'• 12.2.3^6 Copyright, 1898 Bv MORRIS JASTROW, Jr. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO H. B. J. MY FAITHFUL COLLABORATOR PREFACE. It requires no profound knowledge to reach the conclusion that the time has not yet come for an exhaustive treatise on the religion of Babylonia and Assyria. But even if our knowledge of this religion were more advanced than it is, the utility of an exhaustive treatment might still be questioned. Exhaustive treatises are apt to be exhausting to both reader and author ; and however exhaustive (or exhausting) such a treatise may be, it cannot be final except in the fond imagination of the writer. For as long as activity prevails in any branch of science, all results are provisional. Increasing knowledge leads necessarily to a change of perspective and to a readjustment of views. The chief reason for writing a book is to prepare the way for the next one on the same subject. In accordance with the general plan of this Series ' of Hand- books, it has been my chief aim to gather together in con- venient arrangement and readable form what is at present known about the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians. The investigations of scholars are scattered through a large variety of periodicals and monographs. The time has come for focusing the results reached, for sifting the certain from the uncertain, and the uncertain from the false. This work of gathering the disjecta membra of Assyriological science is essential to future progress. If I have succeeded in my chief aim, I shall feel amply repaid for the labor involved. 1 Set forth in the announcement of the series at the back of the book and in the Editor's Prefatory Note to Volume I. viii PREFACE. In order that the book may serve as a guide to students, the names of those to whose researches our present knowledge of the subject is due have frequently been introduced, and it will be found, I trust, that I have been fair to all." At the same time, I have naturally not hesitated to indicate my dissent from views advanced by this or that scholar, and it will also be found, I trust, that in the course of my studies I have advanced the interpretation of the general theme or of specific facts at various points. While, therefore, the book is only in a second- ary degree sent forth as an original contribution, the discus- sion of mooted points will enhance its value, I hope, for the specialist, as well as for the general reader and student for whom, in the first place, the volumes of this series are intended. The disposition of the subject requires a word of explana- tion. After the two introductory chapters (common to all the volumes of the series) I have taken up the pantheon as the natural means to a survey of the field. The pantheon is treated, on the 'basis of the historical texts, in four sections : (i) the old Babylonian period, (2) the middle period, or the pantheon in the days of Hammurabi, (3) the Assyrian pan- theon, and (4) the latest or neo-Babylonian period. The most difficult phase has naturally been the old Babylonian pantheon. Much is uncertain here. Not to speak of the chronology which is still to a large extent guesswork, the identification of many of the gods occurring in the oldest inscriptions, with their later equivalents, must be postponed till future discoveries shall have cleared away the many obstacles which beset the path of the scholar. The discoveries at Telloh and Nippur have occa- sioned a recasting of our views, but new problems have arisen as rapidly as old ones have been solved. I have been espe- cially careful in this section not to pass beyond the range of 1 In the index, however, names of scholars have only been introduced where absolutely necessary to the subject. PREFACE. IX what is definitely known., or, at the most, what may be regarded as tolerably certain. Throughout the chapters on the pantheon, I have endeavored to preserve the attitude of being " open to conviction ' — an attitude on which at present too much stress can hardly be laid. The second division of the subject is represented by the religious literature. With this literature as a guide, the views held by the Babylonians and Assyrians regarding magic and oracles, regarding the relationship to the gods, the creation of the world, and the views of life after death have been illustrated by copious translations, together with discussions of the speci- mens chosen. The translations, I may add, have been made direct from the original texts, and aim to be as literal as is consonant with presentation in idiomatic English. The religious architecture, the history of the temples, and the cult form the subject of the third division. Here again there is much which is still uncertain, and this uncertainty accounts for the unequal subdivisions of the theme which will not escape the reader. Following the general plan of the series, the last chapter of the book is devoted to a general estimate and to a consideration of the influence exerted by the religion of Babylonia and Assyria. In the transliteration of proper names, I have followed con- ventional methods for well-known names (like Nebuchadnezzar), and the general usage of scholars in the case of others. In some cases I have furnished a transliteration of my own ; and for the famous Assyrian king, to whom we owe so much of the material for the study of the Babylonian and Assyrian religion, Ashurbanabal, I have retained the older usage of writing it with a ^, following in this respect Lehman, whose arguments ^ in favor of this pronunciation for the last element in the name I regard as on the whole acceptable. 1 In his work, Santassum-ukin Kbnig von Babylonien^ pp. 16-21. Hence, I also write Asllurnasirbal. X PREFACE. I have reasons to regret the proportions to which the work has grown. These proportions were entirely unforeseen when I began the book, and have been occasioned mainly by the large amount of material that has been made available by numerous important publications that appeared after the actual writing of the book had begun. This constant increase of material necessitated constant revision of chapters ; and such revision was inseparable from enlargement. I may conscien- tiously say that I have studied these recent publications thor- oughly as they appeared, and have embodied at the proper place the results reached by others and which appeared to me acceptable. The work, therefore, as now given to the public may fairly be said to represent the state of present knowledge. In a science that grows so rapidly as Assyriology, to which more than to many others the adage of dies diem docet is appli- cable, there is great danger of producing a piece of work that is antiquated before it leaves the press. At times a publication appeared too late to be utilized. So Delitzsch's important con- tribution to the origin of cuneiform writing^ was published long after the introductory chapters had been printed. In this book he practically abandons his position on the Sumerian question (as set forth on p. 22 of this volume) and once more joins the opposite camp. As far as my own position is con- cerned, I do not feel called upon to make any changes from the statements found in chapter i., even after reading Weiss- bach's Die Sumcrische Frage (Leipzig, 1898), — the latest con- tribution to the subject, which is valuable as a history of the controversy, but offers little that is new. Delitzsch's name must now be removed from the list of those who accept Halevy's thesis ; but, on the other hand, Hale'vy has gained a strong ally in F. Thureau-Dangin, whose special studies in the old Babylonian inscriptions lend great weight to his utterances on the origin of the cuneiform script. Dr. Alfred Jeremias, of 1 Die Entstehittig dcs dltesten Schriftsystems (Leipzig, 1897). PREFACE. ' XI Leipzig, is likewise to be added to the adherents of Halevy. The Sumero- Akkadian controversy is not yet settled, and mean- while it is well to bear in mind that not ever}' Assyriologist is qualified to pronounce an opinion on the subject. A special study is required, and but few Assyriologists have made such a study. Accepting a view or a tradition from one's teacher does not constitute a person an authority, and one may be a very good Assyriologist without having views on the contro- versy that are of any particular value. Lastly, I desire to call attention to the Bibliography, on which much time has been spent, and which will, I trust, be found satisfactory. In a list of addenda at the end of the book, I have noted some errors that slipped into the book, and I have also embodied a few additions. The copious index is the work of my student. Dr. S. Koppe, and it gives me pleasure to express my deep obligations to him for the able and painstaking manner in which he has carried out the work so kindly under- taken by him. The drawing for the map was made by Mr. J. Horace Frank of Philadelphia. To my wife more thanks are due than I can convey in words for her share in the work. She copied almost all of the manuscript, and in doing so made many valuable sugges- tions. Without her constant aid and encouragement I would have shrunk from a task which at times seemed too formidable to be carried to a successful issue. As I lay down my pen after several years of devotion to this book, my last thought is one of gratitude to the beloved partner of my joys and sorrows. MORRIS JASTROW, Jr. University of Pennsylvania, /line, j8g8. CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS. Page, line. 22. See Preface. 35, 10. Isin or Nisin, see Lehmann's Samas-mmukin, I. 77; Meissner's Beitrdge zimi altbabylonischen Privatrecht, p. 122. 39, 7. Read 'as well as the names of four kings.' For Hommel's theory, see now Jensen, Zeits. f. Assyr. X. 342-344. note. 51, 26. Insert Dumuzi. 5r, 28. Add Shul-pa-udda, Nln-akha-kuddu. 61. Bau also appears as Nin-din-dug, i.e., 'the lady who restores life.' See Hilprecht, Old Bt^bylonian Iitscriptions ^ I. 2, Nos. 95, 106, III. 72. I am not certain now whether Utu and Babbar are really names or only epithets. 74. On A, see Hommel, Journal of Transactions of Victoria Institute^ XXVIII. 35-36. 84, 12. Here and elsewhere it is understood that for the conventional form Izdubar, the reading Gilgamesh is to be preferred. 95, 14. Add 'is devoted' after ' that place.' 99, 24. Ur-shul-pa-uddu is a ruler of Kish. 102, 13. For Ku-anna, see IIIR. 67, 32 c-d. 102, 24. For another U-mu as a title of Ramman, see Delitzsch, Das Bahylonische Weltsckopfungsepos, p. 135, note. Whether the deity U-mu, mentioned IIIR. 66, obv. 31, is our goddess or Ramman, it is difficult to say — probably the latter. Ill, 2. Nisaba is mentioned in company with the great gods by Nebo- polassar (Hilprecht, Old Babylonian Inscriptions, I. i. H. 32, col. II. 15). 165. Note 2. On these proper names, see Delitzsch's "Assyriologische Miscellen " {Berichte der phil.-hist. Classe der kgl. sacks. Gesell. d. Wiss., 1893, pp. 183 seq^. 488. Note I. See now Scheil's article " Recueil de Travaux," etc., XX. 55-59. 529. The form Di-ib-ba-ra has now been found. See Scheil's "Recueil de Travaux," etc., XX. 57. 589. Note 3. See now Hommel, Expository Times, VIII. 472, and Baudis,sin, ib. IX. 40-45. 635,12. For 'Dumuzi' read 'Dumuzi-zu-aba.' CONTENTS. •+ai-** CHAPTER \) I. Introduction II. The Land and the People III. General Traits of the Old Baisylonian Pantheon IV. Babylonian Gods Prior to the Days of Hammu- rabi V. The Consorts of the Gods VI. GuDEA's Pantheon ... V VII. Summary VIII. The Pantheon in the Days of Hammurabi IX. The Gods in the Temple Lists and in the Legal AND Commercial Documents X. The Minor Gods in the Period of PIammuraei XI. Survivals of Animism in the Babylonian Religion XII. The Assyrian Pantheon . XIII. The Triad and the Combined Invocation of Deities .... XIV. The Neo-Babylonian Period XV. The Religious Literature of Babylonia XVI. The Magical Texts . XVII. The Prayers and Hymns XVIII. Penitential Psalms . XIX. Oracles and Omens XX. Various Classes of Omens XXI. The Cosmology of the Babylonians XXII. The Zodiacal System of the Babylonians XXIII. The Gilgamesh Epic . . . . XXIV. Myths and Legends . XXV. The Views of Life after Death XXVI. The Temples and the Cult . J XXVII. Conclusion . . . . J: 26 48 5' 104 106 112 116 ■65 171 180 235 239 245 253 294 312 328 352 407 454 467 S18 556 612 6go THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. — -»^^^v,^-»- — CHAPTER I. — INTRODUCTION. SOURCES AND METHODS OF STUDY. I. Until about the middle of this century, our knowledge of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was exceedingly scant. No records existed that were contemporaneous with the period covered by Babylonian- Assyrian history; no monuments of the past were preserved that might, in default of records, throw light upon the religious ideas and customs that once prevailed in Mesopotamia. The only sources at command were the incidental, notices — insufficient and fragmentary in char- acter — that occurred in the Old Testament, in Herodotus, in Eusebius, Syncellus, and Diodorus. Of these, again, only the two first-named, the Old Testament and Herodotus, can be termed direct sources ; the rest simply reproduce extracts from other works, notably from Ctesias, the contemporary of Xeno- phon, from Berosus, a priest of the temple of Bel in Babylonia, who lived about the time of Alexander the Great, or shortly after, and from Apollodorus, Abydenus, Alexander Polyhistor, and Nicolas of Damascus, all of whom being subsequent to Berosus, either quote the latter or are dependent upon him. Of all these sources it may be said, that what information they furnish of Babylonia and Assyria bears largely upon the political history, and only to a very small degree upon the 2 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN liELIGION. religion. In the Old Testament, the two empires appear only as they enter into relations with the Hebrews, and since Hebrew history is not traced back beyond the appearance of the clans of Terah in Palestine, there is found previous to this period, barring the account of the migrations of the Terahites in Mesopotamia, only the mention of the Tigris and Euphrates among the streams watering the legendary Garden of Eden, the incidental reference to Nimrod and his empire, which is made to include the capitol cities of the Northern and Southern Mesopotamian districts, and the story of the founding of the city of Babylon, followed by the dispersion of mankind from their central habitation in the Euphrates Valley. The followers of Abram, becoming involved in the attempts of Palestinian chieftains to throw off the yoke of Babylonian supremacy, an occasion is found for introducing Mesopotamia again, and so the family history of the Hebrew tribes superinduces at odd times a reference to the old settlements on the Euphrates, but it is not until the political struggles of the two Hebrew king- doms against the inevitable subjection to the superior force of Assyrian arms, and upon the fall of Assyria, to the Babylonian power, that Assyria and Babylonia engage the frequent attention of the chronicler's pen and of the prophet's word. Here, too, the political situation is always the chief factor, and it is only incidentally that the religion comes into play, — as when it is said that Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, was murdered while worshipping in the temple dedicated to a deity, Nisroch ; or when a prophet, to intensify the picture of the degradation to which the proud king of Babylon is to be reduced, introduces Babylonian conceptions of the nether world into his discourse.' Little, too, is furnished by the Book of Daniel, despite the fact that Babylon is the center of action, and what little there is 1 Isaiah, xiv. For the Babylonian views contained in this chapter, see Alfred Jeremias, Die Babylonisch-Assyrischen Vorstelliingen vom Lcben nach dem Tode pp. 112-116. SOURCES AND METHODS OF STUDY. 3 bearing on the religious status, such as the significance attached to dreams, and the implied contrast between the religion of Daniel and his companions, and that of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, loses some of its force by the late origin of the book. The same applies, only in a still stronger degree, to the Book of Judith, in which Nineveh is the center of the incidents described. The rabbinical literature produced in Palestine and Baby- lonia is far richer in notices bearing on the religious practices of Mesopotamia, than is the Old Testament. The large settle- ments of Jews in Babylonia, which, beginning in the sixth century b.c, were constantly being increased by fresh accessions from Palestine, brought the professors of Judaism face to face with religious conditions abhorrent to their souls. In the regulations of the Rabbis to guard their followers from the influences surrounding them, there is frequent reference, open or implied, to Babylonish practices, to the festivals of the Baby- lonians, to the images of their gods, to their forms of incanta- tions, and other things besides ; but these notices are rendered obscure by their indirect character, and require a commentary that can only be furnished by that knowledge of the times which they take for granted. To this difficulty, there must be added the comparatively late date of the notices, which demands an exercise of care before applying them to the very early period to which the religion of the Babylonians may be traced. Coming to Herodotus, it is a matter of great regret that the history of Assyria, which he declares it was his intention to write,' was either never produced, or if produced, lost. In accordance with the general usage of his times, Herodotus included under Assyria the whole of Mesopotamia, both Assyria proper in the north and Southern Mesopotamia. His history would therefore have been of extraordinary value, and since nothing escaped his observant eye and well-trained mind, I Book i. sec. 184. 4 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. the religious customs of the country would have come in for their full share of attention. As it is, we have only a few notices about Babylonia and Assyria, incidental to his history of Persia.^ Of these, the majority are purely historical, chief among which is an epitome of the country's past — a curious medley of fact and legend — and the famous account of the capture of Babylon by Cyrus. Fortunately, however, there are four notices that treat of the religion of the inhabitants : the first, a description of an eight-storied tower, surmounted by a temple sacred to the god Bel; a second furnishing a rather detailed account of another temple, also sacred to Bel, and situated in the same precinct of the city of Babylon ; a third notice speaks, though with provoking brevity, of the funeral customs of the Babylonians ; while in a fourth he describes the rites connected with the worship of the chief goddess of the Babylonians, which impress Herodotus, who failed to appreciate their mystic significance, as shameful. We have no reason to believe that Ctesias' account of the Assyrian monarchy, under which he, like Herodotus, included Babylonia, contained any reference to the religion at all. What he says about Babylonia and Assyria served merely as an introduction to Persian history — the real purpose of his work — and the few fragments known chiefly through Diodorus and Eusebius, deal altogether with the succession of dynasties. As is well known, the lists of Ctesias have fallen into utter discredit by the side of the ever-growing confidence in the native traditions as reported by Berosus. The loss of the latter's history of Babylon is deplorable indeed ; its value would have been greater than the history of Herodotus, because it was based, as we know, on the records and documents preserved in Babylonian temples. How much of the history dealt witli the religion of the people, it is difficult to determine, but the extracts of it found in various writers show 1 Book i. (" Clio "), sees. 95, 102, 17S-200. SOURCES AND METHODS OE STUDY. 5 that starting, like the Old Testament, with the beginning of things, Berosus gave a full account of the cosmogony of the Babylonians. Moreover, the early history of Babylonia being largely legendary, as that of every other nation, tales of the relations existing between the gods and mankind — relations that are always close in the earlier stages of a nation's history — must have abounded in the pages of Berosus, even if he did not include in his work a special section devoted to an account of the religion that still was practiced in his days. The quotations from Berosus in the works of Josephus are all of a historical character ; those in Eusebius and Syncellus, on the contrary, deal with the religion and embrace the cosmogony of the Babylonians, the account of a deluge brought on by the gods, and the building of a tower. It is to be noted, moreover, that the quotations we have from Berosus are not direct, for while it is possible, though not at all certain, that Josephus was still able to consult the works of Berosus, Eusebius and Syncellus refer to Apollodorus, Abydenus, and Alexander Polyhistor as their authorities for the statements of Berosus. Passing in this way through several hands, the authoritative value of the comparatively paltry extracts preserved, is dimin- ished, and a certain amount of inaccuracy, especially in details and in the reading of proper names, ^ becomes almost inevitable. Lastly, it is to be noted that the list of Babylonian kings found in the famous astronomical work of Claudius Ptolemaeus, valuable as it is for historical purposes, has no connection with the religion of the Babylonians. ^ An instructive instance is furnished by the mention of a mystic personage, " Homoroka," which now turns out to be — as Professor J. H, Wright has shown — - a corruption of Marduk. (See Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie^ a. 71-74.) BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. II. The sum total of the information thus to be gleaned from ancient sources for an elucidation of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion is exceedingly meagre, sufficing scarcely for determin- ing its most general traits. Moreover, what there is, requires for the most part a control through confirmatory evidence which we seek for in vain, in biblical or classical literature. This control has now been furnished by the remarkable dis- coveries made beneath the soil of Mesopotamia since the year 1842. In that year the French consul at Mosul, P. E. Botta, aided by a government grant, began a series of excavations in the mounds that line the banks of the Tigris opposite Mosul. The artificial character of these mounds had for some time been recognized. Botta's first finds of a pronounced character were made at a village known as Khorsabad, which stood on one of the mounds in question. Here, at a short distance below the surface, he came across the remains of what proved to be a palace of enormous extent. The sculptures that were found in this palace — enormous bulls and lions resting on backgrounds of limestone, and guarding the approaches to the palace chambers, or long rows of carvings in high relief lining the palace walls, and depicting war scenes, building operations, and religious processions — left no doubt as to their belonging to an ancient period of history. The written char- acters found on these monuments substantiated the view that Botta had come across an edifice of the Assyrian empire, while subsequent researches furnished the important detail that the excavated edifice lay in a suburb of the ancient capitol of Assyria, Nineveh, the exact site of which was directly opposite Mosul. Botta's labors extended over a period of three years ; by the end of which time, having laid bare the greater part of the palace, he had gathered a large mass of material including SOURCES AND METHODS OF STUDY. 7 many smaller objects — pottery, furniture, jewelry, and orna- ments — that might serve for the study of Assyrian art and of Assyrian antiquities, while the written records accompanying the monuments placed for the first time an equally considerable quantity of original material at the disposal of scholars for the history of Assyria. All that could be transported was sent to the Louvre, and this material was subsequently published. Botta was followed by Austen Henry Layard, who, acting as the agent of the British Museum, conducted excavations during the years 1845-50, first at a mound Nimrud, some fifteen miles to the south of Khorsabad, and afterwards on the site of Nineveh proper, the mound Koyunjik, opposite Mosul, besides visiting and examining other mounds still further to the south within the district of Babylonia proper. The scope of Layard's excavations exceeded, therefore, those of Botta ; and to the one palace at Khorsabad, he added three at Nimrud and two at Ko3'unjik, besides finding traces of a temple and other buildings. The construction of these edi- fices was of the same order as the one unearthed by Botta; and as at the latter, there was a large yield of sculptures, inscrip- tions, and miscellaneous objects. A new feature, however, of Layard's excavations was the finding of several rooms filled with fragments of small and large clay tablets closely inscribed on both sides in the cuneiform characters. These tablets, about 30,000 of which found their way to the British Museum, proved to be the remains of a royal library. Their contents ranged over all departments of thought, — hymns, incantations, prayers, epics, history, legends, mythology, mathematics, astronomy constituting some of the chief divisions. In the corners of the palaces, the foundation records were also found, containing in each case more or less extended annals of the events that occurred dur- ing the reign of the monarch whose official residence was thus brought to light. Through Layard, the foundations were laid for the Assyrian nnd Babylonian collections of the British 8 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. Museum, the parts of which exhibited to the pubhc now fill six large halls. Fresh sources of a direct character were thus added for the study, not only of the historical unfolding of the Assyrian empire, but through the tablets of the royal library, for the religion of ancient Mesopotamia as well. The stimulus given by Botta and Layard to the recovery of the records and monuments of antiquity that had been hidden from view for more than two thousand years, led to a refresh- ing rivalry between England and France in continuing a work that gave promise of still richer returns by further efforts. Victor Place, a French architect of note, who succeeded Botta as the French consul at Mosul, devoted his term of service, from 1851 to 1855, towards completing the excavations at Khorsabad. A large aftermath rewarded his efforts. Thanks, too, to his technical knowledge and that of his assistant, Felix Thomas, M. Place was enabled more accurately to determine the architectural construction of the temples and palaces of ancient Assyria. Within this same period (1852-1854) an- other exploring expedition was sent out to Mesopotamia by the French government, under the leadership of Fulgence Fresnel, in whose party were the above-mentioned Thomas and the distinguished scholar Jules Oppert. The objective point this time was Southern Mesopotamia, the mounds of which had hitherto not been touched, many not even identi- fied as covering the remains of ancient cities. Much valuable work was done by this expedition in its careful study of the site of the ancient Babylon, — in the neighborhood of the mod- ern village Hillah, some forty miles south of Baghdad. Un- fortunately, the antiquities recovered at this place, and else- where, were lost through the sinking of the rafts as they carried their precious burden down the Tigris. In the south again, the English followed close upon the heels of the French. J. E. Taylor, in 1854, visited many of the huge mounds that were scattered throughout Southern Mesopotamia in much larger SOUHCES AND METHODS OP STUDY. 9 numbers than in the north, while his compatriot, William K. Loftus, a few years previous had begun excavations, though on a small scale, at Warka, the site of the ancient city of Erech. He also conducted some investigations at a mound Mugheir, which acquired special interest as the supposed site of the famous Ur, — the home of some of the Terahites before the migration to Palestine. Of still greater significance were the examinations made by Sir Henry Rawlinson, in 1854, of the only considerable ruins of ancient Babylonia that remained above the surface, — the tower of Birs Nimrud, which proved to be the famous seven-staged temple as described by Herodo- tus. This temple was completed, as the foundation records showed, by Nebuchadnezzar II., in the sixth century before this era; but the beginnings of the structure belong to a much earlier period. Another sanctuary erected by this same king was found near the tower. Subsequent researches by Hormuzd Rassam made it certain that Borsippa, the ancient name of the place where the tower and sanctuaries stood, was a suburb of the great city of Babylon itself, which lay directly opposite on the east side of the Euphrates. The scope of the excavations continued to grow almost from year to year, and while new mounds were being attacked in the south, those in the north, especially Koujunjik, continued to be the subject of attention. Rassam, who has just been mentioned, was in a favorable position, through his long residence as English consul at Mosul, for extracting new finds from the mounds in this vicinity. Be- sides adding more than a thousand tablets from the royal .library discovered by Layard, his most noteworthy discoveries were the unearthing of a magnificent temple at Nimrud, and the finding of a large bronze gate at Balawat, a few miles to the northeast of Nimrud. Rassam and Rawlinson were afterwards joined by George Smith of the British Museum, who, institut- ing a further search through the ruins of Koujunjik, Nimrud, 10 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. Kalah-Shergat, and elsewhere, made many valuable additions to the English collections, until his unfortunate death in 1876, during his third visit to the mounds, cut him off in the prime of a brilliant and most useful career. The English explorers extended their labors to the mounds in the south. Here it was, principally at Abu-Habba, that they set their forces to work. The finding of another temple dedicated to the sun-god re- warded their efforts. The foundation records showed that the edifice was one of great antiquity, which was permitted to fall into decay and was then restored by a ruler whose date can be fixed at the middle of the ninth century B.C. The ancient name of the place was shown to be Sippar, and the fame of the temple was such, that subsequent monarchs vied with one an- other in adding to its grandeur. It is estimated that the tem- ple contained no less than three hundred chambers and halls for the archives and for the accommodation of the large body of priests attached to this temple. In the archives many thou- sands of little clay tablets were again found, not, however, of a literary, but of a legal character, containing records of commer- cial transactions conducted in ancient Sippar, such as sales of houses, of fields, of produce, of stuffs, money loans, receipts, contracts for work, marriage settlements, and the like. The execution of the laws being in the hands of priests in ancient Mesopotamia, the temples were the natural depositories for the official documents of the law courts. Similar collections to those of Sippar have been found in almost every mound of Southern Mesopotamia that has been opened since the days of Rassam. So at Djuradjuma, situated near the site of the ancient city of Babylon, some three thousand were un- earthed that were added to the fast growing collections of the British Museum. At Borsippa, likewise, Rawlinson and Rassam recovered a large number of clay tablets, most of them legal but some of them of a literary character, which proved to be in part duplicates of those in the royal library of Ashurbana- SOU/iCES AND METHODS OF STUDY. 11 bal. In this way, the latter's statement, that he sent his scribes to the large cities of the south for the purpose of collecting and copying the hterature that had its rise there, met with a striking confirmation. Still further to the south, at a mound known as Telloh, a representative of the French government, Ernest de Sarzec, began a series of excavations in 1876, which, continued to the present day, have brought to light remains of temples and palaces exceeding in antiquity those hitherto dis- covered. Colossal statues of diorite, covered with inscriptions, the pottery, tablets and ornaments, showed that at a period as early as 3500 B.C. civilization in this region had already reached a very advanced stage. The systematic and thorough manner in which De Sarzec, with inexhaustible patience, explored the ancient city, has resulted in largely extending our knowledge of the most ancient period of Babylonian history as yet known to us. The Telloh finds were forwarded to the Louvre, which in this way secured a collection from the south that formed a worthy complement to the Khorsabad antiquities. Lastly, it is gratifying to note the share that our own country has recently taken in the great work that has furnished the material needed for following the history of the Mesopotamian states. In 1887, an expedition was sent out under the auspi- ces of the University of Pennsylvania, to conduct excavations at Niffer, — a mound to the southeast of Babylon, situated on a branch of the Euphrates, and which was known to be the site of one of the most famous cities in this region. The Rev. John P. Peters (now in New York), who was largely instru- mental in raising the funds for the purpose, was appointed director of the expedition. Excavations were continued for two years under Dr. Peters' personal supervision, and since then by Mr. John H. Haynes, with most satisfactory success. A great temple dedicated to the god Bel was discovered, and work has hitherto been confined chiefly to laying bare the various parts of the edifice. The foundation of the building 12 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. goes back to an earlier period than the ruins of Telloh. It survived the varying fortunes of the city in which it stood, and each period of Babylonian history left its traces at Niffer through the records of the many rulers who sought the favor of the god by enlarging or beautifying his place of worship. The temple became a favorite spot to which pilgrims came from all sides on the great festivals, to offer homage at the sacred shrines. Votive offerings, in the shape of inscribed clay cones, and little clay images of Bel and of his .female consort, were left in the temple as witnesses to the piety of the visitors. The archives were found to be well stocked with the official legal documents dating chiefly from the period of 1700 to 1200 B.C., when the city appears to have reached the climax of its glory. Other parts of the mound were opened at different depths, and various layers which followed the chrono- logical development of the place were determined.^ After its destruction, the sanctity of the city was in a measure continued by its becoming a burial-place. The fortunes of the place can thus be followed down to the ninth or the tenth century of our era, a period of more than four thousand years. Already more than 20,000 tablets have been received at the University of Pennsylvania, besides many specimens of pottery, bowls, jars, cones, and images, as well as gold, copper, and alabaster work. From this survey of the work done in the last decades in exploring the long lost and almost forgotten cities of the Tigris and of the Euphrates Valley, it will be apparent that a large amount of material has been made accessible for tracing the course of civilization in this region. Restricting ourselves to that portion of it that bears on the religion of ancient Meso- potamia, it may be grouped under two heads, (i) literary, and (2) archaeological. The religious texts of Ashurbanabal's 1 The excavations are still being continued, thanks to the generosity of some public-spirited citizens of Philadelphia.. SOURCES AiVD METHODS OF STUDY. 13 library occupy the first place in the literary group. The incantations, the prayers and hymns, lists of temples, of gods and their attributes, traditions of the creation of the world, legends of the deities and of their relations to men, are sources of the most direct character ; and it is fortunate that among the recovered portions of the library, such texts are largely represented. Equally direct are the dedicatory inscriptions set up by the kings in the temples erected to the honor of some god, and of great importance are the references to the various gods, their attributes, their powers, and their deeds, which are found at every turn in the historical records which the kings left behind them. Many of these records open or close with a long prayer to some deity ; in others, prayers are found interspersed, according to the occasion on which they were offered up. Attributing the success of their undertakings — whether it be a military campaign, or the construction of some edifice, or a successful hunt — to the protection offered by the gods, the kings do not tire of singing the praises of the deity or deities as whose favorites they regarded themselves. The gods are constantly at the monarch's side. Now we are told of a dream sent to encourage the army on the approach of a battle, and again of some portent which bade the king be of good cheer. To the gods, the appeal is constantly made, and to them all good things are ascribed. From the legal docu- ments, likewise, much may be gathered bearing on the religion. The protection of the gods is invoked or their curses called down ; the oath is taken in their name ; while the manner in which the temples are involved in the commercial life of ancient Babylonia renders these tablets, which are chiefly valuable as affording us a remarkable insight into the people's daily life, of importance also in illustrating certain phases of the religious organization of the country. Most significant for the position occupied by the priests, is the fact that the latter are invariably the scribes who draw up the documents. 14 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. The archaeological material furnished by the excavations consists of the temples of the gods, their interior arrangement, and provisions for the various religious functions; secondly, the statues of the gods, demi-gods, and the demons, the altars and the vessels ; and thirdly, the religious scenes, — the wor- ship of some deity, the carrying of the gods in procession, the pouring of libations, the performance of rites, or the representation of some religious symbols sculptured on the palace wall or on the foundation stone of a sacred build- ing, or cut out on the seal cylinders, used as signatures' and talismans. Large as the material is, it is far from being exhausted, and, indeed, far from sufficient for illustrating all the details of the religious life. This will not appear surprising, if it be remem- bered that of the more than one hundred mounds that have been identified in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates as contain- ing remains of buried cities, only a small proportion have been explored, and of these scarcely more than a half dozen with an approach to completeness. The soil of Mesopotamia unquestionably holds still greater treasures than those which it has already yielded. The links uniting the most ancient period — at present, c. 4000 B.C. — to the final destruction of the Babylonian empire by Cyrus, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., are far from being complete. For entire centuries we are wholly in the dark, and for others only a few skeleton facts are known ; and until these gaps shall have been filled, our knowledge of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians must necessarily remain incomplete. Not as incomplete, indeed, as their history, for religious rites are not subject to many changes, and the progress of religious ideas does not keep pace with the constant changes in the political kaleido- scope of a country ; but, it is evident that no exhaustive treat- 1 The parties concerned rolled their cylinders over the clay tablet recording a legal or commercial transaction. SOUHCES AND METHODS OF STUDY. 15 merit of the religion can be given until the material shall have become adequate to the subject. III. Before proceeding to the division of the subject in hand, some explanation is called for of the method by which the literary material found beneath the soil has been made intel- ligible. The characters on the clay tablets and cylinders, on the limestone slabs, on statues, on altars, on stone monuments, are generally known as cuneiform, because of their wedge- shaped appearance, though it may be noted at once that in their oldest form the characters are linear rather than wedge- shaped, presenting the more or less clearly defined outlines of objects from which they appear to be derived. At the time when these cuneiform inscriptions began to be found in Mesopotamia, the language which these characters expressed was still totally unknown. Long previous to the beginning of Botta's labors, inscriptions also showing the cuneiform characters had been found at Persepolis on various monu- ments of the ruins and tombs still existing at that place. The first notice of these inscriptions was brought to Europe by a famous Italian traveler, Pietro della Valle, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. For a long time it was doubted whether the characters represented anything more than mere ornamentation, and it was not until the close of the last century, after more accurate copies of the Persepolitan characters had been furnished through Carsten Niebuhr, that scholars began to apply themselves to their decipherment. Through the efforts chiefly of Gerhard Tychsen, professor at Rostock, ' Frederick Miinter, a Danish scholar, and the distinguished Silvestre de Sacy of Paris, the beginnings were made which finally led to the discovery of the key to the mysterious writings, 16 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. in 1802, by Georg Friedrich Grotefend, a teacher at a public school in Gottingen. The observation was made previous to the days of Grotefend that the inscriptions at Persepolis invariably showed three styles of writing. While in all three the characters were composed of wedges, yet the combination of wedges, as well as their shape, differed sufficiently to make it evident, even to the superficial observer, that there was as much difference between them as, say, between the English and the German script. The conclusion was drawn that the three styles represented three languages, and this conclusion was strikingly confirmed when, upon the arrival of Botta's finds in Europe, it was seen that one of the styles corresponded to the inscriptions found at- Khorsabad ; and so in all subsequent discoveries in Mesopotamia, this was found -to be the case. One of the languages, therefore, on the monuments of Persepolis was presumably identical with the speech of ancient Mesopo- tamia. Grotefend's key to the reading of that style of cunei- form writing which invariably occupied the first place when the three styles were ranged one under the other, or occupied the most prominent place when a different arrangement was adopted, met with universal acceptance. He determined that the language of the style which, for the sake of convenience, we may designate as No. i, was Old Persian, — the language spoken by the rulers, who, it was known through tradition and notices in classical writers, had erected the series of edifices at Persep- olis, one of the capitols of the Old Persian or, as it is also called, the Achaemenian empire. By the year 1840 the decipherment of these Achaemenian inscriptions was practically complete, the inscriptions had been read, the alphabet was definitely settled, and the grammar, in all but minor points, known. It was possible, therefore, in approaching the Mesopotamian style of cuneiform, which, as occupying the third place, may be desig- nated as No. 3, to use No. i as a guide, since it was only legitimate to conclude that Nos. 2 and 3 represented transla- SOURCES AND METHODS OF STUDY. 17 tions of No. I into two languages, which, by the side of Old Persian, were spoken by the subjects of the Achaemenian kings. That one of these languages should have been the current speech of Mesopotamia was exactly what was to be expected, since Babylonia and Assyria formed an essential part of the Persian empire. The beginning was made with proper names, the sound of which would necessarily be the same or very similar in both, or, for that matter, in all the three languages of the Persepolitan inscriptions.^ In this way, by careful comparisons between the two styles, Nos. i and 3, it was possible to pick out the signs in No. 3 that corresponded to those in No. i, and inasmuch as the same sign occurred in various names, it was, furthermore, possible to assign, at. least tentatively, certain values to the signs in question. With the help of the signs thus determined, the attempt was made to read other words in style No. 3, in which these signs occurred, but it was some time before satis- factory results were obtained. An important advance was made when it was once determined, that the writing was a mixture of signs used both as words and as syllables, and that the language on the Assyrian monuments belonged to the group known as Semitic. The cognate languages — chiefly Hebrew and Arabic — formed a help towards determining the meaning of the words read and an explanation of the morphological features they presented. For all that, the task was one of stupendous proportions, and many were the obstacles that had to be overcome, before the principles underlying the cuneiform writing were determined, and the decipherment placed on a firm and scientific basis. This is not the place to enter upon a detailed illustration of the method adopted by ingenious scholars, — 1 Besides those at Persepolis, a large tri-lingual inscription was found at Behistun, near the city of Kirmenshah, in Persia, which, containing some ninety proper names, enabled Sir Henry Rawlinson definitely to establish a basis for the decipherment of the Mesopotamian inscriptions. 18 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. notably Edward Hincks, Isidor Lowenstern, Henry Rawlinson, Jules Oppert, — to whose united efforts the solution of the great problems involved is due ; ^ and it would also take too much space, since in order to make this method clear, it would be necessary to set forth the key discovered by Grotefend for reading the Old Persian inscriptions. Suffice it to say that the guarantee for the soundness of the conclusions reached by scholars is furnished by the consideration, that it was from small and most modest beginnings that the decipherment began. Step by step, the problem was advanced by dint of a painstaking labor, the degree of which cannot easily be exag- gerated, until to-day the grammar of the Babylonian- Assyrian language has been clearly set forth in all its essential particulars : the substantive and verb formation is as definitely known as that of any other Semitic language, the general principles of the syntax, as well as many detailed points, have been carefully investigated, and as for the reading of the cuneiform texts, thanks to the various helps at our disposal, and the further elucidation of the various principles that the Babylonians themselves adopted as a guide, the instance is a rare one when scholars need to confess their ignorance in this particular. At most there may be a halting between two possibilities. The difficulties that still hinder the complete understanding of passages in texts, arise in part from the mutilated condition in which, unfortunately, so many of the tablets and cylinders are found, and in part from a still imperfect knowledge of the lexicography of the language. For many a word occurring 1 The best account is to be found in Hommel's Geschichte Babyloniens unci Assyricjis^ pp. 58-134. A briefer statement was furnished by Professor Fr. Dehtzsch in his supplements to the German translation of George Smith's Chaldaean Genesis (Chald'dische Gejiesis, pp. 257-262). A tolerably satisfactory account in English is furnished by B. T. A. Evetts in his work. New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land, pp. 79-129. For a full account of the excavations and the decipherment together with a summary of results and specimens of the various branches of the Babylonian-Assyrian literature, the reader may be referred to Kaulen's Assyrien und Babylonien nach den neuesien Bntdeckungen (5th edition). SOURCES AND METHODS O? STUDY. 19 only once or twice, and for which neither text nor comparison with cognate languages offers a satisfactory clue, ignorance must be confessed, or at best, a conjecture hazarded, until its more frequent occurrence enables us to settle the question at issue. Such settlements of disputed questions are taking place all the time ; and with the activity with which the study of the language and antiquities of Mesopotamia is being pushed by scholars in this country, in England, France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Russia, and with the constant accession of new material through excavations and publications, there is no reason to despair of clearing up the obscurities, still remaining in the precious texts that a fortunate chance has preserved for us. IV. A question that still remains to be considered as to the ori- gin of the cuneiform writing of Mesopotamia, may properly be introduced in connection with this account of the excavations and decipherment, though it is needless to enter into it in detail. The " Persian " style of wedge-writing is a direct derivative of the Babylonian, introduced in the times of the Achaemenians, and it is nothing but a simplification in form and principle of the more cumbersome and complicated Babylonian. Instead of a combination of as many as ten and fifteen wedges to make one sign, we have in the Persian never more than five, and frequently only three; and instead of writing words by sylla- bles, sounds alone were employed, and the syllabary of several hundred signs reduced to forty-two, while the ideographic style was practically abolished. The second style of cuneiform, generally known as Median or Susian,' is again only a slight modification of the " Persian." 1 The most recent investigations show it to have been a ' Turanian ' language. See Weissbach, Achameniden luschriften zwciter Art, Leipzig, 1893. 20 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION Besides these three, there is a fourth language (spoken in the northwestern district of Mesopotamia between the Euphrates and the Orontes), known as "Mitanni," the exact status of which has not been clearly ascertained, but which has been adapted to cuneiform characters. A fifth variety, found on tablets from Cappadocia, represents again a modification of the ordinary writing met with in Babylonia. In the inscriptions of Mitanni, the writing is a mixture of ideographs and syllables, just as in Mesopotamia, while the so-called " Cappadocian " tablets are written in a corrrupt Babylonian, corresponding in degree to the "corrupt" forms that the signs take on. In Mesopotamia itself, quite a number of styles exist, some due to local influences, others the result of changes that took place in the course of time. In the oldest period known, that is from 4000 to 3000 B.C., the writing is linear rather than wedge- shaped. The linear writing is the modification that the original pictures underwent in being adapted for engraving on stone ; the wedges are the modification natural to the use of clay, though when once the wedges became the standard method, the greater frequency with which clay as against stone came to be used, led to an imitation of the wedges by those who cut out the characters on stone. In consequence, there developed two varieties of wedge-writing : the one that may be termed lapidary, used for the stone inscriptions, the official historical records, and such legal documents as were prepared with especial care ; the other cursive, occurring only on legal and commercial clay tablets, and becoming more frequent as we approach the latest period of Babylonian writing, which extends to within a few decades of our era. In Assyria, finally, a special variety of cuneiform developed that is easily distinguished from the Babylonian by its greater neatness and the more vertical position of the wedges. The origin of all the styles and varieties of cuneiform writing is, therefore, to be sought in Mesopotamia ; and within Meso- SOURCES AND METHODS OF STUDY. 21 potamia, in that part of it where culture begins — the extreme south; but beyond saying tliat the writing is a direct develop- ment from picture writing, there is little of any definite charac- ter that can be maintained. We do not know when the writing originated, we only know that in the oldest inscriptions it is already fully developed. We do not know who originated it; nor can the question be as yet definitely answered, whether those who originated it spoke the Babylonian language, or whether they were Semites at all. Until about fifteen years ago, it was generally supposed that the cuneiform writing was without doubt the invention of a non-Semitic race inhabiting Babylonia at an early age, from whom the Semitic Babylonians adopted it, together with the culture that this non-Semitic race had produced. These in- ventors, called Sumerians by some and Akkadians by others, and Sumero-Akkadians by a third group of scholars, it was supposed, used the " cuneiform " as a picture or ' ideographic ' script exclusively ; and the language they spoke being aggluti- native and largely monosyllabic in character, it was possible for them to stop short at this point of development. The Babylo- nians however, in order to adapt the writing to their language, did not content themselves with the ' picture ' method, but using the non-Semitic equivalent for their own words, employed the former as syllables, while retaining, at the same time, the sign as an ideograph. To make this clearer by an example, the numeral " I ' would represent the word ' one ' in their own language, while the non-Semitic word for ' one,' which let us suppose was " ash," they used as the phonetic value of the sign, in writing a word in which this sound occurred, as e.g., ash-es. Since each sign, in Sumero-Akkadian as well as in Babylonian, represented some general idea, it could stand for an entire series of words, grouped about this idea and associ- ated with it, 'day,' for exarhple, being used for 'light,' 'bril- liancy,' ' pure,' and so forth. The variety of syllabic and 22 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. ideographic values which the cuneiform characters show could thus be accounted for. This theory, however, tempting as it is by its simplicity, cannot be accepted in this unqualified form. Advancing knowledge has made it certain that the ancient civilization, including the religion, is Semitic in character. The assump- tion therefore of a purely non-Semitic culture for southern Babylonia is untenable. Secondly, even in the oldest inscrip- tions fourid, there occur Semitic words and Semitic constructions which prove that the inscriptions were composed by Semites. As long, therefore, as no traces of purely non-Semitic inscription are found, we cannot go beyond the Semites in seeking for the origin of the culture in this region. In view of this, the theory first advanced by Prof. Joseph Hale'vy of Paris, and now sup- ported by the most eminent of German Assyriologists, Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch, which claims that the cuneiform writing is Semitic in origin, needs to be most carefully considered. There is much that speaks in favor of this theory, much that may more easily be accounted for by it, than by the opposite one, which was originally proposed by the distinguished Nestor of cuneiform studies, Jules Oppert, and which is with some modifications still held by the majority of scholars.' The question is one which cannot be answered by an appeal to philology alone. This is the fundamental error of the advocates of the Sumero-Akka- dian theory, who appear to overlook the fact that the testimony of archaeological and anthropological research must be confirm- atory of a philological hypothesis before it can be accepted as an indisputable fact.^ The time however has not yet come for these two sciences to pronounce their verdict definitely, though it may be added that the supposition of a variety of races once 1 Besides Delitzsch, however, there are otliers, as Pognon, JSger, Guyard, McCurdy and Brinton, who side with llal6vy. ■i See now I )r. Brinton's paper, " The Protohistoric Ethnography of Western Asia " {Proceed. Ainer. Philos. Soc, 1S95), especially pp. iS-22. SOUIiCES AND METHODS OF STUDY. 23 inhabiting Southern Mesopotamia finds support in what we know from the pre-historic researches of antliropologists. Again, it is not to be denied that the theory of the Semitic origin of the cuneiform writing encounters obstacles that cannot easily be set aside. While it seeks to explain the syllabic valiies of the signs on the general principle that they represent ele- ments of Babylonian words, truncated in this fashion in order to answer to the growing need for phonetic writing of words for which no ideographs existed, it is difficult to imagine, as Halevy's theory demands, that the " ideographic " style, as found chiefly in religious texts, is the deliberate invention of priests in their desire to produce a method of conveying their ideas that would be regarded as a mystery by the laity, and be successfully concealed from the latter. Here again the theory borders on the domain of archaeology, and philology alone will not help us out of the difficulty. An impartial verdict of the present state of the problem might be summed up as follows: r. It is generally admitted that all the literature of Babylonia, including the oldest and even that written in the " ideographic " style, whether we term it " Sumero- Akkadian" or " hieratic," is the work of the Semitic settlers of Mesopotamia. 2. The culture, including the religion of Babylonia, is like- wise a Semitic production, and since Assyria received its cul- ture from Babylonia, the same remark holds good for entire Mesopotamia. 3. The cuneiform syllabary is largely Semitic in character. The ideas expressed by the ideographic values of the signs give no evidence of having been produced in non-Semitic surroundings ; and, whatever the origin of the system may be, it has been »o shaped by the Babylonians, so thoroughly adapted to their purposes, that it is to all practical purposes Semitic. 24 BAJiYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. 4. Approached from the theoretical side, there remains, after malting full allowance for the Semitic elements in the system, a residuum that has not yet found a satisfactory explan- ation, either by those who favor the non-Semitic theory or by those who hold the opposite view. 5. Pending further light to be thrown upon this question, through the expected additions to our knowledge of the archae- ology and of the anthropological conditions of ancient pre- historic Mesopotamia, philological research must content itself with an acknowledgment of its inability to reach a conclusion that will appeal so forcibly to all minds, as to place the solution of the problem beyond dispute. 6. There is a presumption in favor of assuming a mixture of races in Southern Mesopotamia at an early day, and a possibility, therefore, that the earliest form of picture writing in this region, from which the Babylonian cuneiform is derived, may have been used by a non-Semitic population, and that traces of this are still apparent in the developed system after the important step had been taken, marked by the advance from picture to phonetic writing. The important consideration for our purpose is, that the religious conceptions and practices as they are reflected in the literary sources now at our command, are distinctly Babylonian. With this we may rest content, and, leaving theories aside, there will be no necessity in an exposition of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians to differentiate or to attempt to differentiate between Semitic and so-called non-Semitic elements. Local conditions and the long period covered by the development and history of the religion in question, are the factors that suffice to account for the mixed and in many respects complicated phenomena which this religion presents. Having set forth the sources at our command for the study of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion, and having indicated the SOUXCES AiYJ) METHODS OF STUDY. 25 manner in which these sources have been made available for our purposes, we are prepared to take the next step that will fit us for an understanding of the religious practices that prevailed in Mesopotamia, — a consideration of the land and of its people, together with a general account of the history of the latter. CHAPTER II. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. The Babylonians and Assyrians with whom we are con- cerned in this volume dwelt in the region embraced by the Euphrates and the Tigris, — the Babylonians in the south, or the Euphrates Valley, the Assyrians to the northeast, in the region extending from the Tigris into the Kurdish Mountain districts ; while the northwestern part of Mesopotamia — the northern half of the Euphrates district — was the seat of various empires that were alternately the rivals and the subjects of either Babylonia or Assyria. The entire length of Babylonia was about 300 miles ; the greatest breadth about 125 miles. The entire surface area was some 23,000 square miles, or about the size of West Virginia. The area of Assyria, with a length of 350 miles and a breadth varying from 170 to 300 miles, covered 75,000 square miles, which would make it somewhat smaller than the state of Nebraska. In the strict sense, the term Mesopotamia should be limited to the territory lying between the Euphrates and the Tigris above their junction, in the neighborhood of Baghdad, and extending northwards to the confines of the Taurus range ; while the district to the south of Baghdad, and reaching to the Persian Gulf, may more properly be spoken of as the Euphrates Valley ; and a third division is represented by the territory to the east of the Tigris, from Baghdad, and up to the Kurdish Mountains ; but while this distinction is one that may be justly maintained, in view of the different charac- ter that the southern valley presents from the northern plain, THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. 27 it has become so customary, in popular parlance, to think of the entire' territory along and between the Euphrates and Tigris as one country, that the term Mesopotamia in this broad sense may be retained, with the division suggested by George Raw- linson, into Upper and Lower Mesopotamia. The two streams, as they form the salient traits of the region, are the factors that condition the character of the inhabitants and the culture that once flourished there. The Euphrates, or, to give the more correct pronunciation, Purat, signifies the 'river' par excellence. It is a quiet stream, flowing along in majestic dignity almost from its source, in the Armenian mountains, not far from the town of Erzerum, until it is joined by the Tigris in the extreme south. As the Shatt-el Arab, i.e.., Arabic River, the two reach the Persian Gulf. Receiving many tributaries as long as it remains in the mountains, it flows first in a westerly direction, as though making direct for the Mediterranean Sea, then, veering suddenly to the southeast, it receives but few tributaries after it once passes through the Taurus range into the plain, — on the right side, only the Sadschur, on the left the Balichus and the Khabur. P'rom this point on for the remaining distance of 800 miles, so far from receiving fresh accessions, it loses in quantity through the marsh beds that form on both sides. When it reaches the alluvial soil of Babylonia proper, its current and also its depth are considerably diminished through the numerous canals that form an outlet for its waters. Of its entire length, 1780 miles, it is navigable only for a small distance, cataracts forming a hindrance in its northern course and sandbanks in the south. In consequence, it never became at any time an important avenue for commerce ; and besides rafts, which could be floated down to a certain distance, the only means of com- munication ever used were wicker baskets coated within and without with bitumen, or some form of a primitive ferry for passing from one shore to another. 28 BAB YLONIAN-ASSYJilAN RELIGION. An entirely different stream is the Tigris — a corrupted form of ' Idiklat.' It is only 1 146 miles in length, and is marked, as the native name indicates, by the ' swiftness ' of its flow. Start- ing, like the Euphrates, in the rugged regions of Armenia, it continues its course through mountain clefts for a longer period, and joined at frequent intervals by tributaries, both before it merges into the plain and after doing so, the volume of its waters is steadily increased. Even when it approaches the alluvial soil of the south, it does not lose its character until well advanced in its course to the gulf. Advancing towards the Euphrates and again receding from it, it at last joins the latter at Korna, and together they pour their waters through the Persian Gulf into the great ocean. It is navigable from Diabekr in the north, for its entire length. Large rafts may be floated down from Mosul to Baghdad and Basra, and even small steamers have ascended as far north as Nimrud. The Tigris, then, in contrast to the Euphrates, is the avenue of commerce for Mesopotamia, forming the connecting bond between it and the rest of the ancient world, — Egypt, India, and the lands of the Mediterranean. Owing, however, to the imperfect character of the means of transportation in ancient and, for that matter, in modern times, the voyage up the stream was impracticable. The rafts, resting on inflated bags of goat or sheep skin, can make no headway against the rapid stream, and so, upon reaching Baghdad or Basra, they are broken up, and the bags sent back by the shore route to the north. The contrast presented by the two rivers is paralleled by the traits distinguishing Upper from Lower Mesopotamia. Shut off to the north and northeast by the Armenian range, to the northwest by the Taurus, Upper Mesopotamia retains, for a considerable extent, and especially on the eastern side, a rugged aspect. The Kurdish mountains run close to the Tigris' bed for some distance below Mosul, while between the Tigris and the Euphrates proper, small ranges and promontories THE LAND AND THE PteOrLE. 29 Stretch as far as the end of the Taurus chain, well on towards Mosul. Below Mosul, the region begins to change its character. The mountains cease, the plain begins, the soil becomes alluvial and through the regular overflow of the two rivers in the rainy season, develops an astounding fertility. This overflow begins, in the case of the Tigris, early in March, reaches its height in May, and ceases about the middle of June. The overflow of the Euphrates extends from the middle of March till the begin- ning of June, but September is reached before the river resumes its natural state. Not only does the overflow of the Euphrates thus extend over a longer period, but it oversteps its banks with greater violence than does the Tigris, so that as far north as the juncture with the Khabur, and still more so in the south, the country to both sides is flooded, until it assumes the appear- ance of a great sea. Through the violence of these overflows, changes constantly occur in the course that the river takes, so that places which in ancient times stood on its banks are to-day removed from the main river-bed. Another important change in Southern Babylonia is the constant accretion of soil, due to the deposits from the Persian Gulf. This increase proceeding on an average of about one mile in fifty years has brought it about that the two rivers to-day, instead of passing separately into the Gulf, unite at Korna — some distance still from the entrance. The contrast of seasons is greater, as may be imagined, in Upper Mesopotamia than in the south. The winters are cold, with snowfalls that may last for several months, but with the beginning of the dry season, in May, a tropical heat sets in which lasts until the beginning of November, when the rain begins. Assyria proper, that is, the eastern side of Mesopotamia, is more affected by the mountain ranges than the west. In the Euphrates Valley, the heat during the dry season, from about May till November when for weeks, and even months, no cloud is to be seen. 30 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRTAN RELIGION. beggars description ; but strange enough, the Arabs who dwell there at present, while enduring the heat without much dis- comfort, are severely affected by a winter temperature that for Europeans and Americans is exhilarating in its influence. From what has been said, it will be clear that the Euphrates is, par excellence, the river of Southern Mesopotamia or Baby- lonia, while the Tigris may be regarded as the river of Assyria. It was the Euphrates that made possible the high degree of culture, that was reached in the south. Through the very intense heat of the dry season, the soil developed a fertility that reduced human labor to a minimum. The return for sowing of all kinds of grain, notably wheat, corn, barley, is calculated, on an average, to be five hundred-fold, while the date palm flourishes with scarcely any cultivation at all. Sustenance being thus provided for with little effort, it needed only a certain care in protecting oneself from damage through the too abundant overflow, to enable the population to find that ease of existence, which is an indispensable condition of culture. This was accomplished by the erection of dikes, and by direct- ing the waters through channels into the fields. Assyria, more rugged in character, did not enjoy the same advantages. Its culture, therefore, not only arose at a later period than that of Babylonia, but was a direct importation from the south. It was due to the natural extension of the civilization that continued for the greater part of the existence of the two empires to be central in the south. But when once Assyria was included in the circle of Babylonian culture, the greater effort required in forcing the natural resources of the soil, produced a greater variety in the return. Besides corn, wheat and rice, the olive, banana and fig tree, mulberry and vine were cultivated, while the vicinity of the mountain ranges furnished an abundance of building material — wood and lime- stone — that was lacking in the south. The fertility of Assyria proper, again, not being dependent on the overflow of the Tigris, THE LAND AND THE PtiOPLE. 31 proved to be of greater endurance. With the neglect of the irrigation system, Babylonia became a mere waste, and the same river that was the cause of its prosperity became the foe that, more effectually than any human power, contributed to the ruin and the general desolation that marks the greater part of the Euphrates Valley at the present time. Assyria continued to play a part in history long after its ancient glory had departed, and to this day enjoys a far greater activity, and is of considerable more significance than the south. II. In so far as natural surroundings affect the character of two peoples belonging to the same race, the Assyrians present that contrast to the Babylonians which one may expect from the differences, just set forth, between the two districts. The former were rugged, more warlike, and when they acquired power, used it in the perfection of their military strength ; the latter, while not lacking in the ambition to extend their dominion, yet, on the whole, presented a more peaceful aspect that led to the cultivation of commerce and industrial arts. Both, how- ever, have very many more traits in common than they have marks of distinction. They both belong not only to the Semitic race, but to the same branch of the race. Present- ing the same physical features, the languages spoken by them are identical, barring differences that do not always rise to the degree of dialectical variations, and affect chiefly the pro- nunciation of certain consonants. At what time the Baby- lonians and Assyrians settled in the district in which we find them, whence they came, and whether the Euphrates Valley or the northern Tigris district was the first to be settled, are questions that cannot, in the present state of knowledge, be answered. As to the time of their settlement, the high degree of culture that the Euphrates Valley shows at the earliest 32 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. period known to us, — about 4000 B.C., — and the indigenous character of this culture, points to very old settlement, and makes it easier to err on the side of not going back far enough, than on the side of going too far. Again, while, as has been several times intimated, the culture in the south is older than that of the north, it does not necessarily follow that the settle- ment of Babylonia antedates that of Assyria. The answer to this question would depend upon the answer to the question as to the original home of the Semites.^ The probabilities, however, are in favor of assuming a movement of population, as of culture, from the south to the north. At all events, the history of Babylonia and Assyria begins with the former, and as a consequence we are justified also in beginning with that phase of the religion for which we have the earliest records, — the Babylonian. III. At the very outset of a brief survey of the history of the Babylonians, a problem confronts us of primary importance. Are there any traces of other settlers besides the Semitic Babylonians in the earliest period of the history of the Euphrates Valley ? Those who cling to the theory of a non-Semitic origin of the cuneiform syllabary will, of course, be ready to answer in the affirmative. Sumerians and Akkadians are the names given to these non-Semitic settlers who preceded the Baby- lonians in the control of the Euphrates Valley. The names are derived from the terras Sumer and Akkad, which are frequently found in Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions, in connection with the titles of the kings. Unfortunately, scholars are not a unit in the exact location of the districts comprised by these names, some declaring Sumer to be in the north and 1 I may be permitted to refer to a publication by Dr. Brinton and myself, The Cradle of the Semites (Philadelphia, 1S89), in which the various views as to this home are set forth, THE LAND AND THE PEOfLE. 33 Akkad in the south ; others favoring the reverse position. The balance of proof rests in favor of the former supposition ; but however that may be, Sumer and Akkad represent, from a certain period on, a general designation to include the whole of Babylonia. Professor Hommel goes so far as to declare that in the types found on statues and monuments of the oldest period of Babylonian history — the monuments coming from the mound Telloh — we have actual representations of these Sumerians, who are thus made out to be a smooth-faced race with rather prominent cheek-bones, round faces, and shaven heads. ^ He pronounces in favor of the highlands lying to the east of Babylonia, as the home of the Sumerians, whence they made their way into the Euphrates Valley. Unfortunately, the noses on these old statues are mutilated, and with such an important feature missing, anthropologists, at least, are unwill- ing to pronounce definitely as to the type represented. Again, together with these supposed non-Semitic types, other figures have been found which, as Professor Hommel also admits, show the ordinary Semitic features. It would seem, therefore, that even accepting the hypothesis of a non-Semitic type existing in Babylonia at this time, the Semitic settlers are just as old as the supposed Sumerians ; and since it is admitted that the language found on these statues and figures contains Semitic constructions and Semitic words, it is, to say the least, hazardous to give the Sumerians the preference over the Semites so far as the period of settlement and origin of the Euphratean culture is concerned. As a matter of fact, we are not warranted in going beyond the statement that all evidence points in favor of a population of mixed races in the Euphrates Valley from the earliest period known to us. No positive proof is forthcoming that Sumer and Akkad were ever employed or understood in any other sense than as geographical terms. 1 It has been suggested that since the statues of Telloh are those of the priest- kings, only the priestly classes shaved their hair off. 34 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. This one safe conclusion, however, that the Semitic settlers of Babylonia were not the sole occupants, but by their side dwelt another race, or possibly a variety of races, possessing entirely different traits, is one of considerable importance. At various times the non-Semitic hordes of Elam and the mountain districts to the east of Babylonia swept over the valley, and succeeded, for a longer or shorter period, in securing a firm foothold. The ease with which these conquerors accommodated themselves to their surroundings, continuing the form of gov- ernment which they found there, making but slight changes in the religious practices, can best be accounted for on the supposition that the mixture of different races in the valley had brought about an interchange and interlacing of traits which resulted in the approach of one type to the other. Again, it has recently been made probable that as early at least as 2000, or even 2500 B.C., Semitic invaders entering Babylonia from the side of Arabia drove the native Babylonian rulers from the throne ; ' and at a still earlier period inter- course between Babylonia and distant nations to the northeast and northwest was established, which left its traces on the political and social conditions. At every point we come across evidence of this composite character of Babylonian culture, and the question as to the origin of the latter may, after all, resolve itself into the proposition that the contact of different races gave the intellectual impetus which is the first condition of a forward movement in civilization ; and while it is possible that, at one stage, the greater share in the movement falls to the non-Semitic contingent, the Semites soon obtained the intel- lectual ascendency, and so absorbed the non-Semitic elements as to give to the culture resulting from the combination, the homogeneous character it presents on the surface. 1 See an interesting discussion of the question by Professor Ilomniel, " Arabia according to the Latest Discoveries and Researches." — i'jOTrfaj/ School Times, 1895, nos. 41 and 43. THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE. 35 IV. Our present knowledge of Babylonian history reaches back to the period of about 4000 b.c. At that time we find the Euphrates Valley divided into a series of states or principali- ties, parcelling North and South Babylonia between them. These states group themselves around certain cities. In fact, the Babylonian principalities arise from the extension of the city's jurisdiction, just as the later Babylonian empire is naught but the enlargement, on a greater scale, of the city of Babylon. Of these old Babylonian cities the most noteworthy, in the south, are Eridu, Lagash,"- Ur, Larsa, Uruk, Isin; and in the north, Agade, Sippar, Nippur, Kutha, and Babylon. The rulers of these cities call themselves either "king' (literally 'great man ') or ' governor,' according as the position is a purely in- dependent one, or one of subjection to a more powerful chieftain. Thus the earliest rulers of the district of Lagash, of whom we have inscriptions {c. 3200 B.C.) have the title of 'king,' but a few centuries later Lagash lost its independent position and its rulers became " patesis,' i.e., governors. They are in a position of vassalage, as it would appear, to the contempora- neous kings of Ur, though this does not hinder them from en- gaging in military expeditions against Elam, and in extensive building operations. The kings of Ur, in addition to their title as kings of Ur, are styled kings of Sumer and Akkad. Whether at this time, Sumer and Akkad included the whole of Babylonia, or, as seems more likely, only the southern part, in either case, Lagash would fall under the jurisdiction of these kings, if their title is to be regarded as more than an empty boast. Again, the rulers of Uruk are known simply as kings of that pla,ce, while those of Isin incorporate in their titles, kingship over Ur as well as Sumer and Akkad. i Also known as Shirpurla which Jensen {Keils Bibl. 3, i, 5) thinks was the later name. 36 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION For this early period, extending from about 4000 B.C. to 2300, the chronology is as yet uncertain. Beyond the titles of the rulers over Babylonian states, there are but few safe indications for determining the succession of dynasties. So much, however, is now certain, — that simultaneous with the governors of Lagash and the older kings of Ur, there was an independent state in Northern Babylonia with its seat at Agade. Indeed the history of this state can now be traced back six centuries beyond that of Lagash. Two rulers of Agade, Naram-Sin (c. 3800 B.C.) and Sargon (or to give his fuller name, Shargani-shar-ali ^), are the earliest rulers as yet known. These kings of Agade extended their jurisdiction as far north, at least, as Nippur on the one side and Sippar on the other. The city of Babylon itself, if it existed at this period, was therefore included within the territory of these kings; and it follows that if there existed rulers of Babylon at this time, which is doubtful (since the city is not mentioned), they were in the same position of dependency upon the rulers of Agade as the ' governors ' of Lagash were upon some greater power. It is not until about the middle of the third millennium before this era, that Babylon comes into prominence. In the south, as already intimated, the rulers of Lagash and the dynasty of Ur are the earliest of which we have any record. There is every reason to believe that further excava- tions at Mugheir will bring to light the names of older kings, and the presumption is in favor of regarding the southern states, or at least some of them, earlier than any in the north. The climax in the power of the kings of Ur, the period when 1 See Hilprecht, Old Babylonian Inscriptions, i. 16-1S. Naram-Sin signifies • beloved of the god Sin ' (tlie moon-god) ; Sliargani-shar-ali — ' the legitimate king, king of the city.' The excavations of the University of Pennsylvania have cast new light upon this most ancient period of Babylonian history. It is now known that the temple of I!el at Nippur antedates the reign of Naram-Sin, and in the further publications of the University, we may look for material which will enable us to pass beyond the period of Sargon. THE LAND AND THE PeSpLE. 37 they exerted, in fact as well as in name, the sovereignty over all Sumer and Akkad may be fixed approximately at 3000 B.C. How far we shall be able to go beyond that, for the beginnings of this state, must, for the present, remain doubtful, with the chances in favor of a considerably earlier date ; and it may be that prior to Ur and Lagash there were dynasties estab- lished elsewhere, — at Eridu, perhaps, — the existence of which will be revealed by future discoveries. An independent state with its seat at Uruk follows upon the culminating period of the glory of Ur, and may be regarded, indeed, as an indication that the rulers of Ur had lost their control over the whole of South- ern Babylonia. Isin, whose site has not yet been determined, but which lay probably to the north of Uruk, was another political center. Its rulers, so far as we know them, curiously assign the fourth place to the title " king of Isin,' giving prece- dence to their control over Nippur, Eridu, and Uruk. We may conclude from this, that at the time when Isin extended its supremacy, the greater luster attaching to the old towns of Nippur and Uruk, was emphasized by the precedence given to these centers over Isin, although the Isin kings are only ' shepherds ' and ' merciful lords ' over Nippur and Uruk, and not kings. At a subsequent period, the kings of Ur appear to have regained the supremacy, which was wrested from them by Isin ; and the rulers of the latter acknowledge their dependence upon the kings of Ur. This so-called second dynasty of Ur in- cludes Nippur. The kings are proud of calling themselves the guardians of the temple of Bel in Nippur, nominated to the office by the god himself, and reviving an old title of the kings of Agade, style themselves also ' king of the four regions.' Another change in the political horoscope is reflected in the subjection of Ur to a district whose center was Larsa, not far from Ur, and represented by the mound Senkereh. There are two kings, JSfur-Ramman (/. the degradation implied in being merely /«/«?>, or govern- ors, serving under some powerful chief, they call themselves the patesis of Nin-girsu, implying that the god was the master to whom they owed allegiance. The temple sacred to him at Girsu was called E-ninnu, and also by a longer name that described the god as the one ' who changes darkness into light,' — the reference being to the solar character of the god Nin-ib with whom Nin-girsu is identified. In this temple, Gudea and other rulers place colossal statues of themselves, but temper the vanity implied, by inscribing on the front and back of these statues, an expression of their devotion to their god. To Nin-girsu, most of the objects found at Tell-loh are dedicated; conspicuous among which are the many clay cones, that became the conventional objects for votive offerings. There was another side, however, to his nature, besides the belligerent one. As the patron of Lagash, he also presided 1 Reading doubtful Jensen suggests Erim. Hommel {Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. xv. 37 seq^ endeavored to identify the place with Babylon, but his views are untenable. If Gish-galla was not a part of Lagash, it could not have been far removed from it. It was Amiaud who first suggested that Shir-pur-la (or Lagash) was the general name for a city that arose from an amalgamation of four originally distinct quarters. C'Sirpurla" in Revue Archeologique, iS8S.) The suggestion has been generally, though not universally accepted. 2 That Ninib is only an ideographic form is sufficiently clear from the element NIN-, lord. The proof, however, that Ninib is Adar, is still wanting. See Jensen, Kosmologie der Babylonicr, pp. 457, 458. 58 BBBYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. over the agricultural prosperity of the district. In this role he is addressed as Shul-gur or Shul-gur-an, i.e., the " god of the corn heaps "; Entemena and his son Enanna-tuma in erecting a kind of storehouse which they place under the protection of Nin-girsu, declare that their god is Shul-gur ; ' and an old hymn ^ identifies him with Tammuz, the personification of agricultural activity. Such a combination of apparently opposing attri- butes is a natural consequence of the transformation of what may originally have been the personification of natural forces, into local deities. Each field had its protecting spirit, but for the city as a whole, a local deity, whose rule mirrored the cpn- trol of the human chief over his subjects, alone was available. To him who watched over all things pertaining to the welfare of the territory coming under his jurisdiction, various attributes, as occasion required, were ascribed, and quite apart from his original character, the god could thus be regarded, as the warrior and the peaceful husbandman at the same time. Bau. Perhaps the most prominent of the goddesses in the ancient Babylonian period was Bau. One of the rulers of Lagash has embodied the name of the goddess in his name, calling himself Ur-Bau. It is natural, therefore, to find him more especially devoted to the worship of this deity. He does not tire of singing her praises, and of speaking of the temple he erected in her honor. Still, Ur-Bau does not stand alone in his devotion ; Uru-kagina, Gudea, and others refer to Bau fre- 1 From the context (Dc Sarzec, Diconvertcs, pi. 5, no. 4,11. 13-21, and pi. 31, no. 3, col. ill. 11. 2-6), there can be no doubt that Shul-gur (or Shul-gur-ana) is an epithet of Nin-girsu. The ideographs descriptive of the edifice suggest a corn maga- zine of some kind. One is reminded of the storehouses for grain in Egypt. See Jensen's Notes, Keils Bibl. 3, i,pp. 15, 18, 73. A comparison of the two texts in question makes it probable that Al>gi and E-bi-gar are synonymous. 2 Rawlinson, iv. 27, no. 6 ; 11, 45-4f>. BABYLONIAN GODS. , 59 quently, while in the incantation texts, she is .invoked as the great mother, who gives birth to mankind and restores the body to health. In the old Babylonian inscriptions she is called the chief daughter of Anu, the god of heaven. Among her titles, the one most frequently given is that of ' good lady.' She is the " mother ' who fixes the destinies of men and pro- vides ' abundance ' for the tillers of the soil. Gudea calls her his mistress, and declares that it is she who " fills him with speech," — a phrase whose meaning seems to be that to Bau he owes the power he wields. Locally, she is identi- fied with Uru-azaga (meaning " brilliant town '), a quarter of Lagash ; and it was there that her temple stood. As a consequence, we find her in close association with Nin-girsu, the god of Girsu. We may indeed go further and assume that Girsu and Uru-azaga are the two oldest quarters of the city, the combination of the two representing the first natural steps in the development of the principality, afterwards known as Lagash, through the addition of other quarters.' She is indeed explicitly called the consort of Nin-girsu; and this relation is implied also, in the interesting phrase used by Gudea, who presents gifts to Bau in the name of Nin-girsu, and calls them ' marriage gifts.' ^ It is interesting to find, at this early period, the evidence for the custom that still prevails in the Orient, which makes the gifts of the bridegroom to his chosen one, an indispensable formality.^ These gifts were offered on the New Year's Day, known as Zag-muk, and the importance of the worship of Bau is evidenced by the desig- nation of this day, as the festival of Bau. The offerings, themselves, consist of lambs, sheep, birds, fish, cream, besides dates and various other fruits. When 1 It is noticeable that there is no mention made of ^ special god of Lagash,. which points to the later origin of the name. 2 Inscr. D, col. ii. 13 ; G, col. ii. 11. i-S ; iii. 4 set/. " See Gen. xxiv. 53. Burkhardt, Notes on the Bedouins, i. 109, gives an exam- ple of the custom. 60 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. Uru-azaga becomes a part of Lagash, Bau's dignity is height- ened to that of ' mother of Lagash.' As the consort of Nin- girsu, she is identified with the goddess Gula, the name more commonly applied to the "princely mistress' of Nin-ib, whose worship continues down to the days of the neo-Babylonian monarchy. It is quite certain, however, that Bau is originally an inde- pendent goddess, and that the association of Uru-azaga and Girsu '■ lead to her identification with Gula. Regarding her original nature, a certain index is her character as "daughter of Anu." Anu being the god of heaven, Bau must be sought in the upper realm of personified forces, rather than elsewhere ; but exactly which one she is, it is difficult to say. Hommel, indeed,^ is of opinion that she is the personified watery depth, the primitive chaos which has only the heavens above it; but in giving this explanation, he is influenced by the desire to connect the name of Bau with the famous term for chaos in Genesis, Tohu-wa-bohii. There is, however, no proof what- soever that Bau and Bohu have anything to do with one another. A goddess who can hardly be distinguished from Bau is Ga-sig-(?)dug.^ Indeed, from the fact that she is also the " mother of Lagash,' it might seem that this is but another name for Bau. How- ever, elsewhere, in two lists of deities invoked by Gudea (Inscr. B, col. ii. 17), Ga-sig-dug is given a separate place by the side of Bau, once placed before and once after the latter ; and it is clear therefore that she was originally distinct from Bau. For Gudea, Ga-sig-dug is the mother who produced him. He is 1 The two names are used by Gudea (Inscr, G, col. iii. 12) in a way to indicate that they embrace the whole district of Lagash. 2 Semit. Vol/cer, p. 382. 8 See Jensen, Keils Bihl. 3, i, 28, note 2. BABYLONIAN GODS. , 61 her servant and she is his mistress. Lagash is her beloved city, and there he prepares for her a dwelling-place, which later rulers, like Entena, embellish. She is called the ' bril- liant ' {Azag), but as this title is merely a play upon the element found in the city, Uru-azaga, sacred to Bau, not much stress is to be laid upon this designation. Unfortunately, too, the elements composing her name are not clear,^ and it must be borne in mind that the reading is purely provisional. So much, at least, seems certain : that Bau and Ga-sig-dug are two forms under which one and the same natural element was personified. Bau is called in the incantation texts, the mother of Ea. The latter being distinctly a water god, we may conclude that in some way, Bau is to be connected with water as a natural element. The conjecture may be hazarded that she personifies originally the waters of the upper realm — the clouds. Since Ea, who is her son, represents the waters of the lower realm, the relation of mother and son reflects perhaps a primitive conception of the origin of the deep, through the descent of the upper waters. When we come to the cosmogony of the Babylonians, it will be seen that this conception of a distinction between the two realms of waters is a fundamental one. This character as a spirit of the watery elements is shared by others of the goddesses appearing in the old Babylonian inscriptions.^ En-ki or Ea. This god, who, as we shall see, becomes most prominent in the developed form of Babylonian theology, does not occupy the place one should expect in the early Babylonian inscriptions. Ur-Bau erects a sanctuary to Ea, at Girsu. Another of the gov- ernors of Lagash calls himself, priest of Ea, describing the 1 The first signifies ' to make,' the third means " good, favorable," but the second, upon which so much depends, is not clear. Amiaud reads turn instead of sig. 2 E.g., Nina (see below). 62 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. god as the " supreme councillor." From him, the king receives "wisdom."' A ruler, Rim-Sin, of the second dynasty of Ur, associates Ea with Bel, declaring that these " great gods " en- trusted Uruk into his hands with the injunction to rebuild the city that had fallen in ruins. The ideograms, with which his name is written, En-ki, designate him as god of that ' which is below,' — the earth in the first place ; but with a more precise differentiation of the functions of the great gods, Ea becomes the god of the waters of the deep. When this stage of belief is reached, Ea is frequently associated with Bel, who, it will be recalled, is the 'god of the lower region,' but who becomes the god of earth par excellence. When, therefore, Bel and Ea are invoked, it is equivalent, in modern parlance, to calling upon earth and water ; and just as Bel is used to personify, as it were, the unification of the earthly forces, so Ea becomes, in a comprehensive sense, the watery deep. Ea and Bel assume therefore auspicious proportions in the developed Babylonian cosmogony and theology. In the cosmogony, Bel is the creator and champion of mankind, and Ea is the subterranean deep which surrounds the earth, the source of wisdom and culture ; in the theology, Ea and Bel are pictured in the relation of father and son, who, in concert, are appealed to, when mis- fortune or- disease overtakes the sons of man ; Ea, the father, being the personification of knowledge, and Bel, the practical activity that ' emanates from wisdom,' as Professor Sayce,^ adopting the language of Gnosticism, aptly puts it ; only that, as already suggested, Marduk assumes the role of the older Bel. Confining ourselves here to the earlier phases of Ea, it seems probable that he was originally regarded as the god of Eridu, — one of the most ancient of the holy cities of Southern Baby- lonia, now represented by Abu-Shahrein, and which once stood on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Ur-Bau expressly calls the 1 De Savzec, pi. 7, col. i. 12. 2 Hibbcrt Lcdurcn^ p. T04. BABYLONIAN GODS. • 63 god the " king of Eridu.' The sacredness of the place is attested by Gudea, who boasts of having made the temple of Nin-girsu as sacred as Eridu.^ It is over this city that Ea watches. The importance of the Persian Gulf to the growth of the city, would make it natural to place the seat of the god in the waters themselves. The cult of water-deities arises, naturally, at places which are situated on large sheets of water; and in the attributes of wisdom which an older age ascribed to Ea, there may be seen the embodiment of the tradition that the course of civilization proceeds from the south; The superi- ority of the Persian Gulf over the other waters of Babylon — over the two great rivers with their tributary streams and canals — would be another factor that would lead to the god of the Persian Gulf being regarded as the personification of the watery element in general. For the Babylonians, the Per- sian Gulf, stretching out indefinitely, and to all appearances one with the great ocean whose ulterior shores could not be reached, was the great ' Okeanos,' that flowed around the earth and on which the earth rested. Ea, accordingly (somewhat like En-lil), was delocalized, as it were, and his worship was maintained long after the recollection of his connection with Eridu had all but disappeared. At the same time, for the very reason that he was cut loose from local associations, no place could lay claim to being the seat of the deity. Ur-Bau, when erecting a sanctuary to Ea at Girsu, significantly calls the god 'the king of Eridu.' The sanctuary is not, in this case, the dwelling-place of the god. We are justified, therefore, in going back many centuries, before reaching the period when Ea was, merely, the local god of Eridu. Whether Ea is to be regarded as the real name of ■ the god, or is also an ideograph like En-ki, is again open to doubt. If Ea is the real pronunciation, then the writing of the name is a play upon the character of the deity, for it is com- 1 Inscr. B, col. iv. 11. 7, 8. 64 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. posed of two elements that signify ' house ' and 'water,' — the name thus suggesting the character and real seat of the deity. A point in favor of regarding Ea as the real name, albeit not decisive, is the frequent use of the unmistakable ideographic description of the god as En-ki. The consort of Ea who is Dam-kina does not appear in the historical texts of the first period. The origin of Babylonian civilization at the Persian Gulf, together with the dependence of Babylonia for her fertility upon the streams and canals, account for the numerous water-deities to be found in the ancient Babylonian pantheon, some of which have already been discussed. We will meet with others further on. Every stream, large or small, having its special protect- ing deity, the number of water-deities naturally increases as the land becomes more and more dissected by the canal sys- tem that conditioned the prosperity of the country. Ea, as we shall see, appears under an unusually large num- ber of names.' One of these is NiN-A-GAL, which, signifying ' god of great strength,' is given to him as the patron of the smith's art.^ A god of this name is men- tioned by Ur-Bau," who speaks of a sanctuary erected in honor of this deity. But since the king refers to Ea (as En-ki) a few lines previous, it would appear that at this period Nin-agal is still an independent deity. The later identification with Ea appears to be due to the idea of " strength ' involved in the name of Nin-agal. In the same way, many of the names of Ea were originally descriptive of independent gods who, because of the similarity of their functions to those of the great Ea, 1 In Rawlinson, ii. 58, no. 6, there is a list of some seventy names. ■'■ Rawlinson, ii. 58, no. 6, 58. 3 De Sarzec, pi. 8, col. v. 11. 4-6. BABYLONIAN GODS. . 65 were absorbed by the latter. Their names transferred to Ea, are frequently the only trace left of their original independent existence. Nergal. Nergal, the local deity of Cuthah (or Kutu), represented by the mound Tell-Ibrahim, some distance to the east of Babylon, was of an entirely different character from Ea, but his history in the development of the Babylonian religion is hardly less interesting. The first mention of his famous temple at Cuthah is found in an inscription of Dungi (to be read Ba'u-ukin, according to Winckler ^) who belongs to the first dynasty of Ur (c. 2900 B.C.). Its origin, however, belongs to a still earlier period. Such was the fame of the temple known as E-shid-lam, and the closeness of the connection between the deity and his favorite seat, that Nergal himself became known as shid-lam-ta- ud-du-a, i.e., the god that rises up from E-shid-lam. It is by this epithet that the same Dungi describes him in one of his inscrip- tions.^ Down to the latest period of Assyro-Babylonian history, Nergal remains identified with Kutu, being known at all times as the god of Kutu.^ When Sargon, the king of Assyria, upon his conquest of the kingdom of Israel (c. 722 B.C.), brought peo- ple from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, and so forth, across to the lands of the Jordan to take the place of the deported Israelites, the Hebrew narrator (II Kings, xvii. 24-35) ^^^'^ us in an interest- ing manner of the obnoxious foreign worship which these people brought to the land, each division bringing the gods of their place with them. The men of Cuthah, he adds (v. 30), made a 1 Keils Bibl. 3, x, 80, note 3- 2 Rawlinson, iv. 35, no. 2, i. 3 See a syllabary giving lists of gods, Rawlinson, ii. 60, 12. Dungi, indeed, calls Nergal once the king of lawful control over Lagash (Rawlinson, iv. 35, no. 2, 11. 2, 3). The exact force of the title is not clear, but in no case are we permitted to conclude as Amiaud does {Rcc. of the Past, n. s., i. 59) that Shid-lam-ta-udda is identical with Nin-girsu. 66 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. Statue of Nergal. Singamil, of the dynasty, having its capital at Uruk (c. 2750 B.C.), Hkewise testifies to his devotion to Nergal by busying himself with improvements and additions to his temple at Cuthah. His worship, therefore, was not confined to those who happened to reside at Cuthah ; and closely as he is identified with the place, the character of the god is a general and not a special one. The full form of his name appears to have been Ner-unu-gal, of which Nergal, furnished by the Old Testament passage referred to, would then be a contraction or a somewhat corrupt form. The three elements composing his name signify " the mighty one of the great dwelling-place," but it is, again, an open question whether this is a mere play upon the character of the god, as in the name of Ea (according to one of the interpretations above suggested), or whether it is an ideographic form of the name. The Old Testament shows, con- clusively, that the name had some such pronunciation as Nergal. Jensen, from other evidences, inclines to the opinion that the writing Ner-unu-gal is the result of a species of ety- mology, brought about by the prominence given to Nergal as the god of the region of the dead. It is in this capacity that he already appears in the inscription of Singamil, who calls him ' king of the nether world.' The " great dwelling-place," therefore, is clearly the dominion over which Nergal rules, and when we come to the cosmogony of the Babylonians,' it will be found that this epithet for the nether world — the great dwelling-place — accords with their conception of the life after death. But while Nergal, with a host of lesser demons about him, appears as the Babylonian Pluto, particularly in the religious texts, his functions are not limited to the control of the dead. He is the personification of some of the evils that bring death to mankind, particularly pestilence and war. The death that follows in his path is a violent one, and his de- structive force is one that acts upon large masses rather than 1 See Jensen, Kosmologie der Babytonier^ pp. 476-87. BABYLONIAN GODS. • 67 upon the individual. Hence, one of the most common ideo- graphs used to express his name is that which signifies " sword.' War and pestilence are intimately associated in the mind of the Babylonians. Among other nations, the sword is, similarly, the symbol of the deity, as the plague-bringer as well as the warrior. To this day, a pestilence is the general accompaniment of war in the East, or follows in its wake. Different from Nin-ib, who is also a god of war, Nergal symbolizes more particu- larly the destruction which accompanies war, and not the strong champion who aids his subjects in the fight. Nergal is essen- tially a destroyer, and the various epithets applied to him in the religious texts, show that he was viewed in this light. He is at times the ' god of fire,' again ' the raging king,' ' the violent one' 'the one who burns '; and finally identified with the glowing heat of flame. Often, he is described by these attri- butes, instead of being called by his real name.^ Dr. Jensen has recently shown in a satisfactory manner, that this phase of his character must be the starting-point in tracing the order of his development. As the ' glowing flame,' Nergal is evidently a phase of the sun, and Jensen proves that the functions and aspects of the sun at different periods being differentiated among the Babylonians, Nergal is more especially the hot sun of midsummer or midday, the destructive force of which was the chief feature that distinguished it. The hot sun of Baby- lonia, that burns with fierce intensity, brings pestilence and death, and carries on a severe contest against man. From being the cause of death, it is but a step, and a natural one, to make Nergal preside over the region, prepared for those whom he has destroyed. The course taken by Babylonian theology is responsible for the prominence given to the latter role of Nergal, which finally overshadows his other phases to the extent of suggesting the fanciful interpretation of his name as 1 See Jensen, Kosmologie der Babyloiiier, pp. 476-87. 68 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. the "ruler of the great dwelling-place for the dead.' In the light of the facts set forth, another explanation for his name must be looked for that would connect the god with solar functions. The name may in fact be divided into two ele- ments, the first having the force of chief or ruler, the second " great.' The combination would be an appropriate designation for the sun, in the role of a destructive power. But Nergal, after all, represents only one phase of the sun-god. The god who was worshipped as the personification of the sun par excellence and the sun as a whole, was Shamash. Written with an ideograph that describes him as the " god of the day,' there is no deity whose worship enjoys an equally continued popularity in Babylonia and Assyria. Beginning at the earliest period of Babylonian history, and reaching to the latest, his worship suffers no interruption. Shamash, more- over, maintains his original character with scarcely any modifi- cation throughout this long period. For all that, he bears a name which signifies ' attendant ' or ' servitor,' and which sufficiently shows the subsidiary position that he occupied in the Babylonian pantheon. One of the rulers belonging to the second dynasty of Ur calls the sun-god, the offspring of Nannar, — one of the names of the moon-god, — and the last king of Babylonia, Nabonnedos, does the same. In combination with the moon-god, the latter takes precedence of Shamash,' and in the enumeration of the complete pantheon, in the inscriptions of both Assyrian and Babylonian kings, the same order is preserved. Other evidence that points to the superior rank accorded to Sin, the moon-god over the sun-deity in Baby- lonia, is the reckcfhing of time by the moon phases. The day begins with the evening, and not with sunrise. The moon, as 1 So in the inscription of Rim-Sin (Keils Bibl. 3, i, p. 97). BABYLONIAN GODS. 69 the chief of the starry firmament, and controlling the fate of mankind, was the main factor in giving to the orb of night, this peculiar prominence. The ' service,' accordingly implied in the name of Shamash appears to have been such as was demanded by his subsidiary position to the moon-god. Beyond the general recognition, however, of this relationship between the two, it does not appear that the worship paid to Shamash, was at all affected by the secondary place, that he continued to hold in the theoretically constructed pantheon. Less than is the case with the other gods, is he identified with any particular city, and we therefore find in the most ancient period, two centers of Southern Babylonia claiming Shamash as their patron saint, — Larsa, represented by the mound of Senkereh, and Sippar, occupying the site of the modern Abu-Habba. It is difficult to say which of the two was the older ; the latter, in the course of time, overshadowed the fame of the former, and its history can be traced back considerably beyond the sun- worship at Larsa, the first mention of which occurs in the inscriptions of rulers of the first dynasty of Ur (c. 2900 B.C.). Since Ur, as we shall see, was sacred to the moon-god, it is hardly likely that the Shamash cult was introduced at Larsa by the rulers of Ur. The kings of Ur would not have forfeited the protection of Sin, by any manifestation of preference for Shamash. When Ur-Bau, therefore, tells us that he ' built ' a temple to Shamash at Larsa, he must mean, as Sin-iddina of the dynasty of Larsa does, in using the same phrase, that he enlarged or improved the edifice. What makes it all the more likely that Ur-Bau found sun-worship at Larsa in existence is, that in the various places over which this ruler spread his building activity, he is careful in each case to preserve the status of the presiding deity. So at Nippur, he engages in work at the temples of En-lil and of Nin-lil ; while at Uruk he devotes himself to the temple of Nana. In thus connecting their names with the various sacred edifices of Babylonia, the 70 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. rulers emphasized, on the one hand, their control of the terri- tory in which the building lay, and on the other, their allegiance to the deity of the place, whose protection and favor they sought to gain. The mention of a temple to Shamash at Sippar reverts to a still earlier period than that of its rival. Nabonnedos tells us that it was founded by Naram-Sin. Sargon has put his name on some object^ that he dedicates to the sun-god at Sippar. That there was an historical connection between the two temples may be concluded from the fact that the name of the sacred edifices was the same in both, — E-babbara, signifying the " house of lustre.' Such a similarity points to a dependence of one upon the other, and the transfer or extension of the worship directly from one place to the other ; but, as intimated, we have no certain means of determining which of the two is the older. In view of the general observation to be made in what pertains to the religion of the Babylonians, that fame and age go hand in hand, the balance is in favor of Sippar, which became by far the more famous of the two, received a greater share of popular affection, and retained its prominence to the closing days of the neo-Babylonian monarchy. We shall have occasion in a succeeding chapter to trace the history of the sun- temple at Sippar so far as known. It is interesting to note that Nabonnedos, feeling the end of his power to be near, undertakes, as one of the last resorts, the restoration of this edifice, in the hope that by thus turning once more to the powerful Shamash, he might secure his protection, in addition to that of Marduk, the head of the later Babylonian pantheon. In Ur itself, Shamash was also worshipped in early days by the side of the moon-god. Gungunu, of the second dynasty of Ur {c. 2700 B.C.), tells of two temples erected to him at that place ; and still a third edifice, sacred to both Nannar (the moon-god) and Shamash at Ur, is referred to by a king of the 1 Perhaps the knob of a sceptre. Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. viii. 68. BABYLONIAN GODS. * 71 Larsa dynasty, Rim-Sin {c. 2300 B.C.). The titles given to Shamash by the early rulers are sufficiently definite to show in what relation he stood to his worshippers, and what the conceptions were that were formed of him. He is, alternately, the king and the shepherd. Since the kings also called themselves shepherds, no especial endearment is conveyed by this designation. In the incantations, Shamash is fre- quently appealed to, either alone, or when an entire group of spirits and deities are enumerated. He is called upon to give life to the sick man. To him the body of the one who is smitten with disease is confided. As the god of light, he is appropriately called upon to banish ' darkness ' from the house, darkness being synonymous with misfortune ; and the appeal is made to him more particularly as the ' king of judgment.' From this, it is evident that the beneficent action of the sun, was the phase associated with Shamash. He was hailed as the god that gives light and life to all things, upon whose favor the prosperity of the fields and the well-being of man depend. He creates the light and secures its blessings for mankind. His favor produces order and stability ; his wrath brings discomfiture and ruin to the state and the individual. But his power was, per- haps, best expressed by the title of "' judge " — the favorite one in the numerous hymns that were composed in his honor. He was represented as seated on a throne in the chamber of judg- ment, receiving the supplications of men, and according as he manifested his favor or withdrew it, enacting the part of the decider of fates. He loosens the bonds of the imprisoned, grants health to the sick, and even revivifies the dead. On the other hand, he puts an end to wickedness and destroys enemies. He makes the weak strong, and prevents the strong from crushing the weak. From being the judge, and, moreover, the supreme judge of the world, it was but natural that the con- ception of justice was bound up with him. His light became symbolical of righteousness, and the absence of it, or darkness, 72 , BABYLONIAAr-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. was viewed as wickedness. Men and gods look expectantly for his light. He is the guide of the gods, as well as the ruler of men. While there are no direct indications in the historical texts known at present, that this conception of the sun-god existed in all its details before the days of Hammurabi, there is every reason to believe that this was the case ; the more so, in that it does not at all transcend the range of religious ideas that we have met with in the case of the other gods of this period. Nor does this conception in any way betray itself, as being due to the changed political conditions that set in, with the union of the states under Hammurabi. Still, the age of the religious texts not being fixed, it is thus necessary to exercise some caution before using them without the basis of an allusion in the historical texts. Utu. It but remains, before passing on, to note that the same deity appears under various names. Among these are Utu' and apparently also Babbar ^ in the old Babylonian inscriptions. For the latter, a Semitic etymology is forthcoming, and we may therefore regard it as representing a real pronunciation, and not an ideographic writing. Babbar, a contracted form from Barbar, is the reduplication of the same stem bar"^ that we have already met with, in the name of the temple sacred to Shamash. Like E-babbara, therefore, Babbar is the "brilliantly shining one," — a most appropriate name for the sun, and one frequently applied to him in the religious texts. As to Utu, there is some doubt whether it represents a real pronunciation or not. My own opinion is that it does, and that the underlying stem is 1 E.g., Hammurabi {Revue d'Assyriologie, ii. col. i. 21) ; but also Gudea and a still earlier king. 2 So Amiaud ; and tliere seems some reason to believe that the name was used by the side of Utu, though perhaps only as an epithet. 3 Compare birlnru, ' sheen,' and the stem barii, ' to see,' etc. BABYLONIAN GODS. • 73 atd, which in Babylonian has almost the same meaning as bar or barH, viz., 'to see.' " Utu ' would thus again designate the sun as 'that which shines forth.' It will be recalled, that other instances have been noted of the same god appearing under different names. The most natural explanation for this phenomenon is, that the variation corresponds to the different localities where the god was wor- shipped. The identification would not be made until the union of the various Babylonian states had been achieved. Such a union would be a potent factor in systematizing the pantheon. When once it was recognized that the various names repre- sented, in reality, one and the same deity, it would not be long before the name, peculiar to the place where the worship was most prominent, would set the others aside or reduce them to mere epithets. It may well be that Shamash was the name given to the god at Sippar, whereas at Ur he may have been known as Utu. Ur-Bau (of the first Ur dynasty) calls him Utu also, when speaking of the temple at Larsa, but it would be natural for the kings of Ur to call the sun-god of Larsa by the same name that he had in Ur. That Hammurabi, however, calls the sun- god of Larsa, Utu, may be taken as an indication that, as such he was known at that place, for since we have no record of a sun-temple at Babylon in these days, there would be no motive that might induce him to transfer a name, otherwise known to him, to another place. The testimony of Hammurabi is therefore as direct as that of Sargon, who calls the sun-god of Sippar, Shamash. It is not always possible to determine, with as much show of probability, as in the case of the sun-god, the distribution of the various names, but the general conclusion, for all that, is warranted in every instance, that a variety of names refers, originally, to an equal variety of places over which the worship was spread, — only that care must be exercised to distinguish between distinctive names and mere epithets. 74 BABYLONIAN-ASSYKIAN RELIGION. A OR Malkatu. A consort of the sun-deity, appearing frequently at his side in the incantation texts, is A. It is more particularly with the Shamash of Sippar, that A is associated. She is simply the ' beloved one ' of the sun-deity, with no special character of her own. In the historical texts, her role is quite insignificant, and for the period with which we are at present concerned she is only mentioned once by a North Babylonian ruler, Ma-an-ish- tu-su,^ who dedicates an object to her. The reading of the ideogram A, or Nin-A (i.e.. Lady A), is doubtful. Malkatu (" mistress " or " queen ") is offered as a plausible conjecture.^ Lehman [Keils Bibl. iii. i, 202) suggests A-ja, but on insufficient grounds. In any case A has the force of mistress, and Nin-A simply designates the goddess as the lady, mistress, or queen. It is likely that A was originally an independent deity, and one of the names of the sun-god in a particular locahty. It occurs in proper names as a title of Shamash. Instead, how- ever, of becoming identified with Shamash, A degenerated into a pale reflection of Shamash, pictured under the relation- ship of consort to him. This may have been due to the union of Shamash with the place where A was worshipped. If, as seems likely, that near Sippar, there was another city on the other side of the Euphrates, forming a suburb to it (as Borsippa I did to Babylon), the conclusion is perhaps warranted that A was originally the sun-god worshipped at the place which afterwards became incorporated with Sippar." Such an amal- gamation of two originally male deities into a combination of 1 See Kcih Bibl. 3, i, 100. Reading of name uncertain. 2 Suggested by Rawlinson, ii. 57, 10. See Sclirader, Zeits. f. Assyr. iii. 33 seq. 3 On Sippar, see Sayce, Hihhcrt Lectures, etc., 168-169, ™1^° finds in tlie Old Testament form " Sepharvayim " a trace of this double Sippar. Dr. Ward's sugges- tion, however, in regard to Anbar, as representing this " second ' Sippar, is erroneous. BABYLONIAN GODS. 75 male and female, strange as it may seem to us, is in keeping with the lack of sharp distinction between male and female in the oldest forms of Semitic religions. In the old cuneiform writing the same sign is used to indicate " lord " or " lady " when attached to deities. Ishtar appears among Semites both as a male' and as a female deity. Sex was primarily a ques- tion of strength. The stronger god was viewed as masculine ; the weaker as feminine. Nannar and Sin. Nannar, a reduplicated form like Babbar, with the assimilation of the first r to n (nar-nar = nannar), has very much the same meaning as Babbar. The latter, as we have seen, is the " lus- trous one," the former, the "one that furnishes light." Th'e similarity in meaning is in keeping with the similarity of func- tion of the two deities, thus named: Babbar being the sun and Nannar, the moon. It was under the name of Nannar that the moon-god was worshipped at Ur, the most famous and proba- bly the oldest of the cities over which the moon-god presided. The association of Nannar with Ur is parallel to that of Sha- mash with Sippar, — not that the moon-god's jurisdiction or worship was confined to that place, but that the worship of the deity of that place eclipsed others, and the fame and importance at Ur led to the overshadowing of the moon- worship there, over the obeisance to him paid elsewhere. What further motives led to the choice of the moon-god as the patron of Ur, lies beyond the scope of our knowledge. Due allowance must be made for that natural selection, which takes place in the realm of thought as much as in the domain of nature. Attention has already been called to the predomi- nance given by the Babylonians to the moon over the sun. 1 E.g.^ in Southern Arabia. See W. Robertson Smitii, The Religion of the Semites, i. 59. 76 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. The latter is expressly called the " offspring of the lord of brilliant beginning," that is, the moon-god (Delitzsch, Assyr. Hdw., p. 234 a). It is needless, therefore, to do more, at this place, than to emphasize the fact anew. The moon serving much more as a guide to man, through the regular character of its constant changes, than the sun, was connected in the religious system with both the heavenly and the terrestrial forces. In view of Nannar's position in the heavens, he was called the " heifer of Anu." Anu, it will be recalled, was the god of heaven (and heaven itself), while the " heifer " ' is here used metaphorically for offspring, the picture being sug- gested probably by the " horn " that the moon presents at a certain phase. This ' horn ' constitutes his crown, and he is frequently represented on seal cylinders with a crescent over his head, and with a long flowing beard, that is described as having the color of lapislazuli. A frequent title is the ' lord of the crown.' On the other hand, by virtue of its influence on the earth, regulating, as the ancients observed, the tides, the moon was connected by the Babylonians with the reckon- ing of time. Because of this connection with the " lower world,' it seems, he was also regarded as the first-born of Bel. His sacred edifice at Ur was one to which all rulers of the place devoted themselves. Ur-Bau, Nur-Ramman, Sin-iddina, and Kudur-mabuk tell of their embellishment of the temple, each one appropriating to himself the title of ' builder,' in which they gloried. So close, again, was the identification of the city with the deity, that the latter was frequently known simply as the god of Ur, and the former, as the city of Nannar. Another name of the moon-god was Sin, — the meaning of which escapes us. At the side of Ur, Harran is the place most celebrated by reason of its moon-worship, and there is every reason to believe that the name Sin was originally attached to ^ In Rabbinical literature, the moon is compared to a ' Iieifer ' (Talmud Babli Rosh-hashana 22 d). BABYLONIAN GODS. • 77 Harran. The migrations of the ancient Hebrews were con- nected as we now know with political movements in Babylonia. They proceed from Ur — or Ur-Kasdim, i.e., Chaldean Ur — northward to Harran, which, by virtue of its position, became a town of much importance. This association of Ur with Harran furnishes an indication for historical relations of some sort, existing between the two places. It is therefore not accidental, that the patron deity of both places was the same. As yet, no excavations have been made at Harran, and we are, therefore, dependent upon incidental notices for our knowledge of its his- tory. These sufficiently show that the place continued through a long period to preserve its sacred character. The old temple there, was one of the many that stirred up the religious zeal of Nabonnedos ; and previous to this, we find several Assyrian kings occupied in embellishing and restoring the structure. An interesting reference to Harran, bearing witness to its ancient dignity, is found in an inscription of Sargon H. of Assyria (722-706 B.C.), who enumerates among his claims to the favor of the gods, that he restored the " laws and customs of Harran," by which he evidently means that he was instrumental in giv- ing the place, the dignity it once enjoyed. A curious feature connected with Sin, is the occurrence of the name in Mount Sinai, in the wilderness of Sin, as well as in an inscription of Southern Arabia. May not this be a further testimony to the association of Harran with Sin, since it is from Harran that the departure of the Hebrews for the west took place ? What more natural than that in the migrations which carried the Hebrews to the west, the worship of Sin should have been transferred to Arabia? ^ Important as Ur and Harran are as sacred towns, politically they do not retain their prominence after the days of Hammurabi. The amalgamation of Nannar ' That the name of Sin should have been introduced into Mesopotamia through the ' Arabic ' dynasty (see above, p. 39) is less probable, though not impossible in the light of recent discoveries. 78 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. with Sin, and the almost exclusive occurrence of the latter name in later times, does not of necessity point to a prepon- derating influence of Harran over Ur, but may be due to the greater fame which the former place acquired as the goal of reli- gious pilgrimages. The situation of Harran — the name itself signifies ' road ' — as the highway leading to the west, must have been an important factor, in bringing this about. How- ever this may be, Sin and Nannar are as thoroughly identical in the period following Hammurabi, as Babbar and Shamash. The attributes of the one are transferred to the other so com- pletely, that a separation of the two is no longer possible. The ideographs with which the name of Sin is written show him to have been regarded as the god of wisdom, but while wisdom and light may be connected, it is Nannar's character as the "" illuminator " that becomes the chief trait of the god. No doubt the preeminence of Ea in this respect, who is the per- sonification of wisdom, par excellence., made it superfluous to have another deity possessing the same trait. It is, accord- ingly, as the god of light, that Sin continues to be adored in the Babylonian religion ; and when he is referred to, in the historical texts and hymns, this side of his nature is the one dwelt upon. Through his light, the traps laid by the evil spirits, who are active at night, are revealed. In later times, apparently through Assyrian influence, the reckoning of time was altered to the extent of making the day begin with sunrise, instead o% with the approach of night ; and this, together with the accommodation of the lunar cycle to the movements of the sun, brought about a partial change of the former conditions, and gave somewhat greater prominence to Shamash. As a consequence, the role of Sin is not as prominent in the hymns that belong to a later period as in those of earlier days. The oracles of the Assyrian kings are addressed to Shamash, and not to Sin. Moreover, the personal factor in the case of Sin, if one may express oneself thus, is not as strong as in BABYLONIAN GODS. * 79 that of some other gods. His traits are of a more general kind. He is supreme ; there is none like him, and the spirits are subservient to his will. But terms of endearment are few, while on the mythological side, comparatively little is made of him. He is strong and he is holy. He is called upon to clothe the evil-doer with leprosy, as with a dress. In a robe, befitting his dignity, he stalks about. Without him, no city is founded, no district restored to former glory. Sin is called the father of the gods, but in a metaphorical rather than in a real sense. The only one of his children who takes an important part in the later phases of Babylonian-Assyrian worship is his daughter Ishtar. She seems to have taken to herself some of the traits of right belonging to Sin, and the prominence of her worship may be regarded as an additional factor in accounting for the comparative obscurity to which Sin gradually is assigned. At all events, Sin is a feature of the earlier period of the Baby- lonian religion rather than of the later periods. NiNNI OR Innanna. The secondary position held by the female deities in the Babylonian pantheon has been repeatedly referred to. This trait of the religion finds an illustration not only in the "shadowy' character of the consorts of the gods, but also in the manner in which goddesses, originally distinct from one another and enjoying an existence independent of any male consort, lose their individuality, as it were, and become merely so many forms of one and the same deity. Indeed, as we approach the moment when the gods of the Babylonian pantheon are ranged into a system, the tendency becomes pronounced to recognize only one goddess, representative of the principle of generation — one 'great mother,' endowed with a variety of traits according to the political and social con- ditions prevailing at different times in Babylonia and Assyria. 80 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. In the earliest period which we are now considering, we can still distinguish a number of goddesses who afterwards became merged into this one great goddess. These are Ninni (or Innanna), Nani, and Anunit. Ninni and Innanna are names that appear to have a common origin.' Both embody the notion of " ladyship.' The worship of this goddess centers in the district of Lagash. Ur-Bau (c. 3000 B.C.), who addresses her as 'glorious and supreme,' builds a temple in her honor at Gishgalla, and Gudea refers to a temple known as E-anna, i.e., heavenly house in Girsu.^ For Gudea, Ninni is the " mistress of the world." Another ruler of Lagash whose name is doubtfully read as E-dingir-ra-na-gin,'' but who is even earlier than Ur-Bau, declares that he has been ' called ' by Innanna to the throne. She is mentioned by the side of Nin-khar-sag. We are still in the period where local associations formed a controlling factor in ensuring the popu- larity of a deity, and while the goddesses attached to the gods of the important centers are still differentiated, the tendency already exists to designate the female consorts simply as the 'goddess,' — to apply to all, the traits that may once have been peculiar to one. As we pass from one age to the other, there is an increasing difficulty in keeping the various local ' goddesses ' apart. Even the names become interchangeable ; and since these goddesses, all represented essentially the same principle of generation and fertility, it was natural that with the union of the Babylonian states they should become merged into one great mother-goddess. A " local ' goddess who retains rather more of her individuality than others, is 1 Innanna may be separated into /K = lord or lady, and nanna ; in and natina would then be elements added to " lady," conveying perhaps the idea of greatness. See Jensen's remarks, Kcils Bibl. 3, i, 20, note 4. 2 Rec. of the Past^ n.s., ii. p. 104. 3 Kcils Bibl. 3, I, 16. See Jensen's note on the reading of the name. BABYLONIAN GODS. * 81 Nana. Her name is again playfully interpreted by the Babylonians . — through association with Nin — as ' the lady ' par excellence. She was the chief goddess of the city of Uruk. Her temple at Uruk is first mentioned by Ur-Gur, of the first dynasty of Ur. It is restored and enlarged by Dungi, the successor of Ur-Bau, and so thoroughly is she identified with her edifice known as E-anna (again a play upon her name), that she becomes known as the Lady of E-anna.' She appears to have had a temple also at Ur, and it is to this edifice that later rulers of Larsa — Kudur-Mabuk and Rim-Sin, as well as the kings of the Isin dynasty, Gamil-Ninib, Libit-Ishtar, and Ishme- Dagan — refer in their inscriptions. The members of the Isin dynasty pride themselves upon their control over Uruk, and naturally appear as special devo- tees to Nana, whose chosen "consort" they declare them- selves to be, wielding the sceptre, as it were, in union with her. Already at this period. Nana is brought into connection with the moon-god, being called by Kudur-Mabuk the daughter of Sin. The relationship in this case indicates, primarily, the supremacy exercised by Ur, and also a similarity in the traits of the two deities. In the fully developed cosmology, Nani is the planet Venus, whose various aspects, as morning and evening star, suggested an analogy with the phases of the moon. Venus, like the moon, served as a guide to man, while her inferiority in size and importance to the former, would natu- rally come to be expressed under the picture of father and daughter. In a certain sense, all the planets appearing at the same time and in the same region with the moon were the children of the latter. Sin, therefore, is appropriately called 1 The fame of this temple outlasts the political importance of the place, and as late as the days of the Assyrian monarchy is an object of fostering care on the part of the kings. 82 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. the father of gods, just as Anu, the personification of the heaven itself, is the supreme father of Sin and Shamash, and of all the heavenly bodies. The metaphorical application of " father ' as ' source,' throughout Oriental parlance, must be kept in mind in interpreting the relationship between the gods. Still another name of the goddess is Anunit, which appears to have been peculiar to the North Babylonian city Agade, and emphasizes her descent from "Anu," the god of heaven. Her temple at Agade, known as E-ul-mash, is the object of Sargon's devotion, which makes her, with Bel and Shamash, the oldest triad of gods mentioned in the Babylonian inscriptions. But the name which finally displaces all others, is ISHTAR. Where the name originated has not yet been ascertained, as little as its etymology,^ but it seems to belong to Northern Babylonia rather than to the south. In time, all the names that we have been considering — Ninni, Nant, and Anunit — became merely so many designa- tions of Ishtar. She absorbs the titles and qualities of all, and the tendency which we have pointed out finds its final outcome in the recognition of Ishtar as the one and only goddess endowed with powers and an existence independent of associa- tion with any male deity, though even this independence does not hinder her from being named at times as the associate of the chief god of Assyria — the all-powerful Ashur. The attempt has been made by Sayce and others to divide the various names of Ishtar among the aspects of Venus as morning and evening star, but there is no evidence to show that the 1 That the name is Semitic is no longer seriously questioned by any scholar. The underlying stem suggests etymological relationship with the god Ashur. If this be so, Ishtar may mean ' the goddess that brings blessing ' to mankind, but all this is tentative, as are the numerous other etymologies suggested. BABYLONIAN GODS. * 83 Babylonians distinguished the one from the other so sharply as to malie two goddesses of one and the same planet. It is more in accord with what, as we have seen, has been the general character of the Babylonian pantheon, to account for the identification of Ninni, Nana, and Anunit with Ishtar on the supposition that the different names belonged origi- nally to different localities. Ishtar was appropriately denomi- nated the brilliant goddess. She is addressed as the mother of gods, which signals her supreme position among the female deities. 'The mistress of countries' alternating with "the mistress of mountains," is one of her common titles; and as the growing uniqueness of her position is one of the features of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion, it is natural that she should become simply the goddess. This was especially the case with the Assyrians, to whom Ishtar became a god- dess of war and battle, the consort, at times, of the chief god of the Assyrian pantheon. At the same time it is important to note that the warlike character of the goddess goes back to the time of Hammurabi (Keils Bibl. 3, i, 113), and is dwelt upon by other Babylonian kings {e.g., Nebuchadnezzar I., c. 1130 B.C.) prior to the rise of the Assyrian power. How Ishtar came to take on so violent a character is not altogether clear. There are no indications of this role in the incantation texts, where she is simply the kind mother who is appealed to, to release the sufferer from the power of the disease-bringing spirits. In the prayers, as will be shown in the proper place, she becomes the vehicle for the expression of the highest religious and ethical thought attained by the Babylonians. On the other hand, in the great Babylonian epic,^ dealing with the adventures of a hero, Izdubar (or Gilgamesh), Ishtar, who 1 The ideographs for ' country ' and ' mountain ' are identical Assyrian. The alternation in the title of Ishtar must not be taken to point to a mountainous origin of the goddess. 2 A full account of this epic will be given at its proper place. 84 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. makes her appearance at the summer solstice, is a raging god- dess who smites those who disobey her commands with wasting disease. Starting with this phase of the goddess' character, one can at least understand the process of her further develop- ment into a fierce deity presiding over the fortunes of war. The epic just referred to belongs to the old Babylonian period. It embodies ancient traditions of rivalry between the Babylo- nian principalities, though there are traces of several recastings which the epic received. The violent Ishtar, therefore, is a type going back to the same period as the other side of her character that is emphasized elsewhere. Since, moreover, the Ishtar in the Izdubar epic is none other than the chief goddess of Uruk, all further doubt as to the union of such diverging traits in one and the same personage falls to the ground. In this same epic, Ishtar appears as sympathizing with the sufferings of mankind, and bewailing the destruction that was at one time decreed by the gods. It is noteworthy that the violent Ishtar appears in that portion of the epic which, on the assumption of a zodiacal interpretation for the composition, corresponds to the summer solstice, whereas, the destruction which arouses her sympathy takes place in the eleventh month. It is quite possible, therefore, that the two aspects of Venus, as evening and morning stars, corresponding, as they do, to the summer and winter seasons, are reflected in this double character of the goddess. We are not justified, however, in going further and assuming that her double role as daughter of Sin and daughter of Ann is to be accounted for in the same manner. In the Izdubar epic, she is found in associ- ation with Anu, and to the latter she appeals for protection as her father, and yet it is as the daughter of Sin that she enters the world of the dead to seek for the waters that may heal her bridegroom, Tammuz.' Evidently, the distinction between 1 Again, in the incantation texts she appears only as the daughter of Anu, coordi- nate with Sin and Shamash, BABYLONIAN CODS. . 85 Ishtar as the daughter of Anu and as the daughter of Sin is not an important one, the term daughter in both cases being a metaphor to express a relationship both of physical nature and of a political character. Of the various forms under which the goddess appears, that of Anunit — a feminine form indicating descent from and appertaining to Anu — attaches itself most clearly to the god of heaven, and it may be that it was not until the assimilation of Anunit and Nana with Ishtar that the goddess is viewed as at once the daughter of Anu and of Sin. If this be so, there is surely nothing strange in the fact that a planet like Venus should be regarded in one place as the daughter of heaven and in another brought into relationship with the moon. She actually belongs to both. Just as in Babylonia, so in Assyria, there were various Ishtars, or rather various places where the goddess was wor- shipped as the guardian spirit, but her role in the north is so peculiar that all further consideration of it must be postponed until we come to consider, in due time, the Assyrian pantheon. There will be occasion, too, when treating of the Izdubar epic, to dwell still further on some of her traits. All that need be said here is to emphasize the fact that the popularity of the Babylonian Ishtar in Assyria, as manifested by Esarhaddon's zeal in restoring her temple at Uruk, and Ashurbanabal's restora- tion of Nana's statue {c. 635 B.C.) which had been captured by the Elamites 1635 y^a-rs before Ashurbanabal's reign, is largely due to the effected identity with the goddess who, for the Assyrians, was regarded chiefly as the goddess of war and strife. In worshipping the southern Ishtars, the Assyrian kings felt themselves to be showing their allegiance to the same deity to whom, next to Ashur, most of their supplications were addressed, and of whom as warriors they stood in dread. 86 BABYLONJAN-ASSYKIAN RELIGION. Nina. A goddess who, while sharing the fate of her sister god- desses in being overshadowed by Ishtar, yet merits a special treatment, is one whose name is plausibly conjectured to be read Nina. The compound ideogram expressing the deity signifies ' house of the fish.' The word ' house ' in Semitic parlance is figuratively extended to convey the idea of " possessing or harboring.' Applied to a settlement, the ideo- gram would be the equivalent of our " Fishtown.' It is with this same ideogram that the famous capitol of Assyria, Nineveh, is written in the cuneiform texts, and since the phonetic reading for the city, Ni-na-a, also occurs, it is only legitimate to conclude that the latter is the correct reading for the deity as well. As a matter of course, if the goddess bears a name identical with that of a city, it cannot be the Assyrian city which is meant in the old Babylonian inscriptions, but some other place bearing the same name. Such a place actually occurs in the inscriptions of Gudea. It is, in fact, one of the three towns that combined with Shirpurla to create the great capitol bearing the latter name ; and Jensen ■■ has called attention to a passage in one of Gudea's inscriptions in which the goddess is brought into direct association with the town, so that it would appear that Nina is the patron of Nina, in th e same way that Nin-girsu is the protector of Girsu. In keep- ing with this we find the mention of the goddess limited to the rulers of Lagash. Several of them — En-anna-tuma, Entemena, and Gudea — declare themselves to have been chosen by her. She is said to regard Gudea with special favor. She determines destinies. Another king, Ur-Nina, embodies the name of the goddess in his own, and devotes himself to the enlargement of her 1 Keils Bibl. 3, i, 72, note. Some scholars, as Hommel (Gcsch. d. alt. Morgen- landes, p. 68), propose to identify this place with the Assyrian Nineveh, but the con- jecture lacks proof and is altogether improbable. BABYLONIAN GODS. • 87 temple. From the manner in which she is associated with Nin- girsu, aiding the latter in guarding his temple E-ninnu, and unit- ing with the god in granting the sceptre to Gudea, one is tempted to conclude that the two towns, Girsu and Nina, were amalga- mated before their absorption into Lagash, so that the god and goddess acquired the relationship to one another of husband and consort. As for the connection between this Babylonian Nina and the late Assyrian capital, it is quite possible that the origin of the latter is to be traced to a settle- ment made by inhabitants of the former, although it should be added that there is no positive evidence that can be adduced in support of this proposition. It accords, however, with the northward movement of culture and civilization in Mesopotamia. If this connection between the two Ninevehs be accepted, the question suggests itself whether, in time, Nina did not become merely another form of Ishtar. The Assyrian capital is fre- quently spoken of as the ' beloved city ' of Ishtar, and unless it be supposed that this epithet simply reflects the comparatively late popularity of the distinctively Assyrian Ishtar, the most natural explanation would be to propose the equation Nina = Ishtar. In the incantation texts, Nina is frequently appealed to as the daughter of Ea, — the god of the deep. This relationship, as well as the interpretation of the ideogram above set forth, points to the original character of the goddess as a water-deity. This goddess, therefore, would be of an entirely different form from the ones discussed in the previous paragraphs. Instead of being a member of the heavenly pantheon, her place is with •the kingdom over which Ea presides, and whose dwelling- place is the watery deep. In any case, Nina is originally distinct from Ishtar, Nana, and Anunit ; and she retains an independent existence to a later period than most of the other great goddesses that have been discussed. In an inscription of the days of Belnadinaplu {c. iioo B.C.), published by Hil- 88 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. precht/ Nina appears as the patron deity of Der, — a city of Southern Babylonia. There too she is called the ' daughter of Ea,' the creator of everything. She is " the mistress of goddesses.' Attached to her temple there are lands that having been wrongfully wrested from the priests are returned upon royal command, under solemn invocation of the goddess. How her worship came to be transferred to D^r we do not know. She appears in the inscription in question by the side of a goddess who — following Hommel — is none other than Bau. Der is called the city of the god Anu, and we can only suppose that it must at one time have risen to sufificient importance to harbor in its midst a number of deities. It is presumably^ the place whence Nebuchadnezzar I. sets out in the twelfth century to drive the Cassites off the throne of Babylonia. May it be that, during the days of the foreign rule, priests attached to the service of various of the old gods and goddesses trans- ferred the worship of these deities to places more secure from interference ? Be this as it may, if our Nina has any connection with the goddess of Nineveh, it is certain that Ishtar has retained none of Nini's traits. The fusion in this case has been so com- plete that naught but the faintest tradition of an original and independent Nina has survived in the North. Anu. This god, who, from a theoretical point of view (as will be shown in a subsequent chapter), was regarded as standing at the head of the organized Babylonian pantheon, figures only incidentally in the inscriptions prior to the days of Hammurabi. Ur-Bau of the first dynasty of Ur, in invoking Nannar, calls i Old Babylonian Inscriptions, i. pis. 30, 31. (See now Peiser, Kelts Bill, 4, pp. 64-66.) 2 Questioned by Peiser, ib. BABYLONIAN GODS. , 89 the latter 'the powerful bull of Anu.' The reference is inter- esting, for it shows that already in these early days the position of Anu, as the god of the heavenly expanse, was fixed. The moon appearing in the heavens, and the resemblance of its crescent to a bull's horn,-' are the two factors that account for the expressive epithet used by Ur-Bau. That the worship of the god of heaven par excellence should not have enjoyed great popularity in the early days of the Babylonian religion might seem strange at first sight. A little reflection, however, will make this clear. A god of the heavens is an abstract concep- tion, and while it is possible that even in an early age, such a conception may have arisen in some minds, it is not of a character calculated to take a popular hold. As we proceed in our attempt to trace the development of the Babylonian religion, we will find the line of demarcation separating the theological system, as evolved by the schoolmen, from the popular phases of the religion, becoming more marked. In the inscriptions of the old Babylonian rulers, comparatively little of the influence of the Babylonian theologians is to be detected. Even the description of the moon as the bull of heaven falls within the domain of popular fancy. It is different in the days after Hammurabi, when political concentration leads to the focussing of intellectual life in the Euphrates Valley, with all the consequences that the establishment of a central priesthood, with growing powers over ever-increasing territory, involves. It is to be noted, moreover, that the manner in which in the old Babylonian inscriptions Anu is written,^ indicates that the abstraction involved in the conception of a god of heaven had not yet been reached, though some measure of personi- fication was of course inevitable at a time when animistic 1 Among many nations the moon is pictured as a horned animal. See Robert Brown's interesting monograph on TJic Unicorn^ pp. 27 seq. ct passim ; also above, p. 76. 2 Simply the sign AN (= god, heaven) and the phonetic complement na. 90 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. notions still held sway. A direct indication of this per- sonification of heaven without the deification appears in the epithet ' child of Anu,' bestowed upon the goddess Bau. The reference to the heavens in this connection is an allusion to Ban's position as the patroness of that quarter of Lagash known as the 'brilliant town,'-' and where Bau's temple stood. The transference of the quality of ' brilliancy ' from the town to the goddess would be expressed by calling the latter the offspring of that part of visible nature which is associated in the mind with ' brilliancy.' Somewhat mysterious, and still awaiting a satisfactory explanation, is the title ' sacri- ficer,' or "priest of Anu,' which one of the rulers of Lagash, Ur-Nin-girsu, assumes. It is scarcely possible that the god of heaven can be meant ; and, on the other hand, if we are to assume merely a personification of heaven, we encounter fresh dififlculties. It seems to me that the use of Anu^ here is purely metaphorical for 'high' or 'lofty,' and that the king merely wishes to emphasize the dignity of his station by declaring himself to be the heavenly priest, somewhat as we should say ' priest by divine grace,' or ' supreme priest.' NiN-Sl'-A. Ur-Bau and Gudea alone of the ancient rulers refer to this god. The former erects a temple in honor of the god in some quarter of his capitol city, while the latter emphasizes the strength that the god has given him. These references, how- ever, show that the god must have been of considerable impor- tance, and in this case, his disappearance from the later pantheon is probably due to the absorption of his role by the 1 See above, p. 59. 2 Written An-na, without the determinative for deity. De Sarzec, Decouvertes en Chaldee, pi. yj^ no. S. 3 The second element may also be read dar. See Jensen, Keils Bibl. 3, i, p. 24, note I. BABYLONIAN GODS. • 91 greater god of Lagash, — Nin-girsu. Like Nin-girsu, Nin-si-a was a god of war, and his worship, imported perhaps from some ancient site to Lagash, falls into desuetude, as the attribute accorded to him becomes the distinguishing trait of the chief deity of the place. Gal-alim. Among the various deities to whom Gudea gives praise for the position and glory which he attains is Gal-alim.' From him he has received great rule and a lofty sceptre. The phrase is of a very general nature and reveals nothing as to the special character of the god in question. An earlier king, Uru-kagina, refers to the temple of the god at Lagash. Gal-alim may have been again a merely local deity belonging to one of the, towns that fell under Gudea's rule, and whose attributes again were so little marked that this god too disappeared under the overshadowing importance of Nin-girsu. He and another god, Dun-shagga, are viewed as the sons of Nin-girsu. Coming to some of the deities that we may designate as minor, it is to be noted that in the case of certain ones, at least, it will be found that they may be identified with others more prominent, and that what seem to be distinct names are in reality descriptive epithets of gods already met with. This remark applies more particularly to such names as begin with the element Nin, signifying either "lord' or "lady,' and which, when followed by the name of a place, always points to its being a title, and, when followed by an ideographic compound, only diminishes that probability to a slight degree. We have already come across several instances ; thus Nin-girsu, the 1 Inscription B, col. ii. ig. 92 BABYLONIAN-ASSYKIAN RELIGION. lord of Girsu, has been shown to be a form of Ninib, itself an ideogram, the reading of which, it will be recalled, is still uncertain; and again, Nin-khar-sag has been referred to, as one of the titles of the great goddess Belit. Similarly, Nin- gish-zida, whose name signifies ' the lord of the right-hand (or propitious) sceptre,' becomes a title and not a name, and when Gudea speaks of this god as the one who leads him to battle, and calls him "king,' he is simply describing the same god who is elsewhere spoken of as Nin-girsu. By the side of Nin-girsu and Nin-gish-zida appears Nin-shakh, who, as Oppert ' has shown, is like Nin-girsu the prototype of the well- known god of war, Ninib. However, Nin-shakh occupies, in contradistinction to Nin-gish-zida and others, a position in the old Babylonian pantheon of an independent character, so that it is hardly justifiable, in such a case, to identify him com- pletely with Ninib, and place the name on a par with the epithets just referred to. The dividing line between the mere title and an independent god thus becomes at times very faint, and yet it is well to maintain it whenever called for. In the following enumeration of the minor gods of the old Babylonian pantheon, the attempt will be made to bring out this distinction in each instance. Beginning with Nin-shakh the element Nin, as has several times been mentioned, points to an ideographic form. The second element signifies ' wild boar,' and from other sources we know that this animal was a sacred one in Babylonia, as among other Semitic nations.^ Its flesh, on certain days of the Babylonian calendar, was 1 See Hommel, Scmitischc Kuliuren, p. 389. 2 For the sacred character of the swine among the Semites, see W. Robertson Smith's The Religion of the Semites^ pp. 201, 272. ^32, 457. RawUnson, iii. 68, 22, occurs a deity, 'swine of the right hand,' i.e.^ propitious. BABYLOiVIAN GODS. ' 93 forbidden to be eaten, from which we are permitted to conclude that these days were dedicated to the animal, and the prohibi- tion represents perhaps the traces of some old religious festival. May Nin-shakh therefore have been a " swine deity,' just as Nergal is symbolized by the " lion ' ? In both cases the animal would be a symbol of the violent and destructive character of the god. The ferocious character of the " swine ' would naturally result in assigning to Nin-shakh warlike attributes ; and as a matter of fact he is identified at times with Ninib. His subor- dinate position, however, is indicated by his being called the "servant," generally of En-lil, occasionally also of Anu, and as such he bears the name of Pap-sukal,' i.e., ' divine messenger.' Rim-Sin builds a temple to Nin-shakh at Uruk, and from its designation as his "favorite dwelling place' we may conclude that Rim-Sin only restores or enlarges an ancient temple of the deity. In the light of this, the relationship above set forth between Nin-girsu, Nin-gish-zida, and Nin-shakh becomes some- what clearer. The former, the local deity of Girsu, would natu- rally be called by the kings " the lord of the true sceptre,' while the subordination of Girsu as a quarter of Lagash finds its reflec- tion in the relationship of master and servant pictured as existing between En-lil and Nin-girsu. Again, the warlike character of the patron deity of Girsu would lead to an identi- fication with Nin-shakh of Uruk, possessing the same traits ; and the incorporation of Uruk as a part of the same empire which included Lagash and its quarters, would be the last link bringing about the full equation between the three. With Ninib — the solar deity — coming into prominence as the god of war, all three names, Nin-girsu, Nin-gish-zida, and Nin- 1 Rawlinson, ii. 59, 23. The second element in Pap-sukal is the common Baby- lonian word for 'servant,' or 'messenger'; other deities therefore standing in a subsidiary position are also called Pap-sukal. So e.j^., Nebo and Nusku. See further on and compare Hommel, Semitcn, pp. 479, 480. 94 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. shakh, would be regarded by a later age as merely descriptive of one and the same god. DUN-SHAGGA. Gudea makes mention in one of his inscriptions, by the side of Nin-gish-zida, of a god Dun-shagga/ whose name signifies the ' chief hero,' but the phonetic reading of which it is impos- sible to determine.^ Like Nin-gish-zida, he is a warlike god, and from that one might suppose that he too is only another form of Nin-girsu-Ninib. At all events, he did not differ materially from the latter. It is from him, that Gudea again declares his power to be derived, just as elsewhere he accords to Nin-girsu this distinction. The element ' Dun,' which is very much the same as ' Nin,' speaks in favor of regarding Dun-shagga as a title ; but, in default of positive evidence, it will not be out of place to give him an independent position, and to regard his identification with Nin-girsu as a later phase due to the extension of Nin-girsu's jurisdiction and his corre- sponding absorption of a varying number of minor gods. This tendency on the part of the greater gods to absorb the minor ones is as distinctive a trait in the development of the Baby- lonian religion, as is the subordination of one god to the other, whether expressed by making the subordinate god the consort, the chief, or the servant of a superior one. We have seen that such terms of relationship correspond to certain degrees of political conditions existing between the conquering and the conquered districts. Amalgamation of two cities or districts is portrayed in the relation of the two patron deities as hus- band and wife, the stronger of the two being the former, the 1 Inscription B, col. iii. 2. 2 Uru-kagina, earlier tlian Gudea (de Sarzec, pi. 32), appears to have built a temple to Dun-shagga, but the passage is not altogether clear. The element also appears in the name of the ruler of Ur, Dungi, i.e., ' the legitimate hero,' as Sargon is the ' legitimate king.' BABYLONIAN GODS. * 95 more subservient pictured as the latter. The more pronounced superiority of the one place over the other finds expression in the relation of father to child, while that of master and servant emphasizes the complete control exercised by the one over the other. Lastly, the absorption of one deity into another, is correlative either with the most perfect form of conquest, or the complete disappearance of the seat of his worship in consequence of the growing favor of one possessing sufficiently similar qualities to warrant identification with the other. LUGAL-BANDA. Sin-gashid of the dynasty of Uruk makes mention of this deity at the beginning of one of his inscriptions. To him and to his consort, Nin-gal, a temple as ' the seat of their joy ' at that place. This association of the god with the town points again to a local deity, but possessing a character which leads to the absorption of the god in the solar god, Nergal, whom we have already encountered, and who will occupy us a good deal when we come to the period after Hammurabi. The identification of the two is already fore- shadowed in an inscription of another member of the same dynasty, Sin-gamil, who places the name of Nergal exactly where his predecessor mentions Lugal-banda. The first ele- ment in his name signifies 'king,' the second apparently ' strong,' so that in this respect, too, the god comes close to Nergal, whose name likewise indicates ' great lord.' The consort of Lugal-banda is NiN-GUL. Her name signifies 'the destructive lady,' — an appropriate epithet for the consort of a solar deity. It is Sin-gashid again who associates Ningul with Lugal-banda, and emphasizes his affection for the goddess by calling her his mother. In one 96 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. inscription, moreover, Sin-gashid addresses himself exclusively to the goddess, who had an equal share in the temple at Uruk. DUMUZI-ZU-ABA. Among the deities appealed to by Ur-Bau appears one whose name is to be interpreted as the ' unchangeable child of the watery deep.' The great god of the deep we have seen is Ea. Dumuzi-zQ-aba therefore belongs to the water-deities, and one who, through his subordinate rank to Ea, sinks to the level of a water-spirit. Ur-Bau declares himself to be the darling of this deity, and in the town of Girsu he erects a temple to him. Girsu, however, was not the patron city of the god, for Ur-Bau gives Dumuzi-zu-aba, the appellation of " the lord of Kinunira,' ^ a place the actual situation of which is unknown. Dumuzi-zu-aba, accordingly, is to be regarded as a local deity of a place which, situated probably on an arm of the Euphrates, was the reason for the watery attributes assigned to the god. The comparative insignificance of the place is one of the factors that accounts for the minor importance of the god, and the second factor is the popularity enjoyed by another child of the great Ea, his child par excellence, Marduk, who is best known as the patron god of the city of Babylon. By the side of Marduk, the other children of Ea, the minor water-deities, disappear, so that to a later generation Dumuzi-zu-aba appears merely as a form of Marduk. With Dumuzi-zu-aba, we must be careful not to confuse DuMU-zi, who in the old Babylonian inscriptions is mentioned once by Sin-iddina,^ in connection with the sun-god. Dumu-zi, signify- ing 'child of life,' has a double aspect — an agricultural deity 1 Signifying, according to Jensen, Keils Bibl. 3, i, p. 25, ' fighting-place.' 2 Publislied by Delitzscii, Beitrdge zur Assyr. i, 301-311. BABYLONIAN GODS. • 97 and at the same time a god of the lower world. He plays an important part in the eschatological literature of the Baby- lonians, but hardly none at all in the historical and incantation texts. A fuller treatment may therefore be reserved for a future chapter. Lugal-Erima. A purely local deity, if the reading and interpretation offered by Jensen, " King of the city Erim,' is correct. The mention of the deity in an inscription of Ur-Bau, who calls himself the " beloved servant ' of this god, would be due to the circum- stance that the district within which the city in question lay was controlled by the rulers of Lagash. To invoke as large a number of deities as possible was not only a means of securing protection from many sides, but was already in the early days of Babylonian history indulged in by rulers, as a means of emphasizing the extent and manifold character of their juris- diction. NiN-E-GAL AND NiNGAL. A temple was erected to Nin-e-gal by the wife of Rim-Sin, of the second dynasty of Ur and Akkad. Her name as inter- preted in the tablet dedicated to her, signifies again, as in several cases already noted, ' great lady.' She was probably therefore only the consort of some patron deity ; and Nannar being the most prominent god invoked by Rim-Sin, it would seem that the goddess to whom the queen pays her respects is again one of the consorts of the moon-god.^ This conclusion is supported by the direct association of Nannar of Ur and Ningal in an inscription emanating from an earlier member of the same dynasty to which Rim-Sin belongs. Nur-Ramman speaks of building temples to these deities in the city of Ur. Hence the goddess is also represented as interceding with 1 So also Jensen, Kosmologic^ p. 14, note 3. 98 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. Sin on behalf of those who appeal to her. The form Nin- e-gal is but a variant of Nin-gal, so that the identification of the two lies beyond doubt, and it may very well be that the temple erected by the consort of Rim-Sin is the same as the one referred to by Nur-Ramman. In a land where polygamy was a prevailing custom, the gods too might be represented as having a number of consorts. There would of course be, just as in human relations, one chief consort, but . there might be others ranged at the side of the latter.^ Some of these may have been consorts of other minor deities, wor- shipped in the same district, and who were given to the more important divinity as he gradually overshadowed the others. In this way, we may account for the large variety of ' ladies ' and " great ladies ' met with in the Babylonian pantheon, and who, being merely ' reflections ' of male deities, with no sharply marked traits of their own, would naturally come to be confused with one another, and finally be regarded as various forms of one and the same goddess. Still another member of the second dynasty of Ur, En-anna-tuma, earlier even than Nur-Ramman, invokes Nin-gal in an inscription found in the ancient capital, Ur. Here, too, the goddess appears in associa- Hon with Nannar ; but, curiously enough, she is designated as the mother of Shamash. It will be borne in mind that in the city of Ur, the sun-god occupied a secondary place at the side of the moon-god. This relationship is probably indicated by the epithet ' offspring of Nin-gal^' accorded to Shamash in the inscription referred to. The moon being superior to the sun, the consort of the moon-god becomes the mother of the sun- god. Reference has several times been made to 1 So Anu appears to have concubines. BABYLONIAN GODS. 99 NiN-GISH-ZIDA, who, originally a distinct solar deity, becomes scarcely distin- guishable from Nin-girsu, and is eventually identified with the great Nin-ib.^ It is noticeable that these four deities, Nin- girsu, Nin-shakh, Nin-gish-zida, and Nin-ib, who are thus asso- ciated together, all contain the element Nin in their names, — a factor that may turn out. to be of some importance when more abundant material shall be forthcoming for tracing their development in detail. One of Gudea's inscriptions ^ begins with the significant statement, " Nin-gish-zida is the god of Gudea'; and elsewhere when speaking of him, he is 'my god,' or ' his god.' None of the ancient Babylonian rulers make mention of him except Gudea, though in the incantation texts he is introduced and significantly termed " the throne-bearer' of the earth. The purely local character of the deity is, further- more, emphasized by the reference to his temple in Girsu, on a brick and on a cone containing dedicatory inscriptions, inscribed by Gudea in honor of the god.^ Shul-pa-uddu. The wife of the famous Gudea, Gin-Shul-pa-uddu, bears a name in which one of the elements is a deity, the phonetic reading of whose name is still uncertain.* The elements com- prising it, namely, ' lord ' (?), " sceptre,' and ' radiant,' leave little doubt as to the solar character of the god. Besides Gudea's wife, a ruler, Ur-Shul-pa-uddu,'' belonging apparently to a some- what earlier period, embodies this deity in his name. The wor- ship of the deity, therefore, belongs to a very early epoch, and 1 See above, pp. 92, 93. 2 Inscription C. 3 De Sarzec, pi. 37, no. 5 ; Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. vi. 279. * Jensen, Kosmologte^ p. 127, proposes to read Umun-pauddu. 5 Hilpreclit, Old Babylonian Inscriptions, \. 2, no. 93. The name also appears in syllabaries as Shul-pa-ud-du-a. For the element pa-udda, see p. 103. In Nergal's name Shid-lam-ta-uddu-a (p. 65), the same final elements are found which appear to be characteristic epithets of solar deities. The fii;st element in the name has also the value Dun (as in Dun-gi). 100 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. appears at one time to have enjoyed considerable popularity within a certain district of Babylonia. To what region of Babylonia he belongs has not yet been ascertained. Judging from analogous instances, he represented some phase of the sun ■worshipped in a particular locality, whose cult, with the disap- pearance of the place from the surface of political affairs, yielded to the tendency to concentrate sun-worship in two or three deities, — Shamash and Ninib more especially. In the astronomy of the Babylonians the name survived as a desig- nation of Marduk-Jupiter.^ Nin-Mar. A local deity, designated as the lady of Mar, is invoked by Ur-Bau, from whom we learn that she was the daughter of Nina. Mar, with the determinative for country, A7, appears to have been the name of a district extending to the Persian Gulf.^ The capital of the district is represented by the mound Tel-Id, not far from Warka. Her subsidiary position is indi- cated in these words, and we may conclude that Nin-Mar at an early period fell under the jurisdiction of the district in which Nina was supreme. For all that, Nin-Mar, or the city in which her cult was centralized, must have enjoyed consider- able favor. Ur-Bau calls her the 'gracious lady,' and erects a temple, the name of which, Ish-gu-tur,^ i.e., according to Jensen's plausible interpretation, ' the house that serves as a court for all persons,' points to Mar as a place of pilgrimage to which people came from all sides. Gudea, accordingly, does not omit to include ' the lady of Mar ' in his list of the chief deities to whom he pays his devotions ; and on the assumption of the general favor in which the city of Mar stood as a sacred town, we may account for the fact that a much later ruler, Dungi, of the dynasty of Ur,* erects a temple to her honor. ^ Jensen, A'£7j?Ko/o^'2>, pp. 125, 126. 2 S&& Journal Asiatigtte, September-October, 1895, p. 393. 8 De Sarzec, pi. 8, col. v. 11. 8-12. 4 IR. pi. 2, no. 4. babylonian gods. 101 Pa-sag. A deity, the phonetic reading of whose name is unknown, or at all events uncertain,^ is mentioned once by Gudea in the long list of deities that has been several times referred to. The ideographs with which his name is written designate him as a chief of some kind, and in accord with this, Gudea calls him ' the leader of the land.' Pa-sag is mentioned immediately after the sun-god Utu, and in view of the fact that another solar deity, I-shum, whom we shall come across in a future chapter, is designated by the same title ^ as Pa-sag, it seems safe to conclude that the latter is likewise a solar deity, and in all probability, the prototype of I-shum, if not indeed identical with him. NiSABA (or Nidaba). In a dream which the gods send to Gudea, he sees among other things, a goddess, whose name may be read Nisaba or Nidaba.' Nina, who interprets the dream to the ruler of Shirpurla, declares that Nisaba is her sister. In a text belong- ing to a still earlier age, the deity is mentioned as the begetter of a king whose name is read Lugal-zaggisi.* From the man- ner in which the name of the goddess is written, as well as from other sources, we know that Nisaba is an agricultural deity. In historical texts she plays scarcely any role at all, but in incantations she is often referred to ; and from the fact that Nisaba is appealed to, to break the power of the demons in conjunction with Ea, it would appear that the position once occupied by her was no insignificant one. Nin-girsu, it will 1 Jensen regards Pa-sag as a possible phonetic form, but his view is hardly tenable. 2 See Zimmern, Busspsalmen, pp. 6o, 6i. 3 Cylinder A, cols. iv. and v. Amiaud read the name Nirba. 4 Just published by Hilprecht, Old Babylonian Inscriptions, \,2.^ pis. 38-42. Cf. p. 52. 102 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. be recalled, has also traits which connect him with agricultural life, and Nina being the daughter of Nin-si-a, one of the forms under which Ningirsu-Ninib appears, we may connect Nisaba directly with the cults of which Lagash formed the center. Nisaba must have been the consort of one of the agricultural gods, whose jurisdiction falls within Gudea's empire. Lugal- zaggisi, as the king of Uruk, assigns to the goddess a first place. Her origin- must, therefore, be sought in this region. In later days the name of the goddess is used to describe the fertility of the soil in general. So Ashurbanabal, describing the prosperity existing in his days, says that grain was abundant through the " increase of Nisaba.' ^ KU(?)-Anna. A goddess of this name — reading of the first sign doubtful — is mentioned by Ur-Bau, who builds a temple to her in Girsu. If Amiaud is correct in his reading of the first sign, the goddess was identified at one time by the Babylonians with the consort of Ramman — the storm-god. This would accord with the descrip- tion that Ur-Bau gives of the goddess. She is the one who deluges the land with water — belonging therefore to the same order as Bau. In a list of deities enumerated by a ruler of Erech, Lugal- zaggisi,^ are found (i) a local goddess, Umu, designated as the "priestess of Uruk," and occupying an inferior rank to (2) a goddess, 1 VR. col. i. 4S. 2 See at close of chapter vi. 3 Hilprecht, ib. no. 87, col. i. 30. BABYLONIAN GODS. 103 NlN-AKHA-KUDDU,^ who is called ' the mistress of Uruk.' The importance of Erech in the early history of Babylonia is emphasized by the inscrip- tions from Nippur, recently published by Dr. Hilprecht. It is natural, therefore, to find several deities of a purely local type commemorated by kings who belong to this region. The goddess Umu is not heard of again. The great goddess of Uruk, Nana, absorbs the smaller ones, and hence Nin-akha- kuddu survives chiefly in incantation texts as ' the lady of shining waters,' of ' purification,' and of ' incantations.' ^ Lastly, a passing reference may be made to several deities to whom sanctuaries are erected by Uru-Kagina in the great temple of Bau at Uru-azaga, and whom Amiaud regards as sons of Bau. Uru-Kagina enumerates three, Za-za-uru, Im-pa-ud-du, and Gim-nun-ta-ud-du-a.^ The element ud-dic in the last two names signifies ' radiant ' or ' rising up '; while pa-ud-du (like in Shul- pa-ud-du, p. 99) means " radiant sceptre.' If to this, we add that Im is 'storm,' it will appear plausible to see in the second name a form of a raging solar deity and perhaps also in the third ; gim mm in the latter name may mean ' creating lord.' To these Amiaud * adds from other sources, Khi-gir-nunna, Khi-shaga, Gurmu, and Zarmu. He takes these seven deities as sons of Bau, but he offers no conclusive evidence for his theory. Some of these deities may turn out to be synonymous with such as have already been met with. ^ lb. i. 32, Hilprecht reads Nin-a-gid-kha-du,but this can hardly be correct. 2 The two ideas, ' water ' and ' incantation,' are correlated. The ' waters ' meant are those used for purification purposes in connection with the magic formulas. 3 De Sarzec, pi. 32, col- ii. 9-1 1. 4 Records of the Past, N.S., i. 59. Amiaud reads the second name Im-ghud-ena and the third Gim (or Ur)-nun-ta-ena. The publication in De Sarzec favors my readings. CHAPTER V. THE CONSORTS OF THE GODS. Attention has already been directed to the comparatively small number of female deities that appear in the inscriptions of the first period of Babylonian history. We must, however, not conclude from this, that such deities did not exist in larger num- bers. On the contrary, we may feel certain that every god had his consort, and in some cases more than one. Several instances of such consorts have been furnished in this chapter ; but if the consorts of the larger number of these gods are unknown, it is because of rhe insignificant role that these consorts played. The goddesses of Babylonia, with few exceptions, become mere shadowy reflections of the gods, with but little independent power, and in some cases none at all. They owe what popu- larity they enjoyed to their association with their male com- panions. In consequence of this inferior role played by the female deities, the tendency becomes more pronounced, as we pass from the first to the second period of Babylonian history, to reduce by assimilation the small number that have indepen- dent attributes, until we reach a condition in which we have .practically only one goddess, appearing under many forms. It is only in the religious texts, and in some phases of the popular beliefs, that goddesses retain a certain degree of prominence. So, a goddess Allat, as we shall see, plays an important part as the chief goddess of the subterranean' cave that houses the dead. Allat appears to have been originally a consort of the famous Bel of Nippur, but through association with Nergal, who becomes the chief god of the lower world, almost all traces of the original character of the goddess disappear. Again, THE CONSORTS OF THE GOi)S. 105 Gula, the consort of Nin-ib, while occasionally mentioned in the historical texts of the second and third period, and under the form Ma-ma, as an element in a proper name belonging to the oldest period,^ is more frequently invoked in incantations as the healer of disease. The same is the case with other goddesses j so that we may conclude that from the earliest times, the Baby- lonian religion shared the trait so marked in all Semitic cults, of a combination of the male and female principle in the personifica- tion of the powers that controlled the fate of man. In part, no doubt, the minor importance of women, so far as the outward aspects of social and political life were concerned, is a factor in the altogether secondary importance attaching to the consorts of the gods ; but we may feel certain that there was no god, how- ever restricted in his jurisdiction, or however limited in the number of his worshippers, who had not associated with him a female companion, who follows him as the shadow follows the substance. 1 According to Hilprecht, ib. p. 48, note 6. For Ma-ma and Me-me^ as names of Gula, see chapter viii. CHAPTER VI. GUDEA'S PANTHEON. GuDEA manifests a fondness for giving to his pantheon as large a compass as possible. In this respect, he follows earlier examples, and also sets an example which is followed by many of the rulers of Babylonia and Assyria, who felt that the larger the number of gods invoked by them, the more impressive would their own position appear in the eyes of their subjects. More- over, by incorporating in their pantheon the gods associated with districts that they controlled, they would not only secure the pro- tection of these deities, but would emphasize their own claim to an extended sovereignty. The beginning and the close of dedicatory and commemorative inscriptions were the favorite opportunities, seized upon by the kings, for parading the list of the powers under whose patronage they wished to appear. These lists are both interesting and valuable, as furnishing in a convenient form a summary of the chief gods included in the Babylonian pantheon at the various historical periods. At the close of one of his inscriptions,^ Gudea furnishes a list of no less than eighteen deities. In rapid succession he enumerates Anu, En-lil (Bel), Nin-khar-sag, En-ki (Ea), En-zu (Sin), Nin- girsu, Nina, Nin-si-a, Ga-sig-dug, Bau, Ninni, Utu (Shamash), Pa-sag, Gal-alim, Dun-shagga, Nin-Mar, Dumuzi-zuaba, Nin- gish-zida. These deities may be taken as indicative of the territorial extent of Gudea's jurisdiction. They are called upon to punish him who attempts to alter the decrees of the ruler, or to efface the memory of his deeds. Again, at the beginning of one of his inscriptions, he appeals to Nin-girsu, En-lil, Nina, 1 Inscr. B, cols, viii, ix. GUDEA'S PANTHEON. 107 Bau, Ga-sig-dug, Gal-alim, and Dun-shagga. He recounts what he has done to promote the cults of these deities, and upon his conduct he grounds his hope that they will aid him in his undertakings. The lists, as will be observed, vary in the number and in the order of the gods enumerated. In the second list, the position of Nin-girsu at the head is due to the fact that the inscription commemorates the dedication of a sanctuary to that god. But Nin-girsu, despite his rank as the chief god of Lagash, belongs to a second class of deities. Standing far above him is the triad, Anu, Bel, and Ea, the gods that personify, as we have seen, the great divisions of the universe, — heaven, earth, and water. These gods, accordingly, take precedence of Nin-girsu in the first list. In a succeeding chapter, the significance of this triad for the Babylonian religion will be fully set forth. For the present, it is sufficient to note that the systematization of popular beliefs, involved in the distinctions thus emphasized in the groupings of deities into classes, begins at so early a period. This systematization, however, has not yet a'ssumed final shape. True, the moon- god has already been given the place, immediately following upon the triad, that he will hold in the developed form of Baby- lonian theology ; but while, as we have seen. Sin properly takes precedence of the sun-god, the latter should follow in the wake of his associate. Not only, however, does Nin-girsu precede, but two other deities who are closely related in general char- acter to the " warrior deity ' of Gudea's dominion. Then the two great goddesses, Bau and Ninni, are introduced, and it is not until they are disposed of that the sun-god, together again with Pa-sag as a kind of lieutenant,^ is invoked. In the arrangement of the five remaining deities, no special principle can be recognized. They, evidently, occupy a minor rank. It is possible, then, to distinguish no less than four classes in the old Babylonian pantheon : (i) the great triad, Anu, Bel, and Ea ; 1 See above, p. loi. 108 SABYLOmAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. (2) a second group, as yet incomplete, but which will eventually include Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, representing the great powers of nature — moon, sun, and storm ; (3) the great gods, the patron deities of the more important political centers of the country ; and (4) the minor ones, representing the local cults of less important places. Naturally, the dividing line between the two last-named classes is not sharply marked, and in accordance with the ever-varying political kaleidoscope, local deities will rise from the rank of minor gods to a higher place in the pantheon ; while such as once enjoyed high esteem will, through decline in the political fortunes of their worshippers, be brought down from the. higher to an inferior rank.^ It is this constant interaction between the political situation and the relationship of the gods to one another, that constitutes one of the most striking features of the religion of Babylonia and Assyria. In the course of time, as an organized pantheon leads to greater stability in the domain of theological specula- tion, the influence of the politics of the country on the religion becomes less marked, without, however, disappearing altogether. The various classes into which the gods are divided, are definitely fixed by the schools of theology that, as we shall see, take their rise in the Euphrates Valley. The rivalry, on the one hand, between the Babylonian empire united under one head, and the Assyrian empire on the other, alone remains to bring about an occasional exchange of places between the two gods who stand at the head of the great gods of the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheon respectively. The attempt has been made by Amiaud^ to arrange the pantheon of this oldest period in a genealogical order. In Gudea's long list of deities, he detects three generations, — the three chief gods and one goddess, as the progenitors of Sin, Shamash, Nin-girsu, Bau, and others. 1 See Winckler's excellent remarks on the relationship between the city and the god in ancient Babylonia {Altorientalische Forsclmngen^ iii. 232-235). 2 Records of the Past^ N.s., i. 57-59. GUDMA'S PANTHEON. 109 The gods of this second division give rise to a third class, viewed again as the offspring of the second. Professor Davis, taking up this idea of Amiaud, has quite recently maintained ' that the family idea must form our starting-point for an under- standing of the pantheon of Lagash. The theory, however, does not admit of consistent application. There are gods, as Amiaud recognized, who cannot be brought under his scheme, so far at least as present testimony is concerned ; and others can only by an arbitrary assumption be forced into accord with the theory. Moreover, we should expect to find traces of this family idea in the later phases of the Assyro-Babylonian pan- theon. Such, however, is not the case. A more reasonable and natural explanation of the relationship existing between many — not all — of the gods of Gudea's pantheon has already been suggested. In part, we must look to the development of a theological system of thought in the Euphrates Valley to account for the superior position accorded to certain gods, and in part, political conditions and political changes afford an explanation for the union of certain deities into a family group. So far, indeed, Amiaud is correct, that the relationship existing between the various deities, was as a rule expressed in terms applicable to human society. The secondary position occupied, e.g., by Sin when compared with a god whose domain is the entire ' lower regions,' would be aptly expressed by calling the moon-god the eldest son of En-lil or Bel ; and, similarly, a goddess like Bau would be called the daughter of Anu. It is a mistake, however, to interpret the use of ' daugh- ter ' and ' son ' literally. Such terms are employed in all Semitic languages in a figurative sense, to indicate a dependent position of some sort. Again, wq have seen that the union of a number of cities or states under one head would be followed by a union of the deities proper to these cities or states. That union would 1 In a paper on " The Gods of Shirpurla,'' read before the American Oriental Society in April, 1895. (Proceedings, cckiii-ccxviii.) 110 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. be expressed, according to circumstances, either by placing the deities on a footing of equality — in which case they would be consorts, or brothers and sisters, offsprings therefore of one and the same god — or, the superior rank of one patron god would be indicated by assigning to the god of a conquered or subordinate territory the rank of offspring or attendant. In studying such a list as that presented by Gudea, we must, therefore, make due allowance for what may be called local peculiarities and local conditions. It is only by comparing his list with others that we can differentiate between the general features of Babylonian cults and the special features due to political and local associations. We are in a position now to institute this comparison for a period which is certainly some centuries earlier than Gudea. The date of the reign of Lugal- zaggisi, king of Uruk, who has been several times referred to in a previous chapter, is fixed by Hilprecht at c. 4500 B.C., but it is doubtful whether so high an age will be accepted by scholars. The chronology for the period beyond Gudea is still in a very uncertain condition. Lugal-zaggisi, in a long list of deities at the beginning of an important inscription, enumer- ates in succession Anu, the goddess Nisaba, the gods En-lil (or Bel), En-ki (=Ea), En-zu (Sin), Utu (the sun-god), the goddess Ninni (or Nana[?]), Nin-khar-sag, Umu, and Nin-akha- kuddu. As for Anu, the king introduces the name, as Ur- Ningirsu of Lagash does (see above, p. 90), in calling himself ' priest of Anu,' and which, according to the explanation sug- gested, means simply ' divine priest.' Bel, Ea, Sin, and Shamash (or Utu) are common to Gudea and Lugal-zaggisi. These constitute, then, the great gods whose worship is no longer limited to any particular district. They have become common property, in part through the sanc- tity attached to the places where the gods were worshipped, in part through the antiquity of these places, and in part, no doubt, as the result of a political development lying behind GUDEA'S PANl'HEON. • 111 the period under consideration. The prominence given by Lugal-zaggisi to Nisaba is ratlier surprising. He calls himself and also his father, ' hero ' of Nisaba. If, however, it be borne in mind that of the goddesses at least two, Umu and Nin-akha- kuddu, are of a local character, the conclusion appears justified that Nisaba was a goddess associated more particularly with the district in which Uruk lay. The goddess Ninni (written simply as ' the goddess ') is no doubt identical with the great Nana of Uruk, and Nin-khar-sag is introduced as the consort of En-lil. As a result of this comparison, we may note the tendency towards a general recognition of certain great gods, which is more fully developed in the period of Hammurabi. At the same time, the loyalty of the rulers to the gods, peculiar to their own district, is manifested by the prominent place assigned in the several cases to gods who otherwise play an insignificant role, and who eventually are absorbed by others ; and lastly, as between Lugal-zaggisi and Gudea, the observation may be made of the disposition to emphasize local gods, less for their own sake, than because of the eclat furnished by the enumeration of a large pantheon, which shall be coequal in extent and dignity to the district claimed by the rulers and to the rank assumed by them. CHAPTER VII. SUMMARY. We have thus passed in review the old Babylonian pantheon, so far as the discovered texts have revealed their names and epithets. The list does not claim to be exhaustive. That future texts will add to its length, by revealing the existence at this early period of many known to us at present only from later texts or from the religious hterature,' is more than likely. The nature of the old Babylonian religion entails, as a necessary consequence, an array of gods that might be termed endless. Local cults would ever tend to increase with the rise of new towns, and while the deities thus worshipped would not rise to any or much importance, still their names would become known in larger circles, and a ruler might, for the sake of increasing his own lustre, make mention of one or more of them, honoring them at the same time by an epithet which might or might not accurately define their character. As long as the various districts of Babylonia were not formally united under one head, various local cults might rise to equally large proportions, while the gods worshipped as the special patrons of the great centers, as Lagash, Ur, Uruk, Nippur, and the like, would retain their prominence, even though the political status of the cities sacred to them ^ Quite recently there have been found at Telloh some thirty thousand clay tablets, chiefly lists of sacrifices, temple inventories, and legal documents. These tablets will probably furnisli additional names of deities, and perhaps throw further light on those known. Further excavations at Nippur will likewise add to the material. But after all, for our main purpose in this chapter, which is the illustration of the chief traits of the Babylonian pantheon in early days, these expected additions to the pantheon will not be of paramount significance. SUMMAR V. • 113 suffered a decline. The ruler of the district that claimed a supremacy over one that formerly occupied an independent position, would hasten to emphasize this control by proudly claiming the patron deity as part of his pantheon. The popu- larity of Sin at Ur suffered no diminution because the supremacy of Ur yielded to that of Uruk. On the contrary, the god gained new friends who strove to rival the old ones in manifestations of reverence ; and when, as happened in several instances, the patron deities were personifications of natural phenomena, whose worship through various circumstances became associated with particular localities, there was an additional reason for the survival, and, indeed, growing importance of such local cults, quite independent of the political fortunes that befell the cities in which the gods were supposed to dwell. As a consequence, there are a considerable number of deities who are met with both at the beginning and at the end of the first period of Babylonian history — a period, be it remembered, that, so far as known, already covers a distance of 2,000 years. These are of two classes, (a) deities of purely local origin, surviving through the historical significance of the places where they were worshipped, and (6) deities, at once local in so far as they are associated with a fixed spot, but at the same time having a far more general character by virtue of being personifications of the powers of nature. The jurisdic- tion of both classes of deities might, through political vicissi- tudes, be extended over a larger district than the one to which they were originally confined, and in so far their local character would tend to be obscured. It would depend, however, upon other factors, besides the merely political ones, whether these cults would take a sufficiently deep hold upon the people to lead to the evolution of deities, entirely dissociated from fixed seats, who might be worshipped anywhere, and whose attri- butes would tend to become more and more abstract in charac- ter. Such a process, however, could not be completed by the 114 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. silent working of what, for want of a better name, we call the genius of the people. It requires the assistance, conscious and in a measure pedantic, of the thinkers and spiritual guides of a people. In other words, the advance in religious concep- tions from the point at which we find them when the union of the Babylonian states takes place, is conditioned upon the infusion of the theological spirit into the mass of beliefs that constituted the ancient heritage of the people. On the other hand, various circumstances have already been suggested that cooperated, already prior to the days of Ham- murabi, in weeding out the superfluity of deities, at least so far as recognition of them in the official inscriptions of the rulers were concerned. Deities, attached to places of small and ever-diminishing importance would, after being at first adopted into the pantheon by some ruler desirous of emphasiz- ing his control over the town in question, end in being entirely absorbed by some more powerful god, whose attributes were similar to those of his minor companion. Especially would this be the case with deities conceived as granting assistance in warfare. The glory of the smaller warrior gods would fade through the success achieved by a Nin-girsu. The names and epithets would be transferred to the more powerful god, and, beyond an occasional mention, the weaker would entirely pass out of consideration. Again, the worship of the moon or of the sun, or of certain aspects of the sun, — the morning sun, the noonday sun, and the like, — at localities of minor impor- tance, would yield to the growing popularity of similar worship in important centers. As a consequence, names that formerly designated distinct deities or different phases of one and the same deity, would, by being transferred to a single one, come to be mere epithets of this one. The various names would be used interchangeably, without much regard to their original force. All the essential elements of the Babylonian religion are already to be found in the conditions prevailing during the SUMMARY. • 115 period that we have been considering. Some new deities are met with in the periods that followed, but there is no reason to believe that any profound changes in the manner of worship, or in the conceptions regarding the gods, were introduced. The relations, however, which the gods bear to one another are considerably modified, their attributes become more sharply defined, the duties and privileges pertaining to each are regu- lated. Hand in hand with this systematization, the organization of the cult becomes more perfect, the ritual enters upon further phases of development, speculations regarding the unknown have their outcome in the establishment of dogmas. Finally the past, with its traditions and legends, is viewed under the aspect of later religious thought. The products of popular fancy are reshaped, given a literary turn that was originally foreign to them, and so combined and imbued with a meaning as to re- flect the thoughts and aspirations of a comparatively advanced age. What may be called the flowering of the theological epoch in the history of the Babylonian religion, viewed as a unit, is so directly dependent upon the political union of the Babylonian states, brought about by Hammurabi (c. 2300 B.C.), that it may be said to date from this event. CHAPTER VIII. THE PANTHEON IN THE DAYS OF HAMMURABI. Marduk. The immediate result of Hammurabi's master-stroke in bring- ing the various states of the Euphrates Valley under a single control, was the supremacy secured for his capital, of the city of Babylon over all other Babylonian cities, and with this supremacy, the superior position henceforth assumed by the patron deity of the capital, Marduk.' It is needless for our purposes to enter upon the question as to the age of the city of Babylon,^ nor as to its political fortunes prior to the rise of the dynasty of which Hammurabi was the sixth member. That its beginnings were modest, and that its importance, if not its origin, was of recent date in comparison with such places as Eridu, Nippur, Lagash, Ur, and the like, is proved by the absence of the god Marduk in any of the inscriptions that we have been considering up to this point. The first mention of the god occurs in the inscriptions of Hammurabi, where he appears distinctly as the god of the city of Babylon. No doubt the immediate predecessors of Hammurabi regarded Marduk in 1 The name is also written Ma-ru-duk, which points to its having been regarded (for which there is other evidence) as a compound of maru, ' son,' and an element, duk{ii), which in religious and other texts designates the ' glorious chamber ' in which the god determines the fate of humanity. Such an * etymology ' is, however, merely a play upon the name, similar to the plays upon proper names found in the Old Testament. The real etymology is unknown. The form Marduk is Semitic, and points to an underlying stem, rdk. Marduk appears under a variety of names which will be taken up at their proper place. See Schrader's Assyrisch-Babyl. Keilschriften, p. 129 ; and the same author's Cuneiform Inscrip. and the O. T. (p. 422) for other etymologies. 2 Hommel's view that Gish-galla, in Gudea's inscriptions, is Babylon lacks convin- cing evidence, but the city may be as old as Gudea's days for all that. THE PAA'THEON IN THE DAYS OF HAMMURABI. 117 the same light as the great conqueror, so that we are justified in applying the data, furnished by the inscriptions of Hammu- rabi to such of his predecessors, of whom records are still lacking. It is to Marduk, that Hammurabi ascribes his suc- cess. The king regards himself as the beloved of Marduk. The god rejoices his heart and gives him power and plenty. Even when paying his homage at the shrines of other deities, he does not forget to couple the name of Marduk with that of the deity whose protection he invokes. So at Sippar, sacred to Shamash, and where the king deposits a cylinder recording the improvements that he instigated in the city, he associates the sun-god with Marduk, whereas in contradistinction to the rulers of the old Babylonian cities or states, when addressing Marduk, he does not find it necessary to make mention at the same time of an entire pantheon. Marduk's protection suffices for all purposes. This, of course, does not exclude the worship of other gods. A reference has already been made to the king's care for the city of Shamash. In this respect, he was but following the example of his predecessors, who, while regarding Babylon as their capital, were zealous in doing honor to ancient centers of worship. So one of these predecessors, Zabu, restores the temple of Shamash at Sippar, and that of Anunit at Agade. Hammurabi, besides his work at Sippar, builds a temple to Ninni at Hallabi.' Babylon, however, is the beloved city of Marduk, and upon its beautification and improvement Hammurabi expends his chief energy. Such are the endearing terms in which he speaks of his god, as to give one the impression that, when thinking of Marduk, the king for the moment loses sight of the existence of other gods. The most striking tribute, however, that is paid to Marduk in the period of Hammurabi is his gradual assumption of the role played by the old En-lil or Bel of Nippur, once the head of the Babylonian pantheon. This identification is 1 Near Sippar. 118 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. already foreshadowed in the title belu rahii, i.e., ' great lord,' which Hammurabi is fond of bestowing upon Marduk. It is more clearly indicated in an inscription of his son, Samsu-iluna, who represents Bel, 'the king of heaven and earth,' as trans- ferring to Marduk, the ' first-born son of Ea,' rulership over ' the four regions,' — a phrase that at this time had already assumed a much wider meaning than its original portent. In the religious literature of this age, which reflects the same tendency, Bel expressly transfers his title " lord of the lands ' ^ to Marduk, while Ea likewise pays homage to his son, declaring that the latter's " name ' shall also be Ea. The transference of the name, according to Babylonian notions, is equivalent to a transference of power. As a consequence, Bel and Marduk are blended into one personage, Marduk becoming known as Bel-Marduk, and finally, the first part of the compound sinking to the level of a mere adjective, the god is addressed as ' lord Marduk,' or ' Marduk, the lord.' The old Bel is entirely for- gotten, or survives at best in conventional association with Anu and Ea, as a member of the ancient triad. It has been satisfactorily shown ^ that Marduk was originally a solar deity. His association with Babylon, therefore, must be viewed in the same light as the association of Sin, the moon-god, with the city of Ur, and the association of Shamash, the sun-god, with Larsa and Sippar. Just as in the latter places, other cults besides that of the patron deity prevailed, so in Babylon it was merely the prominence which, for some reason, the worship of the sun-god acquired, that led to the closer identification of this particular deity with the city, until he became viewed as the god /ar excellence of the city, and the city itself as his favorite residence. As long as Larsa and Sippar retained a prominence overshadowing that of Babylon, 1 Bel mat&ti. 2 Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians^ pp. 98 seq. ; Jensen, Kosmologie der Bahylonier, p. 88, THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF WAMMURAB/. 119 the sun cult at the latter place could attract but little attention. Only as Babylon began to rival, and finally to supersede, other centers of sun-worship, could Marduk be brought into the front rank of prevailing cults. It may appear strange, in view of this original character of Marduk, that neither in the inscrip- tions of Hammurabi, nor in those of his successors, is there any direct reference to his qualities as a solar deity. However, in the ideographs composing his name, which are to be inter- preted as ' child of the day,' ^ and in the zodiacal system, as perfected by the Babylonian scholars, there lurk traces of the god's solar origin. Beyond this, perhaps, in certain set phrases, surviving in prayers addressed to him. The explanation for this absence of solar traits is to be sought in the peculiar political conditions that resulted in bringing Marduk into such prominence. Hammurabi was preeminently a conquering king. He waged war on all sides, and carried on his campaigns for many years. When he finally succeeded in bringing both North and South Babylonia under his sway, it still required constant watching to keep his empire together. His patron god, therefore, the protector of the city, whose jurisdiction was thus spread over a larger extent of territory than that of any other deity, must have appeared to Hammurabi and his follow- ers, as well as to those vanquished by him, essentially as a warrior. It is he who hands over to kings the land and its inhabitants. The fact that he was a solar deity would become obscured by the side of the more potent fact that, as god of the city of Babylon, his sway was supreme. He therefore became Marduk, the 'great lord.' The epithets bestowed upon him naturally emphasized the manner in which he manifested him- self, and these epithets, therefore, referred to his power, to his supremacy over other gods, to his favor shown to his worship- ^ So Delitzsch, Beitrdge zur Assyriologic, ii. 623. The first part of the name is also used to designate the ' young bullock,' and it is possible, therefore, that the god was pictured in this way, as both Anu and Sin are occasionally called ' bulls.' 120 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. pers by granting them unprecedented glory ; and since the political supremacy remained undisputed for many centuries, no opportunity was afforded for ever reverting to the attributes of the god as a solar deity. He remained — if one may so express it — a political deity. The political significance of Babylon permitted only one phase of his nature to be brought forward. In the religious texts, however, preserving as they do the more primitive conceptions by the side of the most advanced ones, some traces of other attributes besides prowess in war are found. By virtue of his character as a solar deity, Marduk, like the orb personified through him, is essentially a life-giving god. Whereas Shamash is viewed as the 'judge of mankind,' Marduk becomes the god who restores the dead to life, though he shares this power with Shamash, Gula, Nebo, and Nergal. But after all, even in the religious texts, his more prominent role is that of a ruler, — a magnified king. He protects the weak, releases the imprisoned, and makes great the small. He controls by his powerful hand the mountains and rivers and fountains. He is the counsellor who guides the decrees, even of the great gods, Anu- and Bel. On his head rests a crown with high horns, as the symbol of rulership. As the supreme riiler, life and death are in his hands. Blessings flow from him ; and of awe-inspiring appearance, his wrath inflicts severe punishment on the evil-doer. It is a noteworthy circumstance, and characteristic of the phase of the Babylonian religion which we are considering, that the extension of Marduk's political sway did not lead to the establishment of Marduk cults outside of Babylon. One reason for this was that, in accordance with the political con- ceptions, dwelt upon in the introductory chapter, the empire of Babylonia was regarded simply as an extension of the city of Babylon. Babylonia, therefore, being identified in theory with the city of Babylon, there was no need of emphasizing the THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 121 power of Marduk by establishing his cult elsewhere. Within the limits of Babylon, however, there might be more than one shrine to Marduk, and accordingly, when the city was extended so as to include the place known as Borsippa, a temple to Marduk was also erected there. The temple on the east side of the Euphrates, known as E-Sagila, ' the lofty house,' was the older, and dates probably from the beginnings of Babylon itself ; that in Bor- sippa, known as E-Zida, " the true house,' seems to have been founded by Hammurabi.' While it was not in accord with the dignity attaching to Marduk that his cult should be established outside of the precincts of the city of Babylon, it would only add to his glory to have the worship of other deities grouped around his own sanctuary. Such a course would emphasize the central position of Marduk among the gods, and accordingly, we find that the chief gods of Babylonia are represented by shrines within the sacred precincts of his great temples at Babylon and Borsippa. First among these shrines is that of Marduk's consort, Sarpanitum. Neither Hammurabi nor his immediate successor make men- tion of Sarpanitum, and at no time does she appear independ- ently of Marduk. The glory of Marduk did not permit of any rival, and so his consort becomes merely his shadow, — less significant than most of the consorts of the male deities. Her name, signifying the ' silvery bright one,' evidently stands in some connection with the solar character of her consort. Popular etymology, by a play upon the name, made of Sarpanitum (as though Zer-banit) the " offspring-producing ' goddess. She had her shrine within the precincts of the great temple E-Sagila, but we are not told of any special honors being paid her, nor do we find her invoked to any extent in incantations or in votive inscriptions. Agumkakrimi, or Agum (as he is also called), 1 Louvre Inscription II, col. ii. 11. 12-17. 122 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. who rules about five centuries after Hammurabi, speaks of having recovered the image of Sarpanitum, and that of Marduk, out of the hands of a mountainous people living to the north- west of Babylonia, in the district between the Bay of Iskenderun and the Euphrates. The capture of the statues of the patron gods points to a great humiliation which Babylon must have encountered. Upon receiving a favorable omen' from the sun- god, Agum undertakes the task of bringing Marduk and Sar- panitum back to their seats. Their temples, too, at Babylon appear to have suffered damage during the invasion of the city, and accordingly the statues are placed in the temple of Shamash pending the restoration of E-Sagila. Agum dwells at length upon the handsome garments and head-dress, studded with precious stones, that he prepared for the god and his consort. In all this description, one feels that it is Marduk for whom the honors are intended, and that Sarpanitum is of less than secondary importance, — shining merely by the reflected glory of her great liege, whose presence in Babylon was essential to a restoration of Babylon's position. There are reasons for believing, however, that Sarpanitum once enjoyed considerable importance of her own, that prior to the rise of Marduk to his supreme position, a goddess was worshipped in Babylon, one of whose special functions it was to protect the progeny while still in the mother's womb. A late king of Babylon, the great Nebuchadnezzar, appeals to this attri- bute of the goddess. To her was also attributed the possession of knowledge concealed from men. Exactly to what class of deities she belonged, we are no longer able to say, but it is certain that at some time, probably about the time of Hammurabi, an amalgamation took place between her and another goddess known as Erua,^ — a name that etymologically suggests the idea 1 There is also a goddess Eria worshipped in Elam, who may be identical with Erua. The scribes in the days of Nebuchadnezzar {c. 1140 B.C.), at least, appear to have thought so, for they associate her with Bel, just as Sarpanitum is associated with Bel-Marduk. (See the Inscription VR. 57, col. ii. 11. 11, 12.) THE PANTHEON IN THE DAYS OF tfAMMURABI. 123 of 'begetting." She is represented as dwelling in the temple of E-Zida at Borsippa, and was originally the consort of Nabu, the chief god of this place.^ A late ruler of Babylon — Shamash-shumukin — calls her the queen of the gods, and declares himself to have been nominated by her to lord it over men. A factor in this amalgamation of Erua and Sarpanitum was the close association brought about in Babylon between Marduk and a god whose seat was originally at the Persian Gulf — Ea. The cult of this god, as we shall see, survived in Babylonia through all political vicissitudes, and so did that of some other minor water-deities that belong to this region. Among these was Erua, whose worship centered in one of the islands in or near the gulf. Wisdom and the life-giving principle were two ideas associated in the Babylonian mind with water. As inferior in power to Ea, Erua appears to have been regarded as the daughter of Ea, and such was the sway exercised by Ea over men's minds, that even the Babylonian schoolmen did not venture to place Marduk over Ea, but pictured him as Ea's son. Erua, however, was not prominent enough to become Marduk's mother, and so she was regarded as his consort. In this capacity she was associated with Sarpanitum, and the two were merged into one personality. It rarely happens that all the links in such a process are preserved, but in this case, the epithets borne by Sarpanitum-Erua, such as ' lady of the deep,' ' mistress of the place where the fish dwell,' ' voice of the deep,' point the way towards the solution of the problem involved in the amalgamation of Erua and Sarpanitum.^ 1 Whether, however, this was the real meaning of the name is doubtful, for the name of the goddess is also written Aru and Arua, which points to a different verbal stem. 2 See below under Tashmitum. 3 There are indications also of an arrested amalgamation of Erua-Sarpanitum with Tashmitum, the wife of Nabu. (See Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. ii2.) 124 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. Nabu. The gcd Nabu (or Nebo) enjoys a great popularity in the Babylonian cult, but he owes his prestige to the accident that, as god of Borsippa, he was associated with Marduk. Indeed, his case is a clear instance of the manner in which Marduk overshadows all his fellows. Only as they are brought into some manner of relationship with him do they secure a position in the pantheon during this second period of Babylonian his- tory. Since Nabu's position in the pantheon, once established, incurs but little change, it will be proper, in treating of him, to include the testimony furnished by the historical records of the Assyrian kings. The most prominent attribute of Nabu, at least in the later phases of the Babylonian religion, is that of wisdom. He is the wise, the all-knowing. He embodies in his person all the wisdom of the gods. To him the Assyrian kings are particularly fond of ascribing, not merely the under- standing that they possess, but the thought of preserving the wisdom of the past for future ages ; and in doing this the Assyrians were but guided by examples furnished by the south. Wisdom being associated, in the minds of the Babylonians, with the watery deep, one is tempted to seek an aqueous origin for Nabu. Such a supposition, although it cannot be positively established, has much in its favor. It is not necessary, in order to maintain this proposition, to remove Nabu from Borsippa. The alluvial deposits made by the Euphrates yearly have already demonstrated that Babylon lay much nearer at one time to the Persian Gulf than it does at present. The original seat of Ea, whose worship continued through all times to enjoy great popularity at Babylon, was at Eridu, which, we know, once lay on the Persian Gulf, but does so no longer. The similarity of the epithets bestowed in various texts upon Ea and Nabu point most decidedly to a similar starting-point for both ; and since in a syllabary ' we find the god actually identi- 1 Rawlinson, ii. 60, 30. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 125 fied with a deity of Dilmun, — probably one of the islands near Bahrein, — there are grounds for assuming that a tradition survived among the schoolmen, which brought Nabu into some connection with the Persian Gulf. Sayce ^ has already sug- gested that Borsippa may have originally stood on an inlet of the Persian Gulf. Nabu is inferior to Ea, and were it not for the priority of Marduk, he would have become in Babylonian theology, the son of Ea. Since this distinction ^ is given to Marduk, no direct indication of an original relationship to Ea has survived. But besides being the god of wisdom and intelligence, Nabu is a patron of agriculture, who causes the grain to sprout forth. In religious and historical texts, he is lauded as the deity who opens up the subterranean sources in order to irrigate the fields. He heaps up the grain in the storehouses, and on the other hand, the withdrawal of his favor is followed by famine and distress. Jensen^ would conclude from this that he was originally (like Marduk, therefore) a solar deity. This, how- ever, is hardly justified, since it is just as reasonable to deduce his role as the producer of fertility from his powers as lord of some body of water. However this may be, in the case of Nabu, there are no grounds for supposing that he represents the combination of two originally distinct deities. A later — chiefly theoretical — amalgamation of Nabu with a god Nusku will be discussed in a subsequent chapter.* Hammurabi and his immediate successors, it is noteworthy, do not make mention of Nabu. A sufficient number of inscriptions of this period exists to make it probable that this omission is not accidental. This dynasty was chiefly concerned in firmly establishing the position of Marduk. Other deities could, indeed, be tolerated at his side, provided they were subservient to him ; but Nabu, the god of a place so near Babylon, might prove a dangerous rival because 1 Hihhert Lectures, p. 117. ^ Kosmologie, p. 239. 2 See further on, sub Ea. ^ Sud Nusku, chapter xiii. 126 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. of this proximity. The city on the west bank of the Euphrates was probably as old as that on the east, if not, indeed, older. It did not seem consistent with this devotion to Marduk that Hammurabi and his successors should also recognize Nabu. Policy dictated that Nabu should be ignored, that the attempt must be made to replace his worship, even in Borsippa, by that of Marduk. Viewed in this light, Hammurabi's establishment of the Marduk cult in Borsippa assumes a peculiar significance. It meant that Borsippa was to be incorporated as part of Baby- lon, and that Marduk was henceforth to take the place occupied by Nabu. In order to emphasize this, Hammurabi actually transfers the name of Nabu's temple in Borsippa, &Zida, to the one erected by him at that place to Marduk. Did he perhaps entirely suppress the worship of Nabu at Borsippa ? It would almost appear 39 from Agum's utter omission of Nabu. Only the statues of Marduk and Sarpanitum seem to have been robbed by the Hani. Not a word is said as to Nabu. Either there was no statue at the time at Borsippa, or the cult was of such insignificance that the capture of the god was not consid- ered of sufficient moment to occupy the thoughts of the enemy, as httle as it did that of the rulers of Babylon at the time. In the inscription in which Hammurabi recounts the building of E-Zida in Borsippa, there are certain expressions which go to substantiate the proposition that Nabu is intentionally ignored.^ He calls Marduk the lord of E-Sagila and of E-Zida ; he speaks of Borsippa as the beloved city of Marduk, Just as though it were Babylon. Taking unto himself the functions of Nabu, he even appears to play upon the name, which signifies ' pro- 1 Tiele, Geschichte d. Religion i. Alterthum^ i. 171 and 188, is of the opinion tliat Nabu is a late deity wliose worsliip dates from a period considerably subsequent to Hammurabi. This conclusion from the non-occurrence of the god in early inscriptions is not justified. There is no reason wliy Nabu should have been added as a deity in later times, and in general we must be on our guard against assuming new deities subsequent to Hammurabi. It is much more plausible to assume the restored popularity of very old ones. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 127 claimer,' and styles himself the nabiu Anu, ' the proclaimer of Anu.' However this may be, the attempt to suppress Nabu did not succeed, — a proof that in early times he had gained popular favor. He had to be readmitted into the Babylonian pantheon, though in a subordinate position to Marduk. He took his place in the theological system as the son of Marduk, and on the great festival — the New Year's day — celebrated in honor of the great god of Babylon, the son shared some of the honors accorded to the father. In time, his sanctuary at Borsippa was again recognized. The former rivalry gave way to a cordial entente. Nabu was even granted a chapel in E-Sagila at Babylon, to which likewise the name of E-Zida was given. Every New Year's day the son paid a visit to his father, on which occasion the statue of Nabu was carried in solemn procession from Borsippa across the river, and along the main street of Babylon leading to the temple of Marduk ; and in return the father deity accompanied his son part way on the trip back to E-Zida. In this way, due homage was accorded to Marduk, and at the same time the close and cordial bonds of union between Babylon and Borsippa found satisfactory illustration. E-Sagila and E-Zida become, and remain through- out the duration of the Babylonian religion, the central sanctua- ries of the land around which the most precious recollections cluster, as dear to the Assyrians as to the Babylonians. The kings of the northern empire vie with their southern cousins in beautifying and enlarging the structures sacred to Marduk and Nabu. In view of the explanation offered for the silence maintained by Hammurabi and his successors regarding Nabu, we are justified in including Nabu in the Babylonian pantheon of those days. In later times, among the Assyrians, the Nabu cult, as already intimated, grows in popularity. The northern monarchs, in fact, seem to give Nabu the preference over Marduk. They do not tire of proclaiming him as the source 128 BABYLOJVIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. of wisdom. The staff is his symbol, which is interpreted in a double sense, as the writer's stylus and as the ruler's sceptre. He becomes, also, the bestower of royal power upon his favorites. Without his aid, order cannot be maintained in the land. Diso- bedience to him is punished by the introduction of foreign rule. Political policy may have had a share in this preference shown for the minor god of Babylon. The Assyrian kings were always anxious to do homage to the gods of Babylon, in order to indicate their control over the southern districts. They were particularly proud of their title ' governor of Be!.' ' On the other hand, they were careful not to give offence to the chief of the Assyrian pantheon, — the god Ashur, — by paying too much honor to Marduk, who was in a measure Ashur's rival. In consequence, as Hammurabi and his successors endeavored to ignore Nabu, the Assyrian rulers now turned the tables by manifesting a preference for Nabu ; and obliged as they were to acknowledge that the intellectual impulses came from the south, they could accept a southern god of wisdom without encroaching upon the province of Ashur, whose claims to homage lay in the prowess he showed in war. Marduk was too much like A.shur to find a place at his side. Nabu was a totally different deity, and in worshipping him who was the son of Marduk, the Assyrian kings felt that they were paying due regard to the feelings of their Babylonian subjects. The cult of Nabu thus became widely extended in Assyria. Statues of the god were erected and deposited in shrines built for the purpose, although the fact was not lost sight of that the real dwelling-place of the god was in Borsippa. At the end of the ninth century B.C. this cult seems to have reached its height. We learn of a temple at Calah, and of no less than eight statues of the god being erected in the days of Ramman-nirari HI., and the terms in which the god is addressed might lead one to believe that an attempt was made to concentrate the 1 Bel being Marduk, the title was equivalent to that of ' governor of Babylonia,' THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 129 cult in Assyria on him.^ Tliis, however, was an impossibility. As long as i\ssyria continued to play the role of the subduer of nations, Ashur — the god of war par excellence — neces- sarily retained his position at the head of the Assyrian pan- theon. The popularity of Nabu, which continued to the end of the Assyrian empire, and gained a fresh impetus in the days of Ashurbanabal, who, as a patron of literature, invokes Nabu on thousands of the tablets of his library as ' the opener of ears to understanding,' reacted on his position in the Baby- lonian cult. In the new Babylonian empire, which continued to so large a degree the traditions of Assyria, it is no accident that three of the kings — Nabupolassar, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nabonnedos — bear names containing the deity as one of the elements. While paying superior devotion to Marduk, who once more became the real and not merely the nominal head of the pantheon, they must have held Nabu in no small esteem ; and indeed the last-named king was suspected of trying actu- ally to divert the homage of the people away from Marduk to other gods, though he did not, as a matter of course, go so far as to endeavor to usurp for the son, the position held by the father. It is probably due to Assyrian influence that even in Babylonia, from the eighth century on, Nabu is occasionally mentioned before Marduk. So Marduk-baladan II. (721—710) calls himself the "worshipper of Nabu and Marduk," and similarly others. In official letters likewise, and in astronomical reports, Nabu is given precedence to Marduk, but this may be due to Nabu's functions, as the god of writing and the patron of science. The Neo-Babylonian kings are not sparing in the epithets they bestow on Nabu, though they emphasize more his qualities as holder of the ' sceptre ' than as lord of the ' stylus.' So Nebuchadnezzar declares that it is he "who gives the sceptre of sovereignty to kings to rule over all lands.' In this capacity ■1 So, Tiele, Geschichte d. Religion i. Alterthum, i. 191. 130 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. he is ' the upholder of the world,' " the general overseer,' and his temple is called ' the house of the sceptre of the world.' His name signifies simply the ' proclaimer,' or herald, but we are left in doubt as to what he proclaims, — whether wisdom or sovereignty. Sometimes he appears as the "herald' of the gods. In this role he receives the name of Papsukal (z>., supreme or sacred messenger), and it may be that this function was a very old one. But, again, as god of fertility he could also be appropriately termed the ' proclaimer.' The question must, accordingly, be left open as to the precise force of the attribute contained in his name. Finally, an interesting feature connected with Nabu, that may be mentioned here, is that in the name borne by a famous mountain in Moab, Nebo, where Moses — himself a " proclaimer ' ^ — died, there survives a testi- mony that the worship of this popular deity extended beyond the Euphrates and the Tigris, to Semites living considerably to the west. To Nabu, as to Marduk, a consort was given. Her name was Tashmitum. The name Tashmitum appears for the first time in the days of Hammurabi. Attention has already been called to the king's ignoring of the god of Borsippa. While his attempt to suppress the cult of Nabu was not successful, he did succeed in causing the old consort of Nabu to disappear. This consort appears to have been no other than Erua. It will be recalled that up to very late times the tradition survived that her dwelling-place was Borsippa.'' This is never said of Sarpanitum. Despite, therefore, the amalgamation of Sarpanitum and Erua, the association of the latter with Nabu's dwelling-place remains 1 The Hebrew word for prophet, naln, is of the same stem as the Assyrian Nabu, and the popular tradition in placing the last scene in the life of Moses on Mt. Nebo is apparently influenced by the fact that Moses was a nabi, 2 See above, p. 123. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 131 impressed upon the memory of the Babylonian scholars, at least. Nabu's consort having thus been transferred to Marduk, a new mate had to be found for the former, when once his rivalry was no longer to be dreaded, and his cult again rose to prominence. " Tashmitum ' is an abstract noun in Assyrian, signifying " revelation.' As such, it is bestowed in historical texts upon Nabu himself, who is called ilu tashmeti, ' god of revela- tion.' Nabu is, above all, a "revealing' god, — revealing knowledge, the art of writing, and the method of ruling. The appellation is therefore a most appropriate one, and there seems little reason to question that Tashmitum was originally nothing but one of the terms by which Nabu was designated, just as he was called Papsukal in his role as ' messenger' of the gods, — the messenger of his father Marduk and of his grand- father Ea, in particular. But Tashmitum, being feminine in gender, as an abstract noun, seemed appropriate as the desig- nation of a goddess. It would appear, then, that ' Revelation,' from being so constantly associated with Nabu, was personified, dissociated from him, as it were, through the conception of a distinct goddess bearing the name of ' Tashmitum.' This process of thought, in giving rise to a new goddess, may have been, in part, a popular one. The translation of a metaphor into reality is a phenomenon that may be observed in almost all religions of antiquity. But the process, whatever its course in detail may have been, was not uninfluenced by the theological dogma whereby a god was supposed to have a " reflection ' who was pictured as his consort. Through this conception, as we have already seen, many a goddess once ruling in her own right, and enjoying an independent existence, degenerated into a mere shadow of some male deity, though, on the other hand, it must be borne in mind that these female deities would have disappeared altogether but for the opportunity thus afforded them of becoming " attachdes ' to some male deity. This theory of the f!easi-a.rtihcia.]. character and origin of Tashmit finds 132 BABYLONJAiV-ASSYKIAN RELIGION. support in the manner in which the mention of her name is entwined with that of Nabu. Sarpanitum, bound up as the goddess is with Marduk, has at least a shrine of her own, and occasionally she is spoken of in the texts without her husband Marduk.^ The mention of Tashmitum, however, invariably fol- lows that of Nabu. It is always " Nabu and Tashmitum,' and it is never Tashmitum without Nabu. While the creation of Tash- mitum may be a product of Babylonian religious thought, it is in Assyrian texts that her name is chiefly found. The great Ashurbanabal, in the conventional subscript attached to his tablet, is particularly fond of coupling Tashmitum with Nabu, as the two deities who opened his ears to understanding and prompted him to gather in his palace the literary treasures produced by the culture that flourished in the south. Tashmit has no shrine or temple, so far as known, either in Borsippa or in any of the places whither the Nabu cult spread. She has no attributes other than those that belong to Nabu, and, what is very remarkable, the later Babylonian kings, such as Nebu- chadnezzar II., when they deem it proper to attach a consort to Nabu call her Nana,^ i.e.., simply the lady, and not Tashmitum, a proof, how little hold the name had taken upon the Babylonian populace. If to this it be added, that in by far the greater number of instances, no reference whatsoever to a consort is made when Nabu is spoken of, an additional reason is found for the unreal, the shadowy character of this goddess. Ea. In treating of the position occupied by Ea in the oldest period of Babylonian history (see above, pp. 61-64), it l^s^s already been mentioned that he grows to much larger propor- tions under the influence of a more fully developed theological system. Indeed, there is no god who shows such profound 1 So in the cylinder of Sliamasli-shum-ukin (Lelimann's publication, pis. viii. seq^. 2 E.g.., in tile so-called Grotefend Cylinder, col. ii. 34. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 133 traces of having been submitted to a theological treatment, and indirectly, therefore, furnishes so distinct a proof of the existence of theological schools in the ancient centers of Baby- lonian culture, as Ea. The question may with propriety be here discussed, to what period we are to attribute the comple- tion of the process, which, to summarize his position, made Ea the special god of humanity, the father of Marduk, the third in a great triad, of which the other two members were Anu, the god of heaven, and Bel, the god of earth. Already, in the days preceding the union of the Babylonian states under one head, we have had occasion to see traces of an attempt to systematize the relations existing between the gods. A high degree of culture, such as the existence of a perfected form of writing, an advanced form of architecture, and commercial enterprise reflect, cannot be dissociated from a high degree of activity in the domain of philosophic or religious thought. Accordingly, we are in no danger of attributing too great an antiquity to the beginnings of theological speculation in Baby- lonia. Be it remembered that from the earliest to the latest days, the priests were the scribes and that in their capacity as writers of the texts, they would be enjoying the advantages of an intellectual impulse. But they were also the composers of the texts, as well as the writers, and the prominence given to the gods in texts of whatever description, would inevitably lead their thoughts to speculations regarding the attributes of the gods. The attempt would at an early period be made to find some unifying principles in the tangled mass of gods. By the time that Hammurabi appears on the scene, we have every reason to believe that some of the ancient libraries of the south, whither Ashurbanabal sent his scribes, were already well stocked, and that a goodly portion of the Babylonian literature known to us already existed. What these portions were, we will have occasion to point out when we come to discuss the litera- ture of Babylonia. On the other hand, this literature would 134 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. not only necessarily increase as long as any degree of intellec- tual activity existed in the country, but this activity would also manifest itself in transforming this literature, so as to adapt it to the thoughts and aspirations of a later age. Especially would this be the case in the purely religious divisions of literature. The ancient traditions, legends, and myths, once committed to writing, would serve as a point of departure for further speculations. The existence of a text to which any measure of value is attached, is bound to give rise to various attempts at interpretation, and if this value be connected with the religion of a people, the result is, invariably, that the ancient words are invested with a meaning conformable to a later age. Each generation among a people characterized by intellectual activity has a signature of its own, and it will seek to give to the religious thoughts of the time its own particular impress. Since, however, the material upon which any age works is not of its own making, but is furnished by a preceding one, it follows that much of the intellectual activity of an age manifests itself in a transformation of its literary or speculative heritage. This process was constantly going on in Babylonia, and had we more material — and older material — at our disposal, we would be able to trace more clearly than we can at present, the various stages that led to the system of theology, as embodied in the best productions of the ancient Babylonian schoolmen. The days of Hammurabi, as they were politically of great importance, also appear to have ushered in a new era in the religious life of the people. Stirring political events are always apt to bring in their wake intellectual movements, and in a country like Babylonia, where politics react so forcibly on relig- ious conditions, the permanent establishment of the supremacy of the city of Babylon would be fraught with important conse- quences for the cult. The main change brought about by this new epoch of Babylonian history was, as we have seen, the superior position henceforth accorded in the pantheon to Mar- THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 135 duk as the patron deity of Babylon ; but this change entailed so many others, that it almost merits being termed a revolution. In order to ensure Marduk's place, the relations of the other deities to him had to be regulated, the legends and traditions of the past reshaped, so as to be brought into consistent accord with the new order of things, and the cult likewise to be, at least in part, remodelled, so as to emphasize the supremacy of Marduk. This work, which was an inevitable one, was pri- marily of an intellectual order. We are justified, then, in looking for traces of this activity in the remains that have been recovered of ancient Babylonian literature. We know from direct evidence that the commercial life of Babylonia had already, in the period preceding Hammurabi, led to regulated legal forms and practices for the purpose of carrying out obligations and of settling commercial and legal difficulties. The proof has been furnished by Dr. Meissner^ that sylla- baries prepared for the better understanding of the formulas and words employed in preparing the legal and commercial tablets, date, in part, from the period which we may roughly designate as that of Hammurabi, — covering, say, the three centuries 2300 to 2000 B.C. With this evidence for the exist- ence of pedagogues devoted to the training of novices in the art of reading and writing, in order to fit them for their future tasks as official scribes, we are safe in assuming that these same schoolmen were no less active in other fields of literature. If, in addition to this, we find that much of the religious literature, in the shape that we have it, reflects the religious conditions such as they must have shaped themselves in consequence of the promotion of Marduk to the head of the pantheon, the conclusion is forced upon us that such literary productions date from this same epoch of Hammurabi. This influence of the schoolmen while centering, as repeatedly pointed out, around the position of Marduk, manifests itself in a pro- 1 Wiener Zeitschrift fiir die Kunde d. Morgejilandes, iv. 301-307. 136 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. nounced fashion, also, in the changed position henceforth accorded to the god Ea. It will be recalled that in the earliest period of Babylonian history, Ea does not figure prominently. At the same time we must beware of laying too much stress upon the negative testimony of the historical texts. Besides the still limited material of this character at our disposal, the non-mention of a deity may be due to a variety of circum- stances, that may properly be designated as accidental. The gods to whom the kings of the ancient Babylonian states would be apt to appeal would be, in the first instance, the local deities, patrons of the city that happened to be the capital of the state ; in the second instance, the gods of the vanquished towns ; and thirdly, some of the great deities worshipped at the sacred centers of the Euphrates valley, and who consti- tuted, as it were, the common heritage of the past, Ea, as the god of the Persian gulf, the region which forms the starting- point of Babylonian culture, and around which some of the oldest and most precious recollections center, would come within the radius of the third instance, since, in the period we have in mind, Eridu no longer enjoyed any political importance. We may be sure, then, despite the silence of the texts, that Ea was always held in great esteem, and that even the absence of temples in his honor, did not affect the reverence and awe that he inspired. As for the epoch of Hammurabi, the historical spirit that is never absent in a truly intellectual age would be certain to restore Ea to his proper prestige, assuming that a previous age had permitted him to fall into neglect. Next to Marduk, there is no deity who is given such distinction in Babylonia, after the union of the Babylonian states, as Ea. In the religious literature, moreover, as reshaped by the school- men of the time, his role is even more prominent than that of Marduk. As a water-god, and more particularly as the god to whom the largest body of water known to the Babylonians was sacred, Ea was regarded as the source and giver of wisdom. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF ifAMMURABI. 137 Fountains everywhere were sacred to him ; and so he becomes also the giver of fertility and plenty. Berosus tells us of a mystic being, half man, half fish, who spent his nights in the waters of the gulf, but who would come out of the waters during the day to give instruction to the people, until that time steeped in ignorance and barbarism. This ' Oannes,' as Bero- sus is said ^ to have called him, was none other than Ea. As the great benefactor of mankind, it is natural that Ea should have come to be viewed as the god whose special function it is to protect the human race, to advance it in all its good under- takings, to protect it against the evil designs of gods or demons. In this role, he appears in the religious literature — in the epics, the cosmogony, and the ritual — of Babylonia. There is no god conceived in so universal a manner as Ea. All local connection with Eridu disappears. He belongs to no particu- lar district. His worship is not limited to any particular spot. All of Babylonia lays claim to him. The ethical import of such a conception is manifestly great, and traces of it are to be found in the religious productions. It impressed upon the Babylonians the common bond uniting all mankind. The cult of Ea must have engendered humane feelings, softening the rivalry existing among the ancient centers of Babylonian power, and leading the people a considerable distance, on the road to the conception of a common humanity. When the gods decide to destroy mankind, it is Ea who intercedes on behalf of human- ity ; when the demon of disease has entered a human body, it is to Ea that, in the last resort, the appeal is made to free the sufferer from his pain. Ea is the god of the physicians. Nay, more, it is Ea who presided at the birth of humanity, so that ^ We only know the name through Eusebius' extract from Alexander Polyhistor's digest of Berosus. The form, therefore, cannot be vouched for. The various mod- ern attempts to explain the name have failed (see e.g.^ Lenormant's Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldaer^ 2d German edition, pp. 376-379). There may be some ultimate connection between Oannes and Jonah (see Trumbull in Journal of Bib I. Liter, xi. 58, note). 138 BABYLONIAiV-ASSYRIAN- RELIGION. his protection reaches far back, beyond even the beginnings of civiHzation, almost to the beginning of things. Lastly, as the god of civilization, it is to him that the great works of art are ascribed. He is the god of the smithy, the patron of the gold- and silversmiths, of workers in lapis-lazuli, and all kinds of precious stones. He is the god of sculpture. The great bulls and lions that guarded the approaches to the temple and palace chambers, as well as the statues of the gods and kings, were the work of his hands. Furthermore, he is the patron of weavers, as of other arts. This conception may have been perfected in a general way, and in all probability was perfected before the days of Hammurabi, though perhaps not prom- inently brought forward ; but important modifications were introduced into it, through the compromise that had to be arranged between the position of Ea and that of Marduk. Of course, neither the rulers nor the priests of Babylon could have permitted the reverence for Ea to have gone to the length of throwing Marduk into the shade. Many of the functions assigned to Ea seemed to belong of right to Marduk, who, as the patron of Babylon, presided over the destinies of what to the Babylonians was the essential part of mankind, — namely, themselves. Moreover, Babylon being the seat of culture as well as of power, in the period following upon Hammurabi, Marduk was necessarily conceived as possessing the same wisdom that distinguishes Ea. As a consequence, the attributes of Ea were transferred in a body to Marduk. An amalgamation of the two, however, such as took place in the case of other deities, was neither possible, nor, indeed, desirable. It was not possible, because of the antiquity of the Ea cult and the peculiar position that he, as a common heir- loom of all Babylonia, occupied ; nor was it desirable, for to do so would be to cut off completely the bond uniting Babylon to its own past and to the rest of Babylonia. The solution of the problem was found in making Ea, the father of Marduk — THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF IfAMMURABI. 139 the loving and proud father who willingly transfers all his powers and qualities to his son, who rejoices in the triumph of his offspring, and who suffers no pangs of jealousy when beholding the superior honors shown to Marduk, both by the gods and by men. Ea and Marduk. The combination of the two gods is particularly frequent in the so-called incantation texts. Marduk becomes the mediator between Ea and mankind. The man smitten with disease, or otherwise in trouble, appeals to Marduk for help, who promptly brings the petition to his father Ea. The latter, after modestly declaring that there is nothing that he knows which his son Marduk does not know, gives Marduk the necessary instruc- tions, which in turn are conveyed to the one crying for divine succor. It is clear that these texts have been reshaped with the intention of adding to the glory of Marduk. They must, therefore, have been remodelled at a time when the Marduk cult was in the ascendancy. This was after the days of Hammurabi, and before the subjugation of Babylonia to Assyrian rule. The limits thus assigned are, to be sure, broad, but from what has above been said as to the intellectual activity reigning in the days of Hammurabi, we need not descend far below the death of the great conqueror to find the starting-point for the remodelling of the texts in question. Not all of them, of course, were so reshaped. There are quite a number in which Ea is alone and directly appealed to, and these form a welcome confirmation of the supposition that those in which Ea is joined to Marduk have been reshaped with a desire to make them conform to the position of Marduk in the Babylonian pantheon. Again, there are incantations in which the name of Marduk appears without Ea. Such are either productions of a later period, of the time when Marduk had already assumed his superior position, or what is also 140 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. possible, though less probable, old compositions in which the name of Ea has been simply replaced by that of Marduk. An especially interesting example of the manner in which ancient productions have been worked over by the Babylonian theolo- gians, with a view to bringing their favorite Marduk into greater prominence, appears in one of the episodes of the Babylonian cosmogony. Prior to the creation of man a great monster known as Tiamat had to be subdued. The gods all shrink in terror before her. Only one succeeds in conquering her. In the form of the story, as we have it, this hero is Marduk, but it is quite evident^ that the honor originally belonged to an entirely different god, one who is much older, and who stands much higher than the god of Babylon. This was Bel, — the old god of Nippur who was conceived as the god of earth par excellence, and to whom therefore the task of preparing the earth for the habitation of mankind properly belonged. How do the Babylonian theologians, who stand under the influence of the political conditions prevailing in Babylonia after the union of the Babylonian states, reconcile this older and true form of the episode with the form in which they have recast it ? The gods who are called the progenitors of Marduk are represented as rejoicing upon seeing Marduk equipped for the fray. In chorus they greet and bless him, '" Marduk be king." They present him with additional weap- ons, and encourage him for the contest. Upon hearing of his success the gods vie with one another in conferring honors upon Marduk. They bestow all manner of glorious epithets upon him ; and, to cap the climax, the old Bel, known as 'father Bel,' steps forward and transfers to him his name. Ml matati,- ' lord of lands.' To bestow the name was equivalent to trans- ferring Bel's powers to Marduk ; and so Marduk is henceforth 1 For fuller proof, see the chapter on " The Cosmology of the Babylonians." 2 This, it will be remembered (see above, p. iiS), is one of the titles of Mar- duk in one of Hammurabi's inscriptions, — an important point for the date of the episode in its present form. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF ^AMMURABI. 141 known as Bel. But Ea must be introduced into the episode. It is not sufficient that Bel, the original subduer of Tiamat, should pay homage to Marduk ; Ea also greets his son, and bestows his name upon him,' — that is, transfers his powers to his son. There is a special reason for this. The overthrow of Tiamat is followed by the creation of man. This function properly belongs to Bel, both as the god of earth and as the subduer of Tiamat. According to one — and probably the oldest — version of this part of the Babylonian cosmogony which was embodied in the work of Berosus,^ it is Bel who creates mankind. The substitution of Marduk for Bel necessitated the transference of the role of creator to Marduk likewise, and yet the latter could not take this upon himself without the consent of his father Ea, who had become the god of humanity par excellence. Ea could interpose no objection against Bel being replaced by Marduk in vanquishing the monster, but when it came to draw- ing the conclusion and replacing Bel by Marduk also in the creation of man, the case was different. If Bel was to be replaced, Ea had a prior claim. Marduk could only take the new functions upon himself after receiving the powers of Ea. That is the force of Ea's saying that Marduk's name also shall be Ea just as his. This transference of the name of Ea to Marduk is in itself an indication that there must have existed a second version in Babylonia — probably of later origin than the other — of the creation of man, according to which Ea, and not Bel, was the creator. We shall have occasion to see, in a future chapter, that there were at least two different versions current in Babylonia of the creation of the gods and of the universe. The open- ing chapters in Genesis form an interesting parallel to show the manner in which two different versions of one and the same subject may be combined. There is, therefore, J Literally, ' Ea shall be his name, his as mine.' 2 According to Syncellus. In cuneiform texts the old Bel is at times invoked as the creator of mankind. 142 BAB YLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. nothing improbable in the supposition that a later version, reflecting a period when Bel had sunk into comparative insig- nificance, made Ea the creator of mankind instead of Bel, and that still later a solution of the apparent inconsistency involved in transferring only part of Bel's powers to Marduk was found by securing Ea's consent to the acknowledgment of Marduk not merely as creator of mankind but of the heavenly vault as well. Jensen ' has brought other evidence to show that Ea was once regarded as the creator of mankind. One of his titles is that of ' potter,' and mankind, according to Babylonian theories, was formed of ' clay.' Moreover, in a Babylonian myth that will be set forth in its proper place, Ea expressly figures in the role of creating a mysterious being, Uddiishu-na- mir, whose name signifies 'his light shines.' Such a proper name, too, as " Ea-bani," i.e.., ' Ea creates,' points in the same direction. In other literary productions of Babylonia, such as, e.g., the so-called Izdubar epic, Ea again appears without Marduk, showing that this story has not been remodeled, or that the later version, in which the traces of a recasting may have been seen, has not been discovered. In the deluge story, which forms part of the Izdubar epic, Ea alone is the hero. It is he who saves humanity from complete annihilation, and who paci- fies the angered Bel. Marduk's name does not appear in the entire epic. We have found it necessary to dwell thus at length upon these evidences of the recasting of the literary products of ancient Babylonia under the influence of changed conceptions of the gods and of their relations to one another, for upon the understanding of these changes, our appreciation of the developrrent of religious beliefs in Babylonia, and all connected with these beliefs, hinges. The epoch of Hammu- rabi was a crucial one for Babylonia from a religious as well as from a political point of view. 1 Kosmologie^ pp. 293, 294. THE PAATHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 143 Damkina. The consort of Ea figures occasionally in the historical texts of Hammurabi's successors. Agumkakrimi invokes Ea and Damkina, asking these gods, who "dwell in the great ocean' surrounding the earth, to grant him long life. In addition to this, the antiquity of the literary productions in which her name appears justifies us in reckoning her among the gods of Babylonia of Hammurabi's time. Her name signifies ' lady of the earth,' and there is evidently a theoretical substratum to this association of Ea, the water-god, with an earth-goddess. The one forms the complement to the other ; and Marduk, as the son of water and earth, takes his place in the theory as the creator of the world. In this form the ' natural philosophy ' of Babylonia survived to a late period. Nicolas of Damascus still knows (probably through Berosus) that Ea and Damkina^ had a son Bel (i.e., Marduk). The survival of the name is a proof that, despite the silence of the historical texts, she was a prominent personage in Babylonian mythology, even though she did not figure largely in the cult. She appears in the magical texts quite frequently at the side of Ea. In a hymn ^ where a description occurs of the boat containing Ea, Damkina his wife, and Marduk their son, together with the ferryman and some other personages saihng across the ocean, we may see traces of the process of symbolization to which the old figures of mythology were subjected. Shamash. Passing on, we find Hammurabi as strongly attached to the worship of the old sun-god as any of his predecessors. Next to Babylon, he was much concerned with making improve- ments in Sippar. ' The Temple of Shamash at Larsa also was 1 Aos and Dauke. ^ Rawlinson, iv. 25. 144 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. improved and eijlarged by him. Hammurabi's example is fol- lowed by his successors. Agumkakrimi invokes Shamash as "warrior of heaven and earth'; and it is likely that the prece- dent furnished by these two kings, who considered it consistent with devotion to Marduk to single out the places sacred to Shamash for special consideration, had much to do in main- taining the popularity of sun-worship in Babylonia and Assyria. Kara-indash, of the Cassite dynasty {c. 1450 B.C.), restores the temple of Shamash at Larsa, and Mili-shikhu, two centuries later, assigns to Shamash the second place in his pantheon, naming him before Marduk. Foreign rulers were naturally not so deeply attached to Marduk as were the natives of Babylon. In the Assyrian pantheon Shamash occupies the third place, following immediately upon the two special deities of Assyria. One of the greatest of the northern kings erects a temple in honor of the god, and the later Babylonian kings vie with one another in doing honor to the two oldest sanctuaries of Shamash, at Sippar and Larsa. Perhaps the pristine affinity between Mar- duk, who, as we saw, was originally a sun-deity, and Shamash, also had a share in Hammurabi's fondness for coupling these two gods. When describing his operations at Sippar he speaks of himself as ' doing good to the flesh of Shamash and Marduk.' Hammurabi felt himself to be honoring Marduk, through paying homage to a deity having affinity with the patron protector of Babylon. NiNNI, OR InNANNA. We have already come across a deity of this name in a previous chapter.^ Hammurabi tells us, in one of his inscrip- tions, that he has restored the temple in honor of Innanna at Hallabi — a town near Sippar.^ Innanna, or Ninni, signifying 1 See p. 79. 2 See Jensen, Keils Bibl. 3, i, p. 108, note 5. Tiele, Gesch. p. 126, apparently identifies Innanna of Hallabi with Tashmit. but, so far as 1 can see, without sufficient reason. THE PANTHEON IN THE DAYS OF HAMMURABI. 145 merely 'lady,' or 'great lady,' appears to have become a very general name for a goddess, hence the addition ' of Hallabi,' which Hammurabi is careful to make. At the same time the designation ' lady of Hallabi ' points to her being a consort of a male deity who was the patron of the place. May this have been the moon-god again, as in the case of the other Innanna ? Our knowledge of this goddess is confined to what the king tells us about her. For him she is the mistress whose glory fills heaven and earth, but when he adds that she has placed in his hands the reins of government, this only means that the goddess recognizes his right to supreme authority over the Babylonian states — not that he owes his power to her. It is after he has succeeded in making Babylon the capital of a great kingdom that he proceeds to improve the temple of Innanna. Bel and the Triad of Babylonian Theology. Among the literary remains of Hammurabi's days we have a hymn, in which the chief gods worshipped by the king are enumerated in succession. The list begins with Bel, and then mentions Sin, Ninib, Ishtar, Shamash, and Ramman. We should expect to find at the head of the list Marduk. The hymn may be older than Hammurabi, who, perhaps, is quoting or copying it; and since the Bel who is here at the head of the pantheon is the god of Nippur, the hymn may originally have belonged to the ritual of that place. For Hammurabi the highest " Bel,' or lord, is Marduk, and there is hardly room for doubt that in using this hymn as a means of passing on to sing- ing his own praises, with which the inscription in question ends, Hammurabi has in mind the patron god of Babylon when speaking of Bel.^ It is this amalgamation of the old Bel with Marduk that marks, as we have seen, the transition to the use of Bel's name as a mere title of Marduk. Elsewhere, however, 1 Here written En-lil, as the Bel of Nippur. 146 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAAr RELIGION. Hammurabi uses Bel to designate the old god. So when he calls himself the proclaimer of Anu and Bel' the association with Anu makes it impossible that Marduk should be meant. At times he appears to refer in the same inscription, now to the old Bel and again to Bel-Marduk, under the same designa- tion. When Kurigalzu, a member of the Cassite dynasty {c. 1400 B.C.), speaks of 'Bel, the lord of lands,' to whom he erects a temple in the new city, Dur-Kurigalzu — some forty miles to the northeast of Babylon — it is the old Bel who is again meant. While acknowledging Marduk as one of the chief gods, these foreign rulers in Babylonia — the Cassites — did not feel the same attachment to him as Hammurabi did. They gave the preference to the old god of Nippur, and, indeed, succeeded in their attempt to give to the old city of Nippur some of its pristine glory. They devoted themselves assiduously to the care of the great temple at Nippur. There are some indications of an attempt made by them to make Nippur the capital of their empire. In the case of Hammurabi's immediate successor, as has been pointed out, the equation Bel-Marduk is distinctly set down, but, for all that, the double employment of the name con- tinues even through the period of the Assyrian supremacy over Babylonia. The northern rulers now use Bel to designate the more ancient god, and, again, merely as a designation of Mar- duk. Tiglathpileser I. (see note 2, below) expressly adds 'the older ' when speaking of Bel. When Sargon refers to Bel, ' the lord of lands, who dwells on the sacred mountain of the gods,' or when Tiglathpileser I. calls Bel " the father of the gods,' ' the king of the group of spirits ' known as the Anunaki, it is 1 Attached to the name here (RawUnson, i. 4, no. xv-g), which is written ideo- graphically En-Lil, is the designation da-gan-jii^ which has occasioned considerable discussion. See Jensen, Kosmologic, pp. 449-456. It seems to me that the addition which emphasizes this identity of Bel with another god, Dagan, is to indicate that the Bel of the triad, and not Bel-Marduk, is here meant. Somewhat in the same way Tiglathpileser I. (Rawlinson, i. 14, viii. 87) distinguishes the older Bel by calling him ' Bel labjira,' i.e., ' Bel the older.' THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HA'MMURABI. 147 of course only the old Bel, the lord of the lower region, or of the earth, who can be meant ; but when, as is much more frequently the case, the kings of Assyria, down to the fall of the empire, associate Bel with Nabu, speak of Bel and the gods of Akkad {i.e., Babylonia), and use Bel, moreover, to designate Baby- lonia,^ it is equally clear that Marduk is meant. In the Neo- Babylonian empire Marduk alone is used. The continued existence of a god Bel in the Babylonian pantheon, despite the amalgamation of Bel with Marduk, is a phenomenon that calls for some comment. The explanation is to be found in the influence of the theological system that must have been developed in part, at least, even before the union of the Babylonian states.'' Bel, as the god of earth, was associated with Anu, as the god of heaven, and Ea, as the god of the deep, to form a triad that embraced the entire universe. When, therefore, Anu, Bel, and Ea were invoked, it was equiva- lent to naming all the powers that influenced the fate of man. They embraced, as it were, the three kingdoms of the gods, within which all the other gods could be comprised. The sys- tematization involved in the assumption of a triad of gods controlling the entire pantheon can hardly be supposed to have been a popular process. It betokens an amount of thought and speculation, a comprehensive view of the powers of nature, that could only have arisen in minds superior to the average intelligence. In other words, the conception of the triad Anu, Bel, and Ea is again an evidence of the existence of school- men and of schools of religious thought in the days of the ancient empire. So far, however, as Hammurabi is concerned, he only refers to a duality — Anu and Bel — which, for him, com- prises all the other gods. He is the 'proclaimer of Anu and Bel.' It is Anu and Bel who give him sovereignty over the land. In ' ' Governor of Bel ' for governor of Babylonia, and ' subjects of Bel ' for subjects of Pabylonia. 2 See p. S9 and chapter vii. 148 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. the texts of the second period the triad does not occur until we come to the reign of a king, Mili-shikhu, who lives at least eight centuries after Hammurabi. Ea, in fact, does not occur -at all in those inscriptions of the king that have as yet been discov- ered. If any conclusion is to be drawn from this omission, it is certainly this, — that there are several stages in the develop- ment of the ancient theological system of Babylonia. At first a duality of kingdoms — the kingdom of what is above and be- low — was conceived as comprising all the personified powers of nature, but this duality was replaced by a triad through the addition of the god who stands at the head of all water- deities. Of course the assumption of a duality instead of a triad may have been due to a difference among existing schools of thought. At all events, there seems to be no pohtical rea- son for the addition of Ea, and it is difficult to say, therefore, how soon the conception of a triad standing at the head of the pantheon arose. We have found it in Gudea's days, and it must, therefore, have existed in the days of Hammurabi, with- out, perhaps, being regarded as an essential dogma as yet. A direct and natural consequence of Bel's position in the triad was that, by the side of Bel-Marduk, the older Bel continued to be invoked in historical inscriptions. Since Anu and Ea were appealed to by themselves, the former occasionally, the latter more frequently, there was no reason why a ruler should not at times be prompted to introduce an invocation to Bel, without the direct association with Anu and Ea. The con- fusion that thus ensues between the two Bels was not of serious moment, since from the context one could without difficulty determine which of the two was meant; and what we, with our limited knowledge of ancient Babylonia, are able to do, must have been an easy task for the Babylonians themselves.^ 1 Occasionally a king (so e.g. Nabubaliddin, c 8S3 B.C.) associates Anu with Ea, and omits Bel (Rawlinson, v. 60, ii. 21), as though with the intent of avoiding confusion. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAI^MURABI. 149 It is tempting to suppose that the first command of the Decalogue (Exodus, xx) contains an implied reference to the Babylonian triad. Anu, Bel, and Ea. The theory of the triad succeeds in maintaining its hold upon Babylonian minds from a certain period on, through all political and intellectual vicissitudes. To invoke Anu, Bel, and Ea becomes a standing formula that the rulers of Babylonia as well as of Assyria are fond of employing. These three are the great gods par excellence. They occupy a place of their own. The kings do not feel as close to them as to Marduk, or to Ashur, or even to the sun-god, or to the moon-god. The invocation of the triad partakes more of a formal character, as though in giving to these three gods the first place, the writers felt that they were following an ancient precedent that had more of a theoretical than a practical value for their days. So among Assyrian rulers, Ashur-rish-ishi {c. 1150 B.C.) derives his right to the throne from the authority with which he is invested by the triad. Again, in the formal curses which the kings called down upon the destroyers of the inscriptions or statues that they set up, the appeal to Anu, Bel, and Ea is made. Ashurnasirbal calls upon the triad not to listen to the prayers of such as deface his monuments. Sargon has an interesting statement in one of his inscrip- tions, according to which the names of the months were fixed by Anu, Bel, and Ea. This ' archaeological ' theory illustrates very well the extraneous position occupied by the triad. The months, as we shall see, are sacred, each to a different god. The gods thus distinguished are the ones that are directly concerned in the fortunes of the state, — Sin, Ashur, Ishtar, and the like. Anu, Bel, and Ea are not in the list, and the tradition, or rather the dogma according to which they assign the names is evidently an attempt to make good 150 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. this omission by placing them, as it were, beyond the reach of the calendar. In short, so far as the historical texts are con- cerned which reflect the popular beliefs, the triad represents a theological doctrine rather than a living force. In combina- tion, Anu, Bel, and Ea did not mean as much, nor the same thing, to a Babylonian or an Assyrian, as when he said Marduk, or Nabu. or Ashur, or Sin, as the case might be. It was different when addressing these gods individually, as was occasionally done. The Assyrians were rather fond of intro- ducing Anu by himself in their prayers, and the Babylonians were prompted to a frequent mention of Ea by virtue of his relationship to Marduk, but when this was done Anu and Ea meant something different than when mentioned in one breath along with Bel. Belit. One might have supposed that when Bel became Marduk, the consort of Bel would also become Marduk's consort. Such, however, does not appear to be the case, at least so far as the epoch of Hammurabi is concerned. When he calls himself ' the beloved shepherd of Belit,' it is the wife of the old Bel that is meant, and so when Agumkakrimi mentions Bel and Belit together, as the gods that decree his fate on earth, there is no doubt as to what Belit is meant. In later days, however, and in Assyria more particularly, there seems to be a tendency towards generalizing the name (much as that of Bel) to the extent of applying it in the sense of ' mistress ' to the consort of the chief god of the pantheon ; and that happening to be Ashur in Assyria accounts for the fact, which might otherwise appear strange, that Tiglathpileser I. {c. 1140 B.C.) calls Belit the ' lofty consort and beloved of Ashur.' Ashurbanabal (668-626 B.C.) does the same, and even goes further and declares himself to be the offspring of Ashur and Belit. On the other hand, in the interval between these two THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF H.'^IMURABI. 151 kings we find Shalmaneser II. (860-825 ^-c) calling Belit ' the mother of the great gods ' and " the wife of Bel,' making it evi- dent that the old Belit of the south is meant, and since Ashur- banabal on one occasion also calls the goddess ' the beloved of Bel," it follows that in his days two Belits were still recognized, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say two uses of the term, — one specifically for the consort of the Babylonian Bel, the god of the earth, with his ancient seat at Nippur; the other of a more general character, though still limited as " lady ' to the. consort of the chief gods, just as 'Bel,' while acquiring the general sense of " lord,' was restricted in actual usage to the greatest ' lords ' only. An indication of this distinction, some- what parallel to the addition of Dagan to Bel, to indicate that the old Bel was meant, ^ appears in the sobriquet " of Babylonia,' " which Ashurbanabal gives to the goddess in one place where the old Belit is meant. Under the influence of this Assyrian extension of the term, Nabopolassar, in the Neo-Babylonian period, applies the title to the consort of Shamash at Sippar, but he is careful to specify ' Belit of Sippar,' in order to avoid misunderstanding. Besides being applied to the consorts of Ashur and of Shamash, ' Belit,' in the general sense of ' mis- tress,' is applied only to another goddess, the great Ishtar of the Assyrian pantheon — generally, however, as a title, not as a name of the goddess. The important position she occupied in the Assyrian pantheon seemed to justify this further modifica- tion and extension in the use of the term. Occasionally, Ishtar is directly and expressly called ' Belit.' So, Ashurbanabal speaks of a temple that he has founded in Calah to ' Belit mati,' ■* ' the Belit (or lady) of the land,' where the context speaks in favor of identifying Belit with the great goddess Ishtar. Again 1 Rassam, Cylinder ix. 75. 2 See chapter xii., " The Assyrian Pantheon," p. 208. 3 Rassam, Cylinder viii. 98, 99. ' Belit of Babylonia, honored among the great gods.' 4 Annals^ iii. 135. 152 BABYLOJVIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. Ashurbanabal, in a dedicatory inscription giving an account of improvements made in the temple of Ishtar, addresses the goddess as Belit ' lady of lands, dwelling in E-raash-mash.' ' Anu and Anatum. In the second period of Babylonian history the worship of the supreme god of heaven becomes even more closely bound up with Ann's position as the first member of the inseparable triad than was the case in the first period. For Hammurabi, as has been noted, Anu is only a half-real figure who in association with Bel is represented as giving his endorsement to the king's authority.^ The manner in which Agumka- krimi introduces Anu is no less characteristic for the age of Hammurabi and his successors. At the beginning of his long inscription,'' he enumerates the chief gods under whose protection he places himself. As a Cassitic ruler, he assigns the first place to the chief Cassite deity, Shukamuna, a god of war whom the Babylonian scholars identified with their own Nergal.'' Shukamuna is followed by the triad Anu, Bel, and Ea. Marduk occupies a fifth place, after which comes a second triad, Sin, Shamash "the mighty hero," and Ishtar" " the strong' one among the gods." The inscription is devoted to the king's successful capture of the statues of Marduk and Sarpanitum out of the hands of the Khani, and the restoration 1 The name of the temple. See IIR. 66, 11. i and lo. The title 'belit matati,' ' lady of the lands ' is evidently introduced in imitation of ' bel matati,' ' lord of lands,' belonging to Bel and then to Marduk. 2 Sayce's view {I-Iibbert Lectures^ p. i86), according to which Anu was originally the local god of Erech, is erroneous. 3 VR. pi. 33. 4 Delitzsch, Die Kossaer^ pp. 25, 27. 5 The omission of Ramman here, though invoked at the close of the inscription, is noticeable. Ishtar takes the place tliat in the more developed system belongs to the god of storms, who with the moon-god and sun-god constitutes a second triad. See p. 163. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 153 of the shrines of these deities at Babylon. At the close, the king Agumkakrimi appeals to Anu and his consort Anatum,' who are asked to bless the king in heaven, to Bel and Belit who are asked to fix his fate on earth, and to Ea and Dam- kina, inhabiting the deep,^ who are to grant him long life. As in the beginning of the inscription, the thought of the triad — Anu, Bel, Ea — evidently underlies this interesting invocation, but at the same time the association of a consort with Anu brings the god into closer relationship with his fellows. He takes on — if the contradiction in terms be permitted — a .more human shape. His consort bears a name that is simply the feminine form to Anu, just as Belit is the feminine to Bel. 'Anu,' signifying 'the one on high,' — a feminine to it was formed, manifestly under the influence of the notion that every god must have a consort of some kind. After Agumkakrimi no further mention of Anatum occurs, neither in the inscriptions of Babylonian nor of Assyrian rulers. We are permitted to conclude, therefore, that Anatum was a product of the schools, and one that never took a strong hold on the popular mind. Among the Assyrian kings who in other respects also show less dependence upon the doctrines evolved in the Babylonian schools, and whose inscriptions reflect to a greater degree the purely popular phases of the faith, we find Anu mentioned with tolerable frequency, and in a manner that betrays less emphasis upon the position of the god as a member of the triad. Still, it is rather curious that he does not appear even in the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings by himself, but in association with another god. Thus Tiglathpileser I. {c. 1130 B.C.) gives an elaborate account of an old temple to Anu and 1 Written with the sign An, and the feminine ending turn, but probably pronounced Anatum. The form Anat (without the ending) is used liy many scholars, as Sarpanit and Tashmit are used instead of Sarpanitum and Tashmitum. I prefer the fuller forms of these names. Anum similarly is better than Anu, but the latter has become so common that it might as well be retained. 2 VR. 33, vii. 34-44. 154 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. Ramman in the city of Ashur that he restores to more than its former grandeur.' This dedication of a temple to two deities is unusual. Ramman is the god of thunder and storms, whose seat of course is in the heavens. He stands close, therefore, to Anu, the supreme god of lieaven. In the religious productions, this relationship is expressed by making Ramman the son of Anu. From a passage descriptive of this temple it would appear that the old temple founded by King Samsi- Ramman, who lived several centuries before Tiglathpileser,- was dedicated to Ramman. It looks, therefore, as though the association of Anu with Ramman was the work of the later king. What his motive was in thus combining Anu with Ramman it is difficult to say, but in his account of the res- toration of the sanctuary, he so consistently mentions Anu and Ramman together,^ designating them unitedly as 'the great gods my lords,' that one gains the impression that the two were inseparable in his mind, Ramman being perhaps regarded simply as a manifestation of Anu. The supposition finds some support in the closing words of the inscription, where, in hurl- ing the usual curses upon those who should attempt to destroy his monuments, he invokes Ramman alone, whom he asks to punish the offender by his darts, by hunger, by distress of every kind, and by death. Elsewhere Anu appears in association with Dagan, of whom we shall have occasion to speak in the chapter on the Assyrian pantheon. Suffice it to say here that Dagan in this connection is an equivalent of Bel. When, therefore, Ashurbanabal and Sargon call themselves 'the favorite of Anu and Dagan,' it is the same as though they spoke of Anu and Bel. Apart from this, Anu only appears when a part or the whole of the Assyrian pantheon is enumerated. Thus we come across Anu, Ramman, and Ishtar as the chief gods of the city of Ashur,'" and again 1 IR. pi. 14, col. vii. 71, viii. 88. 2 No less than nine times. 3 Tiglathpileser I. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. ] 55 Anu, Ashur, Shamash, Ramman, and Ishtar.' Finally, Sargon who names the eight gates of his palace after the chief gods of the land does not omit Anu, whom he describes as the "one who blesses his handiwork.' Otherwise we have Anu only when the triad Anu, Bel, and Ea is invoked. Once Ramman-nirari I. {c. 1325 B.C.) adds Ishtar to the triad. After Sargon we no longer find Anu's name at all among the deities worshipped in Assyria. On the whole, then, Anu's claim to reverence rests in Assyria as well as in Babylonia upon his position in the triad, and while Assyria is less influenced by the ancient system devised in Babylonia whereby Anu, Bel, and Ea come to be the representatives of the three kingdoms among which the gods are distributed, still Anu as a specific deity, ruling in his own right, remains a rather shadowy figure. The only temple in his honor is the one which he shares with Ramman, and which, as noted, appears to have been originally devoted to the ser- vice of the latter. One other factor that must be taken into account to explain the disappearance of Anu is the gradual enforcement of Ashur's claim to the absolute headship of the Assyrian pantheon. Either Anu or Ashur had to be assigned to this place, and when circumstances decided the issue in favor of Ashur, there was no place worthy of Anu as a specific deity. Ashur usurps in a measure the role of Anu. So far as Babylonia was concerned, there was still in the twelfth century B.C. a city " Der ' which is called the ' city of Anu.' The city is probably of very ancient foundation, and its continued asso- ciation with Anu forms an interesting survival of a local con- ception that appears to have been once current of the god. In the religious literature, especially in that part of it which furnishes us with the scholastic recastings of the popular tradi- tions, Anu is a much more prominent figure than in the his- torical texts. From being merely the personification of the heavens, he is raised to the still higher dignity of symbolizing, 1 Ramman-nirari I. 156 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. as Jensen puts it/ the abstract principle of which both the heavens and earth are emanations. All the earliest gods con- ceived of by popular tradition as existing from the beginning of things are viewed as manifestations of Anu, or of Anu and Anatum in combination. He gives ear to prayers, but he is not approached directly. The gods are his messengers, who come and give him report of what is going on.^ He is a god for the gods rather than for men. When his daughter Ishtar is insulted she appeals to her father Anu ; and when the gods are terrified they take refuge with Anu. Armed with a mighty weapon whose assault nothing can withstand, Anu is surrounded by a host of gods and powerful spirits who are ready to follow his lead and to do his service. Ramman. With Ramman we reach a deity whose introduction into the Babylonian pantheon and whose position therein appears to be entirely independent of Marduk. The reading of the name as Ramman (or Rammanu) is pro- visional. The ideograph Im with which the name is written designates the god as the power presiding over storms ; and while it is certain that, in Assyria at least, the god was known as Ramman, which means ' the thunderer,' it is possible that this was an epithet given to the god, and not his real or his oldest name. It is significant that in the El-Amarna tablets ic. 1500 B.C.), where the god Im appears as an element in proper names, the reading Addu is vouched for, and this form has been justly brought into connection with a very famous solar deity of Syria, — Hadad. The worship of Hadad, we know, was widely spread in Palestine and Syria, and there is conclu- sive evidence that Hadad (or Adad), as a name for the god Im, was known in Babylonia. Professor Oppert is of the opinion I Kosmologie, p. 274. ^ See the list IIIR. 68, 26 seq. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OE HAMMURABI. 157 that Adad represents the oldest name of the god. Quite recently the proposition has been made that the real name of the deity was Itnmerii} The ideograph in this case would arise through the curtailment of the name (as is frequently the case in the cuneiform syllabary), and the association of Im with " storm ' and ' wind ' would be directly dependent upon the nature of the deity in question. The material at hand is not sufficient for deciding the question. Besides Immeru, Adad, and Ramman, the deity was also known as Mer — connected apparently with Immeru.^ So much is certain, that Ramman appears to have been the name currently used in Assyria for this god. Adad may have been employed occasionally in Baby- lonia, as was Mer in proper names, but that it was not the common designation is proved by a list of gods (published by Bezold ") in which X\ve. foreign equivalent for Im is set down as Adad. We may for the present, therefore, retain Ramman, while bearing in mind that we have only proof of its being an epithet applied to the god, not necessarily his real name and in all probabilities not the oldest name. We meet with the god for the first time in the hymn to which reference has already been made,* and where the god is men- tioned together with Shamash. If the suggestion above thrown out is correct, that the hymn is older than the days of Ham- murabi, Ramman too would be older than his first mention in historical texts. However, it is worthy of note that in this hymn each of the other gods mentioned receives a line for him- self, and that Ramman is the only one who is tacked on to another deity. It is not strange that in making copies of older 1 Thureau-Dangin, Journal Asiatique, 1895, PP- 3^5~393' '^^'^^ name of this deity has been the subject of much discussion. For a full discussion of the subject with an account of the recent literature, see an article by the writer in The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, xii. 159-162, 2 Arising perhaps after /m came into use as the ideographic form. 3 Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., xi. 173-174 and pi. i, col. i. 7. * See p. 145 and also p. 161. 158 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. texts, especially those of a religious character, the scribes should have introduced certain modifications. At all events, the god does not acquire any degree of prominence until the days of Hammurabi ; so that whatever his age and origin, he belongs in a peculiar sense to the pantheon of Hammurabi rather than to that of the old Babylonian period. The successor of Ham- murabi, Samsu-iluna, dedicates a fort, known as Dur-padda, to Ramman whom he addresses as his ' helper,' along with several other gods. Despite this fact, his worship does not appear to have been very firmly established in Babylonia, for Agum- kakrimi, who follows upon Samsu-iluna, does not make mention of Ramman. During the reign of the Cassite dynasty, how- ever, the worship of Ramman appears to have gained a stronger foothold. Several kings of this dynasty have incorporated the name of this deity into their own names, and in an inscription dealing with events that transpired in the reign of one of these kings, Ramman occupies a prominent place. Immediately after the great triad, Anu, Bel, and Ea, there is enumerated a second. Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, and only then there follows Marduk.^ More than this, Ramman is introduced for a sec- ond time in conjunction with Shamash, as in the hymn of Ham- murabi. The two are appealed to as ' the divine lords of justice.' The conqueror of the Cassites, Nebuchadnezzar I., also holds Ramman in high esteem. For him, Ramman is the god of battle who in companionship with Ishtar abets the king in his great undertakings. He addresses Ramman as the great lord of heaven, the lord of subterranean waters and of rain, whose curse is invoked against the one who sets aside the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar or who defaces the monument the king sets up. While acknowledging the supremacy of Marduk, upon whose appeal he proceeds to Babylonia to rid the country of its oppressors, Nebuchadnezzar nevertheless ^ Belser in Haupt and Delitzsch, Bcitr'dge zitr Assyriologie, ii. 187 seq., col. vi. 1. ^seq. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 159 shows remarkable partiality for Ramman, perhaps as a matter of policy to offset the supposed preference shown by Ramman towards the previous dynasty. Ramman with Nergal and Nana are also enumerated as the special gods of Namar — a Babylonian district which caused the king considerable annoyance, and which may have been one of the strongholds whence the Cassitic kings continued their attacks upon Nebuchadnezzar. In order to determine more precisely the nature of this deity, it is necessary to turn to Assyria, where his worship dates from the very earliest times, and where he appears consistently in a single role, — that of the god of storms, more particularly of thunder and lightning. The oldest Assyrian ruler known to us is Samsi-Ramman (c. 1850 B.C.), whose name, containing the god as one of its elements, points to the antiquity of the cult of Ramman in the north. Another king who has frequently been mentioned, Ramman-nirari {i.e., Ramman is my helper), bears evidence to the same effect, and Tiglathpileser I. speaks of a temple to Ramman whose foundation carries us back several centuries beyond the period of these two kings — almost to the days of Hammurabi. The theory has accordingly been advanced that the worship of Ramman came to Babylonia from the north, and since the cult of this same god is found in Damascus and extended as far south as the plain of Jezreel, the further conclusion has been drawn that the god is of Aramaic origin and was brought to Assyria through Aramaic tribes who had settled in parts of Assyria. The great an- tiquity of the Ramman cult in Assyria argues against a foreign origin. It seems more plausible to regard the Ramman cult as indigenous to Assyria ; but reverting to a time when the popu- lation of the north was still in the nomadic state of civilization, the cult may have been carried to the west by some of the wandering tribes who afterwards established themselves around Damascus. Up to a late period Aramaic hordes appear from time to time in western Assyria ; and in a higher stage of cul- 160 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. ture, contact between Aramaeans and Assyrians was maintained by commercial intercourse and by warfare. Since tiie earliest mention of Ramman's cult is in the city of Ashur, it may be that he was originally connected with that place. As already intimated, he was essentially a storm-god, whose manifestation was seen in the thunder and lightning, and the god was known not merely as ' the thunderer,' but also as Barku, i.e., lightning. Perhaps it was because of this that he was also brought into association with the great light of heaven, — the sun-god. In many mythologies, the sun and lightning are regarded as correlated forces. At all events, the frequent association of Shamash and Ramman cannot have been accidental. This double nature of Ramman — as a solar deity representing some particular phase of the sun that escapes us and as a storm-god — still peers through the inscription above noted from the Cas- site period where Ramman is called 'the lord of justice,' — an attribute peculiar to the sun-god ; but in Assyria his role as the thunder- and storm-god overshadows any other attributes that he may have had. There are two aspects to rainstorms in Babylonia. The flooding of the fields while committing much havoc is essential to the fertility of the soil. Ramman is therefore the carrier of blessings to the cities, the one who supplies wells and fields with water ; but the destructive character of the rain and thunder and lightning are much more strongly emphasized than their beneficent aspects. Even though the fields be flooded, Ramman can cause thorns to grow instead of herbs. The same ideograph Im. that signifies Ramman also means distress. When the failure of the crops brings in its wake hunger and desolation, it is the " god of the clouds,' the ' god of rain,' the "god of the overflow,' whose wrath has thus mani- fested itself. It is he who (as a hymn puts it) ' has eaten the land.' No wonder that the " roar ' of the god is described as 'powerful,' and that he is asked to stand at the right side THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 161 of the petitioner and grant protection. When Ramman lets his voice resound, misfortune is at hand. It was natural that he who thus presided over the battle of the elements should come to be conceived essentially as a god of war to a people whose chief occupation grew to be conquest. As such he appears constantly in the inscriptions of Assyrian kings, and to such a degree as to be a formidable rival, at times, to the head of the Assyrian pantheon. The final victory of the Assyrian arms is generally attributed to Ashur alone, but just before the battle and in the midst of the fray, Ramman's pres- ence is felt almost as forcibly as that of Ashur. He shares with the latter the honor of invocations and sacrifices at sifth critical moments. In this capacity Ramman is so essentially an Assyrian god that it will be proper to dwell upon him again in the following chapter, when the specially Assyrian phases of the religion we are investigating will be taken up. The consort of Ramman also, the goddess Shala, will best be treated of in connection with the Assyrian phases of the Ramman cult. Of the other gods whose names occur in the inscriptions of Hammurabi, but little of a special character is to be noted. The attributes that he gives them do not differ from those that we come across in the texts of his predecessors. It is sufficient, therefore, to enumerate them. The longest list is furnished by the hymn which has already been referred to. The text is unfor- tunately fragmentary, and so we cannot be sure that the names embrace the entire pantheon worshipped by him. The list opens with Bel (who, as we have seen, is the old Bel of Nippur) ; then follow Sin, Ninib, Ishtar, Shamash, Ramman. Here the break in the tablet begins and, when the text again becomes intelligible, a deity is praised in such extravagant terms that one is tempted to conclude that Hammurabi has added to an old hymn a paean to his favorite Marduk.' To Bel is given 1 The character of this part of the hymn is quite different from that which precedes. 162 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. the honor of having granted royal dignity to the king. Sin has given the king his princely glory; from Ninib, the king has received a powerful weapon ; Ishtar fixes the battle array, while Shamash and Ramman hold themselves at the service of the king. With this list, however, we are far from having exhausted the pantheon as it had developed in the days of Hammurabi. From the inscriptions of his successors we are permitted to add the following : Nin-khar-sag, Nergal, and Lugal-mit-tu, furnished by Samsu-iluna ; Shukamuna, by Agumkakrimi ; and passing down to the period of the Cassite dynasty, we have in addition Nin-dim-su, Ba-kad, Pap-u, Belit-ekalli, Shumalia.' •During the Cassitic rule, Marduk does not play the pro- minent part that he did under the native rulers, but he is restored to his position by Nebuchadnezzar I., who, it will be recalled, succeeds in driving the Cassites out of power. But besides Marduk, Nebuchadnezzar invokes a large number of other deities. For purposes of comparison with the pantheon of Hammurabi, and of his immediate successors, I give the complete list and in the order mentioned by him in the only inscription that we have of this king. They are Ninib, Gula, Ramman, Shumalia, Nergal, Shir, Shubu, Sin, Belit of Akkad. Moreover, Anu is referred to as the especial god of Der, and a goddess Eria^ is worshipped in Elam. Passing still further down, we obtain as additional names, Malik and Bunene, from the inscription of Nabubaliddin {c. 883-852 B.C.).' We may divide this long period from Hammurabi down to the time that the governors of Babylonia became mere puppets of the Assyrian rulers into three sections: (i) Hammurabi and his successors, (2) the Cassite dynasty, (3) the restoration of native rulers to the throne. A comparison of the names fur- nished by the inscriptions from these three sections shows that 1 For further notices of these gods, see chapter x. 2 g^e above, p. 122. 8 One might include in the list also Nin-igi-nangar-bu, Gushgin-banda, Nin-kurra, Nin-zadim {from Nabubaliddin's inscription), but these are only so many epithets of Ea or various /orwj under which the god came to be worshipped. See p. 177. THE PANTHEON IN THE DA YS OF HAMMURABI. 163 the gods common to all are Marduk, Bel, Shamash, Ramman. But, in addition, our investigations have shown that we are justi- fied in adding the following as forming part of the Babylonian pantheon during this entire period : Sarpanitum, Belit, Tash- mitum, Sin, Ninib, Ishtar, Nergal, Nin-khar-sag, and the two other members of the triad, Anu and Ea, with their consorts, Anatum and Damkina. All these gods and goddesses are founcj in the texts from the first and third section of the period, and the absence of some of them from texts of the second section is simply due to the smaller amount of material that we have for the history of the Cassite dynasty in Babylonia. Some of the deities in this list, which is far from being exhaustive,' axe foreign, so e.g., Shukamuna and Shumalia, who belong to the Cassitic pantheon ; others are of purely local significance, as Shir and Shubu." As for Sin, Ninib, and Ishtar, the worship of none of these deities assumes any great degree of promi- nence during this period. No doubt the local cult was con- tinued at the old centers much as before, but except for an occasional invocation, especially in the closing paragraphs of an inscription, where the writers were fond of grouping a large array of deities so as to render more impressive the curses upon enemies and vilifiers, with which the inscriptions usually ter- minated, they do not figure in the official writings of the time. Of Sin, it is of some importance to note that under the Cassite dynasty he stands already at the head of a second class of triads which consists of Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, or Ishtar (see note 3 on page 152), and that through the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar I., we learn of an additional district of Babylonia, — that of Bit-Khabban, where in association with Belit of Akkad, the consort of the older Bel, he was worshipped as the patron deity. Nebuchadnezzar himself does not enu- i We may now look forward to finding many more gods in the rich material for this period unearthed by the University 0/ Pennsylvania Expedition to Niffer. 2 See chapter x. 164 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. merate Sin among the chief gods. Ninib appears in the familiar role as a god of war. After Hammurabi he is only mentioned once in inscriptions of the Cassitic period and then again in the days of Nebuchadnezzar I., who assigns a prom- inent place to him. It is Ninib who, with the title "king of heaven and earth,' leads off in the long list of gods whose curses are invoked upon the king's opponents. Similarly, the belligerent character of Ishtar is the only phase of the goddess dwelt upon during this period. While for Agumkakrimi, she still occupies a comparatively inferior rank, coming seventh in his list, Nebuchadnezzar places her immediately after Anu and before Ramman and Marduk. This advance foreshadows the superior role that she is destined to play in the pantheon during the period of Assyrian supremacy. The cult of Nergal does not figure prominently during this period. In fact, so far as the historical texts go, he disappears from the scene till the time of Nebuchadnezzar I., when he is incidentally invoked in a group with Ramman and Nana as the gods of a district in Babylonia known as Namar. Exactly where Namar lay has not yet been ascertained. Since Nergal, as was shown in the previous chapter, was the local patron of Cuthah, it may be that the latter city was included in the Namar district. At all events, we may conclude from the silence of the texts as to Nergal, that Cutha played no conspicuous part in the empire formed of the Babylonian states, and that the cult of Nergal, apart from the association of the deity in religious texts with the lower world, did not during this entire period extend beyond local proportions. Lastly, it is interesting to note that Samsu- iluna, the son of Hammurabi, refers to Belit of Nippur as Nin- khar-sag, which we have seen was one of her oldest titles. CHAPTER IX. THE GODS IN THE TEMPLE LISTS AND IN THE LEGAL AND COMMERCIAL DOCUMENTS. Besides the historical texts in the proper sense, there is an- other source for the study of the Babylonian pantheon. Both for the first and for the second periods we now have a large number of lists of offerings made to the temples of Baby- lonia and of thousands of miscellaneous legal documents. De Sarzec found a number of such documents at Telloh some years ago, and quite recently some thirty thousand tablets of the temple archives have come to light.^ At Tell-Sifr, Abu- Habba, and elsewhere, many thousands also have been found, belonging chiefly to the second period. A feature of these documents is the invocation of the gods, introduced for various purposes, at times in connection with oaths, at times as a guarantee against the renewal of claims. Again, certain gods are appealed to as witnesses to an act, and in the lists of temple offerings, gods are constantly introduced. Since many of the commercial transactions recorded in these documents, moreover, concern the temples of Babylonia, further occasions were found for the mention of a god or gods. The proper names occurring in these documents, compounded as these names in most cases are with some deity,^ furnish some 1 The Berlin Museum and Columbia College have secured a large proportion of these through purchase. The remainder are still in the market. - The longer names consist of three elements : subject, verb, and object. The deity is generally the subject ; e.g.^ Sinacherib = Sin-akhe-irba, i.f ., may the god Sin increase the brothers. But there are many variations. So the imperative of the verb is often used, and in that case, the deity is in the vocative case. Instead of three elements, there are frequently only two, a deity and a participle or an adjective ; e.g.^ 166 BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN RELIGION. additions to the pantheon of Babylonia. Naturally, a dis- tinction is to be made between deities introduced in temple lists and in the course of legal proceedings, and such as are merely known through forming an element in proper names. The former constitute a part of what might be called the ' active ' pantheon of the time. Deities that are actually invoked by contracting parties for whatever purpose are such as are endowed with real significance ; and if any of these are not mentioned in the historical texts proper, the omission is due to the lack of material. The testimony of the legal documents in this respect is fully as valid as is that of the historical texts. In proper names the case is different. Custom being a promi- nent, if not a controlling, factor in the giving of names, it may happen that the deity appearing as an element in a name is one who, for various reasons, is no longer worshipped, or whose worship has diminished in significance at the time we meet with the name. Again, deities of very restricted local fame, deities that occupy the inferior rank of mere spirits or demons in the theological system of the Babylonians, may still be incor- porated in proper names. Lastly, in view of the descriptive epithets by which some deities are often known, as much as by their real names, it frequently happens in the case of proper names that a deity otherwise known is designated by one of his attributes. Thus we find in legal documents of the second period a goddess, Da-mu-gal, who is none other than the well- known Gula, the great healing deity; Ud-zal, who is identical with Ninib, and so written as the god of 'the rising sun';'' and Mar-tu (lit., 'the west god'), which is a designation of Ramman.^ Sin-magir, i.e., Sin is favorable, or a person is called ' the son ' or ' the servant ' of a god. The name of the deity alone may also constitute a proper name; and many names of course do not contain the mention of a deity at all, though such names are often abbreviations from longer ones in which some god was introduced. 1 Jensen, Kosviologie, p, 458. 2 Arnold, Amicni Babylonian Temple Records^ p. 5, is of the opinion that Id-nik- mar-tu is also a designation of Ramman. His view is plausible, but it still remains to be proved. THE GODS IN THE TEMPLE LiStS. 167 Bearing in mind all these considerations, we find in the tablets of the first period, so far as published,' the same deities that are met with in the historical inscriptions : En-lil, Bail, En-zu (or Sin), Nin-girsu, Nin-gish-zida, Nin-mar, Nana, Nina, Shul-pa-uddu, and others. No doubt a complete publica- tion of the Telloh archives will furnish some — not many — new deities not occurring in the historical texts of this period. A rather curious feature, illustrated by these temple archives, and one upon which we shall have occasion to dwell, is the divine honors that appear to have been paid towards the end of the first period of Babylonian history to some of the earlier rulers, notably Gudea and Dungi.^ Alongside of wine, oil, wheat, sheep, etc., offered to Bau, Nin-gish-zida, and Shul-pa-uddu, the great kings and patesis of the past are honored. More than this, sanctuaries sacred to these rulers are erected, and in other respects they are placed on a footing of equality with the great gods of the period. Passing on to the lists and the legal documents of the second period,' we may note that the gods in whose name the oath is taken are chiefly Marduk, Shamash,* A, Ramman, and Sin. Gen- erally two or three are mentioned, and often the name of the reigning king is added to lend further solemnity to the oath. Other gods directly introduced are Nana, Ishtar, Nebo, Tash- mitum, and Sarpanitum, after whom the years are at times designated, probably in consequence of some special honors accorded to the gods. The standing phrase is " the year of the , throne,' or simply "the year' of such and such a deity. Nin-mar iScheil, " Le Culte de Gudea sous le 11^ Dynastie d'Ur " {Recueil des Travai