FOOTNOTES:

60.—A BUST INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME OF NEBO. (British Museum.)60.—A BUST INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME OF NEBO.(British Museum.)

(British Museum.)

11. In no relation of life is the difference, yet harmony, of masculine and feminine action so plain as in that between husband and wife, father and mother. It requires no very great effort of imagination to carry the distinction beyond the bounds of animated nature, into the world at large. To men for whom every portion or force of the universe was endowed with a particle of the divine natureand power, many were the things which seemed to be paired in a contrasting, yet joint action similar to that of the sexes. If the great and distant Heaven appeared to them as the universal ruler and lord, the source of all things—the Father of the Gods, as they put it—surely the beautiful Earth, kind nurse, nourisher and preserver of all things that have life, could be called the universal Mother. If the fierce summer and noonday sun could be looked on as the resistless conqueror, the dread King of the world, holding death and disease in his hand, was not the quiet, lovely moon, of mild and soothing light, bringing the rest of coolness and healing dews, its gentle Queen? In short, there is not a power or a phenomenon of nature which does not present to a poetical imagination a twofold aspect, answering to the standard masculine and feminine qualities and peculiarities. The ancient thinkers—priests—who framed the vague guesses of the groping, dreaming mind into schemes and systems of profound meaning, expressed this sense of the twofold nature of things by worshipping a double divine being or principle, masculine and feminine. Thus every god was supplied with a wife, through the entire series of divine emanations and manifestations. And as all the gods were in reality only different names and forms of the Supreme and UnfathomableOne, so all the goddesses represent onlyBelit, the great feminine principle of nature—productiveness, maternity, tenderness—also contained, like everything else, in thatOne, and emanating from it in endless succession. Hence itcomes that the goddesses of the Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, though different in name and apparently in attributions, become wonderfully alike when looked at closer. They are all more or less repetitions ofBelit, the wife ofBel. Her name—which is only the feminine form of the god's, meaning "the Lady," as Bel means "the Lord,"—sufficiently shows that the two are really one. Of the other goddesses the most conspicuous areAnatorNana(Earth), the wife of Anu (Heaven),Anunit(the Moon), wife of Shamash (the Sun), and lastlyIshtar, the ruler of the planet Venus in her own right, and by far the most attractive and interesting of the list. She was a great favorite, worshipped as the Queen of Love and Beauty, and also as the Warrior-Queen, who rouses men to deeds of bravery, inspirits and protects them in battle—perhaps because men have often fought and made war for the love of women, and also probably because the planet Venus, her own star, appears not only in the evening, close after sunset, but also immediately before daybreak, and so seems to summon the human race to renewed efforts and activity. Ishtar could not be an exception to the general principle and remain unmated. But her husband,Dumuz(a name for the Sun), stands to her in an entirely subordinate position, and, indeed, would be but little known were it not for a beautiful story that was told of them in a very old poem, and which will find its place among many more in one of the next chapters.

12. It would be tedious and unnecessary to recite here more names of gods and goddesses, thoughthere are quite a number, and more come to light all the time as new tablets are discovered and read. Most of them are in reality only different names for the same conceptions, and the Chaldeo-Babylonian pantheon—or assembly of divine persons—is very sufficiently represented by the so-called "twelve great gods," who were universally acknowledged to be at its head, and of whom we will here repeat the names:Anu,ÊaandBel,Sin,ShamashandRamân,Nin-dar,Maruduk,Nergal,Nebo,BelitandIshtar. Each had numerous temples all over the country. But every great city had its favorite whose temple was the oldest, largest and most sumptuous, to whose worship it was especially devoted from immemorial times. Êa, the most beloved god of old Shumir, had his chief sanctuary, which he shared with his son Meridug, atEridhu(now Abu-Shahrein), the most southern and almost the most ancient city of Shumir, situated near the mouth of the Euphrates, since the Persian Gulf reached quite as far inland in the year 4000b.c., and this was assuredly an appropriate station for the great "lord of the deep," the Fish-god Oannes, who emerged from the waters to instruct mankind.Ur, as we have seen, was the time-honored seat of the Moon-god. AtErechAnu and Anat or Nana—Heaven and Earth—were specially honored from the remotest antiquity, being jointly worshipped in the temple called "the House of Heaven." This may have been the reason of the particular sacredness attributed to the ground all around Erech, as witnessed by the exceeding persistency with which people strove for ages to bury their dead in it, as though under the immediate protection of the goddess of Earth[AT](see Ch. III. of Introduction). Larsam paid especial homage to Shamash and was famous for its very ancient "House of the Sun." The Sun and Moon—Shamash and Anunit—had their rival sanctuaries atSipparon the "Royal Canal," which ran nearly parallel to the Euphrates, andAgadê, the city of Sargon, situated just opposite on the other bank of the canal. The name of Agadê was lost in the lapse of time, and both cities became one, the two portions being distinguished only by the addition "Sippar of the Sun" and "Sippar of Anunit." The Hebrews called the united city "The two Sippars"—Sepharvaim, the name we find in the Bible.

13. The site of this important city was long doubtful; but in 1881 one of the most skilful and indefatigable searchers, Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a gentleman who began his career as assistant to Layard, made a discovery which set the question at rest. He was digging in a mound known to the Arabs by the name of Abu-Habba, and had made his way into the apartments of a vast structure which he knew to be a temple. From room to room he passed until he came to a smaller chamber, paved with asphalt, which he at once surmised to be the archive-room of the temple. "Heretofore," says Mr. Rassam in his report, "all Assyrian and Babylonian structures were found to be paved generally either with stone or brick, consequently this novel discovery led me to have the asphalt broken into and examined. On doing so we found, buried in a corner of the chamber, about three feet below the surface, an inscribed earthenware coffer, inside which was deposited a stone tablet...." Rassam had indeed stumbled on the archive of the famous Sun-temple, as was proved not only by the tablet, but by the numerous documents which accompanied it, and which gave the names of the builders and restorers of the temple. As to the tablet, it is the finest and best preserved work of art of the kind which has yet been found. It was deposited about the year 880b.c.on occasion of a restoration and represents the god himself, seated on a throne, receiving the homage of worshippers, while above him the sun-disc is held suspended from heaven on two strong cords, like a gigantic lamp, by two ministering beings, who may very probably belong to the host of Igigi or spirits of heaven. The inscription, in beautifully clear and perfectly preserved characters, informs us that this is "The image of Shamash, the great lord, who dwells in the 'House of the Sun,' (Ê-Babbara) which is within the city of Sippar."[AU](SeeFrontispiece.) This was a truly magnificent find, and who knows but something as unexpected and as conclusive may turn up to fix for us the exactplace of the temple of Anunit, and consequently of the venerable city of Agadê. As toBabylon, it was originally placed under divine protection generally, as shown by its proper Semitic name,Bab-ilu, which means, as we have already seen, "the Gate of God," and exactly answers to the Shumiro-Accadian name of the city (Ka-Dingirra, orKa-Dimirra); but later on it elected a special protector in the person ofMaruduk, the old favorite, Meridug. When Babylon became the capital of the united monarchy of Shumir and Accad, its patron divinity, under the name ofBel-Maruduk, ("the Lord Maruduk") rose to a higher rank than he had before occupied; his temple outshone all others and became a wonder of the world for its wealth and splendor. He had another, scarcely less splendid, and founded by Hammurabi himself in Borsip. In this way religion was closely allied to politics. For in the days before the reunion of the great cities under the rule of Hammurabi, whichever of them was the most powerful at the time, its priests naturally claimed the pre-eminence for their local deity even beyond their own boundaries. So that the fact of the old Kings of Ur, Ur-êa and his descendants, not limiting themselves to the worship of their national Moon-god, but building temples in many places and to many gods, was perhaps a sign of a conciliating general policy as much as of liberal religious feeling.

14. One would think that so very perfect a system of religion, based too on so high and noble an order of ideas, should have entirely superseded the coarsematerialism and conjuring practices of the goblin-creed of the primitive Turanian settlers. Such, however, was far from being the case. We saw that the new religion made room, somewhat contemptuously perhaps, for the spirits of the old creed, carelessly massing them wholesale into a sort of regiment, composed of the three hundredIgigi, or spirits of heaven, and the six hundredAnunnaki, or spirits of earth. The conjurers and sorcerers of old were even admitted into the priesthood in an inferior capacity, as a sort of lower order, probably more tolerated than encouraged—tolerated from necessity, because the people clung to their ancient beliefs and practices. But if their official position as a priestly class were subordinate, their real power was not the less great, for the public favor and credulity were on their side, and they were assuredly more generally popular than the learned and solemn priests, the counsellors and almost the equals of the kings, whose thoughts dwelt among the stars, who reverently searched the heavens for revelations of the divine will and wisdom, and who, by pursuing accurate observation and mathematical calculation together with the wildest dreams, made astronomy and astrology the inextricable tangle of scientific truth and fantastic speculation that we see it in the great work (in seventy tablets) prepared for the library of Sargon II. at Agadê. That the ancient system of conjuring and incantations remained in full force and general use, is sufficiently proved by the contents of the first two parts of the great collection in two hundred tablets compiled inthe reign of the same king, and from the care with which the work was copied and recopied, commented on and translated in later ages, as we see from the copy made for the Royal Library at Nineveh, the one which has reached us.

15. There was still a third branch of so-called "science," which greatly occupied the minds of the Chaldeo-Babylonians from their earliest times down to the latest days of their existence: it was the art of Divination, i.e., of divining and foretelling future events from signs and omens, a superstition born of the old belief in every object of inanimate nature being possessed or inhabited by a spirit, and the later belief in a higher power ruling the world and human affairs to the smallest detail, and constantly manifesting itself through all things in nature as through secondary agents, so that nothing whatever could occur without some deeper significance, which might be discovered and expounded by specially trained and favored individuals. In the case of atmospheric prophecies concerning weather and crops, as connected with the appearance of clouds, sky and moon, the force and direction of winds, etc., there may have been some real observation to found them on. But it is very clear that such a conception, if carried out consistently to extreme lengths and applied indiscriminately toeverything, must result in arrant folly. Such was assuredly the case with the Chaldeo-Babylonians, who not only carefully noted and explained dreams, drew lots in doubtful cases by means of inscribed arrows, interpreted the rustle of trees, the plashingof fountains and murmur of streams, the direction and form of lightnings, not only fancied that they could see things in bowls of water and in the shifting forms assumed by the flame which consumed sacrifices, and the smoke which rose therefrom, and that they could raise and question the spirits of the dead, but drew presages and omens, for good or evil, from the flight of birds, the appearance of the liver, lungs, heart and bowels of the animals offered in sacrifice and opened for inspection, from the natural defects or monstrosities of babies or the young of animals—in short, from any and everything that they could possibly subject to observation.

16. This idlest of all kinds of speculation was reduced to a most minute and apparently scientific system quite as early as astrology and incantation, and forms the subject of a third collection, in about one hundred tablets, and probably compiled by those same indefatigable priests of Agadê for Sargon, who was evidently of a most methodical turn of mind, and determined to have all the traditions and the results of centuries of observation and practical experiences connected with any branch of religious science fixed forever in the shape of thoroughly classified rules, for the guidance of priests for all coming ages. This collection has come to us in an even more incomplete and mutilated condition than the others; but enough has been preserved to show us that a right-thinking and religiously-given Chaldeo-Babylonian must have spent his life taking notes of the absurdest trifles, andquestioning the diviners and priests about them, in order not to get into scrapes by misinterpreting the signs and taking that to be a favorable omen which boded dire calamity—or the other way, and thus doing things or leaving them undone at the wrong moment and in the wrong way. What excites, perhaps, even greater wonder, is the utter absurdity of some of the incidents gravely set down as affecting the welfare, not only of individuals, but of the whole country. What shall we say, for instance, of the importance attached to the proceedings of stray dogs? Here are some of the items as given by Mr. Fr. Lenormant in his most valuable and entertaining book on Chaldean Divination:—

"If a gray dog enter the palace, the latter will be consumed by flames.—If a yellow dog enter the palace, the latter will perish in a violent catastrophe.—If a tawny dog enter the palace, peace will be concluded with the enemies.—If a dog enter the palace and be not killed, the peace of the palace will be disturbed.—If a dog enter the temple, the gods will have no mercy on the land.—If a white dog enter the temple, its foundations will subsist.—If a black dog enter the temple, its foundations will be shaken.—If a gray dog enter the temple, the latter will lose its possessions.... If dogs assemble in troops and enter the temple, no one will remain in authority.... If a dog vomits in a house, the master of that house will die."

17. The chapter on monstrous births is extensive. Not only is every possible anomaly registered, from an extra finger or toe to an ear smaller than theother, with its corresponding presage of good or evil to the country, the king, the army, but the most impossible monstrosities are seriously enumerated, with the political conditions of which they are supposed to be the signs. For instance:—"If a woman give birth to a child with lion's ears, a mighty king will rule the land ... with a bird's beak, there will be peace in the land.... If a queen give birth to a child with a lion's face, the king will have no rival ... if to a snake, the king will be mighty.... If a mare give birth to a foal with a lion's mane, the lord of the land will annihilate his enemies ... with a dog's paws, the land will be diminished ... with a lion's paws, the land will be increased.... If a sheep give birth to a lion, there will be war, the king will have no rival.... If a mare give birth to a dog, there will be disaster and famine."

18. The three great branches of religious science—astrology, incantation and divination—were represented by three corresponding classes of "wise men," all belonging, in different degrees, to the priesthood: the star-gazers or astrologers, the magicians or sorcerers, and the soothsayers or fortune-tellers. The latter, again, were divided into many smaller classes according to the particular kind of divination which they practised. Some specially devoted themselves to the interpretation of dreams, others to that of the flight of birds, or of the signs of the atmosphere, or of casual signs and omens generally. All were in continual demand, consulted alike by kings and private persons, and all proceeded in strict accordance with the rules and principleslaid down in the three great works of King Sargon's time. When the Babylonian empire ceased to exist and the Chaldeans were no longer a nation, these secret arts continued to be practised by them, and the name "Chaldean" became a by-word, a synonym for "a wise man of the East,"—astrologer, magician or soothsayer. They dispersed all over the world, carrying their delusive science with them, practising and teaching it, welcomed everywhere by the credulous and superstitious, often highly honored and always richly paid. Thus it is from the Chaldeans and their predecessors the Shumiro-Accads that the belief in astrology, witchcraft and every kind of fortune-telling has been handed down to the nations of Europe, together with the practices belonging thereto, many of which we find lingering even to our day among the less educated classes. The very words "magic" and "magician" are probably an inheritance of that remotest of antiquities. One of the words for "priest" in the old Turanian tongue of Shumir wasimga, which, in the later Semitic language, becamemag. TheRab-mag—"great priest," or perhaps "chief conjurer," was a high functionary at the court of the Assyrian kings. Hence "magus," "magic," "magician," in all the European languages, from Latin downward.

19. There can be no doubt that we have little reason to be grateful for such an heirloom as this mass of superstitions, which have produced so much evil in the world and still occasionally do mischief enough. But we must not forget to set off against it the many excellent things, most important discoveries in the province of astronomy and mathematics which have come to us from the same distant source. To the ancient Chaldeo-Babylonians we owe not only our division of time, but the invention of the sun-dial, and the week of seven days, dedicated in succession to the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets—an arrangement which is still maintained, the names of our days being merely translations of the Chaldean ones. And more than that; there were days set apart and kept holy, as days of rest, as far back as the time of Sargon of Agadê; it was from the Semites of Babylonia—perhaps the Chaldeans of Ur—that both the name and the observance passed to the Hebrew branch of the race, the tribe of Abraham. George Smith found an Assyrian calendar where the day calledSabattuorSabattuvis explained to mean "completion of work, a day of rest for the soul." On this day, it appears it was not lawful to cook food, to change one's dress, to offer a sacrifice; the king was forbidden to speak in public, to ride in a chariot, to perform any kind of military or civil duty, even to take medicine.[AV]This, surely, is a keeping of the Sabbath as strict as the most orthodox Jew could well desire. There are, however, essential differences between the two. In the first place, the Babylonians keptfiveSabbath days every month, which made more than one a week; in the second place,they came round on certain dates of each month, independently of the day of the week: on the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st and 28th. The custom appears to have passed to the Assyrians, and there are indications which encourage the supposition that it was shared by other nations connected with the Jews, the Babylonians and Assyrians, for instance, by the Phœnicians.

FOOTNOTES:[AR]See A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of the East" (1883), p. 389.[AS]Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 164.[AT]It was the statue of this very goddess Nana which was carried away by the Elamite conqueror, Khudur-Nankhundi in 2280b.c.and restored to its place by Assurbanipal in 645b.c.[AU]The three circles above the god represent the Moon-god, the Sun-god, and Ishtar. So we are informed by the two lines of writing which ran above the roof.[AV]Friedrich Delitzsch, "Beigaben" to the German translat. of Smith's "Chaldean Genesis" (1876), p. 300. A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of the East" (1883), p. 402. W. Lotz, "Quæstiones de Historia Sabbati."

[AR]See A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of the East" (1883), p. 389.

[AS]Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 164.

[AT]It was the statue of this very goddess Nana which was carried away by the Elamite conqueror, Khudur-Nankhundi in 2280b.c.and restored to its place by Assurbanipal in 645b.c.

[AU]The three circles above the god represent the Moon-god, the Sun-god, and Ishtar. So we are informed by the two lines of writing which ran above the roof.

[AV]Friedrich Delitzsch, "Beigaben" to the German translat. of Smith's "Chaldean Genesis" (1876), p. 300. A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of the East" (1883), p. 402. W. Lotz, "Quæstiones de Historia Sabbati."

VI.

LEGENDS AND STORIES.

1. In every child's life there comes a moment when it ceases to take the world and all it holds as a matter of course, when it begins to wonder and to question. The first, the great question naturally is—"Who made it all? The sun, the stars, the sea, the rivers, the flowers, and the trees—whence come they? who made them?" And to this question we are very ready with our answer:—"God made it all. The One, the Almighty God created the world, and all that is in it, by His own sovereign will." When the child further asks: "Howdid He do it?" we read to it the story of the Creation which is the beginning of the Bible, our Sacred Book, either without any remarks upon it, or with the warning, that, for a full and proper understanding of it, years are needed and knowledge of many kinds. Now, these same questions have been asked, by children and men, in all ages. Ever since man has existed upon the earth, ever since he began, in the intervals of rest, in the hard labor and struggle for life and limb, for food and warmth, to raise his head and look abroad, and take in the wonders that surrounded him, he has thus ponderedand questioned. And to this questioning, each nation, after its own lights, has framed very much the same answer; the same in substance and spirit (because the only possible one), acknowledging the agency of a Divine Power, in filling the world with life, and ordaining the laws of nature,—but often very different in form, since, almost every creed having stopped short of the higher religious conception, that of One Deity, indivisible and all-powerful, the great act was attributed to many gods—"the gods,"—not to God. This of course opened the way to innumerable, more or less ingenious, fancies and vagaries as to the part played in it by this or that particular divinity. Thus all races, nations, even tribes have worked out for themselves their ownCosmogony, i.e., their own ideas on the Origin of the World. The greatest number, not having reached a very high stage of culture or attained literary skill, preserved the teachings of their priests in their memory, and transmitted them orally from father to son; such is the case even now with many more peoples than we think of—with all the native tribes of Africa, the islanders of Australia and the Pacific, and several others. But the nations who advanced intellectually to the front of mankind and influenced the long series of coming races by their thoughts and teachings, recorded in books the conclusions they had arrived at on the great questions which have always stirred the heart and mind of man; these were carefully preserved and recopied from time to time, for the instruction of each rising generation. Thus manygreat nations of olden times have possessed Sacred Books, which, having been written in remote antiquity by their best and wisest men, were reverenced as something not only holy, but, beyond the unassisted powers of the human intellect, something imparted, revealed directly by the deity itself, and therefore to be accepted, undisputed, as absolute truth. It is clear that it was in the interest of the priests, the keepers and teachers of all religious knowledge, to encourage and maintain in the people at large this unquestioning belief.

2. Of all such books that have become known to us, there are none of greater interest and importance than the sacred books of Ancient Babylonia. Not merely because they are the oldest known, having been treasured in the priestly libraries of Agadê, Sippar, Cutha, etc., at an incredibly early date, but principally because the ancestors of the Hebrews, during their long station in the land of Shinar, learned the legends and stories they contained, and working them over after their own superior religious lights, remodelled them into the narrative which was written down many centuries later as part of the Book of Genesis.

3. The original sacred books were attributed to the god Êa himself, the impersonation of the Divine Intelligence, and the teacher of mankind in the shape of the first Man-Fish, Oannes—(the name being only a Greek corruption of the AccadianÊa-han, "Êa the Fish")[AW]So Berosus informs us.After describing Oannes and his proceedings (see p.185), he adds that "he wrote a Book on the Origin of things and the beginnings of civilization, and gave it to men." The "origin of things" is the history of the Creation of the world, Cosmogony. Accordingly, this is what Berosus proceeds to expound, quoting directly from the Book, for he begins:—"There was a time,says he, (meaning Oannes) when all was darkness and water." Then follows a very valuable fragment, but unfortunately only a fragment, one of the few preserved by later Greek writers who quoted the old priest of Babylon for their own purposes, while the work itself was, in some way, destroyed and lost. True, these fragments contain short sketches of several of the most important legends; still, precious as they are, they convey only second-hand information, compiled, indeed, from original sources by a learned and conscientious writer, but for the use of a foreign race, extremely compressed, and, besides, with the names all altered to suit that race's language. So long as the "original sources" were missing, there was a gap in the study both of the Bible and the religion of Babylon, which no ingenuity could fill. Great, therefore, were the delight and excitement, both of Assyriologists and Bible scholars, when George Smith, while sorting the thousands of tablet-fragments which for years had littered the floor of certain remote chambers of the British Museum, accidentally stumbled on some which were evidently portions of the original sacred legends partly rendered by Berosus. To search for all available fragments of the precious documents and piece them together became the task of Smith's life. And as nearly all that he found belonged to copies from the Royal Library at Nineveh, it was chiefly in order to enlarge the collection that he undertook his first expedition to the Assyrian mounds, from which he had the good fortune to bring back many missing fragments, belonging also to different copies, so that one frequently completes the other.Thus the oldest Chaldean legends were in a great measure restored to us, though unfortunately very few tablets are in a sufficiently well preserved condition to allow of making out an entirely intelligible and uninterrupted narrative. Not only are many parts still missing altogether, but of those which have been found, pieced and collected, there is not one of which one or more columns have not been injured in such a way that either the beginning or the end of all the lines are gone, or whole lines broken out or erased, with only a few words left here and there. How hopeless the task must sometimes have seemed to the patient workers may be judged from the foregoing specimen pieced together of sixteen bits, which Geo. Smith gives in his book. This is one of the so-called "Deluge-tablets," i.e., of those which contain the Chaldean version of the story of the Deluge. Luckily more copies have been found of this story than of any of the others, or we should have had to be content still with the short sketch of it given by Berosus.

61.—BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD. (Smith's "Chaldean Genesis.")61.—BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD.(Smith's "Chaldean Genesis.")

(Smith's "Chaldean Genesis.")

4. If, therefore, the ancient Babylonian legends of the beginnings of the world will be given here in a connected form, for the sake of convenience and plainness, it must be clearly understood that they were not preserved for us in such a form, but are the result of a long and patient work of research and restoration, a work which still continues; and every year, almost every month, brings to light some new materials, some addition, some correction to the old ones. Yet even as the work now stands, it justifies us in asserting that our knowledge of thismarvellous antiquity is fuller and more authentic than that we have of many a period and people not half so remote from us in point of place and distance.

5. The cosmogonic narrative which forms the first part of what Geo. Smith has very aptly called "the Chaldean Genesis" is contained in a number of tablets. As it begins by the words "When above," they are all numbered as No. 1, or 3, or 5 "of the seriesWhen above.The property of Asshurbanipal, king of nations, king of Assyria." The first lines are intact:—"When the heaven above and the earth below were as yet unnamed,"—(i.e., according to Semitic ideas,did not exist)—Apsu(the "Abyss") andMummu-Tiamat(the "billowy Sea") were the beginning of all things; their waters mingled and flowed together; that was the Primeval Chaos; it contained the germs of life but "the darkness was not lifted" from the waters, and therefore nothing sprouted or grew—(for no growth or life is possible without light). The gods also were not; "they were as yet unnamed and did not rule the destinies." Then the great gods came into being, and the divine hosts of heaven and earth (the Spirits of Heaven and Earth). "And the days stretched themselves out, and the god Anu (Heaven.) ..." Here the text breaks off abruptly; it is probable, however, that it told how, after a long lapse of time, the gods Anu, Êa and Bel, the first and supreme triad, came into being. The next fragment, which is sufficiently well preserved to allow of a connected translation, tells of theestablishment of the heavenly bodies: "He" (Anu, whose particular dominion the highest heavens were, hence frequently called "the heaven of Anu") "he appointed the mansions of the great gods" (signs of the Zodiac), established the stars, ordered the months and the year, and limited the beginning and end thereof; established the planets, so that none should swerve from its allotted track; "he appointed the mansions of Bel and Êa with his own; he also opened the great gates of heaven, fastening their bolts firmly to the right and to the left" (east and west); he made Nannar (the Moon) to shine and allotted the night to him, determining the time of his quarters which measure the days, and saying to him "rise and set, and be subject to this law." Another tablet, of which only the beginning is intelligible, tells how the gods (in the plural this time) created the living beings which people the earth, the cattle of the field and the city, and the wild beasts of the field, and the things that creep in the field and in the city, in short all the living creatures.

62.—BABYLONIAN CYLINDER, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE TEMPTATION AND FALL.62.—BABYLONIAN CYLINDER, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE TEMPTATION AND FALL.

6. There are some tablets which have been supposed to treat of the creation of man and perhaps to give a story of his disobedience and fall, answering to that in Genesis; but unfortunately they are in too mutilated a condition to admit of certainty, and no other copies have as yet come to light. However, the probability that such was really the case is very great, and is much enhanced by a cylinder of very ancient Babylonian workmanship, now in the British Museum, and too important not tobe reproduced here. The tree in the middle, the human couple stretching out their hands for the fruit, the serpent standingbehind the womanin—one might almost say—a whispering attitude, all this tells its own tale. And the authority of this artistic presentation, which so strangely fits in to fill the blank in the written narrative, is doubled by the fact that the engravings on the cylinders are invariably taken from subjects connected with religion, or at least religious beliefs and traditions. As to the creation of man, we may partly eke out the missing details from the fragment of Berosus already quoted. He there tells us—and so well-informed a writer must have spoken on good authority—that Bel gave his own blood to be kneaded with the clay out of which men were formed, and that is why they are endowed with reason and have a share of the divine nature in them—certainly a most ingenious way of expressing the blending of the earthly and the divine elements which hasmade human nature so deep and puzzling a problem to the profounder thinkers of all ages.

7. For the rest of the creation, Berosus' account (quoted from the book said to have been given men by the fabulous Oannes), agrees with what we find in the original texts, even imperfect as we have them. He says that in the midst of Chaos—at the time when all was darkness and water—the principle of life which it contained, restlessly working, but without order, took shape in numberless monstrous formations: there were beings like men, some winged, with two heads, some with the legs and horns of goats, others with the hind part of horses; also bulls with human heads, dogs with four bodies and a fish's tail, horses with the heads of dogs, in short, every hideous and fantastical combination of animal forms, before the Divine Will had separated them, and sorted them into harmony and order. All these monstrous beings perished the moment Bel separated the heavens from the earth creating light,—for they were births of darkness and lawlessness and could not stand the new reign of light and law and divine reason. In memory of this destruction of the old chaotic world and production of the new, harmonious and beautiful one, the walls of the famous temple of Bel-Mardouk at Babylon were covered with paintings representing the infinite variety of monstrous and mixed shapes with which an exuberant fancy had peopled the primeval chaos; Berosus was a priest of this temple and he speaks of those paintings as still existing. Though nothing has remained ofthem in the ruins of the temple, we have representations of the same kind on many of the cylinders which, used as seals, did duty both as personal badges—(one is almost tempted to say "coats of arms")—and as talismans, as proved by the fact of such cylinders being so frequently found on the wrists of the dead in the sepulchres.

63.—FEMALE WINGED FIGURES BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (From a photograph in the British Museum.)63.—FEMALE WINGED FIGURES BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.(From a photograph in the British Museum.)

(From a photograph in the British Museum.)

8. The remarkable cylinder with the human couple and the serpent leads us to the consideration of a most important object in the ancient Babylonian or Chaldean religion—the Sacred Tree, the Tree of Life. That it was a very holy symbol is clear from its being so continually reproduced on cylinders and on sculptures. In this particular cylinder, rude as the design is, it bears an unmistakable likeness to a real tree—of some coniferous species, cypress or fir. But art soon took hold of it and began to load it with symmetrical embellishments, until it produced a tree of entirely conventional design, as shown by the following specimens, of which the first leans more to the palm, while the second seems rather of the coniferous type. (Figs. No.63and65.) It is probable that such artificial trees, made up of boughs—perhaps of the palm and cypress—tied together and intertwined with ribbons (something like our Maypoles of old), were set up in the temples as reminders of the sacred symbol, and thus gave rise to the fixed type which remains invariable both in such Babylonian works of art as we possess and on the Assyrian sculptures, where the tree, or a portion of it, appears not only in the running ornaments on the walls but on sealcylinders and even in the embroidery on the robes of kings. In the latter case indeed, it is almost certain, from the belief in talismans which the Assyrians had inherited, along with the whole of their religion from the Chaldean mother country, that this ornament was selected not only as appropriate to the sacredness of the royal person, but as a consecration and protection. The holiness of the symbol is further evidenced by the kneeling posture of the animals which sometimes accompany it (see Fig.22, page 67), and the attitude of adoration of the human figures, or winged spirits attending it, by the prevalence of the sacred number seven in its component parts, and by the fact that it is reproduced on a great many of those glazed earthenware coffins which are so plentiful at Warka (ancient Erech). This latter fact clearly shows that the tree-symbol not only meant life in general, life on earth, but a hope of life eternal, beyond the grave, or why should it have been given to the dead? These coffins at Warka belong, it is true, to a late period, some as late as a couple of hundred years after Christ, but the ancient traditions and their meaning had, beyond a doubt, been preserved. Another significant detail is that the cone is frequently seen in the hands of men or spirits, and always in a way connected with worship or auspicious protection; sometimes it is held to the king's nostrils by his attendant protecting spirits, (known by their wings); a gesture of unmistakable significancy, since in ancient languages "the breath of the nostrils" is synonymous with "the breath of life."

64.—WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith's "Chaldea.")64.—WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.(Smith's "Chaldea.")

(Smith's "Chaldea.")

65.—SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Perrot and Chipiez.)65.—SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

9. There can be no association of ideas more natural than that of vegetation, as represented by a tree, with life. By its perpetual growth and development, its wealth of branches and foliage, its blossoming and fruit-bearing, it is a noble and striking illustration of the world in the widest sense—the Universe, the Cosmos, while the sap which courses equally through the trunk and through the veins of the smallest leaflet, drawn by an incomprehensible process through invisible roots from the nourishing earth, still more forcibly suggests that mysterious principle, Life, which wethinkwe understand because we see its effects and feel it in ourselves, but the sources of which will never be reached, as the problem of it will never be solved, either by the prying of experimental science or the musings of contemplative speculation; life eternal, also,—for the workings of natureareeternal,—and the tree that is black and lifeless to-day, we know from long experience is not dead, but will revive in the fulness of time, and bud, and grow and bear again. All these thingsweknow are the effects of laws; but the ancients attributed them to living Powers,—theChthonic Powers(from the Greek wordChthon, "earth, soil"), which have by some later and dreamy thinkers beencalled weirdly but not unaptly, "the Mothers," mysteriously at work in the depths of silence and darkness, unseen, unreachable, and inexhaustibly productive. Of these powers again, what more perfect symbol or representative than the Tree, as standing for vegetation, one for all, the part for the whole? It lies so near that, in later times, it was enlarged, so as to embrace the whole universe, in the majestic conception of the Cosmic Tree which has its roots on earth and heaven for its crown, while its fruit are the golden apples—the stars, and Fire,—the red lightning.

66.—EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith's "Chaldea.")66.—EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.(Smith's "Chaldea.")

(Smith's "Chaldea.")

67.—FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Perrot and Chipiez.)67.—FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.(Perrot and Chipiez.)

(Perrot and Chipiez.)

10. All these suggestive and poetical fancies would in themselves suffice to make the tree-symbol a favorite one among so thoughtful and profound a people as the old Chaldeans. But there is something more. It is intimately connected with another tradition, common, in some form or other, to all nations who have attained a sufficiently high grade of culture to make their mark in the world—that of an original ancestral abode, beautiful, happy, and remote, a Paradise. It is usually imagined as a great mountain, watered by springs which become great rivers, bearing one or more trees of wonderful properties and sacred character, and is considered as the principal residence of the gods. Each nation locates it according to its own knowledge of geography and vague, half-obliterated memories. Many texts, both in the old Accadian and the Assyrian languages, abundantly prove that the Chaldean religion preserved a distinct and reverent conception of such a mountain, and placed itin the far north or north-east, calling it the "Father of Countries," plainly an allusion to the original abode of man—the "Mountain of Countries," (i.e., "Chief Mountain of the World") and alsoArallu, because there, where the gods dwelt, they also imagined the entrance to the Arali to be the Land of the Dead. There, too, the heroes and great men were to dwell forever after their death. There is the land with a sky of silver, a soil which produces crops without being cultivated, where blessings are for food and rejoicing, which it is hoped the king will obtain as a reward for his piety after having enjoyed all earthly goods during his life.[AX]In an old Accadian hymn, the sacred mount, which is identical with that imagined as the pillar joining heaven and earth, the pillar around which the heavenly spheres revolve, (see page 153)—is called "the mountain of Bel, in the east, whose double head reaches unto the skies; which is like to a mighty buffalo at rest, whose double horn sparkles as a sunbeam, as a star." So vivid was the conception in the popular mind, and so great the reverence entertained for it, that it was attempted to reproduce the type of the holy mountain in the palaces of their kings and the temples of their gods. That is one of the reasons why they built both on artificial hills. There is in the British Museum a sculpture from Koyunjik, representing such a temple, or perhaps palace, on the summit of a mound, converted into a garden and watered by a streamwhich issues from the "hanging garden" on the right, the latter being laid out on a platform of masonry raised on arches; the water was brought up by machinery. It is a perfect specimen of a "Paradise," as these artificial parks were called by the Greeks, who took the word (meaning "park" or "garden") from the Persians, who, in their turn, had borrowed the thing from the Assyrians and Babylonians, when they conquered the latter's empire. TheZiggurat, or pyramidal construction in stages, with the temple or shrine on the top, also owed its peculiar shape to the same original conception: as the gods dwelt on the summit of the Mountain of the World, so their shrines should occupy a position as much like their residence as the feeble means of man would permit. That this is no idle fancy is proved by the very name of "Ziggurat," which means "mountain peak," and also by the names of some of these temples: one of the oldest and most famous indeed, in the city of Asshur, was named "the House of the Mountain of Countries." An excellent representation of a Ziggurat, as it must have looked with its surrounding palm grove by a river, is given us on a sculptured slab, also from Koyunjik. The original is evidently a small one, of probably five stages besides the platform on which it is built, with its two symmetrical paths up the ascent. Some, like the great temple at Ur, had only three stages, others again seven—always one of the three sacred numbers: three, corresponding to the divine Triad; five, to the five planets; seven, to the planets, sun and moon. The famous Temple of the Seven Spheres at Borsip (the Birs-Nimrud), often mentioned already, and rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar about 600b.c.from a far older structure, as he explains in his inscription (see p.72), was probably the most gorgeous, as it was the largest; besides, it is the only one of which we have detailed and reliable descriptions and measurements, which may best be given in this place, almost entirely in the words of George Rawlinson:[AY]

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