Myths of Babylonia and Assyria Part 9

She was compelled, however, to obey the high G.o.ds, and addressed Namtar, saying:

Unto Ishtar give the waters of life and bring her before me.

Thereafter the Queen of Heaven was conducted through the various gates, and at each she received her robe and the ornaments which were taken from her on entering. Namtar says:

Since thou hast not paid a ransom for thy deliverance to her (Allatu), so to her again turn back, For Tammuz the husband of thy youth.

The glistening waters (of life) pour over him...

In splendid clothing dress him, with a ring of crystal adorn him.

Ishtar mourns for "the wound of Tammuz", smiting her breast, and she did not ask for "the precious eye-stones, her amulets", which were apparently to ransom Tammuz. The poem concludes with Ishtar's wail:

O my only brother (Tammuz) thou dost not lament for me.

In the day that Tammuz adorned me, with a ring of crystal, With a bracelet of emeralds, together with himself, he adorned me,[123]

With himself he adorned me; may men mourners and women mourners On a bier place him, and a.s.semble the wake.[124]

A Sumerian hymn to Tammuz throws light on this narrative. It sets forth that Ishtar descended to Hades to entreat him to be glad and to resume care of his flocks, but Tammuz refused or was unable to return.

His spouse unto her abode he sent back.

She then inst.i.tuted the wailing ceremony:

The amorous Queen of Heaven sits as one in darkness.[125]

Mr. Langdon also translates a hymn (Tammuz III) which appears to contain the narrative on which the a.s.syrian version was founded. The G.o.ddess who descends to Hades, however, is not Ishtar, but the "sister", Belit-sheri. She is accompanied by various demons--the "gallu-demon", the "slayer", &c.--and holds a conversation with Tammuz which, however, is "unintelligible and badly broken". Apparently, however, he promises to return to earth.

... I will go up, as for me I will depart with thee ...

... I will return, unto my mother let us go back.

Probably two G.o.ddesses originally lamented for Tammuz, as the Egyptian sisters, Isis and Nepthys, lamented for Osiris, their brother. Ishtar is referred to as "my mother". Isis figures alternately in the Egyptian chants as mother, wife, sister, and daughter of Osiris. She cries, "Come thou to thy wife in peace; her heart fluttereth for thy love", ... "I am thy wife, made as thou art, the elder sister, soul of her brother".... "Come thou to us as a babe".... "Lo, thou art as the Bull of the two G.o.ddesses--come thou, child growing in peace, our lord!"... "Lo! the Bull, begotten of the two cows, Isis and Nepthys".... "Come thou to the two widowed G.o.ddesses".... "Oh child, lord, first maker of the body".... "Father Osiris."[126]

As Ishtar and Belit-sheri weep for Tammuz, so do Isis and Nepthys weep for Osiris.

Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou art prostrate upon thy bed!

G.o.ds and men ... are weeping for thee at the same time, when they behold me (Isis).

Lo! I invoke thee with wailing that reacheth high as heaven.

Isis is also identified with Hathor (Ishtar) the Cow.... "The cow weepeth for thee with her voice."[127]

There is another phase, however, to the character of the mother G.o.ddess which explains the references to the desertion and slaying of Tammuz by Ishtar. "She is", says Jastrow, "the G.o.ddess of the human instinct, or pa.s.sion which accompanies human love. Gilgamesh ...

reproaches her with abandoning the objects of her pa.s.sion after a brief period of union." At Ishtar's temple "public maidens accepted temporary partners, a.s.signed to them by Ishtar".[128] The worship of all mother G.o.ddesses in ancient times was accompanied by revolting unmoral rites which are referred to in condemnatory terms in various pa.s.sages in the Old Testament, especially in connection with the worship of Ashtoreth, who was identical with Ishtar and the Egyptian Hathor.

Ishtar in the process of time overshadowed all the other female deities of Babylonia, as did Isis in Egypt. Her name, indeed, which is Semitic, became in the plural, Ishtarate, a designation for G.o.ddesses in general. But although she was referred to as the daughter of the sky, Anu, or the daughter of the moon, Sin or Nannar, she still retained traces of her ancient character. Originally she was a great mother G.o.ddess, who was worshipped by those who believed that life and the universe had a female origin in contrast to those who believed in the theory of male origin. Ishtar is identical with Nina, the fish G.o.ddess, a creature who gave her name to the Sumerian city of Nina and the a.s.syrian city of Nineveh. Other forms of the Creatrix included Mama, or Mami, or Ama, "mother", Aruru, Bau, Gula, and Zerpanitu?.

These were all "Preservers" and healers. At the same time they were "Destroyers", like Nin-sun and the Queen of Hades, Eresh-ki-gal or Allatu. They were accompanied by shadowy male forms ere they became wives of strongly individualized G.o.ds, or by child G.o.ds, their sons, who might be regarded as "brothers" or "husbands of their mothers", to use the paradoxical Egyptian term. Similarly Great Father deities had vaguely defined wives. The "Semitic" Baal, "the lord", was accompanied by a female reflection of himself--Beltu, "the lady". Shamash, the sun G.o.d, had for wife the shadowy Aa.

As has been shown, Ishtar is referred to in a Tammuz hymn as the mother of the child G.o.d of fertility. In an Egyptian hymn the sky G.o.ddess Nut, "the mother" of Osiris, is stated to have "built up life from her own body".[129] Sri or Lakshmi, the Indian G.o.ddess, who became the wife of Vishnu, as the mother G.o.ddess Saraswati, a tribal deity, became the wife of Brahma, was, according to a Purana commentator, "the mother of the world ... eternal and undecaying".[130]

The G.o.ds, on the other hand, might die annually: the G.o.ddesses alone were immortal. Indra was supposed to perish of old age, but his wife, Indrani, remained ever young. There were fourteen Indras in every "day of Brahma", a reference apparently to the ancient conception of Indra among the Great-Mother-worshipping sections of the Aryo-Indians.[131]

In the _Mahabharata_ the G.o.d Shiva, as Mahadeva, commands Indra on "one of the peaks of Himavat", where they met, to lift up a stone and join the Indras who had been before him. "And Indra on removing that stone beheld a cave on the breast of that king of mountains in which were four others resembling himself." Indra exclaimed in his grief, "Shall I be even like these?" These five Indras, like the "Seven Sleepers", awaited the time when they would be called forth. They were ultimately reborn as the five Pandava warriors.[132]

The ferocious, black-faced Scottish mother G.o.ddess, Cailleach Bheur, who appears to be identical with Mala Lith, "Grey Eyebrows" of Fingalian story, and the English "Black Annis", figures in Irish song and legend as "The Old Woman of Beare". This "old woman" (Cailleach) "had", says Professor Kuno Meyer, "seven periods of youth one after another, so that every man who had lived with her came to die of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races".

When old age at length came upon her she sang her "swan song", from which the following lines are extracted:

Ebb tide to me as of the sea!

Old age causes me reproach ...

It is riches Ye love, it is not men: In the time when _we_ lived It was men we loved ...

My arms when they are seen Are bony and thin: Once they would fondle, They would be round glorious kings ...

I must take my garment even in the sun: The time is at hand that shall renew me.[133]

Freyja, the Germanic mother G.o.ddess, whose car was drawn by cats, had similarly many lovers. In the Icelandic poem "Lokasenna", Loki taunts her, saying:

Silence, Freyja! Full well I know thee, And faultless art thou not found; Of the G.o.ds and elves who here are gathered Each one hast thou made thy mate.

Idun, the keeper of the apples of immortal youth, which prevent the G.o.ds growing old, is similarly addressed:

Silence, Idun! I swear, of all women Thou the most wanton art; Who couldst fling those fair-washed arms of thine About thy brother's slayer.

Frigg, wife of Odin, is satirized as well:

Silence, Frigg! Earth's spouse for a husband, And hast ever yearned after men![134]

The G.o.ddesses of cla.s.sic mythology had similar reputations. Aphrodite (Venus) had many divine and mortal lovers. She links closely with Astarte and Ashtoreth (Ishtar), and reference has already been made to her relations with Adonis (Tammuz). These love deities were all as cruel as they were wayward. When Ishtar wooed the Babylonian hero, Gilgamesh, he spurned her advances, as has been indicated, saying:

On Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth, Thou didst lay affliction every year.

Thou didst love the brilliant Allalu bird But thou didst smite him and break his wing; He stands in the woods and cries "O my wing".

He likewise charged her with deceiving the lion and the horse, making reference to obscure myths:

Thou didst also love a shepherd of the flock, Who continually poured out for thee the libation, And daily slaughtered kids for thee; But thou didst smite him and didst change him into a leopard, So that his own sheep boy hunted him, And his own hounds tore him to pieces.[135]

These G.o.ddesses were ever p.r.o.ne to afflict human beings who might offend them or of whom they wearied. Demeter (Ceres) changed Ascalaphus into an owl and Stellio into a lizard. Rhea (Ops) resembled

The tow'red Cybele, Mother of a hundred G.o.ds,

the wanton who loved Attis (Adonis). Artemis (Diana) slew her lover Orion, changed Actaeon into a stag, which was torn to pieces by his own dogs, and caused numerous deaths by sending a boar to ravage the fields of Oeneus, king of Calydon. Human sacrifices were frequently offered to the bloodthirsty "mothers". The most famous victim of Artemis was the daughter of Agamemnon, "divinely tall and most divinely fair".[136] Agamemnon had slain a sacred stag, and the G.o.ddess punished him by sending a calm when the war fleet was about to sail for Troy, with the result that his daughter had to be sacrificed.

Artemis thus sold breezes like the northern wind hags and witches.

It used to be customary to account for the similarities manifested by the various mother G.o.ddesses by a.s.suming that there was constant cultural contact between separate nationalities, and, as a result, a not inconsiderable amount of "religious borrowing". Greece was supposed to have received its great G.o.ddesses from the western Semites, who had come under the spell of Babylonian religion.

Archaeological evidence, however, tends to disprove this theory. "The most recent researches into Mesopotamian history", writes Dr. Farnell, "establish with certainty the conclusion that there was no direct political contact possible between the powers in the valley of the Euphrates and the western sh.o.r.es of the Aegean in the second millennium B.C. In fact, between the nascent h.e.l.las and the great world of Mesopotamia there were powerful and possibly independent strata of cultures interposing."[137]

The real connection appears to be the racial one. Among the Mediterranean Neolithic tribes of Sumeria, Arabia, and Europe, the G.o.ddess cult appears to have been influential. Mother worship was the predominant characteristic of their religious systems, so that the Greek G.o.ddesses were probably of pre-h.e.l.lenic origin, the Celtic of Iberian, the Egyptian of proto-Egyptian, and the Babylonian of Sumerian. The northern hillmen, on the other hand, who may be identified with the "Aryans" of the philologists, were father worshippers. The Vedic Aryo-Indians worshipped father G.o.ds,[138] as did also the Germanic peoples and certain tribes in the "Hitt.i.te confederacy". Earth spirits were males, like the Teutonic elves, the Aryo-Indian Ribhus, and the Burkans, "masters", of the present-day Buriats, a Mongolian people. When the father-worshipping peoples invaded the dominions of the mother-worshipping peoples, they introduced their strongly individualized G.o.ds, but they did not displace the mother G.o.ddesses. "The Aryan h.e.l.lenes", says Dr. Farnell, "were able to plant their Zeus and Poseidon on the high hill of Athens, but not to overthrow the supremacy of Athena in the central shrine and in the aboriginal soul of the Athenian people."[139] As in Egypt, the beliefs of the father worshippers, represented by the self-created Ptah, were fused with the beliefs of the mother worshippers, who adored Isis, Mut, Neith, and others. In Babylonia this process of racial and religious fusion was well advanced before the dawn of history. Ea, who had already a.s.sumed manifold forms, may have originally been the son or child lover of Damkina, "Lady of the Deep", as was Tammuz of Ishtar. As the fish, Ea was the offspring of the mother river.

The mother worshippers recognized male as well as female deities, but regarded the great G.o.ddess as the First Cause. Although the primeval spirits were grouped in four pairs in Egypt, and apparently in Babylonia also, the female in the first pair was more strongly individualized than the male. The Egyptian Nu is vaguer than his consort Nut, and the Babylonian Apsu than his consort Tiamat. Indeed, in the narrative of the Creation Tablets of Babylon, which will receive full treatment in a later chapter, Tiamat, the great mother, is the controlling spirit. She is more powerful and ferocious than Apsu, and lives longer. After Apsu's death she elevates one of her brood, named Kingu, to be her consort, a fact which suggests that in the Ishtar-Tammuz myth survives the influence of exceedingly ancient modes of thought. Like Tiamat, Ishtar is also a great battle heroine, and in this capacity she was addressed as "the lady of majestic rank exalted over all G.o.ds". This was no idle flattery on the part of worshippers, but a memory of her ancient supremacy.

Reference has been made to the introduction of Tammuz worship into Jerusalem. Ishtar, as Queen of Heaven, was also adored by the backsliding Israelites as a deity of battle and harvest. When Jeremiah censured the people for burning incense and serving G.o.ds "whom they knew not", he said, "neither they, ye, nor your fathers", they made answer: "Since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and the famine". The women took a leading part in these practices, but refused to accept all the blame, saying, "When we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make our cakes and pour out drink offerings unto her without our men?"[140] That the husbands, and the children even, a.s.sisted at the ceremony is made evident in another reference to G.o.ddess worship: "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven".[141]

Jastrow suggests that the women of Israel wept for Tammuz, offered cakes to the mother G.o.ddess, &c., because "in all religious bodies ...

women represent the conservative element; among them religious customs continue in practice after they have been abandoned by men".[142] The evidence of Jeremiah, however, shows that the men certainly co-operated at the archaic ceremonials. In lighting the fires with the "vital spark", they apparently acted in imitation of the G.o.d of fertility. The women, on the other hand, represented the reproductive harvest G.o.ddess in providing the food supply. In recognition of her gift, they rewarded the G.o.ddess by offering her the cakes prepared from the newly ground wheat and barley--the "first fruits of the harvest". As the corn G.o.d came as a child, the children began the ceremony by gathering the wood for the sacred fire. When the women mourned for Tammuz, they did so evidently because the death of the G.o.d was lamented by the G.o.ddess Ishtar. It would appear, therefore, that the suggestion regarding the "conservative element" should really apply to the immemorial practices of folk religion. These differed from the refined ceremonies of the official cult in Babylonia, where there were suitable temples and organized bands of priests and priestesses. But the official cult received no recognition in Palestine; the cakes intended for a G.o.ddess were not offered up in the temple of Abraham's G.o.d, but "in the streets of Jerusalem" and those of other cities.[143]