Chapter X: Part 10

8. It must be confessed that, amidst the nations of Western Asia, this level was, on the whole, not a very lofty one. Both the Hamitic and Semitic races were, as a rule, of a naturally sensuous disposition; the former being, moreover, distinguished by a very decidedly material turn of mind. The Kushites, of whom a branch perhaps formed an important portion of the mixed population of Lower Mesopotamia, and especially the Canaanites, who spread themselves over all the country between the great rivers and the Western Sea--the Mediterranean--were no exception to this rule. If their priests--their professed thinkers, the men trained through generations for intellectual pursuits--had groped their way to the perception of One Divine Power ruling the world, they kept it to themselves, or, at least, out of sight, behind a complicated array of cosmogonic myths, nature-myths, symbols and parables, resulting in Chaldea in the highly artificial system which has been sketched above--(see Chapters V. and VI.)--a system singularly beautiful and deeply significant, but of which the mass of the people did not care to unravel the subtle intricacies, being quite content to accept it entire, in the most literal spirit, elementary nature-gods, astronomical abstractions, cosmogonical fables and all--questioning nothing, at peace in their mind and righteously self-conscious if they sacrificed at the various time-honored local shrines, and conformed to the prescribed forms and ceremonies. To these they privately added those innumerable practices of conjuring and rites of witchcraft, the heirloom of the older lords of the soil, which we saw the colleges of learned priests compelled, as strangers and comparative newcomers, to tolerate and even sanction by giving them a place, though an inferior one, in their own nobler system (see p. 250). Thus it was that, if a glimmer of Truth did feebly illumine the sanctuary and its immediate ministers, the people at large dwelt in the outer darkness of hopeless polytheism and, worse still, of idolatry. For, in bowing before the altars of their temples and the images in wood, stone or metal in which art strove to express what the sacred writings taught, the unlearned worshippers did not stop to consider that these were but pieces of human workmanship, deriving their sacredness solely from the subjects they treated and the place they adorned, nor did they strive to keep their thoughts intent on the invisible Beings represented by the images. It was so much simpler, easier and more comfortable to address their adoration to what was visible and near, to the shapes that were so closely within reach of their senses, that seemed so directly to receive their offerings and prayers, that became so dearly familiar from long associations. The bulk of the Chaldean nation for a long time remained Turanian, and the materialistic grossness of the original Shumiro-Accadian religion greatly fostered its idolatrous tendencies. The old belief in the talismanic virtues of all images (see p. 162) continued to assert itself, and was easily transferred to those representing the divinities of the later and more elaborate worship. Some portion of the divine substance or spirit was supposed somehow to pass into the material representation and reside therein. This is very clear from the way in which the inscriptions speak of the statues of gods, as though they were persons. Thus the famous cylinder of the Assyrian conqueror Asshurbanipal tells how he brought back "the goddess Nana," (i.e., her statue) who at the time of the great Elamite invasion, "had gone and dwelt in Elam, a place not appointed for her," and now spoke to him the king, saying: "From the midst of Elam bring me out and cause me to enter into Bitanna"--her own old sanctuary at Erech, "which she had delighted in." Then again the Assyrian conquerors take especial pride in carrying off with them the statues of the gods of the nations they subdue, and never fail to record the fact in these words: "I carried away _their gods_," beyond a doubt with the idea that, in so doing, they put it out of their enemies' power to procure the assistance of their divine protectors.

9. In the population of Chaldea the Semitic element was strongly represented. It is probable that tribes of Semites came into the country at intervals, in successive bands, and for a long time wandered unhindered with their flocks, then gradually amalgamated with the settlers they found in possession, and whose culture they adopted, or else formed separate settlements of their own, not even then, however, quite losing their pastoral habits. Thus the Hebrew tribe, when it left Ur under Terah and Abraham (see page 121), seems to have resumed its nomadic life with the greatest willingness and ease, after dwelling a long time in or near that popular city, the principal capital of Shumir, the then dominant South. Whether this tribe were driven out of Ur, as some will have it,[BJ] or left of their own accord, it is perhaps not too bold to conjecture that the causes of their departure were partly connected with religious motives. For, alone among the Chaldeans and all the surrounding nations, this handful of Semites had disentangled the conception of monotheism from the obscuring wealth of Chaldean mythology, and had grasped it firmly. At least their leaders and elders, the patriarchs, had arrived at the conviction that the One living God was He whom they called "the Lord," and they strove to inspire their people with the same faith, and to detach them from the mythical beliefs, the idolatrous practices which they had adopted from those among whom they lived, and to which they clung with the tenacity of spiritual blindness and long habit. The later Hebrews themselves kept a clear remembrance of their ancestors having been heathen polytheists, and their own historians, writing more than a thousand years after Abraham's times, distinctly state the fact. In a long exhortation to the assembled tribes of Israel, which they put in the mouth of Joshua, the successor of Moses, they make him say:--"Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood" (i.e., the Euphrates, or perhaps the Jordan) "in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor, _and they served other gods_." And further on: "... Put away _the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood_ and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord.... Choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua, xxiv. 2, 14, 15.) What more probable than that the patriarchs, Terah and Abraham, should have led their people out of the midst of the Chaldeans, away from their great capital Ur, which held some of the oldest and most renowned Chaldean sanctuaries, and forth into the wilderness, partly with the object of removing them from corrupting associations. At all events that branch of the Hebrew tribe which remained in Mesopotamia with Nahor, Abraham's brother (see Gen. xxiv. xxix. and ff.), continued heathen and idolatrous, as we see from the detailed narrative in Genesis xxxi., of how Rachel "had stolen _the images that were her father's_" (xxxi. 19), when Jacob fled from Laban's house with his family, his cattle and all his goods. No doubt as to the value and meaning attached to these "images" is left when we see Laban, after having overtaken the fugitives, reprove Jacob in these words:--"And now, though thou wouldst needs be gone, because thou sore longedst for thy father's house, yet wherefore hast thou stolen _my gods_?" (xxxi. 30), to which Jacob, who knows nothing of Rachel's theft, replies:--"With whomsoever _thou findest thy gods_, let him not live" (xxxi. 32). But "Rachel had taken the images and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban searched all the tent, but found them not" (xxxi. 34). Now what could have induced Rachel to commit so dishonorable and, moreover, dangerous an action, but the idea that, in carrying away these images, her family's household "gods," she would insure a blessing and prosperity to herself and her house? That by so doing, she would, according to the heathens' notion, rob her father and old home of what she wished to secure herself (see page 344), does not seem to have disturbed her. It is clear from this that, even after she was wedded to Jacob the monotheist, she remained a heathen and idolater, though she concealed the fact from him.

10. On the other hand, wholesale emigration was not sufficient to remove the evil. Had it indeed been a wilderness, unsettled in all its extent, into which the patriarchs led forth their people, they might have succeeded in weaning them completely from the old influences. But, scattered over it and already in possession, were numerous Canaanite tribes, wealthy and powerful under their chiefs--Amorites, and Hivites, and Hittites, and many more. In the pithy and picturesque Biblical language, "the Canaanite was in the land" (Genesis, xii. 6), and the Hebrews constantly came into contact with them, indeed were dependent on their tolerance and large hospitality for the freedom with which they were suffered to enjoy the pastures of "the land wherein they were strangers," as the vast region over which they ranged is frequently and pointedly called. Being but a handful of men, they had to be cautious in their dealings and to keep on good terms with the people among whom they were brought. "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you," admits Abraham, "bowing himself down before the people of the land," (a tribe of Hittites near Hebron, west of the Dead Sea), when he offers to buy of them a field, there to institute a family burying-place for himself and his race; for he had no legal right to any of the land, not so much as would yield a sepulchre to his dead, even though the "children of Heth" treat him with high honor, and, in speaking to him, say, "My lord," and "thou art a mighty prince among us" (Genesis, xxiii.). This transaction, conducted on both sides in a spirit of great courtesy and liberality, is not the only instance of the friendliness with which the Canaanite owners of the soil regarded the strangers, both in Abraham's lifetime and long after his death. His grandson, the patriarch Jacob, and his sons find the same tolerance among the Hivites of Shalem, who thus commune among themselves concerning them:--"These men are peaceable with us; therefore let them dwell in the land and trade therein; for the land, behold it is large enough for them; let us take their daughters for wives, and let us give them our daughters." And the Hivite prince speaks in this sense to the Hebrew chief:--"The soul of my son longeth for your daughter: I pray you, give her him to wife. And make ye marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us and take our daughters unto you. And ye shall dwell with us, and the land shall be before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions therein."

11. But this question of intermarriage was always a most grievous one; the question of all others at which the Hebrew leaders strictly drew the line of intercourse and good-fellowship; the more stubbornly that their people were naturally much inclined to such unions, since they came and went freely among their hosts, and their daughters went out, unhindered, "to see the daughters of the land." Now all the race of Canaan followed religions very similar to that of Chaldea, only grosser still in their details and forms of worship. Therefore, that the old idolatrous habits might not return strongly upon them under the influence of a heathen household, the patriarchs forbade marriage with the women of the countries through which they passed and repassed with their tents and flocks, and themselves abstained from it. Thus we see Abraham sending his steward all the way back to Mesopotamia to seek a wife for his son Isaac from among his own kinsfolk who had stayed there with his brother Nahor, and makes the old servant solemnly swear "by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth": "Thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell." And when Esau, Isaac's son, took two wives from among the Hittite women, it is expressly said that they were "a grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah;" and Isaac's most solemn charge to his other son, Jacob, as he sends him from him with his blessing, is: "Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan." Whithersoever the Hebrews came in the course of their long wanderings, which lasted many centuries, the same twofold prohibition was laid on them: of marrying with native women--"for surely," they are told, "they will turn away your heart after their gods," and of following idolatrous religions, a prohibition enforced by the severest penalties, even to that of death. But nothing could keep them long from breaking the law in both respects. The very frequency and emphasis with which the command is repeated, the violence of the denunciations against offenders, the terrible punishments threatened and often actually inflicted, sufficiently show how imperfectly and unwillingly it was obeyed. Indeed the entire Old Testament is one continuous illustration of the unslackening zeal with which the wise and enlightened men of Israel--its lawgivers, leaders, priests and prophets--pursued their arduous and often almost hopeless task, of keeping their people pure from worships and practices which to them, who had realized the fallacy of a belief in many gods, were the most pernicious abominations. In this spirit and to this end they preached, they fought, they promised, threatened, punished, and in this spirit, in later ages, they wrote.

12. It is not until a nation is well established and enjoys a certain measure of prosperity, security and the leisure which accompanies them, that it begins to collect its own traditions and memories and set them down in order, into a continuous narrative. So it was with the Hebrews. The small tribe became a nation, which ceased from its wanderings and conquered for itself a permanent place on the face of the earth. But to do this took many hundred years, years of memorable adventures and vicissitudes, so that the materials which accumulated for the future historians, in stories, traditions, songs, were ample and varied. Much, too, must have been written down at a comparatively early period. _How_ early must remain uncertain, since there is unfortunately nothing to show at what time the Hebrews learned the art of writing and their characters thought, like other alphabets, to be borrowed from those of the Phoenicians. However that may be, one thing is sure: that the different books which compose the body of the Hebrew Sacred Scriptures, which we call "the Old Testament," were collected from several and different sources, and put into the shape in which they have descended to us at a very late period, some almost as late as the birth of Christ. The first book of all, that of Genesis, describing the beginnings of the Jewish people,--("_Genesis_" is a Greek word, which means "Origin")--belongs at all events to a somewhat earlier date. It is put together mainly of two narratives, distinct and often different in point of spirit and even fact. The later compiler who had both sources before him to work into a final form, looked on both with too much respect to alter either, and generally contented himself with giving them side by side, (as in the story of Hagar, which is told twice and differently, in Chap. XVI. and Chap. XXI.), or intermixing them throughout, so that it takes much attention and pains to separate them, (as in the story of the Flood, Chap. VI.-VIII.). This latter story is almost identical with the Chaldean Deluge-legend included in the great Izdubar epic, of which it forms the eleventh tablet. (See Chap. VII.) Indeed, every child can see, by comparing the Chaldean cosmogonic and mythical legends with the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, those which relate to the beginnings not so much of the Hebrew people as of the human race and the world in general, that both must originally have flowed from one and the same spring of tradition and priestly lore. The resemblances are too staring, close, continuous, not to exclude all rational surmises as to casual coincidences. The differences are such as most strikingly illustrate the transformation which the same material can undergo when treated by two races of different moral standards and spiritual tendencies. Let us briefly examine both, side by side.

13. To begin with the Creation. The description of the primeval chaos--a waste of waters, from which "the darkness was not lifted," (see p. 261)--answers very well to that in Genesis, i. 2: "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The establishment of the heavenly bodies and the creation of the animals also correspond remarkably in both accounts, and even come in the same order (see p. 264, and Genesis, i. 14-22). The famous cylinder of the British Museum (see No. 62, p. 266) is strong presumption in favor of the identity of the Chaldean version of the first couple's disobedience with the Biblical one. We have seen the important position occupied in the Chaldean religion by the symbol of the Sacred Tree, which surely corresponds to the Tree of Life in Eden (see p. 268), and probably also to that of Knowledge, and the different passages and names ingeniously collected and confronted by scholars leave no doubt as to the Chaldeans having had the legend of an Eden, a garden of God (see p. 274). A better preserved copy of the Creation tablets with the now missing passages may be recovered any day, and there is no reason to doubt that they will be found as closely parallel to the Biblical narrative as those that have been recovered until now. But even as we have them at present it is very evident that the groundwork, the material, is the same in both. It is the manner, the spirit, which differs. In the Chaldean account, polytheism runs riot. Every element, every power of nature--Heaven, Earth, the Abyss, Atmosphere, etc.--has been personified into an individual divine being actively and severely engaged in the great work. The Hebrew narrative is severely monotheistic. In it GOD does all that "the gods" between them do in the other. Every poetical or allegorical turn of phrase is carefully avoided, lest it lead into the evil errors of the sister-nation. The symbolical myths--such as that of Bel's mixing his own blood with the clay out of which he fashions man,(see p. 266)--are sternly discarded, for the same reason. One only is retained: the temptation by the Serpent. But the Serpent being manifestly the personification of the Evil Principle which is forever busy in the soul of man, there was no danger of its being deified and worshipped; and as, moreover, the tale told in this manner very picturesquely and strikingly points a great moral lesson, the Oriental love of parable and allegory could in this instance be allowed free scope. Besides, the Hebrew writers of the sacred books were not beyond or above the superstitions of their country and age; indeed they retained all of these that did not appear to them incompatible with monotheism. Thus throughout the Books of the Old Testament the Chaldean belief in witchcraft, divination from dreams and other signs is retained and openly professed, and astrology itself is not condemned, since among the destinations of the stars is mentioned that of serving to men "for signs": "And God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years" (Genesis, i. 14). Even more explicit is the passage in the triumphal song of Deborah the prophetess, where celebrating the victory of Israel over Sisera, she says: "They fought from heaven: the stars in their courses fought against Sisera" (Judges, v. 20). But a belief in astrology by no means implies the admission of several gods. In one or two passages, indeed, we do find an expression which seems to have slipped in unawares, as an involuntary reminiscence of an original polytheism; it is where God, communing with himself on Adam's trespass, says: "Behold, the man is become _as one of us_, to know good and evil" (Gen. iii. 22). An even clearer trace confronts us in one of the two names that are given to God. These names are "Jehovah," (more correctly "Yahveh") and "Elohim." Now the latter name is the plural of _El_, "god," and so really means "the gods." If the sacred writers retained it, it was certainly not from carelessness or inadvertence. As they use it, it becomes in itself almost a profession of faith. It seems to proclaim the God of their religion as "the One God who is all the gods," in whom all the forces of the universe are contained and merged.

14. There is one feature in the Biblical narrative, which, at first sight, wears the appearance of mythical treatment: it is the familiar way in which God is represented as coming and going, speaking and acting, after the manner of men, especially in such passages as these: "And they heard the voice of the Lord God _walking in the garden in the cool of the day_" (Gen. iii. 8); or, "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God _make coats of skins and he clothed them_" (Gen. iii. 21). But such a judgment would be a serious error. There is nothing mythical in this; only the tendency, common to all mankind, of endowing the Deity with human attributes of form, speech and action, whenever the attempt was made to bring it very closely within the reach of their imagination. This tendency is so universal, that it has been classed, under a special name, among the distinctive features of the human mind. It has been called ANTHROPOMORPHISM, (from two Greek words _Anthropos_, "man," and _morphê_, "form,") and can never be got rid of, because it is part and parcel of our very nature. Man's spiritual longings are infinite, his perceptive faculties are limited. His spirit has wings of flame that would lift him up and bear him even beyond the endlessness of space into pure abstraction; his senses have soles of lead that ever weigh him down, back to the earth, of which he is and to which he must needs cling, to exist at all. He can _conceive_, by a great effort, an abstract idea, eluding the grasp of senses, unclothed in matter; but he can _realize_, _imagine_, only by using such appliances as the senses supply him with. Therefore, the more fervently he grasps an idea, the more closely he assimilates it, the more it becomes materialized in his grasp, and when he attempts to reproduce it out of himself--behold! it has assumed the likeness of himself or something he has seen, heard, touched--the spirituality of it has become weighted with flesh, even as it is in himself. It is as it were a reproduction, in the intellectual world, of the eternal strife, in physical nature, between the two opposed forces of attraction and repulsion, the centrifugal and centripetal, of which the final result is to keep each body in its place, with a well-defined and limited range of motion allotted to it. Thus, however pure and spiritual the conception of the Deity may be, man, in making it real to himself, in bringing it down within his reach and ken, within the shrine of his heart, _will_, and _must_ perforce make of it a Being, human not only in shape, but also in thought and feeling. How otherwise could he grasp it at all? And the accessories with which he will surround it will necessarily be suggested by his own experience, copied from those among which he moves habitually himself. "Walking in the garden in the cool of the day" is an essentially Oriental and Southern recreation, and came quite naturally to the mind of a writer living in a land steeped in sunshine and sultriness. Had the writer been a Northerner, a denizen of snow-clad plains and ice-bound rivers, the Lord might probably have been represented as coming in a swift, fur-lined sleigh. Anthropomorphism, then, is in itself neither mythology nor idolatry; but it is very clear that it can with the utmost ease glide into either or both, with just a little help from poetry and, especially, from art, in its innocent endeavor to fix in tangible form the vague imaginings and gropings, of which words often are but a fleeting and feeble rendering. Hence the banishment of all material symbols, the absolute prohibition of any images whatever as an accessory of religious worship, which, next to the recognition of One only God, is the keystone of the Hebrew law:--"Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.--Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them" (Exodus, xx. 3-5).

But, to continue our parallel.

15. The ten antediluvian kings of Berosus, who succeed the apparition of the divine Man-Fish, Êa-Oannes (see p. 196), have their exact counterpart in the ten antediluvian patriarchs of Genesis, v. Like the Chaldean kings, the patriarchs live an unnatural number of years. Only the extravagant figures of the Chaldean tradition are considerably reduced in the Hebrew version. While the former allots to its kings reigns of tens of thousands of years (see p. 196); the latter cuts them down to hundreds, and the utmost that it allows to any of its patriarchs is nine hundred and sixty-nine years of life (Methuselah).

16. The resemblances between the two Deluge narratives are so obvious and continuous, that it is not these, but the differences that need pointing out. Here again the sober, severely monotheistic character of the Hebrew narrative contrasts most strikingly with the exuberant polytheism of the Chaldean one, in which Heaven, Sun, Storm, Sea, even Rain are personified, deified, and consistently act their several appropriate and most dramatic parts in the great cataclysm, while Nature herself, as the Great Mother of beings and fosterer of life, is represented, in the person of Ishtar, lamenting the slaughter of men (see p. 327). Apart from this fundamental difference in spirit, the identity in all the essential points of fact is amazing, and variations occur only in lesser details. The most characteristic one is that, while the Chaldean version describes the building and furnishing of a _ship_, with all the accuracy of much seafaring knowledge, and does not forget even to name the pilot, the Hebrew writer, with the clumsiness and ignorance of nautical matters natural to an inland people unfamiliar with the sea or the appearance of ships, speaks only of an _ark_ or _chest_. The greatest discrepancy is in the duration of the flood, which is much shorter in the Chaldean text than in the Hebrew. On the seventh day already, Hâsisadra sends out the dove (see p. 316). But then in the Biblical narrative itself, made up, as was remarked above, of two parallel texts joined together, this same point is given differently in different places. According to Genesis, vii. 12, "the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights," while verse 24 of the same chapter tells us that "the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days." Again, the number of the saved is far larger in the Chaldean account: Hâsisadra takes with him into the ship all his men-servants, his women-servants, and even his "nearest friends," while Noah is allowed to save only his own immediate family, "his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives" (Genesis, vi. 18). Then, the incident of the birds is differently told: Hâsisadra sends out three birds, the dove, the swallow, and the raven; Noah only two--first the raven, then three times in succession the dove. But it is startling to find both narratives more than once using the same words. Thus the Hebrew writer tells how Noah "sent forth a raven, which went to and fro," and how "the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot and returned." Hâsisadra relates: "I took out a dove and sent it forth. The dove went forth, to and fro, but found no resting-place and returned." And further, when Hâsisadra describes the sacrifice he offered on the top of Mount Nizir, after he came forth from the ship, he says: "The gods smelled a savor; the gods smelled a sweet savor." "And the Lord smelled a sweet savor," says Genesis,--viii. 21--of Noah's burnt-offering. These few hints must suffice to show how instructive and entertaining is a parallel study of the two narratives; it can be best done by attentively reading both alternately, and comparing them together, paragraph by paragraph.

17. The legend of the Tower of Languages (see above, p. 293, and Genesis, xi. 3-9), is the last in the series of parallel Chaldean and Hebrew traditions. In the Bible it is immediately followed by the detailed genealogy of the Hebrews from Shem to Abraham. Therewith evidently ends the connection between the two people, who are severed for all time from the moment that Abraham goes forth with his tribe from Ur of the Chaldees, probably in the reign of Amarpal (father of Hammurabi), whom the Bible calls Amraphel, king of Shineâr. The reign of Hammurabi was, as we have already seen (see p. 219), a prosperous and brilliant one. He was originally king of Tintir (the oldest name of Babylon), and when he united all the cities and local rulers of Chaldea under his supremacy, he assorted the pre-eminence among them for his own city, which he began to call by its new name, KA-DIMIRRA (Accadian for "Gate of God," which was translated into the Semitic BAB-IL). This king in every respect opens a new chapter in the history of Chaldea. Moreover, a great movement was taking place in all the region between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; nations were forming and growing, and Chaldea's most formidable rival and future conqueror, Assyria, was gradually gathering strength in the north, a fierce young lion-cub. By this newcomer among nations our attention will henceforth mainly be claimed. Let us, therefore, pause on the high place to which we have now arrived, and, casting a glance backward, take a rapid survey of the ground we have covered.

18. Looking with strained eyes into a past dim and gray with the scarce-lifting mists of unnumbered ages, we behold our starting-point, the low land by the Gulf, Shumir, taking shape and color under the rule of Turanian settlers, the oldest known nation in the world. They drain and till the land, they make bricks and build cities, and prosper materially. But the spirit in them is dark and lives in cowering terror of self-created demons and evil things, which they yet believe they can control and compel. So their religion is one, not of worship and thanksgiving, but of dire conjuring and incantation, inconceivable superstition and witchcraft, an unutterable dreariness hardly lightened by the glimmering of a nobler faith, in the conception of the wise and beneficent Êa and his ever benevolently busy son, Meridug. But gradually there comes a change. Shumir lifts its gaze upward, and as it takes in more the beauty and the goodness of the world--in Sun and Moon and Stars, in the wholesome Waters and the purifying serviceable Fire, the good and divine Powers--the Gods multiply and the host of elementary spirits, mostly evil, becomes secondary. This change is greatly helped by the arrival of the meditative, star-gazing strangers, who take hold of the nature-worship and the nature-myths they find among the people to which they have come--a higher and more advanced race--and weave these, with their own star-worship and astrological lore, into a new faith, a religious system most ingeniously combined, elaborately harmonized, and full of profoundest meaning. The new religion is preached not only in words, but in brick and stone: temples arise all over the land, erected by the _patesis_--the priest-kings of the different cities--and libraries in which the priestly colleges reverently treasure both their own works and the older religious lore of the country. The ancient Turanian names of the gods are gradually translated into the new Cushito-Semitic language; yet the prayers and hymns, as well as the incantations, are still preserved in the original tongue, for the people of Turanian Shumir are the more numerous, and must be ruled and conciliated, not alienated. The more northern region, Accad, is, indeed, more thinly peopled; there the tribes of Semites, who now arrive in frequent instalments, spread rapidly and unhindered. The cities of Accad with their temples soon rival those of Shumir and strive to eclipse them, and their _patesis_ labor to predominate politically over those of the South. And it is with the North that the victory at first remains; its pre-eminence is asserted in the time of Sharrukin of Agadê, about 3800 B.C., but is resumed by the South some thousand years later, when a powerful dynasty (that to which belong Ur-êa and his son Dungi) establishes itself in Ur, while Tintir, the future head and centre of the united land of Chaldea, the great Babylon, if existing at all, is not yet heard of. It is these kings of Ur who first take the significant title "kings of Shumir and Accad." Meanwhile new and higher moral influences have been at work; the Semitic immigration has quickened the half mythical, half astronomical religion with a more spiritual element--of fervent adoration, of prayerful trust, of passionate contrition and self-humiliation in the bitter consciousness of sin, hitherto foreign to it, and has produced a new and beautiful religious literature, which marks its third and last stage. To this stage belong the often mentioned "Penitential Psalms," Semitic, nay, rather Hebrew in spirit, although still written in the old Turanian language (but in the northern dialect of Accad, a fact that in itself bears witness to their comparative lateness and the locality in which they sprang up), and too strikingly identical with similar songs of the golden age of Hebrew poetry in substance and form, not to have been the models from which the latter, by a sort of unconscious heredity, drew its inspirations. Then comes the great Elamitic invasion, with its plundering of cities, desecration of temples and sanctuaries, followed probably by several more through a period of at least three hundred years. The last, that of Khudur Lagamar, since it brings prominently forward the founder of the Hebrew nation, deserves to be particularly mentioned by that nation's historians, and, inasmuch as it coincides with the reign of Amarpal, king of Tintir and father of Hammurabi, serves to establish an important landmark in the history both of the Jews and of Chaldea. When we reach this comparatively recent date the mists have in great part rolled aside, and as we turn from the ages we have just surveyed to those that still lie before us, history guides us with a bolder step and shows us the landscape in a twilight which, though still dim and sometimes misleading, is yet that of breaking day, not of descending night.

19. When we attempt to realize the prodigious vastness and remoteness of the horizon thus opened before us, a feeling akin to awe overcomes us. Until within a very few years, Egypt gloried in the undisputed boast of being the oldest country in the world, i.e., of reaching back, by its annals and monuments, to an earlier date than any other. But the discoveries that are continually being made in the valley of the two great rivers have forever silenced that boast. Chaldea points to a monumentally recorded date nearly 4000 B.C. This is more than Egypt can do. Her oldest authentic monuments,--her great Pyramids, are considerably later. Mr. F. Hommel, one of the leaders of Assyriology, forcibly expresses this feeling of wonder in a recent publication:[BK] "If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern Babylonia (Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B.C., in possession of the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture adopted by them,--a culture, moreover, which appears to have sprouted in Accad as a cutting from Shumir--then the latter must naturally be far, far older still, and have existed in its completed form IN THE FIFTH THOUSAND B.C.--an age to which I now unhesitatingly ascribe the South-Babylonian incantations." This would give our mental vision a sweep of full six thousand years, a pretty respectable figure! But when we remember that these first known settlers of Shumir came from somewhere else, and that they brought with them more than the rudiments of civilization, we are at once thrown back at least a couple of thousands of years more. For it must have taken all of that and more for men to pass from a life spent in caves and hunting the wild beasts to a stage of culture comprising the invention of a complete system of writing, the knowledge and working of metals, even to the mixing of copper and tin into bronze, and an expertness in agriculture equal not only to tilling, but to draining land. If we further pursue humanity--losing at last all count of time in years or even centuries--back to its original separation, to its first appearance on the earth,--if we go further still and try to think of the ages upon ages during which man existed not at all, yet the earth did, and was beautiful to look upon--(_had_ there been any to look on it), and good for the creatures who had it all to themselves--a dizziness comes over our senses, before the infinity of time, and we draw back, faint and awed, as we do when astronomy launches us, on a slender thread of figures, into the infinity of space. The six ages of a thousand years each which are all that our mind can firmly grasp then come to seem to us a very poor and puny fraction of eternity, to which we are tempted to apply almost scornfully the words spoken by the poet of as many years: "Six ages! six little ages! six drops of time!"[BL]

FOOTNOTES:

[BJ] Maspero, "Histoire Ancienne," p. 173.

[BK] Ztschr. für Keilschriftforschung, "Zur altbabylonischen Chronologie," Heft I.

[BL] Matthew Arnold, in "Mycerinus":

"Six years! six little years! six drops of time!"

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII.

Professor Louis Dyer has devoted some time to preparing a free metrical translation of "Ishtar's Descent." Unfortunately, owing to his many occupations, only the first part of the poem is as yet finished. This he most kindly has placed at our disposal, authorizing us to present it to our readers.

ISHTAR IN URUGAL.

Along the gloomy avenue of death
To seek the dread abysm of Urugal,
In everlasting Dark whence none returns,
Ishtar, the Moon-god's daughter, made resolve,
And that way, sick with sorrow, turned her face.
A road leads downward, but no road leads back
From Darkness' realm. There is Irkalla queen,
Named also Ninkigal, mother of pains.
Her portals close forever on her guests
And exit there is none, but all who enter,
To daylight strangers, and of joy unknown,
Within her sunless gates restrained must stay.
And there the only food vouchsafed is dust,
For slime they live on, who on earth have died.
Day's golden beam greets none and darkness reigns
Where hurtling bat-like forms of feathered men
Or human-fashioned birds imprisoned flit.
Close and with dust o'erstrewn, the dungeon doors
Are held by bolts with gathering mould o'ersealed.
By love distracted, though the queen of love,
Pale Ishtar downward flashed toward death's domain,
And swift approached these gates of Urugal,
Then paused impatient at its portals grim;
For love, whose strength no earthly bars restrain,
Gives not the key to open Darkness' Doors.
By service from all living men made proud,
Ishtar brooked not resistance from the dead.
She called the jailer, then to anger changed
The love that sped her on her breathless way,
And from her parted lips incontinent
Swept speech that made the unyielding warder quail.
"Quick, turnkey of the pit! swing wide these doors,
And fling them swiftly open. Tarry not!
For I will pass, even I will enter in.
Dare no denial, thou, bar not my way,
Else will I burst thy bolts and rend thy gates,
This lintel shatter else and wreck these doors.
The pent-up dead I else will loose, and lead
Back the departed to the lands they left,
Else bid the famished dwellers in the pit
Rise up to live and eat their fill once more.
Dead myriads then shall burden groaning earth,
Sore tasked without them by her living throngs."
Love's mistress, mastered by strong hate,
The warder heard, and wondered first, then feared
The angered goddess Ishtar what she spake,
Then answering said to Ishtar's wrathful might:
"O princess, stay thy hand; rend not the door,
But tarry here, while unto Ninkigal
I go, and tell thy glorious name to her."

ISHTAR'S LAMENT.

"All love from earthly life with me departed,
With me to tarry in the gates of death;
In heaven's sun no warmth is longer hearted,
And chilled shall cheerless men now draw slow breath.

"I left in sadness life which I had given,
I turned from gladness and I walked with woe,
Toward living death by grief untimely driven,
I search for Thammuz whom harsh fate laid low

"The darkling pathway o'er the restless waters
Of seven seas that circle Death's domain
I trod, and followed after earth's sad daughters
Torn from their loved ones and ne'er seen again.

"Here must I enter in, here make my dwelling
With Thammuz in the mansion of the dead,
Driven to Famine's house by love compelling
And hunger for the sight of that dear head.

"O'er husbands will I weep, whom death has taken,
Whom fate in manhood's strength from life has swept,
Leaving on earth their living wives forsaken,--
O'er them with groans shall bitter tears be wept.

"And I will weep o'er wives, whose short day ended
Ere in glad offspring joyed their husbands' eyes;
Snatched from loved arms they left their lords untended,--
O'er them shall tearful lamentations rise.

"And I will weep o'er babes who left no brothers,
Young lives to the ills of age by hope opposed,
The sons of saddened sires and tearful mothers,
One moment's life by death eternal closed."

NINKIGAL'S COMMAND TO THE WARDER.

"Leave thou this presence, slave, open the gate;
Since power is hers to force an entrance here,
Let her come in as come from life the dead,
Submissive to the laws of Death's domain.
Do unto her what unto all thou doest."

Want of space bids us limit ourselves to these few fragments--surely sufficient to make our readers wish that Professor Dyer might spare some time to the completion of his task.

INDEX.

A.

Abel, killed by Cain, 129.

Abraham, wealthy and powerful chief, 200;
goes forth from Ur, 201;
his victory over Khudur-Lagamar, 222-224.

Abu-Habba, see Sippar.

Abu-Shahrein, see Eridhu.

Accad, Northern or Upper Chaldea, 145;
meaning of the word, ib.;
headquarters of Semitism, 204-205.

Accads, see Shumiro-Accads.

Accadian language, see Shumiro-Accadian.

Agadê, capital of Accad, 205.

Agglutinative languages, meaning of the word, 136-137;
characteristic of Turanian nations, ib.;
spoken by the people of Shumir and Accad, 144.

Agricultural life, third stage of culture, first beginning of real
civilization, 122.

Akki, the water-carrier, see Sharrukin of Agadê.

Alexander of Macedon conquers Babylon, 4;
his soldiers destroy the dams of the Euphrates, 5.

Allah, Arabic for "God," see Ilu.

Allat, queen of the Dead, 327-329.

Altaï, the great Siberian mountain chain, 146;
probable cradle of the Turanian race, 147.

Altaïc, another name for the Turanian or Yellow Race, 147.

Amarpal, also Sin-Muballit, king of Babylon, perhaps Amraphel, King of
Shinar, 226.

Amorite, the, a tribe of Canaan, 133.

Amraphel, see Amarpal.

Ana, or Zi-ana--"Heaven," or "Spirit of Heaven," p. 154.

Anatu, goddess, mother of Ishtar, smites Êabâni with death and Izdubar
with leprosy, 310.

Anthropomorphism, meaning of the word, 355;
definition and causes of, 355-357.

Anu, first god of the first Babylonian Triad, same as Ana, 240;
one of the "twelve great gods," 246.

Anunnaki, minor spirits of earth, 154, 250.

Anunit (the Moon), wife of Shamash, 245.

Apsu (the Abyss), 264.

Arali, or Arallu, the Land of the Dead, 157;
its connection with the Sacred Mountain, 276.

Arallu, see Arali.

Aram, a son of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Aramæans in Gen.
x., 131.

Arabs, their conquest and prosperous rule in Mesopotamia, 5;
Baghdad, their capital, 5;
nomads in Mesopotamia, 8;
their superstitious horror of the ruins and sculptures, 11;
they take the gigantic head for Nimrod, 22-24;
their strange ideas about the colossal winged bulls and lions and
their destination, 24-25;
their habit of plundering ancient tombs at Warka, 86;
their conquests and high culture in Asia and Africa, 118.

Arbela, city of Assyria, built in hilly region, 50.

Architecture, Chaldean, created by local conditions, 37-39;
Assyrian, borrowed from Chaldea, 50.

Areph-Kasdîm, see Arphaxad, meaning of the word, 200.

Arphaxad, eldest son of Shem, 200.

Arphakshad, see Arphaxad.

Asshur, a son of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Assyrians in Genesis
x., 131.

Asshurbanipal, King of Assyria, his Library, 100-112;
conquers Elam, destroys Shushan, and restores the statue of the
goddess Nana to Erech, 194-195.

Asshur-nazir-pal, King of Assyria, size of hall in his palace at Calah
(Nimrud), 63.

Assyria, the same as Upper Mesopotamia, 7;
rise of, 228.

Astrology, meaning of the word, 106;
a corruption of astronomy, 234;
the special study of priests, ib.

Astronomy, the ancient Chaldeans' proficiency in, 230;
fascination of, 231;
conducive to religious speculation, 232;
degenerates into astrology, 234;
the god Nebo, the patron of, 242.

B.

Babbar, see Ud.

Babel, same as Babylon, 237.

Bab-el-Mandeb, Straits of, 189.

Bab-ilu, Semitic name of Babylon; meaning of the name, 225, 249.

Babylonia, a part of Lower Mesopotamia, 7;
excessive flatness of, 9;
later name for "Shumir and Accad" and for "Chaldea," 237.

Baghdad, capital of the Arabs' empire in Mesopotamia, 5;
its decay, 6.

Bassorah, see Busrah.

Bedouins, robber tribes of, 8;
distinctively a nomadic people, 116-118.

Bel, third god of the first Babylonian Triad, 239;
meaning of the name, 240;
one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
his battle with Tiamat, 288-290.

Belit, the wife of Bel, the feminine principle of nature, 244-245;
one of the "twelve great gods," 246.

Bel-Maruduk, see Marduk.

Berosus, Babylonian priest; his History of Chaldea, 128;
his version of the legend of Oannes, 184-185;
his account of the Chaldean Cosmogony, 260-261, 267;
his account of the great tower and the confusion of tongues, 292-293;
his account of the Deluge, 299-301.

Birs-Nimrud or Birs-i-Nimrud, see Borsippa.

Books, not always of paper, 93;
stones and bricks used as books, 97;
walls and rocks, ib., 97-99.

Borsippa (Mound of Birs-Nimrud), its peculiar shape, 47;
Nebuchadnezzar's inscription found at, 72;
identified with the Tower of Babel, 293.

Botta begins excavations at Koyunjik, 14;
his disappointment, 15;
his great discovery at Khorsabad, 15-16.

Bricks, how men came to make, 39;
sun-dried or raw, and kiln-dried or baked, 40;
ancient bricks from the ruins used for modern constructions; trade
with ancient bricks at Hillah, 42.

British Museum, Rich's collection presented to, 14.

Busrah, or Bassorah, bulls and lions shipped to, down the Tigris, 52.

Byblos, ancient writing material, 94.

C.

Ca-Dimirra (or Ka-Dimirra), second name of Babylon; meaning of the
name, 216, 249.

Cain, his crime, banishment, and posterity, 129.

Calah, or Kalah, one of the Assyrian capitals, the Larissa of
Xenophon, 3.

Calendar, Chaldean, 230, 318-321, 325.

Canaan, son of Ham, eponymous ancestor of many nations, 134.

Canaanites, migrations of, 190.

Cement, various qualities of, 44.

Chaldea, the same as Lower Mesopotamia, 7;
alluvial formation of, 37-38;
its extraordinary abundance in cemeteries, 78;
a nursery of nations, 198;
more often called by the ancients "Babylonia," 237.

Chaldeans, in the sense of "wise men of the East," astrologer,
magician, soothsayer,--a separate class of the priesthood,
254-255.

Charm against evil spells, 162.

Cherub, Cherubim, see Kirûbu.

China, possibly mentioned in Isaiah, 136, note.

Chinese speak a monosyllabic language, 137;
their genius and its limitations, 138, 139;
oldest national religion of, 180, 181;
their "docenal" and "sexagesimal" system of counting, 230-231.

Chronology, vagueness of ancient, 193-194;
extravagant figures of, 196-197;
difficulty of establishing, 211-212.

Chthon, meaning of the word, 272.

Chthonic Powers, 272, 273.

Chthonic Myths, see Myths.

Cissians, see Kasshi.

Cities, building of, fourth stage of culture, 123, 124.

Classical Antiquity, meaning of the term; too exclusive study of, 12.

Coffins, ancient Chaldean, found at Warka: "jar-coffins," 82;
"dish-cover" coffins, 84;
"slipper-shaped" coffin (comparatively modern), 84-86.

Conjuring, against demons and sorcerers, 158-159;
admitted into the later reformed religion, 236.

Conjurors, admitted into the Babylonian priesthood, 250.

Cossæans, see Kasshi.

Cosmogonic Myths, see Myths.

Cosmogony, meaning of the word, 259;
Chaldean, imparted by Berosus, 260-261;
original tablets discovered by Geo. Smith, 261-263;
their contents, 264 and ff.;
Berosus again, 267.

Cosmos, meaning of the word, 272.

Cuneiform writing, shape and specimen of, 10;
introduced into Chaldea by the Shumiro-Accads, 145.

Cush, or Kush, eldest son of Ham, 186;
probable early migrations of, 188;
ancient name of Ethiopia, 189.

Cushites, colonization of Turanian Chaldea by, 192.

Cylinders: seal cylinders in hard stones, 113-114;
foundation-cylinders, 114;
seal-cylinders worn as talismans, 166;
Babylonian cylinder, supposed to represent the Temptation and
Fall, 266.

D.

Damkina, goddess, wife of Êa, mother of Meridug, 160.

Decoration: of palaces, 58-62;
of walls at Warka, 87-88.

Delitzsch, Friedrich, eminent Assyriologist, favors the Semitic
theory, 186.

Deluge, Berosus' account of, 299-301;
cuneiform account, in the 11th tablet of the Izdubar Epic, 314-317.

Demon of the South-West Wind, 168.

Diseases conceived as demons, 163.

Divination, a branch of Chaldean "science," in what it
consists, 251-252;
collection of texts on, in one hundred tablets, 252-253;
specimens of, 253-254.

Draining of palace mounds, 70;
of sepulchral mounds at Warka, 86-87.

Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess Ishtar, 303;
the hero of a solar Myth, 323-326.

Dur-Sharrukin, (see Khorsabad),
built in hilly region, 50.

E.

Êa, sometimes Zi-kî-a, the Spirit of the Earth and Waters, 154;
protector against evil spirits and men, 160;
his chief sanctuary at Eridhu, 215;
second god of the first Babylonian Triad, 239;
his attributions, 240;
one of the "twelve great gods," 246.

Êabâni, the seer, 304;
invited by Izdubar, 304-305;
becomes Izdubar's friend, 307;
vanquishes with him the Elamite tyrant Khumbaba, 308;
smitten by Ishtar and Anatu, 310;
restored to life by the gods, 314.

Ê-Babbara, "House of the Sun," 215, 248.

Eber, see Heber.

El, see Ilu.

Elam, kingdom of, conquered by Asshurbanipal, 194;
meaning of the name, 220.

Elamite conquest of Chaldea, 219-221, 224-225.

Elohim, one of the Hebrew names for God, a plural of El, 354.
See Ilu.

Emanations, theory of divine, 238-239;
meaning of the word, 239.

Enoch, son of Cain, 129.

Enoch, the first city, built by Cain, 129.

Epic Poems, or Epics, 298-299.

Epic-Chaldæan, oldest known in the world, 299;
its division into tablets, 302.

Eponym, meaning of the word, 133.

Eponymous genealogies in Genesis X., 132-134.

Epos, national, meaning of the word, 299.

Erech (now Mound of Warka), oldest name Urukh, immense burying-grounds
around, 80-82;
plundered by Khudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, 195;
library of, 209.

Eri-Aku (Ariokh of Ellassar), Elamite king of Larsam, 226.

Eridhu (modern Abu-Shahrein), the most ancient city of Shumir, 215;
specially sacred to Êa, 215, 246, 287.

Ethiopians, see Cush.

Excavations, how carried on, 30-34.

F.

Fergusson, Jas., English explorer and writer on art subjects, 56.

Finns, a nation of Turanian stock, 138.

Flood, or Deluge, possibly not universal, 128-129.

G.

Gan-Dunyash, or Kar-Dunyash, most ancient name of Babylonia
proper, 225, 286.

Genesis, first book of the Pentateuch, 127-129;
Chapter X. of, 130-142;
meaning of the word, 353.

Gibil, Fire, 173;
hymn to, 16;
his friendliness, 174;
invoked to prosper the fabrication of bronze, 16.

Gisdhubar, see Izdubar.

Gudêa, _patesi_ of Sir-burla, 214.

H.

Ham, second son of Noah, 130;
meaning of the name, 186.

Hammurabi, king of Babylon and all Chaldea, 226;
his long and glorious reign, ib.;
his public works and the "Royal Canal," 227.

Harimtu ("Persuasion"), one of the handmaidens of Ishtar, 305.

Hâsisadra, same as Xisuthros, 303;
gives Izdubar an account of the great Flood, 314-317.

Heber, a descendant of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews in
Genesis X., 131, 222.

Heroes, 296-298.

Heroic Ages, 299.

Heroic Myths, see Myths.

Hillah, built of bricks from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, carries on
trade with ancient bricks, 42.

Himâlaya Mountains, 188.

Hindu-Cush (or Kush) Mountains, 188.

Hit, ancient Is, on the Euphrates, springs of bitumen at, 44.

Hivite, the, a tribe of Canaan, 133.

Hungarians, a nation of Turanian stock, 138.

I.

Idpa, the Demon of Fever, 156.

Igigi, three hundred, spirits of heaven, 250.

Ilu, or El, Semitic name for "god," 232.

Im, or Mermer, "Wind," 154.

India, 188.

Indus, the great river of India, 188.

Intercalary months, introduced by the Chaldeans to correct the
reckoning of their year, 230.

Is, see Hit.