Part 5 (2/2)

Like all early religions, that of Babylonia is broken up into a multiplicity of local wors.h.i.+ps. There is no common system, but each place has its own G.o.d or G.o.ds and its own sacred rites. In Egypt we shall find reason to believe that this state of matters had its origin in an early totemistic arrangement of society; whether the same was the case in Babylonia or not, it is vain to speculate.

Babylonian religion as we see it has risen far above the direct wors.h.i.+p of animals. Each G.o.d comes before us in a certain local connection and with a special character, but they tend to grow like each other, and their wors.h.i.+p is organised on the same plan. The G.o.ds of Babylonia undoubtedly belonged to different towns, and though attempts were made in later times to bring them all together in an imperial Babylonian religion, and to settle their relations to each other, these attempts led to no system which was finally accepted.

The number of the recognised great G.o.ds varied, and there was always a large number of minor G.o.ds. Each G.o.d has his own early history; here as everywhere it is the case that the individual G.o.ds are earlier than the system which seeks to connect them together.

The Great G.o.ds.--The great G.o.ds of Babylonia belong to the elements and to the heavenly bodies. When we first see them, they are not, like the G.o.ds of the western Semites, lords and masters, characters taken from human families; they are not husbands and fathers but creators and universal powers. Another mark about them is that they have originally no wives. When they come to have wives, these are simply doubles of themselves with no special character. A consort is given to the G.o.d by adding a feminine termination to his name, thus Bel receives Belit, Anu has Anat. Finally Babylonian religion is more and more directed to the heavenly bodies. It is Astral religion carried to its furthest point. This fixed the arrangement of its temples, the occupations of its priests.

We rapidly pa.s.s in review the princ.i.p.al G.o.ds. One of the oldest is Ea of Eridu, a town which stood in old times at the head of the Persian Gulf. He is a G.o.d of the deep, whether it was that he was considered to have come over the water from another land, or whether he is connected with the belief which was held in Babylonia as elsewhere, that all things originally arose out of the abyss. In later forms of the legend his name appears as Oannes, and he is an amphibious being, half-fish, half-man, who rises from the deep and instructs men in arts and sciences. Works were preserved bearing his name, for he was an author. He continues, even when little direct wors.h.i.+p is addressed to him, one of the greatest of the G.o.ds. Ana the sky, is the G.o.d of Erech on the lower Euphrates. Like the Chinese, the men of Erech regarded the sky itself as the highest G.o.d, and the maker and ruler of all things. In Babylonia, however, the notion became spiritualised more than in China; at first we hear that his dwelling became the refuge of the G.o.ds during the Deluge, but in later times he is regarded as a being quite above heaven and all created beings, and even all the G.o.ds. A third great G.o.d is Bel of Nippur, not the later Bel of Babylon, but an older one, identical with the Accadian Mullilla, the lord of the under-world. The earliest G.o.ds of this religion are those of the sea, the earth, and the sky. As they belong to different districts of the country, they can scarcely be called a trinity. A better approach to a trinity is formed by Ea of Eridu, Davkina his wife who is the earth, and the sun-G.o.d Dumuzi, their offspring. The son of Ea, also named Miri-Dugga or Merodach (Marduk), is identified with the Egyptian Osiris; they have the same symbol, each is a sun-G.o.d, and each has a sister who is also his wife, Merodach has Istar, and Osiris, Isis. In Sergul the princ.i.p.al deity was the fire-G.o.d, sometimes called Savul; in Cutha they wors.h.i.+pped Nergal the G.o.d of death, the ”strong one” who had his throne beneath.

Cutha was a favourite place of sepulture with the Babylonians. Rimmon was a G.o.d of wind, Matu of storms. There is a dragon Tiamat, with whom the great G.o.ds have to contend.

The sun and the moon were wors.h.i.+pped everywhere; each city had its own sun-G.o.d and its own moon-G.o.d. The preference generally shown by nomads for the moon, since their journeys are made by night, is kept up in early Babylonia, where the moon-G.o.d is regarded as the father of the sun-G.o.d, and as the greater being. In Ur of the Chaldees the moon was the princ.i.p.al deity. There were also towns such as Larsa and Sippara, where the sun was the chief G.o.d; and many of the great G.o.ds of later times were originally sun-G.o.ds. The Chaldeans, moreover, were proverbially star-watchers, and a ”zigurrath” or observatory, a building of seven spheres corresponding to those of the planets as they pa.s.s through the signs of the zodiac, and like them rising up to the seat of G.o.d at the North Star, was a regular part of the later Babylonian temple. To Babylonia is due the practice of the orientation of temples; that is to say, the arrangement of the building in such a way that its princ.i.p.al axis shall point exactly in a desired direction. Some of the Babylonian temples were oriented so that the sun should s.h.i.+ne to the western end of them on the day of the spring equinox when the inundation of the rivers began on which the prosperity of the country so much depended. The temple was thus an astronomical instrument of a high degree of accuracy, and the priests who directed its building and served in it when built were men of science and learning. A religion which is connected with the heavenly bodies, though it does not fully supply the needs of the lower orders and has too little energy to cope with superst.i.tion, tends to produce a priesthood who form centres of enlightenment and civilisation throughout the country. This was in the highest degree the case in Babylonia. To these old astronomers the world owes the signs of the zodiac, which were fixed not later than in the fifth millennium B.C., and in which we see how early man beheld in the nightly heavens the creatures which on earth he regarded as divine, so that he wors.h.i.+pped them in both regions. The inst.i.tution of the Sabbath is also Babylonian; whether it was connected with the changes of the moon, or with a week of days named after the seven planets, is not certain. Seven is a sacred number in Babylonia, as we find in many a connection.

Mythology.--We come lastly, in our attempt to enumerate those parts of Babylonian religion which have entered deeply into human thought, to the myths. The heroic legends and romances are the most interesting and the best-known portions of the newly-recovered literature. We have already noticed some fragments of mythology, such as the story of the fish-G.o.d who comes up daily from the sea, the moon being the father of the sun, and the family history of Ea and Davkina, with the sun their child. The two latter are evidently inconsistent with each other. But the story about the son of Ea and Davkina has an important further development. His name is Duzu or Dumuzu, and he is the Tammuz of whom we hear in the Bible (Ezekiel viii. 14), who is adored by women raising lamentations for him. He is said to be the sun-G.o.d of spring, to whom the heat of summer is fatal, and who dies in June. It is when moisture is failing from the ground that he is bemoaned. His home is in Eden, for Eden belongs to Babylonian legend, which places it near Eridu. There grows the great world-tree which the G.o.ds love; it rises from the centre of the world, and is nourished from springs which Ea himself replenishes. It is a cedar (Yggdrasil, the ash-tree, we shall find, occupies the same position with the Northern Teutons); it is sometimes found in a highly conventional form with the figure of a cherub at each side of it, each of whom holds in his hand a fruit. In this tree scholars recognise both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge with which we are familiar. The knowledge of the priests in Babylonia was not for every one, but was jealously guarded, and kept for the initiated alone.

From Tammuz we naturally pa.s.s to Istar, one of the few G.o.ddesses of old Babylonia, and by far the most famous of them. Istar was originally the G.o.ddess of the earth, and both mother and sister of the sun-G.o.d, for we are led to believe that she is at first the same as Davkina. The great myth of the descent of Istar describes how she goes down to the kingdom of the shades to seek the waters that shall give life again to her bridegroom Tammuz. The poem in which the narrative is preserved gives a description of the ”house of darkness, where they behold no light,” and then tells how, at the orders of Ninkigal or Allat, queen of Hades, Istar is deprived, successively, in spite of her remonstrances, of all her ornaments, and how the plague-demon Namtar is bidden to strike her with all manner of diseases. The result of Istar's disappearance under the earth is that all love and courts.h.i.+p cease both among men and the lower animals, and Ea himself is appealed to, to bring to an end so unnatural a state of affairs. A messenger is sent to the lower regions to cause the release of Istar and the reascent of Tammuz. This G.o.ddess, however, is known not only from this legend; she has many forms, and pa.s.sed through various fortunes. The Istar of Erech herself lures Tammuz to his destruction. In early times Istar is also the evening star, the bright companion of the moon. Her leading character, however, seems to be that of a G.o.ddess of love. Fertility depends on her; she goes under the earth to find her lover. In this character she attracted in Babylonia a wors.h.i.+p noted for impurity, which under the name of Ashtoreth is found also in Phenicia and in Syria. There is also, however, a warlike Istar, a strict G.o.ddess served by Amazons, and capable of identification with the Greek Artemis, as the Istar of love is identified with Aphrodite.

Much more primitive than the legend of Istar are some parts of the Babylonian accounts of the creation. There are several of these accounts, some newly discovered. In one the old G.o.d Ea peoples the original chaos with a variety of strange monsters. In another the birth of the G.o.ds is narrated as well as that of the world; we find also that chaos is itself conceived as a female monster, a dragon of evil, and the G.o.d has to do battle with this power of darkness and evil, and to bring light and the habitable world up from its realm.

It is certainly true that the Babylonian legends of the creation are crude and inconsistent with each other, and that the account in Genesis belongs to a much higher order of thought. The Babylonian account of the deluge and the ark is more closely parallel to the Bible narrative; the two cannot possibly be independent of each other, and there may be no impropriety in holding that the Hebrew writers were acquainted with myths of general diffusion in the world they lived in.

The State Religion.--The Babylonian and a.s.syrian religion of which we hear in the Bible (_cf._ Isa. xl.-lxvi.) is the splendid wors.h.i.+p of mighty empires; it has forgotten its humble beginnings, and under the guidance of large priestly and learned corporations has grown much in depth and purity. Of its outward magnificence the monuments furnish ample proof. The temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon was a wonder of the world. Being the G.o.d of the prevailing city of the empire, Merodach was the greatest of all the G.o.ds, and was reverenced and extolled as befitted the friend and patron of the greatest of monarchs. His son Nebo was a prophet and a G.o.d of wisdom. What Merodach was to Babylon, a.s.sur was to a.s.syria; in fact, he was the only G.o.d peculiar to a.s.syria. The rule that as religion grows in outward splendour it also gains in inward strength and spirituality is strikingly exemplified in the case before us. The G.o.ds have come to be moral powers, who really care for men, not only for the king, their earthly representative, but for their wors.h.i.+ppers in general.

Merodach is praised for his mercy; he not only accompanies the king in his wars, of which the inscriptions give us so many a wearisome catalogue, but he heals the sick, he brings relief to him who is mourning for his transgressions, and he brings life out of death and receives the soul committed to his mercy to a blessed dwelling above.

Perhaps we pa.s.s here somewhat beyond the early period of the religion and touch on its ultimate phase. The penitential hymns of the later literature form a strong contrast to the magical incantations, which fill so much s.p.a.ce in the Babylonian sacred literature. The confessions they contain are not very spiritual; the supplicant bewails his sufferings rather than his sins. Indeed, he rather infers from his sufferings that he has sinned, trodden, it may be, where he ought not to have trodden, or eaten what he should not have eaten, than confesses that he deserved to suffer for sins of which he is aware. What is implored is outward redress or ease, not inward peace.

The removal of outward ills is taken as forgiveness. There can be no comparison between these hymns and those of the Bible. But what they do show is the rise in Babylonia of a religion for the individual.

The G.o.ds are sought not only officially by the state or for state ends, but by the individual. They are believed to have regard to individual sufferings; and the friends of a dying person believe that the G.o.ds care for and will receive his soul.

Our knowledge of the religion of these lands is too imperfect to admit of wide conclusions being drawn from it. We know what the higher religion of Babylonia was; and we also see that the higher wors.h.i.+p never entirely prevailed in this land; the G.o.d, like Bel or a.s.sur, who bore the character of a human over-lord, never drove out the old set of spirits, nor brought the service of them to an end. As in the case of Egypt, so here the attempts made in the direction of a pure and spiritual wors.h.i.+p met with no ultimate success. Babylon and a.s.syria never came so near to Monotheism as did Egypt three millenniums before Christ. Nabonidos, the last king of Babylon, collected all the G.o.ds together in his capital, and endeavoured to organise them in a system under Merodach as their head; but this led to religious discord rather than to peace, since the minor deities vehemently resented the removal of their images from their accustomed shrines, and were understood to refuse their aid to the state on the new conditions. The religion of Babylon was too much broken up into independent local cults to admit of such a unification. The highest that was reached was that one great G.o.d was adored in one city, another in another, with some depth and spirituality. To nations which had attained a higher faith, that of Babylon appeared to be an idolatrous wors.h.i.+p of many G.o.ds. That is a harsh judgment. This religion also had life in it and advanced from a lower to a higher stage; from a timid trafficking with spirits to a service of G.o.ds who were ideal heads of human communities, and friends of individual men.

It was not a mere system, as the world has been accustomed to think, of astrology and of divination of other kinds. But when Babylon and a.s.syria ceased to be independent powers, and became provinces of Persia, Bel bowed down and Nebo stooped, not to rise again. The world of that day had no need of them. It had already attained in more than one country to a higher religion than that of these deities.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

The Histories of Antiquity, viz.--

Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient_.

Duncker, _The History of Antiquity_, from the German, by Evelyn Abbott.

Rawlinson, _The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World: Chaldea, a.s.syria, Babylonia, Media, and Persia_.

Ed. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, 1884. The first volume embraces the History of the East to the foundation of the Persian Empire.

Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament_, 1903.

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