Chapter XVII: Part II: The Religion of the Babylonians (7)

“Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,
thou ordainest weeping for him year by year.
The bright-coloured wood-pigeon didst thou love;
thou didst smite him and break his wings;
in the woods he sits and cries, ‘O my wings!’
Thou didst love a lion perfect in might;
seven times seven didst thou dig for him a pit.
Thou didst love a horse, glorious in battle;
whip and spur and bridle didst thou decree for him.
Fourteen hours didst thou make him gallop;
weariness and thirst didst thou lay upon him;
for his mother, the goddess Silili, thou ordainest weeping.
Thou didst love the shepherd Tabulu,
who poured out the salt continually for thee;
day by day did he slay for thee the sucklings.
Thou didst smite him, and change him into a wolf.
His own shepherd-boys drove him away,
and his own dogs bit his flesh.
Thou didst love Isullanu, the gardener of thy father,
who was ever bringing thee fruit;
day by day he made bright thy dish;
thou didst lift thine eyes to him, and speak softly to him:
‘Isullanu mine, let us eat the gourds together;
put forth thine hand and touch one ...’
Isullanu answered her:
‘Of me what requirest thou?
Has my mother not baked, have I not eaten,
that I should eat such food?
Thorns and thistles are hidden therein’ (?).
When thou didst hear these his words,
thou didst smite him, and change him into a column (?),
and didst plant him in the midst of [the garden?].”

Istar flew to her father Anu in heaven, and demanded from him vengeance upon Gilgames for the slight he had put upon her. Accordingly a monstrous bull was created, which ravaged the country, and threatened the life of Gilgames himself. But Gilgames was more than a match for the monster. With the help of Ea-bani the bull was slain, and its huge horns carried in triumph through the streets of Erech; while Istar stood in impotent rage on the walls of the city, lamenting the death of the bull, and calling on her harlot priestesses to weep over it with her.

But the death of “the divine bull” had evil consequences for the two heroes. The curse of Istar falls upon them; Gilgames himself is smitten with a grievous sickness, and Ea-bani dies after lingering in pain for full twelve days. Gilgames is inconsolable; vainly he protests against the law of death which carries away the strong equally with the weak, the hero equally with the common man. The ninth book thus begins—

“Gilgames for his friend Ea-bani
weeps bitterly and lies outstretched upon the ground.
“’Shall I not die like Ea-bani?
Grief has entered my body;
I fear death, and lie outstretched upon the ground.’ ”

Accordingly he determines to visit Xisuthros,(331) the hero of the Deluge, who dwelt beyond the river of death, whither he had been translated without dying, and learn from him the secret of immortality.

The road was long and difficult; mortal man had never trodden it before. But there was divine blood in Gilgames; and as the Greek Hêraklês forced his way to Hades, so he too forced his way beyond the limits of our human world. First he had to pass the twin mountains of Mas, in the northern desert of Arabia, which guard the daily rising and setting of the sun, whose summit touches the “zenith of heaven,” while “their breast reaches downwards to Hades.” Men with the bodies of scorpions guarded the gateway of the sun, the horror of whose aspect was “awesome,” and whose look “was death.” But “the scorpion-man” and his “wife” recognised that the stranger was partly divine, and he was allowed to pass in safety through the open doors. Once beyond them he entered a region of thick darkness. For the space of twelve double hours he groped his way through this land without light, when suddenly he emerged from it into the bright light of day. Here grew a marvellous tree, whose fruit was the precious turquoise(332) and lapis-lazuli, which hung from it like clusters of grapes.

At last Gilgames reached the shore of the ocean, which, like a serpent, encircles the earth. Here Ṡiduri, or Ṡabitum “the lady of Saba,”(333) sat upon “the throne of the sea.” But she locked the gate of her palace, and forbade him to cross the ocean; none had ever passed over it except the sun-god in his nightly voyage from west to east. Once more, however, the element of divinity that was in Gilgames prevailed; Ṡabitum acknowledged that he was more than a mere man, and allowed his right to seek his ancestor beyond the river of death. Arad-Ea, the pilot of Xisuthros, was summoned; trees were cut and fashioned into a boat, and for a month and fifteen days Gilgames and his pilot pursued their voyage over the sea. Then “on the third day” they entered “the waters of death.” The hero was bidden to cling to the rudder and to see that the deadly water did not touch his hand. Twelve strokes of the oar were needed before the rapids were safely passed, and the boat reached the shore that lay beyond the realm of death. Here Gilgames beheld Xisuthros “afar off” “at the mouth of the rivers.” At once he communicated to him the object of his journey: how and why had Xisuthros escaped the universal law of death? The answer is contained in the eleventh book of the Epic, which recounts the story of the great Deluge.

Ever since its discovery by George Smith in 1872, the Babylonian story of the Deluge, which has thus been introduced into the Epic of Gilgames, has attracted the special attention of both scholars and the public. On the one side it agrees with the story of the Deluge handed down to us by the copyists of the Chaldæan historian Berossos, and so is a witness to his trustworthiness; on the other side, its parallelism with the account of the Deluge in the Book of Genesis is at once striking and startling. But the version of the story embodied by Sin-liqi-unnini in his Epic was but one out of many that were current in Babylonia. We have a fragment of another which so closely resembles that of the Epic, as to have been long believed to form part of it; indeed, it is possible that it comes from a variant copy of the Epic itself. Fragments of another version have lately been found by Dr. Scheil in a Babylonian tablet which goes back to the reign of Ammi-zadok, the fourth successor of Khammurabi.(334) Even the version contained in the Epic seems to be a combination of two earlier ones, or rather to be based upon at least two different versions of the legend. The story, in fact, must have been of immemorial antiquity in Babylonia; Xisuthros and his ship are depicted upon some of the earliest seals, and Babylonian chronology drew a sharp line of division between the kings who had reigned before and after the Flood. In the Epic Xisuthros is a native of Surippak on the Euphrates, but the story must originally have grown up at Eridu on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Like the story of the struggle with Tiamât, it typifies the contest between the anarchic elements of storm and flood and that peaceful expanse of water in which the fishermen of Eridu plied their trade, and out of which the culture-god had ascended. It is significant that up to the last it was En-lil of Nippur who was represented as sending the Flood that destroyed mankind, while Xisuthros was saved by Ea.

The Babylonian story of the Deluge has been so often translated and is so well known, that there is no need for me to repeat it here. It is sufficient to note that Xisuthros, like Noah, owed his preservation to his piety. In the final scene, when Bel (En-lil) is enraged that any one should have escaped from the destruction he had brought upon mankind, Ea pacifies him with the words: “Punish the sinner for his sins, punish the transgressor for his transgressions; be merciful that he be not [utterly] cut off, be long-suffering that he be not [rooted out].” The Deluge was a punishment for sin, and it was only just, therefore, that the righteous man should be saved.

The translation of Xisuthros with his wife to the paradise beyond the grave is evidently regarded by the author of the Epic as a further reward for his piety. But we may suspect that this was not its original cause. In the myth of Adapa, the first man, we find Anu laying down that the mortal who has penetrated into the secrets of the gods must receive the gift of immortality and become as one of the gods himself, and it would seem that the same idea inspired the belief in the translation of the second father of mankind. Xisuthros too had learned the secret counsels of the gods; with the help of Ea he had outwitted Bel, and it was therefore needful that the gift of immortality should be conferred on him, and that he should dwell like them in the land which death cannot reach.

True to his primeval character, En-lil of Nippur was the author of the Deluge. His ministers, Nin-ip, Nusku, and En-nugi, carry out his commands, while “the spirits of the earth lift up their torches.” But the poet of the Epic has spoilt the primitive symmetry of the picture by introducing the triad into it along with the storm-god Hadad of later times, and so making the destruction of mankind not the work of En-lil alone, but of the gods generally in common council. The result has been a want of coherence in the elements of the story; Istar(335) consents to the death of the children she has borne, only to repent of it subsequently when she sees them filling the sea “like fish,” and to weep with the rest of the gods over the havoc that has been wrought. Perhaps Professor Jastrow is right in his suggestion that two separate versions of the story have been united together, in one of which it was the single city of Surippak and its inhabitants that were destroyed, while in the other the Deluge was universal. However that may be, Ea disclosed the determination of En-lil to his faithful servant, “the son of Ubara-Tutu.” According to one part of the story, the disclosure was made through a dream; according to another part, by a device similar to that which gave the Phrygian Midas his ass’s ears. The god whispered the meditated deed of Bel and the means of escaping it to one of those reed-huts which stood by the shore of the Persian Gulf, and in which Xisuthros—despite the fact that he is called “a man of Surippak”—was born. The rustling reeds communicated to him the secret, and he in turn told his “lord Ea” that he had understood the message.

The ship was built, and by the advice of Ea the too-inquisitive inquirers were informed that the builder was transferring his allegiance from Bel, the lord of the land, to Ea, the god of the sea.(336) All sorts of provisions were stored in it, together with “the seed of life,” each after its kind—“cattle of the field, wild beasts of the field, and the sons of the craftsmen.” Then the helm was placed in the hands of Buzur-Sadi-rabi, the steersman, the door of the ark was closed, and the storm broke upon the earth. For seven days and nights it raged; man and his works were swept away, and the ark alone survived with its living freight. When at last Xisuthros opened his window and looked out, a desolate waste of waters was all that could be seen. Above it the lofty peak of the mountain of Nizir(337) in the north-east finally appeared; here the ship grounded, and seven days afterwards Xisuthros sent forth a dove to see if the earth were dry. But the dove “went to and fro, and returned.” Next he sent forth a swallow, which returned also to the ark; and lastly a raven, which “ate, waded and croaked, and did not return.” So the Chaldæan Noah knew that the waters of the Flood had subsided: and accordingly he opened the door of the ark and let the animals within it depart towards “the four quarters of heaven.” Then he offered sacrifice on the summit of the mountain, setting beside it vases of smoking incense ranged “seven by seven.” The gods smelt the sweet savour of the offering, and rejoiced that there were men still left to prepare it for them. They gathered, we are told, “like flies above the offerer,” while Beltis lifted up “the bow that Anu had made.”

En-lil alone refused to be reconciled. He vented his wrath at the escape of Xisuthros and his family upon the Igigi or angels, who, as spirits, were more under his control than the gods. But Ea took the blame upon himself, and, after declaring that the righteous must not suffer with the guilty, persuaded Bel to promise that though he might send the wild beast, the famine, and the pestilence upon mankind, the earth should never again be visited by the waters of a flood. Then Bel entered the ship, blessed Xisuthros and his wife, and translated them to the other world.

After hearing the story, Gilgames fell into a deep sleep, which lasted six days and seven nights, while the wife of Xisuthros prepared magic food, which she placed at the head of the sleeper. When he awoke he ate it, and his sickness departed from him. But his skin was still covered with sores, and it was therefore necessary that he should bathe in the purifying waters of the ocean before the full strength and beauty of his youth came back to him.

Xisuthros now tells him of the plant of immortality which grows, covered with thorns, at the bottom of the ocean. The hero accordingly ties heavy stones to his feet, and dives for it; and though the thorns pierce his hands, he brings a branch of it to the surface, and prepares to carry it to the world of men. But the gift of immortality was not for men to possess. On his voyage home Gilgames stops awhile at a fountain of cool water, and while he bathes in it a serpent perceives the odour of the plant, and steals it away. Vainly the hero laments its loss, the plant that “changes age into youth ” could never be brought to a world the law of which is death.

Man must die, but what is the lot of the dead? This is the question which forms the burden of the twelfth and last book of the Epic. Gilgames wanders from temple to temple, asking the god of each if the earth has seized hold of Ea-bani, and if so, what is his fate below. But the gods are silent; they give neither answer nor sign. At last, however, he reaches the shrine of Nergal, the god of the dead, and Nergal causes the earth to open and the spirit of Ea-bani to ascend out of it like a cloud of dust. And then the answer is given. He who has friends to care for him will “lie on a couch and drink pure water”; the hero too—

“who is slain in battle, as you and I have seen,
his father and his mother support his head,
and his wife [weeps] over him.
But he whose body lies forsaken in the field, as thou and I have
seen,
his ghost rests not in the earth.
He whose ghost has none to care for him, as thou and I have seen,
the garbage of the pot, the refuse of food,
which is thrown into the street, must he devour.”

With this dreary and materialistic picture of the other world the Epic comes to an end. It is a curious contrast to the life in the fields of Alu to which the Egyptian worshipper of Osiris looked forward; and there is little need to wonder that the mind and religious cult of the Babylonian should have been centred in the present life. The Hades in which he was called upon to believe was more dreary even than the Hades of the Homeric Greeks.

The Epic of Gilgames forces two questions upon our attention, both of which have been often discussed. The one is the relation of the story of the Deluge contained in it to the Biblical narrative of the Flood, the other is the relation of Gilgames himself to the Greek Hêraklês. From the outset it has been perceived that the connection between the Babylonian and Hebrew stories is very close, and that the Babylonian is the older of the two. The birds, for instance, sent out by Xisuthros are three instead of two, as in the Biblical narrative, though the number of times they were despatched is the same in both cases; and the ship of the Babylonian version has been replaced by an ark in the Old Testament account. In fact the Babylonian story has been modified in Palestine and under Western influences. In an inland country an ark was naturally substituted for a ship, more especially as the latter contained a house with window and door; even in Babylonia itself, in the processions of the gods, an ark came to take the place of the ship of primitive Eridu. The olive branch, again, with which the dove returned, according to the Book of Genesis, points to Palestine, where the olive grew; while the period of the rainfall has been transferred from Sebet or January and February, when the winter rains fall in Babylonia, to the “second month” of the Hebrew civil year, our October and November, when the “former rains” began in Canaan. Similarly, the subsidence of the waters is extended in the Hebrew narrative to the middle of the “seventh month,” when the “latter rains” of the Canaanitish spring are over.

But the most remarkable fact brought to light by a comparison of the Babylonian story with that of Genesis is, that the resemblances between them are not confined to one only of the two documents into which modern criticism has separated the Biblical narrative. It is not with the so-called Elohistic, or the so-called Yahvistic, account only that the agreement exists, but with both together as they are found at present combined, or supposed to be combined, in the Hebrew text.(338) The fact throws grave doubt on the reality of the critical analysis. As I have said elsewhere:(339) “Either the Babylonian poet had before him the present ‘redacted’ text of Genesis, or else the Elohist and Yahvist must have copied the Babylonian story upon the mutual understanding standing that the one should insert what the other omitted. There is no third alternative.”

The Palestinian colouring of the Biblical version of itself excludes the supposition that the story was borrowed by the Jews in the age of the Babylonian exile. Such a supposition, indeed, would be little in accordance with the feelings of hatred felt by the captives towards their Babylonian conquerors and the religious beliefs and traditions of the latter. But the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets has shown that the culture and literature of Babylonia had made its way to Palestine and even to Egypt long before the Mosaic age. The great literary works of Chaldæa were already known and used as text-books in the West, and, like the story of the first man Adapa, a portion of which was found in Egypt, the story of the Deluge and the second founder of the human race must also have been known there. Gunkel has made it clear(340) that the conceptions and beliefs which underlie the history of the Flood, and find their expression in the statement that “the fountains of the great deep” were broken up, are not only of Babylonian origin, but are also met with in the earliest fragments of Old Testament literature. Before the Israelites entered Canaan, the cosmological ideas of Babylonia had already made their way to it, and been adapted to the geographical conditions of “the land of the Amorites.”

The story of a deluge was known to Greece as well as to Palestine. There, too, it had been sent by Zeus as a punishment for the impiety of mankind; and Deukalion, the Greek Noah, saved himself and his family in a ship.(341) The peak of Parnassos played the same part in the Greek legend that the mountain of Nizir played in the Babylonian; and the stones thrown on the ground by Deukalion which became men, remind us of the images of clay moulded by the goddess Mami in the mutilated Babylonian myth of Atarpi, which similarly become men and women.

But it is not so much with the episode of the Deluge as with the whole story of Gilgames and his adventures that Greek mythology claims connection. The desire of finding the biblical Nimrod in the cuneiform tablets long seduced Assyriologists into the impossible attempt to identify him with Gilgames; it is not, however, to the Biblical Nimrod, but to the Greek Hêraklês, that the Babylonian hero is related. The curious parallelism between the twelve labours of Hêraklês and the twelve adventures of Gilgames may be an accident; but it is no accident that Gilgames and Hêraklês should alike be heroes who are not kings, and that both alike should be tormented with a deadly distemper which destroyed the flesh. Khumbaba is the tyrant Geryon, the bull slain by Gilgames is the Kretan bull slain by Hêraklês, and the Nemæan lion reappears in the lion which Gilgames is so often represented on the seals as strangling to death. As Hêra persecuted Hêraklês, so Istar persecuted Gilgames; the journey of the Greek hero into Hades is paralleled by the journey of Gilgames beyond the waters of death; and the tree which he found on the shores of the sea with its fruit of precious stones is the magical tree of the Hesperides with its golden apples which grew in the midst of the western ocean.

It is true that there are many elements in the legend of Hêraklês which are not derived from Babylonia. But it is also true that, like the cosmogonies of Hesiod or the cosmological philosophy of Thales, there are also elements in it for which we must claim a Babylonian origin. Probably they made their way to Greek lands at the same time as the Cyprian cult of Aphroditê or the myth of Adônis, whose name indicates the road along which the culture of Babylonia had travelled. Recent archæological discoveries have revealed the fact that in the days when Canaan was a Babylonian province, a civilisation already existed in the Ægean, and that an active intercourse was carried on between Egypt and Asia on the one hand, and the islands and shores of the Mediterranean on the other, in which Krete took a leading share. Light is only just dawning on what until lately was the “prehistoric” past of the European peoples; before long a new world will doubtless be disclosed to us, such as that which the decipherment of the cuneiform texts has brought to light.

It is not only in the mythology of primitive Greece that we can trace the influence of the legends embodied in the Epic of Gilgames. The adventures of Gilgames in search of immortality form part of the story of that mythical Alexander who grew up in literature by the side of the Alexander of history. He too had to make his way through a land of thick darkness, and he too finally failed in his endeavour to secure the “waters of life.”(342) Man is and must remain mortal; this is alike the teaching of the old poet of Chaldæa and of the romance which the contact of Eastern and Western thought called into existence in classical days.

Lecture IX. The Ritual Of The Temple.

The temple of the god was the centre and glory of every great Babylonian city. The Babylonian States had been at the outset essentially theocratic; their ruler had been a high priest before he became a king, and up to the last he remained the vicegerent and adopted son of the god. It was round the temple that the city had grown and its population clustered. The artisans worked for it, and the agricultural labourers tilled its fields. The art of Babylonia originated within the temple precincts; it was for its adornment that the enamelled tiles were first made, and wood or stone or metal carved into artistic shapes, while the endowments which thus fostered the craftsman’s art were derived from landed property or from the tithes paid to the priests upon the produce of the soil. The culture of Babylonia was with good reason traced back to the god Ea.

The place occupied in Assyria by the army was filled in Babylonia by the priesthood. The priests could make and unmake their kings. The last monarch of Babylonia, Nabonidos, was a nominee of the priests of Babylon; it was from them, and not from the rights of heritage, that he had derived his title to the throne. The great sanctuaries of the country influenced its destinies to the last. The influence of Nippur and Eridu, in fact, was wholly religious; we know of no royal dynasties that sprang from them. Even Nabonidos, with all his centralising zeal on behalf of Merodach of Babylon, was constrained to lavish gifts and honours on the sun-god of Sippara, at all events in the early part of his reign.

We must therefore look upon the temple as the oldest unit in the civilisation of Babylonia. Babylonian culture begins with the temple, with the worship of a deity or a spirit, and with the ministers attached to the cult. Centuries before En-lil of Nippur had developed into a Semitic Bel, an earthly dwelling-house had been provided for him which became in time the temple of a god. Its first name, Ê-kur, “the house of the earth” or “mountain,” continued always to cling to it, even though the original meaning of the name was forgotten, and it had come to signify a temple in the later sense of the word.

The temple was the sign and token of the reclamation of the primitive Babylonian swamp. Before it could be erected, it was needful to construct a platform of solid earth and brickwork, which should rise above the pestiferous marsh, and serve as a foundation for the building. The Sumerians called the platform the ki-gal or “great place”; it was the first place of human or divine habitation wrested from the waters of the swamp, and it marked the triumph of civilised man over nature. Emphatically, therefore, it was a “great place,” a solid resting-place in a world of water and slime.

On the platform the temple buildings were piled. There was no stone in Babylonia; it was a land of mud, and of mud bricks, accordingly, baked in the sun, the temple of the god was constructed. What was lost in beauty or design was gained in solidity. The Babylonian temples were huge masses of brick, square for the most part, and with the four corners facing the four cardinal points. It was only exceptionally that the four sides, instead of the four corners, were made to front the four “winds.”

These masses of brick were continually growing in height. The crude bricks soon disintegrated, and the heavy rains of a Babylonian winter quickly reduced them to their primeval mud. Constant restorations were therefore needed, and the history of a Babylonian temple is that of perpetual repairs. Efforts were made to keep the walls from crumbling away by building buttresses against them, and the bricks were cemented together with bitumen. But all precautions were in vain. A period of national decay inevitably brought with it the decay also of the temples, and a return of prosperity meant their restoration on the disintegrated ruins of the older edifice. The artificial platform became a _tel_ or mound.

But the growth in height was not displeasing to the priestly builders. The higher the temple rose above the level of the plain, the better they were pleased. A characteristic of the Babylonian temple, in fact, was the _ziggurat_ or “tower” attached to each, whose head it was designed should “reach to heaven.” The word _ziggurat_ means a “lofty peak,” and the royal builders of Babylonia vied with one another in making the temple towers they erected as high as possible.

There was more than one reason for this characteristic feature of religious Babylonian architecture. The first settlers in the plain of Babylonia must soon have discovered that the higher they could be above the surface of the ground the better it was for them. The nearer they ascended to the clouds of heaven, the freer they were from the miasmata and insects of the swamp. The same cause which led them to provide a platform for their temples, would have also led them to raise the temple as high as they could above the level of the plain. This, however, will not explain the origin of the tower itself. It would have been a reason for building the temple as high as possible, not for attaching to it a tower. Nor was the tower suitable for defence against an enemy, like the pylons of an Egyptian temple. At most it was a convenient watch-tower from which the movements of a hostile band could be observed. There must have been some other reason, more directly connected with religious beliefs or practices, which found its outward expression in the sacred tower.

The sanctuary of Nippur, it will be remembered, was the oldest in Northern Babylonia. And from time immemorial it had been known as Ê-kur, “the house of the mountain-land.” It represented that underground world which was the home of En-lil and his ghosts; and this underground world, we must observe, was conceived of as a mountain. In fact, the cuneiform character which signifies “country” also signifies “mountain,” and the hieroglyphic picture out of which it developed is the picture of a mountain-range. The land in which it was first drawn and stereotyped in writing must, it would seem, have been a mountainous one, like the land in which the subterranean realm of En-lil was regarded as a lofty hill. In other words, the Sumerians must have been the inhabitants of a mountainous country before they settled in the plain of Babylonia and laid the foundations of the temple of Nippur.

And this mountainous country lay to the north or east, where the mountains of Elam and Kurdistan border the Babylonian plain. In the story of the Deluge the ark is made to rest on the summit of the mountain of Nizir, which is probably the modern Rowandiz, to the north-east of Assyria; and the gods were believed to have been born in “the mountain of the world,” in the land of Arallu.(343) Here, too, they held their court; “I will ascend into heaven,” the Babylonian monarch is made to say in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, “I will exalt my throne above the stars of El; I will sit also upon the mount of the assembly (of the gods), in the extremities of the north;(344) I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” More than one temple in both Babylonia and Assyria took its name from this “mountain of the world”; the _ziggurat_ at Kis was known as “the house of the mountain of mankind,” while a temple at Ur was entitled “the house of the mountain,” and the shrine of Gula at Babylon was “the house of the holy hill.”(345)

All over Babylonia, accordingly, the mountain is brought into close connection with the religious cult. Not at Nippur only, but in other cities as well, the home of the gods is on the summit of an Olympos, within whose subterranean recesses they were born when as yet the primitive ghost or spirit had not become a god. Sumerian religion must have grown up rather among the mountains than in the plain, and the memory of its birthplace was preserved by religious conservatism. The _ziggurat_ of the temple goes back to the days when the gods were still gods of the mountain, and the builders of the temple sought to force a way into the heavenly Olympos by raising artificially an imitation of the mountain on the alluvial plain. The tower was a mimic representation of the Ê-kur, or mountain of the earth itself, where En-lil, “the god of the great mountain” (_sadu rabu_), had his seat. And the earth could have been figured as a mountain only by the inhabitants of a mountainous land.

But this conception of the world of gods and men stands in glaring contrast to the cosmology of Eridu. There the primeval earth was not a mountain peak, but the flat lands reclaimed from the sea. The gods and spirits had their home in the abysses of the ocean, not in the dark recesses of a mountain of the north; the centre of the world was the palace of Ea beneath the waves, not “the mountain-house” of En-lil, or the dark caverns of “the mountain of Arallu.” Once more we are confronted by a twofold element in Babylonian thought and religion, and a proof of its compound nature. Like the contradictory elements in Egyptian religion, which can best be explained by the composite character of the people, the contradictory elements in Babylonian religion imply that mixture of races which is described in the fragments of Berossos.

In the tower or _ziggurat_, accordingly, we must see a reflection of the belief that this nether earth is a mountain whose highest peak supports the vault of the sky. Around it float the stars and clouds, concealing the heaven of the gods from the eyes of man. But this Olympian heaven was really an afterthought. It was not until the ghosts of the lower world had developed into gods, and been transferred from the heart of the mountain to its summit, that it had any existence at all. It belongs to the age of astro-theology, to the time when the moon and sun and host of heaven became divine, and received the homage of mankind. This is an age to which I shall have to refer again in my next and concluding lecture. It was the time when the _ziggurat_ began to consist of seven storeys, dedicated to the seven planets, when the _ziggurat_ of Erech was called “the house of the seven black stones,” and that of Borsippa, “of the seven zones of heaven and earth.”(346)

The _ziggurat_ occupied but a small part of the temple area. What the temple was like we know to a certain extent, not only from the American excavations at Nippur, but more especially from the accounts given us by Herodotos and by a cuneiform tablet which describes the great temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon. The latter was called Ê-Saggila, “the house of the exalted head”; and though the account of Herodotos is probably quoted from an earlier author, while the cuneiform tablet, which was seen and translated by Mr. George Smith at Constantinople, has unfortunately been lost, there is nevertheless no ground in either case for mistrust. The description given by Herodotos fully agrees with that of the tablet.

The visitor to the temple first entered the “Great” or Outer Court. It was 900 feet in breadth, and more than 1150 in length. If we may judge from the analogy of Nippur and Lagas, an arcade ran round its interior, supported on columns, and two larger, but detached, columns of brick or stone stood on either side of the entrance. At Babylon a second court opened out of the first, devoted to the worship of the goddesses Istar and Zamâmâ. Six gates pierced the walls—the Grand Gate, the Gate of the Rising Sun, the Great Gate, the Gate of the Colossi, the Gate of the Canal, and the Gate of the Tower-view.(347) Then came the _kigallu_, or platform, of the original temple, the sides, and not the corners of which faced the four cardinal points, and which possessed four gates, each in the centre of a side. In it was the _ziggurat_, “the house of the foundation of heaven and earth,” as it was termed, with its seven stages, which rose one above the other in gradually diminishing proportions to a height of 300 feet.(348) A winding ramp led upwards on the outside, connecting the stages with each other, and allowing a chariot to be driven along it to the top. Here in the last of the seven stages was the chamber of the god. It contained no image of the deity, only a couch of gold and a golden table for the shewbread.(349) None but a woman into whom the god had breathed the spirit of prophecy was allowed to enter it, and it was to her that Bel revealed himself at night on his golden couch and delivered his oracles. As in Greece, so too in Babylonia and Assyria, women were inspired prophetesses of the gods. It was from the priestesses and serving-women of Istar of Arbela that Esar-haddon received the oracles of the goddess; and we are reminded that in Israel also it was the prophetess Deborah who roused her countrymen to battle, and Huldah, rather than Jeremiah, to whom the high priest betook himself that he might hear “the word of the Lord.”

It is significant that the place of the oracle was the topmost chamber of the tower. The god is conceived as coming down from heaven;(350) it is there that he lives, not in the underground recesses of the mountain of the world or fathomless abysses of the sea. When the _ziggurat_ took its final shape, the deities of Babylonia had already been transported to the sky.

It is also significant that there was no image of the god. The spiritual had been finally separated from the material, and where the god himself came in spiritual form no material image of him was needed. Though none might be able to see him with mortal eye save only his inspired priestess, he was nevertheless as actually present as if he had embodied himself in some statue of metal or stone. The denizen of heaven required no body or form of earthly make; the divine spirits who were worshipped in the sun or stars were seen only by the eye of faith.

But it was in the _ziggurat_ only that the deity thus came down from heaven in spiritual guise. In the chapels and shrines that stood at its foot images were numerous; here the multitude, whether of priests or laymen, served and worshipped, and the older traditions of religion remained intact. On the eastern side of the tower was the sanctuary of Nebo, the “angel” or interpreter of the will of Merodach, with Tasmit, his wife. To the north were the chapels of Ea and Nusku, and to the south those of Anu and En-lil, while westward was the temple of Merodach himself. It consisted of a double building, with a court between the two wings. In the recesses of the inner sanctuary was the _papakhu_, or “Holy of Holies,” with its golden image of the god. Here too was the golden table of shewbread and the _parakku_, or mercy-seat, which at times gave its name to the whole shrine.

The innermost sanctuary was known as the Du-azagga, or “Holy Hill,” after which the month Tisri received one of its names.(351) But the name had really come from Eridu. It was the dwelling-place of Ea on the eastern horizon of the sea, where the sun rises from the deep,(352) and Asari accordingly was entitled its “son.” When Asari became Merodach of Babylon, the Holy Mound or Hill migrated with him, and the seat of the oracular wisdom of Ea was transformed into the shrine of Merodach, where he in his turn delivered his oracles on the festival of the New Year.(353) Lehmann(354) has shown that originally it represented the mercy-seat, the “golden throne” of the description of Herodotos, above which the deity seated himself when he descended to announce the future destinies of man. It was only subsequently that it was extended to the “Holy of Holies” in which the mercy-seat stood.

A golden altar seems to have been raised close to the mercy-seat of the god. If Herodotos may be trusted, lambs only were allowed to be sacrificed upon it. But there was another and larger altar in the outer court. On this whole sheep were offered, as well as frankincense.

The architectural arrangement of a Babylonian temple, however, was not always the same. The orientation of the temple of Merodach, as we have seen, differed from that of the majority of the Babylonian sanctuaries. The number of chapels included within the sacred precincts varied greatly, and even the position of the great tower was not uniform. But the general plan was alike everywhere. There was first the great court, open to the sky, and surrounded by cloisters and colonnades. Here were the houses of the priests and other ministers of the temple, the library and school, shops for the manufacture and sale of votive objects, even the stalls wherein the animals were kept that were intended for sacrifice. In the centre of the court stood an altar of sacrifice, with large vases for the purposes of ablution by the side of it, as well as a “sea,” or basin of water, which derived its name from the fact that it was a symbol of the primeval “deep.” The basin was of bronze or stone, and was at times supported on the backs of twelve oxen, as we learn from an old hymn which describes the construction of one of them.(355) At other times, as at Lagas, the basin was decorated with a frieze of female figures, who pour water from the vases in their outstretched hands.(356) The purifying effects of the water of the “deep” were transferred to that of the mimic “sea,” and the worshipper who entered the temple after washing in it became ceremonially pure.

The great court, with its two isolated columns in front of the entrance, led into a second, from the floor of which rose the _ziggurat_ or tower. The second court formed the approach to the temple proper, which again consisted of an outer sanctuary and an inner shrine. Whether the laity were admitted into its inner recesses is doubtful. No one, indeed, could appear before the god except through the mediation of a priest; and on the seal-cylinders a frequent representation is that of a worshipper whom the priest is leading by the hand and presenting to the image of a deity. But it is not certain that the image represented on them was that which stood in the Holy of Holies, or innermost shrine; it may have been a second image, erected in another part of the temple. On the other hand, the numerous chapels of the secondary gods who formed the court of the chief deity of a city, can hardly have been furnished with more than one statue, and it is even questionable whether they consisted of more than one chamber. Perhaps it was only from the topmost room of the tower that the layman was absolutely excluded.

The Babylonian temple, it will be seen, thus closely resembled the temple of Solomon. That, too, had its two courts, its chambers for the priests, its sanctuary, and its Holy of Holies. Both alike were externally mere rectangular boxes, without architectural beauty or variety of design. It was only in the possession of a tower that the Babylonian temple differed from the Israelite. They agreed even in the details of their furniture. The two altars of the Babylonian sanctuary are found again in the temple of Jerusalem; so too are the mercy-seat and the table of shewbread. Even the bronze “sea” of Solomon, with its twelve oxen, is at last accounted for; it was modelled after a Babylonian original, and goes back to the cosmological ideas which had their source in Eridu. Yet more striking are the twin pillars that flanked the gateway of the court, remains of which have been found both at Nippur and at Tello. They are exactly parallel to the twin pillars which Solomon set up “in the porch of the temple,” and which he named Yakin and Boaz. In these, again, we may find vestiges of a belief which had its roots in the theology of Eridu. When Adapa, the first man, was sent by Ea to the heaven of Anu, he found on either side of the gate two gods clothed in mourning, and weeping for their untimely removal from the earth. Like the two cherubim who guarded the tree of life, they guarded the gate of heaven. One of them was Tammuz, the other Nin-gis-zida, “the lord of the firmly planted stake.” Each had perished, it would seem, in the prime of life, and hence were fitly set to guard the gates of heaven and prevent mortal man from forcing his way into the realm of immortality. Yakin, it should be noticed, is a very passable translation of the Sumerian Nin-gis-zida; perhaps Boaz preserves, under a corrupted form, a reminiscence of Tammuz.

There was yet another parallelism between the temples of Babylonia and Jerusalem. The Hebrew ark was replaced in Babylonia by a ship. The ship was dedicated to the god or goddess whose image it contained, and was often of considerable size. Its sides were frequently inlaid with gems and gold, and it always bore a special name. One at least of the names indicates that the ship goes back to the days when as yet the gods had not assumed human forms; the ship of Bau is still that of “the holy cow.” In early times the ship was provided with captain and crew; later, it was reduced in size so that it could be carried like an ark on the shoulders of men. But its original object is clear. On days of festival the god was rowed in it on the sacred river, where he could enjoy the cool breeze, and return, as it were, to the “pure” waters of the primeval deep. Gradually it became merely his travelling home when he left his usual dwelling-place. In Assyria its place was even taken by a throne or platform borne upon the shoulders in the religious processions. The ship, in fact, passed into an ark, the curtained palanquin or shrine wherein the deity could conceal himself from the eyes of the profane when he left his own sanctuary.

A discovery made by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam in the mounds of Balawât, some fifteen miles from Mossul, shows that in Assyria the development of the ship into the ark was as complete as it was in Israel. Here he found a small chapel dedicated to the god of dreams. At the entrance of the sanctuary was a stone coffer, which contained two small alabaster slabs thickly covered with cuneiform writing. They proved to be records of the conquests of Assur-nazir-pal, the builder of the chapel, and each tablet contained the same text. It was not surprising that the native workmen when they opened the coffer believed that they had discovered the veritable tables of the Mosaic Law! We are told in the Old Testament that the latter were kept in the ark. Not far from the coffer in the north-west corner of the shrine was a stone altar the ascent to which was by a flight of five steps.

The temples were served by an army of priests. At the head came the _patesi_ or “high priest,” who in the early days of Babylonian history performed the functions of a king. But the _patesi_ was essentially the vicegerent of the god. The god delegated his powers to him, and allowed him to exercise them on earth. It was the doctrine of priestly mediation carried to its logical conclusion. Only through the priest could the deity be approached, and in the absence of the deity the high priest took his place. At Babylon, as we have seen, the divine rights were conferred by an act of adoption; the vicegerent of Bel, by “taking the hand” and becoming the son of the god, acquired the right to exercise his sovereignty over men. An early king of Erech calls himself the son of the goddess Nin-ṡun. From the outset the Babylonian monarchy was essentially theocratic; the king was simply the high priest in a new form.

But with the rise of Semitic supremacy the king himself became a god. The vicegerent had taken to himself all the attributes of the deity, the adopted son succeeded to the rights and powers of his divine father. The _patesi_ ceased to be the king himself, and became instead his viceroy and lieutenant. Wherever the supreme monarch had a governor who acted in his name, he had also a representative of his divine authority. There were high priests of the god on earth as well as of the gods in heaven.

A new term was wanted to take the place of _patesi_, which had thus come to have a secular as well as a religious signification. It was found in _sangu_, which, more especially in the Assyrian period, meant a chief priest. Every great sanctuary had its chief priests who corresponded to the Hebrew “sons of Aaron,” with a “high priest” or _sangam-makhu_ at their head.(357) Under them were a large number of subordinate priests and temple ministers—the _kali_ or “gallos-priests,”(358) the _niṡakki_ or “sacrificers,” the _ramki_ or “pourers of libations,” and the _pasisi_ or “anointers with oil.” There was even a special class of bakers who made the sacred cakes that were used in the temple service, as well as “chanters” and “wailers,” “carriers of the axe” and “of the spear.” Above all, there were the prophets and augurs, the soothsayers (_makhkhi_) and necromancers (_musêli_), and those who “inquired” of the dead (_saili_).

The _asipi_ or “prophets” constituted a class apart. In some respects they resembled the prophets of Israel. It was “by order of the college of prophets” that Assur-bani-pal purified the shrines of Babylon after the capture of the city, and the prophet accompanied even an army in the field. At times they predicted the future; more often it was rather an announcement of the will of Heaven which they delivered to mankind.(359) As they prophesied they poured out libations; hence it is that the purification of the shrines of the Babylonian temples was their special care, and that an old ritual text commands the prophet to pour out libations “for three days at dawn and night during the middle watch.”(360) The word was borrowed by the writer of the Book of Daniel (ii. 10) under the form of _ashshâph_, which the Authorised Version renders “astrologers.” But the Babylonian _asip_ or “prophet” was not an astrologer; he left to others the interpretation of the stars, and contented himself with counselling or foretelling the destinies of men. Like his master Bel-Merodach, he was the interpreter of the wisdom of Ea, and the revealer of his counsels. The Holy of Holies in the great temple of Babylon, where Bel uttered his oracles, was known as the “house of prophecy,” like the ship also in which the image of the god was ferried across the stream.(361) The prophet may have been part of the heritage bequeathed by Eridu to the Babylonian people.

By the side of the prophet stood the seer (_sabrû_).(362) The seer and the prophet were distinct from one another; there was no confusion between their offices, as seems to have been at one time the case in Israel. The seer was not the “speaker” who declared the will of the gods or the fate that was decreed for man; it was, on the contrary, through visions and trances that the future was made known to him. Assur-bani-pal tells us how, on the eve of the Elamite war, after he had invoked the aid and protection of Istar, “a seer slept and dreamed a prophetic dream; a vision of the night did Istar reveal unto him; he repeated it to me, saying: ‘Istar, who dwelleth in Arbela, came down, and on the right hand and on the left hung (her) quivers; in her hand she held the bow; she drew the sharp war-sword and held it before her. Like a mother she speaketh with thee, she calleth thee; Istar, the queen of the gods, appointeth for thee a doom: ... “Eat food, drink wine, make music, exalt my divinity, until I march and this work of mine be accomplished. I will give thee thy heart’s desire; thy face shall not grow pale, thy feet shall not totter.” ’ ”