Part 6

This story is almost identical with that of the Book of Genesis. The God Bel is determined to destroy mankind, and Hasisadra receives directions from Ea to build a ship, and take into it provisions and goods and slaves and beasts of the field. The ship is covered with bitumen. The flood is sent by Shamash (the sun-god). Hasisadra enters the ship and shuts the door. So dreadful is the tempest that the gods in affright ascend for protection to the heaven of Anu. Six days the storm lasts. On the seventh conies calm. Hasisadra opens a window and sees the mountain of Nizir, sends forth a dove, which returns; then a swallow, which returns; then a raven, which does not return; then, knowing that the flood has passed, sends out the animals, builds an altar, and offers sacrifice, over which the gods gather like flies. Ea remonstrates with Bel, and urges that hereafter, when he is angry with men, instead of sending a deluge, he shall send wild beasts, who shall destroy them. Thereupon Bel makes a compact with Hasisadra, and the gods take him and his wife and people and place them in a remote spot at the mouth of the rivers. It is now generally agreed that the Hebrew story of the Flood is taken from the Babylonian, either mediately through the Canaanites (for the Babylonians had occupied Canaan before the sixteenth century B.C.), or immediately during the exile in the sixth century. The Babylonian account is more picturesque, the Hebrew more restrained and solemn. The early polytheistic features have been excluded by the Jewish editors.

In addition to these longer stories there are a number of legends of no little poetical and mythical interest. In the cycle devoted to the eagle there is a story of the struggle between the eagle and the serpent. The latter complains to the sun-god that the eagle has eaten his young. The god suggests a plan whereby the hostile bird may be caught: the body of a wild ox is to be set as a snare. Out of this plot, however, the eagle extricates himself by his sagacity. In the second story the eagle comes to the help of a woman who is struggling to bring a man-child (apparently Etana) into the world. In the third is portrayed the ambition of the hero Etana to ascend to heaven. The eagle promises to aid him in accomplishing his design. Clinging to the bird, he rises with him higher and higher toward the heavenly space, reaching the abode of Anu, and then the abode of Ishtar. As they rise to height after height the eagle describes the appearance of the world lying stretched out beneath: at first it rises like a huge mountain out of the sea; then the ocean appears as a girdle encircling the land, and finally but as a ditch a gardener digs to irrigate his land. When they have risen so high that the earth is scarcely visible, Etana cries to the eagle to stop; so he does, but his strength is exhausted, and bird and man fall to the earth.

Another cycle of stories deals with the winds. The god Zu longs to have absolute power over the world. To that end he lurks about the door of the sun-god, the possessor of the tablets of fate whereby he controls all things. Each morning before beginning his journey, the sun-god steps out to send light showers over the world. Watching his opportunity, Zu glides in, seizes the tablets of fate, and flies away and hides himself in the mountains. So great horror comes over the world: it is likely to be scorched by the sun-god's burning beams. Anu calls on the storm-god Ramman to conquer Zu, but he is frightened and declines the task, as do other gods. Here, unfortunately, the tablet is broken, so that we do not know by whom the normal order was finally restored.

In the collection of cuneiform tablets disinterred at Amarna in 1887 was found the curious story of Adapa. The demigod Adapa, the son of Ea, fishing in the sea for the family of his lord, is overwhelmed by the stormy south wind and cast under the waves. In anger he breaks the wings of the wind, that it may no longer rage in the storm. Anu, informed that the south wind no longer blows, summons Adapa to his presence. Ea instructs his son to put on apparel of mourning, present himself at Anu's gate, and there make friends with the porters, Tammuz and Iszida, so that they may speak a word for him to Anu; going into the presence of the royal deity, he will be offered food and drink which he must reject, and raiment and oil which he must accept. Adapa carries out the instructions of his father to the letter. Anu is appeased, but laments that Adapa, by rejecting heavenly food and drink, has lost the opportunity to become immortal. This story, the record of which is earlier than the sixteenth century B.C., appears to contain two conceptions: it is a mythical description of the history of the south wind, but its conclusion presents a certain parallelism with the end of the story of Eden in Genesis; as there Adam, so here Adapa, fails of immortality because he infringes the divine command concerning the divine food. We have here a suggestion that the story in Genesis is one of the cycle which dealt with the common earthly fact of man's mortality.

The legend of Dibbarra seems to have a historical basis. The god Dibbarra has devastated the cities of Babylonia with bloody wars. Against Babylon he has brought a hostile host and slain its people, so that Marduk, the god of Babylon, curses him. And in like manner he has raged against Erech, and is cursed by its goddess Ishtar. He is charged with confounding the righteous and unrighteous in indiscriminate destruction. But Dibbarra determines to advance against the dwelling of the king of the gods, and Babylonia is to be further desolated by civil war. It is a poetical account of devastating wars as the production of a hostile diety. It is obvious that these legends have many features in common with those of other lands, myths of conflict between wind and sun, and the ambition of heroes to scale the heights of heaven. How far these similarities are the independent products of similar situations, and how far the results of loans, cannot at present be determined.

The moral-religious literature of the Babylonians is not inferior in interest to the stories just mentioned. The hymns to the gods are characterized by a sublimity and depth of feeling which remind us of the odes of the Hebrew Psalter. The penitential hymns appear to contain expressions of sorrow for sin, which would indicate a high development of the religious consciousness. These hymns, apparently a part of the temple ritual, probably belong to a relatively late stage of history; but they are none the less proof that devotional feeling in ancient times was not limited to any one country.

Other productions, such as the hymn to the seven evil spirits (celebrating their mysterious power), indicate a lower stage of religious feeling; this is specially visible in the magic formulas, which portray a very early stratum of religious history. They recall the Shamanism of Central Asia and the rites of savage tribes; but there is no reason to doubt that the Semitic religion in its early stages contained this magic element, which is found all the world over.

Riddles and Proverbs are found among the Babylonians, as among all peoples. Comparatively few have been discovered, and these present nothing of peculiar interest. The following may serve as specimens:--"What is that which becomes pregnant without conceiving, fat without eating?" The answer seems to be "A cloud." "My coal-brazier clothes me with a divine garment, my rock is founded in the sea" (a volcano). "I dwell in a house of pitch and brick, but over me glide the boats" (a canal). "He that says, 'Oh, that I might exceedingly avenge myself!' draws from a waterless well, and rubs the skin without oiling it." "When sickness is incurable and hunger unappeasable, silver and gold cannot restore health nor appease hunger." "As the oven waxes old, so the foe tires of enmity." "The life of yesterday goes on every day." "When the seed is not good, no sprout comes forth."

The poetical form of all these pieces is characterized by that parallelism of members with which we are familiar in the poetry of the Old Testament. It is rhythmical, but apparently not metrical: the harmonious flow of syllables in any one line, with more or less beats or cadences, is obvious; but it does not appear that syllables were combined into feet, or that there was any fixed rule for the number of syllables or beats in a line. So also strophic divisions may be observed, such divisions naturally resulting from the nature of all narratives. Sometimes the strophe seems to contain four lines, sometimes more. No strophic rule has yet been established; but it seems not unlikely that when the longer poetical pieces shall have been more definitely fixed in form, certain principles of poetical composition will present themselves. The thought of the mythical pieces and the prayers and hymns is elevated and imaginative. Some of this poetry appears to have belonged to a period earlier than 2000 B.C. Yet the Babylonians constructed no epic poem like the (Iliad,) or at any rate none such has yet been found. Their genius rather expressed itself in brief or fragmentary pieces, like the Hebrews and the Arabs.

The Babylonian prose literature consists almost entirely of short chronicles and annals. Royal inscriptions have been found covering the period from 3000 B.C. to 539 B.C. There are eponym canons, statistical lists, diplomatic letters, military reports; but none of these rise to the dignity of history. Several connected books of chronicles have indeed been found; there is a synchronistic book of annals of Babylonia and Assyria, there is a long Assyrian chronicle, and there are annalistic fragments. But there is no digested historical narrative, which gives a clear picture of the general civil and political situation, or any analysis of the characters of kings, generals, and governors, or any inquiry into causes of events. It is possible that narratives having a better claim to the name of history may yet be discovered, resembling those of the Biblical Book of Kings; yet the Book of Kings is scarcely history--neither the Jews nor the Babylonians and Assyrians seem to have had great power in this direction.

One of the most interesting collections of historical pieces is that recently discovered at Amarna. Here, out of a mound which represents a palace of the Egyptian King Amenhotep IV., were dug up numerous letters which were exchanged between the kings of Babylonia and Egypt in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and numerous reports sent to the Egyptian government by Egyptian governors of Canaanite cities. These tablets show that at this early time there was lively communication between the Euphrates and the Nile, and they give a vivid picture of the chaotic state of affairs in Canaan, which was exposed to the assaults of enemies on all sides. This country was then in possession of Egypt, but at a still earlier period it must have been occupied by the Babylonians. Only in this way can we account for the surprising fact that the Babylonian cuneiform script and the Babylonian language form the means of communication between the east and west and between Egypt and Canaan. The literary value of these letters is not great; their interest is chiefly historic and linguistic. The same thing is true of the contract tablets, which are legal documents: these cover the whole area of Babylonian history, and show that civil law attained a high state of perfection; they are couched in the usual legal phrases.

The literary monuments mentioned above are all contained in tablets, which have the merit of giving in general contemporaneous records of the things described. But an account of Babylonian literature would be incomplete without mention of the priest Berosus. Having, as priest of Bel, access to the records of the temples, he wrote a history of his native land, in which he preserved the substance of a number of poetical narratives, as well as the ancient accounts of the political history. The fragments of his work which have been preserved (see Cory's 'Ancient Fragments') exhibit a number of parallels with the contents of the cuneiform tablets. Though he wrote in Greek (he lived in the time of Alexander the Great), and was probably trained in the Greek learning of his time, his work doubtless represents the spirit of Babylonian historical writing. So far as can be judged from the remains which have come down to us, its style is of the annalistic sort which appears in the old inscriptions and in the historical books of the Bible.

The Babylonian literature above described must be understood to include the Assyrian. Civilization was first established in Babylonia, and there apparently were produced the great epic poems and the legends. But Assyria, when she succeeded to the headship of the Mesopotamian valley, in the twelfth century B.C., adopted the literature of her southern sister. A great part of the old poetry has been found in the library of Assurbanipal, at Nineveh (seventh century B.C.), where a host of scribes occupied themselves with the study of the ancient literature. They seem to have had almost all the apparatus of modern critical work. Tablets were edited, sometimes with revisions. There are bilingual tablets, presenting in parallel columns the older texts (called Sumerian-Accadian) and the modern version. There are numerous grammatical and lexicographical lists. The records were accessible, and often consulted. Assurbanipal, in bringing back a statue of the goddess Nana from the Elamite region, says that it was carried off by the Elamites 1635 years before; and Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (circa B.C. 550), a man devoted to temple restoration, refers to an inscription of King Naram-Sin, of Agane, who, he says, reigned 3200 years before. In recent discoveries made at Nippur, by the American Babylonian Expedition, some Assyriologists find evidence of the existence of a Babylonian civilization many centuries before B.C. 4000 (the dates B.C. 5000 and B.C. 6000 have been mentioned); the material is now undergoing examination, and it is too early to make definite statements of date. See Peters in American Journal of Archaeology for January-March, 1895, and July-September, 1895; and Hilprecht, 'The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania,' Vol. i., Part 2, 1896.

The Assyrian and Babylonian historical inscriptions, covering as they do the whole period of Jewish history down to the capture of Babylon by Cyrus, are of very great value for the illustration of the Old Testament. They have a literary interest also. Many of them are written in semi-rhythmical style, a form which was favored by the inscriptional mode of writing. The sentences are composed of short parallel clauses, and the nature of the material induced a division into paragraphs which resemble strophes. They are characterized also by precision and pithiness of statement, and are probably as trust-worthy as official records ever are.

[Illustration: Signature]

I. THEOGONY

In the time when above the heaven was not named, The earth beneath bore no name, When the ocean, the primeval parent of both, The abyss Tiamat the mother of both....

The waters of both mingled in one. No fields as yet were tilled, no moors to be seen, When as yet of the gods not one had been produced,

No names they bore, no titles they had, Then were born of the gods.... Lachmu Lachamu came into existence. Many ages past.... Anshar, Kishar were born. Many days went by. Anu....

[Here there is a long lacuna. The lost lines completed the history of the creation of the gods, and gave the reason for the uprising of Tiamat with her hosts. What it was that divided the divine society into two hostile camps can only be conjectured; probably Tiamat, who represents the unfriendly or chaotic forces of nature, saw that her domain was being encroached on by the light-gods, who stand for cosmic order.]

II. REVOLT OF TIAMAT

To her came flocking all the gods, They gathered together, they came to Tiamat; Angry they plan, restless by night and by day, Prepare for war with gestures of rage and hate, With combined might to begin the battle. The mother of the abyss, she who created them all, Unconquerable warriors, gave them giant snakes, Sharp of tooth, pitiless in might, With poison like blood she filled their bodies, Huge poisonous adders raging, she clothed them with dread, Filled them with splendor.... He who sees them shuddering shall seize him, They rear their bodies, none can resist their breast. Vipers she made, terrible snakes.... ... raging dogs, scorpion-men ... fish men.... Bearing invincible arms, fearless in the fight. Stern are her commands, not to be resisted. Of all the first-born gods, because he gave her help, She raised up Kingu in the midst, she made him the greatest, To march in front of the host, to lead the whole, To begin the war of arms, to advance the attack, Forward in the fight to be the triumpher. This she gave into his hand, made him sit on the throne:-- By my command I make thee great in the circle of the gods; Rule over all the gods I have given to thee, The greatest shalt thou be, thou my chosen consort; Be thy name made great over all the earth. She gave him the tablets of fate, laid them on his breast. Thy command be not gainsaid, thy word stand fast. Thus lifted up on high, endued with Anu's rank, Among the gods her children Kingu did bear rule.

[The gods, dismayed, first appeal to Anu for aid against Tiamat, but he refuses to lead the attack. Anshar then sends to invite the gods to a feast.]

Anshar opened his mouth, To Gaga, his servant, spake he:-- Go, O Gaga, my servant thou who delightest my soul, To Lachmu Lachamu I will send thee... That the gods may sit at the feast, Bread to eat, wine to drink, To give the rule to Marduk. Up Gaga, to them go, And tell what I say to thee:-- Anshar, your son, has sent me, Told me the desire of his heart.

[He repeats the preceding description of Tiamat's preparations, and announces that Marduk has agreed to face the foe.]

I sent Anu, naught can he against her. Nudimmud was afraid and turned cowering back, Marduk accepted the task, the ruler of gods, your son, Against Tiamat to march his heart impels him. So speaks he to me: If I succeed, I, your avenger, Conquer Tiamat and save your lives. Come, ye all, and declare me supreme, In Upsukkenaku enter ye joyfully all. With my mouth will I bear rule, Unchangeable be whate'er I do, The word of my lips be never reversed or gainsaid. Come and to him give over the rule, That he may go and meet the evil foe. Gaga went, strode on his way, Humbly before Lachmu and Lachamu, the gods, his fathers, He paid his homage and kissed the ground, Bent lowly down and to them spake:-- Anshar, your son, has sent me, Told me the desire of his heart.

[Gaga then repeats Anshar's message at length, and the narrative proceeds.]

Lachmu and Lachamu heard and were afraid, The Igigi all lamented sore: What change has come about that she thus hates us? We cannot understand this deed of Tiamat. With hurry and haste they went, The great gods, all the dealers of fate, ... with eager tongue, sat themselves down to the feast. Bread they ate, wine they drank, The sweet wine entered their souls, They drank their fill, full were their bodies.

[In this happy state they were ready to accept Marduk's conditions.]

To Marduk, their avenger, they gave over the rule. They lifted him up on a lofty throne, Above his fathers he took his place as judge:-- Most honored be thou among the great gods, Unequaled thy rule, thy word is Anu. From this time forth thy command be not gainsaid; To lift up and cast down be the work of thy hand; The speech of thy mouth stand fast, thy word be irresistible, None of the gods shall intrude on thy domain, Fullness of wealth, the desire of the temples of the gods, Be the portion of thy shrine, though they be in need. Marduk, thou, our avenger, Thine be the kingdom over all forever. Sit thee down in might, noble be thy word, Thy arms shall never yield, the foes they shall crush. O lord, he who trusts in thee, him grant thou life, But the deity who set evil on foot, her life pour out. Then in the midst they placed a garment. To Marduk their first-born thus spake they:-- Thy rule, O lord, be chief among the gods, To destroy and to create--speak and let it be. Open thy mouth, let the garment vanish. Utter again thy command, let the garment appear. He spake with his mouth, vanished the garment; Again he commanded, and the garment appeared. When the gods, his fathers, saw thus his word fulfilled, Joyful were they and did homage: Marduk is king. On him conferred sceptre and throne.... Gave him invincible arms to crush them that hate him. Now go and cut short the life of Tiamat, May the winds into a secret place carry her blood. The ruler of the gods they made him, the gods, his fathers, Wished him success and glory in the way on which he went. He made ready a bow, prepared it for use, Made ready a spear to be his weapon. He took the ... seized it in his right hand, Bow and quiver hung at his side, Lightning he fashioned flashing before him, With glowing flame he filled its body, A net he prepared to seize Tiamat, Guarded the four corners of the world that nothing of her should escape, On South and North, on East and West He laid the net, his father Anu's gift. He fashioned the evil wind, the south blast, the tornado, The four-and-seven wind, the wind of destruction and woe, Sent forth the seven winds which he had made Tiamat's body to destroy, after him they followed. Then seized the lord the thunderbolt, his mighty weapon, The irresistible chariot, the terrible, he mounted, To it four horses he harnessed, pitiless, fiery, swift, Their teeth were full of venom covered with foam.

* * * * *

On it mounted Marduk the mighty in battle. To right and left he looked, lifting his eye. His terrible brightness surrounded his head. Against her he advanced, went on his way, To Tiamat lifted his face.

* * * * *

They looked at him, at him looked the gods, The gods, his fathers, looked at him; at him looked the gods. And nearer pressed the lord, with his eye piercing Tiamat. On Kingu her consort rested his look. As he so looked, every way is stopped. His senses Kingu loses, vanishes his thought, And the gods, his helpers, who stood by his side Saw their leader powerless.... But Tiamat stood, not turning her back. With fierce lips to him she spake:--

* * * * *

Then grasped the lord his thunderbolt, his mighty weapon, Angry at Tiamat he hurled his words:--

* * * * *