beer" being the blood of the slain corn G.o.d, or of his earthly representative. It is probable that the flood legends of North and South America similarly reflected local phenomena, although the possibility that they were of Asiatic origin, like the American Mongoloid tribes, cannot be overlooked. Whether or not Mexican civilization, which was flouris.h.i.+ng about the time of the battle of Hastings, received any cultural stimulus from Asia is a question regarding which it would be unsafe to dogmatize, owing to the meagre character of the available data.

The Mexican deluge was caused by the "water sun", which suddenly discharged the moisture it had been drawing from the earth in the form of vapour through long ages. All life was destroyed.

A flood legend among the Nahua tribes resembles closely the Babylonian story as told by Pir-napishtim. The G.o.d t.i.tlacahuan instructed a man named Nata to make a boat by hollowing out a cypress tree, so as to escape the coming deluge with his wife Nena. This pair escaped destruction. They offered up a fish sacrifice in the boat and enraged the deity who visited them, displaying as much indignation as did Bel when he discovered that Pir-napishtim had survived the great disaster.

Nata and Nena had been instructed to take with them one ear of maize only, which suggests that they were harvest spirits.

In Brazil, Monan, the chief G.o.d, sent a great fire to burn up the world and its wicked inhabitants. To extinguish the flames a magician caused so much rain to fall that the earth was flooded.

The Californian Indians had a flood legend, and believed that the early race was diminutive; and the Athapascan Indians of the north-west professed to be descendants of a family who escaped the deluge. Indeed, deluge myths were widespread in the "New World".

The American belief that the first beings who were created were unable to live on earth was shared by the Babylonians. According to Berosus the first creation was a failure, because the animals could not bear the light and they all died.[232] Here we meet with the germs of the Doctrine of the World's Ages, which reached its highest development in Indian, Greek, and Celtic (Irish) mythologies.

The Biblical account of the flood is familiar to readers. "It forms", says Professor Pinches, "a good subject for comparison with the Babylonian account, with which it agrees so closely in all the main points, and from which it differs so much in many essential details."[233]

The drift of Babylonian culture was not only directed westward towards the coast of Palestine, and from thence to Greece during the Phoenician period, but also eastward through Elam to the Iranian plateau and India. Reference has already been made to the resemblances between early Vedic and Sumerian mythologies. When the "new songs" of the Aryan invaders of India were being composed, the sky and ocean G.o.d, Varuna, who resembles Ea-Oannes, and Mitra, who links with Shamash, were already declining in splendour. Other cultural influences were at work. Certain of the Aryan tribes, for instance, buried their dead in Varuna's "house of clay", while a growing proportion cremated their dead and wors.h.i.+pped Agni, the fire G.o.d. At the close of the Vedic period there were fresh invasions into middle India, and the "late comers" introduced new beliefs, including the doctrines of the Transmigration of Souls and of the Ages of the Universe. G.o.ddesses also rose into prominence, and the Vedic G.o.ds became minor deities, and subject to Brahma, Vishnu, and s.h.i.+va. These "late comers" had undoubtedly been influenced by Babylonian ideas before they entered India. In their Doctrine of the World's Ages or Yugas, for instance, we are forcibly reminded of the Euphratean ideas regarding s.p.a.ce and time. Mr. Robert Brown, junr., who is an authority in this connection, shows that the system by which the "Day of Brahma"

was calculated in India resembles closely an astronomical system which obtained in Babylonia, where apparently the theory of cosmic periods had origin.[234]

The various alien peoples, however, who came under the spell of Babylonian modes of thought did not remain in a state of intellectual bondage. Thought was stimulated rather than arrested by religious borrowing, and the development of ideas regarding the mysteries of life and death proceeded apace in areas over which the ritualistic and restraining priesthood of Babylonia exercised no sway. As much may be inferred from the contrasting conceptions of the Patriarchs of Vedic and Sumerian mythologies. Pir-napishtim, the Babylonian Noah, and the semi-divine Gilgamesh appear to be represented in Vedic mythology by Yama, G.o.d of the dead. Yama was "the first man", and, like Gilgamesh, he set out on a journey over mountains and across water to discover Paradise. He is lauded in the Vedic hymns as the explorer of "the path" or "way" to the "Land of the Pitris" (Fathers), the Paradise to which the Indian uncremated dead walked on foot. Yama never lost his original character. He is a traveller in the Epics as in the Vedas.[235]

Him who along the mighty heights departed, Him who searched and spied the path for many, Son of Vivasvat, gatherer of the people, Yama, the King, with sacrifices wors.h.i.+p. _Rigveda_, x, 14, 1.[236]

To Yama, mighty King, be gifts and homage paid, He was the first of men that died, the first to brave Death's rapid rus.h.i.+ng stream, the first to point the road To heaven, and welcome others to that bright abode. _Sir M. Monier Williams' Translation_.[237]

Yama and his sister Yami were the first human pair. They are identical with the Persian Celestial twins, Yima and Yimeh. Yima resembles Mitra (Mithra); Varuna, the twin brother of Mitra, in fact, carries the noose a.s.sociated with the G.o.d of death.[238]

The Indian Yama, who was also called Pitripati, "lord of the fathers", takes Mitra's place in the Paradise of Ancestors beside Varuna, G.o.d of the sky and the deep. He sits below a tree, playing on a flute and drinking the Soma drink which gives immortality. When the descendants of Yama reached Paradise they a.s.sumed s.h.i.+ning forms "refined and from all taint set free".[239]

In Persian mythology "Yima", says Professor Moulton, "reigns over a community which may well have been composed of his own descendants, for he lived yet longer than Adam. To render them immortal, he gives them to eat forbidden food, being deceived by the Daevas (demons).

What was this forbidden food? May we connect it with another legend whereby, at the Regeneration, Mithra is to make men immortal by giving them to eat the fat of the _Ur-Kuh_, the primeval cow from whose slain body, according to the Aryan legends adopted by Mithraism, mankind was first created?"

Yima is punished for "presumptuously grasping at immortality for himself and mankind, on the suggestion of an evil power, instead of waiting Ahura's good time". Professor Moulton wonders if this story, which he endeavours to reconstruct, "owed anything to Babylon?"

Yima, like the Babylonian Pir-napishtim, is also a revealer of the secrets of creation. He was appointed to be "Guardian, Overseer, Watcher over my Creation" by Ahura, the supreme G.o.d. Three hundred years went past--

Then the earth became abounding, Full of flocks and full of cattle, Full of men, of birds, dogs likewise, Full of fires all bright and blazing, Nor did men, flocks, herds of cattle, Longer find them places in it.

_Jackson's Translation_.

The earth was thereafter cloven with a golden arrow. Yima then built a refuge in which mankind and the domesticated animals might find shelter during a terrible winter. "The picture", says Professor Moulton, "strongly tempts us to recognize the influence of the Babylonian Flood-Legend."[240] The "Fimbul winter" of Germanic mythology is also recalled. Odin asks in one of the Icelandic Eddie poems:

What beings shall live when the long dread winter Comes o'er the people of earth?[241]

In another Eddie poem, the Voluspa, the Vala tells of a Sword Age, an Axe Age, a Wind Age, and a Wolf Age which is to come "ere the world sinks". After the battle of the G.o.ds and demons,

The sun is darkened, earth sinks in the sea.

In time, however, a new world appears.

I see uprising a second time Earth from the Ocean, green anew; The waters fall, on high the eagle Flies o'er the fell and catches fish.

When the surviving G.o.ds return, they will talk, according to the Vala (prophetess), of "the great world serpent" (Tiamat). The fields will be sown and "Balder will come"[242]--apparently as Tammuz came. The a.s.sociation of Balder with corn suggests that, like Nata of the Nahua tribes, he was a harvest spirit, among other things.

Leaving, meantime, the many problems which arise from consideration of the Deluge legends and their connection with primitive agricultural myths, the attention of readers may be directed to the Babylonian conception of the Otherworld.

Pir-napishtim, who escaped destruction at the Flood, resides in an Island Paradise, which resembles the Greek "Islands of the Blessed", and the Irish "Tir nan og" or "Land of the Young", situated in the western ocean, and identical with the British[243]

island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly, but it lies Deep meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.[244]

Only two human beings were permitted to reside on the Babylonian island paradise, however. These were Pir-napishtim and his wife.

Apparently Gilgamesh could not join them there. His G.o.ds did not transport heroes and other favoured individuals to a happy isle or isles like those of the Greeks and Celts and Aryo-Indians. There was no Heaven for the Babylonian dead. All mankind were doomed to enter the gloomy Hades of the Underworld, "the land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is darkness", as Job exclaimed in the hour of despair, lamenting his fate.[245]

This gloomy habitation of the dead resembles the Greek Hades, the Teutonic Nifelhel, and the Indian "Put". No detailed description of it has been found. The references, however, in the "Descent of Ishtar"

and the Gilgamesh epic suggest that it resembled the hidden regions of the Egyptians, in which souls were tortured by demons who stabbed them, plunged them in pools of fire, and thrust them into cold outer darkness where they gnashed their teeth, or into places of horror swarming with poisonous reptiles.

Ishtar was similarly tortured by the plague demon, Namtar, when she boldly entered the Babylonian Underworld to search for Tammuz. Other sufferings were, no doubt, in store for her, resembling those, perhaps, with which the giant maid in the Eddic poem "Skirnismal" was threatened when she refused to marry Frey, the G.o.d of fertility and harvest:

Trolls shall torment thee from morn till eve In the realms of the Jotun race, Each day to the dwellings of Frost giants must thou Creep helpless, creep hopeless of love; Thou shalt weeping have in the stead of joy, And sore burden bear with tears....

May madness and shrieking, bondage and yearning Burden thee with bondage and tears.[246]

In like manner, too, the inhabitants of the Indian h.e.l.l suffered endless and complicated tortures.[247]

The Persephone of the Babylonian Underworld was Eresh-ki-gal, who was also called Allatu. A myth, which was found among the Egyptian Tel-el-Amarna "Letters", sets forth that on one occasion the Babylonian G.o.ds held a feast. All the deities attended it, except Eresh-ki-gal. She was unable to leave her gloomy Underworld, and sent her messenger, the plague demon Namtar, to obtain her share. The various deities honoured Namtar, except Nergal, by standing up to receive him. When Eresh-ki-gal was informed of this slight she became very angry, and demanded that Nergal should be delivered up to her so that he might be put to death. The storm G.o.d at once hastened to the Underworld, accompanied by his own group of fierce demons, whom he placed as guardians at the various doors so as to prevent the escape of Eresh-ki-gal. Then he went boldly towards the G.o.ddess, clutched her by the hair, and dragged her from her throne. After a brief struggle, she found herself overpowered. Nergal made ready to cut off her head, but she cried for mercy and said: "Do not kill me, my brother! Let me speak to thee."

This appeal indicated that she desired to ransom her life--like the hags in the European folk tales--so Nergal unloosed his hold.

Then Eresh-ki-gal continued: "Be thou my husband and I will be thy wife. On thee I confer sovereignty over the wide earth, giving thee the tablet of wisdom. Thou shalt be my lord and I will be thy lady."

Nergal accepted these terms by kissing the G.o.ddess. Affectionately drying her tears, he spoke, saying: "Thou shalt now have from me what thou hast demanded during these past months."

In other words, Nergal promises to honour her as she desired, after becoming her husband and equal.

In the "Descent of Ishtar" the Babylonian Underworld is called Cuthah.

This city had a famous cemetery, like Abydos in Egypt, where many pious and orthodox wors.h.i.+ppers sought sepulture. The local G.o.d was Nergal, who symbolized the destructive power of the sun and the sand storm; he was a gloomy, vengeful deity, attended by the spirits of tempest, weariness, pestilence, and disease, and was propitiated because he was dreaded.

In Nether Cuthah, as Ea-bani informed Gilgamesh, the worm devoured the dead amidst the dust and thick darkness.

It is evident that this Underworld was modelled on the grave. In early times men believed that the spirits of the dead hovered in or about the place of sepulture. They were therefore provided with "houses" to protect them, in the same manner as the living were protected in their houses above the ground.

The enemies of the human ghosts were the earth spirits. Weapons were laid beside the dead in their graves so that they might wage war against demons when necessary. The corpse was also charmed, against attack, by the magical and protecting ornaments which were worn by the living--necklaces, armlets, ear-rings, &c. Even face paint was provided, probably as a charm against the evil eye and other subtle influences.

So long as corpses were left in their graves, the spirits of the dead were, it would appear, believed to be safe. But they required food and refreshment. Food vessels and drinking urns were therefore included in the funerary furniture, and the dead were given food offerings at regular intervals. Once a year the living held feasts in the burial ground, and invited the ghosts to share in the repast. This custom was observed in Babylonia, and is not yet obsolete in Egypt; Moslems and Coptic Christians alike hold annual all-night feasts in their cemeteries.

The j.a.panese "Land of Yomi" is similarly an underworld, or great grave, where ghosts mingle with the demons of disease and destruction.