XIII. THE TRIAD AND THE COMBINED INVOCATION OF DEITIES
The Assyrian kings, in imitation of the example set by their Babylonian predecessors, are fond of introducing into their inscriptions, a series of gods under whose protection they place themselves. They do not do this as the earlier Babylonian rulers did, to emphasize the extent of their jurisdiction by adding to their pantheon the deities of towns or districts vanquished by them. The day of independent states being over, the importance of merely local deities had ceased. The theological system evolved in Babylonia in combination with the popular instinct had led to a selection out of the mass of deities of a limited number, each with tolerably definite attributes, and who together embraced all the forces under whose power mankind stood. Of these deities again, as we have seen, some acquired greater favor in Assyria than others, but for all that, the kings especially of the later period of Assyrian history were fond of including in an enumeration of the pantheon, even those who had no special significance. Policy and the meaningless imitation of earlier examples played an equal part in thus giving to the lists an aspect of formality that deprives them of the impression that they might otherwise make.
The combined invocations are found usually at the beginning and at the end of the inscriptions--at the beginning for invoking the aid of the gods, at the close for invoking their curses upon those who would attempt to destroy the ambitious monuments set up by the kings. Often, however, the narrative is interrupted for the purpose of making acknowledgment to a larger or smaller series of gods for victory, granted or hoped for. In these combined references a separate place belongs to the triad, Anu, Bel, and Ea. While not occupying the prominent position they have in Babylonian inscriptions, still the kings often mention Anu, Bel, and Ea separately, or Anu and Bel alone, ascribing victory to them, putting them down as the originators of the calendar system, and declaring themselves to have been nominated by them to rule over Assyria. Sargon, with his antiquarian zeal, appears to have made an effort to reinstate the triad as a special group in the pantheon. In general, however, they take their place with other gods. So Ramman-nirari I. invokes the curse of Ashur, Anu, Bel, Ea, and Ishtar, together with the Igigi and Anunnaki; but, what is more important, already at an early period the triad disappears altogether from the pantheon, except for the artificial attempts of Sargon to revive interest in them. In both the longer and shorter lists of gods enumerated by the kings from the time of Tiglathpileser, the triad is conspicuous for its absence.
As for the other gods, it is to some extent a matter of caprice which ones happen to be invoked, though just as frequently we see the motive for selecting certain ones of the pantheon. Thus, when proceeding to Babylonia for war or sacrifices, the gods of Babylonia are invoked, either Marduk and Nabu alone, as the chief gods, or Bel (i.e., Marduk), Sarpanitum, Nabu, Tashmitum, Nana, Nergal, with Ashur, or Ashur and Marduk, or Marduk and Nabu in combination with Ashur. At other times it depends upon the gods to whom certain kings may be especially attached, or with whom they may have special dealings in their inscriptions. Thus Tiglathpileser I., when speaking of the temple of Anu and Ramman, contents himself with invoking these two gods alone at the close of his great inscription. Elsewhere, when referring to the special gods of his city, he combines Anu and Ramman with Ishtar; but again, for no special reason, his prayer is addressed to Ashur, Shamash, and Ramman. The pantheon of Ramman-nirari I. consists either of the longer one above enumerated, or of Anu, Ashur, Shamash, Ramman, and Ishtar. As we proceed down the centuries, the formal lists at the beginning of inscriptions have a tendency to grow larger. Ashurnasirbal's pantheon consists of Bel and Nin-ib, Anu and Dagan, Sin, Anu, Ramman, and, of course, Ashur, though on special occasions, as when speaking of his achievements in the chase, he contents himself with a mention of Nin-ib and Nergal. He loves, too, to vary the style of his inscriptions by naming various groups of deities in pairs: now Ashur and Shamash, again Ashur and Nin-ib, or Ashur and Bel; then Shamash and Ramman, or a group of three deities, Ashur, Shamash, and Ramman, or Sin, Anu, and Ramman. His successors imitate this example, though each one chooses his own combinations. Shalmaneser II.'s pantheon embraces Ashur, Anu, Bel, Ea, Sin, Shamash, Nin-ib, Nergal, Nusku, Belit, and Ishtar--eleven in all. Sargon's practice varies. The best list is furnished by his account of the eight gates of his palace and of two walls, which he names after the gods in the following order:[328]
Shamash, who grants victory. } As the names for the Ramman, who brings superabundance. } eastern gates. Bel, who lays foundations. } For the northern gates. Belit, who brings fertility. } Anu, who blesses handiwork. } For the western Ishtar, who causes the inhabitants to flourish. } gates. Ea, who unlocks fountains. } For the southern } gates. Belit ilani,[329] who increases the offspring. } Ashur, who permits the king to grow old, and protects the troops.--For the inner wall. Nin-ib, who lays the foundations of the city.--For the outer wall.
The order here is dictated by the directions of the gates. Elsewhere he sets up the group Ea, Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Ramman, Nin-ib, and their consorts.
Sennacherib's fuller group consists of Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Bel (i.e., Marduk), Nabu, Nergal, Ishtar of Nineveh, and Ishtar of Arbela--only eight. But at the close of one of his building inscriptions[330] he invokes some twenty deities, adding to these eight, Nusku, Khani, Gaga, Sherua, Nin-gal, a god Azag-sir, and Nin-ib under three different forms; but it is evident that most of these are added to give effect and solemnity. They do not form part of the active pantheon. His successor, Esarhaddon, sets up various groups. At one time he enumerates Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Marduk, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela; at another he prefers different combinations of these gods. Ashurbanabal is more consistent than most of the Assyrian rulers, and furnishes at the same time the best list. While he, too, frequently mentions only a few deities, grouping three or four together, his longer series consists, with but one or two exceptions, invariably of the following, and who always occur in the same order: Ashur, Belit, Sin, Shamash, Ramman, Bel (i.e., Marduk), Nabu, Ishtar of Nineveh, the queen of Kidmuru, Ishtar of Arbela, Nin-ib, Nergal, and Nusku--thirteen in all. Of these, as we have seen, only some were actively worshipped at all times in Assyria; as for the others, the popularity of their cult varied from age to age, now being actively carried on under the stimulus afforded by the erection or improvement of an edifice sacred to the god, and again falling into comparative insignificance; but formally, at least, all these gods were regarded at all times as forming part of the pantheon of the 'great gods.' The testimony of Ashurbanabal thus becomes valuable as a proof that to the latest days of the Assyrian monarchy, the attachment to these gods was still strong enough to merit the formal acknowledgments of the king to them on all occasions, and that through their combined aid the glorious achievements of the past and present were attained.
FOOTNOTES:
[328] Cylinder, ll. 67-73.
[329] Ea's consort; see above, p. 231.
[330] Meissner-Rost, Bauinschriften Sanherib's, p. 99.
XIV. THE NEO-BABYLONIAN PERIOD
When upon the fall of the Assyrian empire, in 606 B.C., Babylonia regained her full measure of independence, Marduk once more obtained undisputed sway at the head of the pantheon. True, so far as Babylonia was concerned, Marduk was always the acknowledged head, but during the period that Assyria held Babylonia in a more or less rigid form of subjection it was inevitable that Ashur should lower the prestige of Marduk. When the kings of Assyria paid their respects to Marduk, it was always as second in rank to Ashur; and, what is more, they claimed Marduk and the other gods of Babylonia as their own, and as upholders of their own sovereignty. When the kings feel impelled to invade the southern districts, they not only claim to be under the protection of the Babylonian gods, but they carry these gods with them into the land to be invaded. 'Bel and the gods of Akkad leave Assyria and go to Babylonia' is the official term in which a campaign against Babylonia is described.[331] In the eyes of the Babylonians such a haughty assumption on the part of the Assyrians must have been regarded as humiliating to Marduk, Nabu, and their associates.
The state of affairs changed when Nebopolassar at the end of the seventh century once more claimed independent control over Babylonia. Marduk triumphs over Ashur. He is once more the great god, lord of gods, supreme king of the Igigi, the father of the Anunnaki--all titles that the Assyrians were fond of heaping upon Ashur. One feels the anxiety of Nebopolassar to emphasize the new order of things by attributing once more to Marduk what was formerly claimed for Ashur. The successor of Nebopolassar, the great Nebuchadnezzar, continues the policy of his father. He neglects no opportunity for exalting Marduk as the king, the creator, the leader of the gods, the lord of everything, the merciful one, the light of the gods, the all-wise. Nabu shares the honors with Marduk. Nebopolassar, indeed, accords to Nabu an equal share, and he does not hesitate at times to place the name Nabu before that of Marduk.[332] He does not speak of Nabu as the son of Marduk, and seems to be at particular pains to emphasize the equality of Nabu with Marduk. In this respect Nebopolassar presents a contrast to Hammurabi, who, it will be recalled, made an attempt to suppress the Nabu cult.[333] Nebopolassar, however, does not go to the extent of endeavoring to make Nabu supersede Marduk. He contents himself with manifesting his partiality for the former, and it is probably no accident that both his official name and that of his son contain the god Nabu as one of their elements, and not Marduk. One is inclined to suspect that this popularity of the Nabu cult is a trace of Assyrian influence. But whatever may have been Nebopolassar's intention in exalting Nabu at the cost of Marduk, Nebuchadnezzar restores the old relationship between the two. For him Nabu is again merely the son of Marduk, and he honors Nabu in this capacity. Like the Assyrian Nabu, the god places the sceptre in the king's hands, but he is, after all, only the supreme messenger of Marduk. In the closing days of the Babylonian monarchy a more serious attempt, it would appear, was made to displace Marduk. Nabonnedos formed the design of replacing both Marduk and Nabu by the cult of Shamash. He incurs the ill-will of the priests by paying much more attention to the restoration of the various Shamash temples in Babylonia than would appear to be consistent with devotion to Marduk. Cyrus, therefore, in his conquest of Babylonia, sets up the claim of being the savior of Marduk's honor.[334]
The Neo-Babylonian period may properly be designated as a religious age. The rulers, anxious to manifest their gratitude to the gods, and prompted in part, no doubt, by the desire to emulate the glorious architectural achievements of the Assyrian monarchs, devote themselves assiduously to the improvement of the great temples of the city of Babylon, and to the restoration or enlargement of those scattered throughout the country. Nebopolassar sets the example in this respect, which is considerably improved upon by Nebuchadnezzar. Over forty temples and shrines are mentioned in the latter's inscriptions as having been improved, enlarged, or restored by him; and the last king of Babylonia, Nabonnedos, endeavors to continue this royal policy of temple-building. In this respect the Neo-Babylonian rulers present a contrast to the Assyrian rulers, who were much more concerned in rearing grand edifices for themselves. While the gods were not neglected in Assyria, one hears much more of the magnificent palaces erected by the kings than of temples and shrines. In fact, as compared with Babylonia, Assyria was poor in the number of her temples. The chief sanctuaries to which the Neo-Babylonian kings devoted themselves were, in the first instance, E-sagila of Babylon and E-zida of Borsippa. Nebopolassar and his successors are fond of giving themselves the title of 'beautifier of E-Sagila and E-zida.' In these great temples sacred to Marduk and Nebo, there were shrines to Sarpanitum, Tashmitum, Nusku, Ea and others, which also engaged the energies of the rulers.
After Babylon came the old sanctuaries in the ancient religious centers of the south,--the temples to Shamash and his consort at Sippar and Larsa, the temples to Sin at Ur and Harran, to the old Ishtar or Anunit at Agade, to Nana in Erech. Thirdly, the cities of Babylon and Borsippa, to which the kings, especially Nebuchadnezzar, are deeply attached, were enriched with many sanctuaries more or less imposing, sacred to a variety of deities. So Shamash, Sin, Nin-makh,--i.e., the great lady, or Ishtar,--Nin-khar-shag, Gula, also appearing as Nin-Karrak,[335] have their temples in Babylon, while Ramman has one in Borsippa, and Gula no less than three sanctuaries--perhaps only small chapels--in Borsippa. Fourthly, there are sanctuaries of minor importance in other quarters of Babylonia. Among these we find mention of the improvement of sanctuaries to the local deity of Marad, whom Nebuchadnezzar simply calls Lugal-Marada, i.e., king of Marad, to Bel-sarbi, or Shar-sarbi, in Baz,--perhaps a title of Nergal,--to Nin-ib in Dilbat, to Ramman in Kumari(?).
Most of these sanctuaries are referred to in the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar--a circumstance which, in connection with the many other gods whom he invokes on various occasions, points to a great revival of ancient cults in his days. Some of these cults had never reached any degree of importance prior to his time. Hence it happens that we come across deities in his inscriptions of whom no mention is found elsewhere. It is probable that such gods were purely local deities, some of them, if not many, being at the same time personifications of the powers or phenomena of nature, while others may be familiar gods, masquerading under strange attributes. Unfortunately most of these gods are written in ideographic fashion, so that we cannot be certain of the reading of their names. Among these are Nin-lil-anna, a goddess called by Nebuchadnezzar 'the lady who loves me,'[336] and Tur-lil-en,[337] a god who is described as 'breaking the weapons of enemies.' As for Bel-sarbi, or Shar-sarbi, the god of Baz,[338] they appear to be titles rather than names. Dibbarra, Nergal and his consort Laz, and Zamama are also included in the pantheon of Nebuchadnezzar.
In regard to none of these deities do we find any conceptions different from those developed in the period of Hammurabi, any more than in the conceptions of those gods who occupy a more prominent place in the pantheon. Shamash is the judge, Sin is the wise one, Ramman the thunderer, and so on throughout the list. It was not a period favorable to the production of new religious thought, but only to the more or less artificial revival of old cults.
* * * * *
With the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus in 539 B.C., we reach the close of the period to be embraced in a history of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion. True, the Marduk and Nabu cults were upheld by the Persian rulers, and the policy of the latter in not disturbing the religious status was continued by the Greeks when they in turn succeeded the Persians in their control of Babylonia, but the presence of strange civilizations with totally different religious trains of thought was bound to affect the character of the old faith, and in time to threaten its existence. At all events, it ceases to have any interest for us. There are no further lines of development upon which it enters. The period of decay, of slow but sure decay, has set in. The cuneiform writing continues to be used till almost the beginning of our era, and so the religious cults draw out their existence to a late period; but as the writing and the civilization yield before new forces that entirely alter the character of Oriental culture, so also the religion, after sinking ever lower into the bogs of superstition, disappears, much as the canals and little streams of the Euphrates valley, through the neglect which settled over the country, become lost in the death-breeding swamps and marshes.
FOOTNOTES:
[331] Babylonian Chronicle B, col. iv. ll. 34, 35.
[332] Zeitschrift fuer Assyriologie, II. 72, col. i. ll. 2, 3.
[333] See above, p. 127.
[334] See a paper by Tiele, on "Cyrus and the Babylonian Religion," in the Proceedings of the Amsterdam Academy, 1896.
[335] For the identity of Nin-Karrak and Gula, see the 'Shurpu' Incantation Series, iv. l. 86 (ed. Zimmern), where the former is called the 'great physician,'--the epithet peculiar to Gula.
[336] East India House Inscription, col. iv. l. 44.
[337] VR. 34, col. ii. l. 26, or simply Tur-lil (East India House Inscription, col. iv. l. 49, not Tur-e, as Winckler, Keils Bibl. 3, 2, 18, reads).
[338] I.e., king or lord of Sarbi. Pognon (Les Inscriptions Babyloniennes de Wadl Brissa), p. 46, is of the opinion that sarbi is the palm, but he fails to bring sufficient proof, and his theory is improbable. The stem sarabu means to burn, and the "fiery lord" is certainly an epithet belonging to some solar deity.
XV. THE RELIGIOUS LITERATURE OF BABYLONIA
The pantheon of a religion presents us with the external phases of the religion in question. In order to penetrate further towards the core of the religion, and to see it at its best, the religious thought as manifested in the national literature constitutes our most valuable guide. The beginnings of Babylonian literature are enveloped in obscurity. We have seen that we are justified in passing beyond the period of Hammurabi[339] for these beginnings, but exactly when and precisely how the literary spirit first manifested itself in Babylonia will probably remain for a long time, if not for always, a matter of conjecture. The great political and religious centers of Babylonia, such as Ur, Sippar, Agade, Eridu, Nippur, Uruk, perhaps also Lagash, and later on Babylon, formed the foci of literary activity, as they were the starting-points of commercial enterprise. This intimate connection of religion with literature left its impress upon all branches into which the Babylonian literature was in the course of time differentiated. In a certain sense all the literature of Babylonia is religious. Even the legal formulas, as embodied in the so-called contract tablets, have a religious tinge. The priests being the scribes, a contract of any kind between two or more parties was a religious compact. The oath which accompanied the compact involved an invocation of the gods. The decree of the judges in a disputed suit was confirmed by an appeal to the gods. The terms in which the parties bound themselves consisted largely of religious phrases, and finally the dating of the tablet often contained a reference to some religious festival or to some event of religious import--such as the building of a sanctuary. Science, so far as it existed in Babylonia, never loosened the leading-strings that bound it to the prevailing religious thought. The observation of the stars was carried on under the belief of the supposed influence exerted by the heavenly bodies upon the fate of man; and surprising as we find the development of astronomical calculations and forecasts to be, mathematics does not pass beyond the limits of astrology. Medicine was likewise the concern of the priests. Disease was a divine infliction supposed to be due to the direct presence in the body, or to the hidden influence, of some pernicious spirit. The cure was effected by the exorcising of the troublesome spirit through prescribed formulas of supposed power, accompanied by symbolical acts. There is indeed no branch of human knowledge which so persistently retains its connection with religious beliefs among all peoples of antiquity as the one which to-day is regarded as resting solely upon a materialistic basis. As a consequence the Babylonians, although they made some progress in medicinal methods, and more especially in medical diagnosis, never dissociated medicinal remedies from the appeal to the gods. The recital of formulas was supposed to secure by their magic force the effectiveness of the medical potions that were offered to the sufferer.
As for the historical texts, the preceding chapters have illustrated how full they are of religious allusions, how at every turn we meet with the influence exerted by the priests as the composers of these texts. Almost all occurrences are given a religious coloring. That these texts furnish us with such valuable material, and such a quantity of it, is indeed to be traced directly to the fact that the historical literature is also the direct production of the religious leaders and guides of the people, acting at the command of rulers, who were desirous of emphasizing their dependence upon the gods of the country, and who made this dependence the basis of the authority they exerted.
Such being the general aspect of Babylonian literature, it is not always possible to draw a sharp line separating religious productions from such as may properly be termed secular. For example, the zodiacal system of the Babylonians, which we shall have occasion to discuss, although presenting a scientific aspect, is in reality an outcome of the religious thought; and so at other points it is necessary to pass over into the region of secular thought for illustrations of the religious beliefs. Bearing this in mind, we may set up a fivefold division of the religious literature of the Babylonians in the stricter sense: (1) the magical texts, (2) the hymns and prayers, (3) omens and forecasts, (4) the cosmology, (5) epics and legends. It will be apparent that the first three divisions represent a practical part of the literature, while the two latter are of a more purely literary character. The magical texts, as well as the hymns and prayers and omens, we can well imagine were produced as circumstances called them forth, and one can also understand how they should, at an early age, have been committed to writing. The incantations serving the practical purpose already referred to of securing a control over the spirit, it will be readily seen that such as had demonstrated their effectiveness would become popular. The desire would arise to preserve them for future generations. With that natural tendency of loose custom to become fixed law, these incantations would come to be permanently associated with certain temples. Rituals would thus arise. The incantation would be committed to writing so that one generation of priests might be certain of furnishing orthodox instruction to the other; and, once written, they would form part of the temple archives, finding a place in these archives by the side of the contract tablets, for which the sacred edifices of the country also served as depositories. The large quantity of incantation texts that have been found in Ashurbanabal's library,[340] as well as the variations and contrasts they present when compared with one another, are probably due to the various sources whence the scribes of the king, who were sent to the libraries of the south, collected their material. It is only reasonable to suppose that each great temple acquired in the course of time a ritual of its own, which, while perhaps not differing in any essential points from that introduced in another place, yet deviated from it sufficiently to impart to it a character of its own. In the case of some of the texts that have been preserved, it is still possible to determine through certain traits that they exhibit in what religious center they were produced. With considerable more guarantee of accuracy can this be done in the case of the hymns and prayers. Addressed as the latter were to certain deities, it stands to reason that they were written for use in the temples sacred to those deities, or, if not to be used, at least composed in honor of certain sanctuaries that contained the images of the deities thus exalted. Again, in the historical inscriptions of the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, prayers are introduced, and we are as a general thing expressly told on what occasion they were composed and in what sanctuary they were uttered. We may therefore conclude that those which have been preserved independently also served a practical purpose, and were written, not merely for certain occasions, but for certain places. The practical purpose served by texts containing omens and forecasts derived from the observation of the planets and stars, from monstrosities--human and animal--from strange occurrences, accidents, and the like, is too obvious to require demonstration. But while duly emphasizing the practical purpose that gave rise to the incantation texts, the hymns, the prayers and omens, we must be careful not to press this point too far. The rituals of the various temples once being fixed, the impulse to literary composition would still go on in an age marked by intellectual activity. The practical purpose would be followed by the pure love of composition. The attachment to certain sanctuaries or certain deities would inspire earnest and gifted priests to further efforts. Accordingly, while we cannot be certain that among the actual remains of magical texts and hymns we may not have specimens that belong to this class, there is no reason to question that such must have been produced. The guarantee for this hypothesis is furnished by the compositions that reflect the cosmological beliefs, the epics and legends that form the second half of the religious productions of Babylonia.
Speculation regarding the origin of the universe belongs to an early period in the development of culture. There are few people, however primitive their culture, who are not attracted by the spirit of curiosity to seek for some solution of the mysteries which they daily witness; but the systematization of these speculations does not take place until a body of men arises among a people capable of giving to the popular fancies a logical sequence, or the approach at least to a rational interpretation. This process, which resulted in producing in Babylonia compositions that unfold a system of creation, is one of long duration. It proceeds under the influence of the intellectual movements that manifest themselves from time to time with the attendant result that, as the conceptions become more definite and more elaborate, they reflect more accurately the aspirations of the various generations engaged in bringing these conceptions to their final form. When finally these beliefs and speculations are committed to writing, it is done in part for the purpose of assuring them a greater degree of permanence, and in part to establish more definitely the doctrines developed in the schools--to define, as it were, the norm of theological and philosophical thought.
In examining, therefore, the cosmological speculations of the Babylonians as they appear in the literary productions, we must carefully distinguish between those portions which are the productions of popular fancy, and therefore old, and those parts which give evidence of having been worked out in the schools. In a general way, also, we must distinguish between the contents and the form given to the speculations in question. We shall see in due time that a certain amount of historical tradition, however dimmed, has entered into the views evolved in Babylonia regarding the origin of things, inasmuch as the science of origins included for the Babylonians the beginning, not merely of gods, men, animals, and plants, but also of cities and of civilization in general. Still more pronounced is the historical spirit in the case of the epics and legends that here, as everywhere else, grew to even larger proportions, and were modified even after they were finally committed to writing. The great heroes of the past do not perish from the memory of a people, nor does the recollection of great events entirely pass away. In proportion as the traditions of the past become dimmed, the more easily do they lend themselves to a blending with popular myths regarding the phenomena of nature. To this material popularly produced, a literary shape would be given through the same medium that remodeled the popular cosmological speculations. The task would have a more purely literary aspect than that of systematizing the current views regarding the origin and order of things, since it would be free from any doctrinal tendency. The chief motive that would prompt the literati to thus collect the stories of favorite heroes and the traditions and the legends of the past would be--in addition, perhaps, to the pure pleasure of composition--the desire to preserve the stories for future generations, while a minor factor that may have entered into consideration would be the pedagogical one of adding to the material for study that might engage the attention and thoughts of the young aspirants to sacred and secular lore. While the ultimate aim of learning in Babylonia remained for all times a practical one, namely, the ability to act as a scribe or to serve in the cult, to render judicial decisions or to observe the movements of the stars, to interpret the signs of nature and the like, it was inevitable that through the intellectual activity thus evoked there would arise a spirit of a love of learning for learning's sake, and at all events a fondness for literary pursuits independent of any purely practical purposes served by such pursuits.
In this way we may account for the rise of the several divisions of the religious literature of Babylonia. Before turning to a detailed exposition of each of these divisions, it only remains to emphasize the minor part taken in all these literary labors by the Assyrians. The traditions embodied in the cosmological productions, the epics and legends of Babylonia, are no doubt as much the property of the Assyrians as of their southern cousins, just as the conceptions underlying the incantation texts and the hymns and prayers and omens, though produced in the south, are on the whole identical with those current in the north. Whatever differences we have discovered between the phases of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion, as manifested in the north and in the south, are not of a character to affect the questions and views involved in the religious literature. The stamp given to the literary products in this field, taken as a whole, is distinctly Babylonian. It is the spirit of the south that breathes through almost all the religious texts that have as yet been discovered. Only in some of the prayers and oracles and omens that are inserted in the historical inscriptions of Assyrian kings, or have been transmitted independently, do we recognize the work of Assyrian literati, imbued with a spirit peculiar to Assyria. Perhaps, too, in the final shape given to the tales connected with the creation of the gods and of men we may detect an Assyrian influence on Babylonian thought, some concession made at a period of Assyrian supremacy to certain religious conceptions peculiar to the north. But such influences are of an indirect character, and we may accept the statement of Ashurbanabal as literally true that the literature collected by him is a copy of what was found in the great literary archives of the south--and not only found, but produced there. In imitation of the example set by the south, schools were of a certainty established in Nineveh, Arbela, and elsewhere for the education of priests, scribes, and judges; but we have no evidence to show that they ever developed to the point of becoming intellectually independent of Babylonian models, except perhaps in minor particulars that need not enter into our calculations. This relationship between the intellectual life of Babylonia and Assyria finds its illustration and proof, not merely in the religious literature, but in the religious art and cult which, as we shall see, like the literature, bear the distinct impress of their southern origin, though modified in passing from the south to the north.
FOOTNOTES:
[339] See above, pp. 72, 114, 133 seq.
[340] See pp. 12-14.
XVI. THE MAGICAL TEXTS
Turning to the first subdivision of Babylonian religious literature, we find remains sufficient to justify us in concluding that there must have been produced a vast number of texts containing formulas and directions for securing a control over the spirits which were supposed at all times to be able to exercise a certain amount of power over men. By virtue of the aim served by these productions we may group them under the head of magical texts, or incantations. We have already indicated the manner in which these incantations grew into more or less rigid temple rituals. This growth accounts for the fact that the incantations generally framed in by ceremonial directions, prayers, and reflections, were combined into a continuous series (or volume, as we would say) of varying length, covering nine, ten, a dozen, twenty tablets or more. It has been generally assumed that these incantation texts constitute the oldest division of the religious literature of the Babylonians. The assertion in an unqualified form is hardly accurate, for the incantation texts, such as they lie before us, give evidence of having been submitted to the influences of an age much later than the one in which their substance was produced. Conceptions have been carried into them that were originally absent, and a form given to them that obliges us to distinguish between the underlying concepts, and the manner in which these concepts have been combined with views that reflect a later and, in many respects, a more advanced period. The incantation texts are certainly no older than texts furnishing omens. Some of the incantation texts indeed may not be any older than portions of the creation epic, and in the latter, as in other parts of the religious literature, there are elements as ancient and as primitive as anything to be found in the omens or incantations. So much, however, is true, that the incantations represent the earliest ritual proper to the Babylonian cult, and that the conceptions underlying this ritual are the emanation of popular thought, or, if you choose, of popular fancy of a most primitive character. It is also true that, on the whole, the incantation texts retain more traces of primitive popular thought than other divisions of the religious literature with the exception of the omens. The remodeling to which they were subjected did not destroy their original character to the extent that might have been expected--a circumstance due in the first instance to the persistency of the beliefs that called these texts forth.
Many of the texts containing incantations were found by the modern explorers in so mutilated a condition, that one can hardly hazard any generalizations as to the system followed in putting the incantations together. From the fact, however, that in so many instances the incantations form a series of longer or shorter extent, we may, for the present at least, conclude that the serial form was the method generally followed; and at all events, if not the general method, certainly a favorite one. Deviating from the ordinary custom of calling the series according to the opening line of the first tablet, the incantation texts were given a distinct title, which was either descriptive or chosen with reference to their general contents. So one series which covered at least sixteen tablets was known by the very natural name of the 'evil demon'; the incantations that it contained being intended as a protection against various classes of demons. Another is known as the series of 'head sickness,' and which deals, though not exclusively, with various forms of derangements having their seat in the brain. It covered no less than nine tablets. Two others bear names that are almost synonymous,--"Shurpu" and "Maklu," both signifying 'burning,' and so called from the chief topic dealt with in them, the burning of images of the sorcerers, and the incantations to be recited in connection with this symbolical act. The "Maklu" series embraced eight tablets and contained, according to Tallqvist's calculations,[341] originally about 1,550 lines, or upwards of 9,000 words. The "Shurpu" series, although embracing nine tablets, appears to have been somewhat shorter. In view of the extensive character of these series we are justified in speaking of incantation 'rituals.' The texts were evidently prepared with a practical purpose in view. The efficacy of certain formulas having been demonstrated, it was obviously of importance that their exact form should be preserved for future reference. But a given formula was effective only for a given case, or at most for certain correlated cases, and accordingly it became necessary to collect as many formulas as possible to cover all emergencies. The priests, acting as exorcisers, would be the ones interested in making such collections, and we may assume, as already suggested, that each temple would develop a collection of its own,--an incantation code that served as a guide for its priests. The natural tendency would be for these codes to increase from generation to generation, perhaps not rapidly, but steadily. New cases not as yet provided for would arise, and new formulas with new instructions would be produced; or the exorcisers at a certain temple would learn of remedies tried elsewhere, and would embody them in their own special code. In short, the growth of these incantation 'rituals' was probably similar to the manner in which, on the basis of actual practice, religious codes grew up around the sanctuaries of ancient Israel,--a process that terminated in the production of the various codes and rituals constituting the legal documents embodied in the Pentateuch.
The prominence given to Ea and to his favorite seat, the city of Eridu, in the incantations suggests the theory that many of our texts are to be ultimately traced to the temple of Ea, that once stood at Eridu. In that case an additional proof would be furnished of the great antiquity of the use of incantations in Babylonia. We must sharply distinguish however, as already emphasized, between the origin and the present form of the rituals. Again, those parts of a ritual in which Gibil, or Nusku, appears prominently would most naturally be produced by priests connected with a temple sacred to the one or the other of these gods. The practice of incantation, however, being common to all parts of Babylonia, we can hardly suppose that any temple should have existed which did not have its exorcising formulas. In the combination of these formulas into a ritual, due consideration would naturally be had to the special gods invoked, the obvious result of which would be to produce the long lists of deities that are often embodied in a single incantation. The details of this process can of course no longer be discerned, but the inevitable tendency would be towards increasing complications. The effort would be made to collect everything, and from all known quarters. Hence the heterogeneous elements to be detected in the texts, and which, while adding to their interest, also increase the difficulty of their interpretation. In consequence of the presence of such heterogeneous elements, it is difficult to determine within an incantation series any guiding principles that prompted the collectors. Still we can often distinguish large groups in a series that belong together. So we have whole series of addresses to the fire-god ending with incantations, and again a series of descriptions of the group of seven spirits serving a similar purpose as introductions to incantations, but we cannot see on what grounds the transition from one subject to the other takes place. Indeed the transitions are generally marked by their abruptness.
The only legitimate inference is that the main purpose of the collectors of incantation texts was to exhaust the subject so far as lay in their power. They included in their codes as much as possible. The exorciser would have no difficulty in threading his way through the complicated mass. He would select the division appropriate to the case before him without much concern of what preceded or followed in the text. Moreover, these divisions in the texts were clearly marked by dividing lines, still to be seen on the clay tablets. These divisions correspond so completely to divisions in the subject-matter that the purely practical purpose they served can hardly be called into question, while at the same time they furnish additional proof for the compiled character of the texts.
As for the date of the composition of the texts, the union of the Babylonian states under Hammurabi, with its necessary result, the supremacy of Marduk, that finds its reflection in the texts, furnishes us with a terminus a quo beyond which we need not proceed for final editing. On the other hand, there are indications in the language which warrant us in not passing below 2000 B.C. as the period when many of the incantation texts received their present form, and the editions were completed from which many centuries afterwards the Assyrian scribes prepared their copies for their royal masters.
There is, of course, no reason for assuming that all our texts should be of one age, or that the copying and, in part, the editing should not have gone on continually. Necessity for further copies would arise with the steady growth of the temples. Priests would be engaged in making copies for themselves, either for their edification as a pious work, or for real use; and accordingly, in fixing upon any date for the texts, one can hardly do more than assign certain broad limits within which the texts, so far as their present contents are concerned, may have been completed. The copies themselves may of course belong to a much later period without, for that reason, being more recent productions.
Attention must also be directed to the so-called 'bilingual' form, in which many of the incantation texts are edited; each line being first written in the ideographic style, and then followed by a transliteration into the phonetic style.[342] The use of the ideographic style is a survival of the ancient period when all texts were written in this manner, and the conservatism attaching to all things religious accounts for the continuation of the ideographic style in the religious rituals down to the latest period, beyond the time when even according to those who see in the ideographic style a language distinct from Babylonian, this supposed non-Semitic tongue was no longer spoken by the people, and merely artificially maintained, like the Latin of the Middle Ages. The frequent lack of correspondence in minor points between the ideographic style and the phonetic transliteration shows that the latter was intended merely as a version, as a guide and aid to the understanding of the 'conservative' method of writing. It was not necessary for a transliteration to be accurate, whereas, in the case of a translation, the greatest care would naturally be taken to preserve the original sacred text with all nicety and accuracy, since upon accuracy and nicety the whole efficacy of the formulas rested. The redaction of the incantation texts in the double style must not be regarded as a necessary indication of high antiquity, but only as a proof that the oldest incantation texts were written in the ideographic style, and that for this reason the custom was continued down to the latest period. On the other hand, the addition of the transliteration points to a period when the old style could no longer be read by the priests with facility without some guide, and incidentally proves again that the texts have gone through an editing process. But in the course of time, additions to the ritual were made, written in the phonetic style; and then it would happen, as a concession to religious conservatism, that the text would be translated back into the ideographic form. We would then have a "bilingual" text, consisting of Babylonian and an artificial "Sumero-Akkadian." That incantations were also composed in pure Babylonian without reference to any "Sumero-Akkadian" original is conclusively shown by the metrical traits frequently introduced. Many of the sections--by no means all--can be divided into regular stanzas of four, six, or eight lines, and frequently to the stanza is added a line which forms what Professor D. H. Mueller[343] calls the "response." The same metrical traits being found in other parts of the Babylonian literature,--so, e.g., in the creation epic,--their occurrence in the incantation texts is of course not accidental. When, therefore, we come across a ritual as the "Maklu" series, written exclusively in the phonetic style, and giving evidence of being in part a metrical composition, we are justified in assuming this to have been the original form. Again, in the case of another series,--the "Shurpu," in part Babylonian, in part bilingual,[344]--since the Babylonian section shows the metrical form, it is likely that the ideographic style represents a transliteration of a phonetic, or pure Babylonian, original.
The chief value of the incantation texts lies, naturally, in the insight they afford into the popular beliefs. As among other nations, so among the Babylonians, the use of certain formulas to secure release from ills, pains, and evils of any kind, either actual or portending, rests upon the theory that the accidents and misfortunes to which man is heir are due largely to the influence of more or less powerful spirits or demons, acting independently or at the command of higher powers,--the gods.
Through the incantation rituals we are enabled to specify the traits popularly ascribed to these demons and the means employed to rid oneself of their baneful grasp.
Demons.
The demons were of various kinds and of various grades of power. The names of many of them, as utukku, shedu, alu, gallu, point to 'strength' and 'greatness' as their main attribute; other names, as lilu, 'night-spirit,' and the feminine form lilitu, are indicative of the moment chosen by them for their work; while again, names like ekimmu, the 'seizer,' akhkhazu, the 'capturer,' rabisu, 'the one that lies in wait,' labartu, 'the oppressor,' and labasu, 'the overthrower,' show the aim that the demons have in view. Putting these names together, we may form a general idea of the conceptions connected with the demons. They lurk in hidden or remote places, in graves, in the shadow of ruins, on the tops of mountains, in the wilderness. Their favorite time of activity is at dead of night. They glide noiselessly like serpents, entering houses through holes and crevices. They are powerful, but their power is directed solely towards evil. They take firm hold of their victims and torture them mercilessly.
To these demons all manner of evil is ascribed. Their presence was felt in the destructive winds that swept the land. The pestilent fevers that rise out of the marshes of the Euphrates valley and the diseases bred by the humid heat of summer were alike traced to demons lurking in the soil. Some of these diseases, moreover, were personified, as Namtar, the demon of 'plague,' and Ashakku, the demon of 'wasting disease.' But the petty annoyances that disturb the peace of man--a sudden fall, an unlucky word, a headache, petty quarrels, and the like--were also due to the instigation of the demons; while insanity and the stirring up of the passions--love, hatred, and jealousy--were in a special sense indicative of the presence and power of the demons. Men and women stood in constant danger of them. Even the animals were not safe from their attacks. They drive the birds out of their nests, strike down lambs and bulls. It was impossible to forestall their attacks. They enter a man's dwelling, they wander through the streets, they make their way into food and drink. There is no place, however small, which they cannot invade, and none, however large, that they cannot fill. In a text which furnishes the sacred formulas by means of which one can get rid of the demoniac influence, a description is given of the demons which may serve as an illustration of what has just been said. The incantation is directed against a variety of the demons:[345]
The utukku[346] of the field and the utukku of the mountain, The utukku of the sea and the one that lurks in graves, The evil shedu, the shining alu. The evil wind, the terrible wind, That sets one's hair on end.
Against these the spirits of heaven and earth are invoked. The text proceeds:
The utukku that seizes hold of a man, The ekimmu that seizes hold of a man, The ekimmu that works evil, The utukku that works evil.
And after invoking against these demons, likewise, the spirits of heaven and earth, the text passes on to an enumeration of a long list of physical ills: sickness of the entrails, of the heart, of the head, of the stomach, of the kidneys, of the limbs and muscles, of the skin, and of the senses, which are all ascribed to the influence of the demons.
Apart from the demons that are naught but the personification of certain diseases, it does not appear that the demons were limited in their power to one specific kind of action. In other words, sharp distinctions between the demons do not appear to have been drawn. As appears from the extracts above translated, the utukku, shedu, alu, and ekimmu were grouped together, and hardly regarded as anything more than descriptive epithets of a general class of demons. At the same time it appears likely that at one time they were differentiated with a greater degree of preciseness. So the ekimmu appears to be the shadowy demon that hovers around graves, a species of ghost or vampire that attacks people in the dead of night and lays them prostrate. Lilu and lilitu are the spirits that flit by in the night. Of a specific character likewise are the conceptions connected with a demon known as ardat lili, 'maid of the night,' a strange female 'will-o'-the-wisp,' who approaches men, arouses their passions, but does not permit a satisfaction of them. Great importance being attached by the Babylonians to dreams, the belief in a 'maid of the night' was probably due to the unchecked play of the imagination during the hours of sleep. Bad dreams came at the instigation of the demons, and such a demon as the rabisu or the labartu appears to have been especially associated with the horrible sensations aroused by a 'nightmare.'[347] Again the utukku is represented at times as attacking the neck of man; the gallu attacks the hand, the ekimmu the loins, the alu the breast. But these distinctions count for little in the texts. Utukku becomes a general name for demon, and gallu, alu, and shedu are either used synonymously with utukku or thrown together with the latter in a manner that clearly shows the general identity of the conceptions ultimately connected with them. The same is the case with the rabisu and gallu, with the labartu, akhkhazu, and ekimmu.
The demons were always given some shape, animal or human, for it was a necessary corollary of the stage of religious thought to which the belief in demons belongs, that the demon must not only be somewhere, though invisible to mankind, but also in something that manifests life. Among animals, those calculated to inspire terror by their mysterious movements were chosen, as serpents appearing and disappearing with startling suddenness, or ugly scorpions, against whom it was difficult to protect oneself, or the fabulous monsters with which graves and pestiferous spots were peopled. Regions difficult of access--the desert, the deep waters, the high mountains--were the favorite haunts of the demons. Some of these demons were frequently pictured in the boundary stones between fields, in order to emphasize the curses hurled upon the head of him who should trespass on the lawful rights of the owner of the land.[348] It is to such demons embodied in living form that epithets such as the 'seizer,' the 'one that lurks,' and the like apply with peculiar aptness. In a tablet belonging to a long series of incantations,[349] we find references to various animals--the serpent, the scorpion, monsters--that are regarded as the embodiment of demons.
In the distinctively religious art, the evil spirits are often pictured as ugly monsters that were to inspire terror by their very aspect. Depicted on the monuments, singly or in groups,[350] the shape of wild animals was given to the head, while the remainder of the body was suggestive of a human form. With gaping mouths and armed with some weapon, they stand ready to make an attack. The Assyrian kings, up to the latest period, acknowledged the power of the demons by making huge representations of them, which they placed at the approaches, entrances, and divisions of their temples and palaces, in the hope of thus securing their protection. The great bulls and lions with human heads--so familiar to every one--are but another form of the same idea. These colossal statues were actually known by the name shedu, which we have seen is one of the general terms for 'demon.' But as a general thing, this personal phase of the demon's existence is lost sight of. Even though embodied in animal form, the demons could make themselves invisible to man; and since most of their actions were performed in secret, so that people were totally at their mercy, the differentiation of the demons became a factor of minor importance. With so large a quantity of demons at command, it was difficult to hit upon the one who was manifesting himself by some evil at any given moment. Accordingly, instead of a single mention, a number or a group were enumerated, and the magic formulas pronounced against them in concert. We have one such group of seven to whom quite a number of references are found in the incantation texts. A section in one of these texts gives a vivid description of them:[351]
Seven are they, they are seven, In the subterranean deep, they are seven, Perched (?) in the sky, they are seven, In a section of the subterranean deep they were reared, They are neither male nor are they female, They are destructive whirlwinds, They have no wife, nor do they beget offspring. Compassion and mercy they do not know, Prayer and supplication they do not hear, Horses bred on the mountains, are they Hostile to Ea[352] are they, Powerful ones among the gods are they. To work mischief in the street they settle themselves in the highway. Evil are they, they are evil, Seven are they, they are seven, seven, and again seven[353] are they.
These seven spirits, who are elsewhere compared to various animals, have power even to bewitch the gods. The eclipse of the moon was attributed to their baneful influence. The number seven is probably not to be taken literally. As among so many nations,[354] seven had a sacred significance for the Babylonians; but largely, if not solely, for the reason, as I venture to think, because seven was a large number. In the Old Testament seven is similarly used to designate a large number. A group of seven spirits, accordingly, meant no more than a miscellaneous mass of spirits, and we may therefore regard this 'song of the seven' as a general characterization of the demons who, according to this view, appear to move together in groups rather than singly. Elsewhere[355] we are told of this same group of spirits 'that they were begotten in the mountain of sunset,' i.e., in the west, 'and were reared in the mountain of sunrise,' i.e., the east; 'that they dwell in the hollow of the earth, and that they are proclaimed on the mountain tops.' Evidently a description of this kind is intended to emphasize the universal presence of the spirits. There is no place where they are not found; and when we are furthermore told (apparently in contradiction to what has just been said) 'that neither in heaven nor earth is their name pronounced (i.e., are they known to be), that among the gods of the earth (i.e., the pantheon) they are not recognized, that neither in heaven nor earth do they exist,' this is but the reverse of the picture intended to illustrate the capability of the spirits to disappear without leaving any trace of their presence. They are everywhere and yet invisible. They come and they go, and no one knows their place. Nothing is proof against their approach. Of all the demons it is true, as of this group, that they slip through bolts and doorposts and sockets, gliding, as we are told, 'like snakes.' Such are the demons against whom man must seek to protect himself.
The relationship of the demons or spirits to the gods of the pantheon has been touched upon in a previous chapter.[356] It is sufficient here to emphasize the fact that the dividing line between the two becomes at times exceedingly faint. A deity, we have seen, is a spirit writ large; but often the demon assumes dimensions and is clothed with power that makes him 'little short of divine.' Strength is the attribute of the demons as it is the chief feature of the gods. Both classes of powers influence man's career. The names of the demons are preceded by the same determinative that is used for the gods. As a matter of fact, many of the spirits were originally worshipped as local deities in some restricted territory, which, losing its importance, bequeaths the name of its protective genius to posterity. In the realm of religious belief, as in the domain of nature, absolute loss of something that once had existence does not take place. Something remains. Hundreds of old local gods of Babylonia thus survived in the literature as spirits or demons. The tendency towards making a selection out of the great mass of gods goes hand in hand with the multiplication of spirits that might, as occasion presented itself, be invoked. In general, the larger affairs of life were consigned into the hands of the gods; the petty annoyances--accidents, pains, ill luck, and the like--were put down to the account of the spirits. The gods were, on the whole, favorably disposed towards man. They were angry at times, they sent punishments, but they could be appeased. The spirits were, on the whole, hostile; and although the Babylonians also invoked favorable and kind spirits, when a spirit was hostile there was only one method of ridding oneself of the pernicious influence,--to drive it out by means of formulas, and with the help of a priest acting as exorciser.
Sorcerers and Sorceresses.
A widespread and apparently very ancient belief among the Babylonians and Assyrians was that certain human beings possessed demoniac power, and could exercise it for evil purposes over whomsoever they pleased. This belief may have originated in the abnormal appearance presented by certain individuals in consequence of physical deformities or peculiarities. The uncanny impression made by dwarfs, persons with misshapen limbs, with a strange look in their eyes, and, above all, the insane would give rise to the view that some people, for the very reason of their variation from the normal type, possessed peculiar powers. But by the side of such as were distinguished by bodily defects, those who outranked their fellows by virtue of their prowess or of natural gifts, by keenness of intellect or cunning, would also be supposed to have received their power through some demoniac source. With the giant and the artificer there would thus be associated ideas of sorcery and witchcraft, as with dwarfs, the deformed, and insane. The sorcerers might be either male or female, but, for reasons which are hard to fathom, the preference was given to females. Accordingly, it happens that among the Babylonians, as in the Middle Ages, the witch appears more frequently than the male sorcerer. The witches have all the powers of the demons, and in the incantation texts the two are often thrown together. Just as the demons, so the witches take away the breath of man, defile his food and drink, or close up his mouth. They are able to penetrate into the body of men, and thus produce similar physical and mental disturbances as the animalic demons. In view of this close relationship between witches and demons, we are justified in regarding the two as varying aspects of one and the same belief. The witch appears to be merely the person through whom the hitherto 'invisible' demon has chosen to manifest itself. From being identical in character with the demons, the witches reached a stage which made them superior to the former. They could not only do everything that the demons did, but they could also control the latter, whereas the demons had no power over witches. Witches could invoke the demons at their will and bring such persons as they chose within the demons' power. Various means were at their disposal for bringing this about. The glance of a witch's 'evil eye' was supposed to have great power.[357] Terrible were the sufferings of the one on whom a witch threw the glance that kept the person under her spell. The 'evil word,' as it was called, and by which the use of certain magic formulas was meant, was another effective means at her command for inflicting all manner of evil. Magical potions, too, compounded of poisonous weeds, appear to have been prepared by them, and which, entering the body of those whom they desired to punish, had a disastrous effect. Such means might be denominated as direct. There were others indirect which were even more effective, and which rested upon the principle commonly known as 'sympathetic magic.'[358] Under the notion that the symbolical acts of the sorcerers would have their effect upon the one to be bewitched, the male sorcerer or the witch, as the case might be, would tie knots in a rope. Repeating certain formulas with each fresh knot, the witch would in this way symbolically strangle the victim, seal his mouth, wrack his limbs, tear his entrails, and the like.
Still more popular was the making of an image of the desired victim of clay or pitch, honey, fat, or other soft material,[359] and either by burning it inflict physical tortures upon the person represented, or by undertaking various symbolical acts with it, such as burying it among the dead, placing it in a coffin, casting it into a pit or into a fountain, hiding it in an inaccessible place, placing it in spots that had a peculiar significance, as the doorposts, the threshold, under the arch of gates, would prognosticate in this way a fate corresponding to one of these acts for the unfortunate victim.
The Exorcisers.
As a protection against the demons and witches, small images of some of the protecting deities were placed at the entrances to houses, and amulets of various kinds were carried about the person. Tablets, too, were hung up in the house,--probably at the entrance,--on which extracts from the religious texts were inscribed. These texts by virtue of their sacred character assured protection against the entrance of demons.[360] But when once a person had come under the baneful power of the demons, recourse was had to a professional class of exorcisers, who acted as mediators between the victims and the gods to whom the ultimate appeal for help was made. These exorcisers were of course priests, and at an early period of Babylonian culture it must have been one of the main functions of priests to combat the influence of evil spirits. It was for this purpose chiefly that the people came to the temples, and in so far we are justified in regarding incantation formulas as belonging to the oldest portion of the Babylonian temple rituals. In the course of time, as the temples in the great religious centers developed into large establishments, the priests were divided into classes, each with special functions assigned to them. Some were concerned with the sacrifices, others presided over the oracles, others were set aside for the night and day watches which were observed in the temple, and it is likely that the scribes formed a class by themselves. To this age of differentiation in priestly functions belongs the special class who may be regarded as the forerunners of the eastern magi or magicians, and who by powers and methods peculiar to them could ward off the dangerous attacks of the demons and witches. The means employed by them may in general be described as forming the complement to those used by the witches,--the reverse side of the picture,--only that they were supposed to be effective against sorcerers, witches, and demons alike. Against the incantation formulas of the witches, incantations of superior force were prescribed that might serve to overcome the baneful influence of the former. The symbolical tying of knots was offset by symbolical loosening, accompanied by formulas that might effect the gradual release of the victim from the meshes of both the witches and the demons; or the hoped-for release was symbolized by the peeling of the several skins of an onion. Corresponding to the images made by the witches, the exorcising priests advised the making of counter images of the witches, and by a symbolical burning, accompanied by certain ceremonies and conciliatory gifts to the gods, hoped to destroy the witches themselves. Since, moreover, the favorite time chosen by the demons and witches for their manifestations was the night, the three divisions of the nights--evening, midnight, and dawn--that correspond to the temple watches were frequently selected as the time for the incantations and the symbolical acts. The address was often made to the gods of night. A series of incantation formulas begins:
I call upon you, gods of the night, With you I call upon the night, the veiled bride,[361] I call at evening, midnight, and at dawn.
The formulas themselves, as we shall see, are characterized by their large number rather than by any elements that they have in common. At times they constitute a direct appeal to some god or gods, to some particular spirit, or to the associated spirits of heaven and earth, together with a direct indication of what is desired. An incantation addressed to Nusku, the god of fire, closes:
Fire-god, mighty and lofty one of the gods, Who dost overpower the wicked and the hostile, Overpower them (the witches) so that I be not destroyed. Let me thy servant live, let me unharmed stand before thee, Thou art my god, thou art my lord, Thou art my judge, thou art my helper, Thou art my avenger.
Preceding the direct appeal, there is usually a recital more or less detailed of the woes with which one is afflicted. The victim tells of the pains which torture him. Says one bewitched:
I stand upright, and cannot lie down, neither night nor day. The witches have filled my mouth with their knots. With the aid of upuntu weed,[362] they have stuffed up my mouth. The water that I drink have they diminished, My joy is changed to pain, my pleasure to sorrow.
This recital, which is often wearisome by its length, may or may not end in a direct appeal to some god or gods. The narrative of woes, however, is merely introductory to the incantation itself. To prescribe the formula to be used to the one appealing for help, is the special function of the priest acting as exorciser. He recites the formula, which is then repeated by the communicant.
Instead of an appeal to the gods for help, the incantation often embodies threats hurled in the name of the gods at the demons or witches in case they do not release their victim. Such incantations appear to derive their power chiefly through the personage of the exorciser, who believes himself to be able to control the evil spirits. So in one case, after the sufferer has poured out his troubles, the exorciser replies, threatening the witches with the same evils that they have inflicted:[363]
They have used all kinds of charms to entwine me as with ropes, to catch me as in a cage, to tie me as with cords, to overpower me as in a net, to twist me as with a sling, to tear me as a fabric, to fill me with dirty water as that which runs down a wall (?) to throw me down as a wall.
At this point the exorciser takes up the thread and declares:
But I by command of Marduk, the lord of charms, by Marduk, the master of bewitchment, Both the male and female witch as with ropes I will entwine, as in a cage I will catch, as with cords I will tie, as in a net I will overpower, as in a sling I will twist, as a fabric I will tear, with dirty water as from a wall I will fill, as a wall throw them down.
Accompanying these threats, the actions indicated were symbolically performed by the exorciser on effigies of the witches made, in this case, of bitumen covered with pitch.
Corresponding again to the potions prepared by the witches, the priests prepared draughts compounded of various weeds and herbs that were given to the victim, or concoctions that were poured over his body. This constituted the medicinal phase of the priest's labors, and marks the connection between magic and medicine. Naturally such herbs and weeds were chosen as through experience had proved effective.
The Gods of the Incantation Texts.
A feature of the incantation texts is the appeal to the gods, which is seldom, if ever, wanting. Just as the kings sought, by the enumeration of a large pantheon, to secure the protection of as large a number of powers as possible, so the priests endeavored to strengthen their magic formulas by including the mention of all the chief and a varying number of the minor deities. This invocation of groups of deities, as the invocation of groups of spirits, became more or less conventional, so much so that, instead of mentioning the gods individually, the scribe would content himself with an indication, at the proper point, of the number of gods to be appealed to,--six, ten, fifteen, as the case may be, to as many as fifty.[364] Precisely what gods he had in mind we are no longer in a position to know, but no doubt the chief members of the pantheon were included in the first place. Lists of these deities are often added. The superior triad, Anu, Bel, and Ea, head the list, at times accompanied by their consorts, at times standing alone. The second class of triads, Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, follow, and then the other great gods, Nin-ib, Marduk, Nergal, Nusku, and Gibil; and finally the chief goddesses are added, notably Ishtar, Nin-karrak, or Gula, and Bau.
But besides the chief deities, an exceedingly large number of minor ones are found interspersed through the incantation texts. Some are well known, as Nin-girsu, Zamama, and Papsukal. Many of them are found in other branches of the religious literature or in invocations attached to historical texts, commemorative of some work undertaken and completed by the kings; but a large proportion of these powers, not often distinguishable from mere spirits, only appear once in the literary remains of Babylonia. It is manifestly impossible, under such circumstances, to specify their traits. In most cases, indeed, the phonetic reading is unknown or uncertain. While a considerable proportion may be put down as local gods, enjoying an independent, albeit obscure, existence, at least an equal number will turn out to be mere epithets of gods already known. In all cases where the god's name actually appears as an epithet, we may be certain that such is the case. So when a god is called simply Dainu, i.e., Judge, there can be little doubt that Shamash, the sun-god, is meant; a god, 'great mountain,' is none other than Bel; and similarly, such names as 'merciful,' 'hearer of prayer,' 'conqueror of enemy' are manifestly titles belonging to certain well-known deities, and used much as among the Greeks the gods were often referred to by the traits, physical or moral, that distinguished them. As for the residue, who are independent deities, while of course our knowledge of the Babylonian religion would be increased did we know more of them than their names, it is not likely that the worship of these gods, nor the conceptions connected with them, involved any new principle. A mere enumeration would of course be of little use. Moreover, such an enumeration would not be exhaustive, for new deities are found in almost every additional text that is published. Already this list counts considerably over two hundred. At most, such an enumeration would merely illustrate what we already know,--the exceedingly large number of local cults that once existed in Babylonia and Assyria, and disappeared without leaving any trace but the more or less accidental preservation of the name of the deity, who was once regarded as the patron of the place. Lastly it is to be noted that, besides gods, stars are invoked, as well as rivers, temples, and even towns,--in short, anything that has sacred associations.
On a different level from the gods enumerated in groups stand those deities who are introduced into the incantation texts at essential points individually and for a special reason. Such deities are comparatively few,--hardly more than half a dozen. These gods may be called the gods of the incantation texts par excellence. Their help is essential to ensure the effectiveness of the exorciser's task. They stand in close and direct connection with the troubles from which relief is prayed for. For physical ills, they act as healers. If the evil for which the individual or the country suffers is due to some natural phenomena,--an eclipse of the moon, of which people stood in great terror, or a deluge or a famine,--the moon-god, the storm-god, some phase of the sun-deity, or an agricultural god would naturally be implored; while in a general way the heads of the pantheon, Marduk in Babylonia and Ashur in Assyria, come in for a large share of attention.
As already intimated in a previous chapter,[365] the god who plays perhaps the most prominent role in the incantation texts is Ea. He occupies this rank primarily by virtue of his being the god of humanity; but another factor which enters into consideration, though in an indirect fashion, is his character as a water-god. Water, being one of the means of purification frequently referred to in the texts, acquires a symbolical significance among the Babylonians, as among so many other nations. Ea, therefore, as the water-god of the ancient sacred town, Eridu, acquires additional popularity through this circumstance. The titles that he receives in the texts emphasize his power to heal and protect. He is the great physician who knows all secret sources whence healing can be obtained for the maladies and ills caused by the demons and sorcerers. He is therefore in a peculiar sense 'the lord of the fates' of mankind, the chief exorciser, the all-wise magician of the gods, at whose command and under whose protection, the priest performs his symbolical acts. Not only does humanity turn to Ea: the gods, too, appeal to him in their distress. The eclipse of the moon was regarded by the popular faith as a sort of bewitchment of the great orb through the seven evil spirits. All the heavenly bodies are affected by such an event. Anu is powerless. It is only through Ea that Sin is released, just as though he were a human individual. But Ea is rarely approached directly. At his side stands his son Marduk, who acts as a mediator. Marduk listens to the petition addressed to him by the exorcising priest on behalf of the victim, and carries the word to Father Ea. The latter, after first declaring Marduk to be his equal in knowledge, proceeds to dictate the cure. Marduk, accordingly, is given the same titles as his father, Ea. He, too, is the lord of life, the master of the exorcising art, the chief magician among the gods.
The importance thus given to Marduk is an indication of a later period, and must be taken in connection with the supremacy accorded to the god after the union of the Babylonian states. Originally, Ea is the god to whom the direct appeal was made. Marduk is an afterthought that points to the remodeling of the ancient texts after the period of Hammurabi. Damkina, the consort of Ea, is occasionally invoked, but it is significant that Sarpanitum, the consort of Marduk, is rarely mentioned.
The burning of images and witches, or of other objects, being so frequently resorted to as a means of destroying baneful influences, the god of fire occupies a rank hardly secondary to Ea. Here, too, the mystical element involved in the use of fire adds to the effectiveness of the method. Water and fire are the two great sources of symbolical purification that we meet with in both primitive and advanced rituals of the past.[366] The fire-god appears in the texts under the double form of Gibil and Nusku. The former occurs with greater frequency than the latter, but the two are used so interchangeably as to be in every respect identical. The amalgamation of the two may indeed be due to the growth of the incantation rituals of Babylon. In some districts Gibil was worshipped as the special god of fire, in others Nusku, much as we found the sun-god worshipped under the names of Shamas and Utu, and similarly in the case of other deities. On the supposition that the incantation rituals are the result of a complicated literary process, involving the collection of all known formulas, and the bringing of them into some kind of connection with one another, this existence of a twofold fire-god finds a ready explanation. At Babylon we know Nusku was worshipped as the fire-god. Gibil belongs therefore to another section, perhaps to one farther south. He is in all probability the older god of the two, and the preponderating occurrence of his name in the texts may be taken as a proof of the ancient origin of those parts in which it occurs. There being no special motive why he should be supplanted by Nusku, his preeminence was not interfered with through the remodeling to which the texts were subjected. While bearing in mind that Gibil and Nusku are two distinct deities, we may, for the sake of convenience, treat them together under the double designation of Gibil-Nusku.
Gibil and Nusku are called 'sons of Anu'; Gibil, indeed, is spoken of as the first-born of heaven, and the image of his father. The conception is probably mythological, resting upon the belief in the heavenly origin of fire held by all nations. Gibil-Nusku is exalted as the 'lofty one' among the gods, whose command is supreme. He is at once the great messenger of the gods and their chief counsellor. Clothed in splendor, his light is unquenchable. A large variety of other attributes are assigned to him, all emphasizing his strength, his majesty, his brilliancy, and the terror that he is able to inspire. The importance of fire to mankind made Gibil-Nusku the founder of cities, and in general the god of civilization. As the fire-god, Gibil-Nusku is more especially invoked at the symbolical burning of the images of the witches. With a raised torch in one hand, the bewitched person repeats the incantation recited by the exorciser. Frequently the instruction is added that the incantation is to be recited in a whisper, corresponding to the soft tones in which the demons, witches, and ghosts are supposed to convey their messages. The incantations in which the fire-god is exalted in grandiloquent terms belong to the finest productions of this branch of the religious literature. The addresses to Gibil-Nusku are veritable hymns that are worthy of better associations. One of these addresses begins:
Nusku, great god, counsellor of the great gods,[367] Guarding the sacrificial gifts[368] of all the heavenly spirits, Founder of cities, renewer of the sanctuaries, Glorious day, whose command is supreme, Messenger of Anu, carrying out the decrees of Bel, Obedient to Bel, counsellor, mountain[369] of the earthly spirits, Mighty in battle, whose attack is powerful, Without thee no table is spread in the temple. Without thee, Shamash, the judge executes no judgment.
I, thy servant so and so, the son of so and so,[370] Whose god is so and so, and whose goddess so and so,[371] I turn to thee, I seek thee, I raise my hands to thee, I prostrate myself before thee. Burn the sorcerer and sorceress, May the life of my sorcerer and sorceress be destroyed. Let me live that I may exalt thee and proudly pay homage to thee.
This incantation, we are told, is to be recited in a whisper, in the presence of an image of wax. The image is burnt as the words are spoken, and as it is consumed the power of the witch is supposed to wane. The reference to the indispensable presence of the fire-god in the temple is rather interesting. Sacrifice always entailed the use of fire. To whatever deity the offering was made, Gibil-Nusku could not in any case be overlooked. The fire constituted the medium, as it were, between the worshipper and the deity addressed. The fire-god is in truth the messenger who carries the sacrifice into the presence of the god worshipped. Even Shamash, though himself personifying fire, is forced to acknowledge the power of Gibil-Nusku, who, we are told elsewhere, is invoked, even when sacrifices are made to the sun-god.
Besides being the son of Anu, Gibil-Nusku is brought into association with the two other members of the triad, Bel and Ea. He is the messenger of Bel and the son of Ea. The former conception is again mythical. Fire is also the instrument of the gods, and Nusku is particularly called the messenger of Bel because Bel is one of the highest gods. In reality he is the messenger of all the gods, and is frequently so designated. His connection with Ea, on the other hand, seems to be the result of the systematizing efforts of the schoolmen. Ea occupying the chief rank in the incantations, the subsidiary role of Gibil-Nusku is indicated by making him, just as Marduk, the son of Ea. In this way, too, the two great means of purification--water and fire--are combined under a single aspect. The combination was all the more appropriate since the fire-god, as the promoter of culture, shared with Ea the protection of humanity. Accordingly, all the titles of Ea are bestowed in one place or the other upon Gibil-Nusku. But, after all, Gibil-Nusku is merely a phase of the solar deity,[372] and hence by the side of this fire-god, Shamash and the other solar deities, though in a measure subsidiary to Gibil-Nusku, are frequently invoked. Shamash, as the great judge, was a personage especially appropriate for occasions which involved a decision in favor of the bewitched and against the witches or demons. Gibil-Nusku, like Shamash, is exalted as the great judge who comes to the aid of the oppressed. Similarly, the fire-god receives the attributes belonging to Ninib, Nergal, and the various phases of the latter, such as Lugal-edinna, Lugal-gira, and Alamu. These gods, then, and their consorts, because of their relationship to the fire-god, are introduced into the incantations, and what is more to the point, the various phases of Nergal and Ninib are introduced without any trace of the distinctions that originally differentiated them from one another.[373] Besides the great solar deities, minor ones, as Nin-gish-zida[374] and I-shum, are frequently added in long lists of protecting spirits to whom the appeal for help is directed. The attempt is also made to illustrate their relationship to the great fire-god. So I-shum becomes the messenger of Nusku, while Nin-gish-zida (though in the days of Gudea a male deity[375]) appears to be regarded, as Tallqvist has suggested, as the consort of Nusku.
Night being a favorite time for the recital of the incantations, it was natural that the orb of night, the god Sin, should be added to the pantheon of the exorciser. Though playing a minor role, the moon-god is never omitted when a long series of protecting spirits is invoked. But there are occasions when Sin becomes the chief deity invoked. Reference has already been made to the general terror that moon eclipses inspired. The disappearance of the moon was looked upon as a sign of the god's displeasure or as a defeat of the moon in a conflict with other planets. Disaster of some kind--war, pestilence, internal disturbances--was sure to follow upon an eclipse, unless the anger of the god could be appeased or his weakness overcome. In the case of such general troubles affecting the whole country, it is the kings themselves who seek out the priests. Rituals were prepared to meet the various contingencies. The king begins the ceremony by a prayer addressed to Sin. One of these prayers begins:[376]
O Sin, O Nannar! mighty one ... O Sin, thou who alone givest light, Extending light to mankind, Showing favor to the black-headed ones,[377] Thy light shines in heaven ... Thy torch is brilliant as fire; Thy light fills the broad earth.
...
Thy light is glorious as the Sun ... Before thee the great gods lie prostrate; The fate of the world rests with thee.
An eclipse has taken place, portending evil to the country, and libations have been poured out on days carefully selected as favorable ones. The king continues:
I have poured out to thee, with wailing,[378] a libation at night; I have offered thee a drink-offering with shouts; Prostrate and standing erect[379] I implore thee.
With the prayer to Sin, appeals to other gods and also goddesses are frequently combined,--to Marduk, Ishtar, Tashmitum, Nabu, Ramman, and the like. The incantations themselves, consisting of fervent appeals to remove the evil, actual or portending, are preceded by certain ceremonies,--the burning of incense, the pouring out of some drink, or by symbolical acts, as the binding of cords; and the god is appealed to once more to answer the prayer.
Again, just as Gibil-Nusku entails the invocation of a large variety of solar deities, so Ea, as the water-god, leads to the introduction of various water-gods and spirits. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the god Naru, whose name, signifying 'river,'[380] is clearly the personification of the watery element, though of the minor bodies of water. Next in order comes the goddess Nin-akha-kuddu.[381] She is invoked as 'goddess of purification.' From her association in several passages with the great deep, and with the city of Eridu--metaphorically used for the great deep--one may be permitted to conclude that she, too, was conceived of as a water-god or a water-spirit. She is 'the lady of spells,' who is asked to take possession of the body of the sufferer, and thus free him from the control of demons or witches. By the side of this goddess, Gula, 'the great physician,' is often appealed to. Again, the demons being in some cases the ghosts of the departed, or such as hover around graves, Nin-kigal, or Allatu, the mistress of the lower world, is an important ally, whose aid is desired in the struggle against the evil spirits. Lastly, it is interesting to note that Izdubar, or Gilgamesh, the famous hero of the great Babylonian epic, occurs also in incantations[382]--a welcome indication of the antiquity of the myth, and the proof, at the same time, that the epic is built on a foundation of myth. From the mythological side, Gilgamesh appears to be a solar deity. The connection of a solar god with fire would account for his appearance in the magical texts. However obscure some of the points connected with the gods of the incantation texts may be, so much is certain, that the two factors of water and fire, and the part played by these elements in the ceremonies, control and explain the choice of most of the gods and goddesses introduced, though--be it expressly noted--not of all occurring in the magical texts.
The Ritual and Formulas.
Coming to the incantations themselves, they can best be characterized as appeals interspersed with words of a more or less mystic character. The force and efficacy of the incantation lie not so much in the meaning of the words uttered, as in the simple fact that they are to be uttered. These incantations were combined into a ritual, and indications were given of the occasions on which the incantations were to be used. An analysis of one of these rituals will serve to illustrate this branch of the religious literature of the Babylonians. I choose for this purpose the series known as Maklu, i.e., Burning,[383] the interpretation of which has been so considerably advanced by Dr. Tallqvist's admirable work. The first tablet of the series opens with an invocation to the gods of night. After complaining of his sad condition, the bewitched individual continues as follows:
Arise ye great gods, hear my complaint; Grant me justice, take cognizance of my condition. I have made an image of my sorcerer and sorceress; I have humbled myself before you and bring to you my cause Because of the evil they (i.e., the witches) have done, Of the impure things which they have handled,[384] May she[385] die! Let me live! May her charm, her witchcraft, her sorcery (?) be broken. May the plucked sprig (?) of the binu tree purify me. May it release me; may the evil odor[386] of my mouth be scattered to the winds. May the mashtakal herb[387] which fills the earth cleanse me. Before you let me shine like the kankal herb. Let me be as brilliant and pure as the lardu herb. The charm of the sorceress is evil; May her words return to her mouth,[388] her tongue be cut off. Because of her witchcraft, may the gods of night smite her, The three watches of the night[389] break her evil charm. May her mouth be wax[390] (?), her tongue honey. May the word causing my misfortune that she has spoken dissolve like wax (?). May the charm that she has wound up melt like honey, So that her magic knot be cut in twain, her work destroyed, All her words scattered across the plains By the order that the gods have given.
The section closes with the ordinary request of the exorciser to the victim: "Recite this incantation." It will be seen how closely the principle of sympathetic magic is followed. The individual having been bewitched by means of certain herbs concocted probably into potions, other herbs are prepared by the exorciser as an antidote. The emphasis laid upon purification, too, is noteworthy. There are numerous synonyms employed for which it is difficult to find the adequate equivalent in English. The terms reach out beyond the literal to the symbolical purification. The victim wishes to become pure, cleansed of all impurities, so that he may be resplendent as the gods are pure, brilliant, and glorious, pure as the water, brilliant and glorious as the fire.
The length of the formulas varies. Often they consist only of a few lines. So the one immediately following appeals to Gilgamesh in these words:
Earth, Earth, Earth, Gilgamesh is the master of your witchcraft. What you have done, I know; What I do, you know not. All the mischief wrought by my sorceresses is destroyed, dissolved-- is gone.
At times the conditions under which the witches are pictured as acting are very elaborate. They are represented as dwelling in places with which mythological conceptions are connected; they are ferried across the river separating their city from human habitations; they are protected against attacks by the walls which surround their habitations. To effect a release, the exorcisers, it would appear, made representations by means of drawings on clay of these habitations of the witches. They thereupon symbolically cut off the approaches and laid siege to the towns. This, at least, appears to be the meaning of an incantation beginning:
My city is Sappan,[391] my city is Sappan; The gates of my city Sappan are two, One towards sunrise, the other towards sunset.[392] I carry a box, a pot with mashtakal herbs; To the gods of heaven I offer water; As I for you secure your purification, So do you purify me!
The victim imitates the conduct of the witch, goes about as she does, with a pot in which the potions are made, performs the symbolical act which should purify him of the evil that is in him, and hopes, in this way, to obtain his own release. The description continues:
I have kept back the ferry, have shut off the wall,[393] Have thus checked the enchantment from all quarters. Anu and Anatum have commissioned me. Whom shall I send to Belit of the field?[394] Into the mouth of the sorcerer and sorceress cast the lock.[395] Recite the incantation of the chief of gods, Marduk.[396] 'Let them[397] call to thee but answer them not, Let them address thee, but hearken not to them. Let me call to thee, and do thou answer me, Let me address thee, and do thou hearken unto me.' By the command of Anu, Anatum, and Belit, recite the incantation.
The hymns to the fire-god, Nusku (or Girru), of which the 'Maklu' series naturally furnishes many specimens,[398] are all pretty much alike. I choose one which illustrates in greater detail the symbolical burning of the image of the witch:[399]
Nusku, great offspring of Anu, The likeness of his father, the first-born of Bel, The product of the deep, sprung from Ea,[400] I raise the torch to illumine thee, yea, thee. The sorcerer who has bewitched me, Through the witchcraft by means of which he has bewitched me, do thou bewitch him. The sorceress who has bewitched me, Through the witchcraft by means of which she has bewitched me, bewitch thou her. The charmer who has charmed me, Through the charm with which he has charmed me, charm thou him. The witch who has charmed me, Through the charm with which she has charmed me, charm thou her. Those who have made images of me, reproducing my features, Who have taken away my breath, torn my hairs, Who have rent my clothes, have hindered my feet from treading the dust, May the fire-god, the strong one, break their charm.
Just as the witches were burnt in effigy, so also the demons were supposed to be similarly dispelled. Immediately following the incantation comes one directed against the demons:
I raise the torch, their images I burn, Of the utukku, the shedu, the rabisu, the ekimmu, The labartu, the labasi, the akhkhasu, Of lilu and lilitu and ardat lili, And every evil that seizes hold of men. Tremble, melt away, and disappear! May your smoke rise to heaven, May Shamash destroy your limbs, May the son of Ea [i.e., may the fire-god], The great magician, restrain your strength (?).
The witch who has caused the evil may be unknown. For such a case one of the incantations runs:[401]
Who art thou, sorceress, who bears her evil word within her heart, Through whose tongue my misfortune is produced, Through whose lips I have been poisoned, In whose footsteps death follows? Sorceress, I seize thy mouth, seize thy tongue, I seize thy searching eyes, I seize thy ever-moving feet, I seize thy knees ever active, I seize thy hands ever stretched out, I tie thy hands behind thee. May Sin ... destroy thy body, May he cast thee into an abyss of fire and water. Sorceress, as the circle of this seal-ring,[402] May thy face grow pale and wan.
Of the same character as this, are a variety of other incantations, all applicable to cases in which the sorceress is unknown. As the last specimen of the 'Maklu' series, I choose an incantation addressed to the demons, which is interesting because of the direct character of the commands it contains:
Away, away, far away, far away, For shame, for shame, fly away, fly away, Round about face, go away, far away, Out of my body, away, Out of my body, far away, Out of my body, away for shame, Out of my body, fly away, Out of my body, round about face, Out of my body, go away, Into my body, come not back, Towards my body, do not approach, Towards my body, draw not nigh, My body torture not. By Shamash the mighty, be ye foresworn. By Ea, the lord of everything, be ye foresworn. By Marduk, the chief magician of the gods, be ye foresworn. By the fire-god, be ye foresworn. From my body be ye restrained!
Repetition and variation in the use of certain phrases make up, as will be seen from the specimens given, a large part of the incantation. A curious illustration of the importance attributed to such repetition is furnished by the eighth and last tablet of the 'Maklu' series. It consists of seven divisions, each beginning with a repetition of the headlines of the various sections of the preceding seven tablets; and only after the headlines of each of the tablets have been exhausted, does the real incantation begin. This eighth tablet contains therefore a kind of summary of all the others, the purpose of which is to gather together all the power and influence of the seven others.
The 'Maklu' ritual deals so largely with the fire-god that a specimen from another series, to illustrate the position of Ea and Marduk in the incantations, seems called for. The 'Shurpu' series introduces Ea and Marduk more particularly. The fifth tablet of this series begins:[403]
The evil curse rests like a gallu upon the man, The pain-giving voice[404] has settled upon him, The voice that is not good has settled upon him, The evil curse, the charm that produces insanity, The evil curse has killed that man as a sheep, His god has departed from his body,[405] His goddess has ... taken her place outside,[406] The pain-giving voice covers him as a garment and confuses him. Marduk sees him, And proceeds to the house of his father Ea and speaks: "My father, the evil curse as a demon has settled on the man." He says it for a second time. "What that man should do, I do not know; by what can he be cured?" Ea answers his son Marduk: "My son, can I add aught that thou dost not know? Marduk, what can I tell thee that thou dost not know? What I know, also thou knowest. My son Marduk, take him to the overseer of the house of perfect purification, Dissolve his spell, release him from the charm, and from the troublesome bodily disease. Whether it be the curse of his father, Or the curse of his mother, Or the curse of his brother, Or the curse of an unknown,[407] May the bewitchment through the charm of Ea be peeled off like an onion. May it be cut off like a date. May it be removed like a husk. O power of the spirit of heaven, be thou invoked! O spirit of earth, be thou invoked!"
The purification by water, which is here only incidentally referred to, is more fully touched upon in other incantations, where Ea tells Marduk that the victim must take
Glittering water, pure water, Holy water, resplendent water, The water twice seven times may he bring, May he make pure, may he make resplendent. May the evil rabisu depart, May he betake himself outside, May the protecting shedu, the protecting lamassu, Settle upon his body. Spirit of heaven, be thou invoked! Spirit of earth, be thou invoked![408]
Still other methods of magical cure besides the use of water and of potions were in vogue. In a tablet of the same ritual to which the last extract belongs, and which is especially concerned with certain classes of diseases produced by the demons, the sick man is told to take
White wool, which has been spun into thread, To attach it to his couch[409] in front and at the top, Black wool which has been spun into thread To bind at his left side.
Then follows the incantation which he is to recite:
The evil ulukku, alu, ekimmu, The evil gallu, the evil god, rabisu, Labartu, labasu, akhkhazu, Lilu and lilit and ardat lili, Sorcery, charm, bewitchment, The sickness, the cruel artifice, Their head against his head, Their hand against his hand, Their foot against his foot, May they not place, May they never draw nigh. Spirit of heaven, be thou foresworn! Spirit of earth, be thou foresworn!
It is interesting to note the introduction of ethical ideas into these texts, despite the primitive character of the beliefs upon which the incantations repose. The possibility was considered that the attack of the demons was a punishment sent in some way for committed sins. The incantation series 'Shurpu' furnishes us with a long list of wrongs for which a person may be held enthralled in the power of the demons or sorcerers. The exorciser in petitioning that the ban may be relieved, enumerates at length the various causes for which the evil may have been sent:[410]
Has he sinned against a god, Is his guilt against a goddess, Is it a wrongful deed against his master, Hatred towards his elder brother, Has he despised father or mother, Insulted his elder sister, Has he given too little,[411] Has he withheld too much, For "no" said "yes," For "yes" said "no"?[412]
...
Has he used false weights?
...
Has he taken an incorrect amount, Not taken the correct sum, Has he fixed a false boundary, Not fixed a just boundary, Has he removed a boundary, a limit, or a territory, Has he possessed himself of his neighbor's house, Has he approached his neighbor's wife, Has he shed the blood of his neighbor, Robbed his neighbor's dress?
...
Was he frank in speaking, But false in heart, Was it "yes" with his mouth, But "no" in his heart?[413]
In this way the exorciser proceeds to enumerate an exceedingly long list of sins--no less than one hundred--most of which are ethical misdemeanors, while others are merely ceremonial transgressions. In the third tablet of this series[414] there is even a longer list of causes for the ban which Marduk, the "chief exorciser" among the gods, is called upon to loosen. Here again we find an equal proportion of moral transgressions placed on a par with errors in performing religious rites or unwillful offences in neglecting conventional methods of doing things.
The ethical features of the texts can, without much question, be put down as the work of the later editors. They belong to a period when already an advanced conception not only of right and wrong, but also of sin had arisen among the religious leaders of the people, and perhaps had made its way already among the masses, without, however, disturbing the confidence in the traditional superstitions. The strange combination of primitive and advanced religious beliefs is characteristic, as we shall have occasion to see, of various divisions of the Babylonian religious literature. The lapse from the ethical strain to the incantation refrain is as sudden as it is common. The priest having exhausted the category of possible sins or mishaps that have caused the suffering of the petitioner, proceeds to invoke the gods, goddesses, and the powerful spirits to loosen the ban. There is no question of retribution for actual acts of injustice or violence, any more than there is a question of genuine contrition. The enumeration of the causes for the suffering constitutes in fact a part of the incantation. The mention of the real cause in the long list--and the list aims to be exhaustive, so that the exorciser may strike the real cause--goes a long way towards ensuring the departure of the evil spirit. And if, besides striking the real cause, the exorciser is fortunate enough in his enumeration of the various gods, goddesses, and spirits to call by name upon the right god or spirit, the one who has the power over the demon in question, his object is achieved. Speaking the right words and pronouncing the right name, constitute, together with the performance of the correct ceremony and the bringing of the right sacrifice, the conditions upon which depends the success of the priest in the incantation ritual. Hence the striking features of these texts, the enumeration of long lists of causes for misfortune, long lists of powers invoked, and a variety of ceremonies prescribed, in the hope that the priest will "hit it" at one time or the other.
Incantations and Prayers.
The incantations naturally shade off into prayers. Frequently they are prayers pure and simple. Powerful as the sacred formulas were supposed to be, the ultimate appeal of the sufferer is to the gods. Upon their favor it ultimately depends whether the mystic power contained in the sacred words uttered shall manifest itself to the benefit of the supplicant or not. While it is proper, therefore, to distinguish incantations from prayers, the combination of the two could scarcely be avoided by the priests, who, rising in a measure superior to the popular beliefs, felt it to be inconsistent with a proper regard for the gods not to give them a superior place in the magical texts. The addition, to the sacred formulas, of prayers directly addressed to certain gods may be put down as due to the adaptation of ancient texts to the needs of a later age; and, on the other hand, the addition of incantations to what appear to have been originally prayers, pure and simple, is a concession made to the persistent belief in the efficacy of certain formulas when properly uttered. Such combinations of prayers and incantations constituted, as would appear, a special class of religious texts; and, in the course of further editing,[415] a number of prayers addressed to various deities were combined and interspersed with incantation and ceremonial directions which were to accompany the prayers.
The incantations accordingly lead us to the next division in the religious literature of the Babylonians,--the prayers and hymns.
FOOTNOTES:
[341] Die Assyrische Beschwoerungsserie, Maqlu, p. 14.
[342] There are some preserved solely in the ideographic style, and others of which we have only the phonetic transliteration.
[343] Die Propheten in ihrer urspruenglichen Form, pp. 1, 6. This work is a valuable investigation of the oldest form of the poetic compositions of the Semites.
[344] The fifth and sixth tablets of the series. It is probable that several editions were prepared,--some wholly Babylonian, others bilingual.
[345] Haupt, Akkadische und Sumerische Keilschrifttexte, p. 83. col. I. ll. 1-10.
[346] Wherever feasible, the Babylonian name of the demon will be used in the translations.
[347] Our word 'nightmare' still embodies the same ancient view of the cause of bad dreams as that found among the Babylonians.
[348] See above, p. 182.
[349] IV R. pl. 5.
[350] See Perrot and Chiplez, History of Art in Chaldaea and Assyria, i. 61, 62; ii. 81 for illustrations.
[351] IV R. 2, col. v. ll. 30-60.
[352] The god of humanity. The phrase is equivalent to saying that the spirits are hostile to mankind.
[353] Literally, 'to their second time,' i.e., repeat 'seven are they.'
[354] See Hopkins, The Holy Numbers in the Rig-Veda (Oriental Studies), pp. 144-147.
[355] IV R. 15, col. ll. 21 seq.
[356] See chapter xi.
[357] For the general views connected with the evil eye among all nations, see Elworthy's recent volume, The Evil Eye. (London, 1896.)
[358] For illustrations taken from various nations, see Fraser, The Golden Bough, ii. 9-12; ii. 85-89.
[359] See for illustrations of similar practices among Egyptians and Greeks, Budge, Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great (London, 1896), pp. xii-xvii.
[360] Mr. L. W. King describes (Zeits. fuer Assyr. xl. 50-62) interesting fragments of the Dibbarra (or 'plague-god') legend found on tablets which were evidently intended to be hung up. Mr. King suggests that such tablets were hung up in the houses of the Babylonians whenever a plague broke out. One is reminded of the mezuzoth, the metallic or wooden cases, attached to the doorposts of their houses by the Jews, and which originally served a similar purpose.
[361] Tallqvist, Assyr. Beschwoerungsserie Maklu, p. 115, suggests that the 'veiled bride' may be a name of some goddess of the night. This is improbable. It sounds more like a direct personification of the night, for which an epithet as 'veiled bride' seems appropriate. The name may have arisen in consequence of mythological conceptions affecting the relationship between day and night.
[362] A magic potion compounded of this plant. 'Maklu' series, i. ll. 8-12.
[363] 'Maklu' series, ii. ll. 148-168.
[364] See Relsner, Sumerisch-Babylonische Hymnen (Berlin, 1896), p. 15.
[365] See p. 137.
[366] Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 352. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, i. 508-596. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 383 seq. See also the article "Hestia" in Roscher's Ausfuehrliches Lexikon der Griechischen und Roemischen Mythologie.
[367] 'Maklu' series, ii. ll. 1-17.
[368] A reference to the sacred action of the fire in the burnt offerings.
[369] A favorite title of several gods, Bel, Sin, etc., that emphasizes their strength.
[370] Here the seeker for help inserts his name.
[371] Here the names of special deities are to be inserted.
[372] See above, Nusku, p. 220.
[373] See p. 67.
[374] A form of Nusku, according to Tallqvist, Assyr. Beschwoer. p. 146. It would be more accurate to say a form of Ninib. See p. 92.
[375] See p. 91.
[376] King, Babylonian Magic, p. 3.
[377] Humanity.
[378] The reference is to the formal lamentations on the occasion of the death of any one. The moon-god, having disappeared, is bewailed as though dead.
[379] I.e., under all conditions and at all times.
[380] The reading Naru is not altogether certain, but probable. See Tallqvist, Assyr. Beschwoer. pp. 131, 132, whose suggestion, however, that Naru may be a female deity, is not acceptable. Elitti is probably a scribal error.
[381] See above p. 103.
[382] Tallqvist, I. l. 38.
[383] See above, p. 254.
[384] To bewitch me.
[385] The witch.
[386] From which he suffers through the witches.
[387] The identification of the many herbs mentioned in the texts is as yet impossible. The subject awaits investigation at the hands of one versed in botanical lore.
[388] I.e., be ineffective.
[389] I.e., the gods presiding over the watches.
[390] Her words dissolve like wax and honey.
[391] Supposed to be situated at the northern point of the heavens.
[392] The vault of heaven was pictured as having two gates.
[393] So that the witch cannot leave her habitation.
[394] With the order 'to cast the lock,' etc.
[395] To prevent her from uttering her charms.
[396] The following four lines constitute the incantation.
[397] I.e., the witches.
[398] See above, p. 278, where one has been given.
[399] Maklu, I. 122-143.
[400] The fiery element belongs to all three divisions of the universe,--to heaven, earth, and water.
[401] Maklu, III. ll. 89-103.
[402] Many of the seals used by the Babylonians were of white stone or bone.
[403] Zimmern's edition, pp. 25-29.
[404] I.e., the evil word.
[405] His protecting deity has deserted him.
[406] Of his body.
[407] I.e., whoever may have invoked the evil demon to settle upon him.
[408] The translation of these lines follows in all but some minor passages the correct one given by Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 446.
[409] Of the sick man.
[410] Zimmern, Die Beschwoerungstafeln Shurpu, pp. 5, 6.
[411] In mercantile transactions.
[412] I.e., lied.
[413] I.e., did he say one thing, but mean the contrary?
[414] Zimmern, ib. pp. 13-20.
[415] For details as to the manner in which this editing was done, see King's admirable remarks in the Introduction to his Babylonian Magic and Sorcery, pp. xx-xxiv.
XVII. THE PRAYERS AND HYMNS
From what has just been said, it follows that the step from magical formulas to prayers and hymns is but a small one, and does not, indeed, carry with it the implication of changed or higher religious conceptions. While the incantation texts in their entirety may be regarded as the oldest fixed ritual of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion, there were occasions even in the oldest period of Babylonian history when the gods were approached in prayer without the accompaniment of magic formulas. Such occasions were the celebration of festivals in honor of the gods, the dedication of temples or of sacred statues, and the completion of such purely secular undertakings as the building of a canal. Gudea, we are told, upon completing a statue to his god Nin-girsu, prayed: 'O King, whose great strength the land cannot endure (?); Nin-girsu! grant to Gudea, who has built this house, a good fate.'[416] As in the earliest, so in the latest, period, the Babylonian kings approach the gods in prayer upon completing their great sacred edifices. The prayers of Nebuchadnezzar are particularly fine--remarkable, indeed, for their diction and elevation of thought. Upon completing the restoration of a temple to Nin-karrak or Gula in Sippar, he prays:[417]
Nin-karrak, lofty goddess, look with favor upon the work of my hands, Mercy towards me be the command of thy lips, Long life, abundance of strength, Health, and joy, grant to me as a gift. In the presence of Shamash and Marduk cause my deeds to be regarded with favor, Command grace for me.
A prayer of the same king addressed to Shamash, upon restoring the great temple at Sippar, E-babbara, runs:[418]
O Shamash, great lord, upon entering joyfully into thy glorious temple E-babbara, Look with favor upon my precious handiwork, Mercy towards me be thy command; Through thy righteous order, may I have abundance of strength. Long life, and a firm throne, grant to me. May my rule last forever! With a righteous sceptre of blissful rulership, With a legitimate staff, bringing salvation to mankind, adorn my sovereignty forever. With strong weapons for the fray, protect my soldiers; Then, O Shamash, by oracle and dream, answer me correctly! By thy supreme command, which is unchangeable, May my weapons advance, and strike and overthrow the weapons of the enemies.
Nebuchadnezzar's inscriptions are characterized by the prayer with which they almost invariably close. Whether erecting a sanctuary or building a canal or improving the walls of Babylon, he does not fail to add to the description of his achievements a prayer to some deity, in which he asks for divine grace and the blessings of long life and prosperity.
There were other occasions, too, in which, both in ancient times and in more modern periods, prayers were sent up to the gods. Kudur-mabuk, of the second dynasty of Ur, informs us that he built a temple, E-nun-makh, to Sin in gratitude to the god for having hearkened to his prayer.
The Assyrian kings pray to Ashur or Ishtar before the battle, and offer thanks after the victory has been gained. "O goddess of Arbela!" says Ashurbanabal,[419] "I am Ashurbanabal, the king of Assyria, the product of thy hands, created by thee in the house of my father. To renew the sanctuaries of Assyria, and to enlarge the cities of Babylonia, ... have I devoted myself to thy dwelling-places, and have steadfastly worshipped thy sovereignty.... Hearken unto me! O thou mistress of mistresses, supreme in battle, mistress of the fray, queen of the gods, ... who speakest good things in the presence of Ashur, the father, that produced thee. Teumman, king of Elam, has arrayed his army and fixed upon battle, brandishes his weapons to proceed against Assyria. Do thou now, O warrior, like ... drive him into the midst of the fray, pursue him with a storm, with an evil wind." Ishtar, the narrative tells us, hearkened to the fervent words of the king. "Be not afraid," says the goddess to her royal subject. Elsewhere the same king prays more briefly to Ashur and Ishtar. "May his corpse [viz., of a certain enemy] be cast before his enemy [i.e., before Ashurbanabal], and his remains be carried off."[420]
Upon ascending the throne, we find Nebuchadnezzar addressing a fervent prayer to the great god Marduk:
O Eternal Ruler! Lord of the Universe! Grant that the name[421] of the king whom thou lovest, Whose name thou hast mentioned,[422] may flourish as seems good to thee. Guide him on the right path. I am the ruler who obeys thee, the creation of thy hand. It is thou who hast created me, And thou hast entrusted to me sovereignty over mankind. According to thy mercy, O lord, which thou bestowest upon all, Cause me to love thy supreme rule. Implant the fear of thy divinity in my heart, Grant to me whatsoever may seem good before thee, Since it is thou that dost control my life.
The curses also with which so many of the historical texts of Babylonia and Assyria close may be regarded as prayers. We are also justified in assuming that the offering of sacrifices, which formed at all times an essential feature of the cult, both in Babylonia and Assyria, was always accompanied by some form of prayer addressed to some deity or to a group of deities. In view of all this, no sharp chronological line, any more than a logical one, can be drawn marking off the incantation formulas from the hymns and prayers pure and simple. The conceptions formed of the gods in the incantation texts are precisely those which we have found to be characteristic of them in the period when this phase of the religion reached its highest development. Ea is the protector of humanity, Shamash the lord of justice; and, if certain ideas that in the prayers are attached to the gods--as wisdom to Sin--are absent from the incantations, it may be regarded rather as an accident than as an indication of any difference of conception. The pantheon too, barring the omission of certain gods, is the same that we find it to be in the historical texts, and the order in which the gods are enumerated corresponds quite closely with the rank accorded to them in the inscriptions of the kings. What variations there are are not sufficiently pronounced to warrant any conclusions. All this points, as has been emphasized several times, to the subsequent remodeling of the texts in question. It is true that we find more traces of earlier and purely mythological notions in the incantations than in the hymns and prayers, but such notions are by no means foreign to the latter. Even in those religious productions of Babylonia which represent the flower of religious thought, we meet with views that reflect a most primitive mode of thought. The proper view, therefore, to take of the prayers and hymns is to regard them as twin productions to the magical texts, due to the same conceptions of the power of the gods, an emanation of the same religious spirit, and produced at the same time that the incantation rituals enjoyed popular favor and esteem, and without in any way interfering with the practice of the rites that these rituals involved.
This position does not of course preclude that among the prayers and hymns that have been preserved there are some betraying a loftier spirit, a higher level of religious thought, and more pronounced ethical tendencies than others. Indeed, the one important result of the dissociation of the address to the gods from the purely practical magic rites was to produce the conditions favorable to a development of higher religious thought. An offering of praise to the gods, whether it was for victory granted or for a favor shown, called forth the best and purest sentiments of which the individual was capable. Freed from all lower associations, such an act proved an incentive to view the deity addressed from his most favorable side, to emphasize those phases which illustrated his affection for his worshippers, his concern for their needs, his discrimination, and not merely his power and strength. In short, the softer and the more humane aspects of the religion would thus be brought out. The individual would address his god in terms betraying his affection, and would couple with him attributes that would reflect the worshipper's rather than the god's view of the purpose and aim of existence. Whatever powers of idealization there lay in the worshipper's nature would be brought into the foreground by the intellectual effort involved in giving expression to his best thoughts, when aiming to come into close communion with a power upon which he felt himself dependent. For an understanding, therefore, of the ethical tendencies of the Babylonian religion, an appreciation of the prayers and hymns is of prime importance; and we shall presently see that, as a matter of fact, the highest level of ethical and religious thought is reached in some of these hymns.
The prayers of Nebuchadnezzar represent, perhaps, the best that has been attained in this branch of religious literature. Returning, for a moment, to the dedication prayer to Marduk, addressed by the king on the occasion of his mounting the throne,[423] one cannot fail to be struck by the high sense of the importance of his station with which the king is inspired. Sovereignty is not a right that he can claim--it is a trust granted to him by Marduk. He holds his great office not for purposes of self-glorification, but for the benefit of his subjects. In profound humility he confesses that what he has he owes entirely to Marduk. He asks to be guided so that he may follow the path of righteousness. Neither riches nor power constitute his ambition, but to have the fear of his lord in his heart. Such a plane of thought is never reached in the incantation texts. For all that, the original dependence of the prayers and hymns upon incantation formulas, tinges even the best productions. Some of the finest hymns, in which elevated thoughts are elaborated with considerable skill, reveal their origin by having incantations attached to them. Again, others which are entirely independent productions are full of allusions to sickness, demons, and sorcerers, that show the outgrowth of the hymns from the incantations; and none are entirely free from traces of the conceptions that are characteristic of the incantation texts. The essential difference between these two classes of closely related texts may be summed up in the proposition that the religious thought which produced them both is carried to a higher point of elaboration in the hymns. The prayers and hymns represent the attempt of the Babylonian mind to free itself from a superstitious view of the relationship of man to the powers around him; an attempt, but--it must be added--an unsuccessful one.
It is rather unfortunate that many of the hymns found in the library of Ashurbanabal are in so fragmentary a condition. As a consequence we are frequently unable to determine more than their general contents. The colophons generally are missing,--at least in those hymns hitherto published,[424]--so that we are left in the dark as to the special occasion for which the hymn was composed. Without this knowledge it is quite impossible to assign to it any definite date except upon internal evidence. In the course of time, the hymnal literature of the great temples of Babylonia must have grown to large proportions, and, in collecting them, some system was certainly followed by the priests engaged in this work. There is evidence of a collection having been made at some time of hymns addressed to Shamash. Some of these were intended as a salute upon the sun's rising, others celebrated his setting. These hymns convey the impression of having been composed for the worship of the god in one of his great temples--perhaps in E-babbara, at Sippar. We have several hymns also addressed to Marduk, and one can well suppose that at the great temple E-sagila, in Babylon, a collection of Marduk hymns must have been prepared, and so for others of the great gods. But, again, many of the hymns convey the impression of being merely sporadic productions--composed for certain occasions, and without any reference to a possible position in a ritual.
Of the hymns so far published, those to Shamash are probably the finest. The conception of the sun-god as the judge of mankind lent itself readily to an ethical elaboration. Accordingly, we find in these hymns justice and righteousness as the two prominent themes. A striking passage in one of these hymns reads:[425]
The law of mankind dost thou direct, Eternally just in the heavens art thou, Of faithful judgment towards all the world art thou. Thou knowest what is right, thou knowest what is wrong. O Shamash! Righteousness has lifted up its neck(?); O Shamash! Wrong like a ---- has been cut(?); O Shamash! The support of Anu and Bel art thou; O Shamash! Supreme judge of heaven and earth art thou.
After a break in the tablet, the hymn continues:
O Shamash! Supreme judge, great lord of all the world art thou; Lord of creation, merciful one of the world art thou.
The following lines now reveal the purpose of the hymn. It is a prayer for the life of the king:
O Shamash! on this day purify and cleanse the king, the son of his god. Whatever is evil within him, let it be taken out.
The next few lines are a distinct echo of the incantation formulas, and show how readily prayer passes from a higher to a lower stage of thought:
Cleanse him like a vessel ----[426] Illumine him like a vessel of ----[426] Like the copper of a polished tablet,[427] let him be bright. Release him from the ban.
The same incantation occurs at the close of another hymn to Shamash, addressed to the sun upon his rising.[428] The colophon furnishes the opening line of the next tablet, which also begins with an address to Shamash. We have here a clear indication of a kind of Shamash ritual extending, perhaps, over a number of tablets, and to which, in all probability, the hymn just quoted also belongs.
The opening lines of the second hymn read:
O Shamash! out of the horizon of heaven thou issuest forth, The bolt of the bright heavens thou openest, The door of heaven thou dost open. O Shamash! over the world dost thou raise thy head. O Shamash! with the glory of heaven thou coverest the world.
It would be difficult to believe, but for the express testimony furnished by the hymn itself, that a production giving evidence of such a lofty view of the sun-god should, after all, be no more than an incantation. The same is the case, however, with all the Shamash hymns so far published. They either expressly or by implication form part of an incantation ritual. Evidently, then, such addresses to Shamash are to be viewed in no other light than the exaltation of Nusku in the 'Maklu' series,[429] and which we have found were in many cases elaborate, beautiful in diction, and elevated in thought. So--to give one more example--a hymn addressed to the sun-god at the setting, and which is especially interesting because of the metaphors chosen to describe the sun's course, is proved by the colophon to be again an incantation. It belongs to a series--perhaps, indeed, to the same as the specimens furnished:[430]
O sun-god in the midst[431] of heaven at thy setting, May the enclosure of the pure heaven greet thee,[432] May the gate of heaven approach thee, May the directing god, the messenger who loves thee, direct thy way. In E-babbara, the seat of thy sovereignty, thy supremacy rises like the dawn. May A, the wife whom thou lovest, come before thee with joy; May thy heart be at rest,[433] May the glory of thy divinity be established for thee. O Shamash! warrior hero, mayest thou be exalted; O lord of E-babbara, as thou marchest, may thy course be directed, Direct thy path, march along the path fixed for thy course (?). O Shamash! judge of the world, director of its laws art thou.
In the previous chapter, the hymns addressed to the moon-god in connection with eclipses have been referred to and short specimens given. A more elaborate hymn to Sin will further illustrate the conceptions current about this deity:[434]
O lord, chief of the gods, who on earth and in heaven alone is exalted. Father Nannar,[435] lord of increase, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, heavenly lord, Father Nannar, moon-god, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, lord of Ur, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, lord of E-gish-shir-gal,[436] chief of the gods, Father Nannar, lord of the brilliant crescent, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, whose sovereignty is brought to perfection, chief of the gods, Father Nannar, who passes along in great majesty, O strong Bull,[437] great of horns, perfect in form, with long flowing beard[438] of the color of lapus-lazuli. Powerful one, self-created, a product (?) beautiful to look upon, whose fullness has not been brought forth,[439] Merciful one, begetter of everything, who among living things occupies a lofty seat, Father, merciful one and restorer, whose weapon (?) maintains the life of the whole world. Lord, thy divinity, like the distant heaven and the wide ocean, is full (?) of fear. Ruler of the land, protector of sanctuaries, proclaimer of their name. Father, begetter of the gods and of men, establishing dwellings and granting gifts, Calling to sovereignty, giving the sceptre, who decreest destinies for distant days. Strong chief, whose wide heart embraces in mercy all that exists, ... beautiful, whose knees do not grow weary, who opens the road (?) for the gods, his brothers, ... who, from the foundation of heaven till the zenith, Passes along in brilliancy (?), opening the door of heaven, Preparing the fate (?) of humanity. Father, begetter of everything, ... Lord, proclaiming the decisions of heaven and earth, Whose command is not set aside, ... and granting water[440] for all that has life. No god reaches to thy fullness. In heaven who is exalted? Thou alone art exalted. On earth who is exalted? Thou alone art exalted. Thy strong command is proclaimed in heaven, and the Igigi prostrate themselves. Thy strong command is proclaimed on earth, and the Anunnaki kiss the ground. Thy strong command on high, like a storm in the darkness, passes along, and nourishment streams forth. When thy strong command is established on the earth, vegetation sprouts forth. Thy strong command stretches over meadows and heights, and life is increased. Thy strong command produces right and proclaims justice to mankind. Thy strong command, through the distant heavens and the wide earth, extends to whatever there is. Thy strong command, who can grasp it? Who can rival it? Lord, in heaven is [thy] sovereignty, on earth is thy sovereignty. Among the gods, thy brothers, there is none like thee. O King of Kings, who has no judge superior to him, whose divinity is not surpassed by any other![441]
A more perfect idealization of the mythological notions connected with the moon-god can hardly be imagined. The old metaphors are retained, but interpreted in a manner that reflects higher spiritual tendencies. The moon is still figured as a bull, but it is the idea of strength that is extracted from the picture and dwelt upon. The writer still thinks of the moon as an old man with flowing beard, but he uses the figure to convey the impression of the brilliancy of the great orb. The influence of the moon upon the change of seasons, upon vegetation,--a belief which the Babylonians shared with other nations,--leads the writer to extol the benign feelings of the god towards mankind. The sun-god, through the glowing heat that he develops, becomes, as we have seen, the warrior and even the destroyer, the consuming force. The moon-god is the benefactor of mankind who restores the energies of man weakened from the heat of the day. Nannar-Sin becomes the giver of life, whose mercies are extended to all. The gods and the spirits follow the example of mankind in prostrating themselves before the great orb of night. The independence of the course that he pursues in the heavens places him beyond the control of the great judge of the world, the mighty Shamash. There is no one superior to Sin, no one to whose command he must bend. With all this, there is a total absence of any allusion to his power of removing the influence of demons and witches. We have here a hymn purified from all association with the incantation texts, and there is every reason to believe that it was composed for use in the great temple at Ur, which is mentioned in the opening lines.
In the alternating question and answer we have also a valuable indication of the manner in which the hymn was to be recited or sung. The whole production appears to be arranged in a dialogue form, the lines to be alternately read by the reciting priest and the chorus of priests or worshippers. The same method is followed in other productions, while in some, as we shall see, the dialogue does not proceed in alternate lines, but is distributed among a varying number of sections. We may see in this style of composition one of the natural outcomes of the method pursued in the incantation texts, where, as will be remembered, the priest first recites the formulas, and then calls upon the individual before him to repeat it once, twice, or oftener, as the case may be. Such a custom leads to recital and responses in the hymns.
Not many of the hymns rise to such a height as the one just quoted. There were certain gods only, and after all not many, whose nature was such as to make an ethical development of the conceptions formed of them possible. Besides Shamash and Sin, Ea as the god of humanity and Nebo as the god of wisdom belong to this class. Of Ea, however, no hymns have as yet been found. This may of course be accidental, and still, if one bears in mind that in the later periods of Babylonian history Ea enjoyed a theoretical popularity rather than a practical one, the absence of Ea hymns might be explained as due to the lack of a fixed ritual in the Ea temples outside of the incantation texts.[442] Ea's position, like that of Nusku, was too marked in the magical texts to encourage a conception of them entirely independent of their power to release victims from the grasp of the demons.
A hymn to Nebo, which unfortunately is preserved only in part, illustrates the extent to which polytheistic conceptions may be spiritualized:[443]
... Lord of Borsippa, ... son of E-sagila.[444] O Lord! To thy power there is no rival power, O Nebo! To thy power, there is no rival, To thy house, E-zida, there is no rival, To thy city, Borsippa, there is no rival, To thy district, Babylon, there is no rival. Thy weapon is U-sum-gallu,[445] from whose mouth the breath does not issue, blood does not flow.[446] Thy command is unchangeable like the heavens. In heaven thou art supreme.
There are still plenty of mythological allusions in this hymn that take us back to a primitive period of thought, but it is a hymn prompted by the love and reverence that Nebo inspired. Its direct connection with the Nebo cult is shown again by the complementary character of each two lines. The whole hymn was probably adapted in this way to public worship.
Marduk, by virtue of his relationship to Ea, and by his independent position as the supreme god of Babylon, occupies a middle ground between Shamash, Ea, and Nusku on the one side, and such gods as Sin and Nebo on the other. Some of the hymns addressed to him end in incantations; others form part of the cult arranged for solemn occasions, when the praises of the god were sung in connection with sacrificial offerings.
In confirmation of the theory as to the relationship between magical texts and hymns above advanced, we find scarcely any difference in the grade of religious thought between these two classes of Marduk hymns. Both are equally distinguished by their fine diction. A hymn which celebrates Marduk as the restorer of the dead to life, and yet forms part of an incantation text, reads:[447]
O merciful one among the gods! O merciful one who loveth to give life to the dead! Marduk, king of heaven and earth, King of Babylon, lord of E-sagila, King of E-zida, lord of E-makh-tila, Heaven and earth are thine. The whole of heaven and earth are thine, The spell affording life is thine, The breath of life is thine, The pure incantation of the ocean[448] is thine, Mankind, the black-headed race,[449] The living creatures, as many as there are, and exist on earth, As many as there are in the four quarters, The Igigi of the legions of heaven and earth, As many as there are, To thee do they incline (?). Thou art the shedu, thou art the lamassu. Thou restorest the dead to life, thou bringest things to completeness (?). O merciful one among the gods!
One scarcely detects any difference between such a hymn and those to Sin and Nebo. The lines are adapted, like the other specimens, for recitation by two parties. The last line forms a solemn close to a section of this hymn. In the section that follows, the same character is maintained till we approach the close, when the exorciser steps in and asks Marduk to
Expel the disease of the sick man, The plague, the wasting disease ...
and the various classes of demons, utukku, alu, etc., are introduced.
Compare this now with some passages in a prayer addressed to Marduk:[450]
A resting-place for the lord (of E-sagila) is thy house. A resting-place for the lord of E-makh-tila is thy house. E-sagila, the house of thy sovereignty, is thy house. May the city speak 'rest'[451] to thee--thy house. May Babylon speak peace to thee[452]--thy house. May the great Anu, the father of the gods, tell thee when there will be rest. May the great mountain, the father of the gods,[453] tell thee when there will be rest.
...
Look favorably upon thy house, Look favorably upon the city, O lord of rest! May he restore to his place the bolt Babylon, the enclosure E-sagila, the edifice E-zida,[454] May the gods of heaven and earth speak to thee, O lord of rest.
Here we have specific references to Marduk. Everything about the city of Babylon is associated with the god. The great gods pay homage to Marduk. The whole hymn, conceived as a royal prayer to the god, clearly formed part of the ritual prepared for the great Marduk temple at Babylon. The hymn closes, as so many others, with a prayer on behalf of the king. The god is asked
To establish firmly the foundation of the throne of his sovereignty, So that he may nourish (?) mankind to distant days.
'Rest,' in the liturgical language, implied cessation of anger. Marduk, as the 'lord of rest,' was the pacified deity; and since it was a necessary condition in obtaining an answer to petitions that the god should be free from anger, the city, the temple, and the gods are represented as unitedly speaking to him--appealing to him to be at 'rest.' The production might, therefore, be called a 'pacification hymn.' The god has shown his anger by bringing on misfortune of some shape. His divine associates are no less anxious than his human subjects to pacify the mighty god.
Passing on to another god, a hymn to the storm-god, Ramman, enables us to specify the great terror that the god, as the general source of disturbances in the heavenly phenomena, inspired. The god is addressed[455] as
The lord who in his anger holds the heavens in his control, Ramman in his wrath the earth has shaken. The mighty mountain--thou dost overturn it. At his anger, at his wrath, The gods of heaven mount up to heaven,[456] The gods of earth enter the earth. Into the foundation of heaven Shamash[457] enters.
The illustrations adduced will suffice to show the manner in which the Babylonians conceived the relationship between mankind and the gods. The element of fear alternated with that of love, and no matter how near the gods were felt to be, one was never certain of their good will.
Another feature of some of these hymns which calls for special mention is the introduction of the deity as himself or herself taking part in the dialogue. A hymn addressed to Ishtar, as the morning and evening star,[458] belongs to this class.[459] It begins with a glorification of the goddess as the source of light, of being, and of earthly blessings. The worshipper speaks:
O light of heaven who arises like fire over the earth, who art fixed in the earth, Thou art exalted in strength like the earth. As for thee, a just path be graciously granted to thee When thou enterest the house of man. A hyena on the hunt for a young lamb art thou, A restless lion art thou. A destructive handmaid, the beauty of heaven, A handmaid is Ishtar, the beauty of heaven, Who causest all being to emanate, O beauty of heaven, Associate (?) of the sun, O beauty of heaven!
At this point the goddess speaks, through the officiating priest, who acts as the mediator:
For determining oracles[460] I have been established, in perfection have I been established. For determining oracles of my father Sin, I have been established, in perfection have I been established. For determining oracles of my brother Shamash, I have been established, in perfection have I been established. Me has my father Sin fixed, to determine oracles I have been established, Shining anew in heaven, for determining oracles I have been established, in perfection have I been established.
From the regular repetition of the refrain at the end of each line, one is tempted to conclude that these utterances of the goddess were to be recited by an officiating priest with the assistance of a chorus of priests, to whom the refrain was assigned, or it may be that the lines were alternately recited by the priest and the chorus. In the section that follows, this alternative character of the lines is more clearly indicated:
Full of delight is my majesty, full of delight is my supremacy, Full of delight do I as a goddess walk supreme. Ishtar, the goddess of morning am I, Ishtar, the goddess of evening am I, (I am) Ishtar,--to open the lock of heaven belongs to my supremacy. Heaven I destroy, earth I devastate,[461]--such is my supremacy. The destroyer of heaven, the devastator of the earth,--such is my majesty. To rise up out of the foundation of heaven, Whose fame shines among the habitation of men,--such is my supremacy. Queen of heaven that on high and below is invoked,--such is my supremacy. The mountain I sweep away altogether,--such is my supremacy. The destroyer of the mountain walls am I, their great foundation am I,--such is my supremacy.
The hymn closes with a prayer that the anger of the god be appeased:
May thy heart be at rest, thy liver[462] be pacified. By the great lord Anu, may thy heart be at rest. By the lord, the great mountain Bel, may thy liver be pacified. O goddess, mistress of heaven, may thy heart be at rest. O supreme mistress of heaven, may thy liver be pacified. O supreme mistress of the E-anna,[463] may thy heart be at rest. O supreme mistress of the land of Erech, may thy liver be pacified. O supreme mistress of the shining Erech, may thy heart be at rest. O supreme mistress of the mountain of the universe, may thy liver be pacified. O supreme mistress, queen of E-tur-kalama,[464] may thy heart be at rest. O supreme mistress, queen of Babylon, may thy liver be pacified. O supreme mistress, whose name is Nana, may thy heart be at rest. O mistress of the house, lady of the gods, may thy liver be pacified.
FOOTNOTES:
[416] Inscription D, col. v. ll. 2-7.
[417] Abel-Winckler, Keilschrifttexte, p. 33, col. iii. ll. 52-58.
[418] Ball, Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch. xi. 124 seq.
[419] Annals, Cylinder B, col. v. ll. 30-46.
[420] Without proper burial,--the greatest misfortune that could happen to the dead.
[421] I.e., life.
[422] I.e., called to the throne.
[423] See p. 296.
[424] The prayers and hymns of the Babylonians are only beginning to receive the attention they deserve at the hands of scholars. Sayce, e.g., in the specimens attached to his Hibbert Lectures, pp. 479-520, does not even distinguish properly between pure hymns and mere incantations. Now that Dr. Bezold's great catalogue of the Koujunjik collection of the British Museum is completed, the opportunity is favorable for some one to study the numerous unpublished fragments of hymns in the British Museum, and produce in connection with those that have been published a comprehensive work on the subject. Knudtzon's Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott may serve as a model for such a work.
[425] IVR. 28, no. 1.
[426] Some specification of the kind of vessel meant.
[427] Inscriptions were written on various metals,--gold, silver, antimony, lead, copper, etc.
[428] IVR. 20, no. 2.
[429] See above, p. 286.
[430] Published by Bertin in the Revue d'Assyriologie, no. 4, and translated by Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 573. I adopt Sayce's translation, Bertin's publication being inaccessible to me.
[431] Probably 'horizon.'
[432] Lit., speak to thee of peace.
[433] I.e., may thy anger depart.
[434] IVR. 9.
[435] 'The illuminator,' one of the names of Sin. See above, p. 75.
[436] The name of Sin's temple at Ur.
[437] A metaphor descriptive of the moon, because of the resemblance of the crescent to a horn.
[438] The moon-god is pictured with a long beard on the seal cylinders. See p. 76.
[439] I.e., unlike other products, the moon's fullness is self-created.
[440] A reference perhaps to the supposed influence of the moon on the tides.
[441] The rest of the hymn--some dozen lines--is too fragmentary to warrant translation.
[442] We have, however, a list (IIR. 58, no. 5) giving many titles and names of Ea that must have been prepared on the basis of Ea hymns.
[443] IVR. 20, no. 3.
[444] I.e., of Marduk.
[445] This weapon plays a part in some of the Babylonian myths.
[446] The weapon is miraculous--It kills instantly, but without causing blood to flow. The reference is to the lightning stroke.
[447] IVR. 29, no. 1.
[448] Perhaps a reference to Ea.
[449] Name for the inhabitants of Babylonla, and then used in general for mankind. Cf. p. 281.
[450] IVR. 18, no. 2. Badly preserved.
[451] I.e., call upon thee to be pacified.
[452] I.e., salute thee.
[453] Bel.
[454] The strongly fortified city of Babylon is compared to a bolt and the temple to an enclosure.
[455] IVR. 28, no. 2.
[456] I.e., fly to a safe place.
[457] I.e., the sun is obscured.
[458] See above, p. 84.
[459] Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestuecke (3d edition), pp. 134-136.
[460] The portents taken through observation of the position of Ishtar or Venus in the heavens were of especial value.
[461] Phrases introduced to illustrate the power, not the function, of Ishtar.
[462] The liver as the seat of the emotions.
[463] I.e., house of heaven. Name of Ishtar's temple at Erech.
[464] I.e., court of the universe. Name of one of Ishtar's temples.
XVIII. PENITENTIAL PSALMS
It will be recalled that both in the Ishtar hymn and in the one to Marduk above quoted, great stress is laid upon pacifying the deity addressed. Starting from the primitive conception that misfortunes were a manifestation of divine anger, the Babylonians never abandoned the belief that transgressions could be atoned for only by appeasing the anger of the deity. But within this limitation, an ethical spirit was developed among the Babylonians that surprises us by its loftiness and comparative purity. Instead of having recourse merely to incantation formulas, the person smitten with disease or pursued by ill fortune would turn in prayer to some god at whose instigation the evil has come and appeal for the pacification of the divine wrath. But while the origin of the so-called penitential psalms is thus closely bound up with the same order of thought that gave rise to the incantation texts, no less significant is the divorce between the two classes of compositions that begins already at an early stage of the literary period. The incantations, it is true, may be combined with compositions that belong to a higher order of religious thought. We have seen that they have been so combined, and yet the dividing line between the two is also sharply marked. Zimmern, to whom, more than to any one else, the interpretation of these penitential psalms is due, has suggested[465] that national misfortunes rather than private grievances may have given an impetus to this class of literary productions. It is true that historical references are found in some of the hymns, and it is also significant that not only do these psalms occasionally embody a prayer for the king,--thus giving to them a national rather than a personal character,--but the kings are called upon in times of distress to accompany their libations to the gods with the recitation of a 'lament to quiet the heart,'[466] as the Babylonians called this class of hymns.
One can easily see how such events as defeat in war would be ascribed to divine wrath, and not to the workings of evil spirits or witches; and while the personal tone that pervades most of the penitential psalms makes them applicable to conditions affecting the individual as well as the nation, the peculiar fitness of such psalms for occasions of national importance was a powerful factor in bringing about their sharp separation from the incantation formulas.
Just as in the hymns we found that the mere contemplation of the attributes of the gods, apart from the manifestation of these attributes in any particular instance, led to a loftier interpretation of the relationship existing between the gods and mankind, so the thought that evil was due in the last instance to the anger of some god led to greater emphasis being laid upon this relationship. The anger of the god prompted both the individual and the nation to greater zeal in securing the deity's love. To an even greater extent than in the hymns is the element of love introduced into the penitential psalms, and when not directly expressed, is so clearly implied as to form the necessary complement to the conception of the divine wrath. These psalms indeed show the religious and ethical thought of Babylonia at its best. Their ethical phase manifests itself more particularly in the conception of sin which is unfolded in them. The misfortunes of life, more especially those which could not so readily be ascribed to the presence of evil spirits, filled the individual with his sense of guilt. In some way, known or unknown to him, he must have offended the deity. The thought whether the deity was justified in exercising his wrath did not trouble him any more than the investigation of the question whether the punishment was meted out in accordance with the extent of the wrong committed. It was not necessary for the deity to be just; it was sufficient that some god felt himself to be offended, whether through the omission of certain rights or through an error in the performance of rites or what not. The two facts which presented themselves with overpowering force to the penitent were the anger of the deity and the necessity of appeasing that anger. Beyond this conclusion the Babylonians and Assyrians did not go, but this reasoning also sufficed to bring the conviction home to him that his misfortunes were the result of some offence. The man afflicted was a sinner, and the corollary to this position was that misfortunes come in consequence of sin. Through the evils alone which overtook one, it became clear to an individual that he had sinned against the deity. Within this circle of ideas the penitential psalms of Babylonia move. They do not pass wholly outside of the general Semitic view that sin is a 'missing of the mark,'--a failure, whether voluntary or involuntary, to comply with what was demanded by the deity under whose protection one stood. But one became conscious of having 'missed the mark' only when evil in some form--disease, ill luck, deluge, drought, defeat, destruction, storms, pecuniary losses, family discords, the death of dear ones--came to remind the individual or the nation of the necessity of securing the favor of the deity again. Still within this sphere there were great possibilities of ethical progress, and some of the Babylonian psalms breathe a spirit and are couched in a diction that have prompted a comparison with the Biblical psalms.[467] Thrown, as the sinner felt himself to be, upon the mercy of the angry deity, it mattered little what had called forth this wrath or whether the deity was conceived as acting in accordance with just ideas. The thought that would engage the entire attention of the penitent would be the appeasement of his god. To effect this, he would not stop short at exaggerating his own guilt. He would manifest a contrition of spirit that would not be the less sincere for being, perhaps, out of proportion to the character of his sin when judged by our standards.
Corresponding to the humiliation of mind to which he would be brought, his longing to be reconciled to the offended deity would be intensified. He would address this deity in terms of strong endearment, magnify his or her powers, as the case may be, and belittle himself and his own worth. The result of such a mental discipline could not but react healthfully on the mind of the penitent. The penitent would arise from his prayer with a more spiritual conception of the relationship existing between himself and his god. Not appealing for any material benefits for the time being, but concerned only with appeasing the divine wrath, the single burden of his prayer "that the heart of the offended god might be 'at rest'" would be marked by an intensity all the stronger for being at least comparatively pure of grosser associations.
All these features combined serve to make the penitential psalms the flower of the religious literature of Babylonia. The productions not only represent the highest stage which religious thought reached in the Euphrates Valley, but, in a certain sense, constitute the only productions in cuneiform literature that have a permanent literary value.
We find these compositions marked by a third feature which, however, as we have already seen, is not peculiar to them,--the dialogue form. In order to bring about a reconciliation with an angered god, three personages were necessary in the drama,--the god, the penitent, and, thirdly, the priest, acting as mediator between the sinner and his deity. The deity, according to Babylonian notions, could not be approached directly, but only through his chosen messengers,--the priests. This idea of mediation, as against the immediate approach, was so pronounced as to lead, as we have seen, to the frequent association with a god of a second divine personage,--his son or his servant,--through whom the petitions of mankind were brought to the throne of grace.[468] The priest was similarly conceived as the messenger of the god, and, by virtue of this office, endowed with a certain measure, at least, of divine power. He was, in the full sense, the god's vicar on earth,--his representative, who could, as we saw in the Ishtar hymn, speak in the first person on behalf of the god.[469] The more manifest mission of the priest, however, was to intercede on behalf of the mass of mankind. Accepting the sacrifices offered by the laity, it was he that secured their gracious acceptance on the part of the deity. It was the priest, as we have seen, who instructed the individual to pronounce the magic formulas that would be appropriate to his case; and just as in the incantation texts the priest accompanied the recitation of the formulas with an appeal of his own, so in the penitential psalms, he stood at the penitent's side, instructing him what to say, and emphasizing the confessions of the penitent by an assurance to the deity of the sincerity of the penitent, coupled with a fervent request that the prayer for 'appeasement,' which involved all that we mean by forgiveness, be graciously answered.
It is unfortunate that the text of none of the penitential psalms is perfectly preserved. We must, therefore, content ourselves in our illustrations with more or less imperfect extracts. It is to be noted, too, that often the exact meaning of the lines escapes us, owing to the obscurity of terms employed or to the gaps in the texts themselves. With few exceptions the psalms appear in the double style characteristic of so large a section of the religious literature of the Babylonians, the 'ideographic' composition being accompanied by a phonetic transliteration. The fact, however, that we have at least one text (IVR. 59, no. 2) in the phonetic style alone, is sufficient to show that no special weight is to be attached to the supposed 'bilingual' character of the others. This double style is not a feature that need be taken into account in determining the age of this class of compositions. The historical references in some of them have prompted Zimmern to give his partial assent to the opinion which would assign them, or some of them, to the age of Hammurabi. Beyond such references, which are not as clear as they might be, we have no data through which their age can be determined; but so far as the ideas which they convey and the religious spirit manifested in them are concerned, there is no reason why they should not be assigned to as early a period as some of the incantation texts. It is characteristic of the Babylonian, as, in a measure, of all religions, that the old and the new go hand in hand; that more advanced conceptions, so far from setting aside primitive ones, can live and thrive in the same atmosphere with the latter. We may, therefore, assume that penitential psalms existed as early as 2000 B.C. Whether any of these that have been preserved go back to that period is another question. One gains the impression from a careful study of them that most of these, if not all, belong to a somewhat later period, nearer to the first millennium than to the second millennium before our era. The Assyrians adopted these psalms, as they did the other features of the religious literature of the Babylonians, and enriched the collection by productions of their own which, however, follow closely the Babylonian models.
A particularly beautiful psalm, judging from the portion preserved, represents the penitent addressing his goddess--probably Ishtar--as follows:[470]
I, thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee; The fervent prayer of him who has sinned do thou accept. If thou lookest upon a man, that man lives. O all-powerful mistress of mankind, Merciful one, to whom it is good to turn, who hears[471] sighs!
At this point the priest takes up the thread to emphasize the appeal of the penitent by adding to it his own. He prays to the goddess:
His god and goddess being angry with him, he calls upon thee, Turn towards him thy countenance, take hold of his hand.
The penitent continues:
Besides thee, there is no guiding deity. I implore thee to look upon me and hear my sighs. Proclaim pacification,[472] and may thy soul be appeased. How long, O my mistress, till thy countenance be turned towards me. Like doves, I lament, I satiate myself with sighs.
The priest once more sums up the penitent's prayer:
With pain and ache, his soul is full of sighs; Tears he weeps, he pours forth lament (?).
A trait which appears in many of these psalms is the anonymity beneath which the offended deity is veiled. His or her name is often not mentioned, the deity being simply referred to as god or goddess, and at times it is left doubtful whether the sinner has 'sinned' against the demands of a god or a goddess, or against several deities. This feature is not without significance. In some cases, no doubt, the name of the specific deity was to be added by the penitent,[473] but in others this does not appear to be indicated. The anonymity is the natural result of the conception of sin involved in these productions. The sinner, becoming conscious of his guilt only as a conclusion drawn from the fact of his suffering from some misfortune, could only surmise, but never be entirely certain, wherein his offence consisted or what deity he had offended. In the case of the recital of incantation formulas, the question as to the offended deity was a minor one, and may indeed, at an earlier stage of thought, not have entered into consideration at all. This anonymity, therefore, which characterized the penitential psalms was not due to any advance in thought, but one can easily see how it led to such an advance. What may be called the personal aspects of the gods were less accentuated. The very fact that no particular god could in many cases be specified entailed, as a consequence, that the views held of the gods gained in abstractness. The general thought of one's dependence upon these supernatural powers, without further specification, superinduced a grouping of the gods under a common aspect, as the directors of man's fate. In short, the notion of deity, not indeed as a unit, but as a collective idea, begins to dawn in Babylonia. At the same time we must beware of exaggerating the force that this notion acquired. There is not the slightest trace of any approach to real monotheism in Babylonia, nor can it even be said that the penitential psalms constitute a bridge leading to such an approach. The strong hold that astrology at all times, and up to the latest periods, had upon both the popular and the educated mind was in itself sufficient to prevent the Babylonians from passing, to any considerable degree, beyond the stage in which the powers of nature were personified and imbued with real life. The penitential psalms presuppose this belief as much as any other branch of the religious literature; they merely illustrate this belief in the purest form of which, in the course of its development, it was capable.
A psalm in which this anonymity of the offended god is more strongly brought out begins as follows.[474] The penitent prays:
O that the wrath of my lord's heart return to its former condition,[475] O that the god who is unknown be pacified, O that the goddess unknown be pacified, O that the god known or unknown[476] be pacified, O that the goddess known or unknown be pacified, O that the heart of my god be pacified, O that the god or goddess known or unknown be pacified!
The penitent, it will be seen, does not know whether it is a god or a goddess whom he has offended. He therefore appeals to both. He goes on to say that he is not even aware of the sin that he has committed:
The sin that I have committed I know not.
And yet he must have sinned or he would not suffer as he does. In addition to his confession, he imposes the hardship of fasting upon himself by way of penance:
Food I have not eaten; Clear water I have not drunk.
The reference to fasting occurs so frequently in these psalms that one is tempted to conclude that such a bodily castigation was demanded by the ritual of the Babylonians:[477]
An offence have I unwittingly committed against my god, A sin against my goddess unwillingly been guilty of, O lord, my sins are many, great are my transgressions, O my god, my sins are many, great are my transgressions, O my goddess, my sins are many, great are my transgressions, Known or unknown god, my sins are many, great are my transgressions.
Again the sinner protests his innocence of the wrong he has done. He only knows that
The lord has looked upon me in the rage of his heart, A god has visited me in his wrath, A goddess has become angry with me and brought me into pain, A known or unknown god has oppressed me, A known or unknown goddess has brought sorrow upon me. I seek for help, but no one takes my hand. I weep, but no one approaches me. I call aloud, but no one hears me. Full of woe, I grovel in the dust without looking up. To my merciful god I turn, speaking with sighs. The feet of my goddess I kiss imploringly (?). To the known or unknown god do I speak with sighs, To the known or unknown goddess do I speak with sighs. O lord, look upon me, accept my lament, O goddess, look upon me, accept my lament, O known or unknown goddess, look upon me, accept my lament!
In this strain he proceeds for some time, until he is interrupted by the priest, who briefly adds:
O lord, do not cast aside thy servant, Overflowing with tears,[478] take him by the hand!
The penitent closes the prayer by another and still more earnest appeal:
The sin I have committed change to mercy, The wrong I have done, may the wind carry off. Tear asunder my many transgressions as a garment. My god, my sins are seven times seven,[479] forgive me my sins. My goddess, my sins are seven times seven, forgive me my sins, Known or unknown god, my sins are seven times seven, forgive me my sins. Known or unknown goddess, my sins are seven times seven, forgive me my sins. Forgive me my sins and I will humble myself before thee. May thy heart be glad[480] as the heart of the mother that has given birth, May thy heart be glad as that of a mother who has given birth, as that of a father who has begotten a child.
The proportions between the parts taken by the priest and penitent vary considerably. In the one quoted, the priest is only incidentally introduced; in others,[481] it is the penitent who plays the minor part. The penitential ritual varied accordingly; but since we cannot discover here, as we could in the case of the incantation texts, the special occasions for the variations, except for those that contain historical references, one must suppose that they could be used indifferently at the choice of the penitent or the priest. It is probable that at one time a large collection of such psalms was made in Babylonia, and that those we have represent compositions made from the rituals of various temples. In one psalm we have a distinct statement from which we may conclude that it belonged to the E-sagila temple at Babylon. Only a portion of it is preserved.[482] It is interesting, also, because of a reference to a dream that it contains, and which the god of Babylon is called upon to convert into a favorable sign for the petitioner. Zimmern is of the opinion that the hymn may have been an evening prayer, but it seems more satisfactory to place it merely in the general category of penitential psalms, with a request for a sign that the deity has been appeased. The sinner, after describing his woeful state,--
Instead of food, I eat bitter tears, Instead of date-wine, I drink the waters of misery, For my drink I have bitter waters, Instead of clothes, I am enveloped in sin,[483]--
proceeds to a fervent appeal:
O my god who art angry with me, accept my prayer, O my goddess who art wroth with me, accept my appeal, Accept my appeal, may thy liver be at rest! My lord in mercy and compassion [look upon me?] Who guides the span of life against the encroachments (?) of death, accept my prayer! O my goddess, look upon me, accept my appeal; May my sins be forgiven,[484] my transgressions be wiped out. May the ban be loosened, the chain broken, May the seven winds carry off my sighs. Let me tear away my iniquity, let the birds carry it to heaven, Let the fish take off my misfortune, the stream carry it off. May the beasts of the field take it away from me, The flowing waters of the stream wash me clean. Let me be pure like the sheen of gold. As a ring (?) of precious stone, may I be precious before thee. Remove my iniquity, save my soul. Thy [temple] court I will watch, thy image (?) I will set up.[485] Grant to me that I may see a favorable dream, The dream that I see, let it be favorable, The dream that I see, let it be unfailing, The dream that I see, turn it to a favorable [issue]. The god Makhir (?), the god of dreams stand at my head. Let me enter into E-sagila, the temple of the gods, the house of life. Commend me to Marduk, the merciful one, for favor, I will be subservient to thy greatness, I will exalt thy divinity.
There follows a line from which one may further conclude that the psalm is one composed for the royal chief of Babylonia. It is evidently only a ruler who can assure the deity that
The inhabitants of my city,[486] may they glorify thy power.
We know from the historical texts that previous to a military engagement the kings were particularly desirous of some sign from the deity that might serve to encourage the soldiery. Such a sign was ordinarily a dream. The circumstances, therefore, seem to point to our psalm being a royal prayer for forgiveness of transgressions, uttered before some impending national crisis, in the hope of securing, with the divine pardon, the protection of the deity who, up to this point in the campaign, must have manifested his displeasure rather than his favor. More distinct references to national events are found in another royal penitential psalm:[487]
How long, O my mistress, will the mighty foe oppress thy land, In thy great city Erech famine has settled, In E-ulbar, the house of thy oracle, blood is poured out like water, Throughout thy districts he has kindled conflagrations, and poured [fire] over them in columns (?).[488] O my mistress, I am abundantly yoked to misfortune, O my mistress, thou hast encompassed me, thou hast brought me into pain, The mighty foe has trodden me down as a reed, I have no judgment, I have no wisdom, Like a 'dry field' I am desolate night and day, I thy servant beseech thee, May thy heart be at rest, thy liver be pacified.
At times specific requests are inserted into these hymns, such as release from physical ills. Sickness being, as any other evil, due to divine anger, the sick man combines with his prayer for forgiveness of the sin of which he is guilty, the hope that his disease, viewed as the result of his sin, may be removed. A hymn addressed to Ishtar of Nineveh by Ashurnasirbal, a king of Assyria,[489] is of this character. It begins by an adoration of the goddess, who is addressed as
The producer, the queen of heaven, the glorious lady, To the one who dwells in E-babbara ... who hath spread my fame, To the queen of the gods to whom has been entrusted the commands of the great gods, To the lady of Nineveh ... To the daughter of Sin, the twin-sister of Shamash, ruling over all kingdoms, Who issues decrees, the goddess of the universe, To the lady of heaven and earth, who receives prayer, who hearkens to the petition, who accepts beseeching, To the merciful goddess who loves righteousness.
The king calls upon Ishtar to listen to his prayers:
Look upon me, O lady, so that through thy turning towards me the heart of thy servant may become strong.
Ashurnasirbal appeals to the goddess on the ground of what he has done to promote the glory of the goddess in his land. He has devoted himself to the service of the goddess. He has observed the festivals in her honor. He has repaired her shrines. No less than fourteen images of the goddess were set up by the king. Nay, more, he claims that before his days Ishtar was not properly worshipped.
I was without understanding, and did not pray to thy ladyship, The people of Assyria also lacked judgment, and did not approach thy divinity; But thou, O Ishtar, mighty weapon of the great gods, By thy grace[490] thou didst instruct me, and didst desire me to rule.
The statement that the Ishtar cult was introduced or even reinstated by Ashurnasirbal can hardly be taken literally; but it distinctly points to a movement in the days of the dynasty to which the king belonged, that brought the worship of the goddess into great prominence.
In return for all that he has done to the house of Ishtar, the king pleads:
I, Ashurnasirbal, full of affliction, thy worshipper, Who takes hold of thy divine staff, Who prays to thy sovereignty, Look upon me and let me appeal to thy power! May thy liver be appeased for that which has aroused thy anger; Let thy whole heart be strong towards me. Make my disease come forth and remove my sin, Let thy mouth, O lady, proclaim forgiveness. The priestly vassal who worships thee without change, Grant him mercy and cut off his affliction.
The historical references found in the penitential psalms are valuable indications, not only for determining the age of these compositions, but for ascertaining the occasions on which they were employed. Neither the Babylonian nor the Assyrian rulers ever reveal to us in their official annals or dispatches any check that they may have encountered in their careers or any misfortune that may have occurred to them or to the state. These psalms tell their own story. They point to seasons of distress, when recourse had to be taken to appeals to the gods, accompanied by the confession of wrongs committed. As against the incantations which are the outcome of the purely popular spirit, and which are the natural expression of popular beliefs, the penitential psalms seem to represent a more official method of appealing to the gods. The advance in religious thought which these productions signal may, therefore, be due, in part at least, to a growing importance attached to the relationship existing between the gods and the kingdom as a whole, as against the purely private pact between a god and his worshippers. The use of these psalms by Assyrian rulers, among whom the idea of the kingdom assumes a greater significance than among the Babylonians, points in this direction. It is significant, at all events, that such psalms were also produced in Assyria; and while they are entirely modeled upon the earlier Babylonian specimens, the contribution to the religious literature thus made in the north must be regarded, not as the outcome of the extension of the literary spirit prevailing in Babylonia, but as prompted by a special significance attached to the penitential ritual in removing the obstacles to the advancement of the affairs of state.
Despite, therefore, the elevated thought and diction found in these psalms, there is a close bond existing between them and the next branch of the religious literature to be taken up,--the oracles and omens, which similarly stand in close contact with affairs of state, and to which, likewise, additions, and indeed, considerable additions, to the stock received from Babylonia were made by the Assyrian literati.
FOOTNOTES:
[465] Babylonische Busspsalmen, pp. 1, 2.
[466] I.e., of the deity.
[467] See an article by Francis Brown, "The Religious Poetry of Babylonia," Presbyterian Review, 1888.
[468] Compare the relationship existing between Ea and Marduk, noted above, p. 276. Similarly, Nusku was the messenger to Bel. See p. 279.
[469] On the wider aspects of this conception of the priest among ancient nations, see Frazer, The Golden Bough, passim.
[470] Zimmern, no. 1; IVR. 29, no. 5.
[471] Lit., 'accepts.'
[472] In the original appears a phrase which signifies literally 'when at last,'--an abbreviation for 'when will there be rest,' and which has become a kind of technical phrase to indicate, again, the hoped-for pacification of the deity.
[473] The colophon to one of them (IVR. 10, Reverse 52) declares that the production in question is a "penitential psalm for any god whatsoever."
[474] IVR. 10. Zimmern, no. 4.
[475] I.e., be pacified.
[476] I.e., 'whoever he may be,' as we would say.
[477] Among many nations fasting is resorted to as a means of atonement. It must have been common among the Hebrews during the period of the Babylonian exile--perhaps through Babylonian influence. See Isaiah, lviii. 3.
[478] Lit., rushing water.
[479] I.e., very numerous.
[480] Be pacified.
[481] E.g., IVR. 61.
[482] Ib. 59, no. 2.
[483] Delitzsch, Assyr. Woerterbuch, p. 378. In another psalm the penitent says similarly, "Food I have not eaten, weeping is my nourishment, water I have not drunk, tears are my drink."
[484] Lit., 'released.' The underlying metaphor represents the individual held fast by sin, just as the demons seize hold of a man.
[485] A somewhat puzzling line, but which appears to convey the promise on the part of the penitent that if forgiven he will observe the rites demanded by the deity.
[486] Babylon.
[487] IVR 19, no. 3; Zimmern, no. 5.
[488] Like a column. The metaphor is the same as in the Biblical phrase, "column of smoke."
[489] Published by Bruennow, Zeits. f. Assyr. v. 66 seq. The king mentions his father, Shamshi-Ramman, in the hymn. If this is Shamshi-Ramman III., the date of the hymn would be c. 1100 B.C.
[490] Lit., 'lifting up of thy eyes.'