History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 01 - Ch. 1: Ancient Chaldaea, pt. 1

[Illustration: 002a.

jpg] “In the time when nothing which was called heaven existed above, and when nothing below had as yet received the name of earth,* Apsu, the Ocean, who first was their father, and Chaos-Tiamat, who gave birth to them all, mingled their waters in one, reeds which were not united, rushes which bore no fruit.

” ** Life germinated slowly in this inert mass, in which the elements of our world lay still in confusion: when at length it did spring up, it was but feebly, and at rare intervals, through the hatching of divine couples devoid of personality and almost without form.

“In the time when the gods were not created, not one as yet, when they had neither been called by their names, nor had their destinies been assigned to them by fate, gods manifested themselves.

Lakhmu and Lakhamu were the first to appear, and waxed great for ages; then Anshar and Kishar were produced after them.

Days were added to days, and years were heaped upon years: Anu, Inlil, and Ea were born in their turn, for Anshar and Kishar had given them birth.

” As the generations emanated one from the other, their vitality increased, and the personality of each became more clearly defined; the last generation included none but beings of an original character and clearly marked individuality.

Anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; Inlil-Bel, the king of the earth; Ea, the sovereign of the waters and the personification of wisdom.

*** Each of them duplicated himself, Anu into Anat, Bel into Belit, Ea into Damkina, and united himself to the spouse whom he had deduced from himself.

Other divinities sprang from these fruitful pairs, and the impulse once given, the world was rapidly peopled by their descendants.

Sin, Shamash, and Kamman, who presided respectively over the moon, the sun, and the air, were all three of equal rank; next came the lords of the planets, Ninib, Merodach, Nergal, the warrior-goddess Ishtar, and Nebo; then a whole army of lesser deities, who ranged themselves around Anu as round a supreme master.

Tiamat, finding her domain becoming more and more restricted owing to the activity of the others, desired to raise battalion against battalion, and set herself to create unceasingly; but her offspring, made in her own image, appeared like those incongruous phantoms which men see in dreams, and which are made up of members borrowed from a score of different animals.

They appeared in the form of bulls with human heads, of horses with the snouts of dogs, of dogs with quadruple bodies springing from a single fish-like tail.

Some of them had the beak of an eagle or a hawk; others, four wings and two faces; others, the legs and horns of a goat; others, again, the hind quarters of a horse and the whole body of a man.

Tiamat furnished them with terrible weapons, placed them under the command of her husband Kingu, and set out to war against the gods.

* In Chaldaea, as in Egypt, nothing was supposed to have a real existence until it had received its name: the sentence quoted in the text means practically, that at that time there was neither heaven nor earth.

** Apsu has been transliterated kiracruv [in Greek], by the author an extract from whose works has been preserved by Damascius.

He gives a different version of the tradition, according to which the amorphous goddess Mummu-Tiamat consisted of two persons.

The first, Tauthe, was the wife of Apason; the second, Moymis, was the son of Apason and of Tauthe.

The last part of the sentence is very obscure in the Assyrian text, and has been translated in a variety of different ways.

It seems to contain a comparison between Apsu and Mummu-Tiamat on the one hand, and the reeds and clumps of rushes so common in Chaldaea on the other; the two divinities remain inert and unfruitful, like water-plants which have not yet manifested their exuberant growth.

*** The first fragments of the Chaldaean account of the Creation were discovered by G. Smith, who described them in the _Daily Telegraph_ (of March 4, 1875), and published them in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, and translated in his Chaldaean account of Genesis all the fragments with which he was acquainted; other fragments have since been collected, but unfortunately not enough to enable us to entirely reconstitute the legend.

It covered at least six tablets, possibly more.

Portions of it have been translated after Smith, by Talbot, by Oppert, by Lenormant, by Schrader, by Sayce, by Jensen, by Winckler, by Zimmern, and lastly by Delitzsch.

Since G. Smith wrote _The Chaldaean Account_, a fragment of a different version has been considered to be a part of the dogma of the Creation, as it was put forth at Kutha.

[Illustration: 006. jpg ONE OF THE EAGLE-HEADED GENII.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from an Assyrian bas-relief from Khorsabad At first they knew not whom to send against her.

Anshar despatched his son Anu; but Anu was afraid, and made no attempt to oppose her.

He sent Ea; but Ea, like Anu, grew pale with fear, and did not venture to attack her.

Merodach, the son of Ea, was the only one who believed himself strong enough to conquer her.

The gods, summoned to a solemn banquet in the palace of Anshar, unanimously chose him to be their champion, and proclaimed him king.

“Thou, thou art glorious among the great gods, thy will is second to none, thy bidding is Anu; Marduk (Merodach), thou art glorious among the great gods, thy will is second to none,* thy bidding is Anu.

** From this day, that which thou orderest may not be changed, the power to raise or to abase shall be in thy hand, the word of thy mouth shall endure, and thy commandment shall not meet with opposition.

None of the gods shall transgress thy law; but wheresoever a sanctuary of the gods is decorated, the place where they shall give their oracles shall be thy place.

*** Marduk, it is thou who art our avenger!

We bestow on thee the attributes of a king; the whole of all that exists, thou hast it, and everywhere thy word shall be exalted.

Thy weapons shall not be turned aside, they shall strike thy enemy.

O master, who trusts in thee, spare thou, his life; but the god who hath done evil, put out his life like water.

They clad their champion in a garment, and thus addressed him: ‘Thy will, master, shall be that of the gods.

Speak the word, ‘Let it be so,’ it shall be so.

Thus open thy mouth, this garment shall disappear; say unto it, ‘Return,’ and the garment shall be there.

” He spoke with his lips, the garment disappeared; he said unto it, “Return,” and the garment was restored.

* The Assyrian runs, “thy destiny is second to none.

” This refers not to the _destiny_ of the god himself, but to the fate which he allots to others.

I have substituted, here and elsewhere, for the word “destiny,” the special meaning of which would not have been understood, the word “will,” which, though it does not exactly reproduce the Assyrian expression, avoids the necessity for paraphrases or formulas calculated to puzzle the modern reader.

** Or, to put it less concisely, “When thou commandest, it is Anu himself who commands,” and the same blind obedience must be paid to thee as to Anu.

*** The meaning is uncertain.

The sentence seems to convey that henceforth Merodach would be at home in all temples that were constructed in honour of the other gods.

Merodach having been once convinced by this evidence that he had the power of doing everything and of undoing everything at his pleasure, the gods handed to him the sceptre, the throne, the crown, the insignia of supreme rule, and greeted him with their acclamations: “Be King!

--Go!

Cut short the life of Tiamat, and let the wind carry her blood to the hidden extremities of the universe.

” * He equipped himself carefully for the struggle.

“He made a bow and placed his mark upon it;” ** he had a spear brought to him and fitted a point to it; the god lifted the lance, brandished it in his right hand, then hung the bow and quiver at his side.

He placed a thunderbolt before him, filled his body with a devouring flame, then made a net in which to catch the anarchic Tiamat;

he placed the four winds in such a way that she could not escape, south and north, east and west, and with his own hand he brought them the net, the gift of his father Anu.

“He created the hurricane, the evil wind, the storm, the tempest, the four winds, the seven winds, the waterspout, the wind that is second to none; then he let loose the winds he had created, all seven of them, in order to bewilder the anarchic Tiamat by charging behind her.

And the master of the waterspout raised his mighty weapon, he mounted his chariot, a work without its equal, formidable; he installed himself therein, tied the four reins to the side, and darted forth, pitiless, torrent-like, swift.

” * Sayce was the first, I believe, to cite, in connection with this mysterious order, the passage in which Berossus tells how the gods created men from a little clay, moistened with the blood of the god Belos.

Here there seems to be a fear lest the blood of Tiamat, mingling with the mud, should produce a crop of monsters similar to those which the goddess had already created; the blood, if carried to the north, into the domain of the night, would there lose its creative power, or the monsters who might spring from it would at any rate remain strangers to the world of gods and men.

** “Literally, he made his weapon known; “perhaps it would be better to interpret it, “and he made it known that the bow would henceforth be his distinctive weapon.

” [Illustration: 008. jpg BEL-MERODACH, ARMED WITH THE THUNDERBOLT, DOES BATTLE WITH THE TUMULTUOUS TIAMAT.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from the bas-relief from Nimrud preserved in the British Museum.

He passed through the serried ranks of the monsters and penetrated as far as Tiamat, and provoked her with his cries.

“‘Thou hast rebelled against the sovereignty of the gods, thou hast plotted evil against them, and hast desired that my fathers should taste of thy malevolence;

therefore thy host shall be reduced to slavery, thy weapons shall be torn from thee.

Come, then, thou and I must give battle to one another!

’ Tiamat, when she heard him, flew into a fury, she became mad with rage;

then Tiamat howled, she raised herself savagely to her full height, and planted her feet firmly on the earth.

She pronounced an incantation, recited her formula, and called to her aid the gods of the combat, both them and their weapons.

They drew near one to another, Tiamat and Marduk, wisest of the gods: They flung themselves into the combat, they met one another in the struggle.

Then the master unfolded his net and seized her; he caused the hurricane which waited behind him to pass in front of him, and, when Tiamat opened her mouth to swallow him, he thrust the hurricane into it so that the monster could not close her jaws again.

The mighty wind filled her paunch, her breast swelled, her maw was split.

Marduk gave a straight thrust with his lance, burst open the paunch, pierced the interior, tore the breast, then bound the monster and deprived her of life.

When he had vanquished Tiamat, who had been their leader, her army was disbanded, her host was scattered, and the gods, her allies, who had marched beside her, trembled, were scared, and fled.

” He seized hold of them, and of Kingu their chief, and brought them bound in chains before the throne of his father.

He had saved the gods from ruin, but this was the least part of his task; he had still to sweep out of space the huge carcase which encumbered it, and to separate its ill-assorted elements, and arrange them afresh for the benefit of the conquerors.

He returned to Tiamat whom he had bound in chains.

He placed his foot upon her, with his unerring knife he cut into the upper part of her; then he cut the blood-vessels, and caused the blood to be carried by the north wind to the hidden places.

And the gods saw his face, they rejoiced, they gave themselves up to gladness, and sent him a present, a tribute of peace;

then he recovered his calm, he contemplated the corpse, raised it and wrought marvels.

[Illustration: 010. jpg A KUFA LADEN WITH STONES, AND MANNED BY A CREW OF FOUR MEN.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief at Koyunjik.

Behind the _kufa_ may be seen a fisherman seated astride on an inflated skin with his fish-basket attached to his neck.

He split it in two as one does a fish for drying; then he hung up one of the halves on high, which became the heavens; the other half he spread out under his feet to form the earth, and made the universe such as men have since known it.

As in Egypt, the world was a kind of enclosed chamber balanced on the bosom of the eternal waters.

* The earth, which forms the lower part of it, or floor, is something like an overturned boat in appearance, and hollow underneath, not like one of the narrow skiffs in use among other races, but a kufa, or kind of semicircular boat such as the tribes of the Lower Euphrates have made use of from earliest antiquity down to our own times.

* The description of the Egyptian world will be found in vol. i.

p. 21 of the present work.

So far the only systematic attempt to reconstruct the Chaldaean world, since Lenormant, has been made by Jensen, who, after examining all the elements which went to compose it, one after another, sums up in a few pages, and reproduces in a plate, the principal results of his inquiry.

It will be seen at a glance how much I have taken from his work, and in what respects the drawing here reproduced differs from his.

[Illustration: 012. jpg THE WORLD AS CONCEIVED BY THE CHALDAEANS] The earth rises gradually from the extremities to the centre, like a great mountain, of which the snow-region, where the Euphrates finds its source, approximately marks the summit.

It was at first supposed to be divided into seven zones, placed one on the top of the other along its sides, like the stories of a temple; later on it was divided into four “houses,” each of which, like the “houses” of Egypt, corresponded with one of the four cardinal points, and was under the rule of particular gods.

Near the foot of the mountain, the edges of the so-called boat curve abruptly outwards, and surround the earth with a continuous wall of uniform height having no opening.

The waters accumulated in the hollow thus formed, as in a ditch; it was a narrow and mysterious sea, an ocean stream, which no living man might cross save with permission from on high, and whose waves rigorously separated the domain of men from the regions reserved to the gods.

The heavens rose above the “mountain of the world” like a boldly formed dome, the circumference of which rested on the top of the wall in the same way as the upper structures of a house rest on its foundations.

Merodach wrought it out of a hard resisting metal which shone brilliantly during the day in the rays of the sun, and at night appeared only as a dark blue surface, strewn irregularly with luminous stars.

He left it quite solid in the southern regions, but tunnelled it in the north, by contriving within it a huge cavern which communicated with external space by means of two doors placed at the east and the west.

* The sun came forth each morning by the first of these doors; he mounted to the zenith, following the internal base of the cupola from east to south; then he slowly descended again to the western door, and re-entered the tunnel in the firmament, where he spent the night,** Merodach regulated the course of the whole universe on the movements of the sun.

He instituted the year and divided it into twelve months.

To each month he assigned three decans, each of whom exercised his influence successively for a period of ten days; he then placed the procession of the days under the authority of Nibiru, in order that none of them should wander from his track and be lost.

“He lighted the moon that she might rule the night, and made her a star of night that she might indicate the days:*** ‘From month to month, without ceasing, shape thy disk,**** and at the beginning of the month kindle thyself in the evening, lighting up thy horns so as to make the heavens distinguishable; on the seventh day, show to me thy disk; and on the fifteenth, let thy two halves be full from month to month.

’” He cleared a path for the planets, and four of them he entrusted to four gods; the fifth, our Jupiter, he reserved for himself, and appointed him to be shepherd of this celestial flock; in order that all the gods might have their image visible in the sky, he mapped out on the vault of heaven groups of stars which he allotted to them, and which seemed to men like representations of real or fabulous beings, fishes with the heads of rams, lions, bulls, goats and scorpions.

* Jensen has made a collection of the texts which speak of the interior of the heavens (Kirib shami) and of their aspect.

The expressions which have induced many Assyriologists to conclude that the heavens were divided into different parts subject to different gods may be explained without necessarily having recourse to this hypothesis; the “heaven of Ami,” for instance, is an expression which merely affirms Anu’s sovereignty in the heavens, and is only a more elegant way of designating the heavens by the name of the god who rules them.

The gates of heaven are mentioned in the account of the Creation.

** It is generally admitted that the Chaldaeans believed that the sun passed over the world in the daytime, and underneath it during the night.

The general resemblance of their theory of the universe to the Egyptian theory leads me to believe that they, no less than the Egyptians (cf.

vol. i.

pp. 24, 25, of the present work), for along time believed that the sun and moon revolved round the earth in a horizontal plane.

*** This obscure phrase seems to be explained, if we remember that the Chaldaean, like the Egyptian day, dated from the rising of one moon to the rising of the following moon; for instance, from six o’clock one evening to about six o’clock the next evening.

The moon, the star of night, thus marks the appearance of each day and “indicates the days.

”