History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 06 - Ch. 1: Ancient Chaldaea, pt. 6

The chronicle of these fabulous times placed, soon after the abating of the waters, the foundation of a new dynasty, as extraordinary or almost as extraordinary in character as that before the flood.

According to Berossus it was of Chaldaean origin, and comprised eighty-six kings, who bore rule during 34,080 years; the first two, Evechous and Khomasbelos, reigned 2400 and 2700 years, while the later reigns did not exceed the ordinary limits of human life.

An attempt was afterwards made to harmonize them with probability: the number of kings was reduced to six, and their combined reigns to 225 years.

This attempt arose from a misapprehension of their true character; names and deeds, everything connected with them belongs to myth and fiction only, and is irreducible to history proper.

They supplied to priests and poets material for scores of different stories, of which several have come down to us in fragments.

Some are short, and serve as preambles to prayers or magical formulas; others are of some length, and may pass for real epics.

The gods intervene in them, and along with kings play an important part.

It is Nera, for instance, the lord of the plague, who declares war against mankind in order to punish them for having despised the authority of Anu.

He makes Babylon to feel his wrath first: “The children of Babel, they were as birds, and the bird-catcher, thou wert he!

thou takest them in the net, thou enclosest them, thou decimatest them--hero Nera!

” One after the other he attacks the mother cities of the Euphrates and obliges them to render homage to him--even Uruk, “the dwelling of Anu and Ishtar--the town of the priestesses, of the _almehs_, and the sacred courtesans; “then he turns upon the foreign nations and carries his ravages as far as Phoenicia.

In other fragments, the hero Etana makes an attempt to raise himself to heaven, and the eagle, his companion, flies away with him, without, however, being able to bring the enterprise to a successful issue.

Nimrod and his exploits are known to us from the Bible.

* “He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.

And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

” Almost all the characteristics which are attributed by Hebrew tradition to Nimrod we find in G-ilgames, King of Uruk and descendant of the Shamashnapishtim who had witnessed the deluge.

** * Genesis x. 9, 10. Among the Jews and Mussulmans a complete cycle of legends have developed around Nimrod.

He built the Tower of Babel; he threw Abraham into a fiery furnace, and he tried to mount to heaven on the back of an eagle.

Sayce and Grivel saw in Nimrod an heroic form of Merodach, the god of Babylonia: the majority of living Assyriologists prefer to follow Smith’s example, and identify him with the hero Gilgames.

** The name of this hero is composed of three signs, which Smith provisionally rendered Isdubar--a reading which, modified into Gishdhubar, Gistubar, is still retained by many Assyriologists.

There have been proposed one after another the renderings Dhubar, Namrudu, Anamarutu, Numarad, Namrasit, all of which exhibit in the name of the hero that of Nimrod.

Pinches discovered, in 1890, what appears to be the true signification of the three signs,Gilgamesh, Gilgames; Sayce and Oppert have compared this name with that of Gilgamos, a Babylonian hero, of whom.

AElian has preserved the memory.

A.

Jeremias continued to reject both the reading and the identification.

Several copies of a poem, in which an unknown scribe had celebrated his exploits, existed about the middle of the VIIth century before our era in the Royal Library at Nineveh; they had been transcribed by order of Assur-banipal from a more ancient copy, and the fragments of them which have come down to us, in spite of their lacunae, enable us to restore the original text, if not in its entirety, at least in regard to the succession of events.

They were divided into twelve episodes corresponding with the twelve divisions of the year, and the ancient Babylonian author was guided in his choice of these divisions by something more than mere chance.

Gilgames, at first an ordinary mortal under the patronage of the gods, had himself become a god and son of the goddess Aruru: “he had seen the abyss, he had learned everything that is kept secret and hidden, he had even made known to men what had taken place before the deluge.

” The sun, who had protected him in his human condition, had placed him beside himself on the judgment-seat, and delegated to him authority to pronounce decisions from which there was no appeal: he was, as it were, a sun on a small scale, before whom the kings, princes, and great ones of the earth humbly bowed their heads.

* The scribes had, therefore, some authority for treating the events of his life after the model of the year, and for expressing them in twelve chants, which answered to the annual course of the sun through the twelve months.

* The identity of Gilgames with the Accadian fire-god, or rather with the sun, was recognized from the first by H. Rawlinson, and has been accepted since by almost all Assyriologists.

A tablet brought back by G. Smith, called attention to by Fr.

Delitzsch, and published by Haupt, contains the remains of a hymn addressed to Gilgames, “the powerful king, the king of the Spirits of the Earth.

” [Illustration: 057. jpg GILGAMES STRANGLES A LION.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Khorsabad, in the Museum of the Louvre The whole story is essentially an account of his struggles with Ishtar, and the first pages reveal him as already at issue with the goddess.

His portrait, such as the monuments have preserved it for us, is singularly unlike the ordinary type: one would be inclined to regard it as representing an individual of a different race, a survival of some very ancient nation which had held rule on the plains of the Euphrates before the arrival of the Sumerian or Semitic* tribes.

* Smith (The Chaldaean Account of Genesis, p. 194) remarked the difference between the representations of Gilgames and the typical Babylonian: he concluded from this that the hero was of Ethiopian origin.

Hommel declares that his features have neither a Sumerian nor Semitic aspect, and that they raise an insoluble question in ethnology.

His figure is tall, broad, muscular to an astonishing degree, and expresses at once vigour and activity; his head is massive, bony, almost square, with a somewhat flattened face, a large nose, and prominent cheek-bones, the whole framed by an abundance of hair, and a thick beard symmetrically curled.

All the young men of Uruk, the well-protected, were captivated by the prodigious strength and beauty of the hero; the elders of the city betook themselves to Ishtar to complain of the state of neglect to which the young generation had relegated them.

“He has no longer a rival in their hearts, but thy subjects are led to battle, and Gilgames does not send one child back to his father.

Night and day they cry after him: ‘It is he the shepherd of Uruk, the well-protected, he is its shepherd and master, he the powerful, the perfect and the wise.

’” Even the women did not escape the general enthusiasm: “he leaves not a single virgin to her mother, a single daughter to a warrior, a single wife to her master.

Ishtar heard their complaint, the gods heard it, and cried with a loud voice to Aruru: ‘It is thou, Aruru, who hast given him birth; create for him now his fellow, that he may be able to meet him on a day when it pleaseth him, in order that they may fight with each other and Uruk may be delivered.

’When Aruru heard them, she created in her heart a man of Anu.

Aruru washed her hands, took a bit of clay, cast it upon the earth, kneaded it and created Babani, the warrior, the exalted scion, the man of Ninib, whose whole body is covered with hair, whose tresses are as long as those of a woman; the locks of his hair bristle on his head like those on the corn-god; he is clad in a vestment like that of the god of the fields; he browses with the gazelles, he quenches his thirst with the beasts of the field, he sports with the beasts of the waters.

” Frequent representations of Eabani are found upon the monuments; he has the horns of a goat, the legs and tail of a bull.

* He possessed not only the strength of a brute, but his intelligence also embraced all things, the past and the future: he would probably have triumphed over Gilgames if Shamash had not succeeded in attaching them to one another by an indissoluble tie of friendship.

The difficulty was to draw these two future friends together, and to bring them face to face without their coming to blows; the god sent his courier Saidu, the hunter, to study the habits of the monster, and to find out the necessary means to persuade him to come down peaceably to Uruk.

“Saidu, the hunter, proceeded to meet Eabani near the entrance of the watering-place.

One day, two days, three days, Eabani met him at the entrance of the watering-place.

He perceived Saidu, and his countenance darkened: he entered the enclosure, he became sad, he groaned, he cried with a loud voice, his heart was heavy, his features were distorted, sobs burst from his breast.

The hunter saw from a distance that his face was inflamed with anger,” and judging it more prudent not to persevere farther in his enterprise, returned to impart to the god what he had observed.

* Smith was the first, I believe, to compare his form to that of a satyr or faun; this comparison is rendered more probable by the fact that the modern inhabitants of Chaldaea believe in the existence of similar monsters.

A.

Jeremias places Eabani alongside Priapus, who is generally a god of the fields, and a clever soothsayer.

Following out these ideas, we might compare our Eabani with the Graico-Roman Proteus, who pastures the flocks of the sea, and whom it was necessary to pursue and seize by force or cunning words to compel him to give oracular predictions.

[Illustration: 060. jpg GILGAMES FIGHTS, ON THE LEFT WITH A BULL, ON THE RIGHT WITH EABANI.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio in the Museum at the Hague.

The original measures about 1 7/10 inch in height.

“I was afraid,” said he, in finishing his narrative,* “and I did not approach him.

He had filled up the pit which I had dug to trap him, he broke the nets which I had spread, he delivered from my hands the cattle and the beasts of the field, he did not allow me to search the country through.

” Shamash thought that where the strongest man might fail by the employment of force, a woman might possibly succeed by the attractions of pleasure; he commanded Saidu to go quickly to Uruk and there to choose from among the priestesses of Ishtar one of the most beautiful.

** The hunter presented himself before Grilgames, recounted to him his adventures, and sought his permission to take away with him one of the sacred courtesans.

“‘Go, my hunter, take the priestess; when the beasts come to the watering-place, let her display her beauty; he will see her, he will approach her, and his beasts that troop around him will be scattered.

’”*** The hunter went, he took with him the priestess, he took the straight road; the third day they arrived at the fatal plain.

The hunter and the priestess sat down to rest; one day, two days, they sat at the entrance of the watering-place from whose waters Eabani drank along with the animals, where he sported with the beasts of the water.

* Haupt, Das Babylonische Nimrodepos, p. 9, 11. 42-50. The beginning of each line is destroyed, and the translation of the whole is only approximate.

** The priestesses of Ishtar were young and beautiful women, devoted to the service of the goddess and her worshippers.

Besides the title _qadishtu,_ priestess, they bore various names, _kizireti, ukhati, kharimati_; the priestess who accompanied Saidu was an _ukhat_.

*** As far as can be guessed from the narrative, interrupted as it is by so many lacunae, the power of Eabani over the beasts of the field seems to have depended on his continence.

From the moment in which he yields to his passions the beasts fly from him as they would do from an ordinary mortal; there is then no other resource for him but to leave the solitudes to live among men in towns.

This explains the means devised by Shamash against him: cf.

in the _Arabian Nights_ the story of Shehabeddin.

“When Eabani arrived, he who dwells in the mountains, and who browses upon the grass like the gazelles, who drinks with the animals, who sports with the beasts of the water, the priestess saw the satyr.

” She was afraid and blushed, but the hunter recalled her to her duty.

“It is he, priestess.

Undo thy garment, show him thy form, that he may be taken with thy beauty; be not ashamed, but deprive him of his soul.

He perceives thee, he is rushing towards thee, arrange thy garment; he is coming upon thee, receive him with every art of woman; his beasts which troop around him will be scattered, and he will press thee to his breast.

” The priestess did as she was commanded; she received him with every art of woman, and he pressed her to his breast.

Six days and seven nights, Eabani remained near the priestess, his well-beloved.

When he got tired of pleasure he turned his face towards his cattle, and he saw that the gazelles had turned aside and that the beasts of the field had fled far from him.

Eabani was alarmed, he fell into a swoon, his knees became stiff because his cattle had fled from him.

While he lay as if dead, he heard the voice of the priestess: he recovered his senses, he came to himself full of love; he seated himself at the feet of the priestess, he looked into her face, and while the priestess spoke his ears listened.

For it was to him the priestess spoke--to him, Eabani.

“Thou who art superb, Eabani, as a god, why dost thou live among the beasts of the field?

Come, I will conduct thee to Uruk the well-protected, to the glorious house, the dwelling of Anu and Ishtar--to the place where is Gilgames, whose strength is supreme, and who, like a Urus, excels the heroes in strength.

” While she thus spoke to him, he hung upon her words, he the wise of heart, he realized by anticipation a friend.

Eabani said to the priestess: “Let us go, priestess; lead me to the glorious and holy abode of Anu and Ishtar--to the place where is Gilgames, whose strength is supreme, and who, like a Urus, prevails over the heroes by his strength.

I will fight with him and manifest to him my power; I will send forth a panther against Uruk, and he must struggle with it.

” * The priestess conducted her prisoner to Uruk, but the city at that moment was celebrating the festival of Tammuz, and Gilgames did not care to interrupt the solemnities in order to face the tasks to which Eabani had invited him: what was the use of such trials since the gods themselves had deigned to point out to him in a dream the line of conduct he was to pursue, and had taken up the cause of their children.

Shamash, in fact, began the instruction of the monster, and sketched an alluring picture of the life which awaited him if he would agree not to return to his mountain home.

Not only would the priestess belong to him for ever, having none other than him for husband, but Gilgames would shower upon him riches and honours.

“He will give thee wherein to sleep a great bed cunningly wrought; he will seat thee on his divan, he will give thee a place on his left hand, and the princes of the earth shall kiss thy feet, the people of Uruk shall grovel on the ground before thee.

” It was by such flatteries and promises for the future that Gilgames gained the affection of his servant Eabani, whom he loved for ever.