Babylonian mythology

“ In Teutonic mythology Odin is the "Wild Huntsman in the Raging Host". In Greek mythology the ocean furies attend upon fickle Poseidon. Other examples of this kind could be multiplied.
As we have seen (Chapter II) the earliest group of Babylonian deities consisted probably of four pairs of gods and goddesses as in Egypt. The first pair was Apsu-Rishtu and Tiamat, who personified the primordial deep. Now the elder deities in most mythologies--the "grandsires" and "grandmothers" and "fathers" and "mothers"--are ever the most powerful and most vengeful. ”

“ Babylonian mythology was local in origin; each of the gods had a particular city which was the special seat of his worship, and it is probable that the idea of weaving the gods into a system, in which each should have his part to play, did not arise until after the Semitic occupation of the country. The antiquity of this systematized mythology may, however, be seen from the fact, that two thousand years before the Christian era it was already completed, and its deities definitely connected into a system which remained with little change down to the close of the kingdom. ”

“ A lecture on the myths of Babylonia may perhaps seem out of place in a course, the subject of which is Babylonian religion. But religion has its mythology as well as its theology, and sometimes the mythology has had a good deal to do with moulding or even creating its theology. Moreover, the myths of Babylonia were intimately connected with its worship of the gods. They all related, so far as we know, to the gods and spirits, or else, to what Greek theology would have called heroes and demi-gods. They embody religious beliefs and practices ”

“ In their accounts of the Creation and of the early history of the human race the Babylonian divinities figure very prominently, but it is often difficult to identify the deities mentioned by the Greek authors, because the phonetic reading of many of the names of the Babylonian gods is still very obscure, and the classical writers frequently replace them by the deities of their own mythology, whom they imagined to correspond with the Babylonian names. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to insist on the manner in which material drawn from Babylonian and Assyrian sources has helped to elucidate points in the political and religious history of Israel. Scarcely less striking, though not so numerous, are the echoes from Babylonian legends which have long been recognized as existing in Greek mythology. The best known example of direct borrowing is undoubtedly the myth of Adonis and Aphrodite, the main features of which correspond closely to the Babylonian legend of Tammuz and Ishtar. ”

“ Within recent years a school has arisen in Germany which emphasizes the part played by Babylon in the religious development of Western Asia, and, in a minor degree, of Europe. The evidence on which reliance has been placed to prove the spread of Babylonian thought throughout the ancient world has been furnished mainly by Israel and Greece; and it is claimed that many features both in Hebrew religion and in Greek mythology can only be rightly studied in the light thrown upon them by Babylonian parallels from which they were ultimately derived. ”

“ The primaeval waters are originally the source of life, not of destruction, and it is in them that the gods are born, as in Egyptian mythology; there Nu, the primaeval water-god from whom Ra was self-created, never ceased to be the Sun-god's supporter. The change in the Babylonian conception was obviously introduced by the combination of the Dragon myth with that of Creation, a combination that in Egypt would never have been justified by the gentle Nile. ”

“ This is not the place to criticize the use made of old Babylonian mythology in explanation of old Greek religion, though I do well to point out that the best students of the latter—for example, Dr. Farnell—confine the indebtedness of the Greeks to very narrow limits.
on Hebrew religion more important; The case of the Hebrew scriptures and religion stands on different ground; for the Jews were Semites, and their myths of creation and of the origin and early history of man are, by the admission even of orthodox divines of to-day, largely borrowed from the more ancient civilization of Babylon. ”

“ The goddess has a long Pg 297robe reaching down to the ankles, but her left arm and shoulder are free, as in the case of the god in Fig. 60. Her seat consists in a kind of camp-stool, a form of support which the genius of the Babylonian seems to have invented at a very early date. The serpent-bodied and human-bearded god holds a branch in his hand, the precise significance of which is not very clear, but the prominent place occupied by the sacred tree in Babylonian and Assyrian mythology justifies the assumption that here as elsewhere it has some symbolical meaning. ”

“ To begin with, the character of Babylonian myth was a great deal purer than that of Hellenic or Scandinavian myth. The gods of Babylonia appear to be more dignified than those of the Greeks or Norsemen, for example. They do not descend to the same puerilities, and their record is immeasurably cleaner. ”

“ We have seldom much difficulty in discovering the nature of an Egyptian god. We have frequently, however, immense trouble in finding out for what a Mesopotamian deity stands. The Babylon-Assyrian idea of godhead appears to have been principally astral, terrestrial, or aquatic—that is, most Babylonian-Assyrian deities are connected either with the heavenly bodies, the earth, or the waters. It is only as an afterthought that they become gods of justice, of letters, of the underworld. ”

“ The goddesses of Babylonia, with few exceptions, become mere shadowy reflections of the gods, with but little independent power, and in some cases none at all. They owe what popularity they enjoyed to their association with their male companions. In consequence of this inferior rôle played by the female deities, the tendency becomes more pronounced, as we pass from the first to the second period of Babylonian history, to reduce by assimilation the small number that have independent attributes, until we reach a condition in which we have practically only one goddess, appearing under many forms. ”

“ The cosmology of Babylon is therefore on a par with those of Scandinavia, China, and many North American Indian tribes, nor does it reach so high an imaginative level as those of ancient Egypt, India, or the Maya of Central America, in some of which the vocal command of a god is sufficient to bring about the creation of the earth and the waters surrounding it.
The making of the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies is, as will be more fully shown later, of great importance in Babylonian myth. The stars appear to have been attached to the firmament of heaven as to a cloth. ”

“ A combination of the Babylonian with the Persian religion could only be effected by the degradation of the Babylonian deities into half-divine, half-daemonic beings, infinitely remote from the supreme God of light and of heaven, or even into powers of darkness. ”

“ Henceforward he is acknowledged in heaven as well as in earth, the supreme Bel or Baal of Semitic faith, the father of gods and men. Ea, the lord of the deep, and Bel of Nippur, “the lord of the earth,” alike yield up to him their powers; he assumes their names and titles; and, thanks to the centralising influence of Babylon, Babylonian religion approaches monotheism as nearly as its local character ever allowed it to do. The creator alone could rightfully claim the worship of the creatures he had made. ”

“ We learn, then, from the comparison of the Babylonian religion with that of other ancient races one circumstance of outstanding importance, that is, if the Babylonian gods were so perfunctorily attached to departments expressive of their functions and were so closely bound to the elements that they must have had an elemental origin, that they were indeed originally spirits of the earth, the air, and the water. ”

“ The earth and the sky bounded and defined one another; the age of formlessness was ended, and an orderly universe was being prepared fit to receive the present creation.
But the work of preparation was a long one, and not until it was finished could the gods of Semitic Babylonia be born. But even they have ceased to be gods for the philosophic cosmologist. They are replaced and represented by the triad of Anu, Bel, and Ea, who thus become mere symbols of the sky, the earth, and the water, the [pg 391] elements which Babylonian philosophy regarded as constituting the present world. ”

“ Clearly, then, classical Greece did not consider Babylonia as having a monopoly of scientific knowledge, and we of to-day, when we attempt to weigh the new evidence that has come to us in recent generations with the Babylonian records themselves, find that some, at least, of the heritages for which Babylonia has been praised are of more than doubtful value. ”

“ In fact the new text illustrates a well-known principle in the development of myth, the reconciliation of the rival claims of deities, whose cults, once isolated, had been brought from political causes into contact with each other. In this aspect myth is the medium through which a working pantheon is evolved. Naturally all the deities concerned cannot continue to play their original parts in detail. In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, where a single deity, and not a very prominent one, was to be raised to pre-eminent rank, the problem was simple enough. ”

“ The human head attached to them indicated that the creature was endowed with humanity and the bull-like body symbolized strength. When the Babylonian translated the word 'bull' from the Akkadian tongue he usually rendered it 'hero' or 'strong one.' It is thought that the bull forms of Ea and Merodach must have originated at Eridu, for both of these deities were connected with the city. The Babylonians regarded the sky-country as a double of the plain in which they dwelt, and they believed that the gods as planets ploughed their way across the azure fields of air. ”

“ The solar features in his character passed out of sight; he was not only the giver of the empire of the world to his adopted son and vicegerent, the king of Babylon, he was also the divine counterpart and representative of the king in heaven. The god had made man in his own image, and he was now transformed into the likeness of men. Two ideas, consequently, struggled for the mastery in Babylonian religion—the anthropomorphic [pg 334] conception of the deity, and the belief in his identification with other gods ”

“ The thought of the mythical pieces and the prayers and hymns is elevated and imaginative. Some of this poetry appears to have belonged to a period earlier than 2000 B.C. Yet the Babylonians constructed no epic poem like the (Iliad,) or at any rate none such has yet been found. Their genius rather expressed itself in brief or fragmentary pieces, like the Hebrews and the Arabs.
The Babylonian prose literature consists almost entirely of short chronicles and annals. ”

“ But all pioneering work is necessarily imperfect, and for many a day to come the history of Babylonian religion must be left to the pioneer. Year by year, indeed, the materials are increasing, and it may be that a discovery will yet be made, like that of the Pyramid texts in Egypt, which will reveal to us the inner religious thought and belief of Babylonia in those distant ages, when Nippur and Eridu, and not as yet Babylon, were the theological centres of the land. ”

“ Since, however, the material upon which any age works is not of its own making, but is furnished by a preceding one, it follows that much of the intellectual activity of an age manifests itself in a transformation of its literary or speculative heritage. This process was constantly going on in Babylonia, and had we more material—and older material—at our disposal, we would be able to trace more clearly than we can at present, the various stages that led to the system of theology, as embodied in the best productions of the ancient Babylonian schoolmen. ”

“ The first celebrates the conquest of Anu over Tiawath, the second exalts Ninib as the conqueror, and the third replaces him by En-lil. We thus see how it was possible for the god of a conquering or popular dynasty to have a complete myth made over to him, and how at last it was competent for the mighty Merodach of Babylon to replace an entire line of deities as the central figure of a myth which must have been popular with untold generations of Akkadian and Babylonian people. ”

“ In Babylonian history there are but two figures of moment—the soldier and the priest. We are dealing with a race austere and stern, a race of rigorous religious devotees and conquerors, the Romans of the East—but not an unimaginative race, for the Babylonians and Assyrians came of that stock which gave to the world its greatest religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, a race not without the sense of mystery and science, for Babylon was the mother of astrology and magic, and established the beginnings of the study of the stars ”

“ All this points to animism as the pervading idea of the worship of the peoples of the Babylonian states in the prehistoric period—the attribution of life to every appearance of nature. The question is, however, Is the evidence of the inscriptions sufficient to make this absolutely certain? It is hard to believe that such intelligent people, as the primitive Babylonians naturally were, believed that such things as stones, rocks, mountains, storms, and rain were, in themselves, and apart from the divinity which they regarded as presiding over them, living things. ”