Part 3 (1/2)

How long, O Istar, my mother (shall I be afflicted)?

How long, O G.o.d, who knoweth that I knew not (shall I feel thy) strength?

How long, O Istar, my mother, who knoweth that I knew not, shall thy heart (be angry)?

Thou writest the number (?) of mankind, and none knoweth it.

Thou callest man by his name, and what does he know?

Whether he shall be afflicted, or whether he shall be prosperous, there is no man that knoweth.

O my G.o.d, thou givest not rest to thy servant.

In the waters of the raging flood take his hand.

The sin he has sinned turn into good.

Let the wind carry away the transgression I have committed.

Destroy my manifold wickednesses like a garment.

O my G.o.d, seven times seven are my transgressions, my transgressions are (ever) before me.

A rubric is attached to this verse, stating that it is to be repeated ten times, and at the end of the whole psalm is the further rubric: 'For the tearful supplication of the heart let the glorious name of every G.o.d be invoked sixty-five times, and then the heart shall have peace.'

Reference is made in the psalm to the eating of forbidden foods, and we have other indications that certain kinds of food, among which swine's flesh may be mentioned, were not allowed to be consumed. On particular days also fasts were observed, and special days of fasting and humiliation were prescribed in times of public calamity. In the calendar of the Egibi banking firm, the 2nd of Tammuz or June is entered as a day of 'weeping.' The inst.i.tution of the Sabbath, moreover, was known to the Babylonians and a.s.syrians, though it was confounded with the feast of the new moon, since it was kept, not every seven days, but on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the lunar month. On these days, we read in a sort of Saints' calendar for the intercalary Elul: 'Flesh cooked on the fire may not be eaten, the clothing of the body may not be changed, white garments may not be put on, a sacrifice may not be offered, the king may not ride in his chariot, nor speak in public, the augur may not mutter in a secret place, medicine of the body may not be applied, nor may any curse be uttered.' The very name of Sabattu or Sabbath was employed by the a.s.syrians, and is defined as 'a day of rest for the heart,' while the Accadian equivalent is explained to mean 'a day of completion of labour.'

So far as we are at present acquainted with the peculiarities of the a.s.syro-Babylonian temple, it offers many points of similarity to the temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. Thus there were an outer and an inner court and a shrine, to which the priests alone had access. In this was an altar approached by steps, as well as an ark or coffer containing two inscribed tablets of stone, such as were discovered by Mr. Ra.s.sam in the temple of Balawat. In the outer court was a large basin, filled with water, and called 'a sea,' which was used for ablutions and religious ceremonies. At the entrance stood colossal figures of winged bulls, termed 'cherubs,' which were imagined to prevent the ingress of evil spirits. Similar figures guarded the approach to the royal palace, and possibly to other houses as well. Some of them may now be seen in the British Museum. Within, the temples were filled with images of G.o.ds, great and small, which not only represented the deities whose names they bore, but were believed to confer of themselves a special sanct.i.ty on the place wherein they were placed. As among the Israelites, offerings were of two kinds, sacrifices and meal offerings. The sacrifice consisted of an animal, more usually a bullock, part of whose flesh was burnt upon the altar, while the rest was handed over to the priests or retained by the offerer. There is no trace of human sacrifices among the a.s.syrians, which is the more singular, since we learn that human sacrifice had been an Accadian inst.i.tution. A pa.s.sage in an old astrological work indicates that the victims were burnt to death, like the victims of Moloch; and an early Accadian fragment expressly states that they were to be the children of those for whose sins they were offered to the G.o.ds. The fragment is as follows: 'The son who lifts his head among men, the son for his own life must (the father) give; the head of the child for the head of the man must he give; the neck of the child for the neck of the man must he give; the breast of the child for the breast of the man must he give.' The idea of vicarious punishment is here clearly indicated.

The future life to which the Babylonian had looked forward was dreary enough. Hades, the land of the dead, was beneath the earth, a place of darkness and gloom, from which 'none might return,' where the spirits of the dead flitted like bats, with dust alone for their food. Here the shadowy phantoms of the heroes of old time sat crowned, each upon his throne, a belief to which allusion is made by the Hebrew prophet in his prophecy of the coming overthrow of Babylon (Is. xiv. 9). In the midst stood the palace of Allat, the queen of the underworld, where the waters of life bubbled forth beside the golden throne of the spirits of earth, restoring those who might drink of them to life and the upper air. The entrance to this dreary abode of the departed lay beyond Datilla, the river of death, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and it was here that the hero Gisdhubar saw Xisuthros, the Chaldean Noah, after his translation to the fields of the blessed. In later times, when the horizon of geographical knowledge was widened, the entrance to the gloomy world of Hades, and the earthly paradise that was above it, were alike removed to other and more unknown regions. The conception of the after-life, moreover, was made brighter, at all events, for the favoured few. An a.s.syrian court-poet prays thus on behalf of his king: 'The land of the silver sky, oil unceasing, the benefits of blessedness may he obtain among the feasts of the G.o.ds, and a happy cycle among their light, even life everlasting, and bliss; such is my prayer to the G.o.ds who dwell in the land of a.s.sur.' Even at a far earlier time we find the great Chaldean epic of Gisdhubar concluding with a description of the blissful lot of the spirit of Ea-bani: 'On a couch he reclines and pure water he drinks. Him who is slain in battle thou seest and I see. His father and his mother (support) his head, his wife addresses the corpse.

His friends in the fields are standing; thou seest (them) and I see. His spoil on the ground is uncovered; of his spoil he hath no oversight, (as) thou seest and I see. His tender orphans beg for bread; the food that was stored in (his) tent is eaten.' Here the spirit of Ea-bani is supposed to behold from his couch in heaven the deeds that take place on the earth below.

Heaven itself had not always been 'the land of the silver sky' of later a.s.syrian belief. The Babylonians once believed that the G.o.ds inhabited the snow-clad peak of Rowandiz, 'the mountain of the world' and 'the mountain of the East,' as it was also termed, which supported the starry vault of heaven. It is to this old Babylonian belief that allusion is made in Isaiah xiv. 13, 14, where the Babylonian monarch is represented as saying in his heart: 'I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of G.o.d: I will sit also on the mount of the a.s.sembly (of the G.o.ds)[4] in the extremities[5] of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.'

[4] A. V. 'congregation.'

[5] A. V. 'sides.'

As in all old forms of heathen faith, religion and mythology were inextricably mixed together. Myths were told of most of the G.o.ds.

Reference has already been made to the myth of Istar and Tammuz, the prototype of the Greek legend of Aphrodite and Adonis. So, too, the Greek story of the theft of fire by Prometheus has its parallel in the Babylonian story of the G.o.d Zu, 'the divine storm-bird,' who stole the lightning of Bel, the tablet whereon the knowledge of futurity is written, and who was punished for his crime by the father of the G.o.ds.

In reading the legend of the plague-demon Lubara, whom Anu sends to smite the evildoers in Babylon, Erech, and other places, we are reminded of the avenging angel of G.o.d whom David saw standing with a drawn sword over Jerusalem.

One of the most curious of the Babylonian myths was that which told how the seven evil-spirits or storm-demons had once warred against the moon and threatened to devour it. Samas and Istar fled from the lower sky, and the Moon-G.o.d would have been blotted out from heaven had not Bel and Ea sent Merodach in his 'glistening armour' to rescue him. The myth is really a primitive attempt to explain a lunar eclipse, and finds its ill.u.s.tration in the dragon of the Chinese, who is still popularly believed by them to devour the sun or moon when an eclipse takes place.

The primaeval victory of light and order over darkness and chaos, which seems to be repeated whenever the sun bursts through a storm-cloud, was similarly expressed in a mythical form. It was the victory of Merodach over Tiamat,'the deep,' the personification of chaos and elemental anarchy. The myth was embodied in a poem, the greater part of which has been preserved to us. We are told how Merodach was armed by the G.o.ds with bow and scimetar, how alone he faced and fought the dragon Tiamat, driving the winds into her throat when she opened her mouth to swallow him, and how, finally, he cut open her body, scattering in flight 'the rebellious deities' who had stood at her side. Tiamat, or the watery chaos, is usually represented with wings, claws, tail, and horns, but she is also identified with 'the wicked serpent' of 'night and darkness,' 'the monstrous serpent of seven heads,' 'which beats the sea.'

The most interesting of the old myths and traditions of Babylonia are those in which we can trace, more or less clearly, the lineaments of the accounts of the creation of the world and the early history of man, given us in the early chapters of Genesis. There was more than one legend of the creation. In a text which came from the library of Cuthah, it was described as taking place on evolutionary principles, the first created beings being the brood of chaos, men with 'the bodies of birds'

and 'the faces of ravens,' who were succeeded by the more perfect forms of the existing world. But the library of a.s.sur-bani-pal also contained an account of the creation, which bears a remarkable resemblance to that in the first chapter of Genesis. Unfortunately, however, it seems to have been of a.s.syrian and not Babylonian origin, and, therefore, not to have been of early date. In this account the creation appears to be described as having been accomplished in six days. It begins in these words:

'At that time the heavens above named not a name, nor did the earth below record one; yea, the ocean was their first creator, the flood of the deep (Tiamat) was she who bore them all. Their waters were embosomed in one place, and the clouds (?) were not collected, the plant was still ungrown. At that time the G.o.ds had not issued forth, any one of them; by no name were they recorded, no destiny (had they fixed). Then the (great) G.o.ds were made; Lakhmu and Lakhamu issued forth the first. They grew up.... Next were made the host of heaven and earth. The time was long, (and then) the G.o.ds Anu, (Bel, and Ea were born of) the host of heaven and earth.' The rest of the account is lost, and it is not until we come to the fifth tablet of the series, which describes the appointment of the heavenly bodies, that the narrative is again preserved. Here we are told that the creator, who seems to have been Ea, 'made the stations of the great G.o.ds, even the stars, fixing the places of the princ.i.p.al stars like ... He ordered the year, setting over it the decans; yea, he established three stars for each of the twelve months.'

It will be remembered that, according to Genesis, the appointment of the heavenly bodies to guide and govern the seasons was the work of the fourth day, and since the work is described in the fifth tablet or book of the a.s.syrian account, while the first tablet describes the condition of the universe before the creation was begun, it becomes probable that the a.s.syrians also knew that the work was performed on the fourth day.

The next tablet states that 'at that time the G.o.ds in their a.s.sembly created (the living creatures). They made the mighty (animals). They caused the living beings to come forth, the cattle of the field, the beast of the field, and the creeping thing.' Unfortunately the rest of the narrative is in too mutilated a condition for a translation to be possible, and the part which describes the creation of man has not yet been recovered among the ruins of the library of Nineveh.

The Chaldean account of the Deluge was discovered by Mr. George Smith, and its close resemblance to the account in Genesis is well known. Those who wish to see a translation of it, according to the latest researches, will find one in the pages of 'Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments.'