Chapter IX: Part 9

She demanded satisfaction, and Anu, at her request, created a monstrous bull, which he sent against the city of Erech. But Izdubar and his friend went out to fight the bull, and killed him. Êabâni took hold of his tail and horns, and Izdubar gave him his deathblow. They drew the heart out of his body and offered it to Shamash. Then Ishtar ascended the wall of the city, and standing there cursed Izdubar. She gathered her handmaidens around her and they raised loud lamentations over the death of the divine bull. But Izdubar called together his people and bade them lift up the body and carry it to the altar of Shamash and lay it before the god. Then they washed their hands in the Euphrates and returned to the city, where they made a feast of rejoicing and revelled deep into the night, while in the streets a proclamation to the people of Erech was called out, which began with the triumphant words:

"Who is skilled among leaders? Who is great among men? Izdubar
is skilled among leaders; Izdubar is great among men."

14. But the vengeance of the offended goddess was not to be so easily defeated. It now fell on the hero in a more direct and personal way. Ishtar's mother, the goddess Anatu, smote Êabâni with sudden death and Izdubar with a dire disease, a sort of leprosy, it would appear. Mourning for his friend, deprived of strength and tortured with intolerable pains, he saw visions and dreams which oppressed and terrified him, and there was now no wise, familiar voice to soothe and counsel him. At length he decided to consult his ancestor, Hâsisadra, who dwelt far away, "at the mouth of the rivers," and was immortal, and to ask of him how he might find healing and strength. He started on his way alone and came to a strange country, where he met gigantic, monstrous beings, half men, half scorpions: their feet were below the earth, while their heads touched the gates of heaven; they were the warders of the sun and kept their watch over its rising and setting. They said one to another: "Who is this that comes to us with the mark of the divine wrath on his body?" Izdubar made his person and errand known to them; then they gave him directions how to reach the land of the blessed at the mouth of the rivers, but warned him that the way was long and full of hardships. He set out again and crossed a vast tract of country, where there was nothing but sand, not one cultivated field; and he walked on and on, never looking behind him, until he came to a beautiful grove by the seaside, where the trees bore fruits of emerald and other precious stones; this grove was guarded by two beautiful maidens, SIDURI and SABITU, but they looked with mistrust on the stranger with the mark of the gods on his body, and closed their dwelling against him.

15. And now Izdubar stood by the shore of the Waters of Death, which are wide and deep, and separate the land of the living from that of the blessed and immortal dead. Here he encountered the ferryman URUBÊL; to him he opened his heart and spoke of the friend whom he had loved and lost, and Urubêl took him into his ship. For one month and fifteen days they sailed on the Waters of Death, until they reached that distant land by the mouth of the rivers, where Izdubar at length met his renowned ancestor face to face, and, even while he prayed for his advice and assistance, a very natural feeling of curiosity prompted him to ask "how he came to be translated alive into the assembly of the gods." Hâsisadra, with great complaisance, answered his descendant's question and gave him a full account of the Deluge and his own share in that event, after which he informed him in what way he could be freed from the curse laid on him by the gods. Then turning to the ferryman:

"Urubêl, the man whom thou hast brought hither, behold, disease
has covered his body, sickness has destroyed the strength of
his limbs. Take him with thee, Urubêl, and purify him in the
waters, that his disease may be changed into beauty, that he
may throw off his sickness and the waters carry it away, that
health may cover his skin, and the hair of his head be restored
and descend in flowing locks down to his garment, that he may
go his way and return to his own country."

16. When all had been done according to Hâsisadra's instruction, Izdubar, restored to health and vigor, took leave of his ancestor, and entering the ship once more was carried back to the shore of the living by the friendly Urubêl, who accompanied him all the way to Erech. But as they approached the city tears flowed down the hero's face and his heart was heavy within him for his lost friend, and he once more raised his voice in lamentation for him:

"Thou takest no part in the noble feast; to the assembly they
call thee not; thou liftest not the bow from the ground; what
is hit by the bow is not for thee; thy hand grasps not the
club and strikes not the prey, nor stretches thy foeman dead on
the earth. The wife thou lovest thou kissest not; the wife thou
hatest thou strikest not. The child thou lovest thou kissest
not; the child thou hatest thou strikest not. The might of the
earth has swallowed thee. O Darkness, Darkness, Mother
Darkness! thou enfoldest him like a mantle; like a deep well
thou enclosest him!"

Thus Izdubar mourned for his friend, and went into the temple of Bel, and ceased not from lamenting and crying to the gods, till Êa mercifully inclined to his prayer and sent his son Meridug to bring Êabâni's spirit out of the dark world of shades into the land of the blessed, there to live forever among the heroes of old, reclining on luxurious couches and drinking the pure water of eternal springs. The poem ends with a vivid description of a warrior's funeral:

"I see him who has been slain in battle. His father and mother
hold his head; his wife weeps over him; his friends stand
around; his prey lies on the ground uncovered and unheeded. The
vanquished captives follow; the food provided in the tents is
consumed."

17. The incident of the Deluge, which has been merely mentioned above, not to interrupt the narrative by its disproportionate length, (the eleventh tablet being the best preserved of all), is too important not to be given in full.[BE]

"I will tell thee, Izdubar, how I was saved from the flood,"
begins Hâsisadra, in answer to his descendant's question, "also
will I impart to thee the decree of the great gods. Thou
knowest Surippak, the city that is by the Euphrates. This city
was already very ancient when the gods were moved in their
hearts to ordain a great deluge, all of them, their father
Anu, their councillor the warlike Bel, their throne-bearer
Ninîb, their leader Ennugi. The lord of inscrutable wisdom, the
god Êa, was with them and imparted to me their decision.
'Listen,' he said, 'and attend! Man of Surippak, son of
Ubaratutu,[BF] go out of thy house and build thee a ship. They
are willed to destroy the seed of life; but thou preserve it
and bring into the ship seed of every kind of life. The ship
which thou shalt build let it be ... in length, and ... in
width and height,[BG] and cover it also with a deck.' When I
heard this I spoke to Êa, my lord: 'If I construct the ship as
thou biddest me, O lord, the people and their elders will laugh
at me.' But Êa opened his lips once more and spoke to me his
servant: 'Men have rebelled against me, and I will do judgment
on them, high and low. But do thou close the door of the ship
when the time comes and I tell thee of it. Then enter the ship
and bring into it thy store of grain, all thy property, thy
family, thy men-servants and thy women-servants, and also thy
next of kin. The cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the
fields, I shall send to thee myself, that they may be safe
behind thy door.'--Then I built the ship and provided it with
stores of food and drink; I divided the interior into ...
compartments.[BG] I saw to the chinks and filled them; I poured
bitumen over its outer side and over its inner side. All that I
possessed I brought together and stowed it in the ship; all
that I had of gold, of silver, of the seed of life of every
kind; all my men-servants and my women-servants, the cattle of
the field, the wild beasts of the field, and also my nearest
friends. Then, when Shamash brought round the appointed time, a
voice spoke to me:--'This evening the heavens will rain
destruction, wherefore go thou into the ship and close thy
door. The appointed time has come,' spoke the voice, 'this
evening the heavens will rain destruction.' And greatly I
feared the sunset of that day, the day on which I was to begin
my voyage. I was sore afraid. Yet I entered into the ship and
closed the door behind me, to shut off the ship. And I confided
the great ship to the pilot, with all its freight.--Then a
great black cloud rises from the depths of the heavens, and
Ramân thunders in the midst of it, while Nebo and Nergal
encounter each other, and the Throne-bearers walk over
mountains and vales. The mighty god of Pestilence lets loose
the whirlwinds; Ninîb unceasingly makes the canals to
overflow; the Anunnaki bring up floods from the depths of the
earth, which quakes at their violence. Ramân's mass of waters
rises even to heaven; light is changed into darkness. Confusion
and devastation fills the earth. Brother looks not after
brother, men have no thought for one another. In the heavens
the very gods are afraid; they seek a refuge in the highest
heaven of Anu; as a dog in its lair, the gods crouch by the
railing of heaven. Ishtar cries aloud with sorrow: 'Behold, all
is turned into mud, as I foretold to the gods! I prophesied
this disaster and the extermination of my creatures--men. But I
do not give them birth that they may fill the sea like the
brood of fishes.' Then the gods wept with her and sat lamenting
on one spot. For six days and seven nights wind, flood and
storm reigned supreme; but at dawn of the seventh day the
tempest decreased, the waters, which had battled like a mighty
host, abated their violence; the sea retired, and storm and
flood both ceased. I steered about the sea, lamenting that the
homesteads of men were changed into mud. The corpses drifted
about like logs. I opened a port-hole, and when the light of
day fell on my face I shivered and sat down and wept. I steered
over the countries which now were a terrible sea. Then a piece
of land rose out of the waters. The ship steered towards the
land Nizir. The mountain of the land Nizir held fast the ship
and did not let it go. Thus it was on the first and on the
second day, on the third and the fourth, also on the fifth and
sixth days. At dawn of the seventh day I took out a dove and
sent it forth. The dove went forth to and fro, but found no
resting-place and returned. Then I took out a swallow and sent
it forth. The swallow went forth, to and fro, but found no
resting-place and returned. Then I took out a raven and sent it
forth. The raven went forth, and when it saw that the waters
had abated, it came near again, cautiously wading through the
water, but did not return. Then I let out all the animals, to
the four winds of heaven, and offered a sacrifice. I raised an
altar on the highest summit of the mountain, placed the sacred
vessels on it seven by seven, and spread reeds, cedar-wood and
sweet herbs under them. The gods smelled a savor; the gods
smelled a sweet savor; like flies they swarmed around the
sacrifice. And when the goddess Ishtar came, she spread out on
high the great bows of her father Anu:--'By the necklace of my
neck,' she said, 'I shall be mindful of these days, never shall
I lose the memory of them! May all the gods come to the altar;
Bel alone shall not come, for that he controlled not his wrath,
and brought on the deluge, and gave up my men to destruction.'
When after that Bel came nigh and saw the ship, he was
perplexed, and his heart was filled with anger against the gods
and against the spirits of Heaven:--'Not a soul shall escape,'
he cried; 'not one man shall come alive out of destruction!'
Then the god Ninîb opened his lips and spoke, addressing the
warlike Bel:--'Who but Êa can have done this? Êa knew, and
informed him of everything.' Then Êa opened his lips and spoke,
addressing the warlike Bel:--'Thou art the mighty leader of the
gods: but why hast thou acted thus recklessly and brought on
this deluge? Let the sinner suffer for his sin and the
evil-doer for his misdeeds; but to this man be gracious that he
may not be destroyed, and incline towards him favorably, that
he may be preserved. And instead of bringing on another deluge,
let lions and hyenas come and take from the number of men; send
a famine to unpeople the earth; let the god of Pestilence lay
men low. I have not imparted to Hâsisadra the decision of the
great gods: I only sent him a dream, and he understood the
warning.'--Then Bel came to his senses. He entered the ship,
took hold of my hand and lifted me up; he also lifted up my
wife and laid her hand in mine. Then he turned towards us,
stood between us and spoke this blessing on us:--'Until now
Hâsisadra was only human: but now he shall be raised to be
equal with the gods, together with his wife. He shall dwell in
the distant land, by the mouth of the rivers.' Then they took
me and translated me to the distant land by the mouth of the
rivers."

18. Such is the great Chaldean Epic, the discovery of which produced so profound a sensation, not to say excitement, not only among special scholars, but in the reading world generally, while the full importance of it in the history of human culture cannot yet be realized at this early stage of our historical studies, but will appear more and more clearly as their course takes us to later nations and other lands. We will here linger over the poem only long enough to justify and explain the name given to it in the title of this chapter, of "Mythical Epos."

19. Were the hero Izdubar a purely human person, it would be a matter of much wonder how the small nucleus of historical fact which the story of his adventures contains should have become entwined and overgrown with such a disproportionate quantity of the most extravagant fiction, oftentimes downright monstrous in its fancifulness. But the story is one far older than that of any mere human hero and relates to one far mightier: it is the story of the Sun in his progress through the year, retracing his career of increasing splendor as the spring advances to midsummer, the height of his power when he reaches the month represented in the Zodiac by the sign of the Lion, then the decay of his strength as he pales and sickens in the autumn, and at last his restoration to youth and vigor after he has passed the Waters of Death--Winter, the death of the year, the season of nature's deathlike torpor, out of which the sun has not strength sufficient to rouse her, until spring comes back and the circle begins again. An examination of the Accadian calendar, adopted by the more scientifically inclined Semites, shows that the names of most of the months and the signs by which they were represented on the maps of the corresponding constellations of the Zodiac, directly answer to various incidents of the poem, following, too, in the same order, which is that of the respective seasons of the year,--which, be it noted, began with the spring, in the middle of our month of March. If we compare the calendar months with the tablets of the poem we will find that they, in almost every case, correspond. As the first tablet is unfortunately still missing, we cannot judge how far it may have answered to the name of the first month--"the Altar of Bel." But the second month, called that of "the Propitious Bull," or the "Friendly Bull," very well corresponds to the second tablet which ends with Izdubar's sending for the seer Êabâni, half bull half man, while the name and sign of the third, "the Twins," clearly alludes to the bond of friendship concluded between the two heroes, who became inseparable. Their victory over the tyrant Khumbaba in the fifth tablet is symbolized by the sign representing the victory of the Lion over the Bull, often abbreviated into that of the Lion alone, a sign plainly enough interpreted by the name "Month of Fire," so appropriate to the hottest and driest of seasons even in moderate climes--July-August. What makes this interpretation absolutely conclusive is the fact that in the symbolical imagery of all the poetry of the East, the Lion represents the principle of heat, of fire. The seventh tablet, containing the wooing of the hero by the goddess Ishtar, is too plainly reproduced in the name of the corresponding month, "the Month of the Message of Ishtar," to need explanation. The sign, too, is that of a woman with a bow, the usual mode of representing the goddess. The sign of the eighth month, "the Scorpion," commemorates the gigantic Warders of the Sun, half men half scorpions, whom Izdubar encounters when he starts on his journey to the land of the dead. The ninth month is called "the Cloudy," surely a meet name for November-December, and in no way inconsistent with the contents of the ninth tablet, which shows Izdubar navigating the "Waters of Death." In the tenth month (December-January), the sun reaches his very lowest point, that of the winter solstice with its shortest days, whence the name "Month of the Cavern of the Setting Sun," and the tenth tablet tells how Izdubar reached the goal of his journey, the land of the illustrious dead, to which his great ancestor has been translated. To the eleventh month, "the Month of the Curse of Rain," with the sign of the Waterman,--(January-February being in the low lands of the two rivers the time of the most violent and continuous rains)--answers the eleventh tablet with the account of the Deluge. The "Fishes of Êa" accompany the sun in the twelfth month, the last of the dark season, as he emerges, purified and invigorated, to resume his triumphant career with the beginning of the new year. From the context and sequence of the myth, it would appear that the name of the first month, "the Altar of Bel," must have had something to do with the reconciliation of the god after the Deluge, from which humanity may be said to take a new beginning, which would make the name a most auspicious one for the new year, while the sign--a Ram--might allude to the animal sacrificed on the altar. Each month being placed under the protection of some particular deity it is worthy of notice that Anu and Bel are the patrons of the first month, Êa of the second, (in connection with the wisdom of Êabâni, who is called "the creature of Êa,") while Ishtar presides over the sixth, ("Message of Ishtar,") and Ramân, the god of the atmosphere, of rain and storm and thunder, over the eleventh, ("the Curse of Rain").

20. The solar nature of the adventurous career attributed to the favorite national hero of Chaldea, now universally admitted, was first pointed out by Sir Henry Rawlinson: but it was François Lenormant who followed it out and established it in its details. His conclusions on the subject are given in such clear and forcible language, that it is a pleasure to reproduce them:[BH]--"1st. The Chaldeans and Babylonians had, concerning the twelve months of the year, myths for the most part belonging to the series of traditions anterior to the separation of the great races of mankind which descended from the highlands of Pamir, since we find analogous myths among the pure Semites and other nations. As early as the time when they dwelt on the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, they connected these myths with the different epochs of the year, not with a view to agricultural occupations, but in connection with the great periodical phenomena of the atmosphere and the different stations in the sun's yearly course, as they occurred in that particular region; hence the signs characterizing the twelve solar mansions in the Zodiac and the symbolical names given to the months by the Accads.--2d. It was those myths, strung together in their successive order, which served as foundation to the epic story of Izdubar, the fiery and solar hero, and in the poem which was copied at Erech by Asshurbanipal's order each of them formed the subject of one of the twelve tablets, making up the number of twelve separate books or chapters answering the twelve months of the year."--Even though the evidence is apparently so complete as not to need further confirmation, it is curious to note that the signs which compose the name of Izdubar convey the meaning "mass of fire," while Hâsisadra's Accadian name means "the sun of life," "the morning sun," and his father's name, Ubaratutu, is translated "the glow of sunset."

21. George Smith indignantly repudiated this mythic interpretation of the hero's exploits, and claimed for them a strictly historical character. But we have seen that the two are by no means incompatible, since history, when handed down through centuries by mere oral tradition, is liable to many vicissitudes in the telling and retelling, and people are sure to arrange their favorite and most familiar stories, the mythical signification of which has long been forgotten, around the central figure of the heroes they love best, around the most important but vaguely recollected events in their national life. Hence it came to pass that identically the same stories, with but slight local variations, were told of heroes in different nations and countries; for the stock of original, or, as one may say, primary myths is comparatively small and the same for all, dating back to a time when mankind was not yet divided. In the course of ages and migrations it has been altered, like a rich hereditary robe, to fit and adorn many and very different persons.

22. One of the prettiest, oldest, and most universally favorite solar myths is the one which represents the Sun as a divine being, youthful and of surpassing beauty, beloved by or wedded to an equally powerful goddess, but meeting a premature death by accident and descending into the dark land of shades, from which, however, after a time he returns as glorious and beautiful as before. In this poetical fancy, the land of shades symbolizes the numb and lifeless period of winter as aptly as the Waters of Death in the Izdubar Epic, while the seeming death of the young god answers to the sickening of the hero at that declining season of the year when the sun's rays lose their vigor and are overcome by the powers of darkness and cold. The goddess who loves the fair young god, and mourns him with passionate grief, until her wailings and prayers recall him from his deathlike trance, is Nature herself, loving, bountiful, ever productive, but pale, and bare, and powerless in her widowhood, while the sun-god, the spring of life whence she draws her very being, lies captive in the bonds of their common foe, grim Winter, which is but a form of Death itself. Their reunion at the god's resurrection in spring is the great wedding-feast, the revel and holiday-time of the world.

23. This simple and perfectly transparent myth has been worked out more or less elaborately in all the countries of the East, and has found its way in some form or other into all the nations of the three great white races--of Japhet, Shem, and Ham--yet here again the precedence in point of time seems due to the older and more primitive--the Yellow or Turanian race; for the most ancient, and probably original form of it is the one which was inherited by the Semitic settlers of Chaldea from their Shumiro-Accadian predecessors, as shown by the Accadian name of the young solar god, DUMUZI, "the unfortunate husband of the goddess Ishtar," as he is called in the sixth tablet of the Izdubar epic. The name has been translated "Divine Offspring," but in later times lost all signification, being corrupted into TAMMUZ. In some Accadian hymns he is invoked as "the Shepherd, the lord Dumuzi, the lover of Ishtar." Well could a nomadic and pastoral people poetically liken the sun to a shepherd, whose flocks were the fleecy clouds as they speed across the vast plains of heaven or the bright, innumerable stars. This comparison, as pretty as it is natural, kept its hold in all ages and nations on the popular fancy, which played on it an infinite variety of ingenious changes, but it is only cuneiform science which has proved that it could be traced back to the very earliest race whose culture has left its mark on the world.

24. Of Dumuzi's tragic death no text deciphered until now unfortunately gives the details. Only the remarkable fragment about the black pine of Eridhu, "marking the centre of the earth, in the dark forest, into the heart whereof man hath not penetrated," (see p. 287) tantalizingly ends with these suggestive words: "Within it Dumuzi...." Scholars have found reason for conjecturing that this fragment was the beginning of a mythical narrative recounting Dumuzi's death, which must have been represented as taking place in that dark and sacred forest of Eridhu,--probably through the agency of a wild beast sent against him by a jealous and hostile power, just as the bull created by Anu was sent against Izdubar.[BI] One thing, however, is sure, that both in the earlier (Turanian) and in the later (Semitic) calendary of Chaldea, there was a month set apart in honor and for the festival of Dumuzi. It was the month of June-July, beginning at the summer solstice, when the days begin to shorten, and the sun to decline towards its lower winter point--a retrograde movement, ingeniously indicated by the Zodiacal sign of that month, the Cancer or Crab. The festival of Dumuzi lasted during the six first days of the month, with processions and ceremonies bearing two distinct characters. The worshippers at first assembled in the guise of mourners, with lamentations and loud wailings, tearing of clothes and of hair, as though celebrating the young god's funeral, while on the sixth day his resurrection and reunion to Ishtar was commemorated with the noisiest, most extravagant demonstrations of rejoicing. This custom is alluded to in Izdubar's scornful answer to Ishtar's love-message, when he says to her: "Thou lovedst Dumuzi, _for whom they mourn year after year_," and was witnessed by the Jews when they were carried prisoners to Babylon as late as 600 B.C., as expressly mentioned by Ezekiel, the prophet of the Captivity:--"Then he brought me to the door of the Lord's house which was towards the north; _and behold, there sat the women weeping for Tammuz_." (Ezekiel, iii. 14.)

25. A favorite version of Dumuzi's resurrection was that which told how Ishtar herself followed him into the Lower World, to claim him from their common foe, and thus yielded herself for a time into the power of her rival, the dread Queen of the Dead, who held her captive, and would not have released her but for the direct interference of the great gods. This was a rich mine of epic material, from which songs and stories must have flowed plentifully. We are lucky enough to possess a short epic on the subject, in one tablet, one of the chief gems of the indefatigable George Smith's discoveries,--a poem of great literary beauty, and nearly complete to within a few lines of the end, which are badly injured and scarcely legible. It is known under the name of "THE DESCENT OF ISHTAR," as it relates only this one incident of the myth. The opening lines are unsurpassed for splendid poetry and sombre grandeur in any, even the most advanced literature.

26. "Towards the land whence there is no return, towards the
house of corruption, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, has turned
her mind ... towards the dwelling that has an entrance but no
exit, towards the road that may be travelled but not retraced,
towards the hall from which the light of day is shut out,
where hunger feeds on dust and mud, where light is never seen,
where the shades of the dead dwell in the dark, clothed with
wings like birds. On the lintel of the gate and in the lock
dust lies accumulated.--Ishtar, when she reached the land
whence there is no return, to the keeper of the gate signified
her command: 'Keeper, open thy gate that I may pass. If thou
openest not and I may not enter, I will smite the gate, and
break the lock, I will demolish the threshold and enter by
force; then will I let loose the dead to return to the earth,
that they may live and eat again; I will make the risen dead
more numerous than the living.' The gate-keeper opened his lips
and spoke:--'Be appeased, O Lady, and let me go and report thy
name to Allat the Queen.'"

Here follow a few much injured lines, the sense of which could not be restored in its entirety. The substance is that the gate-keeper announces to Allat that her sister Ishtar has come for the Water of Life, which is kept concealed in a distant nook of her dominions, and Allat is greatly disturbed at the news. But Ishtar announces that she comes in sorrow, not enmity:--

"I wish to weep over the heroes who have left their wives. I
wish to weep over the wives who have been taken from their
husbands' arms. I wish to weep over the Only Son--(a name of
Dumuzi)--who has been taken away before his time."

Then Allat commands the keeper to open the gates and take Ishtar through the sevenfold enclosure, dealing by her as by all who come to those gates, that is, stripping her of her garments according to ancient custom.

"The keeper went and opened the gate: 'Enter, O Lady, and may
the halls of the Land whence there is no return be gladdened by
thy presence.' At the first gate he bade her enter and laid his
hand on her; he took the high headdress from her head: 'Why, O
keeper, takest thou the high headdress from my head?'--'Enter,
O Lady; such is Allat's command.'"

The same scene is repeated at each of the seven gates; the keeper at each strips Ishtar of some article of her attire--her earrings, her necklace, her jewelled girdle, the bracelets on her arms and the bangles at her ankles, and lastly her long flowing garment. On each occasion the same words are repeated by both. When Ishtar entered the presence of Allat, the queen looked at her and taunted her to her face: then Ishtar could not control her anger and cursed her. Allat turned to her chief minister Namtar, the god of Pestilence--meet servant of the queen of the dead!--who is also the god of Fate, and ordered him to lead Ishtar away and afflict her with sixty dire diseases,--to strike her head and her heart, and her eyes, her hands and her feet, and all her limbs. So the goddess was led away and kept in durance and in misery. Meanwhile her absence was attended with most disastrous consequences to the upper world. With her, life and love had gone out of it; there were no marriages any more, no births, either among men or animals; nature was at a standstill. Great was the commotion among the gods. They sent a messenger to Êa to expose the state of affairs to him, and, as usual, to invoke his advice and assistance. Êa, in his fathomless wisdom, revolved a scheme. He created a phantom, Uddusunamir.

"'Go,' he said to him; 'towards the Land whence there is no
return direct thy face; the seven gates of the Arallu will open
before thee. Allat shall see thee and rejoice at thy coming,
her heart shall grow calm and her wrath shall vanish. Conjure
her with the name of the great gods, stiffen thy neck and keep
thy mind on the Spring of Life. Let the Lady (Ishtar) gain
access to the Spring of Life and drink of its waters.'--Allat,
when she heard these things, beat her breast and bit her
fingers with rage. Consenting, sore against her will, she
spoke:--'Go, Uddusunamir! May the great jailer place thee in
durance! May the foulness of the city ditches be thy food, the
waters of the city sewers thy drink! A dark dungeon be thy
dwelling, a sharp pole thy seat!'"

Then she ordered Namtar to let Ishtar drink of the Spring of Life and to bear her from her sight. Namtar fulfilled her command and took the goddess through the seven enclosures, at each gate restoring to her the article of her attire that had been taken at her entrance. At the last gate he said to her:

"Thou hast paid no ransom to Allat for thy deliverance; so now
return to Dumuzi, the lover of thy youth; sprinkle over him the
sacred waters, clothe him in splendid garments, adorn him with
gems."

26. The last lines are so badly mutilated that no efforts have as yet availed to make their sense anything but obscure, and so it must remain, unless new copies come to light. Yet so much is, at all events, evident, that they bore on the reunion of Ishtar and her young lover. The poem is thus complete in itself; but some think that it was introduced into the Izdubar epic as an independent episode, after the fashion of the Deluge narrative, and, if so, it is supposed to have been part of the seventh tablet. Whether such were really the case or no, matters little in comparison with the great importance these two poems possess as being the most ancient presentations, in a finished literary form, of the two most significant and universal nature-myths--the Solar and the Chthonic (see p. 272), the poetical fancies in which primitive mankind clothed the wonders of the heavens and the mystery of the earth, being content to admire and imagine where it could not comprehend and explain. We shall be led back continually to these, in very truth, _primary_ myths, for they not only served as groundwork to much of the most beautiful poetry of the world but suggested some of its loftiest and most cherished religious conceptions.

[For a metrical version by Prof. Dyer of the story of "Ishtar's Descent," see Appendix, p. 367.]

FOOTNOTES:

[BC] Paul Haupt, "Der Keilinschriftliche Sündfluthbericht," 1881.

[BD] There are difficulties in the way of reading this name, and scholars are not sure that this is the right pronunciation of it; but they retain it, until some new discovery helps to settle the question.

[BE] Translated from the German version of Paul Haupt, "Der Keilinschriftliche Sündfluthbericht."

[BF] The ninth king in the fabulous list of ten.

[BG] The figures unfortunately obliterated.

[BH] "Les Premières Civilisations," Vol. II., pp. 78 ff.

[BI] A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 39; Fr. Lenormant, "Il Mito di Adone-Tammuz," pp. 12-13.

VIII.

RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.--IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.--THE CHALDEAN
LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.--RETROSPECT.

1. In speaking of ancient nations, the words "Religion" and "Mythology" are generally used indiscriminately and convertibly. Yet the conceptions they express are essentially and radically different. The broadest difference, and the one from which all others flow, is that the one--Religion--is a thing of the feelings, while the other--Mythology--is a thing of the imagination. In other words, Religion comes from WITHIN--from that consciousness of limited power, that inborn need of superior help and guidance, forbearance and forgiveness, from that longing for absolute goodness and perfection, which make up the distinctively human attribute of "religiosity," that attribute which, together with the faculty of articulate speech, sets Man apart from and above all the rest of animated creation. (See p. 149.) Mythology, on the other hand, comes wholly from WITHOUT. It embodies impressions received by the senses from the outer world and transformed by the poetical faculty into images and stories. (See definition of "Myth" on p. 294.) Professor Max Müller of Oxford has been the first, in his standard work "The Science of Language," clearly to define this radical difference between the two conceptions, which he has never since ceased to sound as a keynote through the long series of his works devoted to the study of the religions and mythologies of various nations. A few illustrations from the one nation with which we have as yet become familiar will help once for all to establish a thorough understanding on this point, most essential as it is to the comprehension of the workings of the human mind and soul throughout the long roll of struggles, errors and triumphs, achievements and failures which we call the history of mankind.

2. There is no need to repeat here instances of the Shumiro-Accadian and Chaldean myths; the last three or four chapters have been filled with them. But the instances of religious feeling, though scattered in the same field, have to be carefully gleaned out and exhibited, for they belong to that undercurrent of the soul which pursues its way unobtrusively and is often apparently lost beneath the brilliant play of poetical fancies. But it is there nevertheless, and every now and then forces its way to the surface shining forth with a startling purity and beauty. When the Accadian poet invokes the Lord "who knows lie from truth," "who knows the truth that is in the soul of man," who "maketh lies to vanish," who "turneth wicked plots to a happy issue"--this is religion, not mythology, for this is not _a story_, it is the expression of _a feeling_. That "the Lord" whose divine omniscience and goodness is thus glorified is really the Sun, makes no difference; _that_ is an error of judgment, a want of knowledge, but the religious feeling is splendidly manifest in the invocation. But when, in the same hymn, the Sun is described as "stepping forth from the background of the skies, pushing back the bolts and opening the gate of the brilliant heaven, and raising his head above the land," etc., (see p. 172) that is only a very beautiful, imaginative description of a glorious natural phenomenon--sunrise; it is magnificent poetry, religious in so far as the sun is considered as a Being, a Divine Person, the object of an intensely devout and grateful feeling; still this is not religion, it is mythology, for it presents a material image to the mind, and one that can be easily turned into narrative, into _a story_,--which, in fact, _suggests_ a hero, a king, and a story. Take, again, the so-called "Penitential Psalms." To the specimen given on p. 178, let us add, for greater completeness, the following three remarkable fragments:

I. "God, my creator, take hold of my arms! Direct the breath of
my mouth, my hands direct, O lord of light."

II. "Lord, let not thy servant sink! Amidst the tumultuous
waters take hold of his hand!"

III. "He who fears not his God, will be cut off even like a
reed. He who honors not his goddess, his bodily strength will
waste away; like to a star of heaven, his splendor will pale;
he will vanish like to the waters of the night."

3. All this is religion, of the purest, loftiest kind; fruitful, too, of good, the only real test of true religion. The deep humility, the trustful appeal, the feeling of dependence, the consciousness of weakness, of sin, and the longing for deliverance from them--these are all very different from the pompous phrases of empty praise and sterile admiration; they are things which flow from the heart, not the fancy, which lighten its weight of sorrow and self-reproach, brighten it with hope and good resolutions, in short, make it happier and better--what no mere imaginative poetry, however fine, can do.

4. The radical distinction, then, between religious feeling and the poetical faculty of mythical creation, is easy to establish and follow out. On the other hand, the two are so constantly blended, so almost inextricably interwoven in the sacred poetry of the ancients, in their views of life and the world, and in their worship, that it is no wonder they should be so generally confused. The most correct way of putting the case would be, perhaps, to say that the ancient Religions--meaning by the word the whole body of sacred poetry and legends as well as the national forms of worship--were made up originally in about equal parts of religious feeling and of mythology. In many cases the exuberance of the imagination gained the upper hand, and there was such a riotous growth of mythical imagery and stories that the religious feeling was almost stifled under them. In others, again, the myths themselves suggested religious ideas of the deepest import and loftiest sublimity. Such was particularly the case with the solar and Chthonic Myths--the poetical presentation of the career of the Sun and the Earth--as connected with the doctrine of the soul's immortality.

5. A curious and significant observation has been made in excavating the most ancient graves in the world, those of the so-called Mound-builders. This name is not that of any particular race or nation, but is given indiscriminately to all those peoples who lived, on any part of the globe, long before the earliest beginnings of even the remotest times which have been made historical by preserved monuments or inscriptions of any kind. All we know of those peoples is that they used to bury their dead--at least those of special renown or high rank--in deep and spacious stone-lined chambers dug in the ground, with a similar gallery leading to them, and covered by a mound of earth, sometimes of gigantic dimensions--a very hill. Hence the name. Of their life, their degree of civilization, what they thought and believed, we have no idea except in so far as the contents of the graves give us some indications. For, like the later, historical races, of which we find the graves in Chaldea and every other country of the ancient world, they used to bury along with the dead a multitude of things: vessels, containing food and drink; weapons, ornaments, household implements. The greater the power or renown of the dead man, the fuller and more luxurious his funeral outfit. It is indeed by no means rare to find the skeleton of a great chief surrounded by those of several women, and, at a respectful distance, more skeletons--evidently those of slaves--whose fractured skulls more than suggest the ghastly custom of killing wives and servants to do honor to an illustrious dead and to keep him company in his narrow underground mansion. Nothing but a belief in the continuation of existence after death could have prompted these practices. For what was the sense of giving him wives and slaves, and domestic articles of all kinds, food and weapons, unless it were for his service and use on his journey to the unknown land where he was to enter on a new stage of existence, which the survivors could not but imagine to be a reproduction, in its simple conditions and needs, of the one he was leaving? There is no race of men, however primitive, however untutored, in which this belief in immortality is not found deeply rooted, positive, unquestioning. The _belief_ is implanted in man by the _wish_; it answers one of the most imperative, unsilenceable longings of human nature. For, in proportion as life is pleasant and precious, death is hideous and repellent. The idea of utter destruction, of ceasing to be, is intolerable to the mind; indeed, the senses revolt against it, the mind refuses to grasp and admit it. Yet death is very real, and it is inevitable; and all human beings that come into the world have to learn to face the thought of it, and the reality too, in others, before they lie down and accept it for themselves. But what if death be _not_ destruction? If it be but a passage from this into another world,--distant, unknown and perforce mysterious, but certain nevertheless, a world on the threshold of which the earthly body is dropped as an unnecessary garment? Then were death shorn of half its terrors. Indeed, the only unpleasantness about it would be, for him who goes, the momentary pang and the uncertainty as to what he is going to; and, for those who remain, the separation and the loathsome details--the disfigurement, the corruption. But these are soon gotten over, while the separation is only for a time; for all must go the same way, and the late-comers will find, will join their lost ones gone before. Surely it must be so! It were too horrible if it were not; it _must be_--it _is_! The process of feeling which arrived at this conclusion and hardened it into absolute faith, is very plain, and we can easily, each of us, reproduce it in our own souls, independently of the teachings we receive from childhood. But the mind is naturally inquiring, and involuntarily the question presents itself: this solution, so beautiful, so acceptable, so universal,--but so abstract--what suggested it? What analogy first led up to it from the material world of the senses? To this question we find no reply in so many words, for it is one of those that go to the very roots of our being, and such generally remain unanswered. But the graves dug by those old Mound-Builders present a singular feature, which almost seems to point to the answer. The tenant of the funereal chamber is most frequently found deposited in a crouching attitude, his back leaning against the stone-lined wall, and _with his face turned towards the West, in the direction of the setting sun_.... Here, then, is the suggestion, the analogy! The career of the sun is very like that of man. His rising in the east is like the birth of man. During the hours of his power, which we call the Day, he does his allotted work, of giving light and warmth to the world, now riding radiant and triumphant across an azure sky, now obscured by clouds, struggling through mists, or overwhelmed by tempests. How like the vicissitudes that checker the somewhat greater number of hours--or days--of which the sum makes up a human life! Then when his appointed time expires, he sinks down,--lower, lower--and disappears into darkness,--dies. So does man. What is this night, death? Is it destruction, or only a rest, or an absence? It is at all events _not_ destruction. For as surely as we see the sun vanish in the west this evening, feeble and beamless, so surely shall we behold him to-morrow morning rise again in the east, glorious, vigorous and young. What happens to him in the interval? Who knows? Perhaps he sleeps, perhaps he travels through countries we know not of and does other work there; but one thing is sure: that he is not dead, for he will be up again to-morrow. Why should not man, whose career so much resembles the sun's in other respects, resemble him in this? Let the dead, then, be placed with their faces to the west, in token that theirs is but a setting like the sun's, to be followed by another rising, a renewed existence, though in another and unknown world.

6. All this is sheer poetry and mythology. But how great its beauty, how obvious its hopeful suggestiveness, if it could appeal to the groping minds of those primitive men, the old Mound-Builders, and there lay the seed of a faith which has been more and more clung to, as mankind progressed in spiritual culture! For all the noblest races have cherished and worked out the myth of the setting sun in the most manifold ways, as the symbol of the soul's immortality. The poets of ancient India, some three thousand years ago, made the Sun the leader and king of the dead, who, as they said, followed where he had gone first, "showing the way to many." The Egyptians, perhaps the wisest and most spiritual of all ancient nations, came to make this myth the keystone of their entire religion, and placed all their burying-places in the west, amidst or beyond the Libyan ridge of hills behind which the sun vanished from the eyes of those who dwelt in the valley of the Nile. The Greeks imagined a happy residence for their bravest and wisest, which they called the Islands of the Blest, and placed in the furthest West, amidst the waters of the ocean into which the sun descends for his nightly rest.

7. But the sun's course is twofold. If it is complete--beginning and ending--within the given number of hours which makes the day, it is repeated on a larger scale through the cycle of months which makes the year. The alternations of youth and age, triumph and decline, power and feebleness, are there represented and are regularly brought around by the different seasons. But the moral, the symbol, is still the same as regards final immortality. For if summer answers to the heyday of noon, autumn to the milder glow and the extinction of evening, and winter to the joyless dreariness of night, spring, like the morning, ever brings back the god, the hero, in the perfect splendor of a glorious resurrection. It was the solar-year myth with its magnificent accompaniment of astronomical pageantry, which took the greater hold on the fancy of the scientifically inclined Chaldeans, and which we find embodied with such admirable completeness in their great epic. We shall see, later on, more exclusively imaginative and poetical races showing a marked preference for the career of the sun as the hero of a day, and making the several incidents of the solar-day myth the subject of an infinite variety of stories, brilliant or pathetic, tender or heroic. But there is in nature another order of phenomena, intimately connected with and dependent on the phases of the sun, that is, the seasons, yet very different in their individual character, though pointing the same way as regards the suggestion of resurrection and immortality--the phenomena of the Earth and the Seed. These may in a more general way be described as Nature's productive power paralyzed during the numbed trance of winter, which is as the sleep of death, when the seed lies in the ground hid from sight and cold, even as a dead thing, but awaking to new life in the good time of spring, when the seed, in which life was never extinct but only dormant, bursts its bonds and breaks into verdant loveliness and bountiful crops. This is the essence and meaning of the Chthonic or Earth-myth, as universal as the Sun-myth, but of which different features have also been unequally developed by different races according to their individual tendencies. In the Chaldean version, the "Descent of Ishtar," the particular incident of the seed is quite wanting, unless the name of Dumuzi's month, "The Boon of the Seed" ("_Le Bienfait de la Semence._" Lenormant), may be considered as alluding to it. It is her fair young bridegroom, the beautiful Sun-god, whom the widowed goddess of Nature mourns and descends to seek among the dead. This aspect of the myth is almost exclusively developed in the religions of most Canaanitic and Semitic nations of the East, where we shall meet with it often and often. And here it may be remarked, without digressing or anticipating too far, that throughout the ancient world, the Solar and Chthonic cycles of myths have been the most universal and important, the very centre and groundwork of many of the ancient mythic religions, and used as vehicles for more or less sublime religious conceptions, according to the higher or lower spiritual level of the worshipping nations.