24. A great deal of additional interest in the elder Sargon of Agade has lately been excited by an extraordinary discovery connected with him, which produced a startling revolution in the hitherto accepted Chaldean chronology. This question of dates is always a most intricate and puzzling one in dealing with ancient Oriental nations, because they did not date their years from some particular event, as we do, and as did the Mohammedans, the Greeks and the Romans. In the inscriptions things are said to have happened in the year so-and-so of such a king"s reign.
Where to place that king is the next question--unanswerable, unless, as fortunately is mostly the case, some clue is supplied, to borrow a legal term, by circ.u.mstantial evidence. Thus, if an eclipse is mentioned, the time can easily be determined by the help of astronomy, which can calculate backward as well as forward. Or else, an event or a person belonging to another country is alluded to, and if they are known to us from other sources, that is a great help. Such a coincidence (which is called a SYNCHRONISM) is most valuable, and dates established by synchronisms are generally reliable. Then, luckily for us, a.s.syrian and Babylonian kings of a late period, whose dates are fixed and proved beyond a doubt, were much in the habit, in their historical inscriptions, of mentioning events that had taken place before their time and specifying the number of years elapsed, often also the king under whose reign the event, whatever it was, had taken place. This is the most precious clue of all, as it is infallible, and besides ascertaining one point, gives a firm foothold, whereby to arrive at many others. The famous memorandum of a.s.shurbanipal, already so often referred to, about the carrying away of the G.o.ddess Nana, (i.e., her statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date, except as a temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agade. There was no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he could not possibly have lived later than 2000 B.C. Scholars therefore agreed to a.s.sign that date to him, approximatively--a little more or less--thinking they could not go very far wrong in so doing. Great therefore was the commotion produced by the discovery of a cylinder of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (whose date is 550 B.C.), wherein he speaks of repairs he made in the great Sun-temple at Sippar, and declares having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the founder, thus describing his success: "Shamash (the Sun-G.o.d), the great lord ... suffered me to behold the foundation-cylinder of NARAM-SIN, the son of Sharrukin, which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none of the kings that lived before me had seen." The simple addition 3200 + 550 gives 3750 B.C. as the date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his father Sargon, allowing for the latter"s long reign! A scene-shifting of 1800 years at one slide seemed something so startling that there was much hesitation in accepting the evidence, unanswerable as it seemed, and the possibility of an error of the engraver was seriously considered. Some other doc.u.ments, however, were found independently of each other and in different places, corroborating the statement on Nabonidus" cylinder, and the tremendously ancient date of 3800 B.C. is now generally accepted the elder Sargon of Agade--perhaps the remotest _authentic_ date yet arrived at in history.
25. When we survey and attempt to grasp and cla.s.sify the materials we have for an early "History of Chaldea," it appears almost presumptuous to grace so necessarily lame an attempt with so ambitious a name. The landmarks are so few and far between, so unconnected as yet, and there is so much uncertainty about them, especially about placing them. The experience with Sargon of Agade has not been encouraging to conjectural chronology; yet with such we must in many cases be content until more lucky finds turn up to set us right. What, for instance, is the proper place of GUDeA, the _patesi_ of SIR-BURLA (also read SIR-GULLA or SIRTILLA, and, lately, ZIRLABA), whose magnificent statues Mr. de Sarzec found in the princ.i.p.al hall of the temple of which the bricks bear his stamp? (See p. 217.) The t.i.tle of _patesi_, (not "king"), points to great antiquity, and he is pretty generally understood to have lived somewhere between 4000 and 3000 B.C. That he was not a Semite, but an Accadian prince, is to be concluded not only from the language of his inscriptions and the writing, which is of the most archaic--i.e., ancient and old-fashioned--character, but from the fact that the head, which was found with the statues, is strikingly Turanian in form and features, shaved, too, and turbaned after a fashion still used in Central Asia. Altogether it might easily be taken for that of a modern Mongolian or Tatar.[AM] The discovery of this builder and patron of art has greatly eclipsed the glory of a somewhat later ruler, UR-eA, King of Ur,[AN] who had long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest known temple-builder. He remains at all events the first powerful monarch we read of in Southern Chaldea, of which Ur appears to have been in some measure the capital, at least in so far as to have a certain supremacy over the other great cities of Shumir.
26. Of these Shumir had many, even more venerable for their age and holiness than those of Accad. For the South was the home of the old race and most ancient culture, and thence both had advanced northward. Hence it was that the old stock was hardier there and endured longer in its language, religion and nationality, and was slower in yielding to the Semitic counter-current of race and culture, which, as a natural consequence, obtained an earlier and stronger hold in the North, and from there radiated over the whole of Mesopotamia. There was ERIDHU, by the sea "at the mouth of the Rivers," the immemorial sanctuary of ea; there was SIR-GULLA, so lately unknown, now the most promising mine for research; there was LARSAM, famous with the glories of its "House of the Sun" (_e-Babbara_ in the old language), the rival of Ur, the city of the Moon-G.o.d, whose kings UR-eA and his son DUNGI were, it appears, the first to take the ambitious t.i.tle of "Kings of Shumir and Accad" and "Kings of the Four Regions." As for Babylon, proud Babylon, which we have so long been accustomed to think of as the very beginning of state life and political rule in Chaldea, it was perhaps not yet built at all, or only modestly beginning its existence under its Accadian name of TIN-TIR-KI ("the Place of Life"), or, somewhat later, KA-DIMIRRA ("Gate of G.o.d"), when already the above named cities, and several more, had each its famous temple with ministering college of priests, and, probably, library, and each its king. But political power was for a long time centred at Ur. The first kings of Ur authentically known to us are Ur-ea and his son Dungi, who have left abundant traces of their existence in the numerous temples they built, not in Ur alone, but in most other cities too. Their bricks have been identified at Larsam (Senkereh), and, it appears, at Sir-burla (Tel-Loh), at Nipur (Niffer) and at Urukh (Erech, Warka), and as the two latter cities belonged to Accad, they seem to have ruled at least part of that country and thus to have been justified in a.s.suming their high-sounding t.i.tle.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 59.--STATUE OF GUDeA, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH, (SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION. (Hommel).]
27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing the name of Ur-ea "are found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundation of buildings;" that "they are of a rude and coa.r.s.e make, of many sizes and ill-fitted together;" that baked bricks are rare among them; that they are held together by the oldest subst.i.tutes for mortar--mud and bitumen--and that the writing upon them is curiously rude and imperfect.[AO] But whatever King Ur-ea"s architectural efforts may lack in perfection, they certainly make up in size and number. Those that he did not complete, his son Dungi continued after him. It is remarkable that these great builders seem to have devoted their energies exclusively to religious purposes; also that, while their names are Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are often in that language, the temples they constructed were dedicated to various deities of the new, or rather reformed religion. When we see the princes of the South, according to an ingenious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we may take it as a sign of the times, as an unmistakable proof of the influence of the North, political as well as religious. A very curious relic of King Ur-ea was found--his own signet cylinder--which was lost by an accident, then turned up again and is now in the British Museum. It represents the Moon-G.o.d seated on a throne,--as is but meet for the king of the Moon-G.o.d"s special city--with priests presenting worshippers. No definite date is of course a.s.signable to Ur-ea and the important epoch of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question for us so unexpectedly. That monarch was as zealous a repairer of temples as his predecessors had been zealous builders. He had reasons of his own to court popularity, and could think of nothing better than to restore the time-honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he repaired the Sun-temple (e-Babbara) at Larsam, whereof we are duly informed by a special cylinder. In it he tells posterity that he found a cylinder of King Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple was founded 700 years before Hammurabi"s time; as Ur-ea was the founder, it only remains to determine the latter king"s date in order to know that of the earlier one.[AP] Here unfortunately scholars differ, not having as yet any decisive authority to build upon. Some place Hammurabi _before_ 2000 B.C., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to a.s.sume that Ur-ea can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later than 2500 B.C. At all events, he must necessarily have lived somewhat before 2300 B.C., for about this latter year took place the Elamite invasion recorded by a.s.shurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King expressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and desecrated its temples--evidently the same ones which Ur-ea and Dungi so piously constructed. Nor was this a pa.s.sing inroad or raid of booty-seeking mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khudur-Nankhundi and his successors remained in Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the country, and reigned, several of them in succession, so that this series of foreign rulers has become known in history as "the Elamite dynasty."
There was no room then for a powerful and temple-building national dynasty like that of the kings of Ur.
28. This is the first time we meet authentic monumental records of a country which was destined through the next sixteen centuries to be in continual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia and her northern rival a.s.syria, until its final annihilation by the latter. Its capital was SHUSHAN, (afterwards p.r.o.nounced by foreigners "Susa"), and its own original name SHUSHINAK. Its people were of Turanian stock, its language was nearly akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at some time or other Semites came and settled in Shushinak. Though too few in number to change the country"s language or customs, the superiority of their race a.s.serted itself. They became the n.o.bility of the land, the ruling aristocracy from which the kings were taken, the generals and the high functionaries. That the Turanian ma.s.s of the population was kept in subjection and looked down upon, and that the Semitic n.o.bility avoided intermarrying with them is highly probable; and it would be difficult otherwise to explain the difference of type between the two cla.s.ses, as shown in the representations of captives and warriors belonging to both on the a.s.syrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an unmistakably Turanian type of features--high cheek-bones, broad, flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and n.o.bles have all the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later monuments, is a Turanian word, which means, like "Accad," "Highlands."
It is the only name under which the historian of Chap. X. of Genesis admits it into his list of nations, and, consistently following out his system of ignoring all members of the great yellow race, he takes into consideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes of Elam a son of Shem, a brother of a.s.shur and Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.)
29. One of Khudur-Nankhundi"s next successors, KHUDUR-LAGAMAR, was not content with the addition of Chaldea to his kingdom of Elam. He had the ambition of a born conqueror and the generalship of one. The Chap. XIV.
of Genesis--which calls him Chedorlaomer--is the only doc.u.ment we have descriptive of this king"s warlike career, and a very striking picture it gives of it, sufficient to show us that we have to do with a very remarkable character. Supported by three allied and probably tributary kings, that of Shumir (Shinear), of Larsam, (Ella.s.sar) and of the GOM, (in the unrevised translation of the Bible "king of nations") i.e., the nomadic tribes which roamed on the outskirts and in the yet unsettled, more distant portions of Chaldea, Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200 miles across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and populous valleys of the Jordan and the lake or sea of Siddim, afterwards called the Dead Sea, where five great cities--Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others--were governed by as many kings. Not only did he subdue these kings and impose his rule on them, but contrived, even after he returned to the Persian Gulf, to keep on them so firm a hand, that for twelve years they "served" him, i.e., paid him tribute regularly, and only in the thirteenth year, encouraged by his prolonged absence, ventured to rebel. But they had underrated Khudur-Lagamar"s vigilance and activity.
The very next year he was among them again, together with his three faithful allies, encountered them in the vale of Siddim and beat them, so that they all fled. This was the battle of the "four kings with five." As to the treatment to which the victor subjected the conquered country it is very briefly but clearly described: "And they took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their way."
30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign race and great wealth, Lot, the nephew of Abraham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived at Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very probably the harsher rule, if not positive oppression, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had driven them thence. It was then they went forth into the land of Canaan, led by Terah and his son Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this time begins to be called in the Bible "Hebrews," from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or Eber, whose name alludes to the pa.s.sing of the Euphrates, or, perhaps, in a wider sense, to the pa.s.sage of the tribe through the land of Chaldea.[AQ] For years the tribe travelled without dividing, from pasture to pasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaanites, well seen and even favored of them, into Egypt and out of it again, until the quarrel occurred between Abraham"s herdsmen and Lot"s, (see Genesis, Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose the plain of the Jordan and pitched his tent toward Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in the plain of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in friendship and close alliance with the princes of the land, that one who had escaped from the battle in the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him how that among the captives whom Khudur-Lagamar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his brother"s son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his trained servants, born in his own household, three hundred and eighteen, took with him his friends, Mamre and his brothers, with their young men, and starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which was now carelessly marching home towards the desert with its long train of captives and booty, overtook it near Damascus in the night, when his own small numbers could not be detected, and produced such a panic by a sudden and vigorous onslaught that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his nephew Lot with his goods and women, but brought back all the captured goods and the people too. And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to keep all the goods for himself, only restoring the persons. Abraham consented that a proper share of the rescued goods should be given to his friends and their young men, but refused all presents offered to himself, with the haughty words: "I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high G.o.d, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread, even to a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."
31. Khudur-Lagamar, of whom the spirited Biblical narrative gives us so life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations, about 2200 B.C. Among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom out of the twilight of those dim and doubtful ages, he is the second with any flesh-and-blood reality about him, probably the first conqueror of whom the world has any authentic record. For Egypt, the only country which rivals in antiquity the primitive states of Mesopotamia, although it had at this time already reached the height of its culture and prosperity, was as yet confined by its rulers strictly to the valley of the Nile, and had not entered on that career of foreign wars and conquests which, some thousand years later, made it a terror from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
32. The Elamitic invasion was not a pa.s.sing raid. It was a real conquest, and established a heavy foreign rule in a highly prosperous and flourishing land--a rule which endured, it would appear, about three hundred years. That the people chafed under it, and were either gloomily despondent or angrily rebellious as long as it lasted, there is plenty of evidence in their later literature. It is even thought, and with great moral probability, that the special branch of religious poetry which has been called "Penitential Psalms" has arisen out of the sufferings of this long period of national bondage and humiliation, and if, as seems to be proved by some lately discovered interesting fragments of texts, these psalms were sung centuries later in a.s.syrian temples on mournful or very solemn public occasions, they must have perpetuated the memory of the great national calamity that fell on the mother-country as indelibly as the Hebrew psalms, of which they were the models, have perpetuated that of King David"s wanderings and Israel"s tribulations.
33. But there seems to have been one Semitic royal house which preserved a certain independence and quietly gathered power against better days.
To do this they must have dissembled and done as much homage to the victorious barbarians as would ensure their safety and serve as a blind while they strengthened their home rule. This dynasty, destined to the glorious task of restoring the country"s independence and founding a new national monarchy, was that of Tin-tir-ki, or Ka-dimirra--a name now already translated into the Semitic BAB-ILU, ("the Gate of G.o.d"); they reigned over the large and important district of KARDUNYASH, important from its central position, and from the fact that it seems to have belonged neither to Accad, nor to Shumir, but to have been politically independent, since it is always mentioned by itself. Still, to the Hebrews, Babylon lay in the land of Shinar, and it is strongly supposed that the "Amraphel king of Shinar" who marched with Khudur-Lagamar, as his ally, against the five kings of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, was no other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read AMARPAL, while "Ariokh of Ella.s.sar" was an Elamite, ERI-AKU, brother or cousin of Khudur-Lagamar, and King of Larsam, where the conquerors had established a powerful dynasty, closely allied by blood to the princ.i.p.al one, which had made the venerable Ur its headquarters. This Amarpal, more frequently mentioned under his other name of SIN-MUBALLIT, is thought to have been the father of HAMMURABI, the deliverer of Chaldea and the founder of the new empire.
34. The inscriptions which Hammurabi left are numerous, and afford us ample means of judging of his greatness as warrior, statesman and administrator. In his long reign of fifty-five years he had, indeed, time to achieve much, but what he did achieve _was_ much even for so long a reign. In what manner he drove out the foreigners we are not told, but so much is clear that the decisive victory was that which he gained over the Elamite king of Larsam. It was probably by expelling the hated race by turns from every district they occupied, that Hammurabi gathered the entire land into his own hands and was enabled to keep it together and weld it into one united empire, including both Accad and Shumir, with all their time-honored cities and sanctuaries, making his own ancestral city, Babylon, the head and capital of them all. This king was in every respect a great and wise ruler, for, after freeing and uniting the country, he was very careful of its good and watchful of its agricultural interests. Like all the other kings, he restored many temples and built several new ones. But he also devoted much energy to public works of a more generally useful kind. During the first part of his reign inundations seem to have been frequent and disastrous, possibly in consequence of the ca.n.a.ls and waterworks having been neglected under the oppressive foreign rule. The inscriptions speak of a city having been destroyed "by a great flood," and mention "a great wall along the Tigris"--probably an embankment, as having been built by Hammurabi for protection against the river. But probably finding the remedy inadequate, he undertook and completed one of the greatest public works that have ever been carried out in any country: the excavation of a gigantic ca.n.a.l, which he called by his own name, but which was afterwards famous under that of "Royal Ca.n.a.l of Babylon." From this ca.n.a.l innumerable branches carried the fertilizing waters through the country. It was and remained the greatest work of the kind, and was, fifteen centuries later, the wonder of the foreigners who visited Babylon. Its constructor did not overrate the benefit he had conferred when he wrote in an inscription which can scarcely be called boastful: "I have caused to be dug the Nahr-Hammurabi, a benediction for the people of Shumir and Accad. I have directed the waters of its branches over the desert plains; I have caused them to run in the dry channels and thus given unfailing waters to the people.... I have changed desert plains into well-watered lands. I have given them fertility and plenty, and made them the abode of happiness."
35. There are inscriptions of Hammurabi"s son. But after him a new catastrophe seems to have overtaken Chaldea. He is succeeded by a line of foreign kings, who must have obtained possession of the country by conquest. They were princes of a fierce and warlike mountain race, the Ka.s.sHI, who lived in the highlands that occupy the whole north-western portion of Elam, where they probably began to feel cramped for room.
This same people has been called by the later Greek geographers COSSaeANS or CISSIANS, and is better known under either of these names. Their language, of which very few specimens have survived, is not yet understood; but so much is plain, that it is very different both from the Semitic language of Babylon and that of Shumir and Accad, so that the names of the Ka.s.shi princes are easily distinguishable from all others. No dismemberment of the empire followed this conquest, however, if conquest there was. The kings of the new dynasty seem to have succeeded each other peacefully enough in Babylon. But the conquering days of Chaldea were over. We read no more of expeditions into the plains of Syria and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun." For a power was rising in the North-West, which quickly grew into a formidable rival: through many centuries a.s.syria kept the rulers of the Southern kingdom too busy guarding their frontiers and repelling inroads to allow them to think of foreign conquests.
FOOTNOTES:
[AH] Names are often deceptive. That of the Hindu-Cush is now thought to mean "Killers of Hindus," probably in allusion to robber tribes of the mountains, and to have nothing to do with the Cus.h.i.te race.
[AI] "Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l"Orient," 1878, p. 160.
[AJ] Translation of Professor A. H. Sayce.
[AK] A. H. Sayce.
[AL] Translated by A. H. Sayce, in his paper "Babylonian Folk-lore" in the "Folk-lore Journal," Vol. I., Jan., 1883.
[AM] See Figs. 44 and 45, p. 101.
[AN] This name was at first read Urukh, then Likbabi, then Likbagash, then Urbagash, then Urba"u, and now Professor Friedr. Delitzsch announces that the final and correct reading is in all probability either Ur-ea or Arad-ea.
[AO] Geo. Rawlinson, "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World" (1862), Vol. I., pp. 198 and ff.
[AP] Geo. Smith, in "Records of the Past," Vol. V., p. 75. Fritz Hommel, "Die Semiten," p. 210 and note 101.
[AQ] It should be mentioned, however, that scholars have of late been inclined to see in this name an allusion to the pa.s.sage of the Jordan at the time of the conquest of Canaan by Israel, after the Egyptian bondage.
V.
BABYLONIAN RELIGION.
1. In relating the legend of the Divine Man-Fish, who came out of the Gulf, and was followed, at intervals, by several more similar beings, Berosus a.s.sures us, that he "taught the people all the things that make up civilization," so that "nothing new was invented after that any more." But if, as is suggested, "this monstrous Oannes" is really a personification of the strangers who came into the land, and, being possessed of a higher culture, began to teach the Turanian population, the first part of this statement is as manifestly an exaggeration as the second. A people who had invented writing, who knew how to build, to make ca.n.a.ls, to work metals, and who had pa.s.sed out of the first and grossest stage of religious conceptions, might have much to learn, but certainly not _everything_. What the newcomers--whether Cus.h.i.tes or Semites--did teach them, was a more orderly way of organizing society and ruling it by means of laws and an established government, and, above all, astronomy and mathematics--sciences in which the Shumiro-Accads were little proficient, while the later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans, attained in them a very high perfection, so that many of their discoveries and the first principles laid down by them have come down to us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the division of the year into twelve months corresponding to as many constellations, known as "the twelve signs of the Zodiac," was familiar to them. They had also found out the division of the year into twelve months, only all their months had thirty days. So they were obliged to add an extra month--an intercalary month, as the scientific term is--every six years, to start even with the sun again, for they knew where the error in their reckoning lay. These things the strangers probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic, but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of sixty years. This was probably the origin of the division, adopted in Babylonia, of the sun"s course into 360 equal parts or degrees, and of the day into twelve "_kasbus_" or double hours, since the kasbu answered to two of our hours, and was divided into sixty parts, which we might thus call "double minutes," while these again were composed of sixty "double seconds." The natural division of the year into twelve months made this so-called "docenal" and "s.e.xagesimal" system of calculation particularly convenient, and it was applied to everything--measures of weight, distance, capacity and size as well as time.
2. Astronomy is a strangely fascinating science, with two widely different and seemingly contradictory aspects, equally apt to develop habits of hard thinking and of dreamy speculation. For, if on one hand the study of mathematics, without which astronomy cannot subsist, disciplines the mind and trains it to exact and complicated operations, on the other hand, star-gazing, in the solitude and silence of a southern night, irresistibly draws it into a higher world, where poetical aspirations, guesses and dreams take the place of figures with their demonstrations and proofs. It is probably to these habitual contemplations that the later Chaldeans owed the higher tone of religious thought which distinguished them from their Turanian predecessors. They looked for the deity in heaven, not on earth. They did not cower and tremble before a host of wicked goblins, the creation of a terrified fancy. The spirits whom they worshipped inhabited and ruled those beautiful bright worlds, whose harmonious, concerted movements they watched admiringly, reverently, and could calculate correctly, but without understanding them. The stars generally became to them the visible manifestations and agents of divine power, especially the seven most conspicuous heavenly bodies: the Moon, whom they particularly honored, as the ruler of night and the measurer of time, the Sun and the five planets then known, those which we call Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury. It is but just to the Shumiro-Accads to say that the perception of the divine in the beauty of the stars was not foreign to them. This is amply proved by the fact that in their oldest writing the sign of a star is used to express the idea not of any particular G.o.d or G.o.ddess, but of the divine principle, the deity generally. The name of every divinity is preceded by the star, meaning "the G.o.d so-and-so." When used in this manner, the sign was read in the old language "Dingir"--"G.o.d, deity." The Semitic language of Babylonia which we call "a.s.syrian," while adapting the ancient writing to its own needs, retained this use of the sign "star," and read it _ilu_, "G.o.d."
This word--ILU or EL--we find in all Semitic languages, either ancient or modern, in the names they give to G.o.d, in the Arabic ALLAH as well as in the Hebrew ELOHIM.
3. This religion, based and centred on the worship of the heavenly bodies, has been called _Sabeism_, and was common to most Semitic races, whose primitive nomadic life in the desert and wide, flat pasture-tracts, with the nightly watches required by the tending of vast flocks, inclined them to contemplation and star-gazing. It is to be noticed that the Semites gave the first place to the Sun, and not, like the Shumiro-Accads, to the Moon, possibly from a feeling akin to terror, experiencing as they did his destructive power, in the frequent droughts and consuming heat of the desert.[AR]
4. A very prominent feature of the new order of things was the great power and importance of the priesthood. A successful pursuit of science requires two things: intellectual superiority and leisure to study, i.e., freedom from the daily care how to procure the necessaries of life. In very ancient times people in general were quite willing to acknowledge the superiority of those men who knew more than they did, who could teach them and help them with wise advice; they were willing also to support such men by voluntary contributions, in order to give them the necessary leisure. That a race with whom science and religion were one should honor the men thus set apart and learned in heavenly things and allow them great influence in private and public affairs, believing them, as they did, to stand in direct communion with the divine powers, was but natural; and from this to letting them take to themselves the entire government of the country as the established rulers thereof, was but one step. There was another circ.u.mstance which helped to bring about this result. The Chaldeans were devout believers in astrology, a form of superst.i.tion into which an astronomical religion like Sabeism is very apt to degenerate. For once it is taken for granted that the stars are divine beings, possessed of intelligence, and will, and power, what more natural than to imagine that they can rule and shape the destinies of men by a mysterious influence? This influence was supposed to depend on their movements, their position in the sky, their ever changing combinations and relations to each other; under this supposition every movement of a star--its rising, its setting, or crossing the path of another--every slightest change in the aspect of the heavens, every unusual phenomenon--an eclipse, for instance--must be possessed of some weighty sense, boding good or evil to men, whose destiny must constantly be as clearly written in the blue sky as in a book. If only one could learn the language, read the characters! Such knowledge was thought to be within the reach of men, but only to be acquired by the exceptionally gifted and learned few, and those whom they might think worthy of having it imparted to them. That these few must be priests was self-evident. They were themselves fervent believers in astrology, which they considered quite as much a real science as astronomy, and to which they devoted themselves as a.s.siduously. They thus became the acknowledged interpreters of the divine will, partakers, so to speak, of the secret councils of heaven. Of course such a position added greatly to their power, and that they should never abuse it to strengthen their hold on the public mind and to favor their own ambitious views, was not in human nature. Moreover, being the clever and learned ones of the nation, they really were at the time the fittest to rule it--and rule it they did. When the Semitic culture spread over Shumir, whither it gradually extended from the North, i.e., the land of Accad, there arose in each great city--Ur, Eridhu, Larsam, Erech,--a mighty temple, with its priests, its library, its _Ziggurat_ or observatory. The cities and the tracts of country belonging to them were governed by their respective colleges. And when in progress of time, the power became centred in the hands of single men, they still were priest-kings, _patesis_, whose royalty must have been greatly hampered and limited by the authority of their priestly colleagues. Such a form of government is known under the name of _theocracy_, composed of two Greek words and meaning "divine government."
5. This religious reform represents a complete though probably peaceable revolution in the condition of the "Land between the Rivers." The new and higher culture had thoroughly a.s.serted itself as predominant in both its great provinces, and in nothing as much as in the national religion, which, coming in contact with the conceptions of the Semites, was affected by a certain n.o.bler spiritual strain, a purer moral feeling, which seems to have been more peculiarly Semitic, though destined to be carried to its highest perfection only in the Hebrew branch of the race.
Moral tone is a subtle influence, and will work its way into men"s hearts and thoughts far more surely and irresistibly than any amount of preaching and commanding, for men are naturally drawn to what is good and beautiful when it is placed before them. Thus the old settlers of the land, the Shumiro-Accads, to whom their gross and dismal goblin creed could not be of much comfort, were not slow in feeling this enn.o.bling and beneficent influence, and it is a.s.suredly to that we owe the beautiful prayers and hymns which mark the higher stage of their religion. The consciousness of sin, the feeling of contrition, of dependence on an offended yet merciful divine power, so strikingly conspicuous in the so-called "Penitential Psalms" (see p. 178), the fine poetry in some of the later hymns, for instance those to the Sun (see p.
171), are features so distinctively Semitic, that they startle us by their resemblance to certain portions of the Bible. On the other hand, a nation never forgets or quite gives up its own native creed and religious practices. The wise priestly rulers of Shumir and Accad did not attempt to compel the people to do so, but even while introducing and propagating the new religion, suffered them to go on believing in their hosts of evil spirits and their few beneficent ones, in their conjuring, soothsaying, casting and breaking of spells and charms. Nay, more. As time went on and the learned priests studied more closely the older creed and ideas, they were struck with the beauty of some few of their conceptions--especially that of the ever benevolent, ever watchful Spirit of Earth, ea, and his son Meridug, the mediator, the friend of men. These conceptions, these and some other favorite national divinities, they thought worthy of being adopted by them and worked into their own religious system, which was growing more complicated, more elaborate every day, while the large bulk of spirits and demons they also allowed a place in it, in the rank of inferior "Spirits of heaven"
and "Spirits of earth," which were lightly cla.s.sed together and counted by hundreds. By the time a thousand years had pa.s.sed, the fusion had become so complete that there really was both a new religion and a new nation, the result of a long work of amalgamation. The Shumiro-Accads of pure yet low race were no longer, nor did the Semites preserve a separate existence; they had become merged into one nation of mixed races, which at a later period became known under the general name of Chaldeans, whose religion, regarded with awe for its prodigious antiquity, yet was comparatively recent, being the outcome of the combination of two infinitely older creeds, as we have just seen. When Hammurabi established his residence at Babel, a city which had but lately risen to importance, he made it the capital of the empire first completely united under his rule (see p. 226), hence the name of Babylonia is given by ancient writers to the old land of Shumir and Accad, even more frequently than that of Chaldea, and the state religion is called indifferently the Babylonian or Chaldean, and not unfrequently Chaldeo-Babylonian.
6. This religion, as it was definitely established and handed down unchanged through a succession of twenty centuries and more, had a twofold character, which must be well grasped in order to understand its general drift and sense. On the one hand, as it admitted the existence of many divine powers, who shared between them the government of the world, it was decidedly POLYTHEISTIC--"a religion of many G.o.ds." On the other hand, a dim perception had already been arrived at, perhaps through observation of the strictly regulated movements of the stars, of the presence of One supreme ruling and directing Power. For a cla.s.s of men given to the study of astronomy could not but perceive that all those bright Beings which they thought so divine and powerful, were not absolutely independent; that their movements and combinations were too regular, too strictly timed, too identical in their ever recurring repet.i.tion, to be entirely voluntary; that, consequently, they _obeyed_--obeyed a Law, a Power above and beyond them, beyond heaven itself, invisible, unfathomable, unattainable by human thought or eyes.
Such a perception was, of course, a step in the right direction, towards MONOTHEISM, i.e., the belief in only one G.o.d. But the perception was too vague and remote to be fully realized and consistently carried out. The priests who, from long training in abstract thought and contemplation, probably could look deeper and come nearer the truth than other people, strove to express their meaning in language and images which, in the end, obscured the original idea and almost hid it out of sight, instead of making it clearer. Besides, they did not imagine the world as _created_ by G.o.d, made by an act of his will, but as being a form of him, a manifestation, part of himself, of his own substance. Therefore, in the great all of the universe, and in each of its portions, in the mysterious forces at work in it--light and heat and life and growth--they admired and adored not the power of G.o.d, but his very presence; one of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms in which he makes himself known and visible to men, manifests himself to them--in short, _an emanation of G.o.d_. The word "emanation" has been adopted as the only one which to a certain extent conveys this very subtle and complicated idea. An emanation is not quite a thing itself, but it is a portion of it, which comes out of it and separates itself from it, yet cannot exist without it. So the fragrance of a flower is not the flower, nor is it a growth or development of it, yet the flower gives it forth and it cannot exist by itself without the flower--it is an emanation of the flower. The same can be said of the mist which visibly rises from the warm earth in low and moist places on a summer evening--it is an emanation of the earth.
7. The Chaldeo-Babylonian priests knew of many such divine emanations, which, by giving them names and attributing to them definite functions, they made into so many separate divine persons. Of these some ranked higher and some lower, a relation which was sometimes expressed by the human one of "father and son." They were ordered in groups, very scientifically arranged. Above the rest were placed two TRIADS or "groups of three." The first triad comprised ANU, eA and BEL, the supreme G.o.ds of all--all three retained from the old Shumiro-Accadian list of divinities. ANU is ANA, "Heaven," and the surnames or epithets, which are given him in different texts, sufficiently show what conception had been formed of him: he is called "the Lord of the starry heavens," "the Lord of Darkness," "the first-born, the oldest, the Father of the G.o.ds." eA, retaining his ancient attributions as "Lord of the Deep," the pre-eminently wise and beneficent spirit, represents the Divine Intelligence, the founder and maintainer of order and harmony, while the actual task of separating the elements of chaos and shaping them into the forms which make up the world as we know it, as well as that of ordering the heavenly bodies, appointing them their path and directing them thereon, was devolved on the third person of the triad, BEL, the son of eA. Bel is a Semitic name, which means simply "the lord."
8. From its nature and attributions, it is clear that to this triad must have attached a certain vagueness and remoteness. Not so the second triad, in which the Deity manifested itself as standing in the nearest and most direct relation to man as most immediately influencing him in his daily life. The persons of this triad were the Moon, the Sun, and the Power of the Atmosphere,--SIN, SHAMASH, and RAMaN, the Semitic names for the Shumiro-Accadian URU-KI or NANNAR, UD or BABBAR, and IM or MERMER. Very characteristically, Sin is frequently called "the G.o.d Thirty," in allusion to his functions as the measurer of time presiding over the month. Of the feelings with which the Sun was regarded and the beneficent and splendid qualities attributed to him, we know enough from the beautiful hymns quoted in Chap. III. (see p. 172). As to the G.o.d RAMaN, frequently represented on tablets and cylinders by his characteristic sign, the double or triple-forked lightning-bolt--his importance as the dispenser of rain, the lord of the whirlwind and tempest, made him very popular, an object as much of dread as of grat.i.tude; and as the crops depended on the supply of water from the ca.n.a.ls, and these again could not be full without abundant rains, it is not astonishing that he should have been particularly ent.i.tled "protector or lord of ca.n.a.ls," giver of abundance and "lord of fruitfulness." In his more terrible capacity, he is thus described: "His standard t.i.tles are the minister of heaven and earth," "the lord of the air," "he who makes the tempest to rage." He is regarded as the destroyer of crops, the rooter-up of trees, the scatterer of the harvest. Famine, scarcity, and even their consequence, pestilence, are a.s.signed to him. He is said to have in his hand a "flaming sword" with which he effects his works of destruction, and this "flaming sword, which probably represents lightning, becomes his emblem upon the tablets and cylinders."[AS]
9. The astronomical tendencies of the new religion fully a.s.sert themselves in the third group of divinities. They are simply the five planets then known and identified with various deities of the old creed, to whom they are, so to speak, a.s.signed as their own particular provinces. Thus NIN-DAR (also called NINIP or NINeB), originally another name or form of the Sun (see p. 172), becomes the ruler of the most distant planet, the one we now call Saturn; the old favorite, Meridug, under the Semitized name of MARDUK, rules the planet Jupiter. It is he whom later Hebrew writers have called MERODACH, the name we find in the Bible. The planet Mars belongs to NERGAL, the warrior-G.o.d, and Mercury to NEBO, more properly NABU, the "messenger of the G.o.ds" and the special patron of astronomy, while the planet Venus is under the sway of a feminine deity, the G.o.ddess ISHTAR, one of the most important and popular on the list. But of her more anon. She leads us to the consideration of a very essential and characteristic feature of the Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, common, moreover, to all Oriental heathen religions, especially the Semitic ones.
10. There is a distinction--the distinction of s.e.x--which runs through the whole of animated nature, dividing all things that have life into two separate halves--male and female--halves most different in their qualities, often opposite, almost hostile, yet eternally dependent on each other, neither being complete or perfect, or indeed able to exist without the other. Separated by contrast, yet drawn together by an irresistible sympathy which results in the closest union, that of love and affection, the two s.e.xes still go through life together, together do the work of the world. What the one has not or has in an insufficient degree it finds in its counterpart, and it is only their union which makes of the world a whole thing, full, rounded, harmonious. The masculine nature, active, strong, and somewhat stern, even when merciful and bounteous, inclined to boisterousness and violence and often to cruelty, is well set off, or rather completed and moderated, by the feminine nature, not less active, but more quietly so, dispensing gentle influences, open to milder moods, more uniformly soft in feeling and manner.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 60.--A BUST INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME OF NEBO. (British Museum.)]
11. In no relation of life is the difference, yet harmony, of masculine and feminine action so plain as in that between husband and wife, father and mother. It requires no very great effort of imagination to carry the distinction beyond the bounds of animated nature, into the world at large. To men for whom every portion or force of the universe was endowed with a particle of the divine nature and power, many were the things which seemed to be paired in a contrasting, yet joint action similar to that of the s.e.xes. If the great and distant Heaven appeared to them as the universal ruler and lord, the source of all things--the Father of the G.o.ds, as they put it--surely the beautiful Earth, kind nurse, nourisher and preserver of all things that have life, could be called the universal Mother. If the fierce summer and noonday sun could be looked on as the resistless conqueror, the dread King of the world, holding death and disease in his hand, was not the quiet, lovely moon, of mild and soothing light, bringing the rest of coolness and healing dews, its gentle Queen? In short, there is not a power or a phenomenon of nature which does not present to a poetical imagination a twofold aspect, answering to the standard masculine and feminine qualities and peculiarities. The ancient thinkers--priests--who framed the vague guesses of the groping, dreaming mind into schemes and systems of profound meaning, expressed this sense of the twofold nature of things by worshipping a double divine being or principle, masculine and feminine. Thus every G.o.d was supplied with a wife, through the entire series of divine emanations and manifestations. And as all the G.o.ds were in reality only different names and forms of the Supreme and Unfathomable ONE, so all the G.o.ddesses represent only BELIT, the great feminine principle of nature--productiveness, maternity, tenderness--also contained, like everything else, in that ONE, and emanating from it in endless succession. Hence it comes that the G.o.ddesses of the Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, though different in name and apparently in attributions, become wonderfully alike when looked at closer. They are all more or less repet.i.tions of BELIT, the wife of BEL.
Her name--which is only the feminine form of the G.o.d"s, meaning "the Lady," as Bel means "the Lord,"--sufficiently shows that the two are really one. Of the other G.o.ddesses the most conspicuous are ANAT or NANA (Earth), the wife of Anu (Heaven), ANUNIT (the Moon), wife of Shamash (the Sun), and lastly ISHTAR, the ruler of the planet Venus in her own right, and by far the most attractive and interesting of the list. She was a great favorite, worshipped as the Queen of Love and Beauty, and also as the Warrior-Queen, who rouses men to deeds of bravery, inspirits and protects them in battle--perhaps because men have often fought and made war for the love of women, and also probably because the planet Venus, her own star, appears not only in the evening, close after sunset, but also immediately before daybreak, and so seems to summon the human race to renewed efforts and activity. Ishtar could not be an exception to the general principle and remain unmated. But her husband, DUMUZ (a name for the Sun), stands to her in an entirely subordinate position, and, indeed, would be but little known were it not for a beautiful story that was told of them in a very old poem, and which will find its place among many more in one of the next chapters.
12. It would be tedious and unnecessary to recite here more names of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, though there are quite a number, and more come to light all the time as new tablets are discovered and read. Most of them are in reality only different names for the same conceptions, and the Chaldeo-Babylonian pantheon--or a.s.sembly of divine persons--is very sufficiently represented by the so-called "twelve great G.o.ds," who were universally acknowledged to be at its head, and of whom we will here repeat the names: ANU, eA and BEL, SIN, SHAMASH and RAMaN, NIN-DAR, MARUDUK, NERGAL, NEBO, BELIT and ISHTAR. Each had numerous temples all over the country. But every great city had its favorite whose temple was the oldest, largest and most sumptuous, to whose worship it was especially devoted from immemorial times. ea, the most beloved G.o.d of old Shumir, had his chief sanctuary, which he shared with his son Meridug, at ERIDHU (now Abu-Shahrein), the most southern and almost the most ancient city of Shumir, situated near the mouth of the Euphrates, since the Persian Gulf reached quite as far inland in the year 4000 B.C., and this was a.s.suredly an appropriate station for the great "lord of the deep,"
the Fish-G.o.d Oannes, who emerged from the waters to instruct mankind. UR, as we have seen, was the time-honored seat of the Moon-G.o.d. At ERECH Anu and Anat or Nana--Heaven and Earth--were specially honored from the remotest antiquity, being jointly worshipped in the temple called "the House of Heaven." This may have been the reason of the particular sacredness attributed to the ground all around Erech, as witnessed by the exceeding persistency with which people strove for ages to bury their dead in it, as though under the immediate protection of the G.o.ddess of Earth[AT] (see Ch. III. of Introduction). Larsam paid especial homage to Shamash and was famous for its very ancient "House of the Sun." The Sun and Moon--Shamash and Anunit--had their rival sanctuaries at SIPPAR on the "Royal Ca.n.a.l," which ran nearly parallel to the Euphrates, and AGADe, the city of Sargon, situated just opposite on the other bank of the ca.n.a.l. The name of Agade was lost in the lapse of time, and both cities became one, the two portions being distinguished only by the addition "Sippar of the Sun" and "Sippar of Anunit." The Hebrews called the united city "The two Sippars"--SEPHARVAIM, the name we find in the Bible.
13. The site of this important city was long doubtful; but in 1881 one of the most skilful and indefatigable searchers, Mr. Hormuzd Ra.s.sam, a gentleman who began his career as a.s.sistant to Layard, made a discovery which set the question at rest. He was digging in a mound known to the Arabs by the name of Abu-Habba, and had made his way into the apartments of a vast structure which he knew to be a temple. From room to room he pa.s.sed until he came to a smaller chamber, paved with asphalt, which he at once surmised to be the archive-room of the temple. "Heretofore,"
says Mr. Ra.s.sam in his report, "all a.s.syrian and Babylonian structures were found to be paved generally either with stone or brick, consequently this novel discovery led me to have the asphalt broken into and examined. On doing so we found, buried in a corner of the chamber, about three feet below the surface, an inscribed earthenware coffer, inside which was deposited a stone tablet...." Ra.s.sam had indeed stumbled on the archive of the famous Sun-temple, as was proved not only by the tablet, but by the numerous doc.u.ments which accompanied it, and which gave the names of the builders and restorers of the temple. As to the tablet, it is the finest and best preserved work of art of the kind which has yet been found. It was deposited about the year 880 B.C. on occasion of a restoration and represents the G.o.d himself, seated on a throne, receiving the homage of worshippers, while above him the sun-disc is held suspended from heaven on two strong cords, like a gigantic lamp, by two ministering beings, who may very probably belong to the host of Igigi or spirits of heaven. The inscription, in beautifully clear and perfectly preserved characters, informs us that this is "The image of Shamash, the great lord, who dwells in the "House of the Sun," (_e-Babbara_) which is within the city of Sippar."[AU] (See Frontispiece.) This was a truly magnificent find, and who knows but something as unexpected and as conclusive may turn up to fix for us the exact place of the temple of Anunit, and consequently of the venerable city of Agade. As to BABYLON, it was originally placed under divine protection generally, as shown by its proper Semitic name, BAB-ILU, which means, as we have already seen, "the Gate of G.o.d," and exactly answers to the Shumiro-Accadian name of the city (KA-DINGIRRA, or KA-DIMIRRA); but later on it elected a special protector in the person of MARUDUK, the old favorite, Meridug. When Babylon became the capital of the united monarchy of Shumir and Accad, its patron divinity, under the name of BEL-MARUDUK, ("the Lord Maruduk") rose to a higher rank than he had before occupied; his temple outshone all others and became a wonder of the world for its wealth and splendor. He had another, scarcely less splendid, and founded by Hammurabi himself in Borsip. In this way religion was closely allied to politics. For in the days before the reunion of the great cities under the rule of Hammurabi, whichever of them was the most powerful at the time, its priests naturally claimed the pre-eminence for their local deity even beyond their own boundaries.
So that the fact of the old Kings of Ur, Ur-ea and his descendants, not limiting themselves to the worship of their national Moon-G.o.d, but building temples in many places and to many G.o.ds, was perhaps a sign of a conciliating general policy as much as of liberal religious feeling.