History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 21 - Ch. 2: The Temples and the Gods of Chaldaea, pt. 8

The gods of the triads were married, but their goddesses for the most part had neither the liberty nor the important functions of the Egyptian goddesses.

* They were content, in their modesty, to be eclipsed behind the personages of their husbands, and to spend their lives in the shade, as the women of Asiatic countries still do.

It would appear, moreover, that there was no trouble taken about them until it was too late--when it was desired, for instance, to explain the affiliation of the immortals.

Anu and Bel were bachelors to start with.

When it was determined to assign to them female companions, recourse was had to the procedure adopted by the Egyptians in a similar case: there was added to their names the distinctive suffix of the feminine gender, and in this manner two grammatical goddesses were formed, Anat and Belit, whose dispositions give some indications of this accidental birth.

There was always a vague uncertainty about the parts they had to play, and their existence itself was hardly more than a seeming one.

Anat sometimes represented a feminine heaven, and differed from Anu only in her sex.

At times she was regarded as the antithesis of Anu, i. e. as the earth in contradistinction to the heaven.

Belit, as far as we can distinguish her from other persons to whom the title “lady” was attributed, shared with Bel the rule over the earth and the regions of darkness where the dead were confined.

The wife of Ea was distinguished by a name which was not derived from that of her husband, but she was not animated by a more intense vitality than Anat or Belit: she was called Damkina, the lady of the soil, and she personified in an almost passive manner the earth united to the water which fertilized it.

The goddesses of the second triad were perhaps rather less artificial in their functions.

Ningal, doubtless, who ruled along with Sin at Uru, was little more than an incarnate epithet.

Her name means “the great lady,” “the queen,” and her person is the double of that of her husband; as he is the man-moon, she is the woman-moon, his beloved, and the mother of his children Shamash and Ishtar.

But A or Sirrida enjoyed an indisputable authority alongside Shamash: she never lost sight of the fact that she had been a sun like Shamash, a disk-god before she was transformed into a goddess.

Shamash, moreover, was surrounded by an actual harem, of which Sirrida was the acknowledged queen, as he himself was its king, and among its members Gula, the great, and Anunit, the daughter of Sin, the morning star, found a place.

Shala, the compassionate, was also included among them;

she was subsequently bestowed upon Ramman.

They were all goddesses of ancient lineage, and each had been previously worshipped on her own account when the Sumerian people held sway in Chaldaea: as soon as the Semites gained the upper hand, the powers of these female deities became enfeebled, and they were distributed among the gods.

There was but one of them, Nana, the doublet of Ishtar, who had succeeded in preserving her liberty: when her companions had been reduced to comparative insignificance, she was still acknowledged as queen and mistress in her city of Eridu.

The others, notwithstanding the enervating influence to which they were usually subject in the harem, experienced at times inclinations to break into rebellion, and more than one of them, shaking off the yoke of her lord, had proclaimed her independence: Anunit, for instance, tearing herself away from the arms of Shamash, had vindicated, as his sister and his equal, her claim to the half of his dominion.

Sippara was a double city, or rather there were two neighbouring Sipparas, one distinguished as the city of the Sun, “Sippara sha Shamash,” while the other gave lustre to Anunit in assuming the designation of “Sippara sha Anunitum.

” Rightly interpreted, these family arrangements of the gods had but one reason for their existence--the necessity of explaining without coarseness those parental connections which the theological classification found it needful to establish between the deities constituting the two triads.

In Chaldaea as in Egypt there was no inclination to represent the divine families as propagating their species otherwise than by the procedure observed in human families: the union of the goddesses with the gods thus legitimated their offspring.

* The passive and almost impersonal character of the majority of the Babylonian and Assyrian goddesses is well known.

The majority must have been independent at the outset, in the Sumerian period, and were married later on, under the influence of Semitic ideas.

The triads were, therefore, nothing more than theological fictions.

Each of them was really composed of six members, and it was thus really a council of twelve divinities which the priests of Uruk had instituted to attend to the affairs of the universe; with this qualification, that the feminine half of the assembly rarely asserted itself, and contributed but an insignificant part to the common work.

When once the great divisions had been arranged, and the principal functionaries designated, it was still necessary to work out the details, and to select v agents to preserve an order among them.

Nothing happens by chance in this world, and the most insignificant events are determined by previsional arrangements, and decisions arrived at a long time previously.

The gods assembled every morning in a hall, situated near the gates of the sun in the east, and there deliberated on the events of the day.

The sagacious Ea submitted to them the fates which are about to be fulfilled, and caused a record of them to be made in the chamber of destiny on tablets which Shamash or Merodach carried with them to scatter everywhere on his way; but he who should be lucky enough to snatch these tablets from him would make himself master of the world for that day.

This misfortune had arisen only once, at the beginning of the ages.

Zu, the storm-bird, who lives with his wife and children on Mount Sabu under the protection of Bel, and who from this elevation pounces down upon the country to ravage it, once took it into his head to make himself equal to the supreme gods.

He forced his way at an early hour into the chamber of destiny before the sun had risen: he perceived within it the royal insignia of Bel, “the mitre of his power, the garment of his divinity,--the fatal tablets of his divinity, Zu perceived them.

He perceived the father of the gods, the god who is the tie between heaven and earth,--and the desire of ruling took possession of his heart;--yea, Zu perceived the father of the gods, the god who is the tie between heaven and earth,--and the desire of ruling took possession of his heart,--‘I will take the fatal tablets of the gods, I myself,--and the oracles of all the gods, it is I who will give them forth;--I will install myself on the throne, I will send forth decrees,--I will manage the whole of the Igigi.

’--And his heart plotted warfare;--lying in wait on the threshold of the hall, he watched for the dawn.

--When Bel had poured out the shining waters,--had installed himself on the throne, and donned the crown, Zu took away the fatal tablets from his hand,--he seized power, and the authority to give forth decrees,--the god Zu, he flew away and concealed himself in the mountains.

” Bel immediately cried out, he was inflamed with anger, and ravaged the world with the fire of his wrath.

“Anu opened his mouth, he spake,--he said to the gods his offspring:--‘Who will conquer the god Zu?

--He will make his name great in every land.

’--Bamman, the supreme, the son of Anu, was called, and Anu himself gave to him his orders;--yea, Bamman, the supreme, the son of Anu, was called, and Anu himself gave to him his orders.

--‘Go, my son Kamman, the valiant, since nothing resists thy attack;--conquer Zu by thine arm, and thy name shall be great among the great gods,--among the gods, thy brothers, thou shalt have no equal: sanctuaries shall be built to thee, and if thou buildest for thyself thy cities in the “four houses of the world,” * --thy cities shall extend over all the terrestrial mountain!

‘Be valiant, then, in the sight of the gods, and may thy name be strong.

’ Bamman answers, he addresses this bpeech to Anu his father:--‘Father, who will go to the inaccessible mountains?

Who is the equal of Zu among the gods, thy offspring?

He has carried off in his hand the fatal tablets,--he has seized power and authority to give forth decrees,--Zu thereupon flew away and hid himself in his mountain.

--Now, the word of his mouth is like that of the god who unites heaven and earth;---my power is no more than clay,--and all the gods must bow before him.

’” Anu sent for the god Bara, the son of Ishtar, to help him, and exhorted him in the same language he had addressed to Ramman: Bara refused to attempt the enterprise.

Shamash, called in his turn, at length consented to set out for Mount Sabu: he triumphed over the storm-bird, tore the fatal tablets from him, and brought him before Ea as a prisoner.

* Literally, “Construct thy cities in the four regions of the world (cf.

pp. 12, 13 of the present work), and thy cities will extend to the mountain of the earth.

” Anu would appear to have promised to Ramman a monopoly; if he wished to build cities which would recognize him as their patron, these cities will cover the entire earth.

[Illustration: 186. jpg SHAMASH FIGHTS WITH ZU AND THE STORM BIRDS.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

[Illustration: 186a.

jpg The Plenisphere taken from the Temple of Tentyra] [Illustration: 186b.

jpg Text of The Plenisphere] The sun of the complete day, the sun in the full possession of his strength, could alone win back the attributes of power which the morning sun had allowed himself to be despoiled of.

From that time forth the privilege of delivering immortal decrees to mortals was never taken out of the hands of the gods of light.

Destinies once fixed on the earth became a law--“mamit”--a good or bad fate, from which no one could escape, but of which any one might learn the disposition beforehand if he were capable of interpreting the formulas of it inscribed on the book of the sky.

The stars, even those which were most distant from the earth, were not unconcerned in the events which took place upon it.

They were so many living beings endowed with various characteristics, and their rays as they passed across the celestial spaces exercised from above an active control on everything they touched.

Their influences became modified, increased or weakened according to the intensity with which they shed them, according to the respective places they occupied in the firmament, and according to the hour of the night and the month of the year in which they rose or set.

Each division of time, each portion of space, each category of existences--and in each category each individual--was placed under their rule and was subject to their implacable tyranny.

The infant was born their slave, and continued in this condition of slavery until his life’s end: the star which was in the ascendent at the instant of his birth became his star, and ruled his destiny.

The Chaldaeans, like the Egyptians, fancied they discerned in the points of light which illuminate the nightly sky, the outline of a great number of various figures--men, animals, monsters, real and imaginary objects, a lance, a bow, a fish, a scorpion, ears of wheat, a bull, and a lion.

The majority of these were spread out above their heads on the surface of the celestial vault; but twelve of these figures, distinguishable by their brilliancy, were arranged along the celestial horizon in the pathway of the sun, and watched over his daily course along the walls of the world.

These divided this part of the sky into as many domains or “houses,” in which they exercised absolute authority, and across which the god could not go without having previously obtained their consent, or having brought them into subjection beforehand.

This arrangement is a reminiscence of the wars by which Bel-Merodach, the divine bull, the god of Babylon, had succeeded in bringing order out of chaos: he had not only killed Tiamat, but he had overthrown and subjugated the monsters which led the armies of darkness.

He meets afresh, every year and every day, on the confines of heaven and earth, the scorpion-men of his ancient enemy, the fish with heads of men or goats, and many more.

The twelve constellations were combined into a zodiac, whose twelve signs, transmitted to the Greeks and modified by them, may still be read on our astronomical charts.

The constellations, immovable, or actuated by a slow motion, in longitude only, contain the problems of the future, but they are not sufficient of themselves alone to furnish man with the solution of these problems.

The heavenly bodies capable of explaining them, the real interpreters of destiny, were at first the two divinities who rule the empires of night and day--the moon and the sun; afterwards there took part in this work of explanation the five planets which we call Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury, or rather the five gods who actuate them, and who have controlled their course from the moment of creation--Merodach, Ishtar, Ninib, Nergal, and Nebo.

The planets seemed to traverse the heavens in every direction, to cross their own and each other’s paths, and to approach the fixed stars or recede from them; and the species of rhythmical dance in which they are carried unceasingly across the celestial spaces revealed to men, if they examined it attentively, the irresistible march of their own destinies, as surely as if they had made themselves master of the fatal tablets of Shamash, and could spell them out line by line.