The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Part 16

The t.i.tle is Sumerian in origin, and must therefore have been given while as yet the Sumerian was dominant. This raises the question whether the name by which the G.o.d was subsequently known in Semitic Babylonia was not rather of Amorite than of Babylonian derivation. And there is much in favour of the view. Hadad, or Rimmon as he was also termed, was in a special way the G.o.d of Syria. His worship was spread along the whole length of the Syrian seaboard, and we find him holding there the rank of a supreme Baal. It is not as the G.o.d of storms, but as the sun-G.o.d himself, that he was adored in Syria, and his very name there became synonymous with deity. That the Semitised Sumerian of Babylonia should have identified the supreme G.o.d of a land of mountains and storms with his own storm-G.o.d, we can understand; that the Syrian should have transferred the name of a Babylonian G.o.d of storms to his own chief Baal, would be difficult to explain. However this may be, the person of Hadad is peculiarly Semitic. The features which he inherited from his Sumerian ancestry were obscured or dropped, and he became in all respects a Semitic G.o.d. We need not be surprised, therefore, at finding that he was a special favourite in a.s.syria. a.s.sur-n.a.z.ir-pal calls him "the mightiest of the G.o.ds," and the a.s.syrian troops in their onset are likened to him.(249)

The doctrine of the triad was not confined to the more prominent G.o.ds. It was extended to others also who occupied a lower rank in the divine hierarchy or in the public cult. Thus Samas helps to form the subordinate triad of Samas, Malik, and Bunene, in which the local sun-G.o.ds, Malik and Bunene, are distinguished from Samas of Sippara, and Bunene is transformed into a female divinity, the consort of Malik. But in all cases the principle is the same. The Semitic conception of the divine family, husband, wife, and son, is combined with the older ideas of genderless Sumerian, which placed the G.o.ddess on the same level as the G.o.d, and the result is a triad in which the Sumerian element has so far prevailed as to exclude the mother and son, and leave three G.o.ds of equal power and rank.(250)

The Babylonian triad is thus in no way a trinity. The divine persons who compose it are coequal and independent one of the other, the sphere of each being limited by that of the other. But they divide the whole universe between them, or at all events that part of the universe over which their attributes and authority extend. They are partners with carefully defined powers, arranged in groups of three. None of them is a supreme Baal dominant over the other two. Nor, indeed, are they Baalim at all in the strict sense of the word. For the Semitic Baalim admitted of no such grouping; each was supreme G.o.d in his own locality, where his powers were neither shared nor limited by another G.o.d. A triad like that of Anu, Bel, and Ea could not exist where each local Baal claimed all the attributes that were divided between the three Babylonian deities, and its existence in Babylonia is one of many proofs that, though Babylonian religion in its later form was moulded by Semitic hands, the elements that composed it had come in large measure from an older faith.

Lecture IV. The Sun-G.o.d And Istar.

It is thus that Nebuchadrezzar addresses his G.o.d in the plenitude of his glory and power-

"To Merodach, my lord, I prayed; I began to him my pet.i.tion; the word of my heart sought him, and I said: 'O prince that art from everlasting, lord of all that exists, for the king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest by name, as it seems good unto thee thou guidest his name aright, thou watchest over him in the path of righteousness! I, the prince who obeys thee, am the work of thy hands; thou hast created me, and hast intrusted to me the sovereignty over mult.i.tudes of men, according to thy goodness, O lord, which thou hast made to pa.s.s over them all. Let me love thy supreme lordship, let the fear of thy divinity exist in my heart, and give what seemeth good unto thee, since thou maintainest my life.' Then he, the firstborn, the glorious, the leader of the G.o.ds, Merodach the prince, heard my prayer and accepted my pet.i.tion."(251)

"To Merodach, my lord, I prayed, and lifted up my hand: 'O Merodach, (my) lord, the wise one of the G.o.ds, the mighty prince, thou didst create me and hast intrusted to me the dominion over mult.i.tudes of men; as my own dear life do I love the height of thy court; among all mankind have I not built a city of the earth fairer than thy city of Babylon. As I have loved the fear of thy divinity and have sought after thy lordship, accept the lifting up of my hands, hearken to my pet.i.tion, for I the king am the adorner (of the shrine) who rejoices thy heart, an instructed ruler, the adorner of all thy fortresses.' "(252)

The G.o.d before whom the great Babylonian conqueror thus humbles himself in pa.s.sionate devotion, was the divine guardian and lord of his capital city.

Ever since the days when Babylon had been but one of the many villages of Babylonia, Merodach had been its presiding G.o.d. It was to him that e-Saggil, its sanctuary, was dedicated, and from him and his priesthood the kings of Babylon derived their right to rule. Merodach had given them their supremacy, first in Babylonia and then throughout Western Asia, and the supremacy he bestowed upon them was reflected upon himself. The G.o.d followed the fortunes of his city, because through him his city had risen to power; and he became Bel, "the lord," not for the inhabitant of Babylon only, but for all the civilised world. Like Amon of Thebes, Bel-Merodach of Babylon supplanted the older G.o.ds of the country because the city wherein he was worshipped supplanted the earlier seats of Babylonian power.

Like Amon of Thebes, moreover, Merodach of Babylon owed much to his solar character. Youngest of the G.o.ds though he might be, he was yet a form of the sun-G.o.d,(253) and as such a representative and impersonation of the supreme Baal. However much his solar features were overshadowed by other attributes in later days, they were never wholly obscured, and his solar origin was remembered to the last. It was never forgotten that before he became the supreme Bel or "lord" of Babylonian theology he had been merely a local sun-G.o.d, like Utu of Larsa or Samas of Sippara.

We can even trace his cult to Sumerian days. A punning etymology, proposed for his name in an age when the true origin of it had been lost, made him the _amar-utuki_ or "heifer of the goblin"; and the fact that the sun-G.o.d was known to have once been an _utuk_ or "goblin" seemed to lend countenance to it. But when we first catch glimpses of his worship, he has already ceased to belong to the goblins of the night. He has been identified with Asari the son of Ea of Eridu, and has thus became the messenger and interpreter of the culture-G.o.d.

In the language of Sumer, Asari signified "the strong one" or "prince."(254) His name was expressed by two ideographs which denoted "place" and "eye," and had precisely the same meaning and form as the two which expressed the name of the Egyptian Osiris.(255) Between the Sumerian Asari and the Egyptian Osiris, therefore, it seems probable that there was a connection. And to my mind the probability is raised to practical certainty by the fact that the character and attributes of both Asari and Osiris were the same. Osiris was Un-nefer, "the good being," whose life was spent in benefiting and civilising mankind; Asari also was "the good heifer" (_amar-dugga_), and his common t.i.tle was that of "the prince who does good to men" (_A?ari-galu-dugga_). He it was who conveyed to men the teaching of Ea, who healed their diseases by means of his father's spells, and who "raised the dead to life." Asari and Osiris are not only the same in name and pictorial representation, they play the same part in the history of religion and culture.

But there was one important difference between them. Osiris was a dead G.o.d, whose kingdom was in the other world; Asari brought help to the living, whom he restored from sickness and delivered from death. Even in Egypt, however, it was remembered that Osiris had been a G.o.d of the living before he was G.o.d of the dead. Tradition told how he had instructed men in the arts of life, and done for primeval Egypt what Ea and Asari had done for Chaldaea. The difference between him and Asari is a difference that runs through the whole of Egyptian and Babylonian theology. The Egyptian of the historical period fixed his eyes on the future life, and the G.o.d he worshipped accordingly was the G.o.d who judged and saved him in the other world; the religion of the Babylonian was confined to this world, and it was in this world only that he was judged by the sun-G.o.d, and received his sentence of reward or punishment. The mummified sun-G.o.d did not exist for the Babylonians, for the practice of mummification was unknown among them.

It is possible that A?ari, "the prince who does good to men," had been originally a t.i.tle of Ea. If so, the t.i.tle and the G.o.d had been separated from one another at an early epoch, and the t.i.tle had become itself a G.o.d who owned Ea as his father. This relationship between Ea and his son betrays Semitic-or at all events foreign-influence. The ghosts and spirits of primitive Sumerian belief were not bound together by any such family ties; the demons of the night had little in common with the men they terrified and plagued. Asari had once been conceived of as a ram, Ea as an antelope; and between the ram and the antelope no genetic relationship was possible. They might be united together like the composite creatures which had come down to the Babylonians from the old Sumerian days, but there could be no birth of one from the other. Birth characterises the present creation in which like springs from like; it was only in the time of chaos that unlike forms could be mingled together in disorderly confusion.

That Asari was a sun-G.o.d follows from his identification with Merodach.

Here and here only could have been the link which bound the two deities together.(256) But in pa.s.sing into Merodach he lost his own personality.

Henceforth the son of Ea and the G.o.d of Babylon are one and the same.

It was but gradually that he attained his high position in the Babylonian pantheon. Ea and Asari were G.o.ds of the south; Babylon lay in the northern half of the country. There must therefore have been some special reason for the close connection that grew up between them. I know of no other that would account for it except the one I gave many years ago-that Babylon was a colony from Eridu. In this case we could understand why its local deity should have been a son of Ea, and how accordingly it became possible to identify him with that particular son of the G.o.d of Eridu whose attributes resembled his own.

It is difficult at present to trace the history of Merodach beyond the age of the dynasty of Khammurabi. It was then that Babylon became an imperial city, and the power of its G.o.d grew with the power of its rulers. The dynasty was Semitic, though of foreign origin; and we may gather from the names of the first two kings that the ancestral G.o.d of the family had been ?amu(257) or Shem. But with the possession of Babylon the manners and religion of Babylonia were adopted; the fourth king of the dynasty bears a Babylonian name,(258) and his grandson ascribes his victories to the G.o.d of Babylon.

Merodach is invested by Khammurabi with all the attributes of a supreme Semitic Baal. His solar character falls into the background; he becomes the lord of G.o.ds and men, who delivers the weak and punishes the proud.

The office of judge, which belonged to him as the sun-G.o.d, is amplified; the wisdom he had derived from Ea is made part of his original nature; his quality of mercy is insisted on again and again. Like the Semitic Baal, he is the father of his people, the mighty king who rules the world and occupies the foremost place in the council of the G.o.ds. Already the son of Khammurabi declares that the older Bel of Nippur had transferred to Merodach the sovereignty of the civilised world; the power of Nippur and its priesthood had pa.s.sed to Babylon, and its G.o.d had to make way for a younger rival. As long as Babylon remained the capital of the kingdom, the Bel or "lord" of Babylonia was Merodach. The G.o.d followed the fortunes of his State.

The sanct.i.ty that had lingered for so many centuries around the temple of Nippur now pa.s.sed to e-Saggil, the temple of Merodach. The priests of Merodach inherited the rights and functions of the priests of En-lil. From henceforth it was Merodach and his priests who could make and unmake kings; it was only the prince who had "taken the hand of Bel" of Babylon, and thereby been adopted as his son, that could claim legitimate rule. The descendants of the conquerors who had carried Babylonian culture to the lands of the West, derived their t.i.tle to dominion not from Nippur, but from Babylon, and it was forgotten that the t.i.tle had ever had any other source. The lordship of the world had indeed been transferred to a new G.o.d and a new city; Zeus had supplanted his father Kronos.

A sort of paean in praise of Merodach, which is supposed to form part of the Epic of the Creation, describes how the G.o.d of Babylon received the names, and therewith the attributes and powers, of the older deities. In the great a.s.sembly of the G.o.ds he was greeted as their Zi or "Life,"(259) then as Ea under his name of "G.o.d of divine life," then as Hadad or the G.o.d of "the good wind,"(260) and finally as Sin with "the divine crown,"

in whose name he became "the merciful one who brings back the dead to life." The ceremony was not concluded until he had received all "the fifty names of the great G.o.ds," whose virtues and essence had thus, as it were, pa.s.sed into himself. Not only was he their heir, he also absorbed their whole being, and so became one with his father, who is made to say: "He is become even as myself, for Ea is (now) his name."

In these words we are brought very near to the Egyptian doctrine which trans.m.u.ted one G.o.d into another, and saw in them only so many forms of the same divinity. But the stage of pantheism was never reached in Babylonia.

The Semitic element in Babylonian religion was too strong to admit of it; the attributes and character of each deity were too clearly cut and defined, and the Semitic mind was incapable of transforming the human figures of the G.o.ds into nebulous abstractions. The G.o.d was too much of a man, moving in too well marked a sphere, to be resolved into a mere form or manifestation. Merodach might receive from the other G.o.ds their attributes and the power to exercise them, but it was delegation and not absorption. The other G.o.ds still retained the attributes that belonged to them, and the right to use them if they would. Merodach was their vicegerent and successor rather than themselves under another form.

Hence it is that the human element in the Babylonian G.o.d predominated over the abstract and divine. His solar attributes fell into the background, and he became more and more the representative of a human king who rules his people justly, and whose orders all are bound to obey. He became, in fact, a Semitic Baal, made in human form, and consequently conceived of as an exaggerated or superhuman man. The other G.o.ds are his subjects, not forms under which he can reveal himself; they retain their individualities, and const.i.tute his court. There is no nebulosity, no pantheism, in the religion of Semitic Babylonia; the formless divinity and the animal worship of Egypt are alike unknown to it. As is the man, so is the G.o.d, for the one has been made in the likeness of the other.

Nevertheless the solar origin of Merodach left its impress upon the theology of the State. It had much to do with that process of identifying one G.o.d with another, which, as we have seen, tended to approximate the doctrines of Babylonia to those of Egypt. Though the individual G.o.ds were distinguished and marked off from one another like individual men, it was yet possible to get as it were behind the individual traits, and find in certain of them a common element in which their individual peculiarities were lost. The name, so the Babylonian believed, was the essence of the person or thing to which it was attached; that which had no name did not exist, and its existence commenced only when it received its name. A nameless G.o.d could not exist any more than a nameless man, and a knowledge of his name brought with it a knowledge of his real nature and powers. But a name was transferable; it could be taken from one object and given to another, and therewith the essential characteristics which had belonged to the first would become the property of the other.

When the name was changed, the person or thing was changed along with it.

To give Merodach another name, therefore, was equivalent to changing his essential characteristics, and endowing him with the nature and properties of another G.o.d. The solar character which belonged to him primitively gave the first impulse to this transference and change of name. There were other solar deities in Babylonia, with distinct personalities of their own, for they were each called by an individual name. But the sun which they typified and represented was the same everywhere, and the attributes of the solar divinity differed but little in the various States of Semitic Babylonia. It was easy, therefore, to a.s.sign to the one the name of another, and the a.s.signment brought with it a change of personality. With the name came the personality of the G.o.d to whom it originally belonged, and who now, as it were, lost his individual existence. It pa.s.sed into the person of the other deity; the two G.o.ds were identified together; but it was not by the absorption of the one into the other but by the loss of individual existence on the part of one of them. It was no resolution of two independent beings into a common form, but rather the subst.i.tution of one individual for another.

This process of a.s.similation was a.s.sisted by the Babylonian conception of the G.o.ddess. By the side of the G.o.d, the G.o.ddess was little more than a colourless abstraction which owed its origin to the necessities of grammar. The individual element was absent; all that gave form and substance to the G.o.ddess was the particular name she happened to bear.

Without the name she had no existence, and the name itself was but an epithet which could be interchanged with another epithet at the will of the worshipper. The G.o.ddesses of Babylonia were thus like the colours of a kaleidoscope, constantly shifting and pa.s.sing one into another. As long as the name existed, indeed, there was an individuality attached to it; but with the change of name the individuality changed too. The individuality depended more on the name in the case of the G.o.ddess than in the case of the G.o.d; for the G.o.ddess possessed nothing but the name which she could call her own, while the G.o.d was conceived of as a human lord and master with definite powers and attributes. There was, it is true, one G.o.ddess, Istar, who resembled the G.o.d in this respect; but it was just the G.o.ddess Istar who retained her independent personality with as much tenacity as the G.o.ds.

When once the various sun-G.o.ds of Babylonia had been a.s.similated, or identified, one with the other, it was not difficult to extend the process yet further. As the city of Merodach increased in power, lording it over the other States of the country, and giving to their inhabitants its own name, so Merodach himself took precedence over the older G.o.ds of Babylonia, and claimed the authority and the attributes which had belonged to them. Their names, and therewith their powers, were transferred to him; the supremacy of En-lil, the wisdom of Ea, the glory of Anu, alike became his. The "tablets of destiny," which conferred on their possessor the government of the visible world, were taken from the older Bel and given to his younger rival; the wisdom of which Merodach had once been the interpreter now became his own; and, like Anu, his rule extended to the farthest regions of the sky. But in thus taking the place of the great G.o.ds of earth and heaven, Merodach was at the same time the inheritor and owner of their names. If the tablets of destiny had pa.s.sed into his possession, it was because he had a.s.sumed along with them the name of Bel; if Ea and Anu had yielded to him their ancient prerogatives, it was because he had himself been transformed into the Ea and Anu of the new official theology. The Babylonian hymn in honour of Merodach, when it declares that the fifty names of the great G.o.ds had been conferred upon him, only expresses in another form the conviction that he had entered into the heritage of the older G.o.ds.

As time went on, and Babylon continued to be the sovereign city of the kingdom, the position of its G.o.d became at once more exalted and more secure. The solar features in his character pa.s.sed out of sight; he was not only the giver of the empire of the world to his adopted son and vicegerent, the king of Babylon, he was also the divine counterpart and representative of the king in heaven. The G.o.d had made man in his own image, and he was now transformed into the likeness of men. Two ideas, consequently, struggled for the mastery in Babylonian religion-the anthropomorphic conception of the deity, and the belief in his identification with other G.o.ds; and the result was an amalgamation of the two. Merodach was the divine man, freed from the limitations of our mortal existence, and therefore able not only to rule over the other G.o.ds, but also, like the magician, to make their natures his own. The other G.o.ds continued to exist indeed, but it was as his subjects who had yielded up to him their powers, and of whom, accordingly, he could dispose as seemed to him good. Originally the first among his peers, he ended-at least in the belief of the native of Babylon-in becoming supreme over them, and absorbing into himself all the attributes and prerogatives of divinity.

It was not, however, till the closing days of Babylonian independence that an attempt was made to give outward and visible expression to the fact.

Nabonidos, the last king of Babylon and the nominee of its priesthood, took the images of the G.o.ds from their ancient shrines and carried them to Babylon. There, in the temple of Merodach, they formed as it were his court, bowing in reverence before him, when, on the festival of the New Year, he announced the destinies of the future. It was an effort to centralise the religion of the country, and give public proof of the supremacy of the G.o.d of Babylon. Like the parallel endeavour of Hezekiah in Judah, the attempt of Nabonidos naturally aroused the hostility of the local priesthoods; and, when Cyrus invaded the country, there was already a party in it ready to welcome him as a deliverer, and to maintain that Merodach himself had been angered by the sacrilegious king. The attempt, indeed, came too late, and Nabonidos was too superst.i.tious and full of respect for the older sanctuaries and G.o.ds of Babylonia to carry it out in other than a half-hearted way. But it indicated the tendency of religious thought, and the direction in which the official worship of Merodach was irresistibly bearing its adherents. Merodach, like his city, was supreme, and the older G.o.ds were surely pa.s.sing away.

The tendency was checked, however, by the long continuity of Babylonian history. Babylonian records went back far beyond the days when Babylon had become the capital of the kingdom. It was remembered that there had been other centres of power, in ages when as yet Babylon was but an obscure village. It was never forgotten that the G.o.d of Nippur had once made and unmade kings, that Akkad had been the seat of an empire, or that Ur had preceded Babylon as the capital of the ruling dynasty. Babylonian history did not begin with the rise of Babylon to power, much as the priests of Babylon wished to make it do so; and the chronological schemes which made a native of Babylon the first ruler of mankind, or traced to Babylon the first observations of astronomy, were but fictions which a little acquaintance with history could easily refute. The earlier cities of the land were proud of their traditions and their temples, and were not inclined to give them up in favour of the _parvenu_ city of Merodach; their religious corporations were still wealthy, and their sanctuaries still commanded the reverence of the people. Wholly to displace and efface them was impossible, as long as history continued to be written and the past to be remembered. The sun-G.o.d of Sippara, the moon-G.o.d of Ur or Harran, even En-lil of Nippur, all remained the rivals of Merodach down to the latest days of Babylonian existence. Nabonidos himself was forced to conform to the prevailing sentiment; he bestowed almost as much care on the temple of the moon-G.o.d at Harran, and the temple of the sun-G.o.d at Sippara, as upon that of Merodach at Babylon, though, it is true, he tells us that it was Merodach who bade him restore the sanctuary of Sin, while the sun-G.o.d of Sippara might be considered to be Merodach himself under another name.(261)

It was thus history which prevented the rise of anything like monotheism in Babylonia. It was impossible to break with the past, and the past was bound up with polytheism and with the existence of great cities, each with its separate G.o.d and sanctuary and the minor divinities who revolved around them. At the same time the tendency to monotheism existed; and could the Babylonian have blotted out the past, it might have ended in the worship of but one G.o.d. As it was, the language of the later inscriptions sometimes approaches very nearly that of the monotheist. When Nebuchadrezzar prays to Merodach, his words might often have been those of a Jew; and even at an earlier date the moon-G.o.d is called by his worshipper "supreme" in earth and heaven, omnipotent and creator of all things; while an old religious poem refers, in the abstract, to "the G.o.d"

who confers lordship on men. As was long ago pointed out by Sir H.

Rawlinson, Anu, whose written name became synonymous with "G.o.d," is identified with various cosmic deities, both male and female, in a theological list;(262) and Dr. Pinches has published a tablet in which the chief divinities of the Babylonian pantheon are resolved into forms of Merodach.(263) En-lil becomes "the Merodach of sovereignty," Nebo "the Merodach of earthly possessions," Nergal "the Merodach of war." This is but another way of expressing that identification of the G.o.d of Babylon with the other deities of Babylonian belief which, as we have seen, placed him at the head of the divine hierarchy, and, by depriving them of their attributes and powers, tended to reduce them into mere angel-ministers of a supreme G.o.d.

There was yet another cause which prevented the religion of Babylonia from a.s.suming a monotheistic form. As we have seen, the majority of the Babylonian G.o.ddesses followed the usual Semitic type, and were little else than reflections of the male divinity. But there was one G.o.ddess who retained her independence, and claimed equal rank with the G.o.ds. Against her power and prerogatives the influence of Semitic theology contended in vain. The Sumerian element continued to exist in the mixed Babylonian nation, and, like the woman who held a position in it which was denied her where the Semite was alone dominant, the G.o.ddess Istar remained the equal of the G.o.ds. Even her name never a.s.sumed the feminine termination which denoted the Semitic G.o.ddess; Semitised though she might be, she continued to be essentially a Sumerian deity.

Many years ago, in my Hibbert Lectures, I first drew attention to the fact that Istar belonged to the non-Semitic part of the Babylonian population, and in both name and attributes was foreign to Semitic modes of thought.

The best proof of this is to be found in the transformations she underwent when her worship was carried by Babylonian culture to the more purely Semitic peoples of the West. In Arabia and Moab she became a male deity; the ideas and functions connected with her were incompatible in the Semitic mind with the conception of a female divinity. Even in Babylonia itself there were those who believed in a male Istar;(264) and the official theology itself spoke of an androgynous deity, of an Istar who was at once a G.o.ddess and a G.o.d.(265) In Canaan, where her female nature was accepted, she was changed into a Semitic G.o.ddess; the feminine suffix was attached to her name, and her attributes were a.s.similated to those of the native G.o.ddess Asherah. In a.s.syria, too, we can see the same process going on. The name of Istar with the feminine termination of Semitic grammar becomes a mere synonym of "G.o.ddess," and, as in Canaan, the Istars, or rather the Ashtoreths, mean merely the G.o.ddesses of the popular cult, the female counterparts of the Baalim or "Baals." It was only the State religion, which had its roots in Babylonia, that prevented Istar of Nineveh or Istar of Arbela from becoming a Canaanitish Ashtoreth.

This was the fate that had actually befallen some of the old Sumerian deities. In the Sippara of Semitic days, for example, the wife of the sun-G.o.d was the G.o.ddess a. But a had once been the sun-G.o.d himself, and texts exist in which he is still regarded as a G.o.d. Sumerian grammar was genderless; there was no distinction in it between masculine and feminine, and the divine names of the Sumerian pantheon could consequently be cla.s.sified by the Semite as he would. He had only to apply a feminine epithet to one of them, and it forthwith became the name of a G.o.ddess.

Sippara already had its sun-G.o.d Samas: there was no room for another, and a accordingly became his wife. But in becoming his wife she lost her individuality; her attributes and powers were absorbed by Samas, and in the later Semitic theology she serves only to complete the divine family or triad.

Istar succeeded in escaping any such effacement or degradation. Her worship was too deeply rooted in Babylonia, and too intimately a.s.sociated with the religious traditions of the past. The same historical reasons which prevented monotheism from developing out of Babylonian polytheism prevented Istar from degenerating into an Ashtoreth. At times she came perilously near to such a fate: in the penitential psalms we find the beginnings of it; and, when Babylon became the head of the kingdom, the supremacy of Merodach threatened the independence and authority of Istar even more than it threatened those of the other "great G.o.ds." But the cult of Istar had been fixed and established long before Merodach was more than a petty provincial G.o.d; she was the G.o.ddess and patroness of Erech, and Erech had once been the capital of a Babylonian empire. It was needful that that fact should be forgotten before Istar could be dethroned from the position she held in the religion of Babylonia, whether official or popular.

All attempts to find a Semitic etymology for the name of Istar have been a failure. We must be content to leave it unexplained, and to recognise the foreign character both of the name and of the G.o.ddess whom it represented.

In Babylonia the name was never Semitised; the character of the G.o.ddess, on the other hand, was adapted, though imperfectly, to Semitic modes of thought. She took upon her the attributes of a Baal, and presided over war as well as over love. One result of this mingling of Semitic and Sumerian ideas was the difficulty of fitting her into the family system of Semitic theology. She could not have a wife, for she was a G.o.ddess; it was equally difficult to a.s.sign to her her shadow and counterpart, which was contrary to all the preconceptions of the Semitic mind. Generally, therefore, if not officially, she was conceived of as a virgin, or at all events as a G.o.ddess who might indulge in amours so long as they did not lead to regular marriage. Even Tammuz was the bridegroom rather than the husband of her youth, and he too had been banished to the darkness of the underground world long before Istar herself had interfered with the affairs of men. She has been described as the female principle corresponding with the male principle in the world: but the description is incorrect; she was rather the male principle in female form.

Istar at the outset was the spirit of the evening star. In days, however, when astronomy was as yet in its infancy, the evening and the morning stars were believed to be the same. It was only in aftertimes that an endeavour was made to distinguish between the Istar of the evening and the Istar of the morning. Originally they were one and the same, the herald at once of night and day. It was on this account that Istar was a.s.sociated with Ana, the sky. The sky was her father, for she was born from it at sunset and dawn; and if other traditions or myths made her the daughter of the moon-G.o.d, they were not accepted at Erech, the centre and source of her cult.

In virtue of her origin she formed a triad with Samas and Sin. The sun, the moon, and the evening star divided, as it were, the heavens between them, and presided over its destinies. They were the luminaries that regulated the seasons of the year and determined the orderly course of the present creation. Istar represents "the stars " of Genesis that were made with the sun and moon. But in the Babylonian system the triad of Istar, Sin, and Samas was not made, they were deities that were born. Before them was the older and higher triad of Anu, Bel, and Ea,-the sky, the earth, and the water,-the three elements of which the whole universe was formed.

How the spirit of the evening star came in time to be the G.o.ddess of love, is not difficult to understand. Even modern poets have sung of the evening as the season of lovers, when the work and business of the day are over, and words of love can be whispered under the pale light of the evening star. But this alone will not explain the licentious worship that was carried on at Erech in the name of Istar. It was essentially Semitic in its character, and ill.u.s.trates that intensity of belief which made the Semite sacrifice all he possessed to the deity whom he adored. The prost.i.tution that was practised in the name of Istar had the same origin as the sacrifice of the firstborn, or the orgies that were celebrated in the temples of the sun-G.o.d.

At Erech, Istar was served by organised bands of unmarried maidens who prost.i.tuted themselves in honour of the G.o.ddess. The prost.i.tution was strictly religious, as much so as the ceremonial cannibalism formerly prevalent among the South Sea Islanders. In return for the lives they led, the "handmaids of Istar" were independent and free from the control of men. They formed a religious community, the distinguishing feature of which was the power of indulging the pa.s.sions of womanhood without the disabilities which amongst a Semitic population these would otherwise have brought. The "handmaid of Istar" owned allegiance only to the G.o.ddess she served. Her freedom was dependent on her priesthood, but in return for this freedom she had to give up all the pleasures of family life. It was a self-surrender which placed the priestess outside the restrictions of the family code, and was yet for the sake of a principle which made that family code possible. Baal, the lord of the Semitic family, claimed the firstborn as his right, and Istar or Ashtoreth similarly demanded the service of its daughters.

It was the same in Canaan as at Erech. Did the rites, and the beliefs on which the rites were based, migrate from Babylonia to the West along with Babylonian culture, or were they a common Semitic heritage in which Erech and Phnicia shared alike? It is difficult to give a precise answer to the question. On the one hand, we know that the Ashtoreth of Canaan was of Babylonian birth, and that in days far remote the theology of the Canaanite was profoundly influenced by that of Babylonia; on the other hand, the rites with which Istar was worshipped were confined in Babylonia to Erech; it was there only that her "handmaids" and eunuch-priests were organised into communities, and that unspeakable abominations were practised in her name. The Istar who was adored elsewhere was a chaste and pa.s.sionless G.o.ddess, the mother of her people whom she had begotten, or their stern leader in war. It does not seem likely that a cult which was unable to spread in Babylonia or a.s.syria should nevertheless have taken deep root in Phnicia, had there not already been there a soil prepared to receive it. Erech was essentially a Semitic city; its supreme G.o.d Anu had all the features of the Semitic Baal, "the lord of heaven"; and its G.o.ddess Istar, Sumerian though she may have been in origin, like Anu himself, had clothed herself in a Semitic dress.

Moreover, there was another side to the worship of Istar which bears indirect testimony to the Semitic origin of her cult at Erech. By the side of the Istar of the official faith there was another Istar, who presided over magic and witchcraft. Her priestesses were the witches who plied their unholy calling under the shadow of night, and mixed the poisonous philtres which drained away the strength of their hapless victims. The black Istar, as we may call her, was a parody of the G.o.ddess of love; and the rites with which she was adored, and the ministers by whom she was served, were equally parodies of the cult that was carried on at Erech.

But the black Istar was not only a parody of the G.o.ddess of the State religion, she was also the Istar of the popular creed, of the creed of that part of the population, in fact, which was least intermixed with Semitic elements and least influenced by Semitic beliefs. It was amongst this portion of the nation that the old Sumerian animism lingered longest and resisted the purer teaching of the educated cla.s.s. The Semitic conceptions which underlay the worship of Istar at Erech were never thoroughly a.s.similated by it; all that it could do was to create a parody and caricature of the official cult, adapting it to those older beliefs and ideas which bad found their centre in the temple of En-lil. The black Istar was a Sumerian ghost masquerading in Semitic garb.

As Bel attracted to himself the other G.o.ds, appropriating their names and therewith their essence and attributes, so Istar attracted the unsubstantial G.o.ddesses of the Babylonian pantheon. They became mere epithets of the one female divinity who maintained her independent existence by the side of the male G.o.ds. One by one they were identified with her person, and pa.s.sed into the Istarat, or Istars, of the later creed. Like the Baalim, the Istarat owed what separate individuality they possessed to geography. On the theological side the Istar of Nineveh was identical with the Istar of Arbela; what distinguished them was the local sphere over which they held jurisdiction. The difference between them was purely geographical: the one was attached to a particular area over which her power extended, and where she was adored, while the other was the G.o.ddess of another city-that was all. It was the same G.o.ddess, but a different local cult. The deity remained the same, but her relations, both to her worshippers and to the other G.o.ds, were changed. There is no trans.m.u.tation of form as in Egypt, but a change of relations, which have their origin in geographical variety.