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« on: July 13, 2019, 03:18:33 PM »
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
“ In my right hand I bear my divine sharur.
In my left hand I bear my divine shargaz.
The divine ‘ lion with fifty teeth,’ sickle of my Anuship, I bear.
My divine ‘ merciless lion,’ shattering the mountain, I bear.
My weapon agasilikku^ which consumes the dead like the great dragon, I bear.
My heavy weapon of Anu, shattering the mountains, I bear.
My weapon nunu with seven wings, subduing the mountains, I bear.
The wild cow of battle, my wicked net of the hostile land, I bear.
The sword, sabre of my Anuship, severing the necks, I bear.
My mighty snare of battle, from whose hand the mountains flee not, I bear.
The help of man, the long bow, arm of my battle, I bear.
Ram that attacks man, my quiver, the cyclone, I bear.
My boomerang and shield, devastating the house of the hostile land, I bear.
My weapon with fifty heads, cyclone of battle, I bear.
My mace with seven heads, which like the mighty serpent with seven heads murder does, I bear.
My weapon with seven heads, wrathful crusher of battle, power of Heaven and Earth, before which the wicked escape not, I bear.
My divine Kurrashurur (‘god who causes the mountain distress’), whose brightness like day-light is sent forth, I bear.
My divine Erimanutuk (‘ god whose power the wicked withstand not’), establisher of Heaven and Earth, I bear.
The weapon whose splendour (covers) the Land, grandly made fit for my right arm, (adorned) with gold and lapis lazuli, which stands as object of admiration, my divine ‘ Help,’ I bear.
My weapon with fifty heads, which consumes in conflagration the hostile land, I bear.”
With the names of these twenty weapons the tablet breaks away, and other weapons probably followed here. The faculty of deifying aspects and activities of gods is well illustrated here. In this hymn seven of these weapons are called “gods,” and a theological list gives five deified weapons as names of the gods worshipped in various cities, one of which is the city Kar- Ninurta, “ Wall of Ninurta.” The references in these hymns to Ninurta’s conquest of the “ mountain ” refers to the wars of the Sumerians with the inhabitants of the hill countries to the north and east of Sumer, and the obscure myth of Ninurta and
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 129
the cursing or decreeing good and evil fates to stones may be indirectly connected with these ancient wars and legends.
Of more purely mythical nature is the legend of the six- headed wild goat slain in the mountain by Ninurta and men- tioned in the following hymn:
“ Hero in thy going against the hostile land,
Honoured one who from the womb of woman didst not issue,
What is in the Deep, what that thou hast not attained?
What in sea and earth can increase thee?
The self-exalted stone thou didst destroy and the plants altogether thou hast crushed.
The gods thou hast annihilated with destruction,^’^®
And the gods of Heaven stood by thee for battle.
The gods of Earth at thy call lapsed into silence.
The Anunnaki bowed their faces to thee.
The six-headed wild ram thou didst slay in the mountains.
The gypsum in the mountain thou didst trample upon.
The poisonous tooth of the sky thou hast broken.
When thou hast cried without, the people without thou didst prostrate.
When thou hast cried within, the people within thou didst prostrate.
When thou hast cried over the valleys with blood were they filled.
When thou hast cried over the habitations, thou didst count them as heaps of ruins.”
The reference to a six-headed ram in the mountains refers to a monster of the Elamitic land, Yamutbal,^^^ and to ancient wars between the Sumerians and that mountainous country, which the word “ mountain ” in all these myths designates. In mem- ory of Ninurta’s victory over this land, Gudea placed an image of the six-headed ram, which the hero (Ningirsu) slew, in the portico of the “ gate of battle ” at Lagash.^^® The “ poisonous tooth ” refers to a mythical bird, called in parallel texts the erin- bird with claws,^^® also referred to by Gudea as the <?rm-bird which lifts its eye upon the bull.” In the myth of Etana and the eagle there is an episode of Zu, the eagle, which preyed upon the carcass of a bull and was ensnared by a serpent. The “ poisonous tooth ” occurred also in the epic discussed above.
The mythological poems, therefore, consistently describe the
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SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
War-god as he who leads the armies of Sumer to victory over the mountainous lands east of the Tigris, and in these legends appear mythical monsters, which seem to belong also to the more famous myth of this sun-god’s conflict with the dragons of darkness. Zu and Mushussu, the eagle and serpent dragon, both occur in the passages cited above,’^’ and concern the same region, where Sumerian traditions place the exploits of the War and Sun-god j it became latterly the home of Iranians, whose principal myth is identical with the battle of Ninurta with the dragons of primeval chaos. Indra of Indian mythology slew the demon Ahi (Serpent), and in that battle Heaven and Earth trembled in fearj in the same manner Heaven and Earth, and the gods on high and below, trembled at the fury of Ninurta’s battle with the dragons. Another form of the Iranian myth of the conflict of light and darkness is the battle of Trita and the three-headed and six-eyed serpent Visvarupa in the Veda.’^^ The Iranian myth is told of Ahura Mazda or Thrae- taona and the three- jawed, triple-headed, six-eyed Azhi, rep- resented as a being with two serpents springing from his shoul- ders.’^® Another form of Thraetaona is Verethraghna who subdued Azhi (=Ahi) and Vishapa, “he whose saliva is poisonous.” There can be hardly any doubt but that Azhi is the serpent dragon mushussu or the serpent with seven heads mentioned in the hymn to Ninurta.’®* And Vishapa is surely connected with Zu, “ the poisonous tooth.” Ninurta and the dragons correspond so closely to Ahura Mazda and the similar Iranian myth that it would be remarkable if this entire Indian and Iranian legend was not ultimately Sumerian. The annual victory of the spring sun over the period of winter’s darkness probably suggested to the Sumerians the idea that in the begin- ning all was a watery chaos ruled over by the serpent dragon and her host when “darkness was on the face of the deep.” After his conquest of the dragons and latterly of the moun- tainous lands hostile to Sumer, the gods entrusted Ninurta with the “ Tablets of Fate,” precisely as in the later Marduk
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 13 1
version that deity received them as a reward for his victory over Tiamatd^® Fig. 57, from a seal of a comparatively late period, shews the god Ninurta, or, in the later period, Marduk or Ashur, pursuing the mushussu. In his right hand he holds a weapon with six heads, and hurls a thunderbolt with his left hand. The usual representation of this myth is the god with drawn bow aiming an arrow at a winged lion; sometimes the lion has an eagle’s head, and the god himself four wings in late glyptique.’^® Sometimes the god wields a sickle attached
Fig. 57. Ninurta Pursuing the Musgussu
to a long handle. On some seals the animals are natural eagles, ostriches, rams, and roe-bucks, a winged horse, and unicorn.
Like all gods who were “ sons,” Ninurta was originally also Tammuz, son of the Earth-mother, and died each year with perishing vegetation. Few traces of his connection with that myth and cult remain, as it was almost entirely suppressed by the Tammuz cult. The most direct survivals are the myths of Lil and Nintur’^ and of Marduk and Ishtar, both of which correspond to Tammuz and Ishtar. Ab-u or Es-u, one of the principal titles of Tammuz, is also a title of Ninurta.’^® Ni- nurta was regent of the month Tammuz and has also the title
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
132
Ni(n)kilim, “Lord of swine,” in the earliest Sumerian textsd^® The cult of Nikilim spread to the west, where he was wor- shipped at an unknown site, Diniktud®” The Accadian word for “ pig,” humusiruy is used as a title for Ninurta, and is followed by another title, sugannunnay “ lord of the sea coast,” by which Phoenicia is probably meant/®^ Aramaic transcriptions of the name nin-ib in the Persian period give the pronunciation Anushat, or Anmasht, or Enmasht, or Ennammasht. When we take into consideration that klUniy “pig,” is also rendered by nammashtUy^'^ “ small cattle,” probably also in a special sense “ swine,” it is possible that Ninurta’s title may be Ennammasht, “ Lord of swine.” It is, therefore, certain that the pig was sacred to Ninurta, and possible that he was known both in Babylonia and throughout the West as “Lord of Swine.” In any case as War-god, he was associated with the western War-god, who is there always the Sky- and Thunder- god Adad, Ishar, Yaw. This probably explains why the pig, at least among the worshippers of Yaw, i.e., the Hebrews, was tabu and its flesh forbidden to be eaten. This animal was well known in Sumer and Babylonia, but, in the innumerable records of offerings and economic transactions, it practically never occurs as a food, and a temple calendar forbids it to be eaten on the thirtieth of the fifth month. A fable in Assyrian states that the pig is unclean and an abomination to the gods. It is difficult to understand why the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Canaanites kept pigs at all j for it seems clear that none of these peoples used them much for food.
The cult of Ninurta spread to the West in early times, and a temple of Ninurta at Gebal is mentioned in the fifteenth cen- tury, It was precisely at Gebal that the famous legend of the annual wounding by a boar, in the wild and mountainous val- ley of the Adonis, was told. The seal (Fig. 58) from Kish, where Ninurta’s principal cult under the name Zamama as War-god existed from prehistoric times, may possibly be con- nected with a legend of the killing of Nikilim by a wild boar.
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 133
The meaning of the scene is obscure, and the figure of the person lancing a spear from the top of a palm tree may not be a deity. It may be connected with the motif of the Sun-god appearing from a tree discussed in Chapter There was
also a city, Beth-Ninurta, near Jerusalem, in the same period.^®® Since the god Damu, a regular title of Tammuz, was also a deity of Gebal,^®® and since Damu also appears for Gula, wife of Ninurta, it is obvious that not only the Adonis cult of Gebal
was borrowed from the Tammuz cult of Sumer, but that Ni- nurta, Nikilim, “the lord of swine,” has a direct connection with the Sumerian and Phoenician cults of the dying god.
The myths of the War-god of Sumer and Babylonia were attached by the Hebrews to their own Yaw, who as Sky- and Thunder-god fills this role in their mythology, or to the older Hebrew deity, the Sun-god El, Eloah. With the myth illus- trated by Fig. 57 compare the Hebrew survival in Job xxvi. 12-13:
“ Through his power the sea was stilled,
And by his adroitness he smote Rahab.
By his wind the Heavens are brightened;
His hand pierced the fleeing serpent.”
The primeval battle of the Sun-god with the dragons of the watery chaos appears in the late hymn to Yaw:
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SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
“ Thou hast rent asunder the sea by thy power,
Thou hast broken the heads of the dragons on the waters. Thou hast smitten the heads of Leviathan,
And given him as food to the wild beasts.”
Here Leviathan with many heads is reminiscent of the battle of Ninurta and the six-headed ram. Yaw and the battle with the dragons was a familiar theme in the visions of late Hebrew poets. In the vision of a poet who prophesied the vengeance of Yaw upon a sinful world, in which only His own people should be saved, the dragon legend is used as a symbol of His punish- ment of Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt:
“ In that day Yaw will take vengeance.
With his sword, harsh, great, and powerful,
Upon Leviathan, the fleeing serpent.
And upon Leviathan, the coiling serpent.
And will strangle the dragon which is the sea.”
Job attributed the legend to El in the verses:
“ Eloah doth not turn back his anger;
The helpers of Rahab did stoop under him.”
In the troubled period of the Jewish Exile a poet appealed to Yaw to shew again his power as in the ancient days when He smote Rahab and pierced the dragon.^^®
Ninurta, however, was identified with Saturn (not with Mars), called sag-us, or in Accadian, kaimanUy “the steady star.” Amos accused his countrymen of the Northern King- dom (Samaria) of bearing their images, Sikkut, “your king,” and Kiyyun. One of the names of Ninurta was Sakkut,^^^ otherwise called Etalak, who with his companion, Latarak, stood at the gate of sunrise to open the gate for the entering of Shamash. We have already seen that the title maliky “ king,” was popular in Canaan for the Sun-god, and in fact the Septua- gint renders Amos v.26 by “ ye have borne the tent of Moloch.” Ninurta, as god who opens the gate of sunrise, is a twin-god, and a hymn to him has the following lines:
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 135
“ The gate of Heaven thou didst open.
The bolt of Heaven thou didst seize away.
The lock-pin of Heaven thou didst lift.
The lock-rail of Heaven thou didst pull back.”
Sikkut is a corruption of the popular name Sakkut as god of Sunrise, and Kiyyun is a false vocalization in Hebrew for Kay- wan, as the Septuagint Raiphan for Kaiphan proves.
Ninurta was, therefore, a deity whose cult was firmly estab- lished in Canaan, as War-god, as Sun-god, as Saturn, and as brother of the Earth-goddess Astarte or Ashtoreth. As Tam- muz or “ brother,” Yaw appears in the Hebrew names Ahi- Yaw, “ My brother is Yaw,” and in Ahi-Melek, “ My brother is Malik,” and in many other names, survivals of this Baby- lonian myth from the older Canaanitish religion. At Gebal the name of an official, Abdi-Ninurta, in the fifteenth century, proves the popularity of this deity in the home of the cults of El and Adonis. In astrology Ninurta was identified under various names with the complex of stars Sirius, called “ the ar- row,” the Bow-star composed of €, 5 ,t of Cams Major, and /c,X of Puppis and Orion, wherein the Babylonians probably saw a gigantic hunter drawing an arrow on his bow.
In Chapter I the character and western forms of Nergal, the Sumerian deity of the summer and winter sun, and counterpart of Ninurta, were described in detail. The oldest known title of this underworld deity is Lugalmeslam, “ King of Meslam.” Meslam, the pronunciation of which is uncertain, is apparently a cosmological word for a mythical chamber in the underworld where the Sun-god remained during the night-time. The ordi- nary title in the later periods is “ god who comes forth from Meslam.” Most of the titles of this deity describe him as formidable agent of death and pestilence, lord of the grave, and judge of those that die. The title by which he was best known, Gir-unu-gal, “ Mighty one of the vast abode,” became Nergal in West Semitic transcriptions and must have been so pronounced by the Babylonians. Other titles are “Raging
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
136
King of the earth,” “ Raging god,” “ Lion, the slayer,” “ He who lies in wait for man on a journey,” and the Babylonians named him “ the evil god,” that is Satan, who like Nergal in Western mythology, was lord of the fires of Hell. This deity is by origin undoubtedly the god of the burning sun, and his title Gira means “ fire.” A text says that “ Shamash and Ner- gal are one,” and his Accadian name umu means “ heat.” Like his brother, Ninurta, he is also a god of War who carries merci- less weapons. Also the moon, during its period of darkness at the end of the month, belonged to the realm of Nergal in the lower world, and offerings were made to him on those days. On Fig. 51 his emblem is seen in the second register, first fig- ure on the left, a winged lion on which stands a weapon with two lion heads, characteristic of the Janus nature of Nergal, god of inferno and pestilence on earth. Fig. 59, a terra-cotta bas-relief from Kish, has the head of a deity, who should be Zamama, the War-god. On the left stands the weapon with panther’s head, symbol of Ninurta-Zamama, but on the right the weapon with two lion heads of Nergal. There is a sun disc at the side of the head. The combination of the emblems of Ninurta and Nergal found on the site of the principal cult of the War-god proves that the Babylonians had difficulty in distin- guishing them.
But as a Fire-god and lord of the lower world he is also god of flocks and foaling (Shagan), and he increases grain and gives life to men. A prayer to him has the following lines:
“ O lord, powerful, exalted, first-born of Nunamnir,’^^
First among the Anunnaki, lord of battle.
Thou art become prince in Arallu; no rival hast thou.
With Sin in Heaven thou perceivest all things.
Enlil, thy father, gave thee the black-headed people, the totality of creatures.
He entrusted to thy hand the cattle of the field, and animals.”
A prayer to him as the planet Mars calls him the “ merciful god ” who gives life to the dying.
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 137
Under the title Gira, Ira, Irra, Nergal appears in a long Accadian myth known as “ King of all habitations ” or the “ Series Irra,” said to have been revealed by night to a scribe Kabti-ilani-Marduk. The name of the scribe and the fact that no Sumerian original has been found, prove that it was written
Fig. 59. Terra-cotta Bas-relief from Kish, with Head of the War-god
at Babylon either during or after the age of Hammurabi.^'*^ It was Ishum, messenger of Irra, who revealed the poem to this scribe, and Irra was pleased by it saying: “ Whosoever reveres this song shall accumulate riches in his sanctuary. The king who magnifies the verses shall rule the regions. The psalmist who chants it shall not die by pestilence. In the house where this tablet is placed, though Irra rage and the seven gods slay, the sword of pestilence shall not come nigh, but peace is pro-
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
138
vided for it.” The argument of the poem, which in the Nine- vite edition occupied five tablets and about five hundred or more lines, cannot be followed in many parts owing to numer- ous lacunae in our present material.
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« on: July 13, 2019, 03:17:51 PM »
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SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
been preserved only in stray references of later literature, but it formed the basis for the elaborate Babylonian Epic of Crea- tion in which Marduk subdued the female dragon of chaos, there called Tiamat, and her host. As he, with his weapon Sharur, “ the cyclone,” rode to battle in a wagon whose roar shook heaven and Earth, so also Marduk “ took up the ‘ cy- clone ’ his great weapon and drove the chariot of the storm, the unopposable and terrible.” Fig. 5 5 shews him driving a winged dragon, fore-parts lion and hind-parts with tail and feet of an eagle. A liturgy refers to this old Sumerian myth. The legend
Fig. 55. Marduk Driving Chariot with Winged Dragon
of a gigantic conflict between the Sun-god and the demon of darkness “ in the beginning,” when the champion of the gods created the world, established the stars in their places, and the planets in their courses, presupposed an age when “ darkness was on the face of the deep,” and when “ Eldhim said, ‘ Let there be light and there was light,’ ” in the words of the late compiler of Hebrew traditions.®^ Ninurta is addressed by Anu and Enlil and ordered to subdue the dragon of chaos, ushumgal, the “ Great Sea Serpent,” and his ally Zu:
“ Lord of the encompassing net, lord full of terror,
Advance, ride forth; O lord, advance, ride forth.
Great champion, whose word bringeth joy; O lord advance, ride forth.
May great Anu see thee ; O lord, advance, ride forth.
Thou that boldest in leash the Zu-bird ; O lord advance, ride forth.
O lord establish thou thy foundations, yea thou alone, over thy foes.”
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 119
In this mythology the eagle, bird of the sun, is clearly dis- tinct from Imgig or Zu, the ally of the ushumgal or sea-serpent. On the monuments of all periods the eagle stands for Ninurta as Sol invictuSy and the eagle with rapacious claws is the storm bird subdued by this god. This is evident because Ninurta as Zamama was identified with the constellation Aquila. The eagle as symbol in Aramaean and Phoenician (see Fig. 19) is most probably taken directly from this ancient Sumerian iconography.®^ On Fig. 36, a seal of about the twenty-fifth century, the eagle is associated with the rising sun, and Fig. 37 shews the midday sun supported on the wings of an eagle, on an altar of Palmyra. On the other hand the eagle-dragon, Imgig, was identified with the constellation Pegasus.®*
Ninurta was the subject of two long Sumerian epics and many hymns. Of the two epics one known as “ The king, the day, the sheen of whose splendour is far-famed” consisted of about fourteen tablets in the late bilingual Assyrian version. Tablets II— IX are almost entirely missing at present. Tablet I is a hymn in glorification of Ninurta, son of Enlil, as the War-god who defeats the foes of Sumer:
“ Hero whose powerful net overwhelms the foe.
Ninurta, the royal son, to whom his father prostrates himself afar off. When Bau prays to him for the king.
When Ninurta the lord, son of Enlil, decrees fate,
Then the weapon of the lord turns its attention to the mountain,®® The god Sharur cries to the lord Ninurta:
‘ O lord, loftily placed among all lords,
O son, who sat not with a nurse, whom the strength of milk [fed not].
On that hero, as on a bull, I place my confidence.
My lord, merciful to his city, solicitous for his mother.
Scaled the mountain and scattered seed far and wide.
And the plants with one accord named him as their king.’ ”
Here begins an obscure myth which runs through the entire epic, the hostility of the various stones and how they were sub- dued by Ninurta and assigned to various uses. If the earth’s
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SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
vegetation sprang from the sowing of this god, the stones were hostile and the foes of civilization. The su stone, the sagkal stone, dolerlte, the wz stone, the “ mountain stone,” and their leader the alabaster, devastated the cities. “ From the moun- tain there went forth a poisonous tooth, scurrying, and at his (Ninurta’s) side the gods of his city cowered on the earth.” Whether this assault of the stones and the mountain serpent upon Ninurta’s city (Nippur) refers to some invasion of Sumer in remote antiquity or to a nature myth is uncertain. Ninurta turned his face to that place and prepared for war. The Tigris paled and trembled at his fury. He rode to battle in his ship Magurmuntae and his people knew not whither he had gone. The birds in the land of the foe were smitten and their feathers fell to earth j the thunder of Adad smote the fish of the Deep, and their cattle were deafened.
“ He caused dogs to consume the hostile land like milk.
The invader cried to his wife and son,
But could not ward off the arm of the lord Ninurta.
His weapon was mingled with dust on the mountain and the Plague had no compassion.
The divine Sharur weapon raised his hand on high to his lord (saying) : ‘ O hero, what has befallen thee?
The wrath of the mountain hast thou not smitten? ’ ”
It is impossible to follow the course of this epic in the broken condition of the sources at this point. On one fragment the myth of the naming of stones, which forms the important epi- sode later on, is referred to.®® With Tablet IX begins an ad- dress of Ninurta’s wife Bau or Gula.
“ The lord, soul of Enlil, who is adorned with crown upon his head, The hero, whose power is not suited to be guided (by others).
Who hastened in majesty, whom (Enlil) sent for my husband. Whom he begat for my spouse, when roof was not provided.
The son of Enlil rested [«o^], he turned not back his face.
The faithful man whom the faithful woman bore, has come to Eshu- mera ’®® the place of which his eyes are fond.
I will ‘ sever the cord ’ for the strong lord.’^“’
I am queen alone, and I will go to the eternal lord.”
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 121
In the broken passage which follows, Ban prays to Ninurta for some purpose not given on the fragment, and Ninurta’s reply contains references to her entering the “ hostile land ” and reigning there as its queen. Here begins the famous episode of Ninurta’s addresses to twenty different stones. This myth is referred to in a hymn to Ninurta:
“ The gypsum on the mountain thou didst trample upon.”
The first address does not preserve the name of the stone. It began:
“ Once on a time, when Ninurta decreed fates,
Then in, the Land lived the X stone, it is said. Verily this is so.”
The fragmentary lines of this section possibly addressed to the gypsum {kassu) afford no intelligible text. The second address began :
“ My lord stood upon the X stone.”
and the whole of this section is missing. The third section began near the end of Tablet X as follows:
“ My king stood upon the shammu-^tone.
To the illatu and the porphyry he cried.
Ninurta, son of Enlil, decreed their fates.’®*
Ninurta, the lord, son of Enlil cursed it :
‘ O shammu-stont, since in the mountain thou wentest up,
Since for my seizing thou didst bind me.
Since for my slaying thou didst smite me.
I am the lord Ninurta; since in my far-famed abode thou didst ter- rify me.
May the powerful hero, possessor of strength, the superior, decrease thy form.
O shammu-stont, may thy brothers pour thee out like meal.
Unto their descendants verily thou shalt be an object of woe, and their corpses rule thou.
Thou art strong, but let thy wailing be, and thou perish by piercing. Like a great wild bull, whom many slew, be (this) given as thy portion,
O shammu-stont, in battle like a dog which the shepherd with weapon overpowered.
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SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
I am lord; “ Porphyry for piercing,” this be thy name.’
Once on a time, when Ninurta decreed fates.
Then in the Land the illatu-stont, the porphyry, was pierced. Verily this is so.”
In a fourth address Ninurta stood upon the j«-stone and the basalt, and cursed them: “Like moths I will annihilate you.” Goldsmith and smithy should use them. The fifth stone was sagkalag, literally “chief stone.” This section is almost en- tirely lost. The last two lines are:
“ Once on a time, when Ninurta decreed fates.
Then in the Land the sagkalag-stont did evil work (?), it is said. Verily this is so.”
The sixth stone was dolerite, which is said to come from the “ upper land ” and from Magan (Oman). This stone received a good fate at the hands of Ninurta:
“ The king, who secures his name unto life of remote times.
Who makes his statue for eternity.
In Eninnu,^®^ temple which is filled with things desirable.
At the place of mortuary sacrifices . . . for seemly use may set thee.**
The seventh address is to the stone and it is cursed:
“ Lie thou like a swine in thy work.
Be cast aside and for no purpose shalt thou be used, perish by pulveri- zation.
He that finds thee shalt return thee to the water.”
The eighth stone, alalluniy received a good fate:
“ O alalluy possessor of wisdom, thou that reposest, verily thou shalt put on my glory.
In the foreign land and likewise in the Land shalt thou proclaim my name.
Thy greatness shall resist pulverization.
In the clash of arms, O hero, him whom thou slayest grandly cause to perish.
The Land shall praise thee kindly and hold thee in honour.”
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 123
The ninth stone is the “mountain stone,” which received a place of unparalleled honour:
“ O praised one, the light of whose eyes is cast abroad,
O mountain stone who in the hostile land hast raised a roar of wrath. Who utterest a roar in battle, wrathfully, terribly.
Him whom my hand conquered not victoriously.
Whom with the cruel ones I bound not,
Shalt thou scatter at the feet of thy people.
Like gold shall they treasure thee.
O hero whom I bound, not have I rested until I gave thee life.”
Marble, the tenth stone, received an illustrious destiny. It should be used for ornament in the temples and be the delight of the gods. The eleventh stone, the algamish, is cursed with a harsh fate:
“ Since thou didst plot against my advance,
Go thou before the craftsmen.
Its name shall be called ‘ Algamish ’ when the daily offering is brought.”
The twelfth stone, dusu^ is grouped with the hulalu and por- phyry, and received a good fate,^®® but the third stone, with which porphyry was grouped, received an evil destiny. This section is almost entirely missing in the texts j it ends:
“ May the land with homage bow down to thee.”
The thirteenth stone was chalcedony which was cursed with a hard fate:
“ For thy . . . may the horn lacerate thee, and be thou laid for adornment.
Set thy face upon one unworthy of thee.
Be thou torn like a mourner’s garment.
The copper-smith shall be set over thee and sever thee with chisel. The man who brings thy flesh for enmity.
The carpenter who is able to do his work well.
Shall slay thee like death, and flay thee like ry^.”
The fourteenth address to the immana-stont is almost entirely lost, but from the first line it is clear that it received an evil fate.
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The fifteenth address begins with the maUd-stonty but like sec- tions three, four, and twelve, other stones are grouped with the one addressed. Here the dubban-y ukittum-y and gashurra- stones seem to be species of the mashid. They are destined unto fame. The sixteenth stone, shagaray is exalted to the chief place among stones:
“ When thou fleest may every people,
With awe in the builded cities, resting-places of the goddess Ninhursag, Chant songs of praise because of it.”
With the beginning of the address to the seventeenth stone, marhushay which received a good fate, the text of the epic is lost, and we know the names of the five remaining stones from the catalogue only.
A Sumerian epic to Ninurta in three tablets was known by its first line Ana-gim gim-muy “ He who like Anu . . .” The theme of this epic is also war, the conquest of foreign lands, and the triumphant return of Ninurta to his city Nippur. Of Tablet I there are only a few references to the warlike power of Ninurta, the wall of the hostile land, and how in his rage he smote their gods. A section of Tablet II has the following lines :
“ Anu in the midst of Heaven gave him fearful splendour.
The Annunaki, the great gods attain it not.
The lord went forth like a cyclone,
Ninurta, destroyer of the wall of the hostile land, went forth like a cyclone.
Like a storm he raged on the foundation of Heaven.
When by the command of Enlil he took his way to Ekur,
He, the hero of the gods, casting a shadow of glory over the Land, Even toward Nippur, far away, not near,
Nusku, the far-famed messenger of Enlil, came forth to meet him in Ekur,
Speaking a word of greeting to the lord Ninurta:
‘ Thy fearful splendour has covered the house of Enlil like a garment. At the noise of the rumbling of thy chariot Heaven and Earth tremble as thou comest.
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When thou Hftest thy arm a shadow stretches far.
The Annunaki flee in terror even to the host of them.
0 terrify not thy father in his abode.
And cause not the Annunaki to tremble in the dwelling Ubshu- kinnu.’ ”
At the beginning of the third Tablet Ninurta is replying to Nusku before his father Enlil and the divine court of Ekur:
“ The warriors, whom I have bound, shall bear a nose-cord like a goring ox.
The kings, whom I have bound, shall bow their faces (to me) even as to Shamash.
1 am the mighty cyclone of Enlil who on the mountain was irre-
sistible.
I am the lord Ninurta, let them kneel at the mention of my name. When Anu, light of the gods,
Anu [a . . . ] chose in his great might, I am he.
By the weapon shattering the high mountains I am he that has war- rant for kingship.”
He then praises Nippur as his beloved city and the city of his brothers. Then the god Ninkarnunna, defined as the barber of Ninurta in other texts, stood before Ninurta and said:
“ O lord, in thy city which thou lovest, may thy heart be at rest.
In the temple of Nippur, thy city, which thou lovest, may thy heart be at rest.
When thou joyfully enterest the temple Shumera, the dwelling place of thy heart’s contentment.
Say to thy wife, the maiden, queen of Nippur,
What is in thy heart, say to her what is in thy mind.
Say to her the kindly words of one who is forever king.”
Then Ninkarnunna with words of homage laved his heart with gift of cool waters. “ These were the things which he said to him to glorify his decrees forever.” “ When thou enterest into Eshumera gloriously.” Ninurta looked kindly upon his wife, the queen of Nippur, and told her what was in his heart and mind, and the kindly words of one who is forever king. The epic closes with the following lines:
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“ The warrior whose valour is made most glorious,
Whose greatness in the temple of Enlil filled the world,
The lord, destroyer of the mountains, the unrivalled,
Wrathfully unchained his mighty battle.
The warrior went forth in his might,
Ninurta, the mighty son of Ekur.
O illustrious one of the father that begetteth, far-famed is thy praise.”
Lugallcurdub, a minor deity in the court of Ningirsu of La- gash, is described in the following passage, where Gudea places an image of him beside Ningirsu (= Ninurta) in the temple. “ To hold the mace of seven heads, to open the door of the temple Enkar, ‘ gate of battle,’ to prepare the sword blade, the ml-lby the quiver, the raging hurra, and the plan of battle, to devastate all lands hostile to Enlil, for the lord Ningirsu, and at his orders, he (Gudea) caused the warrior to enter be- side him, his lieutenant Lugalkur-dub, who with the weapon sharur of battle subdues the lands, the chief lieutenant of Eninnu, falcon of the hostile land.” Beside this deity Gudea also placed “ the second lieutenant,” described as kur-su-na, the raven, that he might destroy the hostile land with “ the mi-ib of Anu, which like a lion rages over the mountains, and with the sharur, the cyclone of battle, that its terrible sound wreak destruction and restrain their hearts.”’”® In another passage Gudea presented this War-god with the following symbols of battle. “ The chariot ‘ subduer of the foreign land,’ bearing splendour, clothed in terror, and its young ass, ‘panther of sweet voice,’ with its coachman, the mace of seven heads, weapon of battle, which the regions bear not, smiter in battle, the mi-ib, weapon of hulalu-stont, with head of a panther, which turns not back against the foreign land, the sword of nine emblems, arm of valiance, the bow which roars like an ash forest, the angry arrow of battle which darts like lightning, the quiver which puts out its tongue against the gnashing wild beasts and the serpent dragon.”””
These passages are principally concerned with wars against the enemies of Sumer, but at the end of the last passage there
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is a mythological reference to the mushuHu, “ raging serpent,” or serpent dragon, which is one of the eleven dragons of Tiamat in the Epic of Creation. In mythological representations of Marduk this dragon seems to have been the one with which the memorable primeval battle of the Sun-god with the dragons of darkness was principally associated. On Fig. 51, third regis- ter, first symbol, the throne of Marduk with spade is sup- ported by the dragon which he subdued in his victory over
Fig. 56. Mushussu from Wall at Gate of Babylon
Tiamat. Fig. 56 shews one of the mushussu designed in white glaze on a blue background on the walls of the gate of Baby- lon. Gudea adorned the lock-blocks of the door of the tem- ple of Ningirsu with figures of two monsters of chaos, hasmu (viper) and nmshussuy which occur together among the dragons of Tiamat.”^ On pp. 117-8 other references to the original myth of Ninurta and the battle with the dragons were given.
A fragment, which probably belongs somewhere among the scantily preserved Tablets II-VIII of the epic discussed above,^^® contains several lines of a hymn of praise by Ninurta himself concerning his weapons:
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This deity is invariably described as the friend and saviour of men, and there are no references in all the vast religious litera- ture to his anger and vengeance, except where he is included with other gods and invoked to destroy those who violate con- tracts,®®
For this reason the mythical being called the fish-ram ob- tained the title karubu^ rendered above by “ protecting angel.” The Accadian word was undoubtedly borrowed in Hebrew my- thology as keruby “ cherub.” The word has strictly speaking the meaning “ one who is favourable,” “ who js benign,” “ who intercedes for,” and images of them were set at the gates of temples and palaces to place these under the protection of the mighty god of wisdom and mystic powers. Asarhaddon placed images of lions, the murderous Zu, Lahmu, and the god Kuribu at the entrances to the gates of the temple of Ishtar in Arbela.®^ These were all, in reality, monsters of chaos, iden- tified with constellations, subdued by Marduk and made to serve the gods. Kuribu, Karubu, or Karibu, the mythical being of Ea, serves in mythology as the fish-ram, symbol of the god of the Deep, and also as Capricorn.
In religion and mythology, of even greater importance than these three heads of the trinity, Anu, Enlil, and Enki, is the Sumerian Mother-goddess, whose character was so manifold that she became many distinct goddesses. In Chapter I the paramount importance of the Earth-goddess Astarte among all the West Semitic races was emphasized. Babylonian religion caused a profound revolution throughout the West in the name and gender of the Arabian and original Semitic goddess of the planet Venus. The great and ubiquitous cult of the virgin Earth-goddess in Canaan, Phoenicia, and Syria seems to have been entirely borrowed from Babylonia. As already suggested, the primitive name of this Sumerian goddess seems to have been Ninanna, Innini, “ Queen of Heaven,” but the pictograph first used to write her name represents a serpent twining on a staff. The name probably rests upon the primitive identification with
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 109
the planet Venus, and upon the theological principle that she was created by Anu, the Heaven-god, as his female counterpart. Three main types of the Earth-goddess, together with their minor manifestations, are clearly recognizable, Innini, the Semitic Ishtar, Mah, “ the mighty goddess,” Accadian Belit-ili, “ Queen of the gods,” and the underworld goddess Eresh- kigal.
The order in the official Assyrian theogony places the Earth- mother-goddess dingir-Mah immediately after the Earth-god Enlil, and she was in fact his sister. The supreme importance of this goddess is obvious by the place and nature of her symbol among the emblems of the gods. On Fig. 51 her throne fol- lows those of the trinity, Anu, Enlil, Ea, and supports a curious object, a broad band shaped like the Greek letter 12, Omega inverted. On one throne, where it follows the symbols of Marduk and Nebo (first two symbols in third register here), this band lies flat on the throne, with ends coiled inward, not outward as here. On other monuments the Omega symbol stands alone without a throne, and in a position exactly like Omega. This symbol is called markasu rahuy “ the great band ” of the Esikilla, “ holy house.” The word markasu, “ band,” “ rope ” is employed in Babylonian philosophy for the cosmic principle which unites all things, and is used also in the sense of “ support,” the divine power and law which hold the universe together. It is employed more often of the god of the first principle, water, Enki-Ea, and of his sons Marduk and Nebo. Ninlil, wife of Enlil, frequently identified with Mah, ruled the constellation Margldda, Ursa major, the wagon star, which was also called the “ band of the Heavens,” because it remains fixed at the pole of the Heavens.
After the multifarious activities of the Earth-goddess were apportioned to the three major types, for Mah or Belit-ili was reserved in particular the protection and increase of animal life. She it was who, in the teaching of the great theological school of the cult of Enlil and Ninlil of Nippur, created man from
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clay, and her salient character is the goddess of Childbirth. Under a minor form (Gula) she became the patroness of medicine. Essentially an unmarried goddess, her minor types, Bau, Gula, became wives of the sons of Enlil, Ningirsu, Ninurta, as Erishkigal became the wife of Nergal, son of Enlil. The official pantheon gives forty-one names for dingir-Mah, among which the scribes indicate five as the most important. These are Ninmah, “ Mighty queen,” Ninhursag, “ Queen of
Fig. 52. Top Portion of a Water Jar in Grave of the Palace at Kish
the earth mountain,” Nintur (dialectic Sentur), “ Queen, the womb,” Ninmea, or Nunusesmea, “ Queen who allots the fates,” and Ninsikilla, “ the pure Queen.” Under the last title she was wife of her son Nesu (dialectic Lisi). The god Nesu is known almost entirely by his star Antares in Scorpio, which was also identified with Nebo.
Among other titles which appear in the myths are Aruru, Nintud, “ Queen who bears,” Amatudda, “ Bearing mother,” Amadubad, “ Mother who opens the lap (womb),” and Mama, Mami. It is extraordinary that the theological lists give her a husband by name Shulpae, in reality a name of Marduk as the planet Jupiter. Every city had a temple, usually named Emah,
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON in
or at least a shrine to this goddess, but her principal cult centres were Adab and Kesh in southern Sumer, and at Kish (near Babylon), said to have been the first city founded after the Flood, and certainly the oldest Sumerian capital. Here her temple was named Hursagkalamma, restored by Nebuchadnez- zar with enormous proportions, and relics of her cult are found at great depth beneath the plain here. At one period the dead were provided with large water- jars which bore broad handles with rude busts of this goddess of Birth and Healing. See Fig.
52. When Merodachbaladan restored her temple at Hursagkalamma (a name given to this part of Kish), he addressed her:
“ Ninlil, great queen, far-famed queen, merciful mother, who sits in the house of the world, the revered.” A description has been preserved, which does not en- tirely agree with the very human and beau- tiful figures of her, found abundantly in nearly all periods in Babylonia, especially at Kish.®® Although these figurines do not have the head-dress of a goddess, the fre- quency with which they occur at her prin- cipal cult centres, establishes their identifi- cation with Ninmah, Aruru, or Ninhursag.
An Assyrian text describes her as follows: “The head (has) a turban and . . . j she is provided with knots on the turban like earth flies j with a . . . and her hand is human j she binds on a waist-band, leaving her breast openj in her left arm she carries a child, which feeds at her breast j with her right arm she caresses itj from her head to her waist-band she has the naked body of a woman j from her waist-band to the soles she is covered with scales like a serpent} her navel is placed in a waist-band.”
References to Mah as she who gave birth to man, in the
Fig. 53. Figure of Mother and Child FROM Late Period
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sense that she created him from clay, are numerous in my- thology. In this sense the texts usually employ the title Aruru. A bilingual poem, in which the traditions of the Eridu and Nippur school were combined, describes the creation of the world as follows:
“ All the lands were sea.
When the interior of the sea was a well,
Then Eridu was made and Esagilla created.
Esagilla, which in the Deep, the “ King of the Holy Chamber ” inhabited.
Babylon was made and Esagilla completed.
The gods, the Anunnaki, together made (them).
The holy city they named ‘ Abode of the joy of their hearts.’
Marduk assembled wicker-work on the face of the waters.
He created dust and heaped it up with the wicker-work To cause the gods to dwell in the abode of the joy of their hearts, Mankind he created.
Aruru with him created the seed of mankind.”
This is a late Babylonian version of creation in which Marduk replaces Enki-Ea. In a myth of the destruction of mankind by drought, famine, and pestilence, it was Mami who recreated men from clay at the command of Ea. She is here called “ Mother womb, creatress of destiny,” Having uttered an incantation over clay, she placed seven pieces of clay at her right hand, and seven at her leftj between them she put a baked brick. These became seven and seven childbearing wombs, seven creating males, and seven creating females. She de- signed them in her own likeness.®® The same myth describes in the next episode how a deluge destroyed mankind, and Mami, summoned by the gods, was told to “ create lullu ®® that he bear the yoke.” As in the myth translated above, man was necessary to the happiness of the gods. In this episode, pre- served only on a fragment from the old Babylonian version, Mami made man from clay and Ea charged the gods to slay a god that Ninhursag might mix the clay with his flesh and blood.®’^ Another text says that Anu wept when the demoness Lamastu destroyed children with plague, and Aruru-Belit-ili’s
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eyes flowed with tears, saying, “ Why should we permit those whom we created to perish? ”
The myth of the Mother-goddess and her son and husband who died yearly and descended for a time to the underworld to be rescued and restored to his wife and mother, generally appears in Sumerian and especially Babylonian religion at Erech in the cult of Innini and Dumuzi, Ishtar and Tammuz, but the older form of this myth in Sumerian seems to have been associated with the cult of Nintur, Ninhursag, Aruru, and her son and husband Nesu. It is perhaps a coincidence that the ancient pictograph for tur consists of the pictures for right and left hand, and that Nintur = Mami created men from pieces of clay at her right and left hand.®® The sign tur certainly means “ bearing womb ” in Nintur, “ Queen of the womb,” and the same sign developed a form read Ul, “ feeble,” “ decrepit,” also the word for “ man,” lily Accadian liluy lulluy who was created from clay by this goddess. The same sign has the meaning “ ill,” “ pain,” “ sickness ” {tur)y and her son, the dying god, is described in one hymn as mu-lu-Ul, “ the feeble one.” It seems, then, that the most ancient titles of this goddess refer to her having created man and to her having borne the dying god. Man, the mortal one, whose life-blood and flesh sprang from a god himself, walks forever in the shadow of death, as does his divine brother the god Lil, or Nesu.^® A Sumerian hymn also speaks of the dying god as the brother of Nintur — Ninhursag:
“ How long, O my brother, O son of Gashanmah?
For my brother I utter lament, utter lament, utter lament always.
I utter lament, a chant of woe for the hero.
I repeat, ‘ how long,’ I repeat ‘ how long,’ ever repeat ‘ how long.’
O hero, thy mother repeats ‘ how long.’
She cries, ‘ O my son, whither shall I entrust thee?
O my brother, from thy resting-place arise, thy mother seeks thee.’
The brother to his sister replied,
‘ Deliver me, O my sister, deliver me.
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The place where I He is dust of the earth ; the slayers repose there. Restless is my sleep, the wicked dwell there.
O my sister, where I sleep I rise not.
May my mother, who seeks me, free me from imprisonment.’ ”
In this text Lil imprisoned in Arallu is restored to the world by a magic ritual in which a couch is prepared for his soul. Throughout this text the Mother-goddess as his sister has the name Egime, the a-tur {tur)y and his mother, Ninhursag. Ap- parently the god Shulpae (= Enlil) is assumed to be the father of the dying god in this text, which is contrary to the entire contents of the myth, where a virgin birth is always presumed. In the theological lists pertaining to this myth of Nintur and Lil, the names Lillu, Nesu, and Assirgi occur for the son of the goddess Mah.
Not only did the Sumerians and Babylonians believe that Arum, Nintur, etc., had created man from clay, but when cir- cumstances required, she was summoned by the gods to create a man for some special purpose. When Gilgamish sorely op- pressed the people of Erech the gods heard their wailing [and said to Arum] :
“ Thou hast created an impetuous son [like a wild bull high is his head]. He has no rival; forth go his weapons.
With the lasso are sent forth his . . .
The men of Erech were cast in misery in their abodes.
Gilgamish leaves not a son to his father.
Day and night he is violent . . .
He is the shepherd of Erech of the sheepfolds.
He is their shepherd and . . .
The strong, the glorified, knower of . . .
Gilgamish leaves not a maiden to [her mother].
Nor the daughter of warrior, nor the betrothed of a man.
Anu? heard their (the people’s) wailing.
They called for the great Aruru (saying),
‘Thou hast created [Gilgamish],
And now create his likeness.
Let [his soul] be like the spirit of his heart.
Let them rival each other, and Erech have peace.’
When Aruru heard this, she created in her mind an image of Anu.
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 115
Aruru washed her hands, clay she gathered and cast it on the field.
[In the field] she created the hero Enkidu, the hostile offspring, the army of Ninurta.”
Here Aruru at the beginning of the Epic of Gilgamish is said to have created both Gilgamish and the wild man Enkidu. In later parts of the Epic the goddess Ninsun, called the ri-im-tum or ri-mat, “ wild cow,” is repeatedly named as the mother of Gilgamish.^®
The sons of Enlil, Ninurta and Nergal, are the deities of supreme importance in the Sumerian mythology, and it was a tribute to the outstanding figure of Ninurta, that the Baby- lonians attributed to Marduk the role originally assumed by Ninurta in the great myth of creation, and as a Sun-god. The original name was Ninurash, and urash is a word for “ morning- light,” hence his wife (Bau, Gula), has the title Ninudzalli, “ Lady of the morning-light.” This is the deity Sol invictus and the War-god of Sumer and Babylonia. On Fig. 51 the symbol of Ninurta (second from left in second register) is a weapon with eagle’s head,’^ standing between a winged griffon (Nergal) and his other symbol, the eagle. In the fourth regis- ter, the last symbol on the right has an eagle perched on a pil- lar, also a symbol of Ninurta.^® The eagle on a pillar is also called “ the twin gods of battle, Shuqamuna and Shumaliya,” and one monument has these names of the twin gods inscribed beside the shaft.'^^ To the right of the eagle in the second regis- ter stands another symbol of the War-god, a weapon with panther’s head. The two weapons of Ninurta with heads of an eagle and panther are called the gods Sharur and Shargaz on one monument.^®
The eagle, therefore, was the symbol of the Sun-god as the spring and morning sun, victorious over the powers of dark- ness and the underworld through which he passed nightly. Although Shuqamuna and Shumaliya are called “ twin gods,” Shumaliya is known to be a goddess. Like all Sun-gods, how- ever, Ninurta was also a twin god, and hence one of the most
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common Sumerian names for him was “ god-Mash,” the twin god, expressing his two original aspects as god of the sun above and below the equator, the beneficent spring sun, and the hostile god of summer heat and winter’s cold. It is true that to Nergal was latterly assigned the character of the hostile phases of the sun, and Ninurta received the propitious powers of that luminary, but he also retains in many minor aspects traces of
Fig. 54. Ningirsu
the ancient duality. The two names of Mash are Umunlua and Umunesiga, apparently “ Lord who gives plenty ” and “ Lord the cruel.”
In mythology Ninurta’s supreme function is war on behalf of the gods or his people. Ningirsu, the name for him at Lagash, appears on the seal (Fig. 54) holding a curved weapon with lion’s head on his left shoulder j a lion’s head springs from each shoulder, and his right hand holds seven weapons, each with feline heads. The throne has two crossing lions on its side, symbols of war, and below the inscription, “ Urdun, priest of incantations of Ningirsu,” stands the lion-headed eagle, em- blem of all types of the War-god. In this case the eagle has two heads characteristic of the twin god, but often only one head. The emblems of all those cities, where the cult of the War-god under various local names was prominent, consisted
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 117
of a lion-headed eagle grasping in each talon the haunch of a wild animal. At Lagash, where he had the title Ningirsu, his emblem is the eagle grasping two lions in this manner; at Umma (modern Djokha) the animals are ibexes; at Kish, the seat of the principal cult of the War-god Zamama, the ani- mals are stags or antelopes, and on the emblem of Kish the head of the eagle is natural, not lion-headed.®^ Emblems of this kind from unknown sites on which the eagle does not have the lion’s head, and with other animals, such as rams,®* are quite numerous.®® The principal god of Elam, Nin-Shushinak, “Lord of Susa,” or simply Shushinak, was identified with Ninurta.®® On painted vases of great antiquity from Susa, the eagle grasps two aquatic birds, and it occurs also on bitumen vases.®^ At Tal Ubaid near Ur the finest deep bas-relief (in copper) of this emblem ever recovered, has the lion-headed eagle grasping two deer.®® The pottery of Susa has also the deployed eagle alone, which is probably not identical with the eagle (with or without lion’s head), symbol of the War-god, but stands for the bird of the sun simply.®® The original name of the deployed eagle grasping lions and other animals is “ Bird Imgig,” always called a god, but in later times “ Bird Im- dugud,” or Zu, that is “ Storm-bird.” In the myth of Zu, enemy of the gods, cited above, he was conquered by Ninurta, and for this reason henceforth became his symbol. The eagle with deployed wings and rapacious talons appears also in Hit- tite iconography where it sometimes occurs grasping two ser- pents.®® The symbol spread from Sumer to Asia Minor and thence to Europe where it survives to this day. The persistence of the sun cult at Jerusalem reappears in the golden eagle placed by Herod on the roof of the temple of Yaw in Jerusalem, which scandalized the high priest Matthias. He and the pious Judas cast it down and thereby incurred the supreme penalty of death at the hands of the dying Herod.®’
The Sumerian legend of the conquest of the dragon of the storm and chaos, the monster Zu or Imgig, by Ninurta, has
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Fig. 50. Gilgamish with Jar of Overflowing Water
undone j because I am a man of unclean lips,” said the prophet. One of the seraphim descended, having a live coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar ; with this coal he touched the mouth of the prophet, saying: “ Lo| this hath touched thy lips, thy sin is purged.”
The tamarisk was said to have been created in Heaven along with the date-palm,^® and these are surely connected with the plant which springs from the overflowing jar on seals and monuments. The seal (Fig. 50) of Ibnisharri, dedicated to Shargalisharri, king of Agade, shews Gilgamish holding the overflowing jar of water from which springs the plant of life. From it drinks Gudanna, the bull of Heaven (p. 28). Gilga- mish in Sumerian mythology was the deified hero, who, fearing death, sought for the plant of life in the island beyond the
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seas. On seals he is repeatedly associated with the overflowing jar, and in one example the jar pours out water to him from the sky.®° Anu’s sacred number was “ sixty.”
Enlil the Earth-god was, strictly speaking, only the god of the upper world, in distinction from the underworld, where reigned the terrible goddess Ereshkigal. His name “ lord of the winds ” is taken from the myth of a cave of winds in the interior of the earth apparently, but in later times the control of the winds was given to the god Ishkur, Mir, Mur, identified with the West Semitic Adad, Ramman (see p. 61). This original character of Enlil as god of Storms and Rains is un- mistakable. The world was thought of as a vast mountain {kur^ and named Ekur, “ house of the mountain,” in the in- terior of which stood the hursag mountain, called also “ moun- tain of Arallu.” Hursag is described as the place where the winds dwell,” and a prayer has the following lines:
“ O great Enlil, tm-hur-sag^ whose head rivals the Heavens,
Whose foundation is laid in the pure abyss,
Who reposes in the lands like a furious wild bull,
Whose horns gleam like the rays of the Sun-god.”
Imhursag means “ Wind of the underworld mountain.” The stage tower of his temple Ekur at Nippur bore the name E-imhursag, and one of his titles was “ Wind of the earth.” Ningirsu, “ lord of floods,” was his son, and his father named him “ King of the Storm of Enlil.” The functions of all his sons, Ninurta, god of War and sol invictus, the spring sun, Ishkur, Ningirsu, and Nergal, originally belonged to him, but in the later specialization of deities he, like Anu, has only abstract relations with men as the powerful deity of the earth. Rarely does he appear as an agricultural deity. “ O my lord, the ploughshare thou hast caused to impregnate (the earth), the harrow thou hast caused to impregnate (the earth).”®® In the liturgies he has almost exclusively the character of a ter- rible, wrathful god who brings disaster upon his own people
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for their sins and upon the enemies of Sumer. The agent of his anger is always the “ Word ” which issues from his mouth, and goes though the world causing calamity, flood, hurricane, fire, pillage of cities, hunger, and exile. The word of wrath may be uttered by any one of his great sons, but it is primarily the prerogative of the “ Earth Mountain ” of Ekur. Anu has the beneficent angels of the waters of life. EnliPs messengers are those of vengeance and destruction. Their names are Kingaludda, Kengida, Uddagubba, and the Fire-god Gibil.®* This myth found its way into Hebrew religion:
“He sendeth his commandment upon earth;
His Word runneth very swiftly.”
In late Jewish mythology the description is as terrible as that of the Babylonian liturgies:
“ Thine all-powerful Word leaped down from the royal throne,
A stern warrior, into the midst of the doomed land.
Bearing as a sharp sword thine unfeigned commandment.
And standing filled all things with death.”
Every liturgy contained a hymn to this Word of Wrath; a good example is cited here from a lament on the destruction of Ur, where the disaster is attributed to the word of Nannar, the god of that city and son of Enlil.
“ In those days the spirit of wrath upon that city was sent and the city lamented.
Father Nannar upon the city of master- workmen sent it and the people lamented.
In those days the spirit of wrath descended upon the Land and the people lamented.
Her people thou hast caused to sit outside her without water-jars. Within her reed baskets were cast in the ways and the people lamented.
The great city gate and the highways with dead were choked.^*
No Sumerian myth of any importance in a literary sense has survived, concerning Enlil,®® although it is possible that to him
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON loi
the Sumerians first attributed the creation of the world, an act latterly attributed to his son Ninurta, and by the Babylonians to Marduk, This myth seems to have survived in only one passage of a hymn:
“ The foundation of the Heavens thou hast made and no hand shall undermine it.
The vault of the Heavens thou hast made and none can ascend it.”
Throughout Babylonian mythology there persists a legend of the “ Tablets of Fate ” which originally belonged to Enlil, and concerning their theft by the dragon Zu the following myth has been preserved in Accadian. It existed in a Sumerian original, as is proved by one of the tablets of the series.^® The storm dragon Zu saw the royal power of Enlil, the crown of his sovereignty, the robes of his divinity, and the Tablets of Fate in his possession.
“ He conceived in his heart to seize the Enlilship,
(saying) ‘ I will take possession of the Tablets of Fate of the gods, And I will control the orders of all the gods.
I will occupy the throne and be master of decrees.’
He waited at the entrance of the throne-room, which he saw, at day- break.
As Enlil washed himself with clean water.
And had mounted the throne, and put on his crown,
The Tablets of Fate he seized in his hand.
He took possession of Enlilship, the ‘ casting ’ of decrees.
Zu flew away hastening to the mountains.”
This was a supreme disaster for the gods. The laws which govern the universe had been written on tablets in the conclave of the gods and worn on the breast of the supreme ruler of the world. Silence fell on all and they turned to Anu their father and counsellor, who said to his sons:
“ Who will slay Zu and
Make glorious his name among the habitations? ”
First he summoned his son Adad who refused to follow the dreadful dragon j for “ Who is like Zu among the gods, thy
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sons? ” He then summoned another god (whose name is broken away), and still a third god, Shara, both of whom re- fused in the same words. This part of the myth is parallel to the scene in the Epic of Creation, where Ea, Enlil (?), and Anu also feared to attack the dragon Tiamat. Finally it was the god Lugalbanda, or Ninurta, the son of Enlil, who found the nest of Zu in the fabulous mountain Sabu, and by the aid of the Wine-goddess Ninkasi rescued the Tablets of Fate.^^ It was also Ninurta, who, in the Sumerian myth of creation, slew the dragon of chaos.
Apparently the Tablets of Fate originally belonged to Tia- mat, the female dragon of the sea, before the earth was created. She gave them to her chief supporter Kingu in her conflict with the gods. According to the Babylonian version, it was Marduk, who destroyed Tiamat and bound Kingu, who bore the Tablets of Fate on his breast. These Marduk took from him and ever after kept them on his breast. Ninurta is called the smiter of Zu in the Babylonian legends. The Tablets of Fate of the gods were written for each year in the assembly hall of Enlil, the Ubsukkinna, in the conclave of gods at the beginning of the New Year, a myth latterly transferred to Marduk of Babylon. Nabu, scribe of the gods, was said to carry them. The name Enlil survived in western sources only in the account of Babylonian theogony by Damascius, a Syrian, who became head of the Neo-Platonic school at Athens, end of the fifth century a.d. His theogony is based upon the Baby- lonian Epic of Creation. Enlil was never known as Bel by the Babylonians.^^
Of more importance for mythology is the third member of the original trinity, Enki of Eridu at the mouth of the Eu- phrates. The name means “ Lord of the earth,” by which is meant the lower world where dwell the Anunnaki in the Apsu, or sea from which the Sumerians supposed fountains and rivers to spring. He was essentially the god of fresh water, and con- sequently he and the Eridu theogony, Marduk, Gibil, are deities
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 103
of lustration. The title e-a^ “ god of the house of water,” does not appear until the period of Dungi of Ur, and henceforth became the favourite name, almost invariably employed by the Accadian texts in bilingual inscriptions for the Sumerian title Enki. The Greek writers knew only this title, which appears as ’Aos in Damascius, and ’Qavvrjs (Oannes) in Berossus. The latter Greek writer, who was himself a Babylonian priest of Bel-Marduk in the age of Alexander, reports the following myth. In the remote past, before the Flood, men lived in lawless manner like beasts of the field. Then appeared Oannes from the sea. He had the body of a fish, and under the fish’s head he had another head, but his feet were like those of a man, subjoined to the tail. He passed the day among men, and taught them letters, science, arts, laws, construction of cities and temples, and geometry. He also introduced agricul- ture and all which would soften their manners and humanize their lives. Since that time nothing has been added to improve upon his instructions. By night he retired into the sea. Ac- cording to one excerpt of Berossus (Alexander Polyhistor) this revelation occurred in the time of Alorus (Sumerian Alu- lim), the first of the ten pre-diluvian kings, but Apollodorus reports Berossus to have placed it in the reign of the fourth king Ammenon. Altogether Oannes is said to have made four appearances as a fish-man at intervals of enormous dura- tion exceeding thirty thousand years, each time in a different reign.
A description of Ea as Lahmu of the sea, which was current as late as the age of Berossus, has been preserved in Assyrian. “ The head is that of a serpent} on his nose are depicted . . . } from his mouth drips water} he is provided with . . . like a sea-serpent} thrice are his . . . ringed} he is provided with ... on his cheek} his body is a skate fish and encrusted with stars} the claws of his feet are his soles, which have no heels.” Ea is the Sumerian patron of arts and philosophy, and his cult at Eridu represents one of the two great schools of Sumerian
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
1 04
and Babylonian theology. Here they taught the philosophy borrowed by Ionian philosophers, namely that all things ema- nated from water, and came into existence by the creative Word, Mummu of Ea.'** To him the Sumerians of the Eridu school attributed the creation of man from clay, “ Lord of mankind, whose hand fashioned man.” One of their myths has this version. The gods created Heaven and Earth, and all crea- tures with the breath of life, and then the god Ninigikug (= Ea) created two small creatures whom among living crea- tures he made most glorious.*®
Another prayer recited at the restoration of a temple has this myth:
“ When Ann had created the Heavens,
And Nudimmud (Ea) had created the Apsu as his abode,
Ea gathered clay from the Apsu and
Created the god of Brick-making (Kulla) for the restoration (of temples).
He created cane-brake and forest(? ) for the work of his creation(? ) He created the god of carpenters, moulders, and Arazu, as completers of the work of his creation (? ).
He created the mountains and the seas for . . .
He created the god of goldsmiths, smithies, jewellers, and sculptors for the deeds of . . . and their rich produce for offerings ...
He created the Corn-goddess, the goddess of Flocks and
Wine, Ningishzid, Ninsar ... as those who enrich the fixed sacrifices.
He created Uduntamkur and Uduntamnag, they who support the offerings.
He created Kugsugga, mighty priest of the gods, as the executor of the ritual orders.
He created the king as a restorer of [holy places]
He created man as the maker of . .
Ea was the god of all mystic learning and the Mummu or crea- tive Word, Logos, which made all things, and fashioned the things begotten.*® The doctrine was applied by the Alex- andrian author of the Wisdom of Solomon to the Hebrew god Yaw:
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 105
“ Oh God of the fathers, and Lord who keepest mercy,
Who madest all things by thy Word,
And by thy Wisdom thou didst form man.” '*®
He was regarded as the god of the Tigris and Euphrates, of rivers and fountains. As such his title is Engur, an ordinary word for “ river,” and in rituals of purification the River- goddess is addressed in the following mystic hymn:
“ Thou River, creatress of all things,®®
When the great gods dug thee, on thy bank they placed Mercy. Within thee Ea, king of the Apsu, built his abode.
They gave thee the Flood, the unequalled.
Fire, rage, splendour, and terror,
Ea and Marduk gave thee.
Thou judgest the judgment of men.
O great River, far-famed River, River of sanctuaries.
Thy waters are release ; receive from me prayer.”
In the theological lists Enki has numerous titles as patron of the arts. Dunga and Lumha are Ea of singers and psalmists. This myth reappears in Hebrew, in the early document con- cerning the patrons of arts, where Lamech = Lumha is said to have been the father of three sons, Jabal, patron of tents and flocks, Jubal, of music, and Tubal-cain, of the forge. Ninbubu is Ea of sailors, Nindubarra of shipmenders, Nurra of potters. There are thirty-six titles of this kind in the official list.
The conception of his form which seems to have been most prevalent in Babylonian mythology is that of the monster called Darabzu, “ Antelope of the nether-sea ” in the official lists, and Kusarikku, “ fish-ram,” or Suhurmashu, “ skate-goat,” in popu- lar mythology. The latter names agree with the description of Oannes, preserved by Berossus, and with the emblem of this god on the monuments, usually a composite creature, with fore-parts of a goat and body of a fish. A good example of this symbol is seen on Fig. 51, first register, where the trinity Anu, Enlil, and Ea stand in a row, Anu and Enlil being represented by tall horned turbans resting on a throne, and Ea by the goat-
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SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
fish, which also supports a low throne.®^ On this throne stands also a symbol of Ea, a pillar with ram’s head. The names Kusarikku and Suhurmashu were also used for Capricorn and one of the monsters of chaos in the train of the dragon Tiamat. Images and bas-reliefs of this “ antelope of the Apsu ” must have been common} Berossus, describing the fish-man Oannes, says that a likeness of him had been preserved even to his day, and it may be that the fish-man on Phoenician coins was derived from this type of Oannes. Images of the fish-ram of the deep to represent Ea were made by the Sumerians, and Gimil-Sin, king of Ur, promulgated a date by the formula, “ Year when the ship of the antelope of the Apsu was completed.”
The principal role of Ea in mythology is as a god of purifica- tion in the water rituals, called rituals of the “ house of bap- tism,” and “ house of washing,” all of which belonged to a great Sumerian series called en e-nu-ru, “ Incantation of the house of Nuru,” taken from the title of Ea, Nunurra. In these rituals there occurs a myth introduced by the priesthood of Babylon, in which Ea, after learning of the wicked machinations of the seven devils, sends his son Marduk to expel them by magical operations. A good example occurs in the sixteenth tablet of the series called udug hul-mes or in Accadian utukke limnutiy “ the evil devils.” Here the object of the long series of incantations is to defend the king and the nation against the malign influences of the seven devils during the three days of the moon’s eclipse. The astronomers discovered that the pe- riod of the dark of the moon was due to natural laws, but the ex- planation was that the seven devils had invaded the vault of Heaven and surrounded the Moon-god, obscuring his visage.
“ Enlil saw the eclipse of the hero Sin in Heaven, and The lord hailed his messenger Nusku.
Tidings of my son Sin who in Heaven has been woefully darkened, Repeat to Ea in the Deep.
Nusku gave heed to the word of his lord.
To Ea in the Deep he set foot quickly.
Fig. 51. Boundary Stone of Melishipak. Cassite Period, Twelfth Century, b.c.
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 107
To the prince, the far-famed ‘ leading goat,’ the lord Nudimmud. Nusku repeated the word of his lord straightway.
Ea in the Deep heard this matter.
He bit his lip and his mouth was filled with woe cries.
Ea called to his son Marduk, informing him of the matter.
Go, O my son, Marduk.
Of the princely son, the Crescent Sin, woeful is his eclipse,
His eclipse in Heaven has been brought about.
The seven evil gods, the slayers, fearless are they.
The seven evil gods like a cyclone went forth and enter the Land. They have come up against the Land like a storm.
And the front of the crescent of Sin wrathfully they surround.
The hero Shamash and Adad the heroic they have turned to their side.”
Here as usual in these texts follow directions for the magic ritual. The priests entering upon their rituals to drive out demons say:
“ I am a man of Enki,
I am a man of Damgalnunna,®®
I am the messenger of Marduk.
To heal his sickness
The great lord Enki (Ea) has given me warrant.
His holy curse he has put with my curse.
His holy mouth he has put with my mouth.
His wizardry he has put with my wizardry.
His intercession he has put with my intercession.
Verily that which is in the body of the sick man devastates the sanc- tuaries.
By the incantation of Ea may these wicked ones be expelled.”
Few prayers to Ea have survived in Sumerian and Accadian. One long Sumerian hymn glorifying his temple and cult at Eridu describes him as “ creator of fates,” “ who causes peoples to spring up like grass.” An Accadian prayer to him under the tide, “ Enlil of intelligence ” (Enlilbanda), begins:
“ King of Wisdom, maker of intelligence.
Far-famed leading goat, adornment of the ‘ House of the Deep.’ Enlilbanda, the skilled, the protecting angel.
Valiant one of Eridu, adviser of the Igigi.
To the great gods thou givest counsel.
O Ea, by thy incantation of life, raise the dying.”
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CHAPTER II
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON
T he Sumerian pantheon in variety and numbers exceeds that of both Greek and Roman religions combined. A simple list of their deities would fill a large volume and contain more than five thousand names. The Accadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians added a few minor deities to this enormous pan- theon, but in the great scholastic period of Sumerian theology, the pantheon was reduced to a logical scheme (twenty-fifth to twenty-third centuries), the temple liturgies for daily use in the church calendar, for festivals and expiation rituals, appeared then in their final canonical forms. This pantheon and the liturgies and litanies which were based upon it, were accepted as sacred and canonical by the Semites of Babylonia and Assyria, and remained essentially unchanged throughout the temple worship of both kingdoms until the end of the Assyrian empire in 612 B.c. In Babylonia the adherents of this great religious system continued it unmolested by their Persian, Greek, and Parthian conquerors after the fall of the Neo-Babylonian king- dom in 538 B.C., and Babylonian editions of Sumerian temple liturgies, lists of gods, and myths were used and read as late as the second century b.c. It is this vast influence in time and space (for the West and North Semitic peoples were constantly in more or less intensive contact with and often subject to the mighty empires of Agade, Ur (Sumerian), Babylon, Ashur, and Nineveh) which so completely transformed Aramaean, Phoenician, and Hebrew mythology and religion. Any com- plete survey of Semitic mythology without Sumerian is impos- sible in our time, and in the discussion of the great pantheon, adopted by the Babylonians and Assyrians, the reader must bear
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 89
in mind that the author is presenting the pantheon of the great- est ancient Semitic people in Sumerian terms, as they themselves thought of it and believed in it.
The complicated Sumerian pantheon was obviously the work of theologians and of gradual growth. Almost all the names of deities express some aspect of nature worship, some personi- fication of natural powers, ethical or cultural functions, per- fectly intelligible to the Sumerologist. The names of their oldest trinity. An, “ Heaven-god,” Enlil, “ Earth-god,” and Enki, “ Water-god,” are not lost in the mysteries of folk-lore. They are names given to definite mythological conceptions by clear thinking theologians and accepted in popular religion. Whether they were called by other unintelligible popular names in the prehistoric period, when they wandered on the Iranian plateau long before 5000 b.c., is a question for which we have no answer. As it was evolved after their occupation of Meso- potamia, the pantheon is the product of theology and not of natural religion. The earliest written records from which any information concerning the Sumerian deities can be ob- tained is found twenty-five feet below modern plain level at Kish and at a prehistoric site, modern Jemdet Nasr, seventeen miles north-east of Kish,^ and from a period area 4000 b.c. On the prehistoric tablets only the trinity An, Enlil, Enki is found, possibly Babbar the Sun-god also. Since in their my- thology all the gods descended from An, the Sky-god, it is extremely probable that the priests who constructed this pan- theon were monotheists at an earlier stage, having only the god An, a word which actually means “ high.” This is to be expected, for we have here not a mythology springing from primitive religion, but speculation based upon nature, spiritual, and ethical values. The tablets are frequently covered with curious seals, but it is difficult to discover any mythology on them; wild and tame animals are frequent, especially the ser- pent, and some fantastic monsters,^ and in one case there is a man holding a long serpent.® On one seal there is a design of a tower
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SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
rising by five stages to a smaller but higher top stage on only one side, which may possibly prove that they had already begun to build towers of this kind as symbols of the earth and sacred to the Earth-godd It is obvious that the serpent was already re- garded as symbolic of the generative powers of the earth in this very early period, but the Earth-mother goddess, whose primitive pictograph (Fig. 46) ap- parently represents a serpent winding around a staff, does not appear on the pictographic inscriptions which have been recovered.® On seals of the primi- Fig. 46. tive period the Grain-goddess appears with a minor Pictograph male deity (see Fig. 47), who is also a deity of ^°goddes™' vegetation. The latter may be Tammuzj he is here represented with a beard, but Tammuz is invariably described as a child or youth. Very primitive seals represent a male deity whose upper parts are human,® but whose lower parts are a long coiled serpent, undoubtedly the serpent deity Mush, whose
Fig. 47. Grain-goddess, with a Male Deity of Vegetation, probably
Tammuz
Accadian names Sherah, “ grain,” “ vegetation,” and Shahan, “ fire,” clearly reveal his connection with the generative powers of the earth and the heat of the sun. However, one of the para- site Tammuz forms was Ningishzida a tree deity, who is invari- ably represented with a mythical serpent springing from each shoulder, and he too always appears bearded.^ The cult of the
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 91
Earth-goddess and her son, the young god of vegetation, belongs to the early period. By giving special names to the diverse functions of each deity the theologians obtained an enormous pantheon, and by assigning special functions of the three great gods to their sons, and again giving special names to their functions, the parent tree became a forest of gods and minor deities. In addition to this, at an early period the constella- tions, fixed stars, and planets were identified with various deities. Astral names were, therefore, invented for each deity, which added a very large number of names to the pantheon. As soon as any given deity became patron of a special religious or intellectual activity, they received additional names for these activities. For example, the Earth-goddess, as female principle of An, received the title Ninanna, Nininni, Innini, but, as goddess of child-birth, Nintud, Aruru, Ninhursag, Nin- karraka, and as the planet Venus, Ninanaslanna, Ninsianna, Ninsinna, Ninisinna, “ Heavenly lady, light of heaven as patroness of medicine she was Gula. These are all regarded as separate goddesses in the cults and literature. Each of the great deities received as many as fifty to a hundred different names, and they had their attendants and courts in Heaven or in the lower world, wherever mythological fancy placed their abode. They had their musicians, messengers, counsellors, bakers, butlers, barbers, gardeners, throne-bearers, priests of sacrifices, watchmen, shepherds, commissioners, envoys, boat- men, sword-bearers, wizards,® gate-keepers, charioteers, etc.
Anu was the first of the gods of civilized man, descended through a line of divine beings, beginning with Apsu, the nether sea of fresh water, and Tiamat, the dragon of the ocean. This late theological speculation by which the gods and all things were created from water was certainly no part of the original system, which apparently was monotheistic to begin with, at least in the Sumerian religion as it has come down to us. The later speculative system is set forth at the beginning of the Accadian or Babylonian Epic of Creation.
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“ When on high the Heavens were not named,
And below a home existed not,
Apsu, the primeval, their engenderer.
And the ‘ Form ’ Tiamat, bearer of all of them.
Mingled their waters together;
The secret chambers were not constructed and marsh-lands were not seen;
When none of the gods had been brought into being.
And they were not named, and had not been assigned (their) destinies, Then were created the gods in the midst thereof.
Lahmu and Lahamu were brought into being and they were named. For ages they grew up and became lofty.
Anshar and Kishar were created more excellent than they.
The days lengthened and the years increased.
Anu their son, the rival of his fathers —
Anshar made Anu his first-born equal (to himself).
And as to Anu, he begat Nudimmud,
Nudimmud, begetter of his fathers was he.”
In these seventeen opening lines the Epic on the origin of the gods according to later theories makes Anu the first actual per- sonal deity; for Anshar and Kishar mean simply “host of Heaven,” “ host of Earth,” or male and female creative spirits of what is above and beneath. From Anu descended the water deity Enki, latterly called Ea, “ god of the house of the waters,” who as creator of mankind received the title Nudimmud, “ crea- tor of the form of man.” The Earth-god Enlil is nowhere described as the son of Anu.® His name means literally, “ Lord of the wind ”; for the winds were supposed to issue from the caverns of his vast abode in the nether world.^®
The texts which first contain the fully developed early pan- theon come from Shuruppak in southern Sumer, and from a period more than 500 years later than the pictographic tablets of Kish.^^ Not until this period does the Moon-god appear under the title en-zu, i.e., zu-en, latterly Sin, but his princi- pal title is Nanna, which means “ lord of Heaven,” the same word as Ninanna, Innini. Here the Moon-god has already re- ceived the title, “ Lord of wisdom,” as a god of divination. Sin. The scribes of this early period place An, Enlil, Innini, Enki,
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93
Nanna, Utu, in that order at the head o£ the pantheon, that is Heaven, Earth, Earth-goddess as female principle of Heaven, Water-god, Moon-god, Sun-god. The two sons of the Earth-god, Ninurta and Nergal, who figure so largely in later Sumerian and Babylonian mythology, do not yet appear by name; earlier titles of Ninurta, god of the spring sun, are already here, as Ningirsu and Ninsubur; while Lugalmeslam, “ King of Meslam,” i.e., of the underworld, and Gir, prove that the mythology concerning the terrible deity of summer heat and winter’s cold, Nergal, was already part of their religion.
Above I concluded that the Semitic word for “ god ” meant originally, “ he who is high,” a Sky-god; and here also I believe that their religion began with monotheism ; they prob- ably worshipped El, Ilah, as their first deity, a Sky-god, cor- responding to the Babylonian Anu, and the Greek Zeus. In Sumerian, the word for “ god,” dinglr^ also means, “ shining,” “ bright,” and the sign used for writing dingir also stands for An, the Sky-god; the word also means “ high,” “ Heaven.” An is the only Sumerian deity whose ideogram is never pre- ceded by the determinative for “ god.” They write dingir Enlil, “ god Enlil,” dingir Sin, “ god Sin,” etc., but never dingir An. Surely this means that An (Anu) is not only older than other deities, but An was in the beginning “ god,” “ the Sky- god.” The ideogram for writing “ god,” “ high,” “ Heaven,” “ bright,” and for the god An, was the picture of a star. In the minds of the earliest Sumerians dingir Enlil, dingir Enki, etc., really mean An-Enlil, An-Enki, etc. ; that is Enlil, Enki, etc., are only aspects of the father Anu. On seals of the pictographic tablets and on painted pots of that prehistoric period, the pic- ture of a star constantly occurs.’^ This star sign is almost the only religious symbol in this primitive age. These facts cannot be explained without assuming monotheism in the beginning.
For the purpose of discussing the Sumerian and Babylonian myths it is not necessary or possible within the compass of a popular book to name and describe the prolific number of
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deities. Only those on whose cults is built the main structure of their mythology are more specifically defined here. An, or as he shall be henceforth named in the Accadian form, Anu, had his principal cult at Erech where he was worshipped in Eanna, “ house of Heaven,” with the still more important virgin deity Innini-Ishtar. As father of all gods he remained in most distant contact with mankind, and is rather a theological principle than a cult deity. In a theological list (and in these lists of all periods Anu always stands at the beginning) his name is replaced by the Sumerian and Accadian words for “ god.” According to the myth of Etana, Anu had his throne in the highest or third Heaven where Etana sought the magical plant of birth, and in the Adapa myth at the gate of Anu stood Tam- muz and Ningishzida. Here Anu kept the bread and water of eternal life. From Anu descended the authority of kings at the beginning of political institutions upon earth.^® The as- tronomers divided the fixed stars into three parallel bands called the “ way of Anu,” “ way of Enlil,” and “ way of Ea.” The band of Anu included those stars in what seemed to them the highest part of heaven along the ecliptic. The northern band was the “ way of Enlil,” and the southern the “ way of Ea.” As a constellation he was placed in the “ yoke of the wagon star ” among the northern polar stars, about which the firmament revolves.""® At Erech each morning of the year sacrifices were made to the polar stars of Anu and his wife Antum, and from the top of the stage tower prayers were said to their constellations as they rose by night. A prayer to the polar star began, “ O star of Anu, prince of the heavens.” ”
The myth of three Heavens was current in Babylonia and Assyria as early as the tenth century. The lowest Heaven was the sphere of the seven planets and was said to have been adorned with jasper."® The middle Heaven was the abode of the three hundred Igigi, or gods of the upper world, as dis- tinguished from the three hundred Anunnaki, or gods of the
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 95
lower world. It was adorned with saggilmud stone, and here Marduk sat in a shrine of lapis lazuli, adorned with byssus and sapphire. This is the plane of the constellations of the three “ ways ” of Enlil, Anu, and Ea. In the highest Heaven sat Anu, wherein also the three hundred Igigi sat. It was adorned with luludata stone. It was here that Etana sought the sammu sa aladi^ “ plant of birth,” that his wife might bear an heir to the throne of Kish. This legend of three Heavens reappears in the pre-Christian Jewish period, in the dream of Levi.^® A
later legend of seven Heavens appears in the Book of the Secrets of Enoch Here Enoch ascended by seven stages on the wings of angels, and in the seventh Heaven found the throne of God.
The bread and water of immortal life, which Anu kept in the highest Heaven, is extremely ancient, and is referred to in Sumerian art by the overflowing vase, often held in the hands of a god, who has been identified with the god of Springs and Rivers (Enki, Ea) by many.^^ Fig. 48 is a good example of the god with overflowing waters, whom I take to be Anu with the waters of eternal life, from which Gilgamish fills his jar on this seal. The waters descend to figures of Capricorn and
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Aquarius (see p. 86) and the latter constellation belongs to the “ way ” of Anu.^* That the vase of overflowing water, often with a plant springing from it, belongs to the god who is throned in high Heaven, is proved by Fig. 49, from a bas-relief of Ur-Nammu of Ur. Here a winged angel descends from Heaven with the vase from which the waters of eternal life fall to a jar held in the outstretched hand of the pious king. The
scene occurs at the top of both sides of this bas-relief on which other scenes represent him in prayer before a vase from which springs a palm with overhanging fruit j into it the king pours the water of Heaven, from the vase in which he had re- ceived it from the angel.
An incantation for childbirth contains this same legend of angels descending from Heaven with jars of oil and water to lave the body of the “ handmaid of the Moon-god,” when in pain she bore the divine calf Amarga. This myth runs as fol- lows:
THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN PANTHEON 97
10. “ Only ‘ cow of Sin,’ ‘ Maid of Sin,’ is her name.
She was adorned with adornments.
She was luxurious in form. Sin saw her and loved her.
With the light of Sin, with a sheen (?) he provided her.
He caused her to have control of the herds.
15. They that are shepherded walk after her.
She rules over the plants as she waters them.
They give her water to drink abundantly at the watering place. In the secret place of the herdsmen, where shepherds see not. The restless young bull mounted the cow taking her virginity.
20. When her days were ended, her months completed.
The cow was in agony, she quivered in pain.
The shepherd, with bowed face, and all the herdsmen wailed for her.
At her wailing, at the cry of her travail, Nannar was aroused.
Sin in Heaven heard her cry, and lifted his hand to the Heavens. 25. Two female genii of Heaven descended, perfect ones; one bore an oil jar.
The second let fall water for travail in birth; with the oil jar she touched her face.
With water for travail in birth she sprinkled all her body.
A second time she touched her face with the oil jar.
With water for travail in birth she sprinkled all her body.
30. When for the third time she touched her.
The calf fell to the earth like a gazelle.
‘ Amarga ’ he created, the name of the calf.
As the ‘ Maid of Sin ’ gave birth happily.
May this handmaiden who travails bear.”
A tree, probably the laurus nohilis {eru), was sacred to Anu, and also the tamarisk. A staflF of laurus nobilis was supposed to aid women in childbirth.^^ This myth of the water of life, bread of life, plant of birth, and probably that of the plant of life, also current in Sumerian mythology, is surely the origin of the manna in Hebrew mythology, said to be the exudation of the tamarisk. Yaw rained bread from Heaven, which the Israelites called man, during their wanderings in Sinai 5 it must have occurred to a people familiar with this Babylonian myth to call the food so miraculously sent by nature, “ bread from Heaven.” The tree sacred to Anu was called ma-nu in Sumerian, and is persistently connected with the tamarisk and
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date-palm in the texts. Not impossibly is the Hebrew term taken directly from this Sumerian word.
The angels who descended to aid Ishtar in the birth of her son Tammuz are confused with natural procreation of animals in the myth translated above j for in the myth of the birth of Tammuz, Ishtar is always a virgin goddess. This descent of angels seems to have given Isaiah the inspiration for his vision of the seraphim. When king Uzziah died he saw Adonai (Yaw) sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and over Him stood seraphim, each with six wings. “ Woe is me! for I am
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In late Greek sources there is a myth concerning the great Syrian goddess Atargatis at Ascalon, where her name was cor- rupted to Derketo. Here a large pool full of fish in a temenos was sacred to her. She is described as having a woman’s face and body to the waist, but the lower part had the form of a fish. Perhaps this myth was transferred to Dag5n, which would rein- force the erroneous myth taken from the derivation of the con- fusion of Dag5n with the word for “ fish.” It is certain that the Fish-deity on the coins of Phoenicia is not Dagdn, unless this erroneous myth had arisen already in the fifth century b.c. A monument of Nineveh, representing a minor deity fertilizing the date-palm, wearing a cowl and hood to represent a fish, has been repeatedly published in popular books as the god Dagon.^®^ Priests often clothed themselves in a garment in the form of a fish, when officiating in rituals of purification, symbolic of the power of the Water deity Enki of Eridu, god of Lustration. In the third register of Fig. 44 a man possessed of one of the seven devils, who appear in the second register, lies on a bed, and a priest, robed to represent the Fish-god Enki, stands at his head, another at his feet.®®® Two brick boxes, each contain- ing seven terra-cotta figurines of the deity in fish robe, all ap- parently without horns on the cowl to indicate a deity, were found beneath the pavement of a late building at Ur.®®® These were laid down to invoke the protection of the Water-god. In religious texts they are called the images of the “ seven wise ones,” with bodies of fish. There are three types: (i) In their right hands they carry a “ purifier,” and in their left hands a water bucket. These were buried under the door-sill of the chamber of lustrations {kummu). (2) In their right hands they carry a date spathe, and their left hands are held to their
Fig, 44. Babylonian Bronze Plaque, Shewing Priest Robed to Represent the Fish-god Enki
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breasts. These were buried opposite the gateway and behind the chair of the owner of a house. (3). In their right hands they carry a great spear, while they place their left hands on their breasts. These were buried in the centre of the house before the chair. Late Assyrian seals have fish-men (Fig. 45) very similar to those which occur on the Phoenician coins of Aradus, and here two streams of water descend to them from a vase, or descend from them to a vase. This fish-man of As- syria is probably one of the dragons of Chaos, called Kulili, conquered by Marduk in the creation myth. He was identi- fied with the constellation Aquarius. The fish-man of Phoenicia is certainly not Aqua- rius, but a deity of the coast cities. Since Anu, the Heaven- god in Sumerian, has the title Gula, and the constellation Gula was Aquarius, it is entirely possible that the fish-man on Fig. 45 represents a Rain-god, and in Phoenicia the fish-man would be naturally identified with the greatest god of their pantheon, Adad. At all events the representation of the god of Aradus is of Assyrian origin. There seems to be no connection at all between Adad, a Sky- god, intimately associated with Anu in Babylonia, and Dagon, an Earth deity. Dagon has been connected also with Odakhn, the name of the fish-man who, like Oannes, emerged from the sea in the time of the seventh prediluvian king to reveal to men science and letters. But this is impossible, and Odakdn is more likely the Graecized form of Uttuku.'*®®
In closing this survey of the more important deities who in various races can be surely described as of genuinely Semitic origin, special mention should be made of the preponderate
Fig. 45. Assyrian Cone Seal with Fish-men
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importance of the moon among the Semites of South Arabia, and the almost total absence of this cult among North Semitic races. Among the Northern Semitic peoples only one deity, who is surely a Moon-god, has been found, namely Agli-Bol of Palmyra in the late period. Even this local name for the Moon- god may be an Aramaic title and translation of some Babylo- nian aspect of the Moon-god of Harran. There is no North Semitic Moon-god at all who had in any way general acceptance in their religion. In the next Chapter, where the major Su- merian deities are discussed, the moon cult, which obtained con- siderable vogue in West and North Semitic lands in the late period, will be found to have been entirely of Babylonian origin. In contrast to South Semitic religion, the cult of the Sun-god is characteristic of Aramaic and Canaanitish religion.
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An important Phoenician deity was Eshmun of Sidon, identi- fied by the Greeks with Asclepius, god of Medicine, whose symbol was the serpent. In the Greek sources he was the son of Sydycos, which we have seen to be a title of the Sun-god as “ Jus- tice.” Sanchounyath5n, however, says that the Cabiri were de- scended from Sydycos, and that others, descended from these, discovered medicinal herbs, the cure of poisons and charms. According to others there were eight Cabiri of whom Esmounos was the last, and so certain Greeks derived his name from the Semitic word shemonay “ eight.” Others say that he, being beautiful, was loved by Astronoe, the Phoenician goddess and mother of the gods. While hunting in the groves he saw the goddess pursuing himj being hard pressed in the chase by the amorous goddess, who was about to capture him, Esmounos cut off his own genitals with an axe. In remorse Astronoe sum- moned Paeon and turned the youth into a god by generative heat. The Phoenicians, therefore, called him Esmoun because of the heat of life. This tradition is based upon the Semitic word es/i, “ fire,” and some fanciful ( ? ) explanation for mown.
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In any case Damascius, by whom this story has been preserved, evidently means that Esmoun signifies “ he who restores the heat of life,” and, taken with the more ancient Phoenician source in Sanchounyathdn, it is clear that this deity was 'par excellence a “ healer ” of the sick, precisely as was his Sumerian counter- part Tammuz.^®*
The self-mutilation of Eshmun belongs to the category of myths concerning other gods loved by the Mother-goddess, and defines him at once as one of the dying gods of Semitic religion, like Adonis, Tammuz, and the Phrygian Attis. A distorted form of this myth, by which the comely young god, who is the incarnation of vegetation, knowing his inevitable death and descent to the lower world, rejects the love of the Earth-god- dess and castrates himself in supreme sacrifice for the life of mankind, is told by Lucian concerning Combabus, at Hierap- olis.®^® Eshmun is called Addni, “ My lord,” or Ad5n, “ Lord,” in Phoenician inscriptions from Cyprus where his cult flour- ished.®®® A trilingual Latin, Greek, and Punic inscription from the island of Sardinia mentions an altar dedicated to Ad5n Esh- mun or Asclepius, with the Greek and Latin title Merre, cor- responding to the Phoenician “ Me’arreh,” if that is the read- ing,®®^ which may mean “ Wanderer.” “ Wanderer ” would describe Eshmun as the young god who dies yearly with the corn before the sickle, and wanders in the lower world until his annual resurrection with the springtime verdure. Tammuz is also called in Sumerian “ the wanderer on the plains of the lower world.” ®®® In the Sardinian text an altar is dedicated to Eshmun by one Cleon, because the god had healed him. It seems evident, therefore, that Eshmun, whose cult has been found also at Beirut ®®® near Gebal (Byblus), is identical with the same type of dying god, Adonis of Gebal, whose cult was also firmly established in Cyprus.®®® For some reason this title adoniy “ my lord,” became the peculiar title of the dying god of Gebal, and survived in its Greek form Adonis j the myths con- cerning him and his cult will be discussed in the Chapter on
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Tammuz and Ishtar. At Gebal statues of three deities were found in the court of a temple of the Egyptian period, and these have been identified with Astarte, El, and the later Adonis or Eshmun.^®^ The local name of the dying god of Gebal, son and lover of Astarte, is said to be represented by the Egyptian Khay-taou, god of the region of Gebal and the Adonis valley, on a seal of the sixth dynasty.®®^ A suggestion that this word means “ He who manifests himself as one warming ” has been made by Professor Montet, and, if this be true, the connection with the name Eshmun as god of generative heat as suggested above is certain. Tammuz is often addressed in Sumerian as “ my lord,” “ my hero,” ®®® and there is no doubt but that this entire cult of a dying god who descends yearly to the shades of the nether world, mourned with annual wailings by women, and in imitation of whose supreme sacrifice his priests emasculated themselves in the cults of Phoenicia, Phrygia, and Rome, is either wholly of Sumerian and Babylonian origin, or pro- foundly influenced by the Tammuz cult. In any case Christian writers state definitely that Tammuz was Adonis.®®* Jerome speaks of the cult of “ Tammuz who is Adonis ” in his own day at Bethlehem, where the lover of Venus was bewailed in a
J.J. 365
grotto.
The ordinary expression characteristic of Tammuz wailings in Sumerian was a kalag, in Babylonian wai itluy “ Alas ! O hero.” The kings of Judah were bewailed at their death with the phrase hoi addn, “ Alas! O lord ” (Jeremiah xxxiv.5), and it may be conjectured that the Phoenician and Canaanitish wail- ing for the dying god of vegetation was hoi adonl, “ Alas my lord.” The original Phoenician pronunciation of this word was aduny and it belongs to the Phoenician and Hebrew vocabu- lary exclusively.®®® This appellative for the son of the Mother- goddess Astarte in West Semitic religion cannot be borrowed from Babylonia, nor is it likely that hoi adon is a translation of wai itlu. The conclusion is that this cult of a dying god belongs to the oldest mythology of Semitic religion, or to Phoenician,
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Canaanitish, and Aramaean mythology j it has already been noted among the Nabataean Arabians under Dusares, but can- not be traced in South Arabia. It belongs to the sphere of Semitic religion profoundly influenced by Babylonia. In its development it was essentially the Tammuz cult transplanted to Phoenicia. The plural adonim like elim and eldhim, “gods,” is also used as a singular in Phoenician, and, in the Old Testament, Yaw is constantly addressed as adonaty “ my lords,” for “ my lord,” parallel to the Phoenician title adorn. This title, “ my lord,” has been found in Phoenician with Eshmun only, and there is consequently hardly any Fig. 41. Coin of Elagabalus. doubt but that Adonis of Gebal is the ”
same god. In Hebrew adorn and addnai appear to be exclusively used of the god Yaw, latterly in fact pointed with the vowels of Addnaiy as Yahdwah, Yehowah. There is clearly no mytho- logical connection between Eshmun, Adonis, and the Hebrew deity YaW',®®^ who has been identified with Adad above.
From the Roman period come coins with the figure of a youthful god who stands between two serpents. None of these can safely be attributed to Sidon, but the similarity to the Greek representations of Asclepius has convinced scholars that these depict Eshmun, “ the Healer.” Fig. 41 shews one of these types from Beyrutus (Beirut), just south of Gebal. A coin of Sidon shews him leaning on a staff about which a serpent winds.®®® The serpent is symbolic of the generative and healing powers of the earth, and is associated with both the Earth- goddess and her dying son and lover in Sumerian, Babylonian, and West Semitic mythology. Ningishzida, one of the names of the young god as principle of arboreal life, in Sumerian mythology called the companion of Tammuz, is represented from early times with a serpent springing from each shoulder.
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An omen of the Babylonians was that if a child was born with a head like a serpent it was a mystery sent by Ningishzida.®^® Both Tammuz and his mother bore the title ama-usumgal- anna, “ mother-great-serpent of Heaven,” that is the serpent deity who emanated from the Heaven-god Ann.®” The corn goddess Nidaba has serpents springing from her shoulders. A shrine of Astarte from Beisan has a serpent climbing upward along its front from a lower window (Fig. 15), and a curious vase with apertures, from her temple at Beisan, has two serpents twining in and out of them.’*’'^ The Sumerians and Babylonians, as usual, made this aspect of the god and goddess of Vegetation and Healing into special serpent deities, but in West Sem- itic religion where this tendency to create a vast pantheon by deification of special aspects of nature did not obtain, there is no trace of a special serpent deity who is god or goddess of Healing.
Worship of the serpent deity, as god of Healing, that is Esh- mun, must have been extremely popular in Canaan and Philistia. It was Yaw himself who directed Moses to set up a brazen ser- pent upon a pole, and those bitten by serpents were healed when they looked upon it.”® This legend arose in the early days of Hebrew mythology to explain the worship of Nehushtan, a brazen serpent set upon a pole, a practice which survived until the reformation of Hezekiah.®^^
The last important deity, undoubtedly of Semitic origin, whose cults were so widely spread that he must be included in this sketch of their mythology, was Dagon or, as he appears in cuneiform documents, Dagan, Dagun. In him we have one of the few Semitic gods who represent the specific deification of corn and agriculture. He appears first in the Amorite or Ara- maean kingdom, Mari, on the upper Euphrates, below the kingdom of Hana, whose capital was TIrqa, modern Asharah, below the mouth of the Habur. The king of Mari in the days of Naram-Sin (twenty-seventh century) was Migir-Dagan, “ Favourite of Dagan ” j Sargon, founder of the dynasty of
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Agade worshipped in Tululi, and Dagan gave this famous Semitic king the lands of the whole upper Euphrates even to the Mediterranean sea-board.^^® By the martial aid of the weapons of Dagan, Naram-Sin conquered the whole of the Phoenician coast and the Taurus region.®^® At an early period the Sumeri- ans included him in their own pantheon, a distinction conferred upon no foreign deity after 2000 b.c. But here he was given only a minor position as attendant of the Earth-god Enlil.®^^ Wherever the Semitic religion asserts itself in Babylonia and Assyria from the age of Sargon onward, and is not completely submerged in Sumerian orthodox forms, the god Dagan appears with persistence. This is particularly true of personal names of Semites at all times, from the period of Agade onward and especially among the Western Semites, who founded the dynasties of Isin and Babylon.®^® No Sumerian personal name, in which Dagan is the divine name, has been found, although the name of a city in Sumer called Bit-Gimil-Dagan in the kingdom of Dungi is always written in ideograms,®*® and the personal name Gimil-Dagan is also occasionally written in Sumerian fashion.®®^ Few names with Dagan have Accadian forma- tions, such as Idin-Dagan and Ishme-Dagan, Iti-Dagan, Silli- Dagan, Silush-Dagan, Nur-Dagan. The majority have West Semitic verbal forms and meanings, as Yashub-Dagan, “ Dagan turns back,” i.e., repents of his wrath, corresponding to the Hebrew name Yashubj Yashmah-Dagan, “ Dagan hears ”j Yawi-Dagan, “Dagan loves Hisni-Dagan, “Dagan is my strength”; Yahmu-Dagan, “Dagan protects (?) ”; Yassib- Dagan, “Dagan establishes”; Sumu-Dagan; Nahum-Dagan, “ Dagan is friendly.” Of special importance is the name of Izrah-Dagan at Hana on the middle Euphrates, from which most of these names come, and where Dagan was one of the principal deities at an early period. This name means literally, Dagan sows,” and it furnishes one of the evidences on which the statement that Dagan was a corn deity rests.®*® It corre- sponds to the Hebrew Jezreel. Unfortunately the verbal root
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has also a secondary meaning, “ to beget,” and both names may mean “ Dagan begets,” “ El begets.” The original name is, therefore, Dagan, and its Phoenician form Dagon, as transcribed in Greek, followed the normal phonetic change, as in the He- brew Dagon.^®® The word is identical with the Hebrew and Phoenician word dagariy “ corn,” found in no other Semitic lan- guage, which agrees with all the Assyriological evidence that this deity is exclusively Canaanitish. Again the statement of the early Phoenician historian must be taken as authoritative. Ura- nus (Heaven) married his sister Ge (Earth), and had by her four sons, Ilos (El) or Cronos, Betylus, Dag5n, “ which is bread-corn,” and Atlas. And Dag5n, after he had discovered bread-corn and the plough, was named Zeus Arotrios, “ Zeus the farmer.”
In Assyrian mythology Dagan was associated with the Earth-god Enlil, and regarded as one of the deities who sat in judgment on the souls of the dead in the lower world with Nergal and Misharu, “ the divine judges,” and others in the “ house of the ordeal.” He appears in cuneiform inscriptions as the principal deity of the ancient Canaanite and Aramaean centres of Mari and Hana between Hit and the mouth of the Habur on the Euphrates, including the Padan Aram and Har- ran of early Hebrew history. Shamshi-Adad I, king of Assyria, “ worshipper of Dagan,” built a temple to this god at Tirga, called Ekisiga, “ House of sacrifices (to the dead),” and Hammurabi, his great southern contemporary, conquered the province Mari to the south of Tirga by the might of Dagan “ his creator.” The three Semitic deities of this, the oldest Semitic centre whose mythology has been preserved not completely con- taminated with Sumerian theology, were Shamash, Dagan, and Idurmer.®®® These are clearly the Sun-god, the god of Fer- tility, and the Rain and Thunder-god Adadj for the enigmati- cal iturmer or idurmer must be connected with Ilumer.®®^
In Fig. 42 is shewn the only statue of a god which can be safely regarded as the mighty Dagan of Semitic mythology.
Fig. 42. Statue of Dagan
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The dress is late Sumerian, and so is the posture of the hands j both dress and posture are those of a Sumerian at prayer. The full beard and moustache after the Assyrian style prove the Semitic character; the horned turban shews that it is a deity. Since it is dedicated to a god (whose name is broken away) by a governor of Mari under a king of Ur in the twenty-fourth century, and it carries a curse in the name of Ishtar, Dagan, and Enki against him who should destroy the inscription, it is well nigh certain that this is Dagan. Adopted into Babylonian mythology as a god of agriculture, he was said to sit in the lower world, where before him through all eternity the seven children of the infernal deity Enmesharra were kept in bondage.®*® Ishtar is described as “ the creation and offspring of Dagan,” in a Babylonian hymn,®*® which proves that he had been identified with the great Earth-god of Sumerian religion, Enlil.
The widely spread worship of Dagan among the Western Semites is proved by the statements of Hebrew writers. His cult appears in the far south of Philistia, at the coast cities Gaza and Ashdod. The Nazirite Samson, of whom a legend is told in Judges xiii-xvii, to explain the Hebrew custom of compelling men consecrated to the service of Yaw to be unshorn, met his death at Gaza. When he was brought, bound and blinded, into that city, the Philistines praised their god Dagon {eld him Dagon). And a legend of the same period of early Hebrew history is told concerning “ the ark of the covenant of Yaw,” which they took from Shiloh and brought into their camp as they were pitched for battle against the Philistines. In the battle the ark of Yaw was captured and taken to Ashdod and set before Dagdn in his temple. Such divine power had the ark that, when the Philistines returned to their temple the following morning, the statue of Dagdn was found fallen on its face before it. Dagdn was restored to his place, but on the following morning his statue lay in fragments on the threshold; the head and hands were broken from the torso,®®® after the manner of statues found by excavators to this day in the temples
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of Babylonia. It was to Ashdod (Azotus) that Apollonius, general of Demetrius II, fled after the battle with Jonathan, ally of Alexander Balas. He and the remnants of his army took refuge in the temple of Dagon.®®^
According to the writer of i Chronicles x.io, the Philistines fastened the head of Saul in the temple of Dagon, which must mean that they carried it away to Philistiaj for the parallel passage, i Samuel xxxi.io, says that they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshan, where stood two temples, one to Ash- taroth and one to Reshef-Mikel.®®^ It is certain that Dagdn has no connection with Mikel, and a temple of Dagon at Bethshan is most improbable. The sources do not agree, but the variant adds emphasis to all the other refer- ences in Hebrew literature. Dagdn was the most important deity of Phi- listia. His cult in this region may be fig. 43. Coin of Unknown
as old as that at Marl on the Euphrates, Supposed to Repre-
, 1 r r •• r 1 • Dagon
but the hrst reference to it is found in
the name of a city king of southern Palestine, Dagan-takala, “ Trust in Dagan,” fifteenth century.®®®
By falsely deriving Dagon from the word dag, “ fish,” Jew- ish rabbis of the Middle Ages described him as a Fish-god, having from the navel up the form of a man, but downward the form of a fish.®®* On coins of the northern Phoenician city Aradus (Persian period) a marine deity of the kind, which may have suggested this Interpretation, occurs frequently.®®® Fig. 43 is a coin from some unknown city, supposed by some to come from Ashdod (Azotus), because of the abbreviated mint signa- ture AZ, or perhaps Ascalon.®®® This coin is also of the Persian period and has a half human and half fish deity. On the Aradus coins he holds a dolphin in each hand by the tail, but on this coin he has the trident of Poseidon and a wreath. Ac- cording to Jerome, Dagon was the god of Ascalon, Gaza, and
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all the cities of the Philistines. Whether the Philistines were of Semitic stock or not, their great deity Dagon certainly was Semitic, and one of the great gods of the far flung occupation of western lands — Syria, Phoenicia, Philistia, Canaan, Moab, by that branch of the Semitic race.
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There is a legend of a certain Ahiqar, a wise scribe and counsellor of Senecherib, king of Assyria, preserved in an Aramaic source found at Elephantine in Egypt, of the fifth century b.c., which latterly became a subject of folk-lore throughout the ancient east.^^^ In his old age Ahiqar lamented that he had no son to continue his services at the court of Assyria, and appealed to the gods to give him an heir that he might be trained in the philosophy and political wisdom with which he had so successfully served the Assyrian em- pire. According to the Arabic version of this tale he appealed to the “ Most high god, creator of the Heavens and Earth,” to give him a boy, that he might be consoled by him, and be present at his death to close his eyes and bury him. The Armenian version preserves a more polytheistic account of this part of the story. He went before the gods with offerings and prayed: “ O my lords and gods, Belshim and Shimil and Shamin, ordain and give to me male seed.” The gods, however, re- fused his supplication, but ordered him to adopt his sister’s son Nathan. The remainder of the story of Ahiqar does not con-
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cern Semitic mythology, but the occurrence of Belshim in the Armenian version, who is clearly the Balshamm and Balsha- meme of Aramaic and Phoenician mythology, as the first of the gods to whom Ahiqar appealed, proves how firmly this title of the great Semitic deity had supplanted the older name Adad in the late period. For Balshamm has been found in Armenian sources outside their version of Ahiqar.
The Semitic word for “god,” whose root is unknown, but common to all Semitic languages, is ilu (Accadian), el (Canaan- itish, Himyaritic, Aramaic)} strengthened triliteraU^® forms, Hebrew eloah^ Aramaic elah, Arabic ilah (Himyaritic, North Arabic). In Accadian, ilu regularly represents Sumerian digir^ dingiTy^^ which is written with an ideogram meaning “ high,” “ Heaven.” It seems plausible to assume that this Semitic general word originally denoted a Sky-god. It is difficult to suppose that in the oldest Arabian religion the word could have had special reference to the sun, for there the sun is feminine. But Semitic religion begins with the worship of sun, moon, and the planet Venus, and hence their word for “god” probably does mean “ high,” “ heavenly.”
This word, like hafaly Accadian hHu, became a specific name for a deity in Semitic religion. This is, however, a local and not a general aspect of their mythology, ilu never became the name of any special god in Babylonia, nor did dingir in Sumerian. The only instance of this in Babylonia is the use of the word Bel for Marduk of Babylon. Wherever this title is employed in West Semitic religion Marduk is meant, never Enlil of Nip- pur} dingir and ilu are employed for specific gods only in the phrase, “ his god ” or “ my god,” where the word “ god ” re- fers to the special protecting deity of a Sumerian or an Acca- dian.®^®
Among the Aramaeans, Phoenicians, and Canaanites El seems to have become a special name for Shamash, due to the pre- ponderant importance of this deity. The early Aramaic in- scriptions mention the deity Rakib-El,®^® which defines El as a
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Sun-god. These texts have four titles of the Sun-god or as- pects of the sun in the same line, El, Reshef, Rakib-El, and Shamash.®^® El, Rakib-El, and Shamash occur together, and El occurs also in Sabaean with Athtar. Here El or II is cer- tainly used for the principal deity of the Sabaean pantheon, Ilmuqah, the Moon-god, in the sense of “ the god.” El was the name of the principal deity of Gebal.®^^ Sanchounya- thdn has ’Elioun, and says that he was called Hypsistos, “ most high”} this is the Greek transcription of the Canaanite word ^elyofif “ most high,” used as a title of the Hebrew deity, El, in the story of Melchizedek and Abraham, where El is appar- ently the god of Salem.®"® In later Hebrew mythology, when monotheism or complete syncretism of the deities Yaw and El prevailed, the title elyon is also applied to Yaw. In the com- plicated scheme of the pantheon at Gebal, as handed down by Sanchounyath5n, Berouth was the wife of Elioun, and they begat Uranos (Heaven), and Ge, the Earth-goddess. There is, here, apparently a mutilated transformation of the Sumero- Babylonian pantheon at the head of whose hereditary scheme stand Anu and Antu, the Sky-god and his wife. Hypsistos was slain in conflict with wild beasts, and was deified. Sanchounya- thon, or the redactors of his original works, treats these deities as ancient heroes, after the manner of Greek mythology. The legend of the death of Elioun or Hypsistos is undoubtedly based upon the cult of Adonis of Gebal, whose wounding by a boar in the precipitous mountain valley of the Adonis River, which flows from Aphaca in the Lebanon and reaches the sea at Gebal, is one of the episodes in this cult.
From Uranos and Ge sprang Ilos, called Cronos, Betulos, Dagon, and Atlas. Ilos or Cronos drove his father Elioun from the kingdom and founded Byblos (Gebal). The com- •rades of Ilos are called Eloeim in this source, a transcription of the Phoenician ®®^ or Hebrew eldhim, “ gods.” Ilos or El had a son Sadidus, whose name is apparently derived from Shaddai, a Hebrew title of El.®®® El is depicted as having been a cruel
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tyrant of Gebalj being suspicious of Atlas, his brother, he cast him into a deep cavern and buried him, and for the same reason he dispatched Sadidos with a sword and severed the head of his own daughter. He married Astarte, Rhea, and Dione, daugh- ters of his own father. Astarte was the Ba^alat or Beltis of Gebal. She and her brother El are the Aphrodite and Adonis of the most famous of all Semitic legends, which will be dis- cussed in the Chapter on Tammuz and Ishtar. By her El had seven daughters called the Titanides, one of whom was married to Sydycos, who begat Asclepius, that is the Greek equivalent of Esmun, god of Sidon. In Sanchounyathdn’s genealogy of the gods of Tyre, where Melqart-Hypsuranios corresponds to El of Gebal, Sydycos and (his brother) Misor occur. These names are Greek transcriptions of the Semitic words sedeq^ “ justice,” and mtshoTy “ righteousness.” Sanchounyathon translates both names by adjectives, “ the just ” and “ the easily freed.” The Greek translation of Misor has confused the verb mashary “ to let loose,” with the noun mtshor, which could not occur unless the Greek, or original Phoenician, writer was dealing with Baby- lonian names. Babylonian mythology has two attendants of Shamash, Kittu, who stands at his right, and Misaru, who stands at his left.^^® MTsharu obtained considerable vogue in West Semitic religion, for he is repeatedly associated with Adad and his consort Shala.®^^ At Erech he was worshipped in the temple of Adad.®^® Kittu appears in the Phoenician pan- theon as Sydyc, either a West Semitic translation or from a Babylonian name which has not been found.
That El was the special name of the “ Ba‘al of Gebal,” as he was called by the Egyptians, is proved by the emphasis laid upon this title by the inhabitants of that city in their proper names. El-ba‘al, “ El is lord,” is the name of an ancient king.^^® In the Persian period names of kings of Gebal are Elpa‘al,^^“ “ El has made,” ‘Ainel,^^^ “ Eye of El.” He is often described simply as Ba‘al, “ lord,” in names of Gebal, e.g., ‘Azba‘al, “ Might of Ba^al,” Yeharba‘al.®^® On coins of
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Gebal El is represented with six wings, two pairs extended from the back in flight, and one pair below, drooping at rest. Fig. 38, obverse, of the year 80 b.c., has the head of Astarte or Beltis of Gebal with mural crown, identifying her with Tyche. The reverse has the winged El, characteristic of coins of the period of the Seleucidae, from Antiochus Epiphanes onward. He holds a long wand or sceptre. Sanchounyathon thus de- scribes this deity: “ He has four eyes, two behind and two be- fore, two of which are closed in sleep. On his shoulders are four
Fig. 38. El (right) with Wings. Obverse (left), Astarte
wings, two in the act of flying, and two reposing at rest. The symbol meant that while he slept he also watched, and while he flew he also rested.”
This myth, combined with the representation on the coins, proves that it rests upon the Babylonian conception of the course of the sun by day and his repose in the lower world by night. He is a Janus figure, and representations of this deity who looks both ways are as old as the age of the Sumerian priest-king Gudea of Lagash, and as late as the fifth century.^^® Fig. 39, a seal from Arrapha, shews the god Marduk with two heads looking right and left. These heads, however, have mythologi- cal faces, half bird and half animal, with grinning jaws. Ap- parently here the twin-demon Nergal type of Sun-god is repre- sented beside the symbol of the sun, a four-rayed star in a circle,
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supported by a staff. On another seal from Arrapha the two- headed monster has two wings and supports the same sun sym- boL®^® Nergal, or the Sun-god, as a hostile deity of the sun’s heat and of the lower world, is frequently called the twin god, and as such his names are Lugalgirra and Meslamtaea. His symbol on monuments is a pillar with two lion heads, dos a doSy looking right to left.®®’ The winged sun disk in various forms begins to appear in the Cassite period and on seals of Arrapha it is frequent.®®® Fig. 40, from the top of a stele of Yehaw-melek,
Fig. 39. Seal Shewing Two-headed Marduk
king of Gebal, fifth century, shews this king in Persian dress, offering a libation to Astarte or Beltis of Gebal. A large sun disk of Assyrian type spreads out its wings above the scene. The goddess is here represented as the Egyptian Hathor.
The Janus nature of El of Gebal accords perfectly with Babylonian mythology. The Epic of Creation has the follow- ing description of Marduk:
“ Four were his eyes and four his ears.
When he moved his lips, fire blazed forth.
Four ears grew large,
And the eyes behold all things even as he (Ea).”
The mythological conception of the winged Sun-god is also revealed in Hebrew poetry, where the idea undoubtedly sur-
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vived from the earlier type of their own El or El5him. “ Hide me under the shadow of thy wings,” in a prayer to Yaw j “ The sons of men put their trust in the shadow of thy wings,” in a hymn to Him (as El5him) ; Boaz welcomed the Moabite woman Ruth to his land and religion with the words: “Yaw, the god of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust ”j a prayer to God (Elohim) has: “I put my trust in the covert
of thy wings.”®*® The figure in these passages is commonly supposed to be taken from a bird protecting her young j this is clearly the simile in Deuteronomy xxxii.ii and Psalm xci. 4 . Mythology and simile are probably combined in Hebrew poetry j for there is no doubt but that Eldhim, Elyon, Shad- dai, which occur in some of these passages, are identical with El, the Sun-god of Phoenicia and the Aramaeans. El or Cronos of Gebal invented the scimitar®** and spear. The scimitar is held in the hand of figurines of both the single- and double-headed Ashur, Sun-god of Assyria, found in
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strata of the twenty-fourth century at the ancient capital of Assyria.®^^
The influence of Babylonian mythology upon El of the West Semitic races is unmistakable. He is both Shamash, the benefi- cent, and Nergal, the dreadful. As god of the lower world his name Malcandros appears in a myth preserved by Plutarch. This famous story, told or referred to in many Greek sources of the early Christian period, has been reconstructed by Baudissin. According to Plutarch,®^® Osiris, who had been treacherously put into a coffin by his brother Set and flung into the Nile, floated down the Nile and out into the Mediterranean Sea. The coffin finally drifted to the harbour of Gebal (Byblos), and was washed ashore. An erica-Xxzt grew up suddenly and enclosed the coffin. Malcandros, king of Gebal, cut down this tree and used it as a pillar of his house, not knowing that it contained the body of Osiris. Isis, sister of Osiris, wandered up and down Egypt seeking her lost husband and brother. Somehow in- formation came to her that his body was in the pillar of the house of Malcandros, whither she went and sat down by a well to weep. Astarte, queen of Gebal, attracted by her sorrow, and by the divine aroma which she had breathed upon the queen’s handmaidens, received her into her house and made her nurse of her child. By night she fluttered about the pillar with mourn- ful twittering. She finally revealed her identity and begged for the pillar, which they gave her. Having cut out the body of Osiris she fell upon it in loud lament, and returned with it to Egypt. The pillar she wrapped in fine linen, anointed it and gave it to Malcandros and Astarte. It stood in the temple of Osiris, i.e., Adonis, at Gebal even unto the days of Plutarch.
Malcandros or Malcander is clearly a title of El, derived from Malk-addir, “ Malk the mighty the title Melk, Malk, “king,” of the Sun-god, more especially of Nergal, has been discussed.®** A king of Gebal in the Persian period was Adar- malk.®*® This is surely the same name as that of the god Adrammelek, whose worship was introduced into Samaria by
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the Sepharvites in the eighth century, and to whom they burned their children in fire.®^® By a new interpretation of the inscrip- tion of Eshmun‘azar of Sidon, a mythological passage in the curse against those who open his sarcophagus should probably read : “ May they have no resting-place with the Shades, nor be buried in a grave, nor have son or seed in their stead, and may the holy gods imprison them with Malkaddir.” The con- ception of souls of the dead held captive in Hell by Nergal is Babylonian also.
The Hebrew deity El, whose character as a Sun-god has been repeatedly mentioned, and whose name occurs also quite regu- larly in the plural Elohim, but employed as a singular, is the god of the Habiru, a people who appear in various kingdoms and local city dynasties of Babylonia and Assyria from the twenty-second century until the Cassite period, among the Hittites, and as an invading warlike tribe in Syria, Phoenicia, and Canaan in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries. I am entering upon debatable ground here when I assume that the Habiru and their god Ilani (plural always written ideographi- cally) are identical with the Hebrews and their god Elohim. There seems to be no doubt at all but that this is the casej every argument against it has been specious and without conviction. Accepting this thesis, the Hebrews had served for six centuries as mercenary soldiers and traders among the Babylonians, As- syrians, Hittites, Mitannians, and Aramaeans before they en- tered and occupied Canaan; and, granted that their persistent use of ilani Habiri, “ the Habiru gods,” is, in reality, a singular like the Hebrew El5him, it follows that it is identical with the Hebrew god El, Elah, Elohim. Phoenician also uses the word “gods” as a singular.®^® This is a common usage among Canaanitish scribes of the period of the Habiru invasions into Syria and Palestine. So, for example, Shuwardata of Kelte calls Pharaoh, “ my god and my sun,” in the text actually “ my gods and my Shamash.” A man of Qadesh in Northern Syria writes to Pharaoh attributing his defeat of the invading Habiru
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to the fact that “ his godhead ” and “ sunship ” went before his face. Here the plural ilanu is used as an abstract noun, as is also the word “ god Shamash.” In Hittite the Habirite god is called Uani Habiriyas, Habiries^ “ Habirite gods.” That the Ha- birites, or, as I assume, the Hebrews, in the days of their wan- derings in Babylonia, from the days of Abraham “ the Hebrew ” and Hammurabi (Amraphel), had a deity known to the peoples with whom they came into contact as “ the Hebrew god,” is proved by a list of nine gods and goddesses worshipped in the temple of Adad at the old capital of Assyria, in a text at least as old as the twelfth century. Here the singular, ilu Habiru oc- curs, which I take to mean not “ god Habiru,” but “ Habirite god,” or, if ilu is here, as in ildni Habiriy a specific name of a deity, i.e., El, the “ Habirite El.” The genitive and accusative of this gentilic word is Habin and the nominative plural should be ildni Habiru or the “ Hebrew Elbhim ” in the texts of the Hittite capital, Boghazkeui.
There are no important myths in Hebrew religion concerning either of their two deities El and Yaw, but if the origin of the god Elohim in the Old Testament can be explained as a direct survival of the Habirite ildni, it is obvious that their long asso- ciation with Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hittite re- ligion explains the great Babylonian myths which appear in He- brew mythology. The myths of Creation in Genesis i-ii, of Paradise and the Fall of Man (iii), and of the Flood (vi— ix), are admittedly of Babylonian origin, and all three in the He- brew account are compiled from two versions in which El5him or Yaw appears respectively. It is extremely difficult to de- cide which of these sources is the older, but if the Habiru are the Hebrews, clearly those sources of these myths in which the deity El5him appears are the originals. Yaw, the Rain- and Thunder-god, appears to be a West Semitic deity unknown to them under that name until they entered Canaan. The meaning of this name being wholly unknown, but his identity with the god Adad certain, it is imprudent to reject
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the supposition that it is not a purely Habirite or Hebrew word for the deity of rains, storms, and winds, and as old as the god Elohim among them. There are purely Hebrew myths such as the communication of the tables of the law on Mount Sinai, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues in Egypt, Balaam and the ass, Jonah and the whale, Samson and Delilah. The myth of the ten prediluvian patri- archs is Babylonian. Of all these only those of Babylonian origin confront us with problems of universal dimensions. In the Chapters on Sumerian and Babylonian myths these will be considered. The Hebrew national legends will be discussed in their proper connections. Here, in preparation for those Chap- ters, it is necessary to point out the reasons for the almost com- plete ascendancy of Babylonian mythology in the greater mytho- logical documents of the Old Testament and the historical reasons for it.®®^
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The cult of Melqart, who, by the accident of being the local god of a great Phoenician seaport, became a patron of sea-faring men, passed into Greek mythology as Melicertes, to whom human sacrifices were made at Tenedos, As a solar deity, fol- lowing the universal Semitic mythology of the sojourn of the
Fig. 31. Colonial Coin of Tyre with Sun Pillars
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Sun-god in the lower world until the days begin to lengthen at the winter solstice, the Tyrians celebrated the resurrection of Melqart on the second day of the Macedonian month Peritios, corresponding to Tyrian February-March.^®® At this festival a great fire was lighted, and “ having lost his old age in fire he obtains in exchange his youth ” j there was in consequence a feast on the second of this month throughout Syria called dies natalis Solis invictiy “ Natal day of the unconquerable Sun.” Another legend ran that he perished in fire at Tyre where was his sepulchre} the Phoenician colony at Gades (Cadiz) in Spain also had a sepulchre of Melqart, and there was one of Melicertes at Corinth.^®® This legend of the death and burial of the Sun-god of Tyre is undoubtedly based upon the legend of the tomb of Bel-Marduk at Babylon. As Marduk rose from his tomb at the New Year festival, so also the Tyrians believed their Sun-god to come forth from his tomb, symbol of his annual sleep of death in the lower world. At Aphaca in the Lebanons, east of Gebal, was the tomb of Ba‘al, who, as shall be seen, is probably Adonis of Gebal, also a Sun-god. The burning of the image of Melqart, the Tyrian Hercules, that by passing through fire he may receive his youth again to revive the life of a dying world, seems to have been peculiar to Tyre and the lands to which his cult spread.
It may be presumed from the human sacrifices to Malik in Canaan and to Melqart as Cronus at Carthage that the Phoenicians offered the first-born in the fire which celebrated the victory of Sol invictuSy and insured themselves against the wrath of the relentless god. The Melek of Tyre was identified with Hercules, and the coins of Tyre (Fig. 32) from 126 b.c. to 225 A.D., bear the head of the Greek Hercules, with lion-skin knotted round his neck. The design of the older Mel- qart (Fig. 30), who is represented as god of the chase riding on a sea-horse, may have led to his identification with Hercules, ubiquitously represented on coins clothed in a lion’s skin, draw- ing bow with arrow, and brandishing a massive club,^®® the
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so-called Tyrian Hercules of Citium. There is another mytho- logical connection between the Nergal-Malik type of Sun- god of Tyre and the Greek deity, whose battles with the lions of Mount Cithaeron and the Nemea, with the Arcadian stag, the Erymanthian boar, and the Cretan bull, caused the Tyrians to find in his deeds a similarity to their mythological tales of Melqart. In fact one of the titles of Melqart is Sed, “ the Hunter,” and the god has the double title, Sed-Melqart, at Carthage. This epithet of Melqart has not been found for
Nergal in Babylonian, but Sa-i-id nakirim, “ Hunter of the foe,” is used of Ninurta, god of the spring Sun.“® Since Ba‘al- Hamman, principal male deity of Carthage,^®® is identified with Hercules,®®® and Melqart occurs repeatedly at Carthage in proper names, the identity of Ba‘al-Hamman with Sed-Mel- qart is certain. Ba‘al-Hamman of the Phoenician colony at Carthage is only a new name for the Sun-god of the mother-city Tyre, and is taken directly from the cult centre Hamman near Tyre,®®^ where the double deity Melk-‘Ashtart was worshipped. Astarte of Tyre became the great goddess and principal deity of Carthage} the double deity Sed-Tanit, corresponding to Melk-‘Ashtart of Hamman, also emerges in the mythological nomenclature of Carthage.®®®
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The Sun-god was known as the god Sed, “ the Hunter,” at Tyre and Carthage.^®* Sanchounyathon made use of trust- worthy sources when he said that Agreus, the Hunter, and Halleus, the Fisherman, were descendants of Samem-roumos,*®* a title of the Sun-god, at Tyre. Here minor aspects of Mel- qart are personified and treated as deities in his pantheon, an ordinary Sumerian method. Agreus and Halieus ^®® begat two brothers, one of whom was called Chrysdr, inventor of hook, bait, fishing line, and small fishing boats, and was the first who sailed. After his death he was deified under the name Diamichius. From them descended Technites and Geinos, who invented brick making.^®^ These begat Agros,
Agroueros, or Agrotes, “ the Farmer.” To him the Phoenicians built a statue and “ a temple drawn by oxen.” At Gebal Agrotes was the greatest of the gods. Since Agrotes also means “ Hunter,” the name was applied to the Sun-god El of Gebal. The statue and temple drawn by oxen clearly refer to
Fig. 33. Sun-symbol of thg chariot of the Sun-god drawn by Tyre in Chariot . 1 • r 1 • r
tour horses, a design found on coins ot every city which emphasized the sun-cult. A chariot with four horses driven by Helios stood on the gable of the magnificent temple of the sun at Ba^albek, and coins of that city represent the fagade of the temple mounted by the chariot of the sun.^®® At Emesa (Homs) the sacred baetyl of Elagabal stands on a chariot drawn by four horses.^®® The myth of the Sun-god and his chariot and charioteer is of Babylonian origin,^^® and a coin of Tyre has Melqart and his charioteer drawing a chariot with four horses.®^^ Josiah destroyed the horses and chariots of the sun at the entrance to the temple of Yaw in Jerusalem (2 Kings, xxiii.ii), by which the Hebrew chronicler means images of chariots and horses dedicated to the Sun-god of Salem. A late Jewish writer in the Book
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of Enoch refers to the wind-driven chariot of the sun and moon.
Sed, “ the Hunter,” has no connection with Shamash, Mel- qart, Elagabal, Rakkab, etc., as the chariot rider of the sun. “ The Hunter ” as an aspect of the Western Sun-god represents rather Ninurta of the Sumerian pantheon. Ninurta, read ap- parently Nimurta in dialectic Sumerian, is probably the origin of the name Nimrod, the famous hunter of Hebrew mythology. This myth, incorporated in one of the oldest Hebrew docu- ments,^^^ reveals his Babylonian origin 5 for he is said to have founded Babylon, Erech, Accad, and Calneh,^^® in Shine^ar (Sumer). If Calneh is an error for Kullaba, a part of Erech, at least two of these cities, Erech and Kullaba, were connected with the exploits of the hero Gilgamish, and since Nimurta is mentioned as the god of Kullaba,^^^ there seems to be a confu- sion of two myths in the Hebrew legend. Nimrod, the mighty hunter before Yaw, and son of Kush,^^® is clearly the Gilgamish of Babylonian mythology; and Nimrod, founder of cities in Sumer, and latterly builder of Nineveh, Rehoboth-lr, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah in Assyria, is surely Nimurta, the god of the spring Sun, son of the Earth-god Enlil of Nippur. The myth of Nimrod is preserved by a stray refer- ence in early Hebrew literature. Genesis x.8-12, and referred to again by the late compiler of i Chronicles i. 10. The prophet Micah calls Assyria “ the land of Nimrod.”
There is here a remnant of an ancient and widely spread Semitic myth, originating in Sumer and Accad, concerning the Sun-god Nimurta, who, in the original Sumerian Epic of Crea- tion, defeated the dragon of chaos and founded cities. Since Nineveh appears in history in the fifteenth century, and Calah was founded by Shalmanasar I (thirteenth century), this leg- end cannot be earlier. Nimurta was the principal deity of Calah, and called “ the dweller of Calah.” In Sumero- Babylonian religion he is the War-god and the planet Saturn, and there is no myth concerning his hunting exploits, except in
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connection with his hunting the foes of Babylonia. This aspect of the Babylonian Nimurta must be assumed, for it surely ex- isted, and the Phoenician Sed is the western reproduction of this Semitic myth of the Sun-god as a hunter.
At Palmyra, the ancient Tadmar,^^^ the principal deities were Yarhi-Bel, Agli-Bel, and Atargatis. Yarhi-Bel is regu- larly transcribed Yaribolos in the Greek translations of Palmy- rene texts,^^® and is proved by the tessara shewn in Fig. 34 to be the Sun-god, and another name for the Aramaean Sun-god Malak-Bel.^^® On the left stands the Sun-god, recognizable by the rays of light spreading from his head. The Aramaic inscription has the letters y-r-h-y-h-l. On the right is the Moon-god, determined by the crescent which stands behind his neck. The Aramaic inscription has the letters ^ -g-l-b-w-l. On p. 22 reference was made to the bas-relief of Emesa (Fig. 35) on which Seimia, a title of the Mother-goddess of the Aramaeans, Ate, Atargatis, Arabian Allat, is defined by a Greek inscription as Athena. She stands between two deities j on the left is the solar deity with rays of light spreading from his headj he wears the dress of a Roman soldier specifying him as a Warrior-god. On the right stands the figure of a deity in oriental garb, holding a spear, and above his head is the Greek word Kerauno, “ thunderbolt,” identifying him with the Semitic god Adad. The monument is thought to be broken away at the left, where a fourth deity may have stood.^®^ Be that as it may, the Greek inscription, as preserved, has Yarebol, Aglibbl, and Sei[mia]. Agli-Bol, the Moon- god, does not appear on the monument and may be the figure which conjecturally stood on the left. Seimia then stands between the two Sun-gods of Palmyra, Malak-Bel and Yarhi-B 31 , and before Yarhi-Bol the Greek text has prob- ably Bel 5 .
The Palmyrene name of the Sun-god, Malak-Bel, often called simply Bel, is of Babylonian origin, as the borrowed name of the great god of Babylon, Marduk or Belu, proves.
Fig. 34. Tessara from Palmyra with Sun-god (left) and Moon-god
(right)
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58
The local pronunciation of their god Ba‘al was Bol. Since no Semitic word malaky for “ king,” “ counsellor,” exists, it is impossible to connect this solar deity of central Syria with the god Malik. Malik in Phoenician and Canaanitish mythology is the Babylonian Nergal and Nimurta. Malak-Bel was iden- tified by the Greeks with Zeus, and by the Romans with Sol sanctissinms. At Palmyra the gods Agli-Bol and Malak-Bel occur in that order, precisely as, in Babylonia and Assyria, Sin and Shamash is a fixed sequence.^®^ Malak-Bel has been in- terpreted to mean “ the messenger of Bel.” The messenger of Bel of Babylon was Nabu,^®^ god of letters and writing. Nabu has essentially and historically no connection with the sunj he probably became the messenger of the Sun-god Mar- duk, because he had been identified with the planet Mercury. This planet is never seen except in the morning or evening twilight, since it stands in close proximity to the sun. For this reason Malak-Bol of Syria has been identified with Mercury.^®® It has been assumed that Malak-Bel is simply a metathesis for Bel-malak,^®® “ Bel has counselled,” but the Semites did not form names of deities in that way. The god Balmalage, listed among Phoenician deities by a scribe of Asarhaddon,^®^ is certainly compounded from the West Semitic general title of deities, Ba‘al, and malaky “ messenger,” as it occurs in Punic inscriptions, Ba'al-malak,^®® where the writing permits no doubt. A Messenger-god Malak must have been well known among West Semitic peoples. It is found in the Edomite divine name Qaush-malaka.^®® Qaush seems to have been the national deity of this people who occupied the mountainous region south of Judea.^®*^ The personal name Il-ma-la-[ku] occurs in an Assyrian contract, with Aramaic transcription El-malak.®®^ Malak-Bel is identified with Mercury in a Greek inscrip- tion of Abila (Suk-Barada) in the Anti-Lebanon, north-west of Damascus.
A marble altar from Palmyra, dedicated by Tiberius Claudius Felix to Malak-Bel and the gods of Tadmor in
I Ape B 6^ A cO A rA I B WA fi)/< A I C6i;
' oyire pccoTHpiACAYi oy- k os:!: ^
Fig, 35. Bas-relief, Shewing Seimia between the Solar Deity (left) AND AdAD (right)
V — 6
6o
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Greek, and to Sol sanctissimus in Latin, has a myth of the sun portrayed in art.^®® The four sides of the altar represent the birth, youth, middle age, and old age of the diurnal or annual life of the sun. On the back side Malak-Bel, as a naked boy, issues from the top of a cypress-tree bearing on his shoul- ders a ram. Only the upper part of his body has emerged. Here is the rising sun born on the eastern horizon of the wooded Lebanon sky-line, precisely as in Babylonian art he rises over the mountains of Elam. Fig. 36, a Sumerian seal of about the
twenty-fifth century, shews the Sun-god, Babbar, Shamash, emerging from the wooded mountains of the east, holding in his left hand the key with which he unlocks the gate of sunrise. Above him stands the winged figure of Innini, Ishtar, the morn- ing star, and, from behind, the god Immer, Adad, sends show- ers upon mountain and plain. The bull, symbol of the Rain and Thunder-god, lies at his feet. On the left stands a god with a bow, probably representing the Sun-god as a hunter, and the lion of the sun with open jaws rushes at the celestial hunter from the left. The eagle, Sumerian symbol of the luminary which takes its daily flight across the vault of Heaven and traverses the celestial dominion of the stars and constella- tions, descends towards the rising sun from the storm-clouds of Adad.
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6i
In Sumerian art Shamash is invariably represented, even at his rising, as an old man. For his various aspects, they have special forms of the solar deity, as Ninurta for the morning or spring sun, Nergal for the midday or summer sun. The myth of the naked youth rising from the wooded hills of the Lebanons, the good shepherd bearing a ram on his shoulders, cannot be traced to Babylonian mythology, unless the myth of the shepherd Tammuz lies at the basis of this late Semitic iconography.
The right side of the altar shews Malak-Bel driving a chariot drawn by four winged griffins j behind him stands the winged goddess of Victory, who places a crown upon his head. This scene represents the youth of the sun mounting victoriously toward the vault of heaven.^®'* The front of the altar (Fig. 37 ) has the bust of Malak-Bel supported by an eagle. From his head spring the brilliant rays of the midday sun.^®® The left side has the bust of the bearded Sun-god, with hood and sickle. This is Cronos, the setting sun (or autumn sun), after he has run his course and descends toward the western horizon in his old age.^®® A monument of Palmyra represents the two great gods of Palmyra, Malak-Bel and Agli-Bol, sun and moon,^®^ standing with hands clasped before a cypress-tree. On the left is Malak-Bel, a youth with a sickle, and on the right Agli-B31, in garb of a Roman soldier j a crescent stands behind his shoulders precisely as on the Palmyrene tessara, Fig- 34-
The close relation between the Thunder and Rain-god, Ramman-Adad, and the Sun-god in Semitic mythology is one of the aspects of Babylonian religion most prominent and most difficult to explain. The Earth-god Enlil of Sumerian re- ligion is by origin “ Lord of the Wind,” god of the vast Under- world, whence come the winds and storms, his son is Ishkur, Immer, Mur, and the Semitic god of Winds, Rain, and Light- ning, Adad.®®® On the other hand the Sun-god Ninurta is also the son of Enlil, and Enlil himself is identified with
SOimiMCT ISSI M0«^¥M Tll“C WPll¥3“lPiLlX- IT CLA¥1D1( A-HUE LFJS“iT
V@TVM4@LYgl?m«T-ILai^J«S'I^KSl®
C^L®lEJMSgS*ei°G©M° HD
Fig. 37. Palmyrene Altar, Front View
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Shamash. The mythological origin of these diverse concep- tions seems to be that the sun and the winds issue from the vast infernal regions of the dominion of Enlil, lord of both upper and lower worlds. Undoubtedly the Greek myth of Aeolus, to whom Zeus gave control of the winds, which he let forth from the caves of the mountains, has been ultimately derived from this ancient Sumerian conception of the Earth-god.^®® Shamash and Adad are the two supreme gods of Divination in Babylonia and Assyria. It is, therefore, not surprising that, among the Aramaeans, Adad, Ramman, Ilumer, is often confused with the Sun-God Malak-Bel, Yarhi-Bol, or that Yaw of the Hebrews completely absorbed the character of the Sun- god El.
Among the Aramaeans and Phoenicians there is a deity Bal- shamin, Balshameme,®®® “ Lord of the Heavens.” In Palmy- rene inscriptions he has the titles “ the good and rewarding god,” and “ lord of the world.” ®®® The Greek translation of Ba‘al-shamin on an altar from Tayyibe, north-east of Palmyra, is Zeus megistos kerauniosy i.e., “ Most mighty Zeus, Thunder (er).” ®®® There is, therefore, no doubt but that Bal- shamm is Adad. Plautus transcribes Ba‘alshamim, the Phoeni- cian form in Punic inscriptions, by Balsamem. The title occurs in inscriptions from Phoenicia,®®* among the Nabataeans of Hauran (south of Damascus),®®® in Sardinia,®®® and among the Arabians of the Hauran in the Christian period.®®^ Since all these Phoenician, Aramaic, Nabataean, and Safaitic inscriptions derive from the late period, second century b.c. to the second century a.d., it was at first supposed that “ Lord of the Heavens ” revealed a monotheistic title of the great Semitic Rain and Thunder-god Adad, taken from the late Hebrew title of Yaw, el hassamainiy “ god of the Heavens.” ®®® But this assertion, even when it was made, ignored the occurrence of this god already found among Phoenician deities in the time of Esarhaddon, and any monotheistic idea was invalidated by the occurrence of Ba‘alsamin with the god Shai‘haqaum and the
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goddess Lat in Safaitic. Moreover Teshub, the Hittite Adad, has the title “ lord of the Heavens and Earth ” in Accadian cuneiform treaties between the Hittites and Mitannians, in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries b.c., and the Hittite Sun-god is called “ lord of the Heavens ” in the same documents. A Palmyrene inscription renders Ba‘alshamin by “ Helios ” in the Greek version/” and Syriac writers translate Zeus Olympios by Ba‘alshamm. Hesychius, the Greek lexicographer, renders Ramas, i.e., Ramman = Adad, by “ Zeus hypsistos,” but Philo Byblius identified Kurios ouranou, “ lord of the Heavens ” with Helios, the Sun-god. This title, Balsamin, therefore, be- gan in the Hittite religion for both Adad and Shamash. The West Semitic peoples then use it as the name of the god of the Skies, either Adad or Shamash. This is only another example of the persistent confusion of these two Semitic deities.®^"
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Adad’s fury is appeased by the grant of divine authority to ap- point and defend the rulers of Babylonia. This divine ap- pointment of kings by the Rain and Mountain-god of the Aramaeans and Hebrews appears repeatedly in their mythol- ogy. Adad, El, Reshef, Rakib-El, and Shamash gave Panamu of Yadi the sceptre of Aleppo.^®^ So also is Yaw,^®® god of the Children of Israel, described in the ancient Hebrew “ Song of the Sea,” as a man of war: “ Thou sendest forth thy wrath, consuming them like stubble, and with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were piled up. Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them.” Yaw appeared unto his people in a cloud, and revealed himself on the mountains in fire, dark- ness, and clouds, and spoke out of the midst of fire. The “ Book of the Wars of Yahweh ” and the “ Book of Jashar ” were two collections of ancient Hebrew martial songs. From the latter collection come the “ Song of the Bow ” and the hymn of Joshua at the battle of Gibeon. It is extremely probable that Jashar is a title of the Babylonian Adad.®®^ Jashar means “ the just,” and the corresponding Accadian word Ishar appears as a title of Adad and Nergal in Babylonian and Assyrian. The “ Book of Jashar ” may well mean the book of the Canaanitish and Aramaean Thunder-god Adad, and all the more since Paddan of Syria is written Padda in Assyrian, and a name of Nergal (often confused with Adad) is Ishar-padda. Already in the period of Ur (end of the twenty-third century) Ishar-badan, apparently “ Ishar of
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Padan,” occurs as a proper name, and the god Ishar-padan, variant Ishar-padda, occurs in southern Babylonia in the period when, according to tradition, Abraham migrated from Ur of the Chaldees by way of Harran in Syria.
Job describes El, in the late period when Yaw and El had been identified, in verses similar to the Sumerian and Accadian hymns :
“ Hearken unto the rumbling of his voice,
And to the muttering that goeth out of his mouth.
He letteth it go under the whole Heaven And lightning to the ends of the earth.”
As the Aramaean kings derived their rights to sceptre and throne from Adad, so also Saul of Benjamin became the first king of Israel by the direction of Yaw.^®® Jeroboam re- ceived the same divine commission to rule over the ten northern tribes of Solomon’s disrupted kingdom from Yaw.
All mythological references to the principal deity of the twelve tribes of Israel, who appear to have been only a part of the greater Hebrew people, indicate that he was identical with the Amorite and Aramaean deity Hadad, Adad, Ilumarru, and the Sumerian Mer. The name was originally written Yaw, as is proved by the earliest written records of Samaria, and among Samaritan exiles in Assyria, where the deity has in- variably this form in all proper names. As an Aramaic deity Yaw occurs in the name of a king of Hamath who was captured by Sargon in 720 b.c. The name is written Ya-u- bi-’-di, i.e., “ god Yaw is my help.” The element is frequently employed with deities of the Aramaic pantheon, as in Atar-bi’di, Mar ^“®-bi’di, Sagil-bi’di, Adadi-bi’di, Bed-El, Hadba’d, ““ Apil-Addu-ba’di. The Jewish colony of Elephan- tine in Southern Egypt, in the sixth and fifth centuries b.c., wrote in Aramaic and pronounced the name of their principal deity Yaw.^“ In the sacred writings of the Jews this original name is correctly preserved in proper names as Yaw and Yah, but for some unexplained reason it was extended into a verbal
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form, apparently Yahweh, “ He causes to be,” and then pointed with the vowels of the word Addnai, and pronounced Adonai, whence the modern reading, Jehovah. In this book I use the form Yaw. A name Yahweh, Jehovah, never existed.
Some have argued that the god Yaw was a Moon-god, but the sources both Aramaic and Hebrew indicate his identity with the Rain and Thunder-god Adad. A coin from Gaza in Southern Philistia, fourth century b.c., the period of the Jewish subjection to the last of the Persian kings, has the only known representation of this He- brew deity. The letters Y H W are incised just above the hawk(?) which the god holds in his outstretched left hand. Fig. 23. He wears a himation,
leaving the upper part of the body Fig. 23. Yaw, Coin of Gaza.
1 j V • j t- 1 Fourth Century, b.c.
bare, and sits upon a winged wheel.
The right arm is wrapped in his garment. At his feet is a mask. Because of the winged chariot and mask it has been suggested that Yaw had been identified with Dionysus on ac- count of a somewhat similar drawing of the Greek deity on a vase where he rides in a chariot drawn by a satyr.^®® The coin was certainly minted under Greek influence, and consequently others have compared Yaw on his winged chariot to Trip- tolemos of Syria, who is represented on a wagon drawn by two dragons. It is more likely that Yaw of Gaza really represents the Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic Sun-god El, Elohim, whom the monotheistic tendencies of the Hebrews had long since identified with Yaw. Sanchounyathon, an historian of Gebal, whose lost writings are preserved by Eusebius, and who in turn quotes them from Philo Byblius, is said to have dedi- cated his History of Phoenicia to Abibalos, king of the Beru- tians. This is probably Abiba‘al, king of Gebal, who lived in the reign of Osorkon I (tenth century). Sanchounyathdn was un- doubtedly a Phoenician writer of that period, as the statement of
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Porphyry, preserved in Eusebius, asserts. He based his his- tory upon Yerombalos, a priest of Yeuo, undoubtedly the god Yaw, who is thus proved to have been worshipped at Gebal as early as lOOO b.c. In a mound north-west of Beisan, modern Ta‘annek, has been found a letter of the fifteenth century writ- ten in cuneiform by Ahi-Yami, which proves that Yaw was a deity of the Canaanites.
An Aramaic Sun-god is Rakib El,
“ charioteer of El,” corresponding to the Sumerian god Bunene rMh nar- kahtly “ charioteer ” of the Sun-god, “ who sits in the chariot-seat, whose on- C^oin'of^Gaza'^^'^' is irresistible, who harnesses
the powerful mules, whose knees rest not, who travels before thee at thy coming and going.” The Sun-god is called the “ Rider,” Rakkab, in the name of the Aramaean king of Samal, Bar-Rakkab,^“® and a citizen of Samal is Bi’li-Rakkabi, “ My lord is my charioteer.”
Yaw was associated with the Canaanitish Mother-goddess, ‘Ashtart-‘Anat, as we know from the name of the deity of the Jews at Elephantine, ‘Anat-Yaw, where two other father- mother titles of divinities occur, such as Ashim-Bethel, ‘Anat- Bethel, in which titles of Astarte are combined with the Sun-god Bethel. It is precisely at Gaza, where Yaw as a Sun-god ap- pears on a coin (Fig. 23), that coins frequently bear the figure of this ‘Ash tart- Yaw, Anat-Yaw, Anat-Bethel, corresponding to the Phoenician Melk-‘Ashtart, Eshmun-‘Ashtart. Fig. 24, of the Persian period, is characteristic of this type of male-female, or female-male deity, and the heads, being joined, prove that under these names was worshipped a deity who combines the attributes of both.^^^
An Aramaean and Canaanite deity is Reshep, concerning whose identity with Adad and Yaw there are not unanimous opinions.^^^ In the list of Aramaic deities of Zenjirli, early eighth century, he is placed between El and Rekub-El, both
Fig. 25. Stele of Mikal of Beisan
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Sun-gods. A principal centre of his cult was Sidon of Phoenicia, where a section of the city was known as Eres-Reshep, or, as some divide the letters, Eres-Reshpam, or Reshepim, the later Greek Apollonia at Sidon, and the modern Arabic Arsuf.^^® From Sidon his cult spread to Cyprus, where he is identified on bi- lingual inscriptions with Apollo.^^^ An Egyptian stele of the twelfth century b.c. identifies Reshef with Saramana, or §ala- mana, and represents him as a god of War with shield and battle- axe.^^“ The deity Shulmanu appears in Assyria in the thirteenth century and at Sidon in the third century, and in a Greek in- scription from Northern Syria as Selamanes.^^^ A king of Moab has the name Salamanu in the time of Ahaz of Judah. Hosea (x.14), in a hopelessly corrupt passage, preserves the name Shalman. Since Ishtar of Assur is called Shulmamtu, “ she of the city Shulman,” it is obvious that the Assyrian god is identical with the name of some city, as Adad was called Iluhallabu, after the city Aleppo. Shulmanu, and Shalman are probably identical with the ancient name of Jerusalem, Shalem,^^® where Malkizedek was king and priest of the god El in the days of Abraham (twenty-first century). The name of this city was written Salim in the correspondence of Abdihiba, king of Jerusalem, with Amenophis of Egypt in the fifteenth century, but with the Sumerian prefix, uru^ “ city,” and con- sequently U-ru-sa-lim replaced the older name before the age of Moses and became Jerusalem of the later period. By adding the locative ending an^ the name of the city became also Salman, and its god El was called Ilu-Salman in Assyria, and in Babylonia Sulman. Babylonian culture and religion exercised a powerful influence on the whole region as is proved also by the name of a city near Jerusalem in the days of Abdihiba, Bet- Ninurta, or Bet-Anussat,^^^ “ House of the god Ninurta,” where the cult of the Sumerian War-god Ninurta must have been adopted by the Canaanites before this period, as also at Beth-Ninurta near Gebal in Syria.^^^
The two Canaanite deities of Salem were, therefore, El, i.e.,
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46
Salman, the Sun-god and Astarte or Salmanitu.^^® Reshef-Sha- lamana, the War-god on the Egyptian stele, is almost certainly a Sun-god, and the identification of Reshef with Apollo, also a Sun-god, is correct. A Phoenician press seal mentions the god Melqart-Resef.^’* Melqart, the local god of Tyre, was a Sun- god. The Egyptian monument. Fig. 13, characterizes Reshef
by the head of a gazelle on the forehead of the god, and a number of Egyptian monu- ments bearing the name of Reshef have the same conical crown and gazelle head. He is usually represented brandishing axe or spear and defending him- self with a shield.^^® At Belsan, in the temple of the local god, has been found the stele of Mekel, “ god of Beth-Shan ” (Fig. 25).^^« Here Mekel, identified by inscriptions with Reshef, has a high conical crown, decorated by two long ribbons, one falling from the Fig. 26. Bas-relief from Moab crown and ending in a tassel.
The other falls from the band above the ears and on the fore-crown are the two bull horns, characteristic of Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian deitles.^^^ The pointed full beard, long high nose and cranial lineaments, indicate with surety a Semitic deity. Before him stand Ame- nemapt and his son Paremheb, Egyptian builders of the temple in the reign of Thotmes III (fifteenth century). Since the Egyptians represented Set-Sutek, the god of Thunder and Lightning, in much the same way (having horns and one long ribbon falling from the top of the crown), it is argued by some that Reshef is a form of Adad.^^® Fig. 26 shews the only figure
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a
of a deity from Moab, which may be re- ^ ^
garded as Kemosh, god of the Moabites.
The same ribbon, here curled at the end, and affording some reason to suppose that it originally represents the tail of a lion or some animal, falls from the top of a low crown. Apparently neither gazelle head nor two horn design is added to the fore- head} the god holds a spear in readiness to attack, and a lion in miniature stands be- hind him. But in Babylonian iconography the lion symbolized the Sun-god Nergal, and the bull represents Adad in all Semitic symbolism. Kemosh is frequently men- tioned on the stele of Mesha‘, king of Moab, and a father-mother goddess,
Ashtar-Kemosh, occurs there, but no in- formation can be derived concerning the nature of this deity from the contents of the inscription.^^®
This West Semitic type of Sun-god is also illustrated by Fig. 27, from Amrith, on the sea-coast north of Gebal. Since the stele carries a fragmentary Phoenician in- scription, it cannot be earlier than the tenth century. This Phoenician deity has the same ribbon falling from the top of the crown, and the fore part has a decora- tion which has not even remote resemblance to a bull’s horns or a gazelle’s head. He wields a boomerang and holds a young lion in his left hand. The deity also stands on a lion, which walks on mountain tops. His character as a Sun- god is clearly defined by the winged sun-disk} above his head is the combined Babylonian symbol of sun and moon.®®’
Fig. 27. Phoenician Deity, from Amrith
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Fig. 28 is a seal of Addumu, king of Sidon, and from the same period as the Amarna Letters.^®^ The deity hurling a spear and guarding himself with a shield is clearly Reshef, who appears on a seal of “ Annipi, son of Addume, king of the city Sidon.”
It cannot be assumed that the hanging ribbon and bull’s horns are specifically characteristic of Adad-Set-Sutek, the Thunder- god, or that gazelle head, spear, and shield are the only icono- graphic signs of the War-god Reshef j for he is also represented with two ribbons falling from the crown, and on a seal of Rameses II, from Beisan, Mekel is represented as Reshef (Fig.
29). According to those who have seen this seal, the forehead of the crown has a miniature gazelle head. Two ribbons fly from the top of the conical crown of the War-god advancing to battle, and since here he holds the battle-axe in his left hand, Pere Vincent has finely observed that this is another connection with the “ ambidexter Apollo.”
If Mekel on the stele of Beisan (Fig. 25) has iconographic similarity to Egyptian representations of the Thunder-god, this is due to syncretism and confusion of types. The double name Reshef-Mekel occurs in inscriptions from Cyprus,^®® and once it is falsely rendered into Greek by Apollo of Amyclae in Lacedaemon.^®^ Reshef of Eliyath (Tamassos) in Cyprus is rendered into Greek by Apollo the Eliyathian.®®® It is, there-
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fore, certain that this deity, whose worship has been found in Moab, Canaan, throughout Phoenicia, Syria, and Cyprus, is really Nergal, the terrible Sumerian and Babylonian Sun-god of the fierce summer heat, sender of pestilence, fire, and plague, lord of the lower world, and implacable judge of the souls of the dead.
Mekel and Reshef are, therefore, titles of Nergal. Con- cerning the meaning of the verb rasafu, “ to blaze,” “ to burn,” there is no doubt, and Nergal or, more correctly, Nergal as
-rxM! — 7F> // \//, V'
^ tTTTl
Fig. 29. Seal of Rameses II, from Beisan
specifically the Fire-god Girra, is called rasfu, “ the Scorcher,” or rasubbu in Babylonia.^^° The verb also occurs as sardpUy and the god Sharrapu is a West Semitic deity, identified by the Assyrians with Lugalgirra, i.e., Nergal as Pest-god.^^^ The Janus nature of Nergal, the Sumerian personification of the sun’s heat, is due to the division of the year into two parts, the period of fierce heat and the period of cold 5 hence he was known in the West as Sharrapu, “ Scorcher,” and Birdu, “ Cold,” “ Chill,” the Meslamtae of the Assyrians. The specialized aspects of this Sun-god resulted in his being on the one hand a devouring deity of fire and heat, of war and pesti-
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lence, and on the other hand as “ he who rises from Meslam,” the beneficent god who returns from his sojourn in Hell after the winter solstice to reclothe the earth in verdure and supply it with grain and fruit. From summer solstice to winter solstice he descends to Hell, and hence he became the lord of Arallu and supreme judge of the souls of the dead. From this concep- tion of the god of the lower world as the scorching heat of the midsummer sun and a withering fire, arose in later times the myth of Gehenna as a fiery place in Hell where the wicked are for ever tortured.
The Egyptian and Phoenician writing of the name com- monly read Mikal does not supply evidence for its vocalization, and Makkal, Mukal, etc., may all be considered. In view of the common Phoenician and Canaanitish custom • of casting human victims into furnaces of fire (Topheth) as sacrifices to this relentless deity of the lower world, the natural meaning to be placed upon this word is “ Devourer,” from the verb akal^ “ to eat.” But since Ge Hinnom, “ Valley of Hin- nom,” or “Valley of the Sons of Hinnom,” near Jerusalem, was a Canaanitish centre of the worship of Malik, to whom human sacrifices were made,^* it is possible that this god of Beth-Shan is the same deity and to be read by metathesis Makil ---- Malik.
Not obvious is the use of this word maliky “ king,” as a title of the Sun-god Nergal, or as a proper name for him. Nergal is defined as the god Malik by the Assyrian scribes,^® and the word means “ Counsellor,” “ Adviser.” It seems to have been applied to him as the deity of pastures, flocks, and the earth’s fertility, and not in the role of the sun’s torrid heat. However this may be, Malik came to be one of the principal names of this deity in both aspects throughout the West, and at Tyre, his principal cult centre, he has the name Melqart, for Malk-qart, “ Melek of the city.” At Hammon near Tyre the father-mother deity Melk-‘Astarte preserves the original title of the Sun-god of Tyre.^® The Sun-god of Babylonia,
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Fig. 30. Coin of Tyre. Melqart on Sea-Horse
Phoenicia, Syria, and Canaan, especially the dreaded power of the summer heat, is always the connotation of the title Malik (Moloch). At Tyre and Gebal the deity appears in the fif- teenth century in the names Abdi-Milki,^^® Ili-Milki, or Mil- kili, king of a district near Jerusalem,
Milkuru of Gebal j Milki-u-ri, an Aramaean.^®® A king of Tyre in the time of Alexander was Azemilkos,
“ My strength is Melek.” On the coins of Tyre Melqart is represented as a bearded god riding the waves of the Mediterranean Sea on the back of a winged hippocampus. In his right hand he draws a bow, and in his left hand are held the reins of the flying sea-horse. On coins of the Tyrian colonies the stone pillar, universal symbol of the Sun- god, is a sure indication of the character of Malik of Tyre. A Greek inscription below the two pillars reads “ holy rocks,”
Sanchounyathdn preserves a myth concerning the two sun-pillars of the cult at Tyre, which probably represent the double aspects of the Phoenician Sun-god Melqart. He says that his- tory began at Tyre with Hypsu- ranios,^®^ inventor of huts, and his brother Ousoos, inventor of clothing made from skins. When these were dead, the Tyrians consecrated “ posts ” to them and worshipped two pillars (stele) which Ous5os had consecrated to fire and wind.
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names contain her title, Beth-‘Anath, Beth-‘Anoth, ‘Anathoth. Her worship as goddess of War in Syria and Canaan was so famous that it spread to Egypt, and is mentioned frequently in hieroglyphic texts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. King Setho’s team of war-horses was called “ ‘Anat is content,” and Ramses’ sword “ ‘Anat is victorious.” Fig. 13 shews in the upper register the lewd type of the Mother-goddess, the great Astarte. She stands on a lion (also symbolic of Ishtar in Babylonia and Assyria), holding in one hand serpents, sym- bolic of the life of the earth, and in the other lotus blooms, symbolic of love. The inscription calls her Qadesh, Queen of Heaven. Qadishtu, an ordinary word in Babylonian for “ har- lot,” is also a title of Ishtar as patroness of temple prostitutes, and so are probably the Phoenician Qadisht and Hebrew Qe- desha titles of Astarte.^^® On her right is the Egyptian god Min and on her left the great Syrian god Reshep, holding spear and ank. Of Reshep the text says: “Reshep, the great god, lord of the heavens, ruler of the nineness.” In the lower register is the seated War-goddess ‘Anat, described in the text, “ Queen of Heaven, Mistress of the gods.” ‘Anat is identi- fied with Athena Soteira on an inscription from Cyprus.^** That ‘Anat is Astarte has been proved by an Egyptian bas- relief of the fourteenth century found at Beth-Shan, an ancient city of Canaan, north of Jerusalem (Fig. 14). Here Qadesh- Astarte is described by ‘Anat, “ Queen of Heaven, Mistress of the gods.” Astarte is known to have had a temple at Beth- Shan, and when the Philistines defeated the army of Israel and slew Saul, they fastened his body to the walls of Beth-Shan and placed his armour in the temple of Astarte.^^® Small shrines bearing on their roofs figures of doves were found in the older strata of her temple here, and the dove is constantly associated with this goddess in Syria,’^^ and sacred to her among the Semites generally. At Babylon a model of a dove in terra-cotta was found in a brick box beneath the entrance of a door of the temple of the Mother-goddess Ninmah.'^^® Doves and turtledoves were
Fig. 13. Egyptian Bas-relief Shewing ‘Anat. Dynasty XIX
Fig. 15. Terra-cotta Shrine of Beth-Shan
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the only birds admitted in Hebrew sacrifices and rituals of puri- fication. In the court of the inner shrine of Ishtar at Assur^^® stood many small terra-cotta shrines in two stages, with win- dows, and adorned on the cross sections with rows of doves, on the roof with lions, and on the sides with serpents, all animals symbolic of Ishtar. On the Beth-Shan shrines a nude figure sits looking out from the upper window, holding birds in each
hand. A serpent^®® winds upward from a window on each side of these Canaanite shrines. They are probably little mov- able prayer-altars, car- ried by each worship- per for his devotions before the eternal Earth-goddess, mother of men, protectress and patroness of all life.^®^
In Fig. 15, the nude Ishtar who sits in the upper window represents a widely spread Babylonian and Canaanitish myth of the so-called Aphrodite Parakyptousa or Venus Prospiciens, referred to by Ovid, whose cult is particularly well known in Cyprus, both by similar clay models of houses and in a local myth preserved by Plutarch. It is said that at Salamis a harlot sat peeping out of a window and enticed many lovers, one of whom, because of her cruel flirtations, died of unrequited love. As the body of the beautiful youth was carried past her house on its journey to the grave, she again looked from her window, not in remorse, but gloating in triumph over the victim of her at- tractions. Aphrodite in rage turned her into stone.^®* The cult of Aphrodite, patroness of harlotry and lewd love, in Cyprus
Fig. 16. Ishtar Parakyptousa. Assyrian Ivory Plaque
Fic. 14. Hesi-Nekht Astarte of Beth-Shan Wearing Head-dress OF the Syrian Goddess, with Two Feathers
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was borrowed from Phoenicia, and eventually from Babylonia. Faithless enticer of men with her beauty, she is represented on Assyrian monuments also as Parakyptousa. Fig. i6 shews an ivory panel from the palace of Ashurnasirpal (ninth cen- tury), obviously of Phoeni- cian handicraft, found in the palace at Calah.
Ishtar, the harlot, who peers from the window, was known in Babylonia and Assyria as Kilili.^®^ She brought woe upon men and distracted their minds. In such cases the priests performed magic ritu- ^ als and the patient prayed to her. A eunuch must sing a lament to her. The prayer of the afflicted man began:
“ Thou art Kilili who leans from the window, . . . who perceives the words of men . . . causing the maiden to depart from her couch.”
“ Thou hast brought me loss, thy limbs upon me thou hast put, O great Ishtar.” Kilili mushirtu is the Babylonian title of this seductive divinity, and means precisely “ Kilili who leans out”} she was known as “the queen of the win- dows.” A demon who cries at the window of a mushirtu^ i.e., “ harlot,” is cursed in the name of the gods.^” The Sumerian titles are Absusu and Abtagigi, corresponding to Kilili and Sahirtu, “ she who leans from windows,” “ she who loiters about,” “ sends messages.” Abtagigi of messages and Kilili of the windows are evil spirits which bring woe to men.^®®
Fig. 17. Terra-cotta Movable Al- tar OF Worshipper before Ishtar of Assur
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She is the “ Beltis of wall and colonnade,” who sits in the re- cesses of the city walls to entice men to their perditiond®° The clay models of dove-cotes and altars in which Ishtar appears at the windows with doves in her hands, or on which doves stand, lend force to the assumption that Kilili is identical with the Accadian word kililuy kuUlu, some kind of birdd®^
Undoubtedly the sacrifice of doves in the Hebrew rituals of expiation is a rem- nant of this bird sacred to Astarte. Ishtar of Nineveh was sent to Egypt by Tushratta, king of the Mitanni, at the very time when the Hebrews of the age of Moses were in- vading Canaan, in order that the king of Egypt might learn to worship herd®^ The myth of Ishtar, Astarte, Atargatis, is one of the principal factors in Sumerian and Sem- itic religion. She is often represented as a mother with a child at her breasts (the Babylonian Nintud); Fig. i8 is an exam- ple of a clay figurine, which is found in abundance in Babylonia and Assyria.^®* Common and ubiquitous throughout Meso- potamia, Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, is this nude figure of Ishtar as the goddess of Love and Harlotry. It is found prolifically in Babylonia from the West Semitic period onward, in Elam, Syria, among the Hittites, Egypt, the Aegean islands, Asia Minor, Phoenicia, and Canaan.^®* It would seem that a figurine of this Aphrodite Vulgaris was possessed by every household, and many carried cylinder seals with the nude goddess engraved upon them. These are probably examples of the household gods called teraphim by the Hebrews. The tale of Jacob and Rachel of early Hebrew folk-lore contains a vivid account of how Rachel would not leave her Aramaean home without the
Fig. 1 8. Nude Ishtar Early Babylonian
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household gods/®® which she brought with her in the migration to Canaan, but which were put aside by Jacob before he reached Bethel, the shrine of the god El, and hidden under an oak by Shechemd®® David’s wife found teraphim ready to hand in his house, when she deceived Saul by substituting them for David in his bedd®^ Even the prophet Hosea, zealous advocate of the worship of Yaw, asserts that religion is im-
Fig. 19. Azizos AND Monimos, Companions of the Sun as an Eagle. Mural Decoration from Temple Court of Baitocaice
possible without pillars, ephods, and teraphim.^®® In Assyria an adopted son had no claims on the “ gods ” of his adopting father/®®
At Edessa in the late period the morning and evening stars bear Arabic names j both are masculine and are represented in art as two youths, companions of the sun. Their names are Azizos, “ the powerful,” the morning star, and Monimos, “ the beneficent,” the evening star. These correspond to the Palmyrene couple Arsu and ‘Azizu, where Arsu is undoubtedly the female Venus, the evening star.^^® A monument of Baito- caice (Fig. 19) shews the mythological conception of the two phases of the planet Venus conceived as precursor and fol- lower of the sun. This is based upon an astronomical observa- tion discovered by the Sumerians in remote antiquity. Venus
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36
is never more than 48 degrees before the sun in the morning or after him at sunset, and hence Ishtar is also known as the twin sister of Shamashd^^ The masculine gender of the double Venus at Edessa is apparently either a survival of the ancient South Arabian Athtar, or due to Greek influence (Phosphorus
Fig. 20. ‘Ate of Hierapolis Riding a Lion. Obverse (left), Seated Figure of Adad
and Hesperus At Ferzol near Baalbek there is a rock sculpture of the Syrian Sun-god riding a horse and led by the youth Azizos.^^®
The Mother-goddess of the Aramaeans in the late period was Atargatis, a Greek transcription of ‘Atar-‘Ate, corrupted also
to Tar-‘ata, hence Greek and Latin Derketd. This double name contains the ordinary Arabian name of Venus Athtar and the Aramaic name of the Mother-goddess, ^Ate, ^Ata, ‘Atta.^^^ Fig. 20 shews ‘Ate riding a lion, usual animal symbol of Ishtar of Assyria j on a similar coin before the lion stands the dove, associated with her in all Sem- itic mythology. On this coin of Alex- ander, she wears a veil falling to the waist. The obverse has the seated figure of Adad, the principal male deity of Hier- opolis, the older Nappigi, Nanpigi, Greek Bambyce, which was renamed Hierapolis by Seleucos Nicator (312-281 b.c.).
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Atargatis and Adad are called “ the Syrian gods of the Hiero- politans” on the coin, seen in Fig. 2i. Atargatis sits on a throne decorated with two lions, and Adad’s throne has two bulls.
Lucian, in his account of the Syrian goddess, refers to the shrine of Hierapolis as follows. Between the statues of Zeus (Adad) and Hera (Atargatis) stands a peculiar image of gold, which the Assyrians (i.e. Syrians) call ffrjfxrjiosj “a sym- bol.” In his time (latter part of second century a.d.) the Syrians, themselves, could not tell whether it represented Dionysus, Deucalion, or Semiramis. On its top perched a dove, and each year it was taken to the Mediterranean Sea to bring water, which was poured into a cavern beneath the temple. The myth ran that when Deucalion’s ark floated on the waters of the Deluge, a cavern miraculously yawned at Hierapolis and received the waters of the Flood. In memory of this sign of divine intervention he founded a temple to Juno over the cavern, and instituted the annual ritual of bringing water from the sea and pouring it into the cavern.’”
Adad and Atargatis are described by Macrobius, a Roman writer of the fourth century a.d., as the Sun-god and Earth- goddess of Syria.”® But Adad, whose symbolic animal is a bull in Assyria and Babylonia, is certainly not a Sun-god, and Macrobius has confused the Sun-god of the Aramaeans, Malak- bel of Palmyra, and the older and original Aramaic El, Rakkab, Rakeb-El, Reshef, with Adad. There are three principal Aramaic and Canaanite deities under various names, the Sun- god (animal symbol the horse), the Rain and Thunder-god, and the Earth-goddess. The Hebrews, who are apparently a Canaanitish people, had these same deities, El, Sun-god, Yaw, the Rain and Thunder-god, and Astarte.
Bambyce, the ancient Nappigi, is said to have been founded by the legendary Babylonian survivor of the Deluge, Sisythus, in Lucian, a corruption of Xisouthros, the Sumerian Ziusudra. Lucian, like all Greek and Roman writers of the period, trans-
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38
forms Semitic mythology into Greek and Roman terms and assigns the legend of the Flood to the Greek Deucalion. This Sumerian legend, based as we now know upon an ancient catas- trophe in lower Mesopotamia, looms largely in the mythology of Asia. Among the Aramaeans it has been preserved only in this highly distorted form of a late writer. He says, repeating the legend as the Greeks told it, that in the Deluge the race of men perished to a man. This first race became rebellious, did unholy deeds, disregarded the sanctity of oaths and hospitality, and behaved cruelly to suppliants. The earth discharged volumes of waters, rivers descended from Heaven, and the sea mounted high. Deucalion alone was saved, for he was wise and pious. He placed his wives and children in an ark and entered in. There came to him into the ark boars, horses, lions, serpents, all beasts which roam the earth in couples. Zeus (i.e. Adad) had ordered it. They floated on the waters as long as the Flood remained. From the native Aramaeans of Bambyce Lucian learned the fable al- ready cited concerning the cavern which swallowed the Flood. Ritual followed myth here, and men came yearly from Syria, Arabia, and beyond the Euphrates (Assyria of the earlier period), to bring water from the sea to pour into the cavern.
According to the Babylonian version Adad let loose the tor- rents of Heaven upon the world, and Ishtar wailed over the destruction of mankind whom she had borne. In this version is told also how Utnapishtim (= Ziusudra) sent forth a dove from the ark on the seventh day of the Deluge. The ark (?) and dove are seen in Fig. 21, where a Roman standard has been added to it. A coin of Caracalla has the same design of an ark (?) and dove, with Adad and Atargatis.^®® The Ara- maean version of the Deluge proves that Adad and Ata had been assimilated to the Babylonian Adad and Ishtar; Hittite influence upon Semitic cults is a very secondary matter here, and entirely negligible in the study of the larger issues of Semitic mythology.
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Adad, Hadad, Reshef, and the Sun-god El, Rakkab, Malak- Bel, are the principal male deities o£ all West Semitic peoples. The god of Rain, Thunder, and Lightning has the title Ba‘al Lebanan, “ Lord of the Lebanon,” and was so known among the Sidonians. Rammanu,^®^ Ramimu, Ragimu, Murtaznu, Murta’imu,^®® “ the Thunderer,” are names current in Baby- lonia, where he was also known as Ilhallabu, “ god of Aleppo.” Adad and Rammanu occur together as names of the same deity.^®® Adad of Padda in Syria had the special name Bardad,^®® and he was known at Hamath as Iluwir,^®^ a title composed of the Semitic word ilu^
“ god,” and Sumerian wir, mir, the word for “ wind ” and “ rain- storm.” The Hebrew tradition connected their ancestral home with Syria, and espe- cially with the “land of the rivers,” the re- gion of Harran and Paddan on the river Balih. As god of the Lebanons {bel sadt)^ the Sumerians call Adad “ god Marru,” Marri, and the Accadi- ans Ilumarru. This deity was identified with the Sumerian god Mer, Imi, Rihamun, Mermer, Iskur, all words for “ wind,” “storm,” “ roaring Nimgirgirri, Nimgigri, Nigir, “light- ning ”} consequently Adad-Ramman became one of the princi- pal Babylonian and Assyrian deities, consistently associated with the Sun-god Shamash. These two gods are particularly concerned with omens and divination in Babylonia. On the monuments Adad is represented standing upon a bull, hurl- ing a thunderbolt in his right hand and holding forked light- ning in his left. A crouching bull with a two forked bolt of lightning rising from his back, a figure consisting of three
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forks of lightning, are his symbols/®® A Sumerian hymn describes Adad in the following verses:
“ ‘ Lord Iskur, gigantic steer and glorious ’ is thy name.
‘ Father Iskur, lord that rideth the storm,’ is thy name.
Thy splendour covers the land like a garment.
At thy thunder the great mountain, father Enlil, is shaken.
At thy rumbling the great mother Ninlil trembles.
Enlil sent forth his son Iskur, saying:
‘ Who, my son, directeth the storm, causeth to descend the storm? The lightning thy messenger goeth before (thee).
The foe doeth evil against the father thy creator, but who maketh him- self like thee?
Destroy thou the foe with thy right hand, and let thy left hand pluck him away.’
Iskur gave ear to the words of the father his creator.
Father Iskur, who went forth from the temple, storm of sonorous voice.
Who from the temple and city went forth, the young lion.”
The poem at the end refers to a famous myth concerning the bird of the storm, Zu, who stole the tablets of fate from the temple of Enlil in Duranki. The gods assembled in consterna- tion and appealed to Adad:
“ O strong Adad, thou smiter, let not thy battle-front waver.
Smite thou Zu with thy weapon.
Thy name shall be great in the assembly of the gods.
Among the gods, thy brothers, shalt thou have no rival. Sanctuaries shall come into being and be built.
In the four quarters make thou thy cult cities.”
This Accadian poem attributes the defeat of Zu and the re- covery of the tablets of fate to the god Lugalbanda, after Adad, Ishtar, and Shara had refused to seek the terrible Zu in the mountains. It is clear from the older Sumerian poem that Iskur did obey his father Enlil and conquered Zuj the Ac- cadian form of the myth is only a redaction of the legend from some school of poets who desired to glorify their god Lugal- banda (Ninurta). An early Accadian fragment preserves a similar myth. Adad’s fury had decimated the land and de-
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stroyed the living/®^ Enlil summoned the Mother-goddess Belit-ili, and ordered her to appease her brother. In the end Enlil met Adad and addressed him:
“ O first among thy brothers, thou bull of the heavens,
In my land thou hast poured out misery unto silence.
I accorded thee sanctuaries to rule over.
May the king on behalf of his fathers fear thee.
Hear thou his prayers.
Cause abundance to rain upon his land.”
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« on: July 08, 2019, 11:54:10 PM »
Fig. 6. Tyche of Antioch
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Fig,
Nabataean Coin. Tyche of Damascus. Aretas III
syncretism here in this Arabic religion, composed of Babylonian, Greek, and Egyptian elements j and beyond all doubt the Nabataeans possessed an elaborate cult of Tammuz and Ishtar, of Osiris and Isis, of Dionysus and Basilinna, the equiva- lent of Proserpine-Core, in which this deity was represented as a youth, son of the Mother-goddess, who was re- born yearly in midwinter and who died in the summer.^®
The Mother-goddess of the Nab- ataeans, Allat, identified with Core by the Greeks, is essentially the North Semitic Ashtart, and the Babylonian Ishtar. But she was also identified with the Greek Tyche, and more especially with Tyche of Antioch, whose representation on coins throughout the Nabataean kingdom is taken from the beau- tiful creation of the sculptor Eutychides (see Fig. 6).®“ Char- acteristic of this type of the Mother-goddess as Fortuna or, more properly, goddess of fate, is the mural crown and cornucopia.
The statue of Tyche of Antioch repre- sents her seated on a rock, and from the rock at her feet springs a youth, symbol of the river Orontes at Antioch. Fig. 7 shews the Tyche of Damascus, seated on a rock, from which the River-god springs at her feetj she wears the tur- reted mural crown, and holds a cornu- copia. Copper coins bearing the figure of the Arabian Fortuna are found at Adraa, Bostra, Esbus (Heshbdn), Gerasa, Medaba, Philadel- phia (‘Amman), and Petra. The same type is found on coins of the great Arabian city Carrhae of the Romans, Harran of the Babylonians and Assyrians j at Singara,®^ and at Ephesus.®® Apparently the chief goddess of any Semitic city was known
Fig. 8. Head of Tyche. Philadelphia. Marcus Aurelius
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as “ Tyche of the city,” from the period of Alexander the Great.
Allat of Petra and throughout the Nabataean kingdom thus becomes the Fortuna or defender of her cities, and the mural crown represents the turreted walls of her holy places.®® At the entrance to Petra stand the imposing ruins of a temple of the Tyche of this city, and in a niche over the portico is a statue of Allat figured as the guardian Fortuna of her city.®® Tyche of Palmyra is Atargatis,®^ the great Mother-goddess of that city, represented on the mural paintings of Doura on the Euphrates with mural crown j here the genius of the holy fountain, Ephka, of Palmyra, appears as a nude maiden springing from the rock on which the Mother-goddess sitsj beside her in the same pose sits the Mother-goddess of Doura, Tux’? Aoupas. The genius of the Euphrates, who springs from the rock on which she sits, is here a bearded man. In most of the ubiquitous representa- tions of this Semitic City-goddess, she bears the cornucopia, symbol of abundance, a purely Greek conception, as on the statue of Tyche of Doura.®® The Mother-goddess of Doura bears the Babylonian name Nana,®® type of Ishtarj ®® at Doura and throughout Western Asia she is habitually identified with Arte- mis. Nana is also a virgin goddess like Artemis and specially connected with the cult of Nebo at Barsippa. Although the representations of this type of Mother-goddess in Semitic cities of North Arabia and Syria in the Greek and Roman periods have been preserved only under the influence of Greek art, the goddess of Fate, especially as protectress of cities, is surely of Semitic origin. The Nabataean goddess Manawatu,®^ plural of the form Manat,®^ which occurs in Thamudic, i.e., before the Nabataean period, consequently belongs to the old South Arabian pantheon. The Coran writes the name Manatun; and manijjaty plural manaja, is an ordinary Arabic word for “ fate,” “ death.” Also zawwa-al-manijjaty “ the shears of fate,” ®® supports the evidence from early Arabic and Nabataean in- scriptions for assuming that the Arabian Mother-goddess ®‘‘ was
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a goddess who fixed the fates of mankind, of cities, and of na- tions. A goddess of Fate, whose name is based upon the verb or m-n-jy can be traced throughout Semitic mythology. She appears in Hebrew as Mem in the post-exilic accusation of Deutero-Isaiah:
“As for you who abandon Yaw, forgetful of my holy mount;
Preparing for Gad a table, and filling for Meni spiced wine.”
Etymologically, the form Mem is masculine, but the deity is a goddess and belongs also to the Assyrian pantheon, where Ishtar has the titles “ goddess Minu-anni,” “ Minu-ullu,” she who “ apportions unto men sanction or denial.” A hymn whose original belongs to the literature of early Babylonia, glorifies Ishtar in the following lines:
“Mistress of habitations, lover of peoples, twin sister of [Shamash],
(Goddess) Minu-anni, the passionate, the perfect,
(Goddess) Minu-ulla, the lofty, arrayed in glory.”
In Babylonia Ishtar, identical with Canaanite Ashtoreth, be- came the goddess of Fate, of good and adverse Fortune, and at an early period.®® Moreover, in this aspect of Babylonian and Assyrian mythology, she is here described as protectress of habitations, precisely the character of the ubiquitous Tyche with the mural crown in Nabataean, Aramaic, and Asiatic Greek religious art. Manat is known to have been worshipped throughout South Arabia from the early period, especially by the tribes Aus and Chazrag, and her principal cult was at Qudaid between Mecca and Medina. According to Arabian tradition, she was represented by a rectangular stone there, and Moham- med found her cult most difficult to suppress even at Mecca itself.^®®
In Assyria, at least after the ninth century b.c., and in Baby- lonia, perhaps from the early period, Ishtar was regarded as the goddess of Fate, under the title Shimti, a word for “ fate ” peculiar to the Accadian language.^®^ All Mother-goddesses in
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Babylonian religion appear in this role as Moira, and Bau is addressed, “ Fate of kings,^®^ Lady of Adab.” And the seven Mother-goddesses of Nippur, Babylon, Barsippa, Der, Uruk, Agade, and Hursagkalamma are described as “ the goddesses, the Fates,” whereby the “ Seven Fates ” correspond to the three Molrae of Greece. The pluralis majestatis stmatiy “ fates,” is repeatedly employed for the goddess Fate, as well as for the various Fate-goddesses.^®* This title of Fate, For- tuna, Tyche, is not only the prototype of the North Arabian, Aramaic, and Canaanite goddess of Fate, but the names Meni and Shlmti were widely employed in those regions. Simi is called the daughter of Hadad in Syriac, and Juno-Sima, daugh- ter of Balmarcod, occurs in a bilingual Greek and Latin inscrip- tion *®® from Deir-el-QaFa near Beyrout, where there was a temple of the god Balmarcod.*®® The dedication is to Balmar- cod, Hera, and Sima.*®^ Martialis, a Roman governor, built a temple to Kvpia Sr^yuea, according to an inscription found near Homs (Emesa),*®® and at Homs has been found a fine bas- relief with three deities j in the centre, between two gods, stands the veiled figure of the goddess Seimia, identified with Athena. Near and behind her head is the star of the Babylo- nian Ishtar in a circle.*®® Proper names in the Roman period are Abedsimioi, “ Servant of Simi,” Amassemia (Arabic in Hau- ran), Sumaios (Nabataean). The name survives to modern times in the Arabic names of villages in Syria — Kafar-Shima, Bet-Shama, and Shamat.**®
A Syrian deity AshTma was imported into Samaria in 722 b.c., from Hamath on the Orontes, and there seems to be no doubt concerning her identity with the Assyrian Shimtl,*** in view of the father-mother deity Ashim-Bethel, worshipped by the Aramaic speaking Jews in Southern Egypt in the fifth century B.C., who appears as Symbetylos in a Greek inscription from Northern Syria.**®
The goddess of Fate belongs, therefore, to the mythology of all Semitic races, and personifies the fatalism so characteristic
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of them in their religions. The northern and western type is influenced by the Assyrian Meni, Shimtij the widely spread representation of Tyche in Syria and Arabia (see Figs. 6-8) pre- serves the mural crown of the Assyrian Shimti (see Fig. 9). This representation of Ishtar with the mural crown, preserves
Fig. 9. The Assyrian Tyche with Mural Crown, Bas-relief from
Nimrud
an attribute which connects this type with the Ishtar of battle.^’^® Logical is the identification with Athena, goddess of battle, pro- tectress of the state and defender of kings.
All these names of Fate in the Aramaic-Canaanite languages are of Babylonian origin. The indigenous deity is the god Gad, who is a god of Fate, of Good Fortune, derived from the common Semitic verb gadad, “ to cut off.” His worship by the Hebrews has been mentioned above.^^* A similar deity
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of the Arabians was Sa‘d, worshipped as a stone (baetyl) at Gudda,“® and another Arabian deity of the same character is found in the title of the Mother-goddess Allat, Rusa, “ good fortune.” This Arabian goddess was widely worshipped among the Sabaean-Himyaritic tribes of Hauran in Syria, and among the Aramaeans of Syria. At Palmyra her name appears as Arsa, and is there used for Venus as the evening star.’^^® This widely spread Semitic myth of a goddess of Fate, which is only a special aspect of the Mother-goddess, is certainly based upon
Fig. io. Venus as Goddess of War, with Star Symbol. Assyrian Seal
astrology and the planet Venus. The Arabian Allat,^^^ Rusa, Arsa, became a goddess of Fortune by assimilation to the Baby- lonian Ishtar, identified with Venus, the Sumerian Ninsianna, Innini. Venus is both morning and evening star. Phosphorus and Hesperus, and various titles of the Arabian Allat, such as Sa‘d and ‘Uzza, have dual forms, Sa‘dan,^^® ‘Uzza, “the two planets Venus.” In Babylonia the morning star is called the “ male Venus,” and the evening star the “ female Venus.” But in both aspects Ishtar is always a goddess in Babylonian mythology. She is sometimes described by “ Ishtar of Agade ” as morning star, and “ Ishtar of Erech ” as evening star.^^® A long metrical poem describes Ishtar:
“ At sunrise she is mistress {belk\ at sunset she is votaress.”
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Mythology set in here at an early period and determined Ishtar, and consequently the western goddesses Astarte, Allat, as a double character. As morning star she is goddess of War (in the West ‘Anat)/^^ and as everung star patroness of love and harlotry.^^® For this reason the western goddesses of Fate were worshipped on house-tops, where baked cakes were offered to them, an obviously astral cult, and it could be served by women only. So important did the favour of the goddess of this lucky planet seem to the Arabians and Aramaeans that they frequently made human sacrifices to her. Particularly beauti- ful are the Sumerian and Babylonian hymns addressed to the “ Queen of Heaven,” and although none of this religious litera- ture of the cult of Allat, Astarte, Rusa, and Tyche has survived in Aramaic, North Arabian, Canaanitish, and Hebrew, it is cer- tain that noble songs of this kind were sung by them to the god- dess of the morning and evening star.
“ To the pure flame that fills the heavens,
To the light of Heaven, Ishtar, who shines like the sun.
To the mighty Queen of Heaven, Ishtar, I address greeting
That she fix the fate of the lands.
May she rise faithfully at dawn of day.
May she fulfil the decrees (of fate) at the dark of the moon.”
These hymns to the planet of fate and war were accompanied by offerings of wine, roasted cakes, and incense.^^® The cult of the “ Queen of Heaven ” was widely spread in Canaan and observed by the Hebrews also. Jeremiah censured this idolatry in two famous passages.
“ The women knead dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven.”
And the Hebrews themselves admitted to the great prophet that they and their fathers, their kings and princes, had always burnt incense to the “ Queen of Heaven ” and poured out drink of- ferings to her in the cities of Judah.^^^
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As morning star Ishtar and Astarte are the War-goddess in Babylonia and among all West Semitic people, where she has the special name ‘Anat. This myth is of Sumerian origin.
“ The long bow, mighty of battle she holds in her hand.
With her left arm she lays low (the foe).
The queen of battle, the loud crying, utters a cry of wailing.”
So runs an ancient Sumerian hymn, and Hammurabi,^^® the famous king of Babylon, composed a long mythical poem in Semitic verse concerning her. So terrible was her love of war that her patron deity Ea became enraged against her.
“ She descended, she mounted on high,
While raged the roar of her voice.
At the reins she stood not,^^®
But went forth in her might.
Her protector trembled in terror.
The god Ea, the wise one.
Was filled with wrath against her.”
The gods in council appealed to Ea to create a rival goddess, that the goddess of war be held in check. He created Saltu (“Hostility,” “Discord”), to oppose Ishtar, and sent her forth with warning of the dread fury of the goddess of War.^®^
“ Her soul is rage, a storm of the ocean.
But it shall not conquer thee.
Thy plans shall cause to perish All the ways
Of the mistress of peoples, the votaress;
O Saltu, though she rage again and again,
And her face (rage) fearfully Yet shalt thou return in safety.^*
Alarmed by the reports of her rival, Ishtar sent her messenger, Ninsubur, to bring a description of her. The report of her was vivid and disquieting. She was the foe of the people and not their friend, like Ishtar. “Her desire was to conquer, she roared, hurled weapons, and thundered, and none could op- pose her in battle.”
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Agusaya, “ the loud crying,” a goddess who is usually identi- fied with Ishtar herself, was sent by the “ Lady of Battle ” to subdue the terrible Saltu. She went to Ea and said: “Why [O Ea, thou wise one], didst thou create [this Saltu] ? Whose mouth is like the waters in full flood.” Ea promised Agusaya that he would cause Saltu to cease making war against Ishtar if she were elevated to the rank of a goddess and mankind told of her miraculous birth. “ May she exist forever. Let sound of liturgical lament be instituted in the eternal rituals.” Ham- murabi, in the epilogue of this mythological poem, describes the powers of each one of these goddesses of War, Ishtar who is supreme and whose orders the terrible Saltu (“ Discord ”) must obeyj Agusaya the power- ful j Saltu creation of Ea, whose greatness he proclaimed among all peoples.^^^
The point of this early Ac- cadian poem is that the warlike goddess of the morning star has a rival in “ Discord ” or “ Hos- tility,” even more dreadful than herself. These are only titles of the War-goddess exalted by the early Semites into separate deities.^®® The reason for the ancient Sumerian identification of the planet Venus with the beautiful goddess of Love and War may only be surmised. This myth arose in hoary antiquity, be- fore 3000 B.C., and forms one of the principal features of Baby- lonian, Assyrian, Aramaic, and Canaanitish religion. Capricious
V— 4
Fig. II. Ishtar’s War Chariot. Model from Kish
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
in love, wilful in action, Ishtar was a constant source of trouble to the gods. She had no consort and really loved only the un- fortunate youth Tammuz, who perished annually with the dy- ing corn. By her beauty, demigods, men, and beasts were se- duced to their destruction. In the sixth book of the Epic of Gilgamish is told a legend of how she yearly sends Tammuz to his doom and then decrees wailings for his departure. A bird of many colours she loved,
“ But him thou smotest and brokest his wing.
He sits in the forest crying, alas my wing.”
She loved a lion, and then dug seven and seven pits for him, and a horse, honoured in battle, and then smote him with whip, spur, and lash. She received homage and worship from a herds- man, and smote him, turning him to a jackal. Ishullunu, the gardener of her father (the Heaven-god), had been one of her devout worshippers. Him she beheld and desired greatly, prof- fering rich repast and voluptuous pleasure. Ishullunu^®® re- jected her shameful advances. Him she turned into a hog( ? and caused him to live in misery.
When Gilgamish returned from his conflict with Humbaba, he put on new raiment, and set his crown upon his head. The halo of his victories, the beauty of the home-returned warrior, fascinated the goddess. She proposed marriage, and Gilgamish scornfully recounted her many love intrigues:
“ What husband would thou love always?
And me likewise thou lovest and wouldst make me even as they are.”
Ishtar flew to heaven in anger and appealed to Anu her father to punish the insolent Gilgamish, by creating a “bull of Heaven” to destroy him. In case of his refusal, she threat- ened to call forth the dead from Hell to consume the living. And so Anu created the Gudanna, “ celestial bull,” that is the constellation Taurus, the bull of Heaven, which draws the
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Plough star (Triangulum). This constellation, rising in early May (Hammurabi period), announces the scorching heat of the climate of Sumer and Accad. Hence Anu warned Ishtar that the bull would bring seven years of hunger on the land. But Ishtar, faithful to her character as Mother-goddess, had gathered provisions for seven years. Gilgamish and his friend Enkidu,^^® however, slew the celestial bull,^®® “ which descended from Heaven.” In rage Ishtar mounted the wall of Erech and cursed Gilgamish. The heroes replied by throwing the right
Fig. 12. Enkidu in Combat with the Bull of Heaven. Ishtar Beholds
THE Fight
leg of the bull in her face. Ishtar assembled the temple pros- titutes of Erech and mourned over the severed leg of the divine bull.^"“
This astral connexion of the great Sumerian and Semitic Mother-goddess resulted in a widely spread worship of her under various titles throughout Western Asia, among the Ara- maeans, Hebrews, Phoenicians, and Canaanites. As deity of fate, of war, or of sexual reproduction, Ishtar (and Astarte) is fundamentally the Sumerian goddess of the planet Venus; Among the Western Semites her name as War-goddess is ‘Anata, Hanata, as it occurs in the earliest known cuneiform texts of the Hammurabi period.^^^ Ancient Canaanite city
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It must be admitted that any Semitic deity could be addressed as the “ brother ” of the worshippers, in the same way as he was called ah^ “ father,” or *ammu “ uncle,” “ ancestor j ” and unless the “ brotherhood ” title can be attributed to the Tammuz-Ishtar myth, it is difficult to explain this aspect of Semitic mythology, in which the gods as “ brothers ” appear as creators of their people.®^ The view of most Semitic scholars, who follow W. R. Smith, is that the early Semites actually re- garded themselves as related to deified persons, or in the final instance to animals or plants from which the various Semitic tribes supposed themselves descended. On this view totemism is the original religion of the Semitic races, and the principal argument used to support this theory is the widespread primitive Semitic custom of naming men and women from animals, trees, and plants. In early Accadian Shelibum, “ fox,” is a very com- mon personal name,*^ which occurs in all periods of later Babylonian and Assyrian history} Sha^albim is the name of a Canaanitish town,®® and Shu‘al, “ fox,” is a good Hebrew name. Bugakum, for Buqaqum, in early Accadian, probably means “ flea,” and occurs as Baqqu in Babylonian. Burasu, “ the pine- tree,” is a name occurring frequently in late Babylonian. Zumbu “ the fly,” Zumba (hypocoristic), Hahhuru, “ raven,” ®* Suluppa, “ date-fruit ” (hypocoristic), occur in late Babylonian and Assyrian. Totemism is also argued from the reference to baetylia and wooden pillars in Jeremiah ii. 27, where the wor- shippers of the Canaanitish Baalim say to the “ tree,” i.e. wooden pillar, “ thou art my father,” and to the “ stone,” “ thou hast begotten me.” Here the ashera, or wooden pillar, and the baetyl are, however, only symbols of deities. (See below under baetylia). The word jor, “ rock,” is apparently a title both of the Hebrew god Yaw and of an Aramaic deity.®®
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In Mesopotamian Semitic names this aspect of nomenclature is, therefore, extremely rare, and almost absent in the early period. There is here a tendency to increase the use of ani- mal names, and in a period of such advanced culture as the Neo-Babylonian, there is no question about primitive totem- istic ideas being present. It is impossible to study primitive Bedouin culture even in the very earliest Accadian, before 3000 B.C., and Sumerian civilization had attained an ad- vanced stage of culture before 4000 b.c. But the history of animal and plant names among the Semites in Mesopotamia proves that persons were called after plants and animals because of some striking characteristics of the persons so named.®®
Animal names are far more common in Canaanite Hebrew, and Arabic 5 in Hebrew they occur chiefly as tribal or city names, and belong entirely to the period before the Exile, Deborah, “ the bee,” Ze’eb (a Midianite), “ the wolf,” a name extremely common in Arabic of all periods,®^ Khagab, Khagabah, “ the locust,” a family name of the Nethinim. In view of these facts, G. B. Gray, Hebrew Proper Names, pp. 99—108, concluded that primitive Semitic religion, or in any case Canaanitish reli- gion, began with totemism. If this were true of Semitic reli- gions we are bound to start with totemistic mythology. The Semitic deities would be by origin animals or plants from which the far-flung Semitic tribes, clans, and races are sprung. The next stage would be that in which these deities are spoken of as “ father,” “ brother,” “ ancestor,” or “ uncle ” i^amm, halu), that is as divine and also natural relatives of a clan. The argument, so far as animal names of clans and persons go, seems to be disproved by the history of this custom in Accadian- Babylonian and in Arabian religions. In South Arabia, which affords the oldest inscriptions of Arabic, this custom is rare, but it increases and becomes prolific in late pre-Islamic times, and this is also true of Babylonia. Although the South Ara- bians and the Accadians are far advanced beyond the primitive
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II
Bedouin stage in the periods when their inscriptions begin, their history shows that it is characteristic of the Semites to use ani- mal names in times of advanced culture, when there is no pos- sible influence of primitive totemism. I, therefore, reject the totemistic theory absolutely. Early Canaanitish and Hebrew religions are far beyond primitive totemism (if it ever existed among them) in the period when any definite information can be obtained about them, and the prevalence of animal names in early Hebrew history is probably due to a peculiar inclination of this Semitic race.
All Semitic tribes appear to have started with a single tribal deity whom they regard as the divine creator of his people, and this deity seems to have been astral, the sun, or the moon, or the planet Venus. The South Arabians of Aksum in Abyssinia speak of their gods ‘ Astar (= Athtar = Venus), Medr or Behr ( Earth-god ),^® and Mehrem, as “ they who begat them.” The Moabites, a Canaanitish tribe, are called “ the people of Kemoshj he (Kemosh) gave his sons as fugitives and his daughters into captivity.” Here Kemosh is described as father of the Moabites. Moses is commanded by Yaw to say to Pharoah, “ Israel is my son, my first-born,” and the old Hebrew song says of Yaw:
“ Is not He thy father, who produced thee?
Did He not make thee and establish thee ? ”
The same song speaks of Yaw as a “ rock ” that begat Israel and as “ El who travailed with thee,” as a woman at child birth.** “ I am a father to Israel and Ephraim is my first-born,” writes Jeremiah, describing Yaw’s relation to the Hebrews, and Ephraim is called the son of Yaw.**
To complete the evidence for this Semitic mythological con- cept of the fatherhood of god, the following names from vari- ous religions are selected. A king of Tyre (Phoenician) in the fourteenth century b.c. is called Abi-milki, “ My father is my king.” Here “ father ” stands for the god of Tyre, Melqart,
V— 3
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whose name is explained by the Greeks as “ Heracles the primeval father.” In Accadian, we have Pir’-Shamash, “ the offspring of Shamash,” Ashur-ban-apli, “ Ashur is the creator of the son ”j Apil-ili-shu, “ son of his god ” in Aramaic, Bir- Atar, “ Son of Atar ” Bar-Rakib, “ Son of Rakib,” a king of Ya’di} Bar-‘Ata, “son of Ata”j Bath-‘Ata, “Daughter of Ata.” More difficult to verify by clear evidence is the paral- lel conception, “ the motherhood ” of Semitic goddesses, and consequently the title “ sister ” applied to them, corresponding to the title “ brother ” of male deities. In Accadian, Baby- lonian, and Assyrian religion, the virgin Earth-mother god- desses, Innini-Ishtar, Nintud, Aruru, Ninhursag, Ninlil, are all Sumerian, and borrowed by the Semites in prehistoric times. In Sumerian mythology the creatress of mankind is this Earth- mother goddess, and the “ motherhood of the goddess ” forms the basis of an entire school of theology at Nippur, distinguished from the school of theology at Eridu. At Nippur it is the Earth-goddess Aruru or Mami who is said to have created man from clay, a legend which will be discussed in its proper place. This legend of the creation of man from clay is of Sumerian origin, although the legend is preserved in Accadian texts only.'*® In Sumerian legend the Earth-god Enlil is the brother of the virgin Earth-mother Aruru,®® and when in Baby- lonian and West Semitic religion a god is described as “ brother,” it is extremely probable that the great Earth-god (who is also a Sun-god) of Sumer or a West Semitic deity, who has borrowed this aspect of Sumerian mythology, is meant.
The Sumerian Earth-mother is repeatedly referred to in Sumerian and Babylonian names as the mother of mankind — Ninmar-ama-dim, “ Ninmar is a creating mother ”j Ama- numun-zid, “the mother legitimate seed (has given) ”j Bau- ama-mu, “ Bau is my mother.” This mythological doctrine is thoroughly accepted in Babylonian religion. A poem has the line: “ All creatures with the breath of life are the handiwork
DISTRIBUTION OF SEMITIC RACES
13
of Aruru,” and a prayer begins: “ O Gula, the mother, bearer of the dark-headed people.” In early Accadian, this my- thology is already firmly established among the Semites, although it does not appear to belong to their primitive religion. Ummi-tabat, “ My mother is good ”j Asdar-ummi, “ Ishtar is my mother ” j the latter name is common in Babylonia. Ummu- tabat, “ the mother is good,” occurs in the fifth century in Baby- lonia. Belit-umma-nu, “ Beltis is our mother,” has the same meaning as “ Sarpanit is our mother.” Istar-ummi-sarri-ni, “ Ishtar is the mother of our king Mannu-ki-ummi, “ Who is like the mother? ” Although the Babylonian feminine par- ticiple mu^alUttUy “ the bearer,” is not found yet in any text,®* but only the form alittu (construct alidat), it is extremely prob- able that this title of the Babylonian Earth-goddess, chiefly known in the West as Ashtoreth, is the original of Mylitta,®® a name used by the Assyrians for Aphrodite.
In West Semitic this mythology is apparently almost un- known. In Canaanitish there is only the Phoenician name ’Am- ‘Ashtart, “ the mother is Ashtoreth.” ®® In Hebrew there is no evidence at all.®^ But names of deities in Phoenicia like Melk-‘Ashtart, at Hammon near Tyre, Eshmun-‘Ashtart at Carthage, ‘Ashtar-Kemosh, of the Moabites, clearly prove that the Mother-goddess of the West Semitic races held even a greater place in their religion than the local gods of their most important cults. These names are taken to be construct forma- tions by W. W. Baudissin {Adonis und Esmun, pp. 264-266) and explained as “ Melk of the temple of Astarte,” i.e., the Tyrian god Melquart worshipped in Astarte’s temple. Ashtar- Kemosh would be Astarte worshipped in the temple of Ke- mosh.®® Now these great Canaanitish gods, Eshmun, Kemosh, Melqart, and Adon of Gebal, are sometimes regarded as the husbands, sometimes as the sons, sometimes as the brothers of the Earth-goddess Astarte, as we know from Sumerian and Babylonian religion. In the West Semitic sources the title “ sister ” for this goddess cannot be defended except by infer-
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ence from the widespread title of the gods as “ brother,” and the title is undoubtedly based upon this Semitic mythology. The Earth-goddess, Astarte, who is by name the South Arabian male deity Athtar and there the planet Venus, is em- phatically a Babylonian deity in North and West Semitic reli- gions. The entire mythology of Astarte goes back to the Su- merian Ininni = Ashdar = Ishtar, goddess of Venus and mother, wife, and lover of the Sumerian dying god Tammuz. This is Inextricably united with the other fundamental Sumerian mythological concept of the Earth-god Enlil, father of man- kind, and his sister the Earth-goddess Aruru, Gula, Bau, Nin- hursag, Nintud, commonly called in Babylonia Belit-ilani, “ Queen of the gods.” In certain cults she is also the wife of the Earth-god, as Ninlil, wife of Enlil, at Nippur, or Bau, wife of Ningirsu, son of Enlil, at Lagash, or of Zamama, son of Enlil, at Kish. In South Arabia the male deity ‘Athtar is the planet Venus, and has no inherent connection at all with the philologically identical feminine name ‘Ashtart of the Canaan- ites. The West Semitic Earth-goddess, sister of all Canaanite deities, El, Melqart, Eshmun, Yaw, Kemosh, is called Ashtar (Moabite), or ‘Ashtart, because the Semitic race with their male Venus came into contact with the Sumerian people, who wor- shipped the female Innini, a Mother-goddess and the planet Venus, at the dawn of history. ‘Athtar becomes now Ashdar and Ishtar in Babylonia, and a Mother-goddess. In the West the old Semitic deity ‘Ashtar is turned into a feminine form, ‘Ashtart, to conform to the Babylonian mythology, which un- doubtedly suppressed primitive Semitic religious ideas among the Aramaic and Canaanitish peoples. The word was pro- nounced ‘Ashtoreth by the later Hebrews, when the monotheis- tic teaching of Moses and the prophets prevailed. This is only an attempt to cast ridicule upon the name of the Mother- goddess of earlier polytheism by reading the consonants of her name with vowels of the Hebrew word for “ abomination,” “ shame,” hosheth. In Western Semitic
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15
religions ‘Ashtart represents the Sumero-Babylonian Mother- goddess, Gula, Bau, Aruru, etc., rather than Innini-Ninsianna- Ishtar, who is both Venus and the Mother-goddess. In Canaan- itish religion ‘Ashtart is not the planet Venus. That is clear by the Greek identifications of this goddess with Ge, “ the earth,” sister of Uranus, in Sanchounyathdn, and the regular identifica- tion of Astarte with Aphrodite, who is never identified with the planet Venus.
In South Arabian religion the Mother-goddess is the Sun- goddess, and there is no mythology there in which she is the sister of a deity, or evidence that any Arabian deity is her brother. In North Arabic religion, as represented on the Safaite inscriptions of Hauran, the Mother-goddess is Hat, Allat, Hal- lat.®® Since Herodotus in his History says that the Arabian Aphrodite was named ’Alilat and ’Alitta, and Alitta is the Babylonian title of the Mother-goddess (Alittu), it is clear that, even in North Arabia, Babylonian mythology is the determining element also.®^ Since Hat of South Arabia is the Sun-goddess, and probably also among the Thamudic Lihyanians at al-‘01a, who are only Northern Minaeans, naturally Hat survives in Islamic tradition as a Sun -goddess.®^ But in North Arabia Hat, “ the goddess,” has been subjected to Babylonian influences as was Ashtart of the Canaanites. Here the goddess is the Earth- mother, and when we are dealing with North Arabian religion, the great sphere of Babylonian mythology and theology has been entered.®® In fact there are only two large groups of Semitic religions j on the one hand there is the Minaean-Sabaean Qatabanian, including Abyssinia and the Thamudic-Minaean re- ligion } on the other hand there is the Babylonian- Assyrian reli- gion of Mesopotamia, which from prehistoric times moulded the mythological and theological concepts of all Semitic races of the Northern and Western Semitic areas, in Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Trans- Jordania.
Babylonian influence becomes particularly prominent in the great Nabataean kingdom whose principal capitals were Petra
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and Damascus, and whose history can be traced from their first mention by Ashurbanipal in the middle of the seventh cen- tury B.C., to their absorption into the Roman Empire in io6 a.d. They were a North Arabic race who used the Aramaic script, and their principal male deity is Dusura, rendered into Greek as Dousares, and identified by the Greeks with Dionysus.®® The name means “ he of Shara ” {^dhu Sara), i.e., “ he of the moun- tain range esh-shara,^ at Petra,®® and he is a Sun-god according to Strabo.®^ Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, writing in the fourth century, preserves the only illuminating information about the mythol- ogy of this great cult of the Nabataeans. As he was born and educated in Palestine, and served in a monastic order there, his statement must be taken authoritatively. He says that the Nabataeans praised the vir- gin whose Arabic name is XaajSoG.®® In Nabataean the Arabic nominative ending in u is regularly preserved in proper names, and Epiphanius undoubtedly heard the word ka^bu, “ square stone,” symbol in Nabataean religion for both Dusares and the great Mother-goddess Allat of the Nabataeans. An Arabic writer®® says that a four-sided stone was worshipped as Allat, who in a Nabataean inscription was called “ Mother of the gods.” On Fig. 4 is seen the reverse of a copper coin of the Ro- man emperor Trajan Decius, struck at Bostra, shewing the sacred baetyl or stone pillar of Dusares, bearing the inscription actia dusaria, “ the Dusarean games.” Suidas, the Greek lexi- cographer, under the word devaaprjs, says that the object of Dusares’ worship was a black stone, four feet high and two feet wide, standing on a base of gold. Moreover Epiphanius states that Dusares was the oflFspring of the virgin Chaabou and only son of the “ lord ” {deairdrov The panegyrarchs of Naba- taean cities came to Petra to assist in the festival of his birth, which was celebrated on the twenty-fifth of December.^®
Fig. 4. Copper Coin Shewing Sacred Baetyl
DISTRIBUTION OF SEMITIC RACES
17
Worship of a dying god, son of the Earth-mother, was the principal cult of this North Arabian people during the pe- riod immediately before and after the life of Jesus of Naza- reth in Palestine. The title of the Mother-goddess Allat is “ Mother of the gods ” here, and a translation of the title of the great Mother- goddess of Babylonia, hHet ilani, “ queen of the gods,” whose title in Sumerian is also goddess Mother.” Du- sares and Allat of the Naba- taeans are an Arabian reflex of the great Babylonian myth of Tammuz and Ishtar, and if the god is identified with Dionysus, the original char- acter common to both is that of a Sun-god and patron of fer- tility. Strabo describes the Nabataeans as a particularly abstemious people 5 the Greeks and Romans called Dusares the Arabian Dionysus or Bacchus} and a statue of him found in the Hauran (see Fig. 5) portrays him as a deity of the vine. The cornucopia and patera are also characteristic of Dusares on coins of Na- bataean cities. As an Arabian
Fig. 5. Basalt Statue of Dusares, Patron OF THE Vine. From the Hauran
1 8 SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
Bacchus, Dusares is a Greek and Roman deity j as a god of Fertility, represented by a baetyl, he is a local Arabic Earth and Sun deity; and, as son of the virgin Earth-goddess, he is a Babylonian deity. The celebration of his birth in De- cember at Petra and the northern cities of Bostra and Adraa
in the Hauran with games and festivities is a replica of the spring festivities at Babylon, when the death, burial, and resurrection of Marduk were celebrated with weeping, which was exchanged for re j oicing.’^’^ The meaning of the actia du- sarla at Petra may be inferred from the similar festival at Alexandria in Egypt, there called after an unexplained Egyptian word Kikellia, or in Greek the Cronia, which also occurred by night on the twenty- fifth of December. In this festi- val an image of a babe was taken from the temple sanctuary and greeted with loud acclamation by the worshippers, saying, “ the Virgin has begotten.” On the night of the fifth of Decem- ber occurred a festival before the image of Core; it ended with bringing forth from beneath the earth the image of Aion,^® which was carried seven times around the inner sanctuary of Core’s temple. The image was then returned to its place below the sur- face of the earth. Epiphanius, in whose writings this Egyptian cult is described, identifies the virgin mother of this myth with the Greek Under-world goddess Core, as he does the virgin mother of Dusares, Chaabu of the Nabataeans. There is a wide
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INTRODUCTION
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cuneiform religious texts. Of particular value also have been the voluminous and excellent copies of Sumerian texts by Pro- fessor Chiera of Chicago, and the vast erudition of Professor Bruno Meissner of Berlin and Professor Arthur Ungnad of Breslau. The copies and interpretations of religious texts by Professor Erich Ebeling of Berlin and Dr. R. C. Thompson of Oxford reveal their great service in the preparation of this book by the numerous references to their copies in the notes. The numerous articles of Rene Dussaud cited there mark a distinct advance in the interpretation of the religion of the Aramaeans and Phoenicians. In my renewed study of the entire religious literature of Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria I have often had occasion to ask for collations of and information concerning tablets in the British Museum. Mr. C. J. Gadd, Assistant in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, has ever served me well with courtesy and accuracy. On matters in- volving special knowledge of Egypt, Professor F. LI. Griffith and Dr. A. M. Blackman have supplied me with the necessary information.
A word to those who are not Semitic scholars should be added concerning the pronunciation of the name of the Hebrew deity Yaw. Phonetically this should have been written Yau. The last letter is a semi-labial vowel and in my opinion no diph- thongal sound should be inferred from the spelling adopted in this book. If the word be written Ya-vf^ the reader will obtain a pronunciation as accurate as a transcription can convey.
It is still impossible to utilize the newly found and recently deciphered Phoenician inscriptions, written in a cuneiform al- phabet. Charles Virolleaud, who first published some of the tablets from Ras Shamra, near Minet-el-Beida in Syria, on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea {Syria^ 1929, pp. 304—310), writes that he has now been able to study large mythological texts and that the language is classical Phoenician, of the fif- teenth century b.c. It is obvious, therefore, that the early Phoenician religion will soon be better understood. None of
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INTRODUCTION
these tablets containing the names of the Phoenician deities has been published up to this date. The author must, therefore, give his signature to this book in the hope that the new revela- tion from Ras Shamra will support the views of the Phoenician pantheon set forth here, and confirm the place which he has assigned to it in the history of Semitic mythology.
S. LANGDON
Jesus College, Oxford March 19, 1931
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
BY
STEPHEN HERBERT LANGDON
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
CHAPTER I
GEOGRAPHICAL AND LINGUISTIC DISTRIBUTION OF SEMITIC RACES, AND DEITIES
T he Semitic speaking peoples are divided geographically into the eastern, western, northern, and southern groups. Philologically these are known respectively as the Accadian, Canaanitish, Aramaean, and Arabic races. The Accadian or Mesopotamian branch possesses by far the oldest records of any Semitic language, and it is so called because the first purely Semitic line of kings reigned at Accad, a city near Sippar, be- tween the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, the modern ruins called ed-Deir.^ As a geographical term, “ Accad ” designates the cen- tral part of the Mesopotamian Valley as far south as the great cities Kish and Babylon, a region first occupied by the Sumerians. Undoubtedly this part of Mesopotamia was known as Accad, before 2732 b.c., when Sargon the ancient founded the city Agade and the empire of the Accadians which com- prised the whole of Western Asia.^ It is difficult to fix an approximate date for the arrival of the Accadians in Mesopota- mia. The Sumerians had founded cities all along the Euphrates and Tigris before 4000 b.c., and their earliest cul- ture as revealed by excavations at Kish, Jemdet Nasr, Shurup- pak, and Ur cannot be placed later than 5000 b.c. Among the kings who ruled in the first kingdom of the land at Kish, said to have been founded immediately after the Flood, there are seven Accadian names out of a total of twenty-three kings.®
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This dynasty ruled approximately 3400-3170 b.c., hence it may be assumed that this Semitic race arrived among the Sumerians in the Kish area as early as the middle of the fourth millennium b.c. Linguistically the Accadian language is closely allied to Himyaritic, Sabaean, and Minaean or the South Arabian branch of the Semitic people, and the few Semitic deities which survived in the vast Sumerian pantheon adopted by the Accadians supports the inference drawn from comparative Semitic philology. Among the Semitic deities whose names survived, when the Accadians adopted the entire Sumerian pantheon, are Shamash the Sun-god and Ashdar the Mother-goddess, identified with the planet Venus.^ Both of these deities are common to all early Semitic peoples, but Ashdar, as the word is first written on Sumerian monuments, is the only direct phonetic reproduction of the South Arabian ‘Athtar, there the name of the planet Venus.
It must be admitted that, although the Semitic race can be traced to a period circa 3300 b.c. in Accad, only one Semitic name of a deity occurs on any of their monuments or in any Sumerian or Accadian inscription before the age of Dungi of LFr (2381-2326).® In fact Asdar is the only Semitic divine name which occurs in the early period. The word for sun and the Sun-god is invariably written with the Sumerian ideo- gram for sun, babhary utUy and even the Semitic name of the Sun-god does not appear before the first Babylonian dynasty.® The phonetic pronunciation of the name of the Sun-god among the Semites of Accad, when they first appear In history at least 2500 years before we have any Semitic inscriptions out- side the Mesopotamian area, appears to have been Sham-shuy and although this word is pronounced Shamsu by the Mlnaeans and Sabaeans when their inscriptions begin, it must be assumed that Shamsu is an example of dissimilation in Arabic. The Accadian form is the one regularly employed in the Canaanitish and Aramaic inscriptions. The sporadic form samsu occurs toward the end of the first dynasty.^
DISTRIBUTION OF SEMITIC RACES
3
Assuming that South Arabia is the original home of the Semitic peoples, the theory adopted by the writer of this vol- ume, it follows from the evidence of Minaean, Sabaean, and Qatabanian inscriptions from Arabia Felix, modern Yemen, and Hadramut, that the three principal and perhaps the only deities originally worshipped by the Semites are the Sun, Venus, and the Moon, all astral deities.®
The sun and moon in South Arabia, whose monuments and in- scriptions are dated from about the ninth to the second century B.C., are symbolically represented by a cres- cent and disk (Fig. i).
This is also the sym- bolism of these two deities, which con- stantly occurs in Su- mero-Accadian sym- bolism (Fig. 2). This same symbolism occurs frequently on coins of the South Arabian people in Abyssinia, right down to the period in which they were converted to Christianity in the fourth cen- tury A.D. See Fig. 3. This is a copper coin and bears the Greek inscription Ousannes Basileus AksomUon Bisi Tisene^ “ Ousannes King of the Aksomites, of the tribe Tisene.” The head is that of the king, on obverse with a crown, and on re- verse without a crown.® It is, therefore, clear that the Semites who first appear in history so completely mingled with Sumerian culture, more than 2000 years before there is any inscriptional evidence about them elsewhere, were South Arabians. South
Fig. I. Sabaean Altar, Shewing Crescent AND Disk
SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
4
Arabian inscriptions have been found in Mesopotamia and at Koweit on the Arabian shore of the Persian gulf near the boundary of Iraqd® But the date of Himyaritic Minaean civili- zation in the Yemen cannot be reduced to a late period merely because their monuments do not begin before the first millen-
nium B.c. Their culture and religion are of hoary antiquity and clearly extended along the entire eastern Arabian sea-coast and the Persian Gulf. Magan and Meluhha of Sumerian geography lay on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf, and
Magan was almost certainly identical with the land of the Gerraei of the Greek geographers. It was then this Semitic people who entered Mesopo- tamia before 3000 b.c., from Magan and Arabia Felix, bringing with them the ancient Semitic deities of South Arabia. The names of the three prin- cipal deities were Shamshu, ‘Athtar, and "Zr'™ Shahar the Moon-god.
In South Arabia the Sun-god is a female deity, and ‘Athtar, or god of the planet Venus, is a male deity. But the Accadians, having identified these deities with the Sumerian Sun-god, Utu or Babbar of Ellasar and Sippar,
Fig. 3
Crescent and Disk
DISTRIBUTION OF SEMITIC RACES
5
and with the Sumerian Innini, the Mother-goddess and the planet Venus, reversed the genders of these deities, a change which was latterly imposed upon the entire North and West Semitic religions. In South Arabian there are many names for the Moon-god, Shahar, the name common to all Arabic dia- lects, Warah, “ the Wanderer,” Kahil, “ the Old One,” Wadd, “the Loving,” Ilmuqah, of unknown meaning} and he is frequently referred to as aby “ father,” ^amniy “ ancestor,” “uncle.” None of these names for the Moon-god survived in Accadian. According to D. Nielsen the South Arabian deity Ilah, or II, which is also the common Semitic word for “ god,” and corresponds to the Hebrew and Aramaic deity El, Elohim, is one of the names of the Moon-god. The North Arabic al- ilah = Allah, who became the supreme and only god of Mo- hammedan religion, and El, El 5 him of the Northern Hebrew tribes who with Yaw, a deity of the Southern Hebrew tribes, became the supreme deity of Hebrew monotheism, would thus originally denote the ancient and prehistoric Moon-god. On this theory there will be more to say when the deities of the Canaanites are discussed.
In Accadian it is the Sumerian name of the Moon-god which is invariably used from first to last in their inscriptions, namely Zu-en, commonly pronounced Sin. There is no doubt at all concerning the Sumerian derivation of this name.^^ It occurs twice in a Himyaritic inscription written S-i-n, clearly the god Sin,^® where it cannot possibly be an Arabic name, but an im- portation from Babylonian. Nabunidus, the last king of Baby- lon (555—538 B.C.), is known to have resided for some time at Teima in Arabia, north of El-‘ 01 a, where South Arabian in- scriptions have been found, and it is certain that Babylonian in- fluence pervaded the whole of South Arabia from a very early period.
If the name Sin is the origin of the word Smai, Mount Sinai, which occurs in early documents of the Hebrew Scrip- tures, not earlier than lOOO b.c., then this mountain range in
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the extreme north-western part of Arabia and especially its principal mountain, Horeb, connected with the worship of the Hebrew gods Yaw and Elohim, must have been an ancient North Arabian centre of Moon worship, and the name itself is taken from the Sumero-Babylonian Sin, after the name had been transmitted to Arabia, and replaced some older Arabic name for “ moon ” as the name of these mountains. In any case this Sumerian name of the Moon-god was known to the Hebrews; for it occurs in the names Shenazzar (sixth cen- tury) and Shinab, king of Admah ; and the Canaanitish cult of the moon was actually favoured by the kings of Judah before the reign of Josiah.^® Job reflects the well-known Semitic sun and moon worship in his remonstrance against this pagan practice:
“ If seeing the sun when it shone,
And the moon moving gloriously along,
My heart was secretly enticed.
And my hand kissed my mouth.”
It is, therefore, certain that Semitic religion in its most primi- tive form begins with three astral deities. Sun, Moon, and Venus, and that they came into contact with Sumerian civiliza- tion at such an early period that the real Semitic characteristics of these deities were totally transformed by the Sumerians. Sumerian religion is based upon a vast pantheon and is ex- tremely polytheistic. It was completely adopted by the Accadians, and through the later Babylonian and Assyrian kingdoms this extreme type of polytheism, rich in mythology and theological speculation, influenced the religious beliefs of nearly every Semitic race in Western Asia. Semitic religion, pure and undefiled, must be sought in those impenetrable areas of Arabia, where the great light of Sumer and Accad did not shine, and in those stray references to the old Semitic cults which survived in Syria and Phoenicia and Canaan. In these latter lands, along the Mediterranean sea-coast, Egyptian in- fluence must also be considered. But it was not important. When we come to deal with the mythology and theology of
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the Northern and Western Semitic races, we shall see that Baby- lonia is the source from which they absorbed all their fundamen- tal ideas, and this process began when the first South Arabian invasion of Sumer occurred and the first Semitic people learned the arts of civilization from the Sumerians of Mesopotamia.
Arabian religion has no mythology at all concerning the gods and goddesses of its pantheon. A few names of Arabic deities of pre-Islamic times have survived in the Coran of Moham- med, who founded a thorough monotheism on the deity Allah, the old Ilah, or title of the Moon-god Wadd, Shahar, Ilmuqah of the earlier pantheon.^® It is an idea common to all primi- tive Semitic tribes that they descended from their patron deity, not in the sense that this deity was a deified man, or that he was a plant or animal (totemism), but in the sense that he was their divine creator.^® The Minaeans described themselves as sons of Wadd, the Qatabanians as sons of ‘Amm, and the Sabaeans as sons of Ilmuqah, all titles of the Moon-god. This idea of a god as father or ancestor of a tribe reveals itself in proper names over the whole Semitic area. In South Arabic Abikarib, “ My father is gracious,” is a very common personal name, in which ah^ “ father,” refers to one of the deities, prob- ably the Moon-god.®® This fatherhood of god is particularly emphasized in early Accadian names, Abum-ilum, “ god is father,” Abu-tab, “ the father is good,” Sin-abu-su, “ Sin is his father.” The gods are also regarded as brothers and sisters of men. “ Brother ” and “ sister ” in personal names occur only in Accadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian, or in Semitic lands under Babylonian influence, and probably refer to Tammuz and his sister Ishtar, and may well be direct epithets of these two deities.®® A name like Ahi-saduq, on a seal of the Amoritic period,®® meaning “ My brother is righteous,” undoubtedly describes a deity as “ My brother.” Ammi- sadugu, “ My uncle is righteous,” is an exact parallel.
The description of a deity as “ brother ” is not found in Arabic at any period. This mythological family relation of
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SEMITIC MYTHOLOGY
god and man is common in Canaanitish, including Hebrew, and in the Aramaic group j in Accadian it appears in the earliest Semitic inscriptions.^^ Ahu-tab, “ the brother is good,” on a monument of Manistusu of the 27th century b.c., is exactly parallel to Ahi-tub, a common Hebrew name occurring not earlier than the eleventh century b.c. In early Accadian, Ahu-issap, “ The brother increases,” Ahu-ilum, “ El is brother,” Salim-ahu, “ the brother is happy,” Ili-ahi, “ My god is my brother,” Ahum-ilum, “ El is a brother,” clearly demonstrate that this idea was firmly rooted in the mythology of the Semites from prehistoric times.^® Since they are in reality South Arabians, where Semitic religious ideas are re- tained in their most primitive forms, it is inexplicable that the “ brotherhood of god ” is not found there, or in the South Arabian kingdom of Abyssinia, or in any of the North Arabian centres to which Minaean-Sabaean culture spread, as at al ‘Ola (in Minaean and Lihyanian inscriptions) or in the Hauran (in Safaitic inscriptions).^® In Hebrew Ahi-yah, “ My brother is Yah,” reveals this mythological relation between Yaw, the tribal god of the Hebrews, and his people, as does also Ahi- melek, where melek is either a title of Yaw, or the name of an old Canaanitish deity. This idea is particularly prominent in Hebrew. Ahi-ezer “ My brother is help,” Ahi-qam, in As- syrian Ahiya-qamu,*^ “ My brother is risen Ahi-ram, in Assyrian Ahi-ramu, “ My brother is supreme,” and in Ahi- ram, king of Gebal, early Phoenician, circa 900 b.c.^® Its occur- rence at Gebal, centre of the West Semitic cult of Adonis and Astarte, i.e., of Tammuz and Ishtar, taken in connection with the almost complete absence of the “ brotherhood of god ” in Ara- bian religion where Babylonian religion had little influence, would support the theory that “ brother,” when applied to deities like Yaw, Melek, and Adonis, actually refers to these deities as the dying and resurrected god, brother of the Earth- goddess Astarte, Ishtar. Names like Ahu-bani, which occurs in Babylonian not earlier than the Cassite period, compared with
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Sin-bani, “ Sin is creator,” Marduk-bani, Enlil-bani, Shamash- bani, clearly prove that, even in Assyria and Babylonian, “ brother ” is a title of any god and cannot refer to Tammuz or Adonis, as it invariably does in Sumerian.
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