Altogether the most glorious reign in all the history of the Hebrew commonwealth was that of Solomon. David his father's military prowess and his own skill in diplomacy had brought peace with foreign nations, and rapid internal development. But even now germs of decay were perceptible. The custom of diplomatic marriage with daughters of heathen kings, the incoming of luxury, which was destined to undermine the social, political, and religious hardihood which had previously characterized the people, were destined powerfully to influence the life and character of Hebrew women. For here, elements of weakness will often first show themselves. It was inevitable that with the harem should come immorality, luxury, effeminacy, and the encroachments of foreign influence, through the women of many lands bringing their forms of worship and also their deities with them. It was in anticipation of all these dangers that the law forbade the king to "multiply wives to himself." It will be remembered that it was the increased taxation necessary to keep up such an establishment as that which Solomon brought into being in Israel that led at his death to a disruption of the kingdom into two antagonistic parts. It was the violation of this law that later led the northern kingdom of Israel into one of the bitterest struggles, one of the most cruel wars of extermination, ever enacted among a people which has suffered many grievous national experiences. King Ahab married a Princess of Phoenicia, the daughter of Eth-baal, King of the Zidonians. With her came her worship of Baal, the very name of which divinity was imbedded in the name of her father, Eth-baal.
For force of character, Jezebel is probably unexcelled in the Scripture records. But that character was, unfortunately, villainous. Molière affirms that "It is more difficult to rule a wife than a kingdom." Ahab must have found it so, and surrendered both enterprises to Jezebel. When--like the famous miller of Potsdam who would not part with his mill even to the great Frederick--Naboth refused to sell the vineyard which was so coveted by the king, Jezebel says tauntingly to the disappointed, fretting husband: "Dost thou rule over the Kingdom of Israel?" This Lady Macbeth cries: "Give me the dagger." She prepares a great feast, invites Naboth as a guest of honor, accuses him falsely and has him killed. Triumphantly she now can present her husband with the much-coveted vineyard. Her horrible death in the revolution which the fast-driving Jehu led is held up by the prophets as a warning to subsequent generations, for, unburied and eaten by dogs, Jezebel's body was cast away, so that none could afterward honor her memory or say: "This is Jezebel." And in the same revolution, by a Nemesis so common in history, Jezebel's son Joram was slain in the field of Naboth. That her name made a deep impression upon the Hebrew mind, however, may be seen in the fact that in the book of Revelation, written nearly ten centuries afterward, an heretical and idolatrous influence is referred to as "that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess to teach my servants to commit fornification and to eat things sacrificed to idols."
In marked contrast with the motherly devotion which generally characterized the "daughters of Rachel" stands out the example of Athaliah the unnatural; since she was the daughter of Jezebel, the fact is not strange. To the truthfulness of the remark of La Bruyère that "Women are ever extreme, they are better or they are worse than men," history has often testified. The woman who is usually satisfied to sit behind the throne has occasionally had ambitions to sit upon it. So it was with Athaliah. The law of the Hebrews, while it made provision for inheritance of daughters along with the sons, does not contemplate the dominion of a queen. Only one woman ever sat upon the throne of the Hebrews.
When King Ahaziah, the reigning King of Judah, had been slain by Jehu in a revolution directed against Joram, King of Israel, and all the seed royal, Ahaziah's mother, seized with ambitions to be herself the sovereign, proceeded to put to death all the possible heirs to the throne. Fortunately for the Davidic dynasty, however, a sister of the dead king rescued one of his sons, an infant, from the bloody massacre, and hid him in one of the apartments of the temple. When the proper time came, the high priest Jehoiada brought forth the lad, now seven years of age, and with the aid of mighty men, proclaimed him king. Athaliah was surprised and overwhelmed and was slain; but she had given Judah six years of unrighteous government.
The religious influence of Jezebel in the northern kingdom and of Athaliah, her daughter, in the southern was of greater consequence in the shaping of the history of the times than their lack of moral worth. Jezebel was an ardent worshipper of Baal; indeed, she was the patroness of Baal's prophets, the very bulwark of idolatrous practices in Israel. Over against her stood the prophet Elijah, the representative of what was apparently a lost hope. Jezebel had driven the prophets of Jehovah into the dens and caves of the earth. It is commonly thought that while men have more vices than women, women have stronger prejudices. But here is a woman of whom it may be stated--altering a remark made concerning Nero--"There is no better description of her than to say she was--Jezebel."
The Baal worship which she would foster, and did greatly succeed in fastening upon Israel until its overthrow by Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, was a debasing nature-worship, which tended to destroy manhood and drag womanhood into shame. And while there was set up no material monument of her power in Israel, yet it required generations for the pernicious influence of her life to die away. If, as Dean Stanley suggested, that Hebrew epithalamium, the forty-fifth Psalm, was written in honor of Jezebel's marriage to Ahab, none of its ideals concerning the new-made queen was ever realized in Israel. She must stand in the history with Jeroboam whose constant literary monument is disclosed in the oft-repeated words, "He made Israel to sin."
In contrast with the proud and cruel queen whose aim had been to slay Elijah and all who stood for Jehovah worship are certain obscure women who protected and comforted the prophet. "You will find a tulip of a woman," says Thackeray, "to be in fashion when a humble violet or daisy of creation is passed over without remark." We shall not fall under the implied condemnation by forgetting the nameless widow of Zarephath who, though found gathering a few sticks to make a meal of the last handful of flour and a little oil left in the cruse, yet when asked took the fleeing Tishbite into her frugal home and shared with him her poor repast. For fully a year did Elijah live under the widow's roof, and the meal in the barrel wasted not, nor did the oil in the cruse fail, till the famine was broken by the coming of the long delayed rains.
A people's religion will register its mark quickly upon its women. A most suggestive Semitic conception is found in the use of the figure of marriage to describe the relationship between a people and their god, or perhaps more accurately, between a land and its governing divinity. This entire conception finds its best illustration in the termBaal, which means husband, or lord. The god was conceived of as father and the land as mother of the people and of all the products of the soil.
The influence of the Baal cult upon Israelitish society, especially upon woman, cannot be understood without reference to the nature of that worship. Picture before your mind's eye the rustic prophet Amos, with wandering staff in hand, impelled by a divine impulse, making his way northward, and carrying a divine message to the people. He reaches Bethel in the southern part of the kingdom of Israel--a city that from time immemorial had been a sanctuary. He is shocked at the terrible orgies practised about the altars there in the name of religion; at the unbridled passion and lewdness in the name of the god and goddess of fertility, Baal and Ashtoreth; at the men and women revelling in shame, that the increase of the land might be celebrated and productiveness symbolized.
It is while looking upon such a scene of bestialized worship and debauched womanhood that Amos cries out in prophetic grief:
"The virgin of Israel is fallen,She shall no more rise.She is forsaken upon her landThere is none to raise her up."
"The virgin of Israel is fallen,She shall no more rise.She is forsaken upon her landThere is none to raise her up."
"The virgin of Israel is fallen,
She shall no more rise.
She is forsaken upon her land
There is none to raise her up."
The domestic life of the prophet Hosea furnishes perhaps the best illustration of the condition and dark possibilities of womanhood in Israel during this era of religious lapse and of consequent moral decay. When religion sanctions prostitution at the altar, profligacy is not unnatural. Hosea had married one Gomer, daughter of Diblaim. Soon she forgets her marriage vows and gives herself to a life of shame. Hosea, not then a prophet, more than once tried to reclaim the erring wife of his love; but she again falls into evil ways. His home is destroyed; and as he thinks of the meaning of this fatal blow to his domestic happiness, he can but see in it a divine call to go forth to correct a condition of society which could foster such vice and make such sorrows possible. The whole meaning of his ministry, as he starts out with his children as object lessons of his and the people's great humiliation, is but an enlarged reproduction of his own bitter experience.
That the god and his land were related as husband and wife, was a very familiar conception in Israel, as well as with the nations round about. Even Isaiah proclaimed that the land of the Hebrew should be called Beulah, that is, "married," a land wedded to Jehovah, in pure and abiding love. But it remained for the worship of Baal, which means both "lord" and "husband," to fasten upon Israel the basest practices between the sexes, as a part of the worship of the god to whom the land was married.
Hosea sees in his own poignant grief an epitome of Israel's relation of apostasy from Jehovah. She should have been a wife of purity, keeping her covenant vows with her Lord, but instead, she had gone away to consort with other gods and was playing the harlot against her first love. Repeated efforts had failed to reclaim her, and now she is given up to horrible vice as she sacrifices her virtue at the altar of Baal. It is a fearful arraignment, hot with his own experiences and saturated with tears. The words of Hosea are themselves the best representation of society of the day, as we speak under the figure of his own bitter grief:
"Plead with your mother, plead, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband. Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight and her adulteries from between her breasts." This is the earnest plea for a purified Israel and a redeemed womanhood.
The day is to come, says the prophet with the broken heart, when "she shall follow after her lovers but she shall not overtake them. Then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now." "For she did not know," says Hosea for Jehovah, "that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal." And looking forward to a day when the sensual worship of Baal which so debauched womanhood, should be no longer known in Israel, the prophet, again as the mouthpiece of Jehovah, still carrying out the same figure of wedlock, says to Israel: "And I will betroth thee unto me forever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know Jehovah. And it shall come to pass in that day that I will hear, saith Jehovah, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear (with) the corn, and the wine, and the oil."
It was only after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in B. C. 586, and the consequent exile of the Hebrews, that this nature worship which so endangered womanly virtue was exterminated.
During the long, synchronous reign of Uzziah, King of Judah, and of Jeroboam II., King of Israel, in the eighth century before the Christian era, prosperity both at home and abroad had given the people of both kingdoms great wealth. The Syrians had for a long series of years been a breakwater against the growing power of Assyria. In the meantime, there was unsurpassed opportunity for internal development, commercial expansion, and the accumulation of wealth. Riches had led to luxury, and commerce had made the people more hospitable to foreign ideals, both social and religious.
It was in the reign of Uzziah's successor, Jotham, that a new and eloquent voice was lifted up on behalf of reform, calling the people back to the ideals of the fathers and of the prophets. This new force in Jerusalem was the young Isaiah, whose striking vision in the year King Uzziah died caused him to give up a profane life for the prophet's office; and upon none of the Hebrew prophets do the condition and character of woman seem to have made so deep an impress. Among the very earliest of his public utterances, so far as they have been preserved to us, is that severe arraignment of the women of Jerusalem for their wanton haughtiness, their wasteful extravagance, their love of show, their self-indulgence and vice. Thus in detail does the prophet draw for us the moving picture of female pride: "Moreover, the Lord saith: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing (or tripping delicately) as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: therefore, the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments (anklets) about their feet, and their cauls (net works), and their round tires like the moon (crescents), the chains (or ear pendants), and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets (head tires), and the ornaments of the legs (ankle chains), and the headbands, and the tablets (or smelling boxes), and the earrings, the rings, and the nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel (festal robes), and the mantles, and the wimples (probably, shawls), and the crisping pins, the glasses (hand mirrors), and the fine linen, and the hoods (or turbans), and the vails. And it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell (of Oriental spices) there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle, a rent; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth; and burning instead of beauty. Thy husbands shall fall by the sword, and thy mighty in the war. And her gates shall lament and mourn; and she being desolate, shall sit upon the ground."
In this period, the women as they went along scented the air with the perfume from the boxes that hung at their girdles; they lolled idly and luxuriantly upon ivory beds and silken cushions sprinkled with perfume, and they gossiped to the sound of music.
In predicting the great disaster and slaughter that were to come upon the people through the Assyrian invasion, made successful by the effeminacy of the people, the prophet discloses not only the dire extremity to which the people were to be reduced, but reveals the feminine ideal among the Hebrews, already alluded to in this volume, namely, that which makes motherhood the aim of every Hebrew woman and the absence of it a calamity. In that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, "We will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach." Widowhood and celibacy were equally sources of deepest grief among the women of Israel, and both were to be among the results of the luxury and vice of the land.
Woman, as well as man, in this era of decay, had fallen into the habit of the most cruel covetousness, and, when occasion offered, the rich and powerful women oppressed the poor. The herdsman-prophet Amos, coming from his home in the rural districts of Judah, was shocked at the corruption into which even the women of Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, had fallen, and so, with a rustic boldness that would not mince matters of such grave concern, he compared the women to the fat cattle of the land of Bashan, saying to the wives and mothers of the corrupt and luxury-loving city: "Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring and let us drink!"
In the age of decline, it is a noteworthy fact that not a woman appears to have lifted up prophetic voice against the moral and religious decay. Prophets there were, but apparently no prophetesses, except those whom Jeremiah rebukes with scathing earnestness,--women who prophesied according to their own feelings and desires rather than in harmony with the eternal principles as applied to the then present conditions. Indeed, in the entire period of decline which preceded the fall of Samaria in B.C. 722 and of Jerusalem in B.C. 586, no prophetess appears in the record, except that Isaiah speaks of his wife as the prophetess. This involves an entire change in the meaning of the word.
But there were patriotic women, just as there were patriotic men, during the days of decline. There was no greater suffering than that of women when they saw the Babylonian soldiery laying Jerusalem in ashes. Hugging their babes to their breasts, some were hewn in pieces, while others suffered shameful indignities and were led away among the captives, to sojourn in a strange land. The prophets had foreseen the coming anguish of the women; and when Jeremiah foretold the restoration of Israel to her land, he proclaimed that the eyes of Rachel, which had wept for her children "because they were not," should at length be dried, and her mourning turned into rejoicing. Thus the picture drawn in that elegiac poem--the greatest of all Hebrew threnodies, known as the Lamentations of Jeremiah--when he saw the sacred city in ruins, was reversed:
"How doth the city sit solitaryThat was full of people!How is she become as a widow!She that was great among the nations,And princess among the provinces,How is she become tributary!"She weepeth sore in the nightAnd her tears are on her cheeks:Among all her loversShe hath none to comfort:All her friends have dealt treacherously with her,They have become her enemies."
"How doth the city sit solitaryThat was full of people!How is she become as a widow!She that was great among the nations,And princess among the provinces,How is she become tributary!"She weepeth sore in the nightAnd her tears are on her cheeks:Among all her loversShe hath none to comfort:All her friends have dealt treacherously with her,They have become her enemies."
"How doth the city sit solitary
That was full of people!
How is she become as a widow!
She that was great among the nations,
And princess among the provinces,
How is she become tributary!
"She weepeth sore in the night
And her tears are on her cheeks:
Among all her lovers
She hath none to comfort:
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
They have become her enemies."
This was but the enlargement and national application of the distress experienced by the women of Israel during the siege and final overthrow of the city in which all Jewish hopes centred.
Of the Hebrew women during the period of the exile, we know comparatively little. And yet no woman of later Biblical Judaism made so deep an impression upon the Jewish mind as did Esther. By her beauty and the wise cunning of her uncle, she became the wife of King Ahasuerus, the famous Persian who attempted to measure arms with the Greeks--an effort which turned out so disastrously for the gigantic but undisciplined Persian army. The story of Vashti's deposal, because she refused to lend herself to the immodest proposal of the king, befuddled by the wine of banqueting and revelry; of the subsequent selection of Esther as queen; of her entreaty for her people, against whom a deep-laid and cruel plot was soon to be executed,--is a familiar narrative.
That a Jewish woman should have been elevated to such a position in the Persian palace seems so improbable that some have been inclined to doubt the accuracy of the story which the Book of Esther records, especially since profane history tells of but one wife of Ahasuerus, Amestris. But the argument from silence is always precarious. Vashti and Esther may easily have been extra-legal wives of the king, even though Amestris were his only legally recognized wife. The well-known custom of Oriental monarchies makes such a view highly probable. At all events, there stands the well-known feast of Purim, the "festival of the Lots," as a monument in Jewish religious life of the substantial accuracy of the events recorded in the Book of Esther.
The power of Esther's life and of her service to her people in exile may be in a measure estimated by the fact that no book in all the Bible was so much copied, or was so generally in possession of the Jewish families as that of Esther. Indeed, it was asserted by Maimonides and believed by many that when at the coming of Messiah all the rest of the Old Testament should pass away, there would still remain the five books of the law and the Book of Esther. Written as it was, upon separate scrolls, it was in thousands of Jewish houses. Even at the present day rolls containing Esther are the prized possession of Jewish families; and these are sometimes even now passed down from parents to their children upon the wedding day. On the day of Purim, the book is read in public as a part of the service, that the way in which Esther became the savior of her people may never be forgotten. The power of Esther's story over the Jewish mind has seemed the more remarkable, since it is the single book in the Hebrew Canon which does not contain the name of God. But on the other hand, there is no Hebrew writing that is so intense in its national spirit; none which breathes and burns so deeply with the characteristic genius of "the peculiar people."
There was perhaps no time in the history of the Hebrews when social life received a more severe shock than during the days of the reforms instituted by Nehemiah about the middle of the fifth century before Christ. When the Jews returned from their exile in Babylonia many of them married women of gentile blood and religion, daughters of those who had peopled the land of Palestine during the exile. Children of Jews were being born and taught heathen language and heathen worship by their mothers. Nehemiah, under appointment as governor, when he saw that Jews had married "wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab," commanded that all foreign women be immediately divorced, and that only Jewish women should be taken for wives. Great was the temporary suffering involved, to be sure, but the aim in view, namely that of keeping the people henceforth free from idolatry seemed to justify even so drastic a measure. A grandson of the high priest, himself in priestly line, had married Nicaso, daughter of Sanballat, the Horonite, the very crafty and troublesome ruler of Samaria. When Nehemiah demanded of him that he give up his wife he refused. The governor accordingly expelled him from Jerusalem, chasing him out of his presence, as the Biblical narrative informs us. Josephus says that when the people demanded that he give up his alien wife or his priestly office,--as the law flatly forbade priests from having foreign wives,--he decided first in favor of his office. But when Sanballat, his father-in-law, heard of it, he told him not to move hastily, but if he would keep Nicaso his wife, he, Sanballat, would build him a temple of his own, so that he might be not only a priest, but high priest, and Nicaso's husband at the same time. This appealed to Manasseh's judgment, and he chose the plan of his father-in-law. Thus was built the temple on Mount Gerizim, which became thereafter the centre of Samaritan life and worship. It was concerning Mount Gerizim that the Samaritan woman at the well spoke when she said to Jesus: "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
The suffering of the women during the grievous persecution of the Jews under Antiochus Epiphanes, "the illustrious"--nicknamed Epimanes, "the madman"--was frightful in the extreme. Some men, but fewer women, yielded to the pressure of the effort to destroy the Jewish religion by forcing the Greek pantheon, Greek games and theatre, and the Greek culture upon the Jews. The struggle into which the people were plunged brought the self-sacrifice of the women into prominence. A typical case of suffering is given in the Second Book of Maccabees. King Antiochus had laid hold of a mother and seven sons, and commanded that they violate their law by eating swine's flesh. The eldest was first put to the test. He refused to obey. The king commanded that the tongue of him who spoke thus defiantly should be cut out, his limbs mutilated, and his living body roasted in hot pans, and that his mother and her younger sons should witness the awful sight. One after another the sons were cruelly dealt with and slain. Each one was given opportunity to save his life by eating the forbidden flesh, but each refused. At length the youngest only remained. The king appealed to the mother, standing by, to advise her boy to obey and save his life. But the sturdy Jewish mother turned to this son and strengthened him in his determination to die rather than prove faithless to the religion of his fathers by obeying the merciless tyrant. He too was then murdered, even more cruelly than the rest. And at length, the mother herself lost her life upon the same altar of faithfulness, rather than transgress the law. Of such sturdy stuff were the Jewish mothers of this awful period made. There is little wonder that the sons of such women succeeded in winning their independence and in setting up again a Jewish state, which had been suppressed for more than four centuries.
A look into this period would be incomplete without reference to one of the apochryphal or deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament, highly prized by the Jews as containing a picture of pious home life among the Jews in the captivity. A devout Jew, as the story goes, with his wife Anna and his son Tobias were among those whom Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, had taken captive from the land of Israel and placed in the city of Nineveh when Samaria fell about B. C. 722. Loyal to his religion, Tobit, even in exile, refused to eat the bread of the Gentiles; but by dint of hard work and fidelity he at length became purveyor to the king. By the revolving wheel of fortune, Tobit is at length reduced to poverty. Here Anna his wife, with devoted womanly faithfulness, comes to the rescue with her skilful fingers, weaving and spinning for a livelihood; for her husband was now both poor and blind. One day Anna, wearied and provoked, reproaches her husband for his blindness--such calamities were esteemed a divine curse in Israel, whereupon Tobit prayed that he might die. On the self-same day, a young Jewess, Sara, daughter of Raguel, a captive in Ecbatana of Media, was offering up a similar prayer that the end of her life might come. For her father's maid had charged her with killing her seven husbands, who had died one after another, each on the very first night of the wedding feast, though the strange deaths had been the work of Asmodeus, the evil spirit, who was not willing that the maiden should wed. Now these two widely separated and unrelated prayers were to be brought together into one romantic story by the help of an angel, who becomes a guide to the son of Tobit, young Tobias, who is about to start out in life in quest of a fortune. The angel guides him to Ecbatana, bids him make the eighth to offer marriage to Sara, whose seven husbands had perished on the nuptial night. Though Tobias had never seen the young woman before, he was to her the next of living kin and so should be (according to the Mosaic law) the one to offer his hand to the youthful, much-married widow. Would the young Tobias prove strong enough bravely to face the record of the seven deaths? The angel here comes to the rescue, and calls Tobias's attention to the heart and liver of a great fish which had been caught in the Euphrates as the two had journeyed together from Nineveh to Ecbatana. These, burned with perfumes in the bridal chamber, drove the evil spirit Asmodeus away, and the marriage festivities went on merrily. The life of Tobias had been saved. He takes his newly wedded wife back to his father's house in joy and triumph, cures his father's blindness by the same magic charm which had saved his own life in the bridal chamber, and peace and wealth and long life follow in rich profusion.
This story is chiefly of interest to us as it shows the continuation, even into the period of exile, of the Levirate marriage custom. While the story of the marriage of Sara, daughter of Raguel, is a Jewish romance, the literature of the inter-biblical period is not without its tragedies, in which woman plays an important rôle. Among these is the well-known story of Judith and Holofernes.
Many Jewish women have passed into literature and art. Rebekah at the wellside, Miriam watching by the reeds or singing the pæan of victory with timbrel, Ruth gleaning in the field of Boaz, Delilah the voluptuous, and Athaliah the monster, have exerted their influence both upon the makers of art and writers of drama, but probably no Hebrew woman before the birth of Jesus has made a deeper impress upon the imagination of men than Judith, the beautiful woman and patriot of Bethulia. A woman once saved the city of Rome from overthrow. Several times in the history of Israel was it given to a woman to be the deliverer of the people. The names of Deborah, Esther, and Judith have come down the centuries as those of women who risked their lives for the salvation of their people from the enemy, and succeeded because of their tact and prowess.
The story of Judith and Holofernes is told in the apocryphal Book of Judith. The Assyrians are at war with Israel, whose cities are being besieged and wasted in the merciless onslaught. Holofernes, the Assyrian general, at length lays siege to Bethulia in his onward march to the holy city of Jerusalem. The people are reduced to straits most direful and bitter. Women and little ones perish in the streets, and the people cry out to their leaders to sue Asshur for peace. The rulers, thus urged, promise within five days to yield to their besiegers. It is then that Judith, wealthy and pious, a widow of the city, comes forward to strengthen the fainting heart of the governors and to bid them trust God and stand firm. She promises, in the meantime, that she herself will aid them. Praying earnestly that God will help her in her purpose, she lays aside the habiliments of widowhood, and, arraying herself in garments of gladness, goes forth with her maids to the camp of Holofernes. Charmed with her beauty and grace, the Assyrian gives a feast, to which the bewitching Judith is invited. Holofernes makes merry, and, drinking to drowsiness, lies down in his tent to sleep. Others depart in the night, leaving him and the Jewess alone. Seeing her opportunity, Judith seizes the scimiter that hung on the pillar of Holofernes's bed, and, laying hold upon the hair of the sleeping man's head, severed it from his body, and made her way in the darkness back to the city. In the early morning a sally was made from the city gates, and the Assyrians, finding their captain headless, were thrown into utter confusion and completely routed. Thus did Judith become the deliverer of Israel. The women of the city ran together to see her who had been their savior, made a great dance for her, sang her praises, and bestowed their benedictions, placing garlands of olive upon her brow.
Portia's shrewd dealing with Shylock, the Jewish money lender, called forth the frequent applause of the onlookers: "A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel!" It is in theHistory of Susanna, an apocryphal addition to the canonical Book of Daniel, in which the great prophet is presented in the rôle of arbiter. He appears in a cause against a woman, Susanna, a Jewish lady of great beauty, the wife of a wealthy and distinguished Hebrew whose home was in Babylon. Susanna excited the amours of two judges, elders of the people, who were frequently at her husband's home; but she spurned all their advances, till, angered and resentful, they united in a plot to destroy her, and accused her of unfaithfulness to Joachim, her husband. The penalty for adultery was death, and the people crowded to the trial; for if there was conviction, stoning would follow. The two elders, standing, with their hands upon the innocent woman's head, tell the story agreed upon, how they saw the wife of Joachim in the very shameful act of which they accused her; and the assembly, believing the testimony of the two elders and judges of the people, condemned Susanna to death. At this juncture, the young man Daniel appears upon the scene, much as Portia in the trial of Antonio, and, by adroitly cross-questioning the two witnesses separately, involved them in contradictions, revealing the cowardly plot against the virtuous woman and convicting them of false witnessing. And since the law of Moses prescribed the same penalty for those who bore false testimony as that which would have come to the accused, the elders were put to death, and Susanna was given honor before all the people. This is but one of the many examples in Hebrew history which reveal the unusually high moral character and purity of life that prevailed among the Hebrew women.
It is one of the noteworthy and distressing facts of late Jewish history that in the later teaching of the rabbis woman is placed upon a distinctly lower plane. Her inferiority to man is frequently emphasized. And yet there was one factor which came into the life of Judaism, after the Babylonian exile, which gave to Jewish women an advantage which they had not previously enjoyed. It was the establishment of the synagogue. The secondary place given to women in the temple worship has already been referred to. The man, as head of the family, was representative of the family and responsible, therefore, for the performance of the ceremonies required of every Hebrew household. With the destruction of the temple and the dispersion of the Jews, the temple rites were rendered impossible. When the synagogue arose to fill the vacancy made by these conditions, women were given a place in attendance at the instruction given in these new centres of Jewish life. And while they were never strictly considered members of the congregation, yet, seated in a separate part of the room, they heard the Scriptures read and expounded; and it was not unknown for women even to read on the Sabbath as among the seven appointees for the day. TheTorah, or law, however, was considered rather too sacred and important to be committed to their exposition.
Judging from a remark in theHalachait is just to infer that in the days when the Jews had become dispersed throughout the Roman world, there were two facts that had a very powerful influence upon Jewish women, one of them of Hebraic, the other of Greco-Roman origin. For theHalacha, in speaking of the women leaving their homes, said that there were two causes which took the women away from their domestic duties: one was the synagogue, the other, the baths,--not, indeed, an altogether uncomplimentary comment upon the women of the times, for it would seem they believed in the oft-coupled virtues of cleanliness and godliness.
From the days of John Hyrcanus, the influence of the Jewish rulers had been decidedly in favor of Hellenic culture. Thus the revolution brought about by the Maccabean revolt seemed about to be undone by the successors of the Maccabees. Jewish independence had been won in an effort to resist Antiochus Epiphanes and others in their attempts to destroy Judaism by making the Greek religion and customs prevalent throughout Palestine. Would the sons and successors of the sturdy Maccabeans give away the fruits of the hard-won victory? When to Alexandra was bequeathed the government by her husband, she decided to espouse the cause of the Pharisaic party, who hated the encroachments of foreign influence. But, alas, for the queen's inability to cope with a situation so strained! In her effort to appease the opposite party she put weapons into their hands, which were soon turned against her. As an old woman of seventy-three, she saw her two sons in bitter contest, at the head of opposing forces, each trying to rule over a tumultuous, faction-torn nation. She passed away, deploring a condition which she was utterly unable to correct. It was not till Pompey brought his Roman legions to the gates of Jerusalem, and set up the Roman eagles in the holy city itself that intrigue and battling for the Jewish throne was brought to a close. Then Jewish independence was no more.
A great granddaughter of Alexandra was destined indirectly at least to play a prominent rôle in later Jewish history. This was Mariamne. Herod, afterward known as the Great, had hoped by marrying this descendant of both the contending Jewish parties, to unite the influence of the two branches of the Asmonean house. In this, however, Herod was disappointed, and he proceeded to accomplish by force what he had hoped to do by wiles. In the frightful war of extermination waged by Herod against the whole Asmonean line, which he feared might endanger the rulership secured to him by the Roman power and his own political prowess, there figured a Jewish woman who, because of her sagacity, is not to be passed over in silence. She was Alexandra, a granddaughter of the queen of the same name. When Herod attempted to place in the office of Jewish high priest a young man who would be simply a tool for him, Alexandra advocated the candidature of Aristobulus,--her son and a brother of Mariamne,--who by birthright was in line of official succession. Alexandra shrewdly wrote to Cleopatra that the wily woman of the Nile might use her influence with Antony to force Herod to terms. Herod was compelled to yield and appointed Aristobulus, but determined that Alexandra as well as the new high priest should be put out of the way. One day after both Herod and Aristobulus had been enjoying a banquet given by Alexandra, Herod successfully plotted the killing of the high priest in a fishpond attached to the house of feasting, Herod's minions holding him playfully under the water until he was drowned. But Alexandra was not so stupid as to fail to take in the situation. Through Cleopatra she again succeeded in forcing Herod upon the defensive. Being summoned to appear before Antony, Herod succeeded, however, in again ingratiating himself with the Roman, and he returned as strong as ever to Jerusalem.
But his return was not altogether happy; for on his departure, he had given command that should his interview with Antony be ill-fated, Mariamne, his Jewish wife, should be slain, that no other man might have her for wife. The secret leaked out, and came to Mariamne's ears. She violently resented the treatment of Herod and on his return reproached him for his cruelty; but the insanely jealous and wily Herod was not to be changed by reproaches. On his absence from home on the occasion when he went to meet Octavius, the new star which arose on Antony's downfall, Herod again commanded that both Mariamne and Alexandra be put to death should he not return alive. Mariamne on his return received him with cold resentment. With the help of Herod's mother and sister the estrangement became more and more bitter. The king's cupbearer was bribed by them to declare that Mariamne had attempted to poison her husband. The jury, as well as the evidence, being well-arranged before-hand, the unfortunate Mariamne was led away to execution in B.C. 29, to be followed next year by Alexandra, who had watched her opportunity and, taking advantage of an illness of Herod, had attempted to gain possession of Jerusalem and overthrow the reign of Herod. It was a bold stroke for a woman. It failed, and she was executed. With her death the line of Asmonean claimants to the throne was ended.
But the end of this chapter in which womanly hate and intrigue played so prominent a part was not yet. When Herod's sister, Salome, who had taken so large a part in the death of Mariamne, saw Herod's sons return from their studies in Rome, with the looks and royal bearing of their mother, Mariamne; when she perceived the people's joy at their likeness to the late Jewish queen who had been so cruelly murdered, her jealousy became most bitter, and she began to plot against them as she had against their mother. Herod for a time seemed unmoved and married one of them to Berenice, Salome's own daughter. This only intensified Salome's hate; and step after step of domestic hatred and unhappiness led at length to the order by Herod that the two sons of his Jewish wife, Alexander and Aristobulus, should be strangled at Sebaste, where years before their mother Mariamne had become his bride. No wonder Augustus Cæsar could utter his famous pun in the Greek language which may be reproduced in the words: "I would rather be Herod'sswinethan hisson!"
This was the same Herod who issued an edict that rent the heart of many a mother "in Bethlehem and in all the coasts thereof," a command which sent Mary, the mother of the infant Jesus, into exile with her newborn Son, whose coming into the world was destined to open a new volume, as the narrative passes from Hebrew to Christian womanhood.
Among the Semitic peoples it is not usual, certainly in strictly historic times, to find women holding the first place in the seat of government. Semiramis in the prehistoric period of Assyria is a noteworthy exception to the general custom; and queens sometimes ruled among the Arabians, and "the Queen of Sheba" in southern Arabia became famous. But the common Semitic conception that the king was son and special representative of the deity made it more difficult for women to hold the sceptre. Among the Hebrews there is no instance of a woman being legally recognized as queen. Deborah, before the days of the kingdom, "judged Israel" by virtue of her prophetic character and her ability as a woman of affairs, and Athaliah was enabled to usurp the throne through the murder and banishment of male heirs to the crown. In speaking of her reign it was said that she was the only woman who ever reigned over Israel. There is, however, one other woman who held the Jewish sceptre. After the bloody struggle led by the Maccabees, the Jews at length obtained their liberty from the yoke of the Seleucid kings. Israel then enjoyed about a century of independence. During this period there arose one woman who for nine years ruled the nation. This was Alexandra, the widow of Alexander Janneus, whose unhappy reign came to an end by strong drink, B. C. 78. The conception of the government as a pure theocracy where the king reigned as representative of Jehovah himself rendered it impossible for women to be recognized as lawful sovereigns. The second Psalm, which seems to be a sort of coronation ode, written at the time of the incoming of a new king, expresses the relationship between Jehovah and the earthly ruler:
"The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son,This day have I begotten thee."
"The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son,This day have I begotten thee."
"The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son,
This day have I begotten thee."
Even wives of the Kings of Israel, as a rule, are not called queens, though Jezebel,--the Phoenician wife of Ahab,--king of the Ten Tribes, is a notable exception. This may be accounted for, however, by the fact that she was not an Israelite and worshipper of Jehovah, but a devotee of Ashtoreth, the queen divinity of Phoenicia; and withal she was a far stronger, more aggressive personality than her inefficient husband. It is of interest to observe also that Jezebel is called queen only in connection with her sons. The idea of queen-mother is far more common among the Hebrews than that of queen-wife. Mothers of kings were given especial honor. King Solomon takes his seat upon his throne and sends, not for his wife to sit by his side, but for Bathsheba, his mother, whose adjacent throne is set at the king's right hand. Asa, in his religious reforms, removed his mother from being queen because she had set up an image or sacred pillar in honor of Baal worship. Jeremiah the prophet called upon the King of Israel and his queen-mother--who seems to have been most active in opposing the prophet's proposed policy in submitting to the Babylonians without a struggle--to humble themselves, because their crowns were even then toppling from their heads. Thus the semi-royal character of the mothers of the kings is evident. This will account, at least in part, for the wording of the chronicles of the kings of Israel and Judah, for this is the set formula: "And A----slept with his fathers, and B----, his son, reigned in his stead. And his mother's name was M----. And he did that which was right (or evil) in the sight of the Lord."
Thus is the importance of the queen-mother constantly emphasized in the Hebrew records.
Archæology here puts on her apron, takes her pick and spade in hand to help us uncover the story of the woman of Babylonia and Assyria. Skulls, jewels, cylinders, tablets, monuments, mural decorations must be brought to light after their long sleep beneath the surface of the ground. As alive from the dead these come forth to tell, at least in broken story, of those women who helped to make the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates among the most noteworthy spots upon the face of the Eastern world.
What we may know concerning the women of this early Assyro-Babylonian civilization may be derived in part from the Greek annalists who taught the world to write history, but chiefly from the discoveries in modern excavations. And even with these sources at our command, we shall find that many things which we would like to know about Assyrian and Babylonian women are still obscure.
The Sumer-Accadian question shall not disturb us here. That there was a non-Semitic people living in the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and that they developed a civilization from which the Babylonian and Assyrians later borrowed, seems clearly established. What the Sumerian and Accadian women left to their Semitic sisters who came at length into the ancient heritage, it would now be impossible to say with any degree of certainty.
The ancient mythology and the epic poems of these people contain many female characters, which may throw some light upon woman's place in their civilization. A people's mythology is the dim daguerreotype of their childhood thinking. Fortunately for us, the last fifty years have brought to light a whole series of epic poems from early Babylonian life, some of them in fragmentary form, others more or less well preserved. In nearly all these the feminine character has its place.
It will be remembered that in the Hebrew account of the creation no female divinity plays a part. In the kindred Semitic accounts from Babylonia and Assyria, however, Tihâmat, or Mummu Tohâmat, becomes the primeval mother of all things. She was chaos--corresponding to the HebrewTehôm, or "abyss." And thus, from the womb of dark chaos, with the ocean as father, came the divinity, the sun, moon and stars, earth, man, everything. But, strangely enough, after the birth of the first gods from chaos, a strife arose between them and their mother Tihâmat. It is, however, the old story of light's struggle with darkness. Anu would decide the dispute, but Tihâmat declares that the war must go on. Marduk, the god of light, becomes the special champion of the forces arrayed against primeval darkness, and Tihâmat is vanquished and cut asunder. From one part he makes the firmament of the heaven, to which the gods of the heavenly lights, sun, moon, and stars, are assigned, and from the other half he fashions the earth.
So, also, in the story of the Deluge, the Babylonian Noah, called Sît-Napishti, takes his wife with him into the ark; and when the floods subside and the ship rests, stranded upon the land, Ishtar, the goddess of the rainbow, greatly rejoices as she smells the sweet incense that arises from the grateful altar of Sît-Napishti. The god Bel is persuaded never again to destroy the earth with a flood, and so takes Sît-Napishti and his faithful wife by the hand, blesses them, and at length translates them to paradise.
One of the most prominent heroines of early Babylonian epic is Ishtar. Indeed, there are many variant stories concerning her. Ishtar's descent into Hades is, in fact, one of the most important legends of Oriental mythology. She is the goddess of love, corresponding to the Canaanite and Phoenician divinities Ashtoreth and Astarte. She is the Aphrodite, the Venus of classic myth. Earlier she did not hold power over men's minds. She was a goddess of war, and the earlier warriors honored her as their patroness. It was Esarhaddon who enlarged the honors paid her; and he is said once to have interrupted his scribe, while reading of two important expeditions of arms, to send and fetchThe Descent of Ishtar into Hades.
This romantic story of adventure on the part of the goddess is well set out in early Assyro-Babylonian literature. Tammuz, the young husband of Ishtar, has been cut off by the boar's tusk (of winter). Ishtar mourned incessantly for her lover, but in vain. She resolved to rescue him if possible from the realm of shade, the kingdom of Allat, whence he had gone; for, though god he was, he must keep company with all the rest whom death claimed. Only one method of restoring him to the realm of life was possible. There was a spring which issued from under the threshold of Allat's own palace. One who could bathe in and drink of these wonderful waters would live again. But, alas! they were zealously guarded; for a stone lay upon the fountain, and seven spirits of earth watched with assiduous care lest some might drink and live. Of these waters Ishtar resolved to go and fetch a draught. But no one, not even a goddess, can descend into this Hades alive. So we read: "To the land from whence no traveller returns, to the regions of darkness, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, has directed her spirit to the house of darkness, the seat of the God Iskala, to the house which those who enter can never leave, by the road over which no one travels a second time, to the house the inhabitants of which never again see the light, the place where there is no bread, but only dust, no food, but wind. No one can see the light there, ... upon the gate and the lock on all sides the dust lies thick." But Ishtar, in her quest of love, is nothing daunted by the difficulties or the forbidding aspects of her task. She descends to the gates of Allat's abode and knocks upon them, calling commandingly to the doorkeeper to unlock the bolts: "Guardian of life's waters, open thy doors, open thy doors that I may go in. If thou do not open thy gate and let me in, I will sound the knocker, I will break the lock, I will strike the threshold and break through the portal. I will raise the dead to devour the living, the dead shall be more numerous than the living." The porter goes and tells his mistress, Allat, of the imperious demand of Ishtar. "O goddess, thy sister Ishtar has come in search of the living water; she has shaken the strong bolts, she threatens to break down the doors." Allat treats her with contempt, but finally commands her messenger: "Go, then, O guardian, open the gates to her, but unrobe her according to the ancient laws." Since men come naked into the world, they must go out unclad, and the older custom among the Babylonians was to bury the dead without clothing. Ishtar is stripped of her garments and jewels, and at each successive gate more of her ornaments were appropriated. First went her crown, for Allat alone was queen in that gloomy realm; then her earrings, her jewelled necklace; then her veil, her belt, her bracelets, and her anklets. When through the seventh gate she passed, all her garments were taken away; and Allat commanded her demon Namtar--the plague devil--to take her from the queen's presence and strike her down with disease of every sort. Meanwhile, in the upper world all are mourning because of her absence; for, as goddess of love and procreation, all nature was perishing, and there was no renewal. All the forces of the upper world, therefore, united to bring her back to light; for the world would be depopulated and barren, if some means were not found to restore her.
Here the supreme god Hea comes to the rescue, for he alone, as controller of the universe, can violate the laws which he himself has imposed thereon. Hea commands that Allat give life again to Ishtar by the application of the water of life to her. She was informed that power over the life of her consort Tammuz was given into her hands. The water of life was poured upon him, he was anointed with precious perfumes and clothed in purple. Thus "Nature revived with Tammuz: Ishtar had conquered death."
That the Babylonian Hades was presided over by a queen; that the real sceptre in the underworld was swayed by a woman is a matter of some significance. In the old Norse mythology the goddess Hel, without a husband, ruled in the abode of Hell, or the place of death. Among the Greeks, Persephone divided with her husband, Pluto, the control of the underworld. With the Babylonians it is the goddess Allat whose power controls the realm of the dead; and even her scribe, contrary to what we might expect, was also a woman, whose name was Belit-Iseri. Allat, the mistress of death, is not represented as an attractive woman, but ill shaped, with the wings and claws of a bird of prey. She goes to and fro in her realm, exploring the river which flows from the world to her own abode. A huge serpent is brandished in each hand, with which, as "an animated sceptre," she strikes and poisons those against whom her enmity is directed. The boat in which she navigates the dark river has a fierce bird's beak upon its prow, and a bull's head upon its stern. Her power is irresistible; and even the gods cannot invade her realm except they die like men, and graciously acknowledge her supremacy over them. Just as the dead eat and drink and sleep, so does Allat. Her daily portion, as with other divinities, comes from the table of the gods, brought by her faithful messenger, Namtar. Libations poured out in sacrifice by the living also trickle down to her through the earth. Thus Allat lives and reigns in the land from which no traveller returns, a kingdom into which twice seven gates open to receive the dead; but none opens for their release.
Professor Peter Jensen, of Marburg, Germany, has raised the question: Why in the realm of the dead is the power of woman so important, and even monarchical in character? He answers it by the very simple explanation that just as the Hebrews personified their Sheol, and the North Germanic nations their Hel, so the Assyrians and Babylonians regarded their country of the dead as a person. And that since names of places and lands are of feminine gender, in Assyrian thought as in the Hebrew, the land of the dead was conceived of under the form of a woman. Whether this be the true explanation or not, certain it is that the female principle played an important part in the religious thinking of the Assyro-Babylonian peoples.
It is not difficult, therefore, to perceive that women would hold an important place in Babylonian and Assyrian religious life, and in the Phoenician cult. When the goddess plays an important part in religion, especially when the renovative and procreative powers of nature are worshipped, woman will naturally find a place. While the Hebrews have their prophetesses, the religion of Babylonia and Assyria has its priestesses as well as prophetesses.
No account of the women of Assyria would seem complete without reference to the legend of Semiramis and her wonderful exploits. And as is the case with much of the history of the dawn of nations, we are indebted to the Greeks for preserving for us the story of this superlative queen. Ctesias, Diodorus, Herodotus, Strabo, and others tell her story or mention her achievements. This remarkable woman was said to be the daughter of Derceto, the goddess of reproductive nature and of a youthful mortal with whom she had fallen in love. The babe was exposed by its mother, but was found and cared for by a shepherd named Simmas. Having developed into a very beautiful damsel, she won the hand of Oannes, Governor of Syria. In the war against Bactria she so distinguished herself for bravery, disguising herself as a soldier and scaling the wall of the besieged capital, that the King Ninus, founder of the city of Nineveh, took her to be his own queen. Soon Ninus died and Semiramis became sole ruler of the realm. Unbounded ambition, coupled with surpassing genius, caused her to undertake the labor of eclipsing the glory of all her predecessors. She built cities, threw up defences, conquered kings, and extended her territory in every direction. She made the city of Babylon one of her capitals, fortifying it with gigantic walls of sun-dried brick, cemented with asphalt. She built wonderful bridges supported by huge pillars of stone. Diodorus Siculus, quoting Ctesias, thus describes her work upon the walls of the city of Babylon: "When the first part of the work was completed, Semiramis fixed on the place where the Euphrates was narrowest, and threw across it a bridge five stadia long. She contrived to build in the bed of the stream pillars twelve feet apart, the stones of which were joined with strong iron clamps, fixed into the mortises with melted lead. The side of these pillars toward the run of the stream was built at an angle, so as to divide the water and cause it to run smoothly past and lessen the pressure against the massive pillars. On these pillars were laid beams of cedar and cypress, with large trunks of palm trees, so as to form a platform thirty feet wide. The queen then built at great cost, on either bank of the river, a quay with a wall as broad as that of the city and one hundred and sixty stadia long, that is, nearly twenty miles. In front of each end of the bridge, she built a castle flanked by towers, and surrounded by triple walls. Before the bricks used in these buildings were baked, she modelled on them, figures of animals of every kind, colored to represent living nature. Semiramis then constructed another prodigious work: she had a huge basin, or square reservoir, dug in some low ground. When it was finished the river was directed into it, and she at once commenced building in the dry bed of the river, a covered way leading from one castle to the other. This work was completed in seven days, and the river was then allowed to return to its bed, and Semiramis could then pass dry-shod under water from one of her castles to the other. She placed at the two ends of the tunnel, gates of bronze, said by Ctesias to be still in existence in the time of the Persians. Lastly, she built in the midst of the city the temple of the god Bel."
It will be seen from such a paragraph as this just quoted how Semiramis anticipated much of the best work of engineering of modern times. The mountains and valleys yielded to her daring when highways were to be built for the extension of her power and her commerce. In Armenia, Media, and all the regions around she exhibited her genius and prowess. Even Egypt and Ethiopia fell before her. Only when she undertook to carry her arms into far-off India did she meet with reverses. Stabrobatis, King of India, with the aid of elephants, utterly routed the army of the valiant queen, and she never again attempted an expedition to the Far East. As an example of what Semiramis thought of herself, we may quote the words attributed to her: "Nature gave me the body of a woman, but my deeds have equalled those of the most valiant men. I ruled the empire of Ninus, which reaches eastward to the river Hinaman (the Indus), southward to the land of incense and myrrh (Arabia Felix), northward to the Saces and Sogdians. Before me no Assyrian had seen a sea; I have seen four that no one had approached, so far were they distant. I compelled the rivers to run where I wished, and directed them to the places where they were required. I made barren land fertile by watering it with my rivers; I built impregnable fortresses; with iron tools I made roads across impassable rocks; I opened roads for my chariots, where the very wild beasts were unable to pass. In the midst of these occupations, I have found time for pleasure and love!"
What are we to think of this story of the very wonderful lady of the Orient of long ago? Did she ever live, move, and have her remarkable being? It is needless to reply that the story is purely legendary, that none of the modern excavations which have been so fruitful in character have confirmed the story of Ctesias. On the contrary, the monuments have as yet failed even to certify to the existence of such a woman. The fact that her birth is given as from a goddess, that at her death she was changed into a dove, and was thereafter herself worshipped as a goddess, is some evidence of the unreliable character of the narrative. A queen who bore the name of Sammuramat and lived between B.C. 812 and B.C. 783 has been discovered as a historical personage, a name that may possibly have influenced that given the great prehistoric queen. But the marvellous achievements attributed to Semiramis are discovered to be the work of man through a long series of years, and that, too, highly idealized in the numerous details.
That the imaginary queen, as the story goes, had a power over the minds of the people is evident from the fact that many later achievements of arms and of building were attributed to her. And yet, notwithstanding the mythological character of the story of Semiramis, there is reflected much truth concerning Assyro-Babylonian history in these legends. That so great achievements should have been attributed to a woman is evidence of a lack of that prejudice against woman which is discoverable among many Oriental people. In the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris, women had a noteworthy degree of independence, and in some respects a recognized equality. The legend could have developed only in such an atmosphere. The comparison of feminine and masculine virtues has been made time out of mind; the following words from Plutarch are, in this connection, of interest: "Neither can a man truly any better learn the resemblance and difference between feminine and virile virtue than by comparing together lives with lives, exploits with exploits, as the product of some great art, duly considering whether the magnanimity of Semiramis carries with it the same character and impression with that of Sesostris, or the cunning of Tanaquil the same with that of King Servius, or the discretion of Portia the same with that of Brutus, or that of Pelopidas with that of Timoclea, regarding that quality of these virtues wherein lie their chiefest point and force."
It is certain that if early Assyrian myth is to be consulted, the Assyrians had no hesitancy in recognizing the possibility of real greatness in woman's accomplishments and womanly genius.
While there are few queens of note among the prominent personages of whom we read upon the monuments, and while the name of no woman occurs in the Eponym Canon by which the chronology of the nation's life is reckoned, yet the place of woman among the Assyrians and Babylonians was one of greater privilege and honor than among most ancient nations. Those unsurpassed walls that protected the great city of Babylon and the hydraulic works which Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, was forced to capture before the city fell into his hands are attributed by Herodotus to a woman,--Queen Nitocris.
In the Code of Hammurabi, who was King of Babylon about B. C. 2250, the most ancient of all known codes of law, woman fares well for so early a period. One of these quaint laws reads: "If a woman hates her husband and says, 'Thou shalt not have me,' they shall inquire into her antecedents for her defects. If she has been a careful mistress and without reproach, and her husband has been going about and greatly belittling her, that woman has no blame. She shall receive her presents, and shall go to her father's house." "If she has not been a careful mistress, has gadded about, has neglected her house and belittled her husband, they shall throw that woman into the water!" Under this code, a man might sell his wife to pay his debts. For three years she might work in the house of the purchaser; after which she was to be given her freedom. Where the law of Moses says: "He that smiteth his fatheror his mothershall be surely put to death," Hammurabi's code enjoins: "Who smites his father, loses the offending limb."
From the many contract tablets that have been exhumed much fresh light has been thrown upon the social customs of the people in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris. In Babylonia the woman did not suffer greatly before the law from the fact that she was the weaker vessel. Indeed, the scales were held quite evenly as between the sexes. A woman might hold her own property, appear in public, and attend to her own business. Frequently, Assyrian women are depicted upon monuments riding on the highways upon mules. Woman might even hold office and plead in a court of justice--so far did Babylonia anticipate the progress of modern Western ideas. Agreements have been discovered upon tablets by which it was covenanted between a man and his wife that should the husband marry another during the lifetime of the first wife, all the dowry of the first shall be returned to her and she shall be allowed to go where she pleases. The law concerning divorce, however, would seem to lack that fairness which characterizes many other regulations of social life. A man might divorce his wife by the payment of a pecuniary consideration; but if a woman undertook the initiative in annulling the marriage contract, she might be condemned to death by drowning.
In the formula for the exorcism used by the priests to break the spell the gods had sent upon one possessed or sick, we discover that despising the mother was regarded as being as culpable as dishonoring the father. "Has he perchance set his parents or relations at variance, sinned against God, despised father or mother, lied, cheated, dishonored his neighbor's wife, shed his neighbor's blood, etc. Indeed, an ancient law, which is thought to go back even to Accadian precedents, even gives to the woman, if she be a mother, greater honor than to the man for it is prescribed that if a son denies his father he is to be fined; if he denies his mother, he is to be banished."
It must be said, however, that the social freedom of the women depended much upon their social rank. The women of the lower walks of life were singularly independent for an Oriental community. Indeed, their liberty was practically unrestricted. They could be seen upon the public highways, with both head and face uncovered. They could make their purchases at the market place, attend to any business that they might find necessary, and visit the homes of their friends without restraint. While all women, whatever might be their rank, had the same standing before the laws of the land, unbending custom kept women of the highest plane of social life within the seclusion of the home. Even when allowed the privilege of being seen in public, they must go attended by eunuchs or pages, so that both seeing and being seen were difficult processes. Of course, in the highest lady of the land, the queen, was found the culmination of dignity and exclusiveness, and she was rarely seen by anyone except her husband, members of the royal family, and her servants. Thus rank, instead of giving freedom and enlarged powers, tended only to bring monotony and seclusion.
The women of the lower classes usually went with bare feet, as well as bare heads. With their long shaggy garments they did not present a very picturesque or attractive appearance. The truth is, the costumes of the people of Babylonia and Assyria were wanting in that grace and beauty which is discoverable among some other people of the Orient. The garments lacked that lightness of effect which flowing robes and drapery make possible. The designs and materials were stiff, and with the profusion of borders and fringes presented a heavy aspect. The women did not choose so to dress as to show their natural figure, but by concealing themselves in heavy and sometimes padded garments, their forms were far from beautiful, and contrast most unfavorably with the Greek and Egyptian grace of womanly dress and carriage. The women as well as the men used much embroidery, which was generally very heavy and often elaborate. Some of the designs were highly ornate and beautiful.
Of the education of women in Babylonia and Assyria little definite is known, except that it was common for women as well as men to read and write. Exercises and translations of school children have been exhumed from the mounds of ancient Babylonian cities. Dolls and other playthings of the children have also been brought to light, showing that the children of all ages have much the same tastes and occupations. Music, dancing, embroidery, besides reading and writing, were among the accomplishments of the girls of these lands.
Households were amply equipped religiously, for every home must be provided with some method of keeping itself free from the power of evil spirits. When all believe that the world is peopled with demons who are perpetually trying to ensnare men and bring them to ruin if possible, we might expect that the women would be especially superstitious and punctilious to the last degree in order that all evil spirits may be frightened from their dwellings. Hence, they hung amulets in almost every conceivable place. Talismans, statuettes of the dreaded spirits might be seen in every home. Every charm was used to thwart the enemies of human happiness in their attempt to destroy domestic peace, estrange husband from wife, drive the head of the family from his own roof, and send barrenness and blight in every quarter.
The ancient Babylonians had a queer way of marrying off their daughters, if we may believe Herodotus--which we do not. Not any period in the year might the maiden select as the time to become a matron, but only on one occasion during the year, and that a public festival, was marriage permitted. On this occasion, the daughters of marriageable age were put up at public auction. The crier took his place, while the young men who were looking for wives or the young men's parents who were to pay for them, stood about watching their opportunity to exchange their money for feminine values. It is said that the girls were put up for purchase, according to their beauty--the prettiest first, and so on to the end of the sale. Often the contest of buyers would run high in excitement, and large prices were offered for the coveted prize.
After the good-looking damsels were all sold at fair prices, then came the less attractive maidens, who, we are informed, were not sold, but offered as wives with a dowry, the proceeds of the beauties being used to add to the value of their less fortunate sisters. When the auction was over, the marriage followed, and the brides accompanied their new-made husbands to their homes. There was no escape from this method of wedlock. The procedure was not optional, but imperative. There was no marriage ring or bracelet to commemorate the event, but each new wife was given a bit of baked clay in the form of an olive. Through this model a hole was pierced so that it might be worn continually about the neck, and upon it were inscribed the names of the parties to the transaction and the date of their marriage. Several of these clay memorials have been found as mute witnesses of the days when girls were put up at the annual sale of wives in the month of Sabat and knocked down to the highest bidder.
Later, however, this custom gave way to one more rational, when marriage came to be considered both "an act of civil law and a rite of domestic worship." It became a contract entered into by two parties. A scribe must be called in to draw up the marriage bond. It is to be properly witnessed and filed away with a public notary for future reference. There is a long period of social evolution between these two methods of conducting marriage. And it is not to be supposed that all trace of bargain and sale have disappeared. Not at all. The following happy effort has been made at reproducing a scene which might have easily occurred between the father of a young man who seeks in marriage the hand of a certain damsel and the father of the girl at the home of the latter.
"'Will you give your daughter Bilitsonnon in marriage to my son Zamamanadin?' The father consents and without further delay the two men arrange the dowry. Both fathers are generous and rich, but they are also men of business habits. One begins by asking too much, the other replies by offering too little; it is only after some hours of bargaining that they finally agree and settle upon what each knew from the beginning was a reasonable dowry--a mana of silver, three servants, a trousseau and furniture, with permission for the father to substitute articles of equal value for the cash." There being no further obstacles the marriage is accordingly fixed for a day of the next week.
But does not the young lady need a longer time to prepare for an event of so great moment in her life? No, because she has been anticipating for some time that such a transaction will be effected by her parents; for has she not already arrived at the age of thirteen? She has therefore not let the past months slip idly through her fingers. She has been busy sewing, embroidering, and making other things of beauty and usefulness for her expected home. But nothing has concerned her more than to see that her own person shall be attractive to her new husband when the veil is lifted on her wedding day. Odors and ornaments ample have been provided.
Early upon the appointed day the friends may be seen moving toward the home of the bride-elect. The scribe who is to draw up the marriage contract is present ready to perform his important task. With his triangular stylus he indents the covenant in soft clay. This is to be inserted in an envelope also of clay that there may be a double impression of the words of the contract. This is to be carefully baked and filed away for possible future use--it may be to be found thousands of years afterward by some explorer digging in the ruins of a long buried city. The day has dawned beautiful, for the astrologer has said that all would be propitious. The hands of the bride and groom are tied together with a thread of wool, the customary emblem of the union into which they have now entered. The marriage contract is clearly read before the assembled company, and the witnesses make their mark upon the soft tablet, the dowry and other presents are given over. Prayer is made to the proper gods for the happy pair, and curses are invited upon any who shall undertake to annul the covenant or revoke the gifts.
Next comes the banqueting, of which the Assyrians were so fond. Music and dancing, jesting and telling happy tales, with eating and drinking, make up the round of merriment. At length the time comes for the bridal party to make its way to the home of the groom's parents. All along the way are signs of rejoicing, in which all are expected to join. The groom's house is reached, and here the festivities are resumed and carried on for several days, till all are fatigued and sated with mirth and quite ready to see the young couple settle down to their new life as home makers.
Polygamy was rare for the Orient, especially at so early a period; but where polygamy was practised at all, the harem existed. In Assyria, the king might have more than one legitimate wife, to say nothing of those who were not so ranked. Sargon had three lawful wives, for each of whom he erected a separate apartment in his royal palace of Dur-Sargina. Like Oriental houses generally, the several apartments are entered from a central court. The queen's apartments were usually rich in decoration and furnishings. The harem of Sargon's palace, which may be taken as typical, was entered by gates. One of these had upon the front two huge bronze palm trees, on each side one. Since the palm tree is emblematic of both grace and fecundity, the significance of its use is apparent. There were anterooms and drawing rooms, as well as bedrooms, for the use of the queen. These were plastered, and mural decorations were abundant, the designs being sometimes conventional, sometimes depicting religious ideas in symbolism. Of course, the winged bull and the winged lion, watchful guardians of Assyrian interest, were often painted upon the walls. The gods were favorite subjects. In the women's apartments were chairs, stools, tables, and the floors of brick or stone were covered with carpets and mats. The bed, more like a modern lounge, was raised upon wooden legs, and held a mattress and appropriate coverings, and placed in a highly ornamented alcove, gave to the bedroom an attractive air.