History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 15 - Ch. 2: The Temples and the Gods of Chaldaea, pt. 2

In Its Present State, According To Loftus.

Drawn by Bouchier, from Loftus.

Here stood the statue of Nannar, one of those stiff and conventionalized figures in the traditional pose handed down from generation to generation, and which lingered even in the Chaldaean statues of Greek times.

The spirit of the god dwelt within it in the same way as the double resided in the Egyptian idols, and from thence he watched over the restless movements of the people below, the noise of whose turmoil scarcely reached him at that elevation.

The gods of the Euphrates, like those of the Nile, constituted a countless multitude of visible and invisible beings, distributed into tribes and empires throughout all the regions of the universe.

A particular function or occupation formed, so to speak, the principality of each one, in which he worked with an indefatigable zeal, under the orders of his respective prince or king;

but, whereas in Egypt they were on the whole friendly to man, or at the best indifferent in regard to him, in Chaldaea they for the most part pursued him with an implacable hatred, and only seemed to exist in order to destroy him.

These monsters of alarming aspect, armed with knives and lances, whom the theologians of Heliopolis and Thebes confined within the caverns of Hades in the depths of eternal darkness, were believed by the Chaldaeans to be let loose in broad daylight over the earth,--such were the “gallu” and the “mas-kim,” the “alu” and the “utukku,” besides a score of other demoniacal tribes bearing curious and mysterious names.

[Illustration: 137. jpg Lion-headed genius.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a small terra-cotta figure of the Assyrian period, and now in the Louvre.

It was one of the figures buried under the threshold of one of the gates of the town at Khorsabad, to keep off baleful influences.

Some floated in the air and presided over the unhealthy winds.

The South-West Wind, the most cruel of them all, stalked over the solitudes of Arabia, whence he suddenly issued during the most oppressive months of the year: he collected round him as he passed the malarial vapours given off by the marshes under the heat of the sun, and he spread them over the country, striking down in his violence not only man and beast, but destroying harvests, pasturage, and even trees.

[Illustration: 138. jpg THE SOUTH-WEST WIND] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bronze original now in the Louvre.

The latter museum and the British Museum possess several other figures of the same demon.

The genii of fevers and madness crept in silently everywhere, insidious and traitorous as they were.

The plague alternately slumbered or made furious onslaughts among crowded populations.

Imps haunted the houses, goblins wandered about the water’s edge, ghouls lay in wait for travellers in unfrequented places, and the dead quitting their tombs in the night stole stealthily among the living to satiate themselves with their blood.

The material shapes attributed to these murderous beings were supposed to convey to the eye their perverse and ferocious characters.

They were represented as composite creatures in whom the body of a man would be joined grotesquely to the limbs of animals in the most unexpected combinations.

They worked in as best they could, birds’ claws, fishes’ scales, a bull’s tail, several pairs of wings, the head of a lion, vulture, hyaena, or wolf; when they left the creature a human head, they made it as hideous and distorted as possible.

The South-West Wind was distinguished from all the rest by the multiplicity of the incongruous elements of which his person was composed.

His dog-like body was supported upon two legs terminating in eagle’s claws; in addition to his arms, which were furnished with sharp talons, he had four outspread wings, two of which fell behind him, while the other two rose up and surrounded his head; he had a scorpion’s tail, a human face with large goggle-eyes, bushy eyebrows, fleshless cheeks, and retreating lips, showing a formidable row of threatening teeth, while from his flattened skull protruded the horns of a goat: the entire combination was so hideous, that it even alarmed the god and put him to flight, when he was unexpectedly confronted with his own portrait.

There was no lack of good genii to combat this deformed and vicious band.

They too were represented as monsters, but monsters of a fine and noble bearing,--griffins, winged lions, lion-headed men, and more especially those splendid human-headed bulls, those “lamassi” crowned with mitres, whose gigantic statues kept watch before the palace and temple gates.

Between these two races hostility was constantly displayed: restrained at one point, it broke out afresh at another, and the evil genii, invariably beaten, as invariably refused to accept their defeat.

Man, less securely armed against them than were the gods, was ever meeting with them.

“Up there, they are howling, here they lie in wait,--they are great worms let loose by heaven--powerful ones whose clamour rises above the city--who pour water in torrents from heaven, sons who have come out of the bosom of the earth.

--They twine around the high rafters, the great rafters, like a crown;--they take their way from house to house,--for the door cannot stop them, nor bar the way, nor repulse them,--for they creep like a serpent under the door--they insinuate themselves like the air between the folding doors,--they separate the bride from the embraces of the bridegroom,--they snatch the child from between the knees of the man,--they entice the unwary from out of his fruitful house,--they are the threatening voice which pursues him from behind.

” Their malice extended even to animals: “They force the raven to fly away on the wing,--and they make the swallow to escape from its nest;--they cause the bull to flee, they cause the lamb to flee--they, the bad demons who lay snares.

” The most audacious among them did not fear at times to attack the gods of light; on one occasion, in the infancy of the world, they had sought to dispossess them and reign in their stead.

Without any warning they had climbed the heavens, and fallen upon Sin, the moon-god; they had repulsed Shamash, the Sun, and Eamman, both of whom had come to the rescue; they had driven Ishtar and Anu from their thrones: the whole firmament would have become a prey to them, had not Bel and Nusku, Ea and Merodach, intervened at the eleventh hour, and succeeded in hurling them down to the earth, after a terrible battle.

They never completely recovered from this reverse, and the gods raised up as rivals to them a class of friendly genii--the “Igigi,” who were governed by five heavenly Anunnas.

[Illustration: 141. jpg SIN DELIVERED BY MERODACH FROM THE ASSAULT OF THE SEVEN EVIL SPIRITS.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio published by Layard.

The earthly Anunnas, the Anunnaki, had as their chiefs seven sons of Bel, with bodies of lions, tigers, and serpents: “the sixth was a tempestuous wind which obeyed neither god nor king,--the seventh, a whirlwind, a desolating storm which destroys everything,”--“Seven, seven,--in the depth of the abyss of waters they are seven,--and destroyers of heaven they are seven.

--They have grown up in the depths of the abyss, in the palace;--males they are not, females they are not,--they are storms which pass quickly.

--They take no wife, they give birth to no child,--they know neither compassion nor kindness,--they listen to no prayer nor supplication.

--As wild horses they are born in the mountains,--they are the enemies of Ba,--they are the agents of the gods;--they are evil, they are evil--and they are seven, they are seven, they are twice seven.

” Man, if reduced to his own resources, could have no chance of success in struggling against beings who had almost reduced the gods to submission.

He invoked in his defence the help of the whole universe, the spirits of heaven and earth, the spirit of Bel and of Belit, that of Ninib and of Nebo, those of Sin, of Ishtar, and of Bamman; but Gibir or Gibil, the Lord of Fire, was the most powerful auxiliary in this incessant warfare.

The offspring of night and of dark waters, the Anunnaki had no greater enemy than fire; whether kindled on the household hearth or upon the altars, its appearance put them to flight and dispelled their power.

[Illustration: 142. jpg STRUGGLE BETWEEN A GOOD AND AN EVIL GENIUS.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

“Gibil, renowned hero in the land,--valiant, son of the Abyss, exalted in the land,--Gibil, thy clear flame, breaking forth,--when it lightens up the darkness,--assigns to all that bears a name its own destiny.

--The copper and tin, it is thou who dost mix them,--gold and silver, it is thou who meltest them,--thou art the companion of the goddess Ninkasi--thou art he who exposes his breast to the nightly enemy!

--Cause then the limbs of man, son of his god, to shine,--make him to be bright like the sky,--may he shine like the earth,--may he be bright like the interior of the heavens,--may the evil word be kept far from him,” and with it the malignant spirits.

The very insistence with which help is claimed against the Anunnaki shows how much their power was dreaded.

The Chaldean felt them everywhere about him, and could not move without incurring the danger of coming into contact with them.

He did not fear them so much during the day, as the presence of the luminary deities in the heavens reassured him; but the night belonged to them, and he was open to their attacks.

If he lingered in the country at dusk, they were there, under the hedges, behind walls and trunks of trees, ready to rush out upon him at every turn.

If he ventured after sundown into the streets of his village or town, he again met with them quarrelling with dogs over the offal on a rubbish heap, crouched in the shelter of a doorway, lying hidden in corners where the shadows were darkest.

Even when barricaded within his house, under the immediate protection of his domestic idols, these genii still threatened him and left him not a moment’s repose.

* The number of them was so great that he was unable to protect himself adequately from all of them: when he had disarmed the greater portion of them, there were always several remaining against whom he had forgotten to take necessary precautions.

What must have been the total of the subordinate genii, when, towards the IXth century before our era, the official census of the invisible beings stated the number of the great gods in heaven and earth to be sixty-five thousand!

** * The presence of the evil spirits everywhere is shown, among other magical formulas, by the incantation in Rawlinson, _Cun, Ins.

W.

As.

_, vol. ii.

pi.

18, where we find enumerated at length the places from which they are to be kept out.

The magician closes the house to them, the hedge which surrounds the house, the yoke laid upon the oxen, the tomb, the prison, the well, the furnace, the shade, the vase for libation, the ravines, the valleys, the mountains, the door.