History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 16 - Ch. 2: The Temples and the Gods of Chaldaea, pt. 3

** Assurnazirpal, King of Assyria, speaks in one of his inscriptions of these sixty-five thousand great gods of heaven and earth.

We are often much puzzled to say what these various divinities, whose names we decipher on the monuments, could possibly have represented.

The sovereigns of Lagash addressed their prayers to Ningirsu, the valiant champion of Inlil; to Ninursag, the lady of the terrestrial mountain: to Ninsia, the lord of fate; to the King Ninagal; to Inzu, of whose real name no one has an idea; to Inanna, the queen of battles; to Pasag, to Galalim, to Dunshagana, to Ninmar, to Ningishzida.

Gudea raised temples to them in all the cities over which his authority extended, and he devoted to these pious foundations a yearly income out of his domain land or from the spoils of his wars.

“Gudea, the ‘vicegerent’ of Lagash, after having built the temple Ininnu for Ningirsu, constructed a treasury; a house decorated with sculptures, such as no ‘vicegerent’ had ever before constructed for Ningirsu; he constructed it for him, he wrote his name in it, he made in it all that was needful, and he executed faithfully all the words from the mouth of Ningirsu.

” The dedication of these edifices was accompanied with solemn festivals, in which the whole population took an active part.

“During seven years no grain was ground, and the maidservant was the equal of her mistress, the slave walked beside his master, and in my town the weak rested by the side of the strong.

” Henceforward Gudea watched scrupulously lest anything impure should enter and mar the sanctity of the place.

[Illustration: 145. jpg THE GOD NINGIBSU, PATRON OF LAGASH.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec.

The attribution of this figure to Ningirsu is very probable, but not wholly certain.

Those we have enumerated were the ancient Sumerian divinities, but the characteristics of most of them would have been lost to us, had we not learned, by means of other documents, to what gods the Semites assimilated them, gods who are better known and who are represented under a less barbarous aspect.

Ningirsu, the lord of the division of Lagash which was called Girsu, was identified with Ninib; Inlil is Bel, Ninursag is Beltis, Inzu is Sin, Inanna is Ishtar, and so on with the rest.

The cultus of each, too, was not a local cultus, confined to some obscure corner of the country; they all were rulers over the whole of Chaldaea, in the north as in the south, at Uruk, at Urn, at Larsam, at Nipur, even in Babylon itself.

Inlil was the ruler of the earth and of Hades, Babbar was the sun, Inzu the moon, Inanna-Antmit the morning and evening star and the goddess or love, at a time when two distinct religious and two rival groups of gods existed side by side on the banks of the Euphrates.

The Sumerian language is for us, at the present day, but a collection of strange names, of whose meaning and pronunciation we are often ignorant.

We may well ask what beings and beliefs were originally hidden under these barbaric combinations of syllables which are constantly recurring in the inscriptions of the oldest dynasties, such as Pasag, Dunshagana, Dumuzi-.

Zuaba, and a score of others.

The priests of subsequent times claimed to define exactly the attributes of each of them, and probably their statements are, in the main, correct.

But it is impossible for us to gauge the motives which determined the assimilation of some of these divinities, the fashion in which it was carried out, the mutual concessions which Semite and Sumerian must have made before they could arrive at an understanding, and before the primitive characteristics of each deity were softened down or entirely effaced in the process.

Many of these divine personages, such as Ea, Merodach, Ishtar, are so completely transformed, that we may well ask to which of the two peoples they owed their origin.

The Semites finally gained the ascendency over their rivals, and the Sumerian gods from thenceforward preserved an independent existence only in connection with magic, divination, and the science of foretelling events, and also in the formulas of exorcists and physicians, to which the harshness of their names lent a greater weight.

Elsewhere it was Bel and Sin, Shamash and Eamman, who were universally worshipped, but a Bel, a Sin, a Shamash, who still betrayed traces of their former connection with the Sumerian Inlil and Inzu, with Babbar and Mermer.

In whatever language, however, they were addressed, by whatever name they were called upon, they did not fail to hear and grant a favourable reply to the appeals of the faithful.

Whether Sumerian or Semitic, the gods, like those of Egypt, were not abstract personages, guiding in a metaphysical fashion the forces of nature.

Each of them contained in himself one of the principal elements of which our universe is composed,--earth, water, sky, sun, moon, and the stars which moved around the terrestrial mountain.

The succession of natural phenomena with them was not the result of unalterable laws; it was due entirely to a series of voluntary acts, accomplished by beings of different grades of intelligence and power.

Every part of the great whole is represented by a god, a god who is a man, a Chaldaean, who, although of a finer and more lasting nature than other Chaldaeans, possesses nevertheless the same instincts and is swayed by the same passions.

He is, as a rule, wanting in that somewhat lithe grace of form, and in that rather easy-going good-nature, which were the primary characteristics of the Egyptian gods: the Chaldaean divinity has the broad shoulders, the thick-set figure and projecting muscles of the people over whom he rules; he has their hasty and violent temperament, their coarse sensuality, their cruel and warlike propensities, their boldness in conceiving undertakings, and their obstinate tenacity in carrying them out.

Their goddesses are modelled on the tyra of the Chaldaen women, or, more properly speaking, on that of their queens.

The majority of them do not quit the harem, and have no other ambition than to become speedily the mother of a numerous offspring.

Those who openly reject the rigid constraints of such a life, and who seek to share the rank of the gods, seem to lose all self-restraint when they put off the veil: like Ishtar, they exchange a life of severe chastity for the lowest debauchery, and they subject their followers to the same irregular life which they themselves have led.

“Every woman born in the country must enter once during her lifetime the enclosure of the temple of Aphrodite, must there sit down and unite herself to a stranger.

Many who are wealthy are too proud to mix with the rest, and repair thither in closed chariots, followed by a considerable train of slaves.

The greater number seat themselves on the sacred pavement, with a cord twisted about their heads,--and there is always a great crowd there, coming and going; the women being divided by ropes into long lanes, down which strangers pass to make their choice.

A woman who has once taken her place here cannot return home until a stranger has thrown into her lap a silver coin, and has led her away with him beyond the limits of the sacred enclosure.

As he throws the money he pronounces these words: ‘May the goddess Mylitta make thee happy!

‘--Now, among the Assyrians, Aphrodite is called Mylitta.

The silver coin may be of any value, but none may refuse it, that is forbidden by the law, for, once thrown, it is sacred.

The woman follows the first man who throws her the money, and repels no one.

When once she has accompanied him, and has thus satisfied the goddess, she returns to her home, and from thenceforth, however large the sum offered to her, she will yield to no one.

The women who are tall or beautiful soon return to their homes, but those who are ugly remain a long time before they are able to comply with the law; some of them are obliged to wait three or four years within the enclosure.

” * This custom still existed in the Vth century before our era, and the Greeks who visited Babylon about that time found it still in full force.

* Herodotus, i. 199: of.

Stabo, xvi.

p. 1058, who probably has merely quoted this passage from Herodotus, or some writer who copied from Herodotus.

We meet with a direct allusion to this same custom in the Bible, in the _Book of Barueh_; “The women also, with cords about them, sitting in the ways, burn bran for perfume; but if any of them, drawn by some that passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her fellow, that she was not thought as worthy as herself, nor her cord broken.

” The gods, who had begun by being the actual material of the element which was their attribute, became successively the spirit of it, then its ruler.

* They continued at first to reside in it, but in the course of time they were separated from it, and each was allowed to enter the domain of another, dwell in it, and even command it, as they could have done in their own, till finally the greater number of them were identified with the firmament.

* Pk.

Lbnoemant, _La Magie chez les Chaldeens_, p. 144, et seq.

, where the author shows how Anu, after having at first been the Heaven itself, the starry vault stretched above the earth, became successively the Spirit of Heaven (_Zi-ana_), and finally the supreme ruler of the world: according to Lenormant, it was the Semites in particular who transformed the primitive spirit into an actual god-king.

Bel, the lord of the earth, and Ea, the ruler of the waters, passed info the heavens, which did not belong to them, and took their places beside Ami: the pathways were pointed out which they had made for themselves across the celestial vault, in order to inspect their kingdoms from the exalted heights to which they had been raised; that of Bel was in the Tropic of Cancer, that of Ea in the Tropic of Capricorn.

They gathered around them all the divinities who could easily be abstracted from the function or object to which they were united, and they thus constituted a kind of divine aristocracy, comprising all the most powerful beings who guided the fortunes of the world.

The number of them was considerable, for they reckoned seven supreme and magnificent gods, fifty great gods of heaven and earth, three hundred celestial spirits, and six hundred terrestrial spirits.

Each of them deputed representatives here below, who received the homage of mankind for him, and signified to them his will.

The god revealed himself in dreams to his seers and imparted to them the course of coming events,* or, in some cases, inspired them suddenly and spoke by their mouth: their utterances, taken down and commented on by their assistants, were regarded as infallible oracles.

But the number of mortal men possessing adequate powers, and gifted with sufficiently acute senses to bear without danger the near presence of a god, was necessarily limited;

communications were, therefore, more often established by means of various objects, whose grosser substance lessened for human intelligence and flesh and blood the dangers of direct contact with an immortal.

The statues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on the summits of the “ziggurats” became imbued, by virtue of their consecration, with the actual body of the god whom they represented, and whose name was written either on the base or garment of the statue.

** The sovereign who dedicated them, summoned them to speak in the days to come, and from thenceforth they spoke: when they were interrogated according to the rite instituted specially for each one, that part of the celestial soul, which by means of the prayers had been attracted to and held captive by the statue, could not refuse to reply.

** Were there for this purpose special images, as in Egypt, which were cleverly contrived so as to emit sounds by the pulling of a string by the hidden prophet?

Voices resounded at night in the darkness of the sanctuaries, and particularly when a king came there to prostrate himself for the purpose of learning the future: his rank alone, which raised him halfway to heaven, prepared him to receive the word from on high by the mouth of the image.

* A prophetic dream is mentioned upon, one of the statues of Telloh.

In the records of Assurbanipal we find mention of several “seers”--_shabru_--one of whom predicts the general triumph of the king over his enemies, and of whom another announces in the name of Ishtar the victory over the Elamites and encourages the Assyrian army to cross a torrent swollen by rains, while a third sees in a dream the defeat and death of the King of Elam.

These “seers” are mentioned in the texts of Gudea with the prophetesses “who tell the message” of the gods.

** In a formula drawn up against evil spirits, for the purpose of making talismanic figures for the protection of houses, it is said of Merodach that he “inhabits the image” --_ashibu salam_--which has been made of him by the magician.

** This is what Gudea says, when, describing his own statue which he had placed in the temple of Telloh, he adds that “he gave the order to the statue: ‘To the statue of my king, speak!

’” The statue of the king, inspired by that of the god, would thenceforth speak when interrogated according to the formularies.

Cf.

what is said of the divine or royal statues dedicated in the temples of Egypt, vol. i.

pp. 169, 170. A number of oracles regularly obtained in the time of Asarhaddon and Assurbanabal have been published by Knudtzon.

[Illustration: 152. jpg THE ADORATION OF THE MACE AND THE WHIP.

]