History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 22 - Ch. 2: The Temples and the Gods of Chaldaea, pt. 9

The Chaldaens were disposed to regard the planets as perverse sheep who had escaped from the fold of the stars to wander wilfully in search of pasture.

* At first they were considered to be so many sovereign deities, without other function than that of running through the heavens and furnishing there predictions of the future; afterwards two of them descended to the earth, and received upon it the homage of men* --Ishtar from the inhabitants of the city of Dilbat, and Nebo* from those of Borsippa.

Nebo assumed the _role_ of a soothsayer and a prophet.

He knew and foresaw everything, and was ready to give his advice upon any subject: he was the inventor of the method of making clay tablets, and of writing upon them.

Ishtar was a combination of contradictory characteristics.

**** * Their generic name, read as “lubat,” in Sumero-Accadian, “bibbu” in Semitic speech (Fr.

Lenormant, _Essai de Commentaire de Berose_, pp. 370, 371), denoted a quadruped, the species of which Lenormant was not able to define;

Jensen (_Die Kosmologie_, pp. 95-99) identified it with the sheep and the ram.

At the end of the account of the creation, Merodach-Jupiter is compared with a shepherd who feeds the flock of the gods on the pastures of heaven (cf.

p. 15 of the present work).

** The site of Dilbat is unknown: it has been sought in the neighbourhood of Kishu and Babylon (Delitzsch, _Wo lag das Paradies?

_ p. 219); it is probable that it was in the suburbs of Sippara.

The name given to the goddess was transcribed AeXckit (Hesychius, _sub voce_), and signifies the herald, the messenger of the day.

*** The role of Nebo was determined by the early Assyriologists (Rawlin-son, _On the Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians_, pp. 523-52G; Oppeet, _Expedition en Mesopotamie_, vol. ii.

p. 257; Lenormant, _Essai de Commentaire de Berose_, pp. 114-116).

He owed his functions partly to his alliance with other gods (Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, pp. 118, 119).

**** See the chapter devoted by Sayce to the consideration of Ishtar in his Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (IV.

Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 221, et seq.

), and the observations made by Jeremias on the subject in the sequel of his Izdubar-Nimrod (Ishtar-Astarte im Izdubar-Epos), pp. 56-66. [Illustration: 190. jpg ISHTAR AS A WARRIOR-GODDESS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Menant’s _Recherches sur la Glyptique orientale_.

In Southern Chaldaea she was worshipped under the name of Nana, the supreme mistress.

* The identity of this lady of the gods, “Belit-ilanit,” the Evening Star, with Anunit, the Morning Star, was at first ignored, and hence two distinct goddesses were formed from the twofold manifestation of a single deity: having at length discovered their error, the Chaldaeans merged these two beings in one, and their names became merely two different designations for the same star under a twofold aspect.

The double character, however, which had been attributed to them continued to be attached to the single personality.

* With regard to Nana, consult, with reserve, Fk.

Lenormant, Essai de Commentaire de Berose, pp. 100-103, 378, 379, where the identity of Ishtar and Nana is still unrecognized.

[Illustration: 191. jpg NEBO] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian statue in alabaster in the British Museum.

The Evening Star had symbolized the goddess of love, who attracted the sexes towards one another, and bound them together by the chain of desire; the Morning Star, on the other hand, was regarded as the cold-blooded and cruel warrior who despised the pleasures of love and rejoiced in warfare: Ishtar thus combined in her person chastity and lasciviousness, kindness and ferocity, and a peaceful and warlike disposition, but this incongruity in her characteristics did not seem to disconcert the devotion of her worshippers.

The three other planets would have had a wretched part to play in comparison with Nebo and Ishtar, if they had not been placed under new patronage.

The secondary solar gods, Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal, led, if we examine their role carefully, but an incomplete existence: they were merely portions of the sun, while Shamash represented the entire orb.

What became of them apart from the moment in the day and year in which they were actively engaged in their career?

Where did they spend their nights, the hours during which Shamash had retired into the firmament, and lay hidden behind the mountains of the north?

As in Egypt the Horuses identified at first with the sun became at length the rulers of the planets, so in Chaldaea the three suns of Ninib, Merodach, and Nergal became respectively assimilated to Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars;* and this identification was all the more easy in the case of Saturn, as he had been considered from the beginning as a bull belonging to Shamash.

Henceforward, therefore, there was a group of five powerful gods--distributed among the stars of heaven, and having abodes also in the cities of the earth--whose function it was to announce the destinies of the universe.

Some, deceived by the size and brilliancy of Jupiter, gave the chief command to Merodach, and this opinion naturally found a welcome reception at Babylon, of which he was the feudal deity.

Others, taking into account only the preponderating influence exercised by the planets over the fortunes of men, accorded the primacy to Ninib, placing Merodach next, followed respectively by Ishtar, Nergal, and Nebo.

The five planets, like the six triads, were not long before they took to themselves consorts, if indeed they had not already been married before they were brought together in a collective whole.

Ninib chose for wife, in the first place, Bau, the daughter of Anu, the mistress of Uru, highly venerated from the most remote times; afterwards Gula, the queen of physicians, whose wisdom alleviated the ills of humanity, and who was one of the goddesses sometimes placed in the harem of Shamash himself.

Merodach associated with him Zirbanit, the fruitful, who secures from generation to generation the permanence and increase of living beings.

Nergal distributed his favours sometimes to Laz, and sometimes to Esharra, who was, like himself, warlike and always victorious in battle.

Nebo provided himself with a mate in Tashmit, the great bride, or even in Ishtar herself.

But Ishtar could not be content with a single husband: after she had lost Dumuzi-Tammuz, the spouse of her youth, she gave herself freely to the impulses of her passions, distributing her favours to men as well as gods, and was sometimes subject to be repelled with contempt by the heroes upon whom she was inclined to bestow her love.

The five planets came thus to be actually ten, and advantage was taken of these alliances to weave fresh schemes of affiliation: Nebo was proclaimed to be the son of Merodach and Zirbanit, Merodach the son of Ba, and Ninib the offspring of Bel and Esharra.

* Ishtar, Nebo, Sin, and Shamash being heavenly bodies, to begin with, and the other great gods, Anu, Bel, Ea, and Ramman having their stars in the heavens, the Chaldaeans were led by analogy to ascribe to the gods which represented the phases of the sun, Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal, three stars befitting their importance, i. e. three planets.

There were two councils, one consisting of twelve members, the other of ten; the former was composed of the most popular gods of Southern Chaldaea, representing the essential elements of the world, while the latter consisted of the great deities of Northern Chaldaea, whose function it was to regulate or make known the destinies of men.

The authors of this system, who belonged to Southern Chaldaea, naturally gave the position to their patron gods, and placed the twelve above the ten.

It is well known that Orientals display a great respect for numbers, and attribute to them an almost irresistible power; we can thus understand how it was that the Chaldaeans applied them to designate their divine masters, and we may calculate from these numbers the estimation in which each of these masters was held.

The goddesses had no value assigned to them in this celestial arithmetic, Ishtar excepted, who was not a mere duplication, more or less ingenious, of a previously existing deity, but possessed from the beginning an independent life, and could thus claim to be called goddess in her own right.

The members of the two triads were arranged on a descending scale, Anu taking the highest place: the scale was considered to consist of a soss of sixty units in length, and each of the deities who followed Anu was placed ten of these units below his predecessor, Bel at 50 units, Ea at 40, Sin at 30, Shamash at 20, Ramman at 10 or 6. The gods of the planets were not arranged in a regular series like those of the triads, but the numbers attached to them expressed their proportionate influence on terrestrial affairs: to Ninib was assigned the same number as had been given to Bel, 50, to Merodach perhaps 25, to Ishtar 15, to Nergal 12, and to Nebo 10. The various spirits were also fractionally estimated, but this as a class, and not as individuals: the priests would not have known how to have solved the problem if they had been obliged to ascribe values to the infinity of existences.

* As the Heliopolitans were obliged to eliminate from the Ennead many feudal divinities, so the Chaldaeans had left out of account many of their sovereign deities, especially goddesses, Bau of Uru, Nana of Uruk, and Allat; or if they did introduce them into their calculations, it was by a subterfuge, by identifying them with other goddesses, to whom places had been already assigned;

Bau being thus coupled with Ohila, Nana with Ishtar, and Allat with Ninhl-Beltis.

If figures had been assigned to the latter proportionate to the importance of the parts they played, and the number of their votaries, how comes it that they were excluded from the cycle of the great gods?

They were actually placed alongside rather than below the two councils, and without insistence upon the rank which they enjoyed in the hierarchy.

But the confusion which soon arose among divinities of identical or analogous nature opened the way for inserting all the neglected personalities in the framework already prepared for them.

A

sky-god, like Dagan, would mingle naturally with Anu, and enjoy like honours with him.

The gods of all ranks associated with the sun or fire, Nusku, Gibil, and Dumuzi, who had not been at first received among the privileged group, obtained a place there by virtue of their assimilation to Shamash, and his secondary forms, Bel-Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal.

Ishtar absorbed all her companions, and her name put in the plural, Ishtarati, “the Ishtars,” embraced all goddesses in general, just as the name Hani took in all the gods.

Thanks to this compromise, the system flourished, and was widely accepted: local vanity was always able to find a means for placing in a prominent place within it the feudal deity, and for reconciling his pretensions to the highest rank with the order of precedence laid down by the theologians of Uruk.

The local god was always the king of the gods, the father of the gods, he who was worshipped above the others in everyday life, and whose public cult constituted the religion of the State or city.

* As far as we can at present determine, the most ancient series established was that of the planetary gods, whose values, following each other irregularly, are not calculated on a scheme of mathematical progression, but according to the empirical importance, which a study of predictions had ascribed to each planet.

The regular series, that of the great gods, bears in its regularity the stamp of its later introduction: it was instituted after the example of the former, but with corrections of what seemed capricious, and fixing the interval between the gods always at the same figure.