The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Part 23

Even Nabonidos, with all his centralising zeal on behalf of Merodach of Babylon, was constrained to lavish gifts and honours on the sun-G.o.d of Sippara, at all events in the early part of his reign.

We must therefore look upon the temple as the oldest unit in the civilisation of Babylonia. Babylonian culture begins with the temple, with the worship of a deity or a spirit, and with the ministers attached to the cult. Centuries before En-lil of Nippur had developed into a Semitic Bel, an earthly dwelling-house had been provided for him which became in time the temple of a G.o.d. Its first name, e-kur, "the house of the earth" or "mountain," continued always to cling to it, even though the original meaning of the name was forgotten, and it had come to signify a temple in the later sense of the word.

The temple was the sign and token of the reclamation of the primitive Babylonian swamp. Before it could be erected, it was needful to construct a platform of solid earth and brickwork, which should rise above the pestiferous marsh, and serve as a foundation for the building. The Sumerians called the platform the ki-gal or "great place"; it was the first place of human or divine habitation wrested from the waters of the swamp, and it marked the triumph of civilised man over nature.

Emphatically, therefore, it was a "great place," a solid resting-place in a world of water and slime.

On the platform the temple buildings were piled. There was no stone in Babylonia; it was a land of mud, and of mud bricks, accordingly, baked in the sun, the temple of the G.o.d was constructed. What was lost in beauty or design was gained in solidity. The Babylonian temples were huge ma.s.ses of brick, square for the most part, and with the four corners facing the four cardinal points. It was only exceptionally that the four sides, instead of the four corners, were made to front the four "winds."

These ma.s.ses of brick were continually growing in height. The crude bricks soon disintegrated, and the heavy rains of a Babylonian winter quickly reduced them to their primeval mud. Constant restorations were therefore needed, and the history of a Babylonian temple is that of perpetual repairs. Efforts were made to keep the walls from crumbling away by building b.u.t.tresses against them, and the bricks were cemented together with bitumen. But all precautions were in vain. A period of national decay inevitably brought with it the decay also of the temples, and a return of prosperity meant their restoration on the disintegrated ruins of the older edifice. The artificial platform became a _tel_ or mound.

But the growth in height was not displeasing to the priestly builders. The higher the temple rose above the level of the plain, the better they were pleased. A characteristic of the Babylonian temple, in fact, was the _ziggurat_ or "tower" attached to each, whose head it was designed should "reach to heaven." The word _ziggurat_ means a "lofty peak," and the royal builders of Babylonia vied with one another in making the temple towers they erected as high as possible.

There was more than one reason for this characteristic feature of religious Babylonian architecture. The first settlers in the plain of Babylonia must soon have discovered that the higher they could be above the surface of the ground the better it was for them. The nearer they ascended to the clouds of heaven, the freer they were from the miasmata and insects of the swamp. The same cause which led them to provide a platform for their temples, would have also led them to raise the temple as high as they could above the level of the plain. This, however, will not explain the origin of the tower itself. It would have been a reason for building the temple as high as possible, not for attaching to it a tower. Nor was the tower suitable for defence against an enemy, like the pylons of an Egyptian temple. At most it was a convenient watch-tower from which the movements of a hostile band could be observed. There must have been some other reason, more directly connected with religious beliefs or practices, which found its outward expression in the sacred tower.

The sanctuary of Nippur, it will be remembered, was the oldest in Northern Babylonia. And from time immemorial it had been known as e-kur, "the house of the mountain-land." It represented that underground world which was the home of En-lil and his ghosts; and this underground world, we must observe, was conceived of as a mountain. In fact, the cuneiform character which signifies "country" also signifies "mountain," and the hieroglyphic picture out of which it developed is the picture of a mountain-range. The land in which it was first drawn and stereotyped in writing must, it would seem, have been a mountainous one, like the land in which the subterranean realm of En-lil was regarded as a lofty hill. In other words, the Sumerians must have been the inhabitants of a mountainous country before they settled in the plain of Babylonia and laid the foundations of the temple of Nippur.

And this mountainous country lay to the north or east, where the mountains of Elam and Kurdistan border the Babylonian plain. In the story of the Deluge the ark is made to rest on the summit of the mountain of Nizir, which is probably the modern Rowandiz, to the north-east of a.s.syria; and the G.o.ds were believed to have been born in "the mountain of the world,"

in the land of Arallu.(343) Here, too, they held their court; "I will ascend into heaven," the Babylonian monarch is made to say in the 14th chapter of Isaiah, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of El; I will sit also upon the mount of the a.s.sembly (of the G.o.ds), in the extremities of the north;(344) I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High." More than one temple in both Babylonia and a.s.syria took its name from this "mountain of the world"; the _ziggurat_ at Kis was known as "the house of the mountain of mankind," while a temple at Ur was ent.i.tled "the house of the mountain," and the shrine of Gula at Babylon was "the house of the holy hill."(345)

All over Babylonia, accordingly, the mountain is brought into close connection with the religious cult. Not at Nippur only, but in other cities as well, the home of the G.o.ds is on the summit of an Olympos, within whose subterranean recesses they were born when as yet the primitive ghost or spirit had not become a G.o.d. Sumerian religion must have grown up rather among the mountains than in the plain, and the memory of its birthplace was preserved by religious conservatism. The _ziggurat_ of the temple goes back to the days when the G.o.ds were still G.o.ds of the mountain, and the builders of the temple sought to force a way into the heavenly Olympos by raising artificially an imitation of the mountain on the alluvial plain. The tower was a mimic representation of the e-kur, or mountain of the earth itself, where En-lil, "the G.o.d of the great mountain" (_sadu rabu_), had his seat. And the earth could have been figured as a mountain only by the inhabitants of a mountainous land.

But this conception of the world of G.o.ds and men stands in glaring contrast to the cosmology of Eridu. There the primeval earth was not a mountain peak, but the flat lands reclaimed from the sea. The G.o.ds and spirits had their home in the abysses of the ocean, not in the dark recesses of a mountain of the north; the centre of the world was the palace of Ea beneath the waves, not "the mountain-house" of En-lil, or the dark caverns of "the mountain of Arallu." Once more we are confronted by a twofold element in Babylonian thought and religion, and a proof of its compound nature. Like the contradictory elements in Egyptian religion, which can best be explained by the composite character of the people, the contradictory elements in Babylonian religion imply that mixture of races which is described in the fragments of Berossos.

In the tower or _ziggurat_, accordingly, we must see a reflection of the belief that this nether earth is a mountain whose highest peak supports the vault of the sky. Around it float the stars and clouds, concealing the heaven of the G.o.ds from the eyes of man. But this Olympian heaven was really an afterthought. It was not until the ghosts of the lower world had developed into G.o.ds, and been transferred from the heart of the mountain to its summit, that it had any existence at all. It belongs to the age of astro-theology, to the time when the moon and sun and host of heaven became divine, and received the homage of mankind. This is an age to which I shall have to refer again in my next and concluding lecture. It was the time when the _ziggurat_ began to consist of seven storeys, dedicated to the seven planets, when the _ziggurat_ of Erech was called "the house of the seven black stones," and that of Borsippa, "of the seven zones of heaven and earth."(346)

The _ziggurat_ occupied but a small part of the temple area. What the temple was like we know to a certain extent, not only from the American excavations at Nippur, but more especially from the accounts given us by Herodotos and by a cuneiform tablet which describes the great temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon. The latter was called e-Saggila, "the house of the exalted head"; and though the account of Herodotos is probably quoted from an earlier author, while the cuneiform tablet, which was seen and translated by Mr. George Smith at Constantinople, has unfortunately been lost, there is nevertheless no ground in either case for mistrust. The description given by Herodotos fully agrees with that of the tablet.

The visitor to the temple first entered the "Great" or Outer Court. It was 900 feet in breadth, and more than 1150 in length. If we may judge from the a.n.a.logy of Nippur and Lagas, an arcade ran round its interior, supported on columns, and two larger, but detached, columns of brick or stone stood on either side of the entrance. At Babylon a second court opened out of the first, devoted to the worship of the G.o.ddesses Istar and Zamama. Six gates pierced the walls-the Grand Gate, the Gate of the Rising Sun, the Great Gate, the Gate of the Colossi, the Gate of the Ca.n.a.l, and the Gate of the Tower-view.(347) Then came the _kigallu_, or platform, of the original temple, the sides, and not the corners of which faced the four cardinal points, and which possessed four gates, each in the centre of a side. In it was the _ziggurat_, "the house of the foundation of heaven and earth," as it was termed, with its seven stages, which rose one above the other in gradually diminishing proportions to a height of 300 feet.(348) A winding ramp led upwards on the outside, connecting the stages with each other, and allowing a chariot to be driven along it to the top. Here in the last of the seven stages was the chamber of the G.o.d.

It contained no image of the deity, only a couch of gold and a golden table for the shewbread.(349) None but a woman into whom the G.o.d had breathed the spirit of prophecy was allowed to enter it, and it was to her that Bel revealed himself at night on his golden couch and delivered his oracles. As in Greece, so too in Babylonia and a.s.syria, women were inspired prophetesses of the G.o.ds. It was from the priestesses and serving-women of Istar of Arbela that Esar-haddon received the oracles of the G.o.ddess; and we are reminded that in Israel also it was the prophetess Deborah who roused her countrymen to battle, and Huldah, rather than Jeremiah, to whom the high priest betook himself that he might hear "the word of the Lord."

It is significant that the place of the oracle was the topmost chamber of the tower. The G.o.d is conceived as coming down from heaven;(350) it is there that he lives, not in the underground recesses of the mountain of the world or fathomless abysses of the sea. When the _ziggurat_ took its final shape, the deities of Babylonia had already been transported to the sky.

It is also significant that there was no image of the G.o.d. The spiritual had been finally separated from the material, and where the G.o.d himself came in spiritual form no material image of him was needed. Though none might be able to see him with mortal eye save only his inspired priestess, he was nevertheless as actually present as if he had embodied himself in some statue of metal or stone. The denizen of heaven required no body or form of earthly make; the divine spirits who were worshipped in the sun or stars were seen only by the eye of faith.

But it was in the _ziggurat_ only that the deity thus came down from heaven in spiritual guise. In the chapels and shrines that stood at its foot images were numerous; here the mult.i.tude, whether of priests or laymen, served and worshipped, and the older traditions of religion remained intact. On the eastern side of the tower was the sanctuary of Nebo, the "angel" or interpreter of the will of Merodach, with Tasmit, his wife. To the north were the chapels of Ea and Nusku, and to the south those of Anu and En-lil, while westward was the temple of Merodach himself. It consisted of a double building, with a court between the two wings. In the recesses of the inner sanctuary was the _papakhu_, or "Holy of Holies," with its golden image of the G.o.d. Here too was the golden table of shewbread and the _parakku_, or mercy-seat, which at times gave its name to the whole shrine.

The innermost sanctuary was known as the Du-azagga, or "Holy Hill," after which the month Tisri received one of its names.(351) But the name had really come from Eridu. It was the dwelling-place of Ea on the eastern horizon of the sea, where the sun rises from the deep,(352) and Asari accordingly was ent.i.tled its "son." When Asari became Merodach of Babylon, the Holy Mound or Hill migrated with him, and the seat of the oracular wisdom of Ea was transformed into the shrine of Merodach, where he in his turn delivered his oracles on the festival of the New Year.(353) Lehmann(354) has shown that originally it represented the mercy-seat, the "golden throne" of the description of Herodotos, above which the deity seated himself when he descended to announce the future destinies of man.

It was only subsequently that it was extended to the "Holy of Holies" in which the mercy-seat stood.

A golden altar seems to have been raised close to the mercy-seat of the G.o.d. If Herodotos may be trusted, lambs only were allowed to be sacrificed upon it. But there was another and larger altar in the outer court. On this whole sheep were offered, as well as frankincense.

The architectural arrangement of a Babylonian temple, however, was not always the same. The orientation of the temple of Merodach, as we have seen, differed from that of the majority of the Babylonian sanctuaries.

The number of chapels included within the sacred precincts varied greatly, and even the position of the great tower was not uniform. But the general plan was alike everywhere. There was first the great court, open to the sky, and surrounded by cloisters and colonnades. Here were the houses of the priests and other ministers of the temple, the library and school, shops for the manufacture and sale of votive objects, even the stalls wherein the animals were kept that were intended for sacrifice. In the centre of the court stood an altar of sacrifice, with large vases for the purposes of ablution by the side of it, as well as a "sea," or basin of water, which derived its name from the fact that it was a symbol of the primeval "deep." The basin was of bronze or stone, and was at times supported on the backs of twelve oxen, as we learn from an old hymn which describes the construction of one of them.(355) At other times, as at Lagas, the basin was decorated with a frieze of female figures, who pour water from the vases in their outstretched hands.(356) The purifying effects of the water of the "deep" were transferred to that of the mimic "sea," and the worshipper who entered the temple after washing in it became ceremonially pure.

The great court, with its two isolated columns in front of the entrance, led into a second, from the floor of which rose the _ziggurat_ or tower.

The second court formed the approach to the temple proper, which again consisted of an outer sanctuary and an inner shrine. Whether the laity were admitted into its inner recesses is doubtful. No one, indeed, could appear before the G.o.d except through the mediation of a priest; and on the seal-cylinders a frequent representation is that of a worshipper whom the priest is leading by the hand and presenting to the image of a deity. But it is not certain that the image represented on them was that which stood in the Holy of Holies, or innermost shrine; it may have been a second image, erected in another part of the temple. On the other hand, the numerous chapels of the secondary G.o.ds who formed the court of the chief deity of a city, can hardly have been furnished with more than one statue, and it is even questionable whether they consisted of more than one chamber. Perhaps it was only from the topmost room of the tower that the layman was absolutely excluded.

The Babylonian temple, it will be seen, thus closely resembled the temple of Solomon. That, too, had its two courts, its chambers for the priests, its sanctuary, and its Holy of Holies. Both alike were externally mere rectangular boxes, without architectural beauty or variety of design. It was only in the possession of a tower that the Babylonian temple differed from the Israelite. They agreed even in the details of their furniture.

The two altars of the Babylonian sanctuary are found again in the temple of Jerusalem; so too are the mercy-seat and the table of shewbread. Even the bronze "sea" of Solomon, with its twelve oxen, is at last accounted for; it was modelled after a Babylonian original, and goes back to the cosmological ideas which had their source in Eridu. Yet more striking are the twin pillars that flanked the gateway of the court, remains of which have been found both at Nippur and at Tello. They are exactly parallel to the twin pillars which Solomon set up "in the porch of the temple," and which he named Yakin and Boaz. In these, again, we may find vestiges of a belief which had its roots in the theology of Eridu. When Adapa, the first man, was sent by Ea to the heaven of Anu, he found on either side of the gate two G.o.ds clothed in mourning, and weeping for their untimely removal from the earth. Like the two cherubim who guarded the tree of life, they guarded the gate of heaven. One of them was Tammuz, the other Nin-gis-zida, "the lord of the firmly planted stake." Each had perished, it would seem, in the prime of life, and hence were fitly set to guard the gates of heaven and prevent mortal man from forcing his way into the realm of immortality. Yakin, it should be noticed, is a very pa.s.sable translation of the Sumerian Nin-gis-zida; perhaps Boaz preserves, under a corrupted form, a reminiscence of Tammuz.

There was yet another parallelism between the temples of Babylonia and Jerusalem. The Hebrew ark was replaced in Babylonia by a ship. The ship was dedicated to the G.o.d or G.o.ddess whose image it contained, and was often of considerable size. Its sides were frequently inlaid with gems and gold, and it always bore a special name. One at least of the names indicates that the ship goes back to the days when as yet the G.o.ds had not a.s.sumed human forms; the ship of Bau is still that of "the holy cow." In early times the ship was provided with captain and crew; later, it was reduced in size so that it could be carried like an ark on the shoulders of men. But its original object is clear. On days of festival the G.o.d was rowed in it on the sacred river, where he could enjoy the cool breeze, and return, as it were, to the "pure" waters of the primeval deep. Gradually it became merely his travelling home when he left his usual dwelling-place. In a.s.syria its place was even taken by a throne or platform borne upon the shoulders in the religious processions. The ship, in fact, pa.s.sed into an ark, the curtained palanquin or shrine wherein the deity could conceal himself from the eyes of the profane when he left his own sanctuary.

A discovery made by Mr. Hormuzd Ra.s.sam in the mounds of Balawat, some fifteen miles from Mossul, shows that in a.s.syria the development of the ship into the ark was as complete as it was in Israel. Here he found a small chapel dedicated to the G.o.d of dreams. At the entrance of the sanctuary was a stone coffer, which contained two small alabaster slabs thickly covered with cuneiform writing. They proved to be records of the conquests of a.s.sur-n.a.z.ir-pal, the builder of the chapel, and each tablet contained the same text. It was not surprising that the native workmen when they opened the coffer believed that they had discovered the veritable tables of the Mosaic Law! We are told in the Old Testament that the latter were kept in the ark. Not far from the coffer in the north-west corner of the shrine was a stone altar the ascent to which was by a flight of five steps.

The temples were served by an army of priests. At the head came the _patesi_ or "high priest," who in the early days of Babylonian history performed the functions of a king. But the _patesi_ was essentially the vicegerent of the G.o.d. The G.o.d delegated his powers to him, and allowed him to exercise them on earth. It was the doctrine of priestly mediation carried to its logical conclusion. Only through the priest could the deity be approached, and in the absence of the deity the high priest took his place. At Babylon, as we have seen, the divine rights were conferred by an act of adoption; the vicegerent of Bel, by "taking the hand" and becoming the son of the G.o.d, acquired the right to exercise his sovereignty over men. An early king of Erech calls himself the son of the G.o.ddess Nin-?un.

From the outset the Babylonian monarchy was essentially theocratic; the king was simply the high priest in a new form.

But with the rise of Semitic supremacy the king himself became a G.o.d. The vicegerent had taken to himself all the attributes of the deity, the adopted son succeeded to the rights and powers of his divine father. The _patesi_ ceased to be the king himself, and became instead his viceroy and lieutenant. Wherever the supreme monarch had a governor who acted in his name, he had also a representative of his divine authority. There were high priests of the G.o.d on earth as well as of the G.o.ds in heaven.

A new term was wanted to take the place of _patesi_, which had thus come to have a secular as well as a religious signification. It was found in _sangu_, which, more especially in the a.s.syrian period, meant a chief priest. Every great sanctuary had its chief priests who corresponded to the Hebrew "sons of Aaron," with a "high priest" or _sangam-makhu_ at their head.(357) Under them were a large number of subordinate priests and temple ministers-the _kali_ or "gallos-priests,"(358) the _ni?akki_ or "sacrificers," the _ramki_ or "pourers of libations," and the _pasisi_ or "anointers with oil." There was even a special cla.s.s of bakers who made the sacred cakes that were used in the temple service, as well as "chanters" and "wailers," "carriers of the axe" and "of the spear." Above all, there were the prophets and augurs, the soothsayers (_makhkhi_) and necromancers (_museli_), and those who "inquired" of the dead (_saili_).

The _asipi_ or "prophets" const.i.tuted a cla.s.s apart. In some respects they resembled the prophets of Israel. It was "by order of the college of prophets" that a.s.sur-bani-pal purified the shrines of Babylon after the capture of the city, and the prophet accompanied even an army in the field. At times they predicted the future; more often it was rather an announcement of the will of Heaven which they delivered to mankind.(359) As they prophesied they poured out libations; hence it is that the purification of the shrines of the Babylonian temples was their special care, and that an old ritual text commands the prophet to pour out libations "for three days at dawn and night during the middle watch."(360) The word was borrowed by the writer of the Book of Daniel (ii. 10) under the form of _ashshaph_, which the Authorised Version renders "astrologers." But the Babylonian _asip_ or "prophet" was not an astrologer; he left to others the interpretation of the stars, and contented himself with counselling or foretelling the destinies of men.

Like his master Bel-Merodach, he was the interpreter of the wisdom of Ea, and the revealer of his counsels. The Holy of Holies in the great temple of Babylon, where Bel uttered his oracles, was known as the "house of prophecy," like the ship also in which the image of the G.o.d was ferried across the stream.(361) The prophet may have been part of the heritage bequeathed by Eridu to the Babylonian people.

By the side of the prophet stood the seer (_sabru_).(362) The seer and the prophet were distinct from one another; there was no confusion between their offices, as seems to have been at one time the case in Israel. The seer was not the "speaker" who declared the will of the G.o.ds or the fate that was decreed for man; it was, on the contrary, through visions and trances that the future was made known to him. a.s.sur-bani-pal tells us how, on the eve of the Elamite war, after he had invoked the aid and protection of Istar, "a seer slept and dreamed a prophetic dream; a vision of the night did Istar reveal unto him; he repeated it to me, saying: 'Istar, who dwelleth in Arbela, came down, and on the right hand and on the left hung (her) quivers; in her hand she held the bow; she drew the sharp war-sword and held it before her. Like a mother she speaketh with thee, she calleth thee; Istar, the queen of the G.o.ds, appointeth for thee a doom: ... "Eat food, drink wine, make music, exalt my divinity, until I march and this work of mine be accomplished. I will give thee thy heart's desire; thy face shall not grow pale, thy feet shall not totter." ' "

Here the message of the seer pa.s.ses into a prophecy, and his office is distinguished from that of the prophet only through the difference in the mode of revelation. The seer went back to the earliest ages of Semitic Babylonia. The "seer" of the palace of Sargon of Akkad is already mentioned on a contemporaneous tablet by the side of "the king" and "the queen."(363) Like the other priests among whom he was reckoned, it was necessary that he should be without bodily blemish. The leper, the blind, and the maimed were excluded from the service of the G.o.ds.(364)

How far the Babylonian prophet resembled the Hebrew prophet it is at present impossible to say. But there were certainly two important points in which they differed. The Babylonian prophet was, on the one side, a member of the priestly body; the mere peasant could not become an "utterer" of the will of heaven without previous training and consecration. There was, consequently, no such distinction between the prophet and the priest as prevailed in Israel; Babylonia was a theocratic, not a democratic State. On the other side, the prophet was closely linked with the magician and necromancer. Magic had been taken under the protection of the State religion, not repudiated and persecuted as among the Israelites. Hence, while the prophet was a priest to whom the rites of purification were specially entrusted, he was at the same time cla.s.sed with the _sailu_ who "inquired" of the dead, the _muselu_ or necromancer, and the _makhkhu_ or "soothsayer."

On the other hand, there were prophetesses as well as prophets in both Babylonia and Israel. The employment of women in the temple services peculiarly characterised Babylonia. As we have seen, it was a woman only who was privileged to enter the secret shrine of Bel-Merodach at Babylon; while unmarried women were consecrated, not only to Istar, but also to the sun-G.o.d, and, like the priests, formed a corporate community. We are told that in the lower world of Hades there were female as well as male soothsayers; it was the home of the black art, and so reflected the const.i.tution of the professors of sorcery in the upper world.

Along with the seer and the soothsayer, the prophet was thus annexed by the temple. A definite duty was a.s.signed to him there; he was "the pourer out" of libations. The libations were doubtless originally of "pure"

water, to which was subsequently added wine, whether made from the palm or the vine. Along with the libations all the first-fruits of the cultivated land were offered to the G.o.ds. Milk and b.u.t.ter and oil, dates and vegetables, were given in abundance. So too were the spices and incense that were brought from the southern coast of Arabia, the corn that was grown in the fields, garlic and other herbs from the garden, and honey from the hive. But animal sacrifices were not forgotten. Oxen and calves, sheep and lambs, goats and kids, fish and certain kinds of birds, were slain upon the altar, and so presented to the G.o.ds. It is noticeable that it was only the cultivated plant and the domesticated beast that were thus offered to the deity. The dog and swine, or rather wild boar, are never mentioned in the sacrificial lists. What man gave to heaven was what he ate himself, and reared or grew with the sweat of his brow. The gazelle, indeed, is named, but it is a scape-goat which is driven into the desert like the Hebrew Azazel, carrying away with it the sins and sickness of those who let it loose.(365) The G.o.ds of Semitic Babylonia were essentially human, and what man lived upon they too required. They had, moreover, given their worshippers all they most needed and prized-fruitful fields, fat cattle, rain in its season, and the blessings of the sunshine.

In return they demanded the first-fruits of what was in reality their own; they could, if they so chose, deprive man of the whole, but they were generously satisfied with a part. The Semitic Baal was indeed like a divine king; lord and master though he was of the cultivated soil and of all that it produced, he was content only with a share.

Was the firstborn of man included among the sacrifices that were deemed acceptable to heaven? Years ago I published an early text which seemed to show that such was the case. My interpretation of the text has been disputed, but it still appears to me to be the sole legitimate one. The text is bilingual in both Sumerian and Semitic, and therefore probably goes back to Sumerian times. Literally rendered, it is as follows: "Let the _algal_ proclaim: the offspring who raises his head among men, the offspring for his life he must give; the head of the offspring for the head of the man he must give, the neck of the offspring for the neck of the man he must give, the breast of the offspring for the breast of the man he must give."(366) It is difficult to attach any other meaning to this than that which makes it refer to the sacrifice of children.

The question, however, is really settled by the evidence of archaeology. On the famous stela of the Vultures, now in the Louvre, a sort of wicker-work cage is represented, filled with captives who are waiting to be put to death by the mace of the king.(367) On a certain cla.s.s of seal-cylinders, moreover, a scene is engraved which Menant seems to me to have rightly explained as depicting a human sacrifice. In later times, it is true, human sacrifice ceased to be practised; there are few, if any, references to it in the inscriptions, and the human victim is replaced by an ox or sheep. It was to the offended majesty of the a.s.syrian king rather than of the G.o.d a.s.sur that the a.s.syrian conqueror impaled or burnt the beaten foe; and among the lists of offerings that were made to the deified rulers of Babylonia, we look in vain for any mention of man or child. As in Israel, so too in the kingdoms of the Euphrates and Tigris, human sacrifice seems to have disappeared at an early date.

So, moreover, does another custom which has been revealed to us by the archaic sculptures of Tello. That was the custom of approaching the deity stripped of clothing;(368) and Professor Jastrow aptly compares with it not only the scanty dress of the Mohammedan pilgrims on Mount Arafat, but also Saul's conduct when the spirit of prophecy fell upon him. A similar custom prevailed in Keltic Ireland, and the Hindu still strips himself when he sits down to eat.

The growth of culture, and it may be also the mixture of races, thus deprived the G.o.ds of two of the prerogatives they had once enjoyed. They could no longer claim the firstborn of men, nor require that the worshipper should enter their presence naked and defenceless. But they retained all their other kingly rights. A t.i.the of all that the land produced was theirs, and it was rigorously exacted, for the support of the temples and priests. Babylonia, in short, was the inventor of t.i.the.

Why it should have been a tenth we cannot say. The numerical system of the Babylonians was s.e.xagesimal and duodecimal, not decimal, and the year consisted of twelve months, not of ten. Perhaps the inst.i.tution went back to a period when the year of twelve months had not yet been fixed, and, like the lunar year of the modern Mohammedan, it still possessed but ten months. However this may be, the t.i.the became a marked characteristic of Babylonian religious life. It was paid by all cla.s.ses; even the king and his heir were not exempt from it. One of the last acts of the crown prince Belshazzar was to pay the t.i.the, forty-seven shekels in amount, due from his sister to the temple of the sun-G.o.d at Sippara, at the very moment when Cyrus was knocking at the gates of Babylon.(369) It is probable that the daily sacrifices were provided for in great measure out of the t.i.the; at all events, a.s.sur-bani-pal tells us that after the suppression of the Babylonian revolt, he levied upon the people the provision needed for the sacrifices made to a.s.sur and Beltis and the G.o.ds of a.s.syria. They were, however, often endowed specially; thus Nebuchadrezzar made special provision for the daily sacrifice of eight lambs in the temple of Nergal at Cuthah; and an earlier king of Babylonia describes how he had increased the endowment of the stated offerings at Sippara.

The daily sacrifice was called the _?atttuku_, a term which goes back to the age when the Semite was first mingling with the older Sumerian.(370) There were other terms in use to denote the various kinds of offering that were presented to the G.o.ds. The animal sacrifice had the name of _zibu_, the meal-offering being known as manitu.(371) The free-will offering was _nidbu_; the "gift" or "benevolence" demanded by the G.o.d upon the produce of the field being _qurbannu_, the Hebrew _qorban_. Other terms also were employed, the exact sense of which is still uncertain; among them is one which probably means "trespa.s.s-offering."

It is impossible not to be struck by the many points of similarity between the Babylonian ritual and arrangement of the temples and that which existed among the Israelites. The temple of Solomon, in fact, was little more than a reproduction of a Babylonian sanctuary. And just as the palace of the Hebrew king adjoined the temple in which he claimed the right of offering sacrifice, so too at Babylon the palace of Nebuchadrezzar-who, it must be remembered, was a pontiff as well as a king-stood close to the temple of Merodach. Even the bronze serpent which Hezekiah destroyed finds its parallel in the bronze serpents erected in the gates of the Babylonian temples.(372) The internal decoration of the sanctuary, moreover, was similar in both countries. The walls were made gorgeous with enamelled bricks, or with plaques of gold and bronze and inlaid stones. Sometimes they were painted with vermilion, the monsters of the Epic of the Creation being pictured on the walls. But more often the painted or sculptured figures were, as at Jerusalem, those of cherubim and the sacred tree or other vegetable devices. At Erech, bull-headed colossi guarded the doors.

But the resemblance between the Babylonian and Hebrew rituals extends beyond the ceremonial of the temple of Solomon into the Levitical Law. In fact, the very term for law, the _torah_, as the Israelites called it, was borrowed from the Babylonian _tertu_, as was first pointed out by Professor Haupt. It is even a question whether the word is not a derivative from the verb _aharu_, "to send" or "direct," from which the name of Aaron was also formed. However this may be, even the technical words of the Mosaic Law recur in the ritual texts of early Babylonia. The biblical _kipper_, "atonement," is the a.s.syrian _kuppuru_; and the _qorban_, as we have seen, is the a.s.syrian _qurbannu_. A distinction was made between the offerings of the rich and of the poor (_muskinu_),(373) and the sacrificial animal was required to be "without blemish" (_salmu_).

The "right" thigh or shoulder of the victim was given to the priest, along with the loins and hide, the rump and tendons, and part of the stomach.(374) Still more interesting is it to find in the ritual of the prophets instructions for the sacrifice of a lamb at the gate of the house, the blood of which is to be smeared on the lintels and doorposts, as well as on the colossal images that guarded the entrance.(375) To this day in Egypt the same rite is practised, and when my dahabiah was launched I had to conform to it. On this occasion the blood of the lamb was allowed to fall over the sides of the lower deck.

There are other parallels between Babylonia and Mosaic Israel which have been brought forward by Professor Zimmern. In the "Tabernacle of the Congregation," or "Tent of meeting," he sees the place where "the proper time" (_moed_, a.s.syr. _adannu_) for an undertaking was determined by the _baru_ or seer; at any rate, "to determine the proper time" (_sakanu sa adanni_) was one of the functions of the Babylonian seer.(376) By the side of the rituals for the seers and prophets, moreover, there was another for the _zammari_ or "singers." The hierarchy of a Babylonian temple was, in short, the same as that of Israel.

But in addition to the architecture of the temple and the regulations of the ritual, there were yet other resemblances between the religious law of Babylonia and that of the Israelites. They may be traced in the numerous festivals of the calendar, and the time of year at which they were held.

Foremost among them was the festival of the New Year. Babylonia was primarily an agricultural community, and the festivals of its G.o.ds, like the names of the months, were determined by the necessities of agriculture. Spring and autumn were marked by the sowing of the seed and the garnering of the harvest. But neither the one nor the other took place in all parts of the country at the same time of the year. In the south the harvest might be gathered in when the corn was sown in the north, or the seed sown when in colder regions the harvest was gathered in.

Hence it was that the same festival might commemorate either the beginning or the end of the agricultural year. But in either case it was a period of rejoicing and rest from labour, of thanking the G.o.ds for their benefits, and offering them the first-fruits of the field. In the old days of Gudea of Lagas the year commenced with the festival of the G.o.ddess Bau in the middle of October; in the later Babylon of Khammurabi the feast was transferred to the spring, and the first month of the year began in March.