Patriarchal Palestine Part 11

But she shared in the honours that were paid to her consort, and the divinity that resided in him was reflected upon her. Anat, like Ashtoreth, became multiplied under many forms, and the Anathoth or "Anat" signified little more than "G.o.ddesses." Between the Ashtaroth and the Anathoth the difference was but in name.

The numerous localities in Palestine which received their names from the G.o.d Rimmon are a proof of his popularity. The Babylonian Rimmon or Ramman was, strictly speaking, the G.o.d of the air, but in the West he was identified with the Sun-G.o.d Hadad, and a place near Megiddo bore the compound t.i.tle of Hadad-Rimmon (Zech. xii. 11). His naturalization in Canaan seems to belong to a very early period; at all events, in Sumerian he was called Martu, "the Amorite," and seal-cylinders speak of "the Martu G.o.ds." One of these has been found in the Lebanon. The a.s.syrian tablets tell us that he was also known as Dadu in the West, and under this form we find him in names like El-Dad and Be-dad, or Ben-Dad.

Like Rimmon, Nebo also must have been transported to Palestine at an early epoch. Nebo "the prophet" was the interpreter of Bel-Merodach of Babylon, the patron of cuneiform literature, and the G.o.d to whom the great temple of Borsippa--the modern Birs-i-Nimrud--was dedicated.

Doubtless he had migrated to the West along with that literary culture over which he presided. There his name and worship were attached to many localities. It was on the summit of Mount Nebo that Moses died; over Nebo, Isaiah prophesies, "Moab shall howl;" and we hear of a city called "the other Nebo" in Judah (Neh. vii. 33).

Another G.o.d who had been borrowed from Babylonia by the people of Canaan was Malik "the king," a t.i.tle originally of the supreme Baal. Malik is familiarly known to us in the Old Testament as Moloch, to whom the first-born were burned in the fire. At Tyre the G.o.d was termed Melech-kirjath, or "king of the city," which was contracted into Melkarth, and in the mouths of the Greeks became Makar. There is a pa.s.sage in the book of the prophet Amos (v. 25, 26), upon which the a.s.syrian texts have thrown light. We there read: "Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? Yet ye have borne Sikkuth your Malik and Chiun your Zelem, the star of your G.o.d, which ye made to yourselves."

Sikkuth and Chiun are the Babylonian Sakkut and Kaivan, a name given to the planet Saturn. Sakkut was a t.i.tle of the G.o.d Nin-ip, and we gather from Amos that it also represented Malik "the king." Zelem, "the image,"

was another Babylonian deity, and originally denoted "the image" or disk of the sun. His name and worship were carried into Northern Arabia, and a monument has been discovered at Teima, the Tema of Isaiah xxi. 14, which is dedicated to him. It would seem, from the language of Amos, that the Babylonian G.o.d had been adored in "the wilderness" as far back as the days when the Israelites were encamping in it. Nor, indeed, is this surprising: Babylonian influence in the West belonged to an age long anterior to that of the Exodus, and even the mountain whereon the oracles of G.o.d were revealed to the Hebrew lawgiver was Sinai, the mountain of Sin. The worship of Sin, the Babylonian Moon-G.o.d, must therefore have made its way thus far into the deserts of Arabia.

Inscriptions from Southern Arabia have already shown us that there too Sin was known and adored.

Dagon, again, was another G.o.d who had his first home in Babylonia. The name is of Sumerian origin, and he was a.s.sociated with Ami, the G.o.d of the sky. Like Sin, he appears to have been worshipped at Harran; at all events, Sargon states that he inscribed the laws of that city "according to the wish of Anu and Dagon." Along with Arm he would have been brought to Canaan, and though we first meet with his name in the Old Testament in connection with the Philistines, it is certain that he was already one of the deities of the country whom the Philistine invaders adopted.

One of the Canaanitish governors in the Tel el-Amarna correspondence bears the a.s.syrian name of Dagon-takala, "we trust in Dagon." The Phoenicians made him the G.o.d of corn in consequence of the resemblance of his name to the word which signifies "corn"; primarily, however, he would have been a G.o.d of the earth. The idea that he was a fish-G.o.d is of post-Biblical date, and due to a false etymology, which derived his name from the Hebrew _dag_, "a fish." The fish-G.o.d of Babylonia, however, whose image is sometimes engraved on seals, was a form of Ea, the G.o.d of the deep, and had no connection with Dagon. Doubtless there were other divinities besides these whom the peoples of Canaan owed to the Babylonians. Mr. Tomkins is probably right in seeing in the name of Beth-lehem a reminiscence of the Babylonian G.o.d Lakhmu, who took part in the creation of the world, and whom a later philosophizing generation identified with Anu. But the theology of early Canaan is still but little known, and its pantheon is still in great measure a sealed book.

Now and again we meet with a solitary pa.s.sage in some papyrus or inscription on stone, which reveals to us for the first time the name of an otherwise unknown deity. Who, for instance, is the G.o.ddess 'As.h.i.ti-Khaur, who is addressed, along with Kedesh, on an Egyptian monument now at Vienna, as "the mistress of heaven" and "ruler of all the G.o.ds"? The votive altars of Carthage make repeated mention of the G.o.ddess Tanit, the Peni or "Face" of Baal, whom the Greeks identified with Artemis. She must have been known in the mother-land of Phoenicia, and yet no trace of her worship there has as yet been found. There were "G.o.ds many and lords many" in primitive Palestine, and though a comprehensive faith summed them up as its Baalim and Ashtaroth they yet had individual names and t.i.tles, as well as altars and priests.

But though altars were numerous, temples were not plentiful. The chief seats of religious worship were "the high-places," level spots on the summits of hills or mountains, where altars were erected, and the worshipper was believed to be nearer the dwelling-place of the G.o.ds than he would have been in the plain below. The altar was frequently some natural boulder of rock, consecrated by holy oil, and regarded as the habitation of a G.o.d. These sacred stones were termed beth-els, _baetyli_ as the Greeks wrote the word, and they form a distinguishing characteristic of Semitic faith. In later times many of them were imagined to have "come down from heaven." So deeply enrooted was this worship of stones in the Semitic nature, that even Mohammed, in spite of his iconoclastic zeal, was obliged to accommodate his creed to the worship of the Black Stone at Mekka, and the Kaaba is still one of the most venerated objects of the Mohammedan faith.

But the sacred stone was not only an object of worship or the consecrated altar of a deity, it might also take the place of a temple, and so be in very truth a beth-el, or "house of G.o.d." Thus at Medain Salih in North-western Arabia Mr. Doughty discovered three upright stones, which an inscription informed him were the _mesged_ or "mosque"

of the G.o.d Aera of Bozrah. In the great temple of Melkarth at Tyre Herodotus saw two columns, one of gold, the other of emerald, reminding us of the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, which the Phoenician architect of Solomon erected in the porch of the temple at Jerusalem (1 Kings vii.

21). Similar columns of stone have been found in the Phoenician temple, called that of the Giants, in Gozo, one of which is still standing in its place.

While certain stones were thus regarded as the abode of deity, the high places whereon so many of them stood also received religious worship.

The most prominent of the mountains of Syria were deified: Carmel became a Penu-el or "Face of G.o.d," Hermon was "the Holy One," and Mount Lebanon was a Baal. The rivers and springs also were adored as G.o.ds, and the fish which swam in them were accounted sacred. On the Phoenician coast was a river Kadisha, "the holy," and the Canaanite maiden saw in the red marl which the river Adonis brought down from the hills the blood of the slaughtered Sun-G.o.d Tammuz.

The temple of Solomon, built as it was by Phoenician architects and workmen, will give us an idea of what a Canaanitish temple was like. In its main outlines it resembled a temple in Babylonia or a.s.syria. There, too, there was an outer court and an inner sanctuary, with its _parakku_ or "mercy-seat," and its ark of stone or wood, in which an inscribed tablet of stone was kept. Like the temple of Jerusalem, the Babylonian temple looked from the outside much like a rectangular box, with its four walls rising up, blank and unadorned, to the sky. Within the open court was a "sea," supported at times on oxen of bronze, where the priests and servants of the temple performed their ablutions and the sacred vessels were washed.

The Canaanitish altar was approached by steps, and was large enough for the sacrifice of an ox. Besides the sacrifices, offerings of corn and wine, of fruit and oil were also made to the G.o.ds. The sacrifices and offerings were of two kinds, the _zau'at_ or sin-offering, and the _shelem_ or thank-offering. The sin-offering had to be given wholly to the G.o.d, and was accordingly termed _kalil_ or "complete"; a part of the thank-offering, on the other hand, might be carried away by him who made it. Birds, moreover, might const.i.tute a thank-offering; they were not allowed when the offering was made for sin. Such at least was the rule in the later days of Phoenician ritual, to which belong the sacrificial tariffs that have been preserved.

In these sacrificial tariffs no mention is made of human sacrifices, and, as M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out, the ram takes in them the place of the man. But this was the result of the milder manners of an age when the Phoenicians had been brought into close contact with the Greeks. In the older days of Canaanitish history human sacrifice had held a foremost place in the ritual of Syria. It was the sacrifice of the firstborn son that was demanded in times of danger and trouble, or when the family was called upon to make a special atonement for sin. The victim was offered as a burnt sacrifice, which in Hebrew idiom was euphemistically described as pa.s.sing through the fire.

Side by side with these human sacrifices were the abominations which were performed in the temples in honour of Ashtoreth. Women acted as prost.i.tutes, and men who called themselves "dogs" foreswore their manhood. It was these sensualities practised in the name of religion which caused the iniquity of the Canaanites to become full.

It is pleasanter to turn to such fragments of Canaanitish mythology and cosmological speculation as have come down to us. Unfortunately most of it belongs in its present form to the late days of Greek and Roman domination, when an attempt was made to fuse the disjointed legends of the various Phoenician states into a connected whole, and to present them to Greek readers under a philosophical guise. How much, therefore, of the strange cosmogony and history of the G.o.ds recorded by Philon of Gebal really goes back to the patriarchal epoch of Palestine, and how much of it is of later growth, it is now impossible to say. In the main, however, it is of ancient date.

This is shown by the fact that a good deal of it has been borrowed directly or indirectly from Babylonia. How this could have happened has been explained by the Tel el-Amarna tablets. It was while Canaan was under the influence of Babylonian culture and Babylonian government that the myths and traditions of Babylonia made their way to the West. Among the tablets are portions of Babylonian legends, one of which has been carefully annotated by the Egyptian or Canaanite scribe. It is the story of the queen of Hades, who had been asked by the G.o.ds to a feast they had made in the heavens. Unable or unwilling to ascend to it, the G.o.ddess sent her servant the plague-demon, but with the result that Nergal was commissioned to descend to Hades and destroy its mistress.

The fourteen gates of the infernal world, each with its attendant warder, were opened before him, and at last he seized the queen by the hair, dragging her to the ground, and threatening to cut off her head.

But Eris-kigal, the queen of Hades, made a successful appeal for mercy; she became the wife of Nergal, and he the lord of the tomb.

Another legend was an endeavour to account for the origin of death.

Adapa or Adama, the first man, who had been created by Ea, was fishing one day in the deep sea, when he broke the wings of the south wind. The south wind flew to complain to Anu in heaven, and Anu ordered the culprit to appear before him. But Adapa was instructed by Ea how to act.

Clad in a garment of mourning, he won the hearts of the two guardians of the gate of heaven, the G.o.ds Tammuz and Gis-zida ("the firmly-fixed post"), so that they pleaded for him before Anu. Food and water were offered him, but he refused them for fear that they might be the food and water of death. Oil only for anointing and clothing did he accept.

"Then Anu looked upon him and raised his voice in lamentation: 'O Adapa, wherefore atest thou not, wherefore didst thou not drink? The gift of life cannot now be thine.'" Though "a sinful man" had been permitted "to behold the innermost parts of heaven and earth," he had rejected the food and water of life, and death henceforth was the lot of mankind.

It is curious that the commencement of this legend, the latter portion of which has been found at Tel el-Amarna, had been brought to the British Museum from the ruins of the library of Nineveh many years ago.

But until the discovery of the conclusion, its meaning and character were indecipherable. The copy made for the library of Nineveh was a late edition of the text which had been carried from Babylonia to the banks of the Nile eight hundred years before, and the fact emphasizes once more the Babylonian character of the culture and literature possessed by Palestine in the Patriarchal Age.

We need not wonder, therefore, if it is to Babylonia that the cosmological legends and beliefs of Phoenicia plainly point. The watery chaos out of which the world was created, the divine hierarchies, one pair of deities proceeding from another and an older pair, or the victory of Kronos over the dragon Ophioneus, are among the indications of their Babylonian origin. But far more important than these echoes of Babylonian mythology in the legendary lore of Phoenicia is the close relationship that exists between the traditions of Babylonia and the earlier chapters of Genesis. As is now well known, the Babylonian account of the Deluge agrees even in details with that which we find in the Bible, though the polytheism of Chaldaea is there replaced by an uncompromising monotheism, and there are little touches, like the subst.i.tution of an "ark" for the Babylonian "ship," which show that the narrative has been transported to Palestine. Equally Babylonian in origin is the history of the Tower of Babel, while two of the rivers of Eden are the Tigris and Euphrates, and Eden itself is the Edin or "Plain" of Babylonia.

Not so long ago it was the fashion to declare that such coincidences between Babylonian and Hebrew literature could be due only to the long sojourn of the Jews in Babylonia during the twenty years of the Exile.

But we now know that the traditions and legends of Babylonia were already known in Canaan before the Israelites had entered the Promised Land. It was not needful for the Hebrew writer to go to Chaldaea in order that he might learn them; when Moses was born they were already current both in Palestine and on the banks of the Nile. The Babylonian colouring of the early chapters of Genesis is just what archaeology would teach us to expect it would have been, had the Pentateuch been of the age to which it lays claim.

Here and there indeed there are pa.s.sages which must be of that age, and of none other. When in the tenth chapter of Genesis Canaan is made the brother of Cush and Mizraim, of Ethiopia and Egypt, we are carried back at once to the days when Palestine was an Egyptian province. The statement is applicable to no other age. Geographically Canaan lay outside the southern zone to which Egypt and Ethiopia belonged, except during the epoch of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, when all three were alike portions of a single empire. With the fall of that empire the statement ceased to be correct or even conceivable. After the era of the Israelitish conquest Canaan and Egypt were separated one from the other, not to be again united save for a brief s.p.a.ce towards the close of the Jewish monarchy. Palestine henceforth belonged to Asia, not to Africa, to the middle zone, that is to say, which was given over to the sons of Shem.

There is yet another pa.s.sage in the same chapter of Genesis which takes us back to the Patriarchal Age of Palestine. It is the reference to Nimrod, the son of Cush, the beginning of whose kingdom was Babel and Erech, and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar, and who was so familiar a figure in the West that a proverb was current there concerning his prowess in the chase. Here again we are carried to a date when the Ka.s.site kings of Babylonia held rule in Canaan, or led thither their armies, and when the Babylonians were called, as they are in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, the Ka.s.si or sons of Cush. Nimrod himself may be the Ka.s.site monarch n.a.z.i-Murudas. The cuneiform texts of the period show that the names borne by the Ka.s.site kings were strangely abbreviated by their subjects; even in Babylonia, Kasbe and Sagarta-Suria, for instance, being written for Kasbeias and Sagarakti-Suryas, the latter of which even appears as Sakti-Surias, while n.a.z.i-Murudas itself is found under the form of n.a.z.i-Rattas. Similarly Duri-galzu and Kurigalzu take the place of Dur-Kurigalzi. There is no reason, therefore, why n.a.z.i-Murudas should not have been familiarly known as Na-Muruda, more especially in distant Canaan.

Indeed we can almost fix the date to which the lifetime of Nimrod must be a.s.signed. We are told that out of his kingdom "one went forth into a.s.syria," and there "builded" Nineveh and Calah, The cuneiform inscriptions have informed us who this builder of Calah was. He was Shalmaneser I., who was also the restorer of Nineveh and its temples, and who is stated by Sennacherib to have reigned six hundred years before himself. Such a date would coincide with the reign of Ramses II., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, as well as with the birth-time of Moses.

It represents a period when the influence of Babylonia had not yet pa.s.sed away from Canaan, and when there was still intercourse between the East and the West. Ramses claims to have overcome both a.s.syria and Shinar, and though the Shinar he means was the Shinar of Mesopotamia and not Chaldaea, it lay within the limits of Babylonian control. The reign of Ramses II. is the latest period down to which, with our present knowledge, we can regard the old influence of Babylonia in Canaan as still continuing, and it is equally the period to which, if we are to listen to the traditional teaching of the Church, the writer of the Pentateuch belonged. The voice of archaeology is thus in agreement with that of authority, and here as elsewhere true science declares herself the handmaid of the Catholic Church.