MYTHS OF
BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

Before the
dawn of the historical period Ancient Babylonia was divided into
a number of independent city states similar to those which
existed in pre-Dynastic Egypt. Ultimately these were grouped into
loose confederacies. The northern cities were embraced in the
territory known as Akkad, and the southern in the land of Sumer,
or Shumer. This division had a racial as well as a geographical
significance. The Akkadians were “late comers” who had achieved political
ascendency in the north when the area they occupied was called
Uri, or Kiuri, and Sumer was known as Kengi. They were a people
of Semitic speech with pronounced Semitic affinities. From the
earliest times the sculptors depicted them with abundant locks,
long full beards, and the prominent distinctive noses and full
lips, which we usually associate with the characteristic Jewish
type, and also attired in long, flounced robes, suspended from
their left shoulders, and reaching down to their ankles. In
contrast, the Sumerians had clean-shaven faces and scalps, and
noses of Egyptian and Grecian rather than Semitic type, while
they wore short, pleated kilts, and went about with the upper
part of their bodies quite bare like the Egyptian noblemen of the
Old Kingdom period. They spoke a non-Semitic language, and were
the oldest inhabitants of Babylonia of whom we have any
knowledge. Sumerian civilization was rooted in the agricultural
mode of life, and appears to have been well developed before the
Semites became numerous and influential in the land. Cities had
been built chiefly of sun-dried and fire-baked bricks;
distinctive pottery was manufactured with much skill; the people
were governed by humanitarian laws, which formed the nucleus of
the Hammurabi code, and had in use a system of cuneiform writing
which was still in process of development from earlier pictorial
characters. The distinctive feature of their agricultural methods
was the engineering skill which was displayed in extending the
cultivatable area by the construction of irrigating canals and
ditches. There are also indications that they possessed some
knowledge of navigation and traded on the Persian Gulf. According
to one of their own traditions Eridu, originally a seaport, was
their racial cradle. The Semitic Akkadians adopted the
distinctive culture of these Sumerians after settlement, and
exercised an influence on its subsequent growth.

Much controversy has been waged regarding the original home of
the Sumerians and the particular racial type which they
represented. One theory connects them with the lank-haired and
beardless Mongolians, and it is asserted on the evidence afforded
by early sculptural reliefs that they were similarly
oblique-eyed. As they also spoke an agglutinative language, it is
suggested that they were descended from the same parent stock as
the Chinese in an ancient Parthian homeland. If, however, the
oblique eye was not the result of faulty and primitive art, it is
evident that the Mongolian type, which is invariably found to be
remarkably persistent in racial blends, did not survive in the
Tigris and Euphrates valleys, for in the finer and more exact
sculpture work of the later Sumerian period the eyes of the
ruling classes are found to be similar to those of the Ancient
Egyptians and southern Europeans. Other facial characteristics
suggest that a Mongolian racial connection is highly improbable;
the prominent Sumerian nose, for instance, is quite unlike the
Chinese, which is diminutive. Nor can far-reaching conclusions be
drawn from the scanty linguistic evidence at our disposal.
Although the languages of the Sumerians and long-headed Chinese
are of the agglutinative variety, so are those also which are
spoken by the broad-headed Turks and Magyars of Hungary, the
broad-headed and long-headed, dark and fair Finns, and the brunet
and short-statured Basques with pear-shaped faces, who are
regarded as a variation of the Mediterranean race with
distinctive characteristics developed in isolation. Languages
afford no sure indication of racial origins or affinities.

Another theory connects the Sumerians with the broad-headed peoples of
the Western Asian plains and plateaus, who are vaguely grouped as
Ural-Altaic stock and are represented by the present-day Turks
and the dark variety of Finns. It is assumed that they migrated
southward in remote times in consequence of tribal pressure
caused by changing climatic conditions, and abandoned a purely
pastoral for an agricultural life. The late Sumerian sculpture
work again presents difficulties in this connection, for the
faces and bulging occiputs suggest rather a long-headed than a
broad-headed type, and the theory no longer obtains that new
habits of life alter skull forms which are usually associated
with other distinctive traits in the structure of skeletons.
These broad-headed nomadic peoples of the Steppes are allied to
Tatar stock, and distinguished from the pure Mongols by their
abundance of wavy hair and beard. The fact that the Sumerians
shaved their scalps and faces is highly suggestive in this
connection. From the earliest times it has been the habit of most
peoples to emphasize their racial characteristics so as to be
able, one may suggest, to distinguish readily a friend from a
foeman. At any rate this fact is generally recognized by
ethnologists. The Basques, for instance, shave their pointed
chins and sometimes grow short side whiskers to increase the
distinctive pear-shape which is given to their faces by their
prominent temples. In contrast, their neighbours, the
Andalusians, grow chin whiskers to broaden their already rounded
chins, and to distinguish them markedly from the
Basques.[12] Another example of
similar character is afforded in Asia Minor, where the skulls of
the children of long-headed Kurds are narrowed, and those of the
children of broad-headed Armenians made flatter behind as a
result of systematic pressure applied by using cradle boards. In this way
these rival peoples accentuate their contrasting head forms,
which at times may, no doubt, show a tendency towards variation
as a result of the crossment of types. When it is found,
therefore, that the Sumerians, like the Ancient Egyptians, were
in the habit of shaving, their ethnic affinities should be looked
for among a naturally glabrous rather than a heavily-bearded
people.

A Central Asiatic source for Sumerian culture has also been
urged of late with much circumstantial detail. It breaks quite
fresh and interesting ground. Recent scientific expeditions in
Russian and Chinese Turkestan have accumulated important
archaeological data which clearly establish that vast areas of
desert country were at a remote period most verdurous and
fruitful, and thickly populated by organized and apparently
progressive communities. From these ancient centres of
civilization wholesale migrations must have been impelled from
time to time in consequence of the gradual encroachment of
wind-distributed sand and the increasing shortage of water. At
Anau in Russian Turkestan, where excavations were conducted by
the Pumpelly expedition, abundant traces were found of an archaic
and forgotten civilization reaching back to the Late Stone Age.
The pottery is decorated with geometric designs, and resembles
somewhat other Neolithic specimens found as far apart as Susa,
the capital of ancient Elam, on the borders of Babylonia, Boghaz
Köi in Asia Minor, the seat of Hittite administration, round
the Black Sea to the north, and at points in the southern regions
of the Balkan Peninsula. It is suggested that these various finds
are scattered evidences of early racial drifts from the Central
Asian areas which were gradually being rendered uninhabitable.
Among the Copper Age artifacts at Anau are clay votive statuettes resembling
those which were used in Sumeria for religious purposes. These,
however, cannot be held to prove a racial connection, but they
are important in so far as they afford evidence of early trade
relations in a hitherto unsuspected direction, and the long
distances over which cultural influence extended before the dawn
of history. Further we cannot go. No inscriptions have yet been
discovered to render articulate this mysterious Central Asian
civilization, or to suggest the original source of early Sumerian
picture writing. Nor is it possible to confirm Mr. Pumpelly’s
view that from the Anau district the Sumerians and Egyptians
first obtained barley and wheat, and some of their domesticated
animals. If, as Professor Elliot Smith believes, copper was first
used by the Ancient Egyptians, it may be, on the other hand, that
a knowledge of this metal reached Anau through Sumeria, and that
the elements of the earlier culture were derived from the same
quarter by an indirect route. The evidence obtainable in Egypt is
of interest in this connection. Large quantities of food have
been taken from the stomachs and intestines of sun-dried bodies
which have lain in their pre-Dynastic graves for over sixty
centuries. This material has been carefully examined, and has
yielded, among other things, husks of barley and millet, and
fragments of mammalian bones, including those, no doubt, of the
domesticated sheep and goats and cattle painted on the
pottery.[13] It is therefore
apparent that at an extremely remote period a knowledge of
agriculture extended throughout Egypt, and we have no reason for
supposing that it was not shared by the contemporary inhabitants
of Sumer.

The various theories which have been propounded regarding the
outside source of Sumerian culture are based on the assumption that it commenced
abruptly and full grown. Its rude beginnings cannot be traced on
the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, but although no specimens
of the earliest form of picture writing have been recovered from
the ruins of Sumerian and Akkadian cities, neither have any been
found elsewhere. The possibility remains, therefore, that early
Babylonian culture was indigenous. “A great deal of ingenuity has
been displayed by many scholars”, says Professor Elliot Smith,
“with the object of bringing these Sumerians from somewhere else
as immigrants into Sumer; but no reasons have been advanced to
show that they had not been settled at the head of the Persian
Gulf for long generations before they first appeared on the stage
of history. The argument that no early remains have been found is
futile, not only because such a country as Sumer is no more
favourable to the preservation of such evidence than is the Delta
of the Nile, but also upon the more general grounds that negative
statements of this sort cannot be assigned a positive evidence
for an immigration.”[14] This distinguished
ethnologist is frankly of opinion that the Sumerians were the
congeners of the pre-Dynastic Egyptians of the Mediterranean or
Brown race, the eastern branch of which reaches to India and the
western to the British Isles and Ireland. In the same ancient
family are included the Arabs, whose physical characteristics
distinguish them from the Semites of Jewish type.

Some light may be thrown on the Sumerian problem by giving
consideration to the present-day racial complexion of Western
Asia. The importance of evidence of this character has been
emphasized elsewhere. In Egypt, for instance, Dr. C.S. Myers has
ascertained that the modern peasants have skull forms which are
identical with
those of their pre-Dynastic ancestors. Mr. Hawes has also
demonstrated that the ancient inhabitants of Crete are still
represented on that famous island. But even more remarkable is
the fact that the distinctive racial type which occupied the
Palaeolithic caves of the Dordogne valley in France continues to
survive in their vicinity after an interval of over twenty
thousand years.[15] It is noteworthy,
therefore, to find that in south-western Asia at the present day
one particular racial type predominates over all others.
Professor Ripley, who summarizes a considerable mass of data in
this connection, refers to it as the “Iranian”, and says: “It
includes the Persians and Kurds, possibly the Ossetes in the
Caucasus, and farther to the east a large number of Asiatic
tribes, from the Afghans to the Hindus. These peoples are all
primarily long-headed and dark brunets. They incline to
slenderness of habit, although varying in stature according to
circumstances. In them we recognize at once undoubted congeners
of our Mediterranean race in Europe. The area of their extension
runs off into Africa, through the Egyptians, who are clearly of
the same race. Not only the modern peoples, but the Ancient
Egyptians and the Phoenicians also have been traced to the same
source. By far the largest portion of this part of Western Asia
is inhabited by this eastern branch of the Mediterranean race.”
The broad-headed type “occurs sporadically among a few ethnic
remnants in Syria and Mesopotamia”.[16] The
exhaustive study of thousands of ancient crania in London and
Cambridge collections has shown that Mediterranean peoples,
having alien traits, the result of early admixture, were
distributed between Egypt and the Punjab.[17] Where blending took place, the early
type, apparently,
continued to predominate; and it appears to be reasserting itself
in our own time in Western Asia, as elsewhere. It seems doubtful,
therefore, that the ancient Sumerians differed racially from the
pre-Dynastic inhabitants of Egypt and the Pelasgians and Iberians
of Europe. Indeed, the statuettes from Tello, the site of the
Sumerian city of Lagash, display distinctively Mediterranean
skull forms and faces. Some of the plump figures of the later
period suggest, however, “the particular alien strain” which in
Egypt and elsewhere “is always associated with a tendency to the
development of fat”, in contrast to “the lean and sinewy
appearance of most representatives of the Brown
race”.[18] This change may be accounted for by
the presence of the Semites in northern Babylonia.

Whence, then, came these invading Semitic Akkadians of Jewish
type? It is generally agreed that they were closely associated
with one of the early outpourings of nomadic peoples from Arabia,
a country which is favourable for the production of a larger
population than it is able to maintain permanently, especially
when its natural resources are restricted by a succession of
abnormally dry years. In tracing the Akkadians from Arabia,
however, we are confronted at the outset with the difficulty that
its prehistoric, and many of its present-day, inhabitants are not
of the characteristic Semitic type. On the Ancient Egyptian
pottery and monuments the Arabs are depicted as men who closely
resembled the representatives of the Mediterranean race in the
Nile valley and elsewhere. They shaved neither scalps nor faces
as did the historic Sumerians and Egyptians, but grew the slight
moustache and chin-tuft beard like the Libyans on the north and
the majority of the men whose bodies have been preserved in pre-Dynastic graves
in the Nile valley. “If”, writes Professor Elliot Smith, “the
generally accepted view is true, that Arabia was the original
home of the Semites, the Arab must have undergone a profound
change in his physical characters after he left his homeland and
before he reached Babylonia.” This authority is of opinion that
the Arabians first migrated into Palestine and northern Syria,
where they mingled with the southward-migrating Armenoid peoples
from Asia Minor. “This blend of Arabs, kinsmen of the
proto-Egyptians and Armenoids, would then form the big-nosed,
long-bearded Semites, so familiar not only on the ancient
Babylonian and Egyptian monuments, but also in the modern
Jews.”[19] Such a view is in accord with Dr.
Hugo Winckler’s contention that the flow of Arabian migrations
was northwards towards Syria ere it swept through Mesopotamia. It
can scarcely be supposed that these invasions of settled
districts did not result in the fusion and crossment of racial
types and the production of a sub-variety with medium skull form
and marked facial characteristics.

Of special interest in this connection is the evidence
afforded by Palestine and Egypt. The former country has ever been
subject to periodic ethnic disturbances and changes. Its racial
history has a remote beginning in the Pleistocene Age.
Palaeolithic flints of Chellean and other primitive types have
been found in large numbers, and a valuable collection of these
is being preserved in a French museum at Jerusalem. In a northern
cave fragments of rude pottery, belonging to an early period in
the Late Stone Age, have been discovered in association with the
bones of the woolly rhinoceros. To a later period belong the
series of Gezer cave dwellings, which, according to Professor
Macalister, the well-known Palestinian authority, “were occupied by a
non-Semitic people of low stature, with thick skulls and showing
evidence of the great muscular strength that is essential to
savage life”.[20] These people are
generally supposed to be representatives of the Mediterranean
race, which Sergi has found to have been widely distributed
throughout Syria and a part of Asia Minor.[21] An interesting problem, however, is
raised by the fact that, in one of the caves, there are evidences
that the dead were cremated. This was not a Mediterranean custom,
nor does it appear to have prevailed outside the Gezer area. If,
however, it does not indicate that the kinsmen of the Ancient
Egyptians came into contact with the remnants of an earlier
people, it may be that the dead of a later people were burned
there. The possibility that unidentified types may have
contributed to the Semitic blend, however, remains. The
Mediterraneans mingled in Northern Syria and Asia Minor with the
broad-headed Armenoid peoples who are represented in Europe by
the Alpine race. With them they ultimately formed the great
Hittite confederacy. These Armenoids were moving southwards at
the very dawn of Egyptian history, and nothing is known of their
conquests and settlements. Their pioneers, who were probably
traders, appear to have begun to enter the Delta region before
the close of the Late Stone Age.[22] The
earliest outpourings of migrating Arabians may have been in
progress about the same time. This early southward drift of
Armenoids might account for the presence in southern Palestine,
early in the Copper Age, of the tall race referred to in the
Bible as the Rephaim or Anakim, “whose power was broken only by
the Hebrew
invaders”.[23] Joshua drove them
out of Hebron,[24] in the neighbourhood
of which Abraham had purchased a burial cave from Ephron, the
Hittite.[25] Apparently a system
of land laws prevailed in Palestine at this early period. It is
of special interest for us to note that in Abraham’s day and
afterwards, the landed proprietors in the country of the Rephaim
were identified with the aliens from Asia Minor–the tall variety
in the Hittite confederacy.

Little doubt need remain that the Arabians during their
sojourn in Palestine and Syria met with distinctive types, and if
not with pure Armenoids, at any rate with peoples having Armenoid
traits. The consequent multiplication of tribes, and the gradual
pressure exercised by the constant stream of immigrants from
Arabia and Asia Minor, must have kept this part of Western Asia
in a constant state of unrest. Fresh migrations of the surplus
stock were evidently propelled towards Egypt in one direction,
and the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates in another. The
Semites of Akkad were probably the conquerors of the more highly
civilized Sumerians, who must have previously occupied that area.
It is possible that they owed their success to the possession of
superior weapons. Professor Elliot Smith suggests in this
connection that the Arabians had become familiar with the use of
copper as a result of contact with the Egyptians in Sinai. There
is no evidence, however, that the Sumerians were attacked before
they had begun to make metal weapons. It is more probable that
the invading nomads had superior military organization and
considerable experience in waging war against detached tribal
units. They may have also found some of the northern Sumerian
city states at war with one another and taken advantage of their
unpreparedness to resist a common enemy. The rough Dorians who
overran Greece and the fierce Goths who shattered the power of
Rome were similarly in a lower state of civilization than the
peoples whom they subdued.

The Sumerians, however, ultimately achieved an intellectual
conquest of their conquerors. Although the leaders of invasion
may have formed military aristocracies in the cities which they
occupied, it was necessary for the great majority of the nomads
to engage their activities in new directions after settlement.
The Semitic Akkadians, therefore, adopted Sumerian habits of life
which were best suited for the needs of the country, and they
consequently came under the spell of Sumerian modes of thought.
This is shown by the fact that the native speech of ancient Sumer
continued long after the dawn of history to be the language of
Babylonian religion and culture, like Latin in Europe during the
Middle Ages. For centuries the mingling peoples must have been
bilingual, as are many of the inhabitants of Ireland, Wales, and
the Scottish Highlands in the present age, but ultimately the
language of the Semites became the prevailing speech in Sumer and
Akkad. This change was the direct result of the conquests and the
political supremacy achieved by the northern people. A
considerable period elapsed, however, ere this consummation was
reached and Ancient Babylonia became completely Semitized. No
doubt its brilliant historical civilization owed much of its
vigour and stability to the organizing genius of the Semites, but
the basis on which it was established had been laid by the
ingenious and imaginative Sumerians who first made the desert to
blossom like the rose.

The culture of Sumer was a product of the Late Stone Age,
which should not be regarded as necessarily an age of barbarism. During its vast
periods there were great discoveries and great inventions in
various parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Neoliths made
pottery and bricks; we know that they invented the art of
spinning, for spindle-whorls are found even in the Gezer caves to
which we have referred, while in Egypt the pre-Dynastic dead were
sometimes wrapped in finely woven linen: their deftly chipped
flint implements are eloquent of artistic and mechanical skill,
and undoubted mathematical ability must be credited to the makers
of smoothly polished stone hammers which are so perfectly
balanced that they revolve on a centre of gravity. In Egypt and
Babylonia the soil was tilled and its fertility increased by
irrigation. Wherever man waged a struggle with Nature he made
rapid progress, and consequently we find that the earliest great
civilizations were rooted in the little fields of the Neolithic
farmers. Their mode of life necessitated a knowledge of Nature’s
laws; they had to take note of the seasons and measure time. So
Egypt gave us the Calendar, and Babylonia the system of dividing
the week into seven days, and the day into twelve double
hours.

The agricultural life permitted large communities to live in
river valleys, and these had to be governed by codes of laws;
settled communities required peace and order for their progress
and prosperity. All great civilizations have evolved from the
habits and experiences of settled communities. Law and religion
were closely associated, and the evidence afforded by the remains
of stone circles and temples suggests that in the organization
and division of labour the influence of religious teachers was
pre-eminent. Early rulers, indeed, were priest-kings
–incarnations of the deity who owned the land and measured out
the span of human life.

We need not
assume that Neolithic man led an idyllic existence; his triumphs
were achieved by slow and gradual steps; his legal codes were, no
doubt, written in blood and his institutions welded in the fires
of adversity. But, disciplined by laws, which fostered
humanitarian ideals, Neolithic man, especially of the
Mediterranean race, had reached a comparatively high state of
civilization long ages before the earliest traces of his
activities can be obtained. When this type of mankind is
portrayed in Ancient Sumeria, Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Crete we
find that the faces are refined and intellectual and often quite
modern in aspect. The skulls show that in the Late Stone Age the
human brain was fully developed and that the racial types were
fixed. In every country in Europe we still find the direct
descendants of the ancient Mediterranean race, as well as the
descendants of the less highly cultured conquerors who swept
westward out of Asia at the dawn of the Bronze Age; and
everywhere there are evidences of crossment of types in varying
degrees. Even the influence of Neolithic intellectual life still
remains. The comparative study of mythology and folk beliefs
reveals that we have inherited certain modes of thought from our
remote ancestors, who were the congeners of the Ancient Sumerians
and the Ancient Egyptians. In this connection it is of interest,
therefore, to refer to the social ideals of the early peoples who
met and mingled on the southern plains of the Tigris and
Euphrates, and especially the position occupied by women, which
is engaging so much attention at the present day.

It would appear that among the Semites and other nomadic
peoples woman was regarded as the helpmate rather than the
companion and equal of man. The birth of a son was hailed with
joy; it was “miserable to have a daughter”, as a Hindu sage reflected; in
various countries it was the custom to expose female children
after birth and leave them to die. A wife had no rights other
than those accorded to her by her husband, who exercised over her
the power of life and death. Sons inherited family possessions;
the daughters had no share allotted to them, and could be sold by
fathers and brothers. Among the peoples who observed “male
right”, social life was reflected in the conception of
controlling male deities, accompanied by shadowy goddesses who
were often little else than figures of speech.

The Ancient Sumerians, on the other hand, like the
Mediterranean peoples of Egypt and Crete, reverenced and exalted
motherhood in social and religious life. Women were accorded a
legal status and marriage laws were promulgated by the State.
Wives could possess private property in their own right, as did
the Babylonian Sarah, wife of Abraham, who owned the Egyptian
slave Hagar.[26] A woman received
from her parents a marriage dowry, and in the event of separation
from her husband she could claim its full value. Some spinsters,
or wives, were accustomed to enter into business partnerships
with men or members of their own sex, and could sue and be sued
in courts of law. Brothers and sisters were joint heirs of the
family estate. Daughters might possess property over which their
fathers exercised no control: they could also enter into legal
agreements with their parents in business matters, when they had
attained to years of discretion. Young women who took vows of
celibacy and lived in religious institutions could yet make
business investments, as surviving records show. There is only
one instance of a Sumerian woman ascending the throne, like Queen
Hatshepsut of Egypt. Women, therefore, were not rigidly excluded from
official life. Dungi II, an early Sumerian king, appointed two of
his daughters as rulers of conquered cities in Syria and Elam.
Similarly Shishak, the Egyptian Pharaoh, handed over the city of
Gezer, which he had subdued, to his daughter, Solomon’s
wife.[27] In the religious life of ancient
Sumeria the female population exercised an undoubted influence,
and in certain temples there were priestesses. The oldest hymns
give indication of the respect shown to women by making reference
to mixed assemblies as “females and males”, just as present-day
orators address themselves to “ladies and gentlemen”. In the
later Semitic adaptations of these productions, it is significant
to note, this conventional reference was altered to “male and
female”. If influences, however, were at work to restrict the
position of women they did not meet with much success, because
when Hammurabi codified existing laws, the ancient rights of
women received marked recognition.

There were two dialects in ancient Sumeria, and the invocatory
hymns were composed in what was known as “the women’s language”.
It must not be inferred, however, that the ladies of Sumeria had
established a speech which differed from that used by men. The
reference would appear to be to a softer and homelier dialect,
perhaps the oldest of the two, in which poetic emotion found
fullest and most beautiful expression. In these ancient days, as
in our own, the ideal of womanhood was the poet’s chief source of
inspiration, and among the hymns the highest reach of poetic art
was attained in the invocation of Ishtar, the Babylonian Venus.
The following hymn is addressed to that deity in her
Valkyrie-like character as a goddess of war, but her more
feminine traits are not obscured:–

Ancient
Babylonia was for over four thousand years the garden of Western
Asia. In the days of Hezekiah and Isaiah, when it had come under
the sway of the younger civilization of Assyria on the north, it
was “a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a
land of oil olive and of honey[28]“.
Herodotus found it still flourishing and extremely fertile. “This
territory”, he wrote, “is of all that we know the best by far for
producing grain; it is so good that it returns as much as two
hundredfold for the average, and, when it bears at its best, it
produces three hundredfold. The blades of the wheat and barley
there grow to be full four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed, how
large a tree grows, I know myself, but shall not record, being
well aware that even what has already been said relating to the
crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in those who
have not visited Babylonia[29].” To-day great
tracts of undulating moorland, which aforetime yielded two and
three crops a year, are in summer partly barren wastes and partly
jungle and reedy swamp. Bedouins camp beside sandy heaps which
were once populous and thriving cities, and here and there the
shrunken remnants of a people once great and influential eke out
precarious livings under the oppression of Turkish tax-gatherers
who are scarcely less considerate than the plundering nomads of
the desert.

This historic country is bounded on the east by Persia and on
the west by the Arabian desert. In shape somewhat resembling a
fish, it lies between the two great rivers, the Tigris and the
Euphrates, 100 miles wide at its broadest part, and narrowing to
35 miles towards the “tail” in the latitude of Baghdad; the
“head” converges to a point above Basra, where the rivers meet
and form the Shatt-el-Arab, which pours into the Persian Gulf
after meeting the Karun and drawing away the main volume of that
double-mouthed river. The distance from Baghdad to Basra is about
300 miles, and the area traversed by the Shatt-el-Arab is slowly
extending at the rate of a mile every thirty years or so, as a
result of the steady accumulation of silt and mud carried down by
the Tigris and Euphrates. When Sumeria was beginning to flourish,
these two rivers had separate outlets, and Eridu, the seat of the
cult of the sea god Ea, which now lies 125 miles inland, was a
seaport at the head of the Persian Gulf. A day’s journey
separated the river mouths when Alexander the Great broke the power of the
Persian Empire.

In the days of Babylonia’s prosperity the Euphrates was hailed
as “the soul of the land” and the Tigris as “the bestower of
blessings”. Skilful engineers had solved the problem of water
distribution by irrigating sun-parched areas and preventing the
excessive flooding of those districts which are now rendered
impassable swamps when the rivers overflow. A network of canals
was constructed throughout the country, which restricted the
destructive tendencies of the Tigris and Euphrates and developed
to a high degree their potentialities as fertilizing agencies.
The greatest of these canals appear to have been anciently river
beds. One, which is called Shatt en Nil to the north, and Shatt
el Kar to the south, curved eastward from Babylon, and sweeping
past Nippur, flowed like the letter S towards
Larsa and then rejoined the river. It is believed to mark the
course followed in the early Sumerian period by the Euphrates
river, which has moved steadily westward many miles beyond the
sites of ancient cities that were erected on its banks. Another
important canal, the Shatt el Hai, crossed the plain from the
Tigris to its sister river, which lies lower at this point, and
does not run so fast. Where the artificial canals were
constructed on higher levels than the streams which fed them, the
water was raised by contrivances known as “shaddufs”; the buckets
or skin bags were roped to a weighted beam, with the aid of which
they were swung up by workmen and emptied into the canals. It is
possible that this toilsome mode of irrigation was substituted in
favourable parts by the primitive water wheels which are used in
our own day by the inhabitants of the country who cultivate
strips of land along the river banks.

In Babylonia there are two seasons–the rainy and the dry. Rain falls
from November till March, and the plain is carpeted in spring by
patches of vivid green verdure and brilliant wild flowers. Then
the period of drought ensues; the sun rapidly burns up all
vegetation, and everywhere the eye is wearied by long stretches
of brown and yellow desert. Occasional sandstorms darken the
heavens, sweeping over sterile wastes and piling up the shapeless
mounds which mark the sites of ancient cities. Meanwhile the
rivers are increasing in volume, being fed by the melting snows
at their mountain sources far to the north. The swift Tigris,
which is 1146 miles long, begins to rise early in March and
reaches its highest level in May; before the end of June it again
subsides. More sluggish in movement, the Euphrates, which is 1780
miles long, shows signs of rising a fortnight later than the
Tigris, and is in flood for a more extended period; it does not
shrink to its lowest level until early in September. By
controlling the flow of these mighty rivers, preventing
disastrous floods, and storing and distributing surplus water,
the ancient Babylonians developed to the full the natural
resources of their country, and made it–what it may once again
become–one of the fairest and most habitable areas in the world.
Nature conferred upon them bountiful rewards for their labour;
trade and industries flourished, and the cities increased in
splendour and strength. Then as now the heat was great during the
long summer, but remarkably dry and unvarying, while the air was
ever wonderfully transparent under cloudless skies of vivid blue.
The nights were cool and of great beauty, whether in brilliant
moonlight or when ponds and canals were jewelled by the lustrous
displays of clear and numerous stars which glorified that
homeland of the earliest astronomers.

Babylonia is a treeless country, and timber had to be imported from the
earliest times. The date palm was probably introduced by man, as
were certainly the vine and the fig tree, which were widely
cultivated, especially in the north. Stone, suitable for
building, was very scarce, and limestone, alabaster, marble, and
basalt had to be taken from northern Mesopotamia, where the
mountains also yield copper and lead and iron. Except Eridu,
where ancient workers quarried sandstone from its sea-shaped
ridge, all the cities were built of brick, an excellent clay
being found in abundance. When brick walls were cemented with
bitumen they were given great stability. This resinous substance
is found in the north and south. It bubbles up through crevices
of rocks on river banks and forms small ponds. Two famous springs
at modern Hit, on the Euphrates, have been drawn upon from time
immemorial. “From one”, writes a traveller, “flows hot water
black with bitumen, while the other discharges intermittently
bitumen, or, after a rainstorm, bitumen and cold water…. Where
rocks crop out in the plain above Hit, they are full of seams of
bitumen.”[30] Present-day Arabs
call it “kiyara”, and export it for coating boats and roofs; they
also use it as an antiseptic, and apply it to cure the skin
diseases from which camels suffer.

Sumeria had many surplus products, including corn and figs,
pottery, fine wool and woven garments, to offer in exchange for
what it most required from other countries. It must, therefore,
have had a brisk and flourishing foreign trade at an exceedingly
remote period. No doubt numerous alien merchants were attracted
to its cities, and it may be that they induced or encouraged
Semitic and other raiders to overthrow governments and form
military aristocracies, so that they themselves might obtain
necessary concessions and achieve a degree of political ascendancy.
It does not follow, however, that the peasant class was greatly
affected by periodic revolutions of this kind, which brought
little more to them than a change of rulers. The needs of the
country necessitated the continuance of agricultural methods and
the rigid observance of existing land laws; indeed, these
constituted the basis of Sumerian prosperity. Conquerors have
ever sought reward not merely in spoil, but also the services of
the conquered. In northern Babylonia the invaders apparently
found it necessary to conciliate and secure the continued
allegiance of the tillers of the soil. Law and religion being
closely associated, they had to adapt their gods to suit the
requirements of existing social and political organizations. A
deity of pastoral nomads had to receive attributes which would
give him an agricultural significance; one of rural character had
to be changed to respond to the various calls of city life.
Besides, local gods could not be ignored on account of their
popularity. As a result, imported beliefs and religious customs
must have been fused and absorbed according to their bearing on
modes of life in various localities. It is probable that the
complex character of certain deities was due to the process of
adjustment to which they were subjected in new environments.

The petty kingdoms of Sumeria appear to have been tribal in
origin. Each city was presided over by a deity who was the
nominal owner of the surrounding arable land, farms were rented
or purchased from the priesthood, and pasture was held in common.
As in Egypt, where we find, for instance, the artisan god Ptah
supreme at Memphis, the sun god Ra at Heliopolis, and the cat
goddess Bast at Bubastis, the various local Sumerian and Akkadian
deities had distinctive characteristics, and similarly showed a
tendency to absorb the attributes of their rivals. The chief deity of a state was
the central figure in a pantheon, which had its political aspect
and influenced the growth of local theology. Cities, however, did
not, as a rule, bear the names of deities, which suggests that
several were founded when Sumerian religion was in its early
animistic stages, and gods and goddesses were not sharply defined
from the various spirit groups.

A distinctive and characteristic Sumerian god was Ea, who was
supreme at the ancient sea-deserted port of Eridu. He is
identified with the Oannes of Berosus,[31] who
referred to the deity as “a creature endowed with reason, with a
body like that of a fish, with feet below like those of a man,
with a fish’s tail”. This description recalls the familiar
figures of Egyptian gods and priests attired in the skins of the
sacred animals from whom their powers were derived, and the fairy
lore about swan maids and men, and the seals and other animals
who could divest themselves of their “skin coverings” and appear
in human shape. Originally Ea may have been a sacred fish. The
Indian creative gods Brahma and Vishnu had fish forms. In
Sanskrit literature Manu, the eponymous “first man”, is
instructed by the fish to build a ship in which to save himself
when the world would be purged by the rising waters. Ea
befriended in similar manner the Babylonian Noah, called
Pir-napishtim, advising him to build a vessel so as to be
prepared for the approaching Deluge. Indeed the Indian legend
appears to throw light on the original Sumerian conception of Ea.
It relates that when the fish was small and in danger of being
swallowed by other fish in a stream it appealed to Manu for
protection. The
sage at once lifted up the fish and placed it in a jar of water.
It gradually increased in bulk, and he transferred it next to a
tank and then to the river Ganges. In time the fish complained to
Manu that the river was too small for it, so he carried it to the
sea. For these services the god in fish form instructed Manu
regarding the approaching flood, and afterwards piloted his ship
through the weltering waters until it rested on a mountain
top.[32]

If this Indian myth is of Babylonian origin, as appears
probable, it may be that the spirit of the river Euphrates, “the
soul of the land”, was identified with a migrating fish. The
growth of the fish suggests the growth of the river rising in
flood. In Celtic folk tales high tides and valley floods are
accounted for by the presence of a “great beast” in sea, loch, or
river. In a class of legends, “specially connected with the
worship of Atargatis”, wrote Professor Robertson Smith, “the
divine life of the waters resides in the sacred fish that inhabit
them. Atargatis and her son, according to a legend common to
Hierapolis and Ascalon, plunged into the waters–in the first
case the Euphrates, in the second the sacred pool at the temple
near the town–and were changed into fishes”. The idea is that
“where a god dies, that is, ceases to exist in human form, his
life passes into the waters where he is buried; and this again is
merely a theory to bring the divine water or the divine fish into
harmony with anthropomorphic ideas. The same thing was sometimes
effected in another way by saying that the anthropomorphic deity
was born from the water, as Aphrodite sprang from sea foam, or as
Atargatis, in another form of the Euphrates legend, … was born
of an egg which the sacred fishes found in the Euphrates and
pushed ashore.”[33]

As “Shar Apsi”, Ea was the “King of the Watery Deep”. The reference,
however, according to Jastrow, “is not to the salt ocean, but the
sweet waters flowing under the earth which feed the streams, and
through streams and canals irrigate the fields”.[34] As Babylonia was fertilized by its
rivers, Ea, the fish god, was a fertilizing deity. In Egypt the
“Mother of Mendes” is depicted carrying a fish upon her head; she
links with Isis and Hathor; her husband is Ba-neb-Tettu, a form
of Ptah, Osiris, and Ra, and as a god of fertility he is
symbolized by the ram. Another Egyptian fish deity was the god
Rem, whose name signifies “to weep”; he wept fertilizing tears,
and corn was sown and reaped amidst lamentations. He may be
identical with Remi, who was a phase of Sebek, the crocodile god,
a developed attribute of Nu, the vague primitive Egyptian deity
who symbolized the primordial deep. The connection between a fish
god and a corn god is not necessarily remote when we consider
that in Babylonia and Egypt the harvest was the gift of the
rivers.

The Euphrates, indeed, was hailed as a creator of all that
grew on its banks.

In serving Ea, the embodiment or the water spirit, by leading
him, as the Indian Manu led the Creator and “Preserver” in fish
form, from river to water pot, water pot to pond or canal, and
then again to river and ocean, the Babylonians became expert engineers and
experienced agriculturists, the makers of bricks, the builders of
cities, the framers of laws. Indeed, their civilization was a
growth of Ea worship. Ea was their instructor. Berosus states
that, as Oannes, he lived in the Persian Gulf, and every day came
ashore to instruct the inhabitants of Eridu how to make canals,
to grow crops, to work metals, to make pottery and bricks, and to
build temples; he was the artisan god–Nun-ura, “god of the
potter”; Kuski-banda, “god of goldsmiths”, &c.–the divine
patron of the arts and crafts. “Ea knoweth everything”, chanted
the hymn maker. He taught the people how to form and use
alphabetic signs and instructed them in mathematics: he gave them
their code of laws. Like the Egyptian artisan god Ptah, and the
linking deity Khnumu, Ea was the “potter or moulder of gods and
man”. Ptah moulded the first man on his potter’s wheel: he also
moulded the sun and moon; he shaped the universe and hammered out
the copper sky. Ea built the world “as an architect builds a
house”.[36] Similarly the Vedic Indra, who
wielded a hammer like Ptah, fashioned the universe after the
simple manner in which the Aryans made their wooden
dwellings.[37]

Like Ptah, Ea also developed from an artisan god into a
sublime Creator in the highest sense, not merely as a producer of
crops. His word became the creative force; he named those things
he desired to be, and they came into existence. “Who but Ea
creates things”, exclaimed a priestly poet. This change from
artisan god to creator (Nudimmud) may have been due to the
tendency of early religious cults to attach to their chief god
the attributes of rivals exalted at other centres.

Ea, whose
name is also rendered Aa, was identified with Ya, Ya’u, or Au,
the Jah of the Hebrews. “In Ya-Daganu, ‘Jah is Dagon'”, writes
Professor Pinches, “we have the elements reversed, showing a wish
to identify Jah with Dagon, rather than Dagon with Jah; whilst
another interesting name, Au-Aa, shows an identification of Jah
with Aa, two names which have every appearance of being
etymologically connected.” Jah’s name “is one of the words for
‘god’ in the Assyro-Babylonian language”.[38]

Ea was “Enki”, “lord of the world”, or “lord of what is
beneath”; Amma-ana-ki, “lord of heaven and earth”; Sa-kalama,
“ruler of the land”, as well as Engur, “god of the abyss”, Naqbu,
“the deep”, and Lugal-ida, “king of the river”. As rain fell from
“the waters above the firmament”, the god of waters was also a
sky and earth god.

The Indian Varuna was similarly a sky as well as an ocean god
before the theorizing and systematizing Brahmanic teachers
relegated him to a permanent abode at the bottom of the sea. It
may be that Ea-Oannes and Varuna were of common origin.

Another Babylonian deity, named Dagan, is believed to be
identical with Ea. His worship was certainly of great antiquity.
“Hammurabi”, writes Professor Pinches, “seems to speak of the
Euphrates as being ‘the boundary of Dagan’, whom he calls his
creator. In later inscriptions the form Daguna, which approaches
nearer to the West Semitic form (Dagon of the Philistines), is
found in a few personal names.[39]

It is possible that the Philistine deity Dagon was a specialized form of
ancient Ea, who was either imported from Babylonia or was a sea
god of more than one branch of the Mediterranean race. The
authorities are at variance regarding the form and attributes of
Dagan. Our knowledge regarding him is derived mainly from the
Bible. He was a national rather than a city god. There are
references to a Beth-dagon[40], “house or city
of Dagon”; he had also a temple at Gaza, and Samson destroyed it
by pulling down the two middle pillars which were its main
support.[41] A third temple was
situated in Ashdod. When the captured ark of the Israelites was
placed in it the image of Dagon “fell on his face”, with the
result that “the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands
were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was
left”.[42] A further reference to “the
threshold of Dagon” suggests that the god had feet like
Ea-Oannes. Those who hold that Dagon had a fish form derive his
name from the Semitic “dag = a fish”, and suggest that after the
idol fell only the fishy part (dāgo) was left. On the other
hand, it was argued that Dagon was a corn god, and that the
resemblance between the words Dagan and Dagon are accidental.
Professor Sayce makes reference in this connection to a crystal
seal from Phoenicia in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, bearing an
inscription which he reads as Baal-dagon. Near the name is an ear
of corn, and other symbols, such as the winged solar disc, a
gazelle, and several stars, but there is no fish. It may be, of
course, that Baal-dagon represents a fusion of deities. As we
have seen in the case of Ea-Oannes and the deities of Mendes, a
fish god may also be a corn god, a land animal god and a god of
ocean and the sky. The offering of golden mice representing “your
mice that mar the land”,[43] made by the
Philistines, suggests that Dagon was the fertilizing harvest god,
among other things, whose usefulness had been impaired, as they
believed, by the mistake committed of placing the ark of Israel
in the temple at Ashdod. The Philistines came from Crete, and if
their Dagon was imported from that island, he may have had some
connection with Poseidon, whose worship extended throughout
Greece. This god of the sea, who is somewhat like the Roman
Neptune, carried a lightning trident and caused earthquakes. He
was a brother of Zeus, the sky and atmosphere deity, and had bull
and horse forms. As a horse he pursued Demeter, the earth and
corn goddess, and, like Ea, he instructed mankind, but especially
in the art of training horses. In his train were the Tritons,
half men, half fishes, and the water fairies, the Nereids. Bulls,
boars, and rams were offered to this sea god of fertility.
Amphitrite was his spouse.

An obscure god Shony, the Oannes of the Scottish Hebrides,
received oblations from those who depended for their agricultural
prosperity on his gifts of fertilizing seaweed. He is referred to
in Martin’s Western Isles,
and is not yet forgotten. The Eddic sea god Njord of Noatun was
the father of Frey, the harvest god. Dagda, the Irish corn god,
had for wife Boann, the goddess of the river Boyne. Osiris and
Isis of Egypt were associated with the Nile. The connection
between agriculture and the water supply was too obvious to
escape the early symbolists, and many other proofs of this than
those referred to could be given.

Ea’s “faithful spouse” was the goddess Damkina, who was also
called Nin-ki, “lady of the earth”. “May Ea make thee glad”,
chanted the priests. “May Damkina, queen of the deep, illumine
thee with her countenance; may Merodach (Marduk), the mighty overseer
of the Igigi (heavenly spirits), exalt thy head.” Merodach was
their son: in time he became the Bel, or “Lord”, of the
Babylonian pantheon.

Like the Indian Varuna, the sea god, Ea-Oannes had control
over the spirits and demons of the deep. The “ferryman” who kept
watch over the river of death was called Arad-Ea, “servant of
Ea”. There are also references to sea maidens, the Babylonian
mermaids, or Nereids. We have a glimpse of sea giants, which
resemble the Indian Danavas and Daityas of ocean, in the
chant:

A suggestion of the Vedic Vritra and his horde of
monsters.

These seven demons were also “the messengers of Anu”, who,
although specialized as a sky god in more than one pantheon,
appears to have been closely associated with Ea in the earliest
Sumerian period. His name, signifying “the high one”, is derived
from “ana”, “heaven”; he was the city god of Erech (Uruk). It is
possible that he was developed as an atmospheric god with solar
and lunar attributes. The seven demons, who were his messengers,
recall the stormy Maruts, the followers of Indra. They are
referred to as

When we deal
with a deity in his most archaic form it is difficult to
distinguish him from a demon. Even the beneficent Ea is
associated with monsters and furies. “Evil spirits”, according to
a Babylonian chant, were “the bitter venom of the gods”. Those
attached to a deity as “attendants” appear to represent the
original animistic group from which he evolved. In each district
the character of the deity was shaped to accord with local
conditions.

At Nippur, which was situated on the vague and shifting
boundary line between Sumer and Akkad, the chief god was Enlil,
whose name is translated “lord of mist”, “lord of might”, and
“lord of demons” by various authorities. He was a storm god and a
war god, and “lord of heaven and earth”, like Ea and Anu. An
atmospheric deity, he shares the attributes of the Indian Indra,
the thunder and rain god, and Vayu, the wind god; he also
resembles the Semitic Adad or Rimman, who links with the Hittite
Tarku. All these are deities of tempest and the mountains–Wild
Huntsmen in the Raging Host. The name of Enlil’s temple at Nippur
has been translated as “mountain house”, or “like a mountain”,
and the theory obtained for a time that the god must therefore
have been imported by a people from the hills. But as the
ideogram for “mountain” and “land” was used in the earliest
times, as King shows, with reference to foreign
countries,[46] it is more probable
that Enlil was exalted as a world god who had dominion over not
only Sumer and Akkad, but also the territories occupied by the
rivals and enemies of the early Babylonians.

Enlil is known as the “older Bel” (lord), to distinguish him
from Bel Merodach of Babylon. He was the chief figure in a triad in which he
figured as earth god, with Anu as god of the sky and Ea as god of
the deep. This classification suggests that Nippur had either
risen in political importance and dominated the cities of Erech
and Eridu, or that its priests were influential at the court of a
ruler who was the overlord of several city states.

Associated with Bel Enlil was Beltis, later known as
“Beltu–the lady”. She appears to be identical with the other
great goddesses, Ishtar, Nana, Zerpanitum, &c., a “Great Mother”, or consort of an
early god with whom she was equal in power and dignity.

In the later systematized theology of the Babylonians we seem
to trace the fragments of a primitive mythology which was vague
in outline, for the deities were not sharply defined, and existed
in groups. Enneads were formed in Egypt by placing a local god at
the head of a group of eight elder deities. The sun god Ra was
the chief figure of the earliest pantheon of this character at
Heliopolis, while at Hermopolis the leader was the lunar god
Thoth. Professor Budge is of opinion that “both the Sumerians and
the early Egyptians derived their primeval gods from some common
but exceedingly ancient source”, for he finds in the Babylonian
and Nile valleys that there is a resemblance between two early
groups which “seems to be too close to be
accidental”.[47]

The Egyptian group comprises four pairs of vague gods and
goddesses–Nu and his consort Nut, Hehu and his consort Hehut,
Kekui and his consort Kekuit, and Kerh and his consort Kerhet.
“Man always has fashioned”, he says, “and probably always will
fashion, his god or gods in his own image, and he has always,
having reached a certain stage in development, given to his gods
wives and
offspring; but the nature of the position taken by the wives of
the gods depends upon the nature of the position of women in the
households of those who write the legends and the traditions of
the gods. The gods of the oldest company in Egypt were, the
writer believes, invented by people in whose households women
held a high position, and among whom they possessed more power
than is usually the case with Oriental peoples.”[48]

We cannot say definitely what these various deities represent.
Nu was the spirit of the primordial deep, and Nut of the waters
above the heavens, the mother of moon and sun and the stars. The
others were phases of light and darkness and the forces of nature
in activity and repose.

Nu is represented in Babylonian mythology by Apsu-Rishtu, and
Nut by Mummu-Tiamat or Tiawath; the next pair is Lachmu and
Lachamu, and the third, Anshar and Kishar. The fourth pair is
missing, but the names of Anu and Ea (as Nudimmud) are mentioned
in the first tablet of the Creation series, and the name of a
third is lost. Professor Budge thinks that the Assyrian editors
substituted the ancient triad of Anu, Ea, and Enlil for the pair
which would correspond to those found in Egypt. Originally the
wives of Anu and Ea may have made up the group of eight primitive
deities.

There can be little doubt but that Ea, as he survives to us,
is of later characterization than the first pair of primitive
deities who symbolized the deep. The attributes of this
beneficent god reflect the progress, and the social and moral
ideals of a people well advanced in civilization. He rewarded
mankind for the services they rendered to him; he was their
leader and instructor; he achieved for them the victories over
the destructive forces of nature. In brief, he was the dragon
slayer, a distinction, by the way, which was attached in later
times to his son Merodach, the Babylonian god, although Ea was
still credited with the victory over the dragon’s husband.

When Ea was one of the pre-Babylonian group–the triad of
Bel-Enlil, Anu, and Ea–he resembled the Indian Vishnu, the
Preserver, while Bel-Enlil resembled Shiva, the Destroyer, and
Anu, the father, supreme Brahma, the Creator and Father of All,
the difference in exact adjustment being due, perhaps, to
Sumerian political conditions.

Ea, as we have seen, symbolized the beneficence of the waters;
their destructive force was represented by Tiamat or Tiawath, the
dragon, and Apsu, her husband, the arch-enemy of the gods. We
shall find these elder demons figuring in the Babylonian Creation
myth, which receives treatment in a later chapter.

The ancient Sumerian city of Eridu, which means “on the
seashore”, was invested with great sanctity from the earliest
times, and Ea, the “great magician of the gods”, was invoked by
workers of spells, the priestly magicians of historic Babylonia.
Excavations have shown that Eridu was protected by a retaining
wall of sandstone, of which material many of its houses were
made. In its temple tower, built of brick, was a marble stairway,
and evidences have been forthcoming that in the later Sumerian
period the structure was lavishly adorned. It is referred to in
the fragments of early literature which have survived as “the
splendid house, shady as the forest”, that “none may enter”. The
mythological spell exercised by Eridu in later times suggests
that the civilization of Sumeria owed much to the worshippers of
Ea. At the sacred city the first man was created: there the
souls of the
dead passed towards the great Deep. Its proximity to the sea–Ea
was Nin-bubu, “god of the sailor”–may have brought it into
contact with other peoples and other early civilizations. Like
the early Egyptians, the early Sumerians may have been in touch
with Punt (Somaliland), which some regard as the cradle of the
Mediterranean race. The Egyptians obtained from that sacred land
incense-bearing trees which had magical potency. In a fragmentary
Babylonian charm there is a reference to a sacred tree or bush at
Eridu. Professor Sayce has suggested that it is the Biblical
“Tree of Life” in the Garden of Eden. His translations of certain
vital words, however, is sharply questioned by Mr. R. Campbell
Thompson of the British Museum, who does not accept the
theory.[49] It may be that Ea’s sacred bush or
tree is a survival of tree and water worship.

If Eridu was not the “cradle” of the Sumerian race, it was
possibly the cradle of Sumerian civilization. Here, amidst the
shifting rivers in early times, the agriculturists may have
learned to control and distribute the water supply by utilizing
dried-up beds of streams to irrigate the land. Whatever successes
they achieved were credited to Ea, their instructor and patron;
he was Nadimmud, “god of everything”.

In dealing
with the city cults of Sumer and Akkad, consideration must be
given to the problems involved by the rival mythological systems.
Pantheons not only varied in detail, but were presided over by
different supreme gods. One city’s chief deity might be regarded
as a secondary deity at another centre. Although Ea, for
instance, was given first place at Eridu, and was so pronouncedly
Sumerian in character, the moon god Nannar remained supreme at
Ur, while the sun god, whose Semitic name was Shamash, presided
at Larsa and Sippar. Other deities were similarly exalted in
other states.

As has been indicated, a mythological system must have been
strongly influenced by city politics. To hold a community in sway,
it was necessary to recognize officially the various gods
worshipped by different sections, so as to secure the constant
allegiance of all classes to their rulers. Alien deities were
therefore associated with local and tribal deities, those of the
nomads with those of the agriculturists, those of the unlettered
folks with those of the learned people. Reference has been made
to the introduction of strange deities by conquerors. But these
were not always imposed upon a community by violent means.
Indications are not awanting that the worshippers of alien gods
were sometimes welcomed and encouraged to settle in certain
states. When they came as military allies to assist a city folk
against a fierce enemy, they were naturally much admired and
praised, honoured by the women and the bards, and rewarded by the
rulers.

In the epic of Gilgamesh, the Babylonian Hercules, we meet
with Ea-bani, a Goliath of the wilds, who is entreated to come to
the aid of the besieged city of Erech when it seemed that its
deities were unable to help the people against their enemies.

Ea-bani was attracted to Erech by the gift of a fair woman for
wife. The poet who lauded him no doubt mirrored public opinion.
We can see the slim, shaven Sumerians gazing with wonder and
admiration on their rough heroic ally.

Like the giant Alban, the eponymous ancestor of a people who
invaded prehistoric Britain, Ea-bani appears to have represented
in Babylonian folk legends a certain type of foreign settlers in
the land. No doubt the city dwellers, who were impressed by the
prowess of the hairy and powerful warriors, were also ready to
acknowledge the greatness of their war gods, and to admit them
into the pantheon. The fusion of beliefs which followed must have
stimulated thought and been productive of speculative ideas.
“Nowhere”, remarks Professor Jastrow, “does a high form of
culture arise without the commingling of diverse ethnic
elements.”

We must also take into account the influence exercised by
leaders of thought like En-we-dur-an-ki, the famous high priest
of Sippar, whose piety did much to increase the reputation of the
cult of Shamesh, the sun god. The teachings and example of
Buddha, for instance, revolutionized Brahmanic religion in
India.

A mythology was an attempt to solve the riddle of the
Universe, and to adjust the relations of mankind with the various
forces represented by the deities. The priests systematized
existing folk beliefs and established an official religion. To
secure the prosperity of the State, it was considered necessary
to render homage unto whom homage was due at various seasons and
under various circumstances.

The religious attitude of a particular community, therefore,
must have been largely dependent on its needs and experiences.
The food supply was a first consideration. At Eridu, as we have seen, it was
assured by devotion to Ea and obedience to his commands as an
instructor. Elsewhere it might happen, however, that Ea’s gifts
were restricted or withheld by an obstructing force–the raging
storm god, or the parching, pestilence-bringing deity of the sun.
It was necessary, therefore, for the people to win the favour of
the god or goddess who seemed most powerful, and was accordingly
considered to be the greatest in a particular district. A rain
god presided over the destinies of one community, and a god of
disease and death over another; a third exalted the war god, no
doubt because raids were frequent and the city owed its strength
and prosperity to its battles and conquests. The reputation won
by a particular god throughout Babylonia would depend greatly on
the achievements of his worshippers and the progress of the city
civilization over which he presided. Bel-Enlil’s fame as a war
deity was probably due to the political supremacy of his city of
Nippur; and there was probably good reason for attributing to the
sun god a pronounced administrative and legal character; he may
have controlled the destinies of exceedingly well organized
communities in which law and order and authority were held in
high esteem.

In accounting for the rise of distinctive and rival city
deities, we should also consider the influence of divergent
conceptions regarding the origin of life in mingled communities.
Each foreign element in a community had its own intellectual life
and immemorial tribal traditions, which reflected ancient habits
of life and perpetuated the doctrines of eponymous ancestors.
Among the agricultural classes, the folk religion which entered
so intimately into their customs and labours must have remained
essentially Babylonish in character. In cities, however, where
official religions were formulated, foreign ideas were more apt
to be imposed, especially when embraced by influential teachers.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find that in Babylonia, as in
Egypt, there were differences of opinion regarding the origin of
life and the particular natural element which represented the
vital principle.

One section of the people, who were represented by the
worshippers of Ea, appear to have believed that the essence of
life was contained in water. The god of Eridu was the source of
the “water of life”. He fertilized parched and sunburnt wastes
through rivers and irrigating canals, and conferred upon man the
sustaining “food of life”. When life came to an end–

Offerings of water and food were made to the dead so that the
ghosts might be nourished and prevented from troubling the
living. Even the gods required water and food; they were immortal
because they had drunk ambrosia and eaten from the plant of life.
When the goddess Ishtar was in the Underworld, the land of the
dead, the servant of Ea exclaimed–

The goddess of the dead commanded her servant to “sprinkle the
lady Ishtar with the water of life and bid her depart”. The
sacred water might also be found at a confluence of rivers. Ea
bade his son, Merodach, to “draw water from the mouth of two
streams”, and “on this water to put his pure spell”.

The worship of rivers and wells which prevailed in many countries was
connected with the belief that the principle of life was in
moisture. In India, water was vitalized by the intoxicating juice
of the Soma plant, which inspired priests to utter prophecies and
filled their hearts with religious fervour. Drinking customs had
originally a religious significance. It was believed in India
that the sap of plants was influenced by the moon, the source of
vitalizing moisture and the hiding-place of the mead of the gods.
The Teutonic gods also drank this mead, and poets were inspired
by it. Similar beliefs obtained among various peoples. Moon and
water worship were therefore closely associated; the blood of
animals and the sap of plants were vitalized by the water of life
and under control of the moon.

The body moisture of gods and demons had vitalizing
properties. When the Indian creator, Prajápati, wept at
the beginning, “that (the tears) which fell into the water became
the air. That which he wiped away, upwards, became the
sky.”[50] The ancient Egyptians believed that
all men were born from the eyes of Horus except negroes, who came
from other parts of his body.[51] The
creative tears of Ra, the sun god, fell as shining rays upon the
earth. When this god grew old saliva dripped from his mouth, and
Isis mixed the vitalizing moisture with dust, and thus made the
serpent which bit and paralysed the great solar
deity.[52]

Other Egyptian deities, including Osiris and Isis, wept
creative tears. Those which fell from the eyes of the evil gods
produced poisonous plants and various baneful animals. Orion, the
Greek giant, sprang from the body moisture of deities. The
weeping ceremonies in connection with agricultural rites were no doubt
believed to be of magical potency; they encouraged the god to
weep creative tears.

Ea, the god of the deep, was also “lord of life” (Enti), “king
of the river” (Lugal-ida), and god of creation (Nudimmud). His
aid was invoked by means ot magical formulae. As the “great
magician of the gods” he uttered charms himself, and was the
patron of all magicians. One spell runs as follows:

Saliva, like tears, had creative and therefore curative
qualities; it also expelled and injured demons and brought good
luck. Spitting ceremonies are referred to in the religious
literature of Ancient Egypt. When the Eye of Ra was blinded by
Set, Thoth spat in it to restore vision. The sun god Tum, who was
linked with Ra as Ra-Tum, spat on the ground, and his saliva
became the gods Shu and Tefnut. In the Underworld the devil
serpent Apep was spat upon to curse it, as was also its waxen
image which the priests fashioned.[53]

Several African tribes spit to make compacts, declare
friendship, and to curse.

Park, the explorer, refers in his Travels to his carriers spitting on a
flat stone to ensure a good journey. Arabian holy men and
descendants of Mohammed spit to cure diseases. Mohammed spat in
the mouth of his grandson Hasen soon after birth. Theocritus,
Sophocles, and
Plutarch testify to the ancient Grecian customs of spitting to
cure and to curse, and also to bless when children were named.
Pliny has expressed belief in the efficacy of the fasting spittle
for curing disease, and referred to the custom of spitting to
avert witchcraft. In England, Scotland, and Ireland spitting
customs are not yet obsolete. North of England boys used to talk
of “spitting their sauls” (souls). When the Newcastle colliers
held their earliest strikes they made compacts by spitting on a
stone. There are still “spitting stones” in the north of
Scotland. When bargains are made in rural districts, hands are
spat upon before they are shaken. The first money taken each day
by fishwives and other dealers is spat upon to ensure increased
drawings. Brand, who refers to various spitting customs, quotes
Scot’s Discovery of
Witchcraft regarding the saliva cure for king’s evil,
which is still, by the way, practised in the Hebrides. Like
Pliny, Scot recommended ceremonial spitting as a charm against
witchcraft.[54] In China spitting to
expel demons is a common practice. We still call a hasty person a
“spitfire”, and a calumniator a “spit-poison”.

The life principle in trees, &c., as we have seen, was
believed to have been derived from the tears of deities. In India
sap was called the “blood of trees”, and references to “bleeding
trees” are still widespread and common. “Among the ancients”,
wrote Professor Robertson Smith, “blood is generally conceived as
the principle or vehicle of life, and so the account often given
of sacred waters is that the blood of the deity flows in them.
Thus as Milton writes:

The ruddy
colour which the swollen river derived from the soil at a certain
season was ascribed to the blood of the god, who received his
death wound in Lebanon at that time of the year, and lay buried
beside the sacred source.”[55]

In Babylonia the river was regarded as the source of the life
blood and the seat of the soul. No doubt this theory was based on
the fact that the human liver contains about a sixth of the blood
in the body, the largest proportion required by any single organ.
Jeremiah makes “Mother Jerusalem” exclaim: “My liver is poured
upon the earth for the destruction of the daughter of my people”,
meaning that her life is spent with grief.

Inspiration was derived by drinking blood as well as by
drinking intoxicating liquors–the mead of the gods. Indian
magicians who drink the blood of the goat sacrificed to the
goddess Kali, are believed to be temporarily possessed by her
spirit, and thus enabled to prophesy.[56]
Malayan exorcists still expel demons while they suck the blood
from a decapitated fowl.[57]

Similar customs were prevalent in Ancient Greece. A woman who
drank the blood of a sacrificed lamb or bull uttered prophetic
sayings.[58]

But while most Babylonians appear to have believed that the
life principle was in blood, some were apparently of opinion that
it was in breath–the air of life. A man died when he ceased to
breathe; his spirit, therefore, it was argued, was identical with
the atmosphere–the moving wind–and was accordingly derived from
the atmospheric or wind god. When, in the Gilgamesh epic, the
hero invokes the dead Ea-bani, the ghost rises up like a “breath of
wind”. A Babylonian charm runs:

The Hebrew “nephesh ruach” and “neshamah” (in Arabic “ruh” and
“nefs”) pass from meaning “breath” to “spirit”.[60] In Egypt the god Khnumu was “Kneph” in
his character as an atmospheric deity. The ascendancy of storm
and wind gods in some Babylonian cities may have been due to the
belief that they were the source of the “air of life”. It is
possible that this conception was popularized by the Semites.
Inspiration was perhaps derived from these deities by burning
incense, which, if we follow evidence obtained elsewhere, induced
a prophetic trance. The gods were also invoked by incense. In the
Flood legend the Babylonian Noah burned incense. “The gods
smelled a sweet savour and gathered like flies over the
sacrificer.” In Egypt devotees who inhaled the breath of the Apis
bull were enabled to prophesy.

In addition to water and atmospheric deities Babylonia had
also its fire gods, Girru, Gish Bar, Gibil, and Nusku. Their
origin is obscure. It is doubtful if their worshippers, like
those of the Indian Agni, believed that fire, the “vital spark”,
was the principle of life which was manifested by bodily heat.
The Aryan fire worshippers cremated their dead so that the
spirits might be
transferred by fire to Paradise. This practice, however, did not
obtain among the fire worshippers of Persia, nor, as was once
believed, in Sumer or Akkad either. Fire was, however, used in
Babylonia for magical purposes. It destroyed demons, and put to
flight the spirits of disease. Possibly the fire-purification
ceremonies resembled those which were practised by the
Canaanites, and are referred to in the Bible. Ahaz “made his son
to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the
heathen”.[61] Ezekiel declared
that “when ye offer your gifts, when ye make your sons to pass
through the fire, ye pollute yourselves with all your
idols”.[62] In Leviticus it is laid down: “Thou shalt
not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to
Moloch”.[63] It may be that in
Babylonia the fire-cleansing ceremony resembled that which
obtained at Beltane (May Day) in Scotland, Germany, and other
countries. Human sacrifices might also have been offered up as
burnt offerings. Abraham, who came from the Sumerian city of Ur,
was prepared to sacrifice Isaac, Sarah’s first-born. The fire
gods of Babylonia never achieved the ascendancy of the Indian
Agni; they appear to have resembled him mainly in so far as he
was connected with the sun. Nusku, like Agni, was also the
“messenger of the gods”. When Merodach or Babylon was exalted as
chief god of the pantheon his messages were carried to Ea by
Nusku. He may have therefore symbolized the sun rays, for
Merodach had solar attributes. It is possible that the belief
obtained among even the water worshippers of Eridu that the sun
and moon, which rose from the primordial deep, had their origin
in the everlasting fire in Ea’s domain at the bottom of the sea.
In the Indian god Varuna’s ocean home an “Asura fire” (demon
fire) burned
constantly; it was “bound and confined”, but could not be
extinguished. Fed by water, this fire, it was believed, would
burst forth at the last day and consume the universe.[64] A similar belief can be traced in
Teutonic mythology. The Babylonian incantation cult appealed to
many gods, but “the most important share in the rites”, says
Jastrow, “are taken by fire and water–suggesting, therefore,
that the god of water–more particularly Ea–and the god of fire
… are the chief deities on which the ritual itself hinges”. In
some temples there was a bit
rimki, a “house of washing”, and a bit nuri, a “house of
light”.[65]

It is possible, of course, that fire was regarded as the vital
principle by some city cults, which were influenced by imported
ideas. If so, the belief never became prevalent. The most
enduring influence in Babylonian religion was the early Sumerian;
and as Sumerian modes of thought were the outcome of habits of
life necessitated by the character of the country, they were
bound, sooner or later, to leave a deep impress on the minds of
foreign peoples who settled in the Garden of Western Asia. It is
not surprising, therefore, to find that imported deities assumed
Babylonian characteristics, and were identified or associated
with Babylonian gods in the later imperial pantheon.

Moon worship appears to have been as ancient as water worship,
with which, as we have seen, it was closely associated. It was
widely prevalent throughout Babylonia. The chief seat of the
lunar deity, Nannar or Sin, was the ancient city of Ur, from
which Abraham migrated to Harran, where the “Baal” (the lord) was
also a moon god. Ur was situated in Sumer, in the south,
between the west
bank of the Euphrates and the low hills bordering the Arabian
desert, and not far distant from sea-washed Eridu. No doubt, like
that city, it had its origin at an exceedingly remote period. At
any rate, the excavations conducted there have afforded proof
that it flourished in the prehistoric period.

As in Arabia, Egypt, and throughout ancient Europe and
elsewhere, the moon god of Sumeria was regarded as the “friend of
man”. He controlled nature as a fertilizing agency; he caused
grass, trees, and crops to grow; he increased flocks and herds,
and gave human offspring. At Ur he was exalted above Ea as “the
lord and prince of the gods, supreme in heaven, the Father of
all”; he was also called “great Anu”, an indication that Anu, the
sky god, had at one time a lunar character. The moon god was
believed to be the father of the sun god: he was the “great steer
with mighty horns and perfect limbs”.

His name Sin is believed to be a corruption of “Zu-ena”, which
signifies “knowledge lord”.[66] Like the lunar
Osiris of Egypt, he was apparently an instructor of mankind; the
moon measured time and controlled the seasons; seeds were sown at
a certain phase of the moon, and crops were ripened by the
harvest moon. The mountains of Sinai and the desert of Sin are
called after this deity.

As Nannar, which Jastrow considers to be a variation of
“Narnar”, the “light producer”, the moon god scattered darkness
and reduced the terrors of night. His spirit inhabited the lunar
stone, so that moon and stone worship were closely associated; it
also entered trees and crops, so that moon worship linked with
earth worship, as both linked with water worship.

The consort
of Nannar was Nin-Uruwa, “the lady of Ur”, who was also called
Nin-gala. She links with Ishtar as Nin, as Isis of Egypt linked
with other mother deities. The twin children of the moon were
Mashu and Mashtu, a brother and sister, like the lunar girl and
boy of Teutonic mythology immortalized in nursery rhymes as Jack
and Jill.

Sun worship was of great antiquity in Babylonia, but appears
to have been seasonal in its earliest phases. No doubt the sky
god Anu had his solar as well as his lunar attributes, which he
shared with Ea. The spring sun was personified as Tammuz, the
youthful shepherd, who was loved by the earth goddess Ishtar and
her rival Eresh-ki-gal, goddess of death, the Babylonian
Persephone. During the winter Tammuz dwelt in Hades, and at the
beginning of spring Ishtar descended to search for him among the
shades.[67] But the burning summer sun was
symbolized as a destroyer, a slayer of men, and therefore a war
god. As Ninip or Nirig, the son of Enlil, who was made in the
likeness of Anu, he waged war against the earth spirits, and was
furiously hostile towards the deities of alien peoples, as
befitted a god of battle. Even his father feared him, and when he
was advancing towards Nippur, sent out Nusku, messenger of the
gods, to soothe the raging deity with soft words. Ninip was
symbolized as a wild bull, was connected with stone worship, like
the Indian destroying god Shiva, and was similarly a deity of
Fate. He had much in common with Nin-Girsu, a god of Lagash, who
was in turn regarded as a form of Tammuz.

Nergal, another solar deity, brought disease and pestilence,
and, according to Jensen, all misfortunes due to excessive heat.
He was the king of death, husband of Eresh-ki-gal, queen of Hades. As a war god
he thirsted for human blood, and was depicted as a mighty lion.
He was the chief deity of the city of Cuthah, which, Jastrow
suggests, was situated beside a burial place of great repute,
like the Egyptian Abydos.

The two great cities of the sun in ancient Babylonia were the
Akkadian Sippar and the Sumerian Larsa. In these the sun god,
Shamash or Babbar, was the patron deity. He was a god of Destiny,
the lord of the living and the dead, and was exalted as the great
Judge, the lawgiver, who upheld justice; he was the enemy of
wrong, he loved righteousness and hated sin, he inspired his
worshippers with rectitude and punished evildoers. The sun god
also illumined the world, and his rays penetrated every quarter:
he saw all things, and read the thoughts of men; nothing could be
concealed from Shamash. One of his names was Mitra, like the god
who was linked with Varuna in the Indian Rigveda. These twin deities, Mitra and
Varuna, measured out the span of human life. They were the source
of all heavenly gifts: they regulated sun and moon, the winds and
waters, and the seasons.[68]

These did the gods establish in royal power over themselves,
because they were wise and the children of wisdom, and because
they excelled in power.–Prof.
Arnold’s trans. of Rigvedic Hymn.

Mitra and Varuna were protectors of hearth and home, and they
chastised sinners. “In a striking passage of the Mahabharata” says Professor Moulton,
“one in which Indian thought comes nearest to the conception of
conscience, a kingly wrongdoer is reminded that the sun sees
secret sin.”[69]

In Persian mythology Mitra, as Mithra, is the patron of Truth, and “the
Mediator” between heaven and earth[70].
This god was also worshipped by the military aristocracy of
Mitanni, which held sway for a period over Assyria. In Roman
times the worship of Mithra spread into Europe from Persia.
Mithraic sculptures depict the deity as a corn god slaying the
harvest bull; on one of the monuments “cornstalks instead of
blood are seen issuing from the wound inflicted with the
knife[71]“. The Assyrian word “metru”
signifies rain[70]. As a sky god Mitra may have been
associated, like Varuna, with the waters above the firmament.
Rain would therefore be gifted by him as a fertilizing deity. In
the Babylonian Flood legend it is the sun god Shamash who
“appointed the time” when the heavens were to “rain destruction”
in the night, and commanded Pir-napishtim, “Enter into the midst
of thy ship and shut thy door”. The solar deity thus appears as a
form of Anu, god of the sky and upper atmosphere, who controls
the seasons and the various forces of nature. Other rival chiefs
of city pantheons, whether lunar, atmospheric, earth, or water
deities, were similarly regarded as the supreme deities who ruled
the Universe, and decreed when man should receive benefits or
suffer from their acts of vengeance.

It is possible that the close resemblances between Mithra and
Mitra of the Aryan-speaking peoples of India and the Iranian
plateau, and the sun god of the Babylonians–the Semitic Shamash,
the Sumerian Utu–were due to early contact and cultural
influence through the medium of Elam. As a solar and corn god,
the Persian Mithra links with Tammuz, as a sky and atmospheric
deity with Anu, and as a god of truth, righteousness, and law
with Shamash. We seem to trace in the sublime Vedic hymns addressed by the Indian
Aryans to Mitra and Varuna the impress of Babylonian religious
thought:

Shamash was similarly exalted in Babylonian hymns:

The worshippers of Varuna and Mitra in the Punjab did not
cremate their dead like those who exalted the rival fire god
Agni. The grave was the “house of clay”, as in Babylonia. Mitra,
who was identical with Yama, ruled over departed souls in the
“Land of the Pitris” (Fathers), which was reached by crossing the
mountains and the rushing stream of death.[75] As we have seen, the Babylonian solar
god Nergal was also the lord of the dead.

As Ma-banda-anna, “the boat of the sky”, Shamash links with
the Egyptian sun god Ra, whose barque sailed over the heavens by
day and through the underworld of darkness and death during the
night. The consort of Shamash was Aa, and his attendants were
Kittu and Mesharu, “Truth” and “Righteousness”.

Like the Hittites, the Babylonians had also a sun goddess: her
name was Nin-sun, which Jastrow renders “the annihilating lady”.
At Erech she had a shrine in the temple of the sky god Anu.

We can trace in Babylonia, as in Egypt, the early belief that
life in the Universe had a female origin. Nin-sun links with
Ishtar, whose Sumerian name is Nana. Ishtar appears to be
identical with the Egyptian Hathor, who, as Sekhet, slaughtered
the enemies of the sun god Ra. She was similarly the goddess of
maternity, and is depicted in this character, like Isis and other
goddesses of similar character, suckling a babe. Another
Babylonian lady of the gods was Ama, Mama, or Mami, “the
creatress of the seed of mankind”, and was “probably so called as
the ‘mother’ of all things”.[76]

A characteristic atmospheric deity was Ramman, the Rimmon of
the Bible, the Semitic Addu, Adad, Hadad, or Dadu. He was not a
presiding deity in any pantheon, but was identified with Enlil at
Nippur. As a hammer god, he was imported by the Semites from the
hills. He was a wind and thunder deity, a rain bringer, a corn
god, and a god of battle like Thor, Jupiter, Tarku, Indra, and
others, who were all sons of the sky.

In this brief review of the representative deities of early
Babylonia, it will be seen that most gods link with Anu, Ea, and
Enlil, whose attributes they symbolized in various forms. The
prominence accorded to an individual deity depended on local
conditions, experiences, and influences. Ceremonial practices no
doubt varied
here and there, but although one section might exalt Ea and
another Shamash, the religious faith of the people as a whole did
not differ to any marked extent; they served the gods according
to their lights, so that life might be prolonged and made
prosperous, for the land of death and “no return” was regarded as
a place of gloom and misery.

When the Babylonians appear before us in the early stages of
the historical period they had reached that stage of development
set forth so vividly in the Orations of Isocrates: “Those of the
gods who are the source to us of good things have the title of
Olympians; those whose department is that of calamities and
punishments have harsher titles: to the first class both private
persons and states erect altars and temples; the second is not
worshipped either with prayers or burnt sacrifices, but in their
case we perform ceremonies of riddance”.[77]

The Sumerians, like the Ancient Egyptians, developed their
deities, who reflected the growth of culture, from vague spirit
groups, which, like ghosts, were hostile to mankind. Those
spirits who could be propitiated were exalted as benevolent
deities; those who could not be bargained with were regarded as
evil gods and goddesses. A better understanding of the character
of Babylonian deities will therefore be obtained by passing the
demons and evil spirits under review.

The
memorable sermon preached by Paul to the Athenians when he stood
“in the midst of Mars’ hill”, could have been addressed with
equal appropriateness to the ancient Sumerians and Akkadians. “I
perceive”, he declared, “that in all things ye are too
superstitious…. God that made the world and all things therein,
seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in
temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands
as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and
breath, and all things … for in him we live, and move, and have
our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we
are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring
of God, we ought
not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or
stone, graven by art and man’s device.”[78]

Babylonian temples were houses of the gods in the literal
sense; the gods were supposed to dwell in them, their spirits
having entered into the graven images or blocks of stone. It is
probable that like the Ancient Egyptians they believed a god had
as many spirits as he had attributes. The gods, as we have said,
appear to have evolved from early spirit groups. All the world
swarmed with spirits, which inhabited stones and trees, mountains
and deserts, rivers and ocean, the air, the sky, the stars, and
the sun and moon. The spirits controlled Nature: they brought
light and darkness, sunshine and storm, summer and winter; they
were manifested in the thunderstorm, the sandstorm, the glare of
sunset, and the wraiths of mist rising from the steaming marshes.
They controlled also the lives of men and women. The good spirits
were the source of luck. The bad spirits caused misfortunes, and
were ever seeking to work evil against the Babylonian. Darkness
was peopled by demons and ghosts of the dead. The spirits of
disease were ever lying in wait to clutch him with cruel
invisible hands.

Some modern writers, who are too prone to regard ancient
peoples from a twentieth-century point of view, express grave
doubts as to whether “intelligent Babylonians” really believed
that spirits came down in the rain and entered the soil to rise
up before men’s eyes as stalks of barley or wheat. There is no
reason for supposing that they thought otherwise. The early folks
based their theories on the accumulated knowledge of their age.
They knew nothing regarding the composition of water or the atmosphere, of the
cause of thunder and lightning, or of the chemical changes
effected in soils by the action of bacteria. They attributed all
natural phenomena to the operations of spirits or gods. In
believing that certain demons caused certain diseases, they may
be said to have achieved distinct progress, for they anticipated
the germ theory. They made discoveries, too, which have been
approved and elaborated in later times when they lit sacred
fires, bathed in sacred waters, and used oils and herbs to charm
away spirits of pestilence. Indeed, many folk cures, which were
originally associated with magical ceremonies, are still
practised in our own day. They were found to be effective by
early observers, although they were unable to explain why and how
cures were accomplished, like modern scientific
investigators.

In peopling the Universe with spirits, the Babylonians, like
other ancient folks, betrayed that tendency to symbolize
everything which has ever appealed to the human mind. Our
painters and poets and sculptors are greatest when they symbolize
their ideals and ideas and impressions, and by so doing make us
respond to their moods. Their “beauty and their terror are
sublime”. But what may seem poetic to us, was invariably a grim
reality to the Babylonians. The statue or picture was not merely
a work of art but a manifestation of the god or demon. As has
been said, they believed that the spirit of the god inhabited the
idol; the frown of the brazen image was the frown of the wicked
demon. They entertained as much dread of the winged and
human-headed bulls guarding the entrance to the royal palace as
do some of the Arab workmen who, in our own day, assist
excavators to rescue them from sandy mounds in which they have
been hidden for long centuries.

When an idol
was carried away from a city by an invading army, it was believed
that the god himself had been taken prisoner, and was therefore
unable any longer to help his people.

In the early stages of Sumerian culture, the gods and
goddesses who formed groups were indistinguishable from demons.
They were vaguely defined, and had changing shapes. When attempts
were made to depict them they were represented in many varying
forms. Some were winged bulls or lions with human heads; others
had even more remarkable composite forms. The “dragon of
Babylon”, for instance, which was portrayed on walls of temples,
had a serpent’s head, a body covered with scales, the fore legs
of a lion, hind legs of an eagle, and a long wriggling serpentine
tail. Ea had several monster forms. The following description of
one of these is repulsive enough:–

Even after the gods were given beneficent attributes to
reflect the growth of culture, and were humanized, they still
retained many of their savage characteristics. Bel Enlil and his
fierce son, Nergal, were destroyers of mankind; the storm god desolated the
land; the sky god deluged it with rain; the sea raged furiously,
ever hungering for human victims; the burning sun struck down its
victims; and the floods played havoc with the dykes and houses of
human beings. In Egypt the sun god Ra was similarly a “producer
of calamity”, the composite monster god Sokar was “the lord of
fear”.[80] Osiris in prehistoric times had been
“a dangerous god”, and some of the Pharaohs sought protection
against him in the charms inscribed in their tombs.[81] The Indian Shiva, “the Destroyer”, in
the old religious poems has also primitive attributes of like
character.

The Sumerian gods never lost their connection with the early
spirit groups. These continued to be represented by their
attendants, who executed a deity’s stern and vengeful decrees. In
one of the Babylonian charms the demons are referred to as “the
spleen of the gods”–the symbols of their wrathful emotions and
vengeful desires. Bel Enlil, the air and earth god, was served by
the demons of disease, “the beloved sons of Bel”, which issued
from the Underworld to attack mankind. Nergal, the sulky and
ill-tempered lord of death and destruction, who never lost his
demoniac character, swept over the land, followed by the spirits
of pestilence, sunstroke, weariness, and destruction. Anu, the
sky god, had “spawned” at creation the demons of cold and rain
and darkness. Even Ea and his consort, Damkina, were served by
groups of devils and giants, which preyed upon mankind in bleak
and desolate places when night fell. In the ocean home of Ea were
bred the “seven evil spirits” of tempest–the gaping dragon, the
leopard which preyed upon children, the great Beast, the terrible
serpent, &c.

In Indian
mythology Indra was similarly followed by the stormy Maruts, and
fierce Rudra by the tempestuous Rudras. In Teutonic mythology
Odin is the “Wild Huntsman in the Raging Host”. In Greek
mythology the ocean furies attend upon fickle Poseidon. Other
examples of this kind could be multiplied.

As we have seen (Chapter II) the earliest group of Babylonian
deities consisted probably of four pairs of gods and goddesses as
in Egypt. The first pair was Apsu-Rishtu and Tiamat, who
personified the primordial deep. Now the elder deities in most
mythologies–the “grandsires” and “grandmothers” and “fathers”
and “mothers”–are ever the most powerful and most vengeful. They
appear to represent primitive “layers” of savage thought. The
Greek Cronos devours even his own children, and, as the late
Andrew Lang has shown, there are many parallels to this myth
among primitive peoples in various parts of the world.

Lang regarded the Greek survival as an example of “the
conservatism of the religious instinct”.[82] The grandmother of the Teutonic deity
Tyr was a fierce giantess with nine hundred heads; his father was
an enemy of the gods. In Scotland the hag-mother of winter and
storm and darkness is the enemy of growth and all life, and she
raises storms to stop the grass growing, to slay young animals,
and prevent the union of her son with his fair bride. Similarly
the Babylonian chaos spirits, Apsu and Tiamat, the father and
mother of the gods, resolve to destroy their offspring, because
they begin to set the Universe in order. Tiamat, the female
dragon, is more powerful than her husband Apsu, who is slain by
his son Ea. She summons to her aid the gods of evil, and creates
also a brood of monsters–serpents, dragons, vipers, fish men, raging hounds,
&c.–so as to bring about universal and enduring confusion
and evil. Not until she is destroyed can the beneficent gods
establish law and order and make the earth habitable and
beautiful.

But although Tiamat was slain, the everlasting battle between
the forces of good and evil was ever waged in the Babylonian
world. Certain evil spirits were let loose at certain periods,
and they strove to accomplish the destruction of mankind and his
works. These invisible enemies were either charmed away by
performing magical ceremonies, or by invoking the gods to thwart
them and bind them.

Other spirits inhabited the bodies of animals and were ever
hovering near. The ghosts of the dead and male and female demons
were birds, like the birds of Fate which sang to Siegfried. When
the owl raised its melancholy voice in the darkness the listener
heard the spirit of a departed mother crying for her child.
Ghosts and evil spirits wandered through the streets in darkness;
they haunted empty houses; they fluttered through the evening air
as bats; they hastened, moaning dismally, across barren wastes
searching for food or lay in wait for travellers; they came as
roaring lions and howling jackals, hungering for human flesh. The
“shedu” was a destructive bull which might slay man wantonly or
as a protector of temples. Of like character was the “lamassu”,
depicted as a winged bull with human head, the protector of
palaces; the “alu” was a bull-like demon of tempest, and there
were also many composite, distorted, or formless monsters which
were vaguely termed “seizers” or “overthrowers”, the Semitic
“labashu” and “ach-chazu”, the Sumerian “dimmea” and “dimme-kur”.
A dialectic form of “gallu” or devil was “mulla”. Professor Pinches thinks it
not improbable that “mulla” may be connected with the word
“mula”, meaning “star”, and suggests that it referred to a
“will-o’-the-wisp”.[83] In these islands,
according to an old rhyme,

Other names are “Kitty”, “Peg”, and “Jack with a lantern”.
“Poor Robin” sang:

In Shakespeare’s Tempest[84] a
sailor exclaims: “Your fairy, which, you say, is a harmless
fairy, has done little better than played the Jack with us”. Dr.
Johnson commented that the reference was to “Jack with a
lantern”. Milton wrote also of the “wandering fire”,

“When we stick in the mire”, sang Drayton, “he doth with
laughter leave us.” These fires were also “fallen stars”, “death
fires”, and “fire drakes”:

Pliny
referred to the wandering lights as stars.[87] The Sumerian “mulla” was undoubtedly an
evil spirit. In some countries the “fire drake” is a bird with
gleaming breast: in Babylonia it assumed the form of a bull, and
may have had some connection with the bull of lshtar. Like the
Indian “Dasyu” and “Dasa”,[88] Gallu was
applied in the sense of “foreign devil” to human and superhuman
adversaries of certain monarchs. Some of the supernatural beings
resemble our elves and fairies and the Indian Rakshasas.
Occasionally they appear in comely human guise; at other times
they are vaguely monstrous. The best known of this class is
Lilith, who, according to Hebrew tradition, preserved in the
Talmud, was the demon lover of Adam. She has been immortalized by
Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

Lilith is the Babylonian Lilithu, a feminine form of Lilu, the
Sumerian Lila. She resembles Surpanakha of the Ramayana, who made love to Rama and
Lakshmana, and the sister of the demon Hidimva, who became enamoured of Bhima,
one of the heroes of the Mahabharata,[89] and the various fairy lovers of Europe
who lured men to eternal imprisonment inside mountains, or
vanished for ever when they were completely under their
influence, leaving them demented. The elfin Lilu similarly wooed
young women, like the Germanic Laurin of the “Wonderful Rose
Garden”,[90] who carried away the
fair lady Kunhild to his underground dwelling amidst the Tyrolese
mountains, or left them haunting the place of their meetings,
searching for him in vain:

Another materializing spirit of this class was Ardat Lili, who
appears to have wedded human beings like the swan maidens, the
mermaids, and Nereids of the European folk tales, and the goddess
Ganga, who for a time was the wife of King Shantanu of the
Mahabharata.[91]

The Labartu, to whom we have referred, was a female who
haunted mountains and marshes; like the fairies and hags of
Europe, she stole or afflicted children, who accordingly had to
wear charms round their necks for protection. Seven of these
supernatural beings were reputed to be daughters of Anu, the sky
god.

The Alu, a storm deity, was also a spirit which caused
nightmare. It endeavoured to smother sleepers like the Scandinavian hag
Mara, and similarly deprived them of power to move. In Babylonia
this evil spirit might also cause sleeplessness or death by
hovering near a bed. In shape it might be as horrible and
repulsive as the Egyptian ghosts which caused children to die
from fright or by sucking out the breath of life.

As most representatives of the spirit world were enemies of
the living, so were the ghosts of dead men and women. Death
chilled all human affections; it turned love to hate; the deeper
the love had been, the deeper became the enmity fostered by the
ghost. Certain ghosts might also be regarded as particularly
virulent and hostile if they happened to have left the body of
one who was ceremonially impure. The most terrible ghost in
Babylonia was that of a woman who had died in childbed. She was
pitied and dreaded; her grief had demented her; she was doomed to
wail in the darkness; her impurity clung to her like poison. No
spirit was more prone to work evil against mankind, and her
hostility was accompanied by the most tragic sorrow. In Northern
India the Hindus, like the ancient Babylonians, regard as a
fearsome demon the ghost of a woman who died while pregnant, or
on the day of the child’s birth.[92] A
similar belief prevailed in Mexico. In Europe there are many folk
tales of dead mothers who return to avenge themselves on the
cruel fathers of neglected children.

A sharp contrast is presented by the Mongolian Buriats, whose
outlook on the spirit world is less gloomy than was that of the
ancient Babylonians. According to Mr. Jeremiah Curtin, this
interesting people are wont to perform a ceremony with purpose to
entice the ghost to return to the dead body–a proceeding which
is dreaded in
the Scottish Highlands.[93] The Buriats
address the ghost, saying: “You shall sleep well. Come back to
your natural ashes. Take pity on your friends. It is necessary to
live a real life. Do not wander along the mountains. Do not be
like bad spirits. Return to your peaceful home…. Come back and
work for your children. How can you leave the little ones?” If it
is a mother, these words have great effect; sometimes the spirit
moans and sobs, and the Buriats tell that there have been
instances of it returning to the body.[94] In
his Arabia
Deserta[95] Doughty relates that
Arab women and children mock the cries of the owl. One explained
to him: “It is a wailful woman seeking her lost child; she has
become this forlorn bird”. So do immemorial beliefs survive to
our own day.

The Babylonian ghosts of unmarried men and women and of those
without offspring were also disconsolate night wanderers. Others
who suffered similar fates were the ghosts of men who died in
battle far from home and were left unburied, the ghosts of
travellers who perished in the desert and were not covered over,
the ghosts of drowned men which rose from the water, the ghosts
of prisoners starved to death or executed, the ghosts of people
who died violent deaths before their appointed time. The dead
required to be cared for, to have libations poured out, to be
fed, so that they might not prowl through the streets or enter houses
searching for scraps of food and pure water. The duty of giving
offerings to the dead was imposed apparently on near relatives.
As in India, it would appear that the eldest son performed the
funeral ceremony: a dreadful fate therefore awaited the spirit of
the dead Babylonian man or woman without offspring. In Sanskrit
literature there is a reference to a priest who was not allowed
to enter Paradise, although he had performed rigid penances,
because he had no children.[96]

There were hags and giants of mountain and desert, of river
and ocean. Demons might possess the pig, the goat, the horse, the
lion, or the ibis, the raven, or the hawk. The seven spirits of
tempest, fire, and destruction rose from the depths of ocean, and
there were hosts of demons which could not be overcome or baffled
by man without the assistance of the gods to whom they were
hostile. Many were sexless; having no offspring, they were devoid
of mercy and compassion. They penetrated everywhere:

These furies did not confine their unwelcomed attentions to
mankind alone:

The Babylonian poet, like Burns, was filled with pity for the
animals which suffered in the storm:

According to Babylonian belief, “the great storms directed
from heaven” were caused by demons. Mankind heard them “loudly
roaring above, gibbering below”.[98] The
south wind was raised by Shutu, a plumed storm demon resembling
Hraesvelgur of the Icelandic Eddas:

The northern story of Thor’s fishing, when he hooked and
wounded the Midgard serpent, is recalled by the Babylonian legend
of Adapa, son of the god Ea. This hero was engaged catching fish,
when Shutu, the south wind, upset his boat. In his wrath Adapa
immediately attacked the storm demon and shattered her pinions.
Anu, the sky god, was moved to anger against Ea’s son and summoned him to
the Celestial Court. Adapa, however, appeared in garments of
mourning and was forgiven. Anu offered him the water of life and
the bread of life which would have made him immortal, but Ea’s
son refused to eat or drink, believing, as his father had warned
him, that the sky god desired him to partake of the bread of
death and to drink of the water of death.

Another terrible atmospheric demon was the south-west wind,
which caused destructive storms and floods, and claimed many
human victims like the Icelandic “corpse swallower”. She was
depicted with lidless staring eyes, broad flat nose, mouth gaping
horribly, and showing tusk-like teeth, and with high cheek bones,
heavy eyebrows, and low bulging forehead.

In Scotland the hag of the south-west wind is similarly a
bloodthirsty and fearsome demon. She is most virulent in the
springtime. At Cromarty she is quaintly called “Gentle Annie” by
the fisher folks, who repeat the saying: “When Gentle Annie is
skyawlan (yelling) roond the heel of Ness (a promontory) wi’ a
white feather on her hat (the foam of big billows) they (the
spirits) will be harrying (robbing) the crook”–that is, the pot
which hangs from the crook is empty during the spring storms,
which prevent fishermen going to sea. In England the wind hag is
Black Annis, who dwells in a Leicestershire hill cave. She may be
identical with the Irish hag Anu, associated with the “Paps of
Anu”. According to Gaelic lore, this wind demon of spring is the
“Cailleach” (old wife). She gives her name in the Highland
calendar to the stormy period of late spring; she raises gale
after gale to prevent the coming of summer. Angerboda, the
Icelandic hag, is also a storm demon, but represents the east
wind. A Tyrolese folk tale tells of three magic maidens who dwelt
on Jochgrimm mountain, where they “brewed the winds”. Their demon
lovers were Ecke, “he who causes fear”; Vasolt, “he who causes
dismay”; and the scornful Dietrich in his mythical character of
Donar or Thunor (Thor), the thunderer.

Another Sumerian storm demon was the Zu bird, which is
represented among the stars by Pegasus and Taurus. A legend
relates that this “worker of evil, who raised the head of evil”,
once aspired to rule the gods, and stole from Bel, “the lord” of
deities, the Tablets of Destiny, which gave him his power over
the Universe as controller of the fates of all. The Zu bird
escaped with the Tablets and found shelter on its mountain top in
Arabia. Anu called on Ramman, the thunderer, to attack the Zu
bird, but he was afraid; other gods appear to have shrunk from
the conflict. How the rebel was overcome is not certain, because
the legend survives in fragmentary form. There is a reference,
however, to the moon god setting out towards the mountain in
Arabia with purpose to outwit the Zu bird and recover the lost
Tablets. How he fared it is impossible to ascertain. In another
legend–that of Etana–the mother serpent, addressing the sun
god, Shamash, says:

In Indian mythology, Garuda, half giant, half eagle, robs the
Amrita (ambrosia) of the gods which gives them their power and
renders them immortal. It had assumed a golden body, bright as
the sun. Indra, the thunderer, flung his bolt in vain; he could not wound
Garuda, and only displaced a single feather. Afterwards, however,
he stole the moon goblet containing the Amrita, which Garuda had
delivered to his enemies, the serpents, to free his mother from
bondage. This Indian eagle giant became the vehicle of the god
Vishnu, and, according to the Mahabharata, “mocked the wind with his
fleetness”.

It would appear that the Babylonian Zu bird symbolized the
summer sandstorms from the Arabian desert. Thunder is associated
with the rainy season, and it may have been assumed, therefore,
that the thunder god was powerless against the sandstorm demon,
who was chased, however, by the moon, and finally overcome by the
triumphant sun when it broke through the darkening sand drift and
brightened heaven and earth, “netting” the rebellious demon who
desired to establish the rule of evil over gods and mankind.

In the “Legend of Etana” the Eagle, another demon which links
with the Indian Garuda, slayer of serpents, devours the brood of
the Mother Serpent. For this offence against divine law, Shamash,
the sun god, pronounces the Eagle’s doom. He instructs the Mother
Serpent to slay a wild ox and conceal herself in its entrails.
The Eagle comes to feed on the carcass, unheeding the warning of
one of his children, who says, “The serpent lies in this wild
ox”:

In vain the
Eagle appealed for mercy to the Mother Serpent, who was compelled
to execute the decree of Shamash; she tore off the Eagle’s
pinions, wings, and claws, and threw him into a pit where he
perished from hunger and thirst.[100]
This myth may refer to the ravages of a winged demon of disease
who was thwarted by the sacrifice of an ox. The Mother Serpent
appears to be identical with an ancient goddess of maternity
resembling the Egyptian Bast, the serpent mother of Bubastis.
According to Sumerian belief, Nintu, “a form of the goddess Ma”,
was half a serpent. On her head there is a horn; she is “girt
about the loins”; her left arm holds “a babe suckling her
breast”:

The close association of gods and demons is illustrated in an
obscure myth which may refer to an eclipse of the moon or a night
storm at the beginning of the rainy season. The demons go to war
against the high gods, and are assisted by Adad (Ramman) the
thunderer, Shamash the sun, and Ishtar. They desire to wreck the
heavens, the home of Anu:

The moon god Sin, “the seed of mankind”, was darkened by the
demons who raged, “rushing loose over the land” like to the wind. Bel called upon
his messenger, whom he sent to Ea in the ocean depths, saying:
“My son Sin … hath been grievously bedimmed”. Ea lamented, and
dispatched his son Merodach to net the demons by magic, using “a
two-coloured cord from the hair of a virgin kid and from the wool
of a virgin lamb”.[101]

As in India, where Shitala, the Bengali goddess of smallpox,
for instance, is worshipped when the dreaded disease she controls
becomes epidemic, so in Babylonia the people sought to secure
immunity from attack by worshipping spirits of disease. A tablet
relates that Ura, a plague demon, once resolved to destroy all
life, but ultimately consented to spare those who praised his
name and exalted him in recognition of his bravery and power.
This could be accomplished by reciting a formula. Indian serpent
worshippers believe that their devotions “destroy all danger
proceeding from snakes”.[102]

Like the Ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians also had their
kindly spirits who brought luck and the various enjoyments of
life. A good “labartu” might attend on a human being like a
household fairy of India or Europe: a friendly “shedu” could
protect a household against the attacks of fierce demons and
human enemies. Even the spirits of Fate who served Anu, god of
the sky, and that “Norn” of the Underworld, Eresh-ki-gal, queen
of Hades, might sometimes be propitious: if the deities were
successfully invoked they could cause the Fates to smite spirits
of disease and bringers of ill luck. Damu, a friendly fairy
goddess, was well loved, because she inspired pleasant dreams,
relieved the sufferings of the afflicted, and restored to good health
those patients whom she selected to favour.

In the Egyptian Book of the
Dead the kindly spirits are overshadowed by the evil
ones, because the various magical spells which were put on record
were directed against those supernatural beings who were enemies
of mankind. Similarly in Babylonia the fragments of this class of
literature which survive deal mainly with wicked and vengeful
demons. It appears probable, however, that the highly emotional
Sumerians and Akkadians were on occasion quite as cheerful a
people as the inhabitants of ancient Egypt. Although they were
surrounded by bloodthirsty furies who desired to shorten their
days, and their nights were filled with vague lowering phantoms
which inspired fear, they no doubt shared, in their
charm-protected houses, a comfortable feeling of security after
performing magical ceremonies, and were happy enough when they
gathered round flickering lights to listen to ancient song and
story and gossip about crops and traders, the members of the
royal house, and the family affairs of their acquaintances.

The Babylonian spirit world, it will be seen, was of complex
character. Its inhabitants were numberless, but often vaguely
defined, and one class of demons linked with another. Like the
European fairies of folk belief, the Babylonian spirits were
extremely hostile and irresistible at certain seasonal periods;
and they were fickle and perverse and difficult to please even
when inclined to be friendly. They were also similarly manifested
from time to time in various forms. Sometimes they were comely
and beautiful; at other times they were apparitions of horror.
The Jinn of present-day Arabians are of like character; these may
be giants, cloudy shapes, comely women, serpents or cats, goats
or pigs.

Some of the composite monsters of Babylonia may suggest the
vague and exaggerated recollections of terror-stricken people who
have had glimpses of unfamiliar wild beasts in the dusk or amidst
reedy marshes. But they cannot be wholly accounted for in this
way. While animals were often identified with supernatural
beings, and foreigners were called “devils”, it would be
misleading to assert that the spirit world reflects confused folk
memories of human and bestial enemies. Even when a demon was
given concrete human form it remained essentially non-human: no
ordinary weapon could inflict an injury, and it was never
controlled by natural laws. The spirits of disease and tempest
and darkness were creations of fancy: they symbolized moods; they
were the causes which explained effects. A sculptor or
storyteller who desired to convey an impression of a spirit of
storm or pestilence created monstrous forms to inspire terror.
Sudden and unexpected visits of fierce and devastating demons
were accounted for by asserting that they had wings like eagles,
were nimble-footed as gazelles, cunning and watchful as serpents;
that they had claws to clutch, horns to gore, and powerful fore
legs like a lion to smite down victims. Withal they drank blood
like ravens and devoured corpses like hyaenas. Monsters were all
the more repulsive when they were partly human. The human-headed
snake or the snake-headed man and the man with the horns of a
wild bull and the legs of a goat were horrible in the extreme.
Evil spirits might sometimes achieve success by practising
deception. They might appear as beautiful girls or handsome men
and seize unsuspecting victims in deathly embrace or leave them
demented and full of grief, or come as birds and suddenly assume
awesome shapes.

Fairies and elves, and other half-human demons, are sometimes regarded as
degenerate gods. It will be seen, however, that while certain
spirits developed into deities, others remained something between
these two classes of supernatural beings: they might attend upon
gods and goddesses, or operate independently now against mankind
and now against deities even. The “namtaru”, for instance, was a
spirit of fate, the son of Bel-Enlil and Eresh-ki-gal, queen of
Hades. “Apparently”, writes Professor Pinches, “he executed the
instructions given him concerning the fate of men, and could also
have power over certain of the gods.”[103]
To this middle class belong the evil gods who rebelled against
the beneficent deities. According to Hebridean folk belief, the
fallen angels are divided into three classes–the fairies, the
“nimble men” (aurora borealis), and the “blue men of the Minch”.
In Beowulf the “brood of
Cain” includes “monsters and elves and sea-devils–giants also,
who long time fought with God, for which he gave them their
reward”.[104] Similarly the
Babylonian spirit groups are liable to division and subdivision.
The various classes may be regarded as relics of the various
stages of development from crude animism to sublime monotheism:
in the fragmentary legends we trace the floating material from
which great mythologies have been framed.

Among the
gods of Babylonia none achieved wider and more enduring fame than
Tammuz, who was loved by Ishtar, the amorous Queen of Heaven–the
beautiful youth who died and was mourned for and came to life
again. He does not figure by his popular name in any of the city
pantheons, but from the earliest times of which we have knowledge
until the passing of Babylonian civilization, he played a
prominent part in the religious life of the people.

Tammuz, like Osiris of Egypt, was an agricultural deity, and
as the Babylonian harvest was the gift of the rivers, it is
probable that one of his several forms was Dumu-zi-abzu, “Tammuz
of the Abyss”. He was also “the child”, “the heroic lord”, “the
sentinel”, “the healer”, and the patriarch who reigned over the
early Babylonians for a considerable period. “Tammuz of the
Abyss” was one of the members of the family of Ea, god of the
Deep, whose other sons, in addition to Merodach, were Nira, an
obscure deity; Ki-gulla, “world destroyer”, Burnunta-sa, “broad
ear”, and Bara and Baragulla, probably “revealers” or “oracles”.
In addition there was a daughter, Khi-dimme-azaga, “child of the
renowned spirit”. She may have been identical with Belit-sheri,
who is referred to in the Sumerian hymns as the sister of Tammuz.
This family group was probably formed by symbolizing the
attributes of Ea and his spouse Damkina. Tammuz, in his character
as a patriarch, may have been regarded as a hostage from the
gods: the human form of Ea, who instructed mankind, like King
Osiris, how to grow corn and cultivate fruit trees. As the youth
who perished annually, he was the corn spirit. He is referred to
in the Bible by his Babylonian name.

When Ezekiel detailed the various idolatrous practices of the
Israelites, which included the worship of the sun and “every form
of creeping things and abominable beasts”–a suggestion of the
composite monsters of Babylonia –he was brought “to the door of
the gate of the Lord’s house, which was towards the north; and,
behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz”.[105]

The weeping ceremony was connected with agricultural rites.
Corn deities were weeping deities, they shed fertilizing tears;
and the sowers simulated the sorrow of divine mourners when they
cast seed in the soil “to die”, so that it might spring up as
corn. This ancient custom, like many others, contributed to the
poetic imagery
of the Bible. “They that sow in tears”, David sang, “shall reap
in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves
with him.”[106] In Egypt the
priestesses who acted the parts of Isis and Nepthys, mourned for
the slain corn god Osiris.

It was believed to be essential that human beings should share
the universal sorrow caused by the death of a god. If they
remained unsympathetic, the deities would punish them as enemies.
Worshippers of nature gods, therefore, based their ceremonial
practices on natural phenomena. “The dread of the worshippers
that the neglect of the usual ritual would be followed by
disaster, is particularly intelligible”, writes Professor
Robertson Smith, “if they regarded the necessary operations of
agriculture as involving the violent extinction of a particle of
divine life.”[108] By observing
their ritual, the worshippers won the sympathy and co-operation
of deities, or exercised a magical control over nature.

The Babylonian myth of Tammuz, the dying god, bears a close
resemblance to the Greek myth of Adonis. It also links with the
myth of Osiris. According to Professor Sayce, Tammuz is identical
with “Daonus or Daos, the shepherd of Pantibibla”, referred to by
Berosus as the ruler of one of the mythical ages of Babylonia.
We have
therefore to deal with Tammuz in his twofold character as a
patriarch and a god of fertility.

The Adonis version of the myth may be summarized briefly. Ere
the god was born, his mother, who was pursued by her angry sire,
as the river goddesses of the folk tales are pursued by the well
demons, transformed herself into a tree. Adonis sprang from the
trunk of this tree, and Aphrodite, having placed the child in a
chest, committed him to the care of Persephone, queen of Hades,
who resembles the Babylonian Eresh-ki-gal. Persephone desired to
retain the young god, and Aphrodite (Ishtar) appealed to Zeus
(Anu), who decreed that Adonis should spend part of the year with
one goddess and part of the year with the other.

It is suggested that the myth of Adonis was derived in
post-Homeric times by the Greeks indirectly from Babylonia
through the Western Semites, the Semitic title “Adon”, meaning
“lord”, having been mistaken for a proper name. This theory,
however, cannot be accepted without qualifications. It does not
explain the existence of either the Phrygian myth of Attis, which
was developed differently from the Tammuz myth, or the Celtic
story of “Diarmid and the boar”, which belongs to the
archaeological “Hunting Period”. There are traces in Greek
mythology of pre-Hellenic myths about dying harvest deities, like
Hyakinthos and Erigone, for instance, who appear to have been
mourned for. There is every possibility, therefore, that the
Tammuz ritual may have been attached to a harvest god of the
pre-Hellenic Greeks, who received at the same time the new name
of Adonis. Osiris of Egypt resembles Tammuz, but his Mesopotamian
origin has not been proved. It would appear probable that Tammuz,
Attis, Osiris, and the deities represented by Adonis and Diarmid
were all developed from an archaic god of fertility and
vegetation, the central figure of a myth which was not only as
ancient as the knowledge and practice of agriculture, but had
existence even in the “Hunting Period”. Traces of the
Tammuz-Osiris story in various forms are found all over the area
occupied by the Mediterranean or Brown race from Sumeria to the
British Isles. Apparently the original myth was connected with
tree and water worship and the worship of animals. Adonis sprang
from a tree; the body of Osiris was concealed in a tree which
grew round the sea-drifted chest in which he was concealed.
Diarmid concealed himself in a tree when pursued by Finn. The
blood of Tammuz, Osiris, and Adonis reddened the swollen rivers
which fertilized the soil. Various animals were associated with
the harvest god, who appears to have been manifested from time to
time in different forms, for his spirit pervaded all nature. In
Egypt the soul of Osiris entered the Apis bull or the ram of
Mendes.

Tammuz in the hymns is called “the pre-eminent steer of
heaven”, and a popular sacrifice was “a white kid of the god
Tammuz”, which, however, might be substituted by a sucking pig.
Osiris had also associations with swine, and the Egyptians,
according to Herodotus, sacrificed a pig to him annually. When
Set at full moon hunted the boar in the Delta marshes, he
probably hunted the boar form of Osiris, whose human body had
been recovered from the sacred tree by Isis. As the soul of Bata,
the hero of the Egyptian folk tale,[109]
migrated from the blossom to the bull, and the bull to the tree,
so apparently did the soul of Osiris pass from incarnation to
incarnation. Set, the demon slayer of the harvest god, had also a
boar form; he was the black pig who devoured the waning moon and
blinded the Eye of Ra.

In his
character as a long-lived patriarch, Tammuz, the King Daonus or
Daos of Berosus, reigned in Babylonia for 36,000 years. When he
died, he departed to Hades or the Abyss. Osiris, after reigning
over the Egyptians, became Judge of the Dead.

Tammuz of the Sumerian hymns, however, is the Adonis-like god
who lived on earth for a part of the year as the shepherd and
agriculturist so dearly beloved by the goddess Ishtar. Then he
died so that he might depart to the realm of Eresh-ki-gal
(Persephone), queen of Hades. According to one account, his death
was caused by the fickle Ishtar. When that goddess wooed
Gilgamesh, the Babylonian Hercules, he upbraided her, saying:

References in the Sumerian hymns suggest that there also
existed a form of the legend which gave an account of the slaying
of the young god by someone else than Ishtar. The slayer may have
been a Set-like demon–perhaps Nin-shach, who appears to have
symbolized the destroying influence of the sun. He was a war
deity, and his name, Professor Pinches says, “is conjectured to
mean ‘lord of the wild boar'”. There is no direct evidence,
however, to connect Tammuz’s slayer with the boar which killed
Adonis. Ishtar’s innocence is emphasized by the fact that she
mourned for her youthful lover, crying:

The Phrygian
Attis met his death, according to one legend, by self-mutilation
under a sacred tree. Another account sets forth, however, that he
was slain by a boar. The Greek Adonis was similarly killed by a
boar. This animal was a form of Ares (Mars), god of war and
tempest, who also loved Aphrodite (Ishtar). The Celtic Diarmid,
in his character as a love god, with lunar attributes, was slain
by “the green boar”, which appears to have been one of the
animals of a ferocious Hag, an earth and air “mother” with
various names. In one of the many Fingalian stories the animal
is

Diarmid had eloped with the wife of Finn-mac-Coul (Fingal),
who, like Ares, plotted to bring about his rival’s death, and
accordingly set the young hero to hunt the boar. As a thunder god
Finn carried a hammer with which he smote his shield; the blows
were heard in Lochlann (Scandinavia). Diarmid, like Tammuz, the
“god of the tender voice and shining eyes”, had much beauty. When
he expired, Finn cried:

Tammuz died with the dying vegetation, and Diarmid expired
when the hills apparently were assuming their purple
tints.[113] The month of
Tammuz wailings was from 20th June till 20th July, when the heat and
dryness brought forth the demons of pestilence. The mourners
chanted:

The following extract contains a reference to the slaying of
the god:

There is wailing for Tammuz “at the sacred cedar, where the
mother bore thee”, a reference which connects the god, like
Adonis and Osiris, with tree worship:

The wailing is also for the shrunken river, the parched
meadows, the fishpools, the cane brakes, the forests, the plains, the gardens,
and the palace, which all suffer because the god of fertility has
departed. The mourner cries:

Whither went Tammuz? His destination has already been referred
to as “the bosom of the earth”, and in the Assyrian version of
the “Descent of Ishtar” he dwells in “the house of darkness”
among the dead, “where dust is their nourishment and their food
mud”, and “the light is never seen”–the gloomy Babylonian Hades.
In one of the Sumerian hymns, however, it is stated that Tammuz
“upon the flood was cast out”. The reference may be to the
submarine “house of Ea”, or the Blessed Island to which the
Babylonian Noah was carried. In this Hades bloomed the nether
“garden of Adonis”.

The following extract refers to the garden of Damu
(Tammuz)[114]:–

Although Tammuz of the hymns was slain, he returned again from
Hades. Apparently he came back as a child. He is wailed for as
“child, Lord Gishzida”, as well as “my hero Damu”. In his lunar
character the Egyptian Osiris appeared each month as “the child
surpassingly beautiful”; the Osiris bull was also a child of the
moon; “it was begotten”, says Plutarch, “by a ray of generative
light falling from the moon”. When the bull of Attis was
sacrificed his worshippers were drenched with its blood, and were afterwards
ceremonially fed with milk, as they were supposed to have
“renewed their youth” and become children. The ancient Greek god
Eros (Cupid) was represented as a wanton boy or handsome youth.
Another god of fertility, the Irish Angus, who resembles Eros, is
called “the ever young”; he slumbers like Tammuz and awakes in
the Spring.

Apparently it was believed that the child god, Tammuz,
returned from the earlier Sumerian Paradise of the Deep, and grew
into full manhood in a comparatively brief period, like Vyasa and
other super-men of Indian mythology. A couplet from a Tammuz hymn
says tersely:

The “boat” may be the “chest” in which Adonis was concealed by
Aphrodite when she confided him to the care of Persephone, queen
of Hades, who desired to retain the young god, but was compelled
by Zeus to send him back to the goddess of love and vegetation.
The fact that Ishtar descended to Hades in quest of Tammuz may
perhaps explain the symbolic references in hymns to mother
goddesses being in sunken boats also when their powers were in
abeyance, as were those of the god for part of each year. It is
possible, too, that the boat had a lunar and a solar
significance. Khonsu, the Egyptian moon god, for instance, was
associated with the Spring sun, being a deity of fertility and
therefore a corn spirit; he was a form of Osiris, the Patriarch,
who sojourned on earth to teach mankind how to grow corn and
cultivate fruit trees. In the Egyptian legend Osiris received the
corn seeds from Isis, which suggests that among
Great-Mother-worshipping peoples, it was believed that
agricultural civilization had a female origin. The same myths may
have been attached to corn gods and corn goddesses, associated
with water, sun, moon, and stars.

That there existed in Babylonia at an extremely remote period
an agricultural myth regarding a Patriarch of divine origin who
was rescued from a boat in his childhood, is suggested by the
legend which was attached to the memory of the usurper King
Sargon of Akkad. It runs as follows:

It is unlikely that this story was invented by Sargon. Like
the many variants of it found in other countries, it was probably
founded on a form of the Tammuz-Adonis myth. Indeed, a new myth
would not have suited Sargon’s purpose so well as the adaptation
of an old one, which was more likely to make popular appeal when
connected with his name. The references to the goddess Ishtar,
and Sargon’s early life as a gardener, suggest that the king
desired to be remembered as an agricultural Patriarch, if not of
divine, at any rate of semi-divine origin.

What appears to be an early form of the widespread Tammuz myth
is the Teutonic legend regarding the mysterious child who came
over the sea to inaugurate a new era of civilization and instruct
the people how to grow corn and become great warriors. The
Northern peoples, as archaeological evidence suggests, derived
their knowledge of agriculture, and therefore their agricultural
myths, from the Neolithic representatives of the Mediterranean
race with whom they came into contact. There can be no doubt but
that the Teutonic legend refers to the introduction of
agriculture. The child is called “Scef” or “Sceaf”, which
signifies “Sheaf”, or “Scyld, the son of Sceaf”. Scyld is the
patriarch of the Scyldings, the Danes, a people of mixed origin.
In the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf
poem, the reference is to “Scyld”, but Ethelweard, William of
Malmesbury, and others adhered to “Sceaf” as the name of the
Patriarch of the Western Saxons.

The legend runs that one day a boat was seen approaching the
shore; it was not propelled by oars or sail. In it lay a child
fast asleep, his head pillowed upon a sheaf of grain. He was
surrounded by armour, treasure, and various implements, including
the fire-borer. The child was reared by the people who found him,
and he became a great instructor and warrior and ruled over the
tribe as king. In Beowulf
Scyld is the father of the elder Beowulf, whose grandson Hrothgar
built the famous Hall. The poem opens with a reference to the
patriarch “Scyld of the Sheaf”. When he died, his body, according
to the request he had made, was laid in a ship which was set
adrift:

Sceaf or Scyld is identical with Yngve, the patriarch of the
Ynglings; with Frey, the harvest and boar god, son of
Njord,[117] the sea god; and
with Hermod, referred to as follows in the Eddic “Lay of
Hyndla”:

Tammuz is similarly “the heroic lord of the land”, the “wise
one”, the “lord of knowledge”, and “the sovereign, lord of
invocation”.

Heimdal, watchman of the Teutonic gods, also dwelt for a time
among men as “Rig”, and had human offspring, his son Thrall being
the ancestor of the Thralls, his son Churl of churls, and Jarl of
noblemen.

Tammuz, like Heimdal, is also a guardian. He watches the
flocks and herds, whom he apparently guards against the Gallu
demons as Heimdal guards the world and the heavens against
attacks by giants and monsters. The flocks of Tammuz, Professor
Pinches suggests, “recall the flocks of the Greek sun god Helios.
These were the clouds illuminated by the sun, which were likened
to sheep–indeed, one of the early Sumerian expressions for
‘fleece’ was ‘sheep of the sky’. The name of Tammuz in Sumerian
is Dumu-zi, or in its rare fullest form, Dumuzida, meaning ‘true
or faithful son’. There is probably some legend attached to this
which is at present unknown.”[118]

So the Sumerian hymn-chanters lamented:

Agni, the Aryo-Indian god, who, as the sky sentinel, has
points of resemblance to Heimdal, also links with Tammuz,
especially in his Mitra character:

Agni has been established among the tribes of men, the son of
the waters, Mitra acting in the right way. Rigveda, iii, 5, 3.

Agni, who has been looked and longed for in Heaven, who has
been looked for on earth–he who has been looked for has entered
all herbs. Rigveda, i,
98.[120]

Tammuz, like the Egyptian lunar and solar god Khonsu, is “the
healer”, and Agni “drives away all disease”. Tammuz is the god
“of sonorous voice”; Agni “roars like a bull”; and Heimdal blows
a horn when the giants and demons threaten to attack the citadel
of the gods. As the spring sun god, Tammuz is “a youthful
warrior”, says Jastrow, “triumphing over the storms of
winter”.[121] The storms, of
course, were symbolized as demons. Tammuz, “the heroic lord”, was
therefore a demon slayer like Heimdal and Agni. Each of these
gods appear to have been developed in isolation from an archaic
spring god of fertility and corn whose attributes were
symbolized. In Teutonic mythology, for instance, Heimdal was the
warrior form of the patriarch Scef, while Frey was the deified
agriculturist who came over the deep as a child. In Saxo’s
mythical history of Denmark, Frey as Frode is taken prisoner by a storm
giant, Beli, “the howler”, and is loved by his hag sister in the
Teutonic Hades, as Tammuz is loved by Eresh-ki-gal, spouse of the
storm god Nergal, in the Babylonian Hades. Frode returns to
earth, like Tammuz, in due season.

It is evident that there were various versions of the Tammuz
myth in Ancient Babylonia. In one the goddess Ishtar visited
Hades to search for the lover of her youth. A part of this form
of the legend survives in the famous Assyrian hymn known as “The
Descent of Ishtar”. It was first translated by the late Mr.
George Smith, of the British Museum. A box containing inscribed
tablets had been sent from Assyria to London, and Mr. Smith, with
characteristic patience and skill, arranged and deciphered them,
giving to the world a fragment of ancient literature infused with
much sublimity and imaginative power. Ishtar is depicted
descending to dismal Hades, where the souls of the dead exist in
bird forms:

When the goddess reaches the gate of Hades she cries to the
porter:

The porter answers that he must first consult the Queen of
Hades, here called Allatu, to whom he accordingly announces the
arrival of the Queen of Heaven. Allatu’s heart is filled with
anger, and makes reference to those whom Ishtar caused to
perish:

Then she issues abruptly the stern decree:

that is, “Deal with her as you deal with others who come
here”.

As Ishtar enters through the various gates she is stripped of
her ornaments and clothing. At the first gate her crown was taken
off, at the second her ear-rings, at the third her necklace of
precious stones, at the fourth the ornaments of her breast, at
the fifth her gemmed waist-girdle,[122]
at the sixth the bracelets of her hands and feet, and at the
seventh the covering robe of her body. Ishtar asks at each gate
why she is thus dealt with, and the porter answers, “Such is the
command of Allatu.”

After descending for a prolonged period the Queen of Heaven at
length stands naked before the Queen of Hades. Ishtar is proud
and arrogant, and Allatu, desiring to punish her rival whom she
cannot humble,

commands the
plague demon, Namtar, to strike her with disease in all parts of
her body. The effect of Ishtar’s fate was disastrous upon earth:
growth and fertility came to an end.

Meanwhile Pap-sukal, messenger of the gods, hastened to
Shamash, the sun deity, to relate what had occurred. The sun god
immediately consulted his lunar father, Sin, and Ea, god of the
deep. Ea then created a man lion, named Nadushu-namir, to rescue
Ishtar, giving him power to pass through the seven gates of
Hades. When this being delivered his message

In her anger she cursed the rescuer of the Queen of
Heaven.

She was compelled, however, to obey the high gods, and
addressed Namtar, saying:

Thereafter the Queen of Heaven was conducted through the
various gates, and at each she received her robe and the
ornaments which were taken from her on entering. Namtar says:

Ishtar mourns
for “the wound of Tammuz”, smiting her breast, and she did not
ask for “the precious eye-stones, her amulets”, which were
apparently to ransom Tammuz. The poem concludes with Ishtar’s
wail:

A Sumerian hymn to Tammuz throws light on this narrative. It
sets forth that Ishtar descended to Hades to entreat him to be
glad and to resume care of his flocks, but Tammuz refused or was
unable to return.

She then instituted the wailing ceremony:

Mr. Langdon also translates a hymn (Tammuz III) which appears
to contain the narrative on which the Assyrian version was
founded. The goddess who descends to Hades, however, is not
Ishtar, but the “sister”, Belit-sheri. She is accompanied by
various demons– the “gallu-demon”, the “slayer”, &c.–and
holds a conversation with Tammuz which, however, is
“unintelligible and badly broken”. Apparently, however, he
promises to return to earth.

Probably two
goddesses originally lamented for Tammuz, as the Egyptian
sisters, Isis and Nepthys, lamented for Osiris, their brother.
Ishtar is referred to as “my mother”. Isis figures alternately in
the Egyptian chants as mother, wife, sister, and daughter of
Osiris. She cries, “Come thou to thy wife in peace; her heart
fluttereth for thy love”, … “I am thy wife, made as thou art,
the elder sister, soul of her brother”…. “Come thou to us as a
babe”…. “Lo, thou art as the Bull of the two goddesses–come
thou, child growing in peace, our lord!”… “Lo! the Bull,
begotten of the two cows, Isis and Nepthys”…. “Come thou to the
two widowed goddesses”…. “Oh child, lord, first maker of the
body”…. “Father Osiris.”[126]

As Ishtar and Belit-sheri weep for Tammuz, so do Isis and
Nepthys weep for Osiris.

Isis is also identified with Hathor (Ishtar) the Cow…. “The
cow weepeth for thee with her voice.”[127]

There is another phase, however, to the character of the
mother goddess which explains the references to the desertion and
slaying of Tammuz by Ishtar. “She is”, says Jastrow, “the goddess
of the human instinct, or passion which accompanies human love.
Gilgamesh … reproaches her with abandoning the objects of her
passion after a brief period of union.” At Ishtar’s temple
“public maidens accepted temporary partners, assigned to them
by
Ishtar”.[128] The worship of
all mother goddesses in ancient times was accompanied by
revolting unmoral rites which are referred to in condemnatory
terms in various passages in the Old Testament, especially in
connection with the worship of Ashtoreth, who was identical with
Ishtar and the Egyptian Hathor.

Ishtar in the process of time overshadowed all the other
female deities of Babylonia, as did Isis in Egypt. Her name,
indeed, which is Semitic, became in the plural, Ishtaráte,
a designation for goddesses in general. But although she was
referred to as the daughter of the sky, Anu, or the daughter of
the moon, Sin or Nannar, she still retained traces of her ancient
character. Originally she was a great mother goddess, who was
worshipped by those who believed that life and the universe had a
female origin in contrast to those who believed in the theory of
male origin. Ishtar is identical with Nina, the fish goddess, a
creature who gave her name to the Sumerian city of Nina and the
Assyrian city of Nineveh. Other forms of the Creatrix included
Mama, or Mami, or Ama, “mother”, Aruru, Bau, Gula, and
Zerpanitum. These were all
“Preservers” and healers. At the same time they were
“Destroyers”, like Nin-sun and the Queen of Hades, Eresh-ki-gal
or Allatu. They were accompanied by shadowy male forms ere they
became wives of strongly individualized gods, or by child gods,
their sons, who might be regarded as “brothers” or “husbands of
their mothers”, to use the paradoxical Egyptian term. Similarly
Great Father deities had vaguely defined wives. The “Semitic”
Baal, “the lord”, was accompanied by a female reflection of
himself–Beltu, “the lady”. Shamash, the sun god, had for wife
the shadowy Aa.

As has been
shown, Ishtar is referred to in a Tammuz hymn as the mother of
the child god of fertility. In an Egyptian hymn the sky goddess
Nut, “the mother” of Osiris, is stated to have “built up life
from her own body”.[129] Sri or Lakshmi,
the Indian goddess, who became the wife of Vishnu, as the mother
goddess Saraswati, a tribal deity, became the wife of Brahma,
was, according to a Purana commentator, “the mother of the world
… eternal and undecaying”.[130]

The gods, on the other hand, might die annually: the goddesses
alone were immortal. Indra was supposed to perish of old age, but
his wife, Indrani, remained ever young. There were fourteen
Indras in every “day of Brahma”, a reference apparently to the
ancient conception of Indra among the Great-Mother-worshipping
sections of the Aryo-Indians.[131]
In the Mahabharata the god
Shiva, as Mahadeva, commands Indra on “one of the peaks of
Himavat”, where they met, to lift up a stone and join the Indras
who had been before him. “And Indra on removing that stone beheld
a cave on the breast of that king of mountains in which were four
others resembling himself.” Indra exclaimed in his grief, “Shall
I be even like these?” These five Indras, like the “Seven
Sleepers”, awaited the time when they would be called forth. They
were ultimately reborn as the five Pandava warriors.[132]

The ferocious, black-faced Scottish mother goddess, Cailleach
Bheur, who appears to be identical with Mala Lith, “Grey
Eyebrows” of Fingalian story, and the English “Black Annis”,
figures in Irish song and legend as “The Old Woman of Beare”.
This “old woman” (Cailleach) “had”, says Professor Kuno Meyer,
“seven periods
of youth one after another, so that every man who had lived with
her came to die of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons
were tribes and races”. When old age at length came upon her she
sang her “swan song”, from which the following lines are
extracted:

Freyja, the Germanic mother goddess, whose car was drawn by
cats, had similarly many lovers. In the Icelandic poem
“Lokasenna”, Loki taunts her, saying:

Idun, the keeper of the apples of immortal youth, which
prevent the gods growing old, is similarly addressed:

Frigg, wife
of Odin, is satirized as well:

The goddesses of classic mythology had similar reputations.
Aphrodite (Venus) had many divine and mortal lovers. She links
closely with Astarte and Ashtoreth (Ishtar), and reference has
already been made to her relations with Adonis (Tammuz). These
love deities were all as cruel as they were wayward. When Ishtar
wooed the Babylonian hero, Gilgamesh, he spurned her advances, as
has been indicated, saying:

He likewise charged her with deceiving the lion and the horse,
making reference to obscure myths:

These goddesses were ever prone to afflict human beings who
might offend them or of whom they wearied. Demeter (Ceres)
changed Ascalaphus into an owl and Stellio into a lizard. Rhea
(Ops) resembled

the wanton
who loved Attis (Adonis). Artemis (Diana) slew her lover Orion,
changed Actaeon into a stag, which was torn to pieces by his own
dogs, and caused numerous deaths by sending a boar to ravage the
fields of Oeneus, king of Calydon. Human sacrifices were
frequently offered to the bloodthirsty “mothers”. The most famous
victim of Artemis was the daughter of Agamemnon, “divinely tall
and most divinely fair”.[136] Agamemnon
had slain a sacred stag, and the goddess punished him by sending
a calm when the war fleet was about to sail for Troy, with the
result that his daughter had to be sacrificed. Artemis thus sold
breezes like the northern wind hags and witches.

It used to be customary to account for the similarities
manifested by the various mother goddesses by assuming that there
was constant cultural contact between separate nationalities,
and, as a result, a not inconsiderable amount of “religious
borrowing”. Greece was supposed to have received its great
goddesses from the western Semites, who had come under the spell
of Babylonian religion. Archaeological evidence, however, tends
to disprove this theory. “The most recent researches into
Mesopotamian history”, writes Dr. Farnell, “establish with
certainty the conclusion that there was no direct political
contact possible between the powers in the valley of the
Euphrates and the western shores of the Aegean in the second
millennium B.C. In fact, between the nascent Hellas and the great
world of Mesopotamia there were powerful and possibly independent
strata of cultures interposing.”[137]

The real connection appears to be the racial one. Among the
Mediterranean Neolithic tribes of Sumeria, Arabia, and Europe,
the goddess cult appears to have been influential. Mother worship was the
predominant characteristic of their religious systems, so that
the Greek goddesses were probably of pre-Hellenic origin, the
Celtic of Iberian, the Egyptian of proto-Egyptian, and the
Babylonian of Sumerian. The northern hillmen, on the other hand,
who may be identified with the “Aryans” of the philologists, were
father worshippers. The Vedic Aryo-Indians worshipped father
gods,[138] as did also the Germanic peoples
and certain tribes in the “Hittite confederacy”. Earth spirits
were males, like the Teutonic elves, the Aryo-Indian Ribhus, and
the Burkans, “masters”, of the present-day Buriats, a Mongolian
people. When the father-worshipping peoples invaded the dominions
of the mother-worshipping peoples, they introduced their strongly
individualized gods, but they did not displace the mother
goddesses. “The Aryan Hellenes”, says Dr. Farnell, “were able to
plant their Zeus and Poseidon on the high hill of Athens, but not
to overthrow the supremacy of Athena in the central shrine and in
the aboriginal soul of the Athenian people.”[139] As in Egypt, the beliefs of the
father worshippers, represented by the self-created Ptah, were
fused with the beliefs of the mother worshippers, who adored
Isis, Mut, Neith, and others. In Babylonia this process of racial
and religious fusion was well advanced before the dawn of
history. Ea, who had already assumed manifold forms, may have
originally been the son or child lover of Damkina, “Lady of the
Deep”, as was Tammuz of Ishtar. As the fish, Ea was the offspring
of the mother river.

The mother worshippers recognized male as well as female
deities, but regarded the great goddess as the First Cause.
Although the primeval spirits were grouped in four pairs in Egypt,
and apparently in Babylonia also, the female in the first pair
was more strongly individualized than the male. The Egyptian Nu
is vaguer than his consort Nut, and the Babylonian Apsu than his
consort Tiamat. Indeed, in the narrative of the Creation Tablets
of Babylon, which will receive full treatment in a later chapter,
Tiamat, the great mother, is the controlling spirit. She is more
powerful and ferocious than Apsu, and lives longer. After Apsu’s
death she elevates one of her brood, named Kingu, to be her
consort, a fact which suggests that in the Ishtar-Tammuz myth
survives the influence of exceedingly ancient modes of thought.
Like Tiamat, Ishtar is also a great battle heroine, and in this
capacity she was addressed as “the lady of majestic rank exalted
over all gods”. This was no idle flattery on the part of
worshippers, but a memory of her ancient supremacy.

Reference has been made to the introduction of Tammuz worship
into Jerusalem. Ishtar, as Queen of Heaven, was also adored by
the backsliding Israelites as a deity of battle and harvest. When
Jeremiah censured the people for burning incense and serving gods
“whom they knew not”, he said, “neither they, ye, nor your
fathers”, they made answer: “Since we left off to burn incense to
the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we
have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and
the famine”. The women took a leading part in these practices,
but refused to accept all the blame, saying, “When we burned
incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings
unto her, did we make our cakes and pour out drink offerings unto
her without our men?”[140] That the
husbands, and the children even, assisted at the ceremony is made
evident in another reference to goddess worship: “The children gather
wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the
dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven”.[141]

CYLINDER-SEAL IMPRESSIONS. (British Museum)

Jastrow suggests that the women of Israel wept for Tammuz,
offered cakes to the mother goddess, &c., because “in all
religious bodies … women represent the conservative element;
among them religious customs continue in practice after they have
been abandoned by men”.[142] The evidence
of Jeremiah, however, shows that the men certainly co-operated at
the archaic ceremonials. In lighting the fires with the “vital
spark”, they apparently acted in imitation of the god of
fertility. The women, on the other hand, represented the
reproductive harvest goddess in providing the food supply. In
recognition of her gift, they rewarded the goddess by offering
her the cakes prepared from the newly ground wheat and
barley–the “first fruits of the harvest”. As the corn god came
as a child, the children began the ceremony by gathering the wood
for the sacred fire. When the women mourned for Tammuz, they did
so evidently because the death of the god was lamented by the
goddess Ishtar. It would appear, therefore, that the suggestion
regarding the “conservative element” should really apply to the
immemorial practices of folk religion. These differed from the
refined ceremonies of the official cult in Babylonia, where there
were suitable temples and organized bands of priests and
priestesses. But the official cult received no recognition in
Palestine; the cakes intended for a goddess were not offered up
in the temple of Abraham’s God, but “in the streets of Jerusalem”
and those of other cities.[143]

The obvious
deduction seems to be that in ancient times women everywhere
played a prominent part in the ceremonial folk worship of the
Great Mother goddess, while the men took the lesser part of the
god whom she had brought into being and afterwards received as
“husband of his mother”. This may account for the high social
status of women among goddess worshippers, like the
representatives of the Mediterranean race, whose early religion
was not confined to temples, but closely associated with the acts
of everyday life.

When the
curtain rises to reveal the drama of Babylonian civilization we
find that we have missed the first act and its many fascinating
scenes. Sumerians and Akkadians come and go, but it is not always
possible to distinguish between them. Although most Semites are
recognizable by their flowing beards, prominent noses, and long
robes, some have so closely imitated the Sumerians as to suffer
almost complete loss of identity. It is noticeable that in the
north the Akkadians are more Semitic than their contemporaries in
the south, but it is difficult at times to say whether a city is
controlled by the descendants of the indigenous people or those
of later settlers. Dynasties rise and fall, and, as in Egypt at
times, the progress of the fragmentary narrative is interrupted
by a sudden change of scene ere we have properly grasped a
situation and realized its significance.

What we know for certain is that civilization is well
advanced. Both in the north and the south there are many
organized and independent city states, and not unfrequently these
wage war one against another. Occasionally ambitious rulers tower
among their fellows, conduct vigorous military campaigns, and
become overlords of wide districts. As a rule, a subjugated
monarch who has perforce to acknowledge the suzerainty of a
powerful king is allowed to remain in a state of
semi-independence on condition that he pays a heavy annual
tribute of grain. His own laws continue in force, and the city
deities remain supreme, although recognition may also be given to
the deities of his conqueror. He styles himself a Patesi–a
“priest king”, or more literally, “servant of the chief deity”.
But as an independent monarch may also be a pious Patesi, it does
not always follow when a ruler is referred to by that title he is
necessarily less powerful than his neighbours.

When the historical narrative begins Akkad included the cities
of Babylon, Cutha, Kish, Akkad, and Sippar, and north of
Babylonia proper is Semitic Opis. Among the cities of Sumer were
Eridu, Ur, Lagash, Larsa, Erech, Shuruppak, and probably Nippur,
which was situated on the “border”. On the north Assyria was yet
“in the making”, and shrouded in obscurity. A vague but vast area
above Hit on the Euphrates, and extending to the Syrian coast,
was known as the “land of the Amorites”. The fish-shaped
Babylonian valley lying between the rivers, where walled towns
were surrounded by green fields and numerous canals flashed in
the sunshine, was bounded on the west by the bleak wastes of the
Arabian desert, where during the dry season “the rocks branded
the body” and
occasional sandstorms swept in blinding folds towards the “plain
of Shinar” (Sumer) like demon hosts who sought to destroy the
world. To the east the skyline was fretted by the Persian
Highlands, and amidst the southern mountains dwelt the fierce
Elamites, the hereditary enemies of the Sumerians, although a
people apparently of the same origin. Like the Nubians and the
Libyans, who kept watchful eyes on Egypt, the Elamites seemed
ever to be hovering on the eastern frontier of Sumeria, longing
for an opportunity to raid and plunder.

The capital of the Elamites was the city of Susa, where
excavations have revealed traces of an independent civilization
which reaches back to an early period in the Late Stone Age. Susa
is referred to in the Old Testament–“The words of Nehemiah…. I
was in Shushan the palace”.[144] An Assyrian
plan of the city shows it occupying a strategic position at a
bend of the Shawur river, which afforded protection against
Sumerian attacks from the west, while a canal curved round its
northern and eastern sides, so that Susa was completely
surrounded by water. Fortifications had been erected on the river
and canal banks, and between these and the high city walls were
thick clumps of trees. That the kings of Elam imitated the
splendours of Babylonian courts in the later days of Esther and
Haman and Mordecai, is made evident by the Biblical references to
the gorgeous palace, which had “white, green, and blue hangings,
fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and
pillars of marble; the beds were of gold and silver, upon a
pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black
marble”.[145] Beyond Elam were
the plains, plateaus, and grassy steppes occupied by the Medes
and other peoples of Aryan speech. Cultural
influences came and went like spring winds between the various
ancient communities.

For ten long centuries Sumer and Akkad flourished and
prospered ere we meet with the great Hammurabi, whose name has
now become almost as familiar as that of Julius Caesar. But our
knowledge of the leading historical events of this vast period is
exceedingly fragmentary. The Sumerians were not like the later
Assyrians or their Egyptian contemporaries–a people with a
passion for history. When inscriptions were composed and cut on
stone, or impressed upon clay tablets and bricks, the kings
selected as a general rule to record pious deeds rather than to
celebrate their victories and conquests. Indeed, the average
monarch had a temperament resembling that of Keats, who
declared:

The Sumerian king was emotionally religious as the great
English poet was emotionally poetical. The tears of Ishtar for
Tammuz, and the afflictions endured by the goddess imprisoned in
Hades, to which she had descended for love of her slain husband,
seemed to have concerned the royal recorder to a greater degree
than the memories of political upheavals and the social changes
which passed over the land, like the seasons which alternately
brought greenness and gold, barrenness and flood.

City chronicles, as a rule, are but indices of obscure events,
to which meagre references were sometimes also made on mace
heads, vases, tablets, stelae, and sculptured monoliths.
Consequently, present-day excavators and students have often
reason to be grateful that the habit likewise obtained of
inscribing on bricks in buildings and the stone sockets of doors
the names of kings and others. These records render obscure
periods faintly articulate, and are indispensable for comparative
purposes. Historical clues are also obtained from lists of year
names. Each city king named a year in celebration of a great
event–his own succession to the throne, the erection of a new
temple or of a city wall, or, mayhap, the defeat of an invading
army from a rival state. Sometimes, too, a monarch gave the name
of his father in an official inscription, or happily mentioned
several ancestors. Another may be found to have made an
illuminating statement regarding a predecessor, who centuries
previously erected the particular temple that he himself has
piously restored. A reckoning of this kind, however, cannot
always be regarded as absolutely correct. It must be compared
with and tested by other records, for in these ancient days
calculations were not unfrequently based on doubtful
inscriptions, or mere oral traditions, perhaps. Nor can implicit
trust be placed on every reference to historical events, for the
memoried deeds of great rulers were not always unassociated with
persistent and cumulative myths. It must be recognized,
therefore, that even portions of the data which had of late been
sifted and systematized by Oriental scholars in Europe, may yet
have to be subjected to revision. Many interesting and important
discoveries, which will throw fresh light on this fascinating
early period, remain to be made in that ancient and deserted
land, which still lies under the curse of the Hebrew prophet, who
exclaimed: “Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the
Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah. It
shall never be inhabited; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent
there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But
wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall
be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and
satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands
shall cry in their desolate houses and dragons in their pleasant
palaces.”[146]

The curtain rises, as has been indicated, after civilization
had been well advanced. To begin with, our interests abide with
Akkad, and during a period dated approximately between 3000 B.C.
and 2800 B.C., when Egypt was already a united kingdom, and the
Cretans were at the dawn of the first early Minoan period, and
beginning to use bronze. In Kish Sumerian and Akkadian elements
had apparently blended, and the city was the centre of a powerful
and independent government. After years have fluttered past
dimly, and with them the shadow-shapes of vigorous rulers, it is
found that Kish came under the sway of the pronouncedly Semitic
city of Opis, which was situated “farthest north” and on the
western bank of the river Tigris. A century elapsed ere Kish
again threw off the oppressor’s yoke and renewed the strength of
its youth.

The city of Kish was one of the many ancient centres of
goddess worship. The Great Mother appears to have been the
Sumerian Bau, whose chief seat was at Lagash. If tradition is to
be relied upon, Kish owed its existence to that notable lady,
Queen Azag-Bau. Although floating legends gathered round her
memory as they have often gathered round the memories of famous
men, like Sargon of Akkad, Alexander the Great, and Theodoric the
Goth, who became Emperor of Rome, it is probable that the queen was a
prominent historical personage. She was reputed to have been of
humble origin, and to have first achieved popularity and
influence as the keeper of a wine shop. Although no reference
survives to indicate that she was believed to be of miraculous
birth, the Chronicle of Kish gravely credits her with a prolonged
and apparently prosperous reign of a hundred years. Her son, who
succeeded her, sat on the throne for a quarter of a century.
These calculations are certainly remarkable. If the Queen
Azag-Bau founded Kish when she was only twenty, and gave birth to
the future ruler in her fiftieth year, he must have been an
elderly gentleman of seventy when he began to reign. When it is
found, further, that the dynasty in which mother and son
flourished was supposed to have lasted for 586 years, divided
between eight rulers, one of whom reigned for only three years,
two for six, and two for eleven, it becomes evident that the
historian of Kish cannot be absolutely relied upon in detail. It
seems evident that the memory of this lady of forceful character,
who flourished about thirteen hundred years before the rise of
Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt, has overshadowed the doubtful annals
of ancient Kish at a period when Sumerian and Semite were
striving in the various states to achieve political
ascendancy.

Meanwhile the purely Sumerian city of Lagash had similarly
grown powerful and aggressive. For a time it acknowledged the
suzerainty of Kish, but ultimately it threw off the oppressor’s
yoke and asserted its independence. The cumulative efforts of a
succession of energetic rulers elevated Lagash to the position of
a metropolis in Ancient Babylonia.

The goddess Bau, “the mother of Lagash”, was worshipped in
conjunction with other deities, including the god Nin-Girsu, an
agricultural deity, and therefore a deity of war, who had solar attributes.
One of the titles of Nin-Girsu was En-Mersi, which, according to
Assyrian evidence, was another name of Tammuz, the spring god who
slew the storm and winter demons, and made the land fertile so
that man might have food. Nin-Girsu was, it would seem, a
developed form of Tammuz, like the Scandinavian Frey, god of
harvest, or Heimdal, the celestial warrior. Bau was one of the
several goddesses whose attributes were absorbed by the Semitic
Ishtar. She was a “Great Mother”, a creatrix, the source of all
human and bestial life, and, of course, a harvest goddess. She
was identified with Gula, “the great one”, who cured diseases and
prolonged life. Evidently the religion of Lagash was based on the
popular worship of the “Queen of Heaven”, and her son, the dying
god who became “husband of his mother”.

The first great and outstanding ruler of Lagash was Ur-Nina,
who appears to have owed his power to the successful military
operations of his predecessors. It is uncertain whether or not he
himself engaged in any great war. His records are silent in that
connection, but, judging from what we know of him, it may be
taken for granted that he was able and fully prepared to give a
good account of himself in battle. He certainly took steps to
make secure his position, for he caused a strong wall to be
erected round Lagash. His inscriptions are eloquent of his piety,
which took practical shape, for he repaired and built temples,
dedicated offerings to deities, and increased the wealth of
religious bodies and the prosperity of the State by cutting
canals and developing agriculture. In addition to serving local
deities, he also gave practical recognition to Ea at Eridu and
Enlil at Nippur. He, however, overlooked Anu at Erech, a fact
which suggests that he held sway over Eridu and Nippur, but had to
recognize Erech as an independent city state.

Among the deities of Lagash, Ur-Nina favoured most the goddess
Nina, whose name he bore. As she was a water deity, and perhaps
identical with Belit-sheri, sister of “Tammuz of the Abyss” and
daughter of Ea, one of the canals was dedicated to her. She was
also honoured with a new temple, in which was probably placed her
great statue, constructed by special order of her royal
worshipper. Like the Egyptian goddess, the “Mother of Mendes”,
Nina received offerings of fish, not only as a patroness of
fishermen, but also as a corn spirit and a goddess of maternity.
She was in time identified with Ishtar.

A famous limestone plaque, which is preserved in the Louvre,
Paris, depicts on its upper half the pious King Ur-Nina engaged
in the ceremony of laying the foundations of a temple dedicated
either to the goddess Nina or to the god Nin-Girsu. His face and
scalp are clean shaven, and he has a prominent nose and firm
mouth, eloquent of decision. The folds of neck and jaw suggest
Bismarckian traits. He is bare to the waist, and wears a pleated
kilt, with three flounces, which reaches almost to his ankles. On
his long head he has poised deftly a woven basket containing the
clay with which he is to make the first brick. In front of him
stand five figures. The foremost is honoured by being sculptured
larger than the others, except the prominent monarch. Apparently
this is a royal princess, for her head is unshaven, and her
shoulder dress or long hair drops over one of her arms. Her name
is Lida, and the conspicuous part she took in the ceremony
suggests that she was the representative of the goddess Nina. She
is accompanied by her brothers, and at least one official, Anita,
the cup-bearer, or high priest. The concluding part of this
ceremony, or another ceremonial act, is illustrated on the lower
part of the plaque. Ur-Nina is seated on his throne, not, as
would seem at first sight, raising the wine cup to his lips and
toasting to the success of the work, but pouring out a libation
upon the ground. The princess is not present; the place of honour
next to the king is taken by the crown prince. Possibly in this
case it is the god Nin-Girsu who is being honoured. Three male
figures, perhaps royal sons, accompany the prominent crown
prince. The cup-bearer is in attendance behind the throne.

The inscription on this plaque, which is pierced in the centre
so as to be nailed to a sacred shrine, refers to the temples
erected by Ur-Nina, including those of Nina and Nin-Girsu.

After Ur-Nina’s prosperous reign came to a close, his son
Akurgal ascended the throne. He had trouble with Umma, a powerful
city, which lay to the north-west of Lagash, between the
Shatt-el-Kai and Shatt-el-Hai canals. An army of raiders invaded
his territory and had to be driven back.

The next king, whose name was Eannatum, had Napoleonic
characteristics. He was a military genius with great ambitions,
and was successful in establishing by conquest a small but
brilliant empire. Like his grandfather, he strengthened the
fortifications of Lagash; then he engaged in a series of
successful campaigns. Umma had been causing anxiety in Lagash,
but Eannatum stormed and captured that rival city, appropriated
one of its fertile plains, and imposed an annual tribute to be
paid in kind. An army of Elamites swept down from the hills, but
Ur-Nina’s grandson inflicted upon these bold foreigners a
crushing defeat and pursued them over the frontier. Several
cities were afterwards forced to come under the sway of triumphant Lagash,
including Erech and Ur, and as his suzerainty was already
acknowledged at Eridu, Eannatum’s power in Sumeria became as
supreme as it was firmly established.

Evidently Zuzu, king of the northern city of Opis, considered
that the occasion was opportune to overcome the powerful Sumerian
conqueror, and at the same time establish Semitic rule over the
subdued and war-wasted cities. He marched south with a large
army, but the tireless and ever-watchful Eannatum hastened to the
fray, scattered the forces of Opis, and captured the foolhardy
Zuzu.

Eannatum’s activities, however, were not confined to
battlefields. At Lagash he carried out great improvements in the
interests of agriculture; he constructed a large reservoir and
developed the canal system. He also extended and repaired
existing temples in his native city and at Erech. Being a patron
of the arts, he encouraged sculpture work, and the finest
Sumerian examples belong to his reign.

Eannatum was succeeded by his brother, Enannatum I. Apparently
the new monarch did not share the military qualities of his royal
predecessor, for there were signs of unrest in the loose
confederacy of states. Indeed, Umma revolted. From that city an
army marched forth and took forcible possession of the plain
which Eannatum had appropriated, removing and breaking the
landmarks, and otherwise challenging the supremacy of the sovran
state. A Lagash force defeated the men of Umma, but appears to
have done little more than hold in check their aggressive
tendencies.

No sooner had Entemena, the next king, ascended the throne
than the flame of revolt burst forth again. The Patesi of Umma
was evidently determined to free, once and for all, his native state from the
yoke of Lagash. But he had gravely miscalculated the strength of
the vigorous young ruler. Entemena inflicted upon the rebels a
crushing defeat, and following up his success, entered the walled
city and captured and slew the patesi. Then he took steps to
stamp out the embers of revolt in Umma by appointing as its
governor one of his own officials, named Ili, who was duly
installed with great ceremony. Other military successes followed,
including the sacking of Opis and Kish, which assured the
supremacy of Lagash for many years. Entemena, with characteristic
vigour, engaged himself during periods of peace in strengthening
his city fortifications and in continuing the work of improving
and developing the irrigation system. He lived in the golden age
of Sumerian art, and to his reign belongs the exquisite silver
vase of Lagash, which was taken from the Tello mound, and is now
in the Louvre. This votive offering was placed by the king in the
temple of Nin-Girsu. It is exquisitely shaped, and has a base of
copper. The symbolic decorations include the lion-headed eagle,
which was probably a form of the spring god of war and fertility,
the lion, beloved by the Mother goddess, and deer and ibexes,
which recall the mountain herds of Astarte. In the dedicatory
inscription the king is referred to as a patesi, and the fact
that the name of the high priest, Dudu, is given may be taken as
an indication of the growing power of an aggressive priesthood.
After a brilliant reign of twenty-nine years the king died, and
was succeeded by his son, Enannatum II, who was the last ruler of
Ur-Nina’s line. An obscure period ensued. Apparently there had
been a city revolt, which may have given the enemies of Lagash
the desired opportunity to gather strength for the coming
conflict. There is a reference to an Elamite raid which, although repulsed,
may be regarded as proof of disturbed political conditions.

One or two priests sat on the throne of Lagash in brief
succession, and then arose to power the famous Urukagina, the
first reformer in history. He began to rule as patesi, but
afterwards styled himself king. What appears certain is that he
was the leader of a great social upheaval, which received the
support of a section of the priesthood, for he recorded that his
elevation was due to the intercession of the god Nin-Girsu. Other
deities, who were sons and daughters of Nin-Girsu and Nina, had
been given recognition by his predecessors, and it is possible
that the orthodox section of Lagash, and especially the
agricultural classes, supported the new ruler in sweeping away
innovations to which they were hostile.

Like Khufu and his descendants, the Pyramid kings of Egypt’s
fourth dynasty, the vigorous and efficient monarchs of the
Ur-Nina dynasty of Lagash were apparently remembered and
execrated as tyrants and oppressors of the people. To maintain
many endowed temples and a standing army the traders and
agriculturists had been heavily taxed. Each successive monarch
who undertook public works on a large scale for the purpose of
extending and developing the area under cultivation, appears to
have done so mainly to increase the revenue of the exchequer, so
as to conserve the strength of the city and secure its
pre-eminence as a metropolis. A leisured class had come into
existence, with the result that culture was fostered and
civilization advanced. Lagash seems to have been intensely modern
in character prior to 2800 B.C., but with the passing of the old
order of things there arose grave social problems which never
appear to have been seriously dealt with. All indications of social unrest
were, it would appear, severely repressed by the iron-gloved
monarchs of Ur-Nina’s dynasty.

The people as a whole groaned under an ever-increasing burden
of taxation. Sumeria was overrun by an army of officials who were
notoriously corrupt; they do not appear to have been held in
check, as in Egypt, by royal auditors. “In the domain of
Nin-Girsu”, one of Urukagina’s tablets sets forth, “there were
tax gatherers down to the sea.” They not only attended to the
needs of the exchequer, but enriched themselves by sheer robbery,
while the priests followed their example by doubling their fees
and appropriating temple offerings to their own use. The splendid
organization of Lagash was crippled by the dishonesty of those
who should have been its main support.

Reforms were necessary and perhaps overdue, but, unfortunately
for Lagash, Urukagina’s zeal for the people’s cause amounted to
fanaticism. Instead of gradually readjusting the machinery of
government so as to secure equality of treatment without
impairing its efficiency as a defensive force in these perilous
times, he inaugurated sweeping and revolutionary social changes
of far-reaching character regardless of consequences. Taxes and
temple fees were cut down, and the number of officials reduced to
a minimum. Society was thoroughly disorganized. The army, which
was recruited mainly from the leisured and official classes, went
practically out of existence, so that traders and agriculturists
obtained relief from taxation at the expense of their material
security.

Urukagina’s motives were undoubtedly above reproach, and he
showed an example to all who occupied positions of trust by
living an upright life and denying himself luxuries. He was
disinterestedly pious, and built and restored temples, and acted
as the steward of his god with desire to promote the welfare and
comfort of all true worshippers. His laws were similar to those
which over two centuries afterwards were codified by Hammurabi,
and like that monarch he was professedly the guardian of the weak
and the helper of the needy; he sought to establish justice and
liberty in the kingdom. But his social Arcadia vanished like a
dream because he failed to recognize that Right must be supported
by Might.

In bringing about his sudden social revolution, Urukagina had
at the same time unwittingly let loose the forces of disorder.
Discontented and unemployed officials, and many representatives
of the despoiled leisured and military classes of Lagash, no
doubt sought refuge elsewhere, and fostered the spirit of revolt
which ever smouldered in subject states. At any rate, Umma,
remembering the oppressions of other days, was not slow to
recognize that the iron hand of Lagash had become unnerved. The
zealous and iconoclastic reformer had reigned but seven years
when he was called upon to defend his people against the invader.
He appears to have been utterly unprepared to do so. The
victorious forces of Umma swept against the stately city of
Lagash and shattered its power in a single day. Echoes of the
great disaster which ensued rise from a pious tablet inscription
left by a priest, who was convinced that the conquerors would be
called to account for the sins they had committed against the
great god Nin-Girsu. He lamented the butchery and robbery which
had taken place. We gather from his composition that blood was
shed by the raiders of Umma even in the sacred precincts of
temples, that statues were shattered, that silver and precious
stones were carried away, that granaries were plundered and
standing crops destroyed, and that many buildings were set on
fire. Amidst these horrors of savagery and vengeance, the now tragic
figure of the great reformer suddenly vanishes from before our
eyes. Perhaps he perished in a burning temple; perhaps he found a
nameless grave with the thousands of his subjects whose bodies
had lain scattered about the blood-stained streets. With
Urukagina the glory of Lagash departed. Although the city was
rebuilt in time, and was even made more stately than before, it
never again became the metropolis of Sumeria.

The vengeful destroyer of Lagash was Lugal-zaggisi, Patesi of
Umma, a masterful figure in early Sumerian history. We gather
from the tablet of the unknown scribe, who regarded him as a
sinner against the god Nin-Girsu, that his city goddess was named
Nidaba. He appears also to have been a worshipper of Enlil of
Nippur, to whose influence he credited his military successes.
But Enlil was not his highest god, he was the interceder who
carried the prayers of Lugal-zaggisi to the beloved father, Anu,
god of the sky. No doubt Nin-Girsu represented a school of
theology which was associated with unpleasant memories in Umma.
The sacking and burning of the temples of Lagash suggests as
much.

Having broken the power of Lagash, Lugal-zaggisi directed his
attention to the rival city of Kish, where Semitic influence was
predominating. When Nanizak, the last monarch of the line of the
famous Queen Azag-Bau, had sat upon the throne for but three
years, he perished by the sword of the Umma conqueror. Nippur
likewise came under his sway, and he also subdued the southern
cities.

Lugal-zaggisi chose for his capital ancient Erech, the city of
Anu, and of his daughter, the goddess Nana, who afterwards was
identified with Ishtar. Anu’s spouse was Anatu, and the pair
subsequently became abstract deities, like Anshar and Kishar,
their parents, who figure in the Babylonian Creation story. Nana was
worshipped as the goddess of vegetation, and her relation to Anu
was similar to that of Belit-sheri to Ea at Eridu. Anu and Ea
were originally identical, but it would appear that the one was
differentiated as the god of the waters above the heaven and the
other as god of the waters beneath the earth, both being forms of
Anshar. Elsewhere the chief god of the spring sun or the moon,
the lover of the goddess, became pre-eminent, displacing the
elder god, like Nin-Girsu at Lagash. At Sippar the sun god,
Babbar, whose Semitic name was Shamash, was exalted as the chief
deity, while the moon god remained supreme at Ur. This
specializing process, which was due to local theorizing and the
influence of alien settlers, has been dealt with in a previous
chapter.

In referring to himself as the favoured ruler of various city
deities, Lugal-zaggisi appears as a ruler of all Sumeria. How far
his empire extended it is impossible to determine with certainty.
He appears to have overrun Akkad, and even penetrated to the
Syrian coast, for in one inscription it is stated that he “made
straight his path from the Lower Sea (the Persian Gulf) over the
Euphrates and Tigris to the Upper Sea (the Mediterranean)”. The
allegiance of certain states, however, depended on the strength
of the central power. One of his successors found it necessary to
attack Kish, which was ever waiting for an opportunity to regain
its independence.

According to the Chronicle of Kish, the next ruler of Sumer
and Akkad after Lugal-zaggisi was the famous Sargon I. It would
appear that he was an adventurer or usurper, and that he owed his
throne indirectly to Lugal-zaggisi, who had dethroned the ruler
of Akkad. Later traditions, which have been partly confirmed by
contemporary inscriptions, agree that Sargon was of humble birth. In the
previous chapter reference was made to the Tammuz-like myth
attached to his memory. His mother was a vestal virgin dedicated
to the sun god, Shamash, and his father an unknown stranger from
the mountains–a suggestion of immediate Semitic affinities.
Perhaps Sargon owed his rise to power to the assistance received
by bands of settlers from the land of the Amorites, which
Lugal-zaggisi had invaded.

According to the legend, Sargon’s birth was concealed. He was
placed in a vessel which was committed to the river. Brought up
by a commoner, he lived in obscurity until the Semitic goddess,
Ishtar, gave him her aid.

A similar myth was attached in India to the memory of Karna,
the Hector of that great Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata. Kama’s mother, the
Princess Pritha, who afterwards became a queen, was loved by the
sun god, Surya. When in secret she gave birth to her son she
placed him in an ark of wickerwork, which was set adrift on a
stream. Ultimately it reached the Ganges, and it was borne by
that river to the country of Anga, where the child was rescued by
a woman and afterwards reared by her and her husband, a
charioteer. In time Karna became a great warrior, and was crowned
King of Anga by the Kaurava warriors.[147]

Before he became king, Sargon of Akkad, the Sharrukin of the
texts, was, according to tradition, a gardener and watchman
attached to the temple of the war god Zamama of Kish. This deity
was subsequently identified with Merodach, son of Ea; Ninip, son
of Enlil; and Nin-Girsu of Lagash. He was therefore one of the
many developed forms of Tammuz–a solar, corn, and military
deity, and an interceder for mankind. The goddess of Kish appears
to have been a form of Bau, as is testified by the name of Queen Azag-Bau,
the legendary founder of the city.

Unfortunately our knowledge of Sargon’s reign is of meagre
character. It is undoubted that he was a distinguished general
and able ruler. He built up an empire which included Sumer and
Akkad, and also Amurru, “the western land”, or “land of the
Amorites”. The Elamites gave him an opportunity to extend his
conquests eastward. They appear to have attacked Opis, but he
drove them back, and on more than one occasion penetrated their
country, over the western part of which, known as Anshan, he
ultimately imposed his rule. Thither went many Semitic settlers
who had absorbed the culture of Sumeria.

During Sargon’s reign Akkad attained to a splendour which
surpassed that of Babylon. In an omen text the monarch is lauded
as the “highly exalted one without a peer”. Tradition relates
that when he was an old man all the Babylonian states rose in
revolt against him and besieged Akkad. But the old warrior led
forth his army against the combined forces and achieved a
shattering victory.

Manishtusu, who succeeded Sargon I, had similarly to subdue a
great confederacy of thirty-two city states, and must therefore
have been a distinguished general. But he is best known as the
monarch who purchased several large estates adjoining subject
cities, his aim having been probably to settle on these Semitic
allies who would be less liable to rebel against him than the
workers they displaced. For the latter, however, he found
employment elsewhere. These transactions, which were recorded on
a monument subsequently carried off with other spoils by the
Elamites and discovered at Susa, show that at this early period
(about 2600 B.C.) even a conquering monarch considered it advisable
to observe existing land laws. Urumush,[148] the next ruler, also achieved
successes in Elam and elsewhere, but his life was cut short by a
palace revolution.

The prominent figure of Naram Sin, a later king of Akkad,
bulks largely in history and tradition. According to the
Chronicle of Kish, he was a son of Sargon. Whether he was or not,
it is certain that he inherited the military and administrative
genius of that famous ex-gardener. The arts flourished during his
reign. One of the memorable products of the period was an
exquisitely sculptured monument celebrating one of Naram Sin’s
victories, which was discovered at Susa. It is one of the most
wonderful examples of Babylonian stone work which has come to
light.

A successful campaign had been waged against a mountain
people. The stele shows the warrior king leading his army up a
steep incline and round the base of a great peak surmounted by
stars. His enemies flee in confusion before him. One lies on the
ground clutching a spear which has penetrated his throat, two are
falling over a cliff, while others apparently sue for mercy.
Trees have been depicted to show that part of the conquered
territory is wooded. Naram Sin is armed with battleaxe and bow,
and his helmet is decorated with horns. The whole composition is
spirited and finely grouped; and the military bearing of the
disciplined troops contrasts sharply with the despairing
attitudes of the fleeing remnants of the defending army.