Myths of Babylonia and Assyria 10

Myths of Babylonia and Assyria 10

Let me weep over the strong who have left their wives,

Let me weep over the handmaidens who have lost the embraces of

their husbands,

Over the only son let me mourn, who ere his days are come is taken

away.

 

Then she issues abruptly the stern decree:

 

Go, keeper, open the gate to her,

Bewitch her according to the ancient rules;

 

that is, "Deal with her as you deal with others who come here".

 

As Ishtar enters through the various gates she is stripped of her

ornaments and clothing. At the first gate her crown was taken off, at

the second her ear-rings, at the third her necklace of precious

stones, at the fourth the ornaments of her breast, at the fifth her

gemmed waist-girdle,[122] at the sixth the bracelets of her hands and

feet, and at the seventh the covering robe of her body. Ishtar asks at

each gate why she is thus dealt with, and the porter answers, "Such is

the command of Allatu."

 

After descending for a prolonged period the Queen of Heaven at length

stands naked before the Queen of Hades. Ishtar is proud and arrogant,

and Allatu, desiring to punish her rival whom she cannot humble,

 

commands the plague demon, Namtar, to strike her with disease in all

parts of her body. The effect of Ishtar's fate was disastrous upon

earth: growth and fertility came to an end.

 

Meanwhile Pap-sukal, messenger of the gods, hastened to Shamash, the

sun deity, to relate what had occurred. The sun god immediately

consulted his lunar father, Sin, and Ea, god of the deep. Ea then

created a man lion, named Nadushu-namir, to rescue Ishtar, giving him

power to pass through the seven gates of Hades. When this being

delivered his message

 

Allatu ... struck her breast; she bit her thumb,

She turned again: a request she asked not.

 

In her anger she cursed the rescuer of the Queen of Heaven.

 

May I imprison thee in the great prison,

May the garbage of the foundations of the city be thy food,

May the drains of the city be thy drink,

May the darkness of the dungeon be thy dwelling,

May the stake be thy seat,

May hunger and thirst strike thy offspring.

 

She was compelled, however, to obey the high gods, and addressed

Namtar, saying:

 

Unto Ishtar give the waters of life and bring her before me.

 

Thereafter the Queen of Heaven was conducted through the various

gates, and at each she received her robe and the ornaments which were

taken from her on entering. Namtar says:

 

Since thou hast not paid a ransom for thy deliverance to her

(Allatu), so to her again turn back,

For Tammuz the husband of thy youth.

The glistening waters (of life) pour over him...

In splendid clothing dress him, with a ring of crystal adorn him.

 

Ishtar mourns for "the wound of Tammuz", smiting her breast, and she

did not ask for "the precious eye-stones, her amulets", which were

apparently to ransom Tammuz. The poem concludes with Ishtar's wail:

 

O my only brother (Tammuz) thou dost not lament for me.

In the day that Tammuz adorned me, with a ring of crystal,

With a bracelet of emeralds, together with himself, he adorned

me,[123]

With himself he adorned me; may men mourners and women

mourners

On a bier place him, and assemble the wake.[124]

 

A Sumerian hymn to Tammuz throws light on this narrative. It sets

forth that Ishtar descended to Hades to entreat him to be glad and to

resume care of his flocks, but Tammuz refused or was unable to return.

 

His spouse unto her abode he sent back.

 

She then instituted the wailing ceremony:

 

The amorous Queen of Heaven sits as one in darkness.[125]

 

Mr. Langdon also translates a hymn (Tammuz III) which appears to

contain the narrative on which the Assyrian version was founded. The

goddess who descends to Hades, however, is not Ishtar, but the

"sister", Belit-sheri. She is accompanied by various demons--the

"gallu-demon", the "slayer", &c.--and holds a conversation with Tammuz

which, however, is "unintelligible and badly broken". Apparently,

however, he promises to return to earth.

 

... I will go up, as for me I will depart with thee ...

... I will return, unto my mother let us go back.

 

Probably two goddesses originally lamented for Tammuz, as the Egyptian

sisters, Isis and Nepthys, lamented for Osiris, their brother. Ishtar

is referred to as "my mother". Isis figures alternately in the

Egyptian chants as mother, wife, sister, and daughter of Osiris. She

cries, "Come thou to thy wife in peace; her heart fluttereth for thy

love", ... "I am thy wife, made as thou art, the elder sister, soul of

her brother".... "Come thou to us as a babe".... "Lo, thou art as the

Bull of the two goddesses--come thou, child growing in peace, our

lord!"... "Lo! the Bull, begotten of the two cows, Isis and

Nepthys".... "Come thou to the two widowed goddesses".... "Oh child,

lord, first maker of the body".... "Father Osiris."[126]

 

As Ishtar and Belit-sheri weep for Tammuz, so do Isis and Nepthys weep

for Osiris.

 

Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou art prostrate upon thy

bed!

Gods and men ... are weeping for thee at the same time, when

they behold me (Isis).

Lo! I invoke thee with wailing that reacheth high as heaven.

 

Isis is also identified with Hathor (Ishtar) the Cow.... "The cow

weepeth for thee with her voice."[127]

 

There is another phase, however, to the character of the mother

goddess which explains the references to the desertion and slaying of

Tammuz by Ishtar. "She is", says Jastrow, "the goddess of the human

instinct, or passion which accompanies human love. Gilgamesh ...

reproaches her with abandoning the objects of her passion after a

brief period of union." At Ishtar's temple "public maidens accepted

temporary partners, assigned to them by Ishtar".[128] The worship of

all mother goddesses in ancient times was accompanied by revolting

unmoral rites which are referred to in condemnatory terms in various

passages in the Old Testament, especially in connection with the

worship of Ashtoreth, who was identical with Ishtar and the Egyptian

Hathor.

 

Ishtar in the process of time overshadowed all the other female

deities of Babylonia, as did Isis in Egypt. Her name, indeed, which is

Semitic, became in the plural, Ishtaráte, a designation for goddesses

in general. But although she was referred to as the daughter of the

sky, Anu, or the daughter of the moon, Sin or Nannar, she still

retained traces of her ancient character. Originally she was a great

mother goddess, who was worshipped by those who believed that life and

the universe had a female origin in contrast to those who believed in

the theory of male origin. Ishtar is identical with Nina, the fish

goddess, a creature who gave her name to the Sumerian city of Nina and

the Assyrian city of Nineveh. Other forms of the Creatrix included

Mama, or Mami, or Ama, "mother", Aruru, Bau, Gula, and Zerpanituᵐ.

These were all "Preservers" and healers. At the same time they were

"Destroyers", like Nin-sun and the Queen of Hades, Eresh-ki-gal or

Allatu. They were accompanied by shadowy male forms ere they became

wives of strongly individualized gods, or by child gods, their sons,

who might be regarded as "brothers" or "husbands of their mothers", to

use the paradoxical Egyptian term. Similarly Great Father deities had

vaguely defined wives. The "Semitic" Baal, "the lord", was accompanied

by a female reflection of himself--Beltu, "the lady". Shamash, the sun

god, had for wife the shadowy Aa.

 

As has been shown, Ishtar is referred to in a Tammuz hymn as the

mother of the child god of fertility. In an Egyptian hymn the sky

goddess Nut, "the mother" of Osiris, is stated to have "built up life

from her own body".[129] Sri or Lakshmi, the Indian goddess, who

became the wife of Vishnu, as the mother goddess Saraswati, a tribal

deity, became the wife of Brahma, was, according to a Purana

commentator, "the mother of the world ... eternal and

undecaying".[130]

 

The gods, on the other hand, might die annually: the goddesses alone

were immortal. Indra was supposed to perish of old age, but his wife,

Indrani, remained ever young. There were fourteen Indras in every "day

of Brahma", a reference apparently to the ancient conception of Indra

among the Great-Mother-worshipping sections of the Aryo-Indians.[131]

In the _Mahabharata_ the god Shiva, as Mahadeva, commands Indra on

"one of the peaks of Himavat", where they met, to lift up a stone and

join the Indras who had been before him. "And Indra on removing that

stone beheld a cave on the breast of that king of mountains in which

were four others resembling himself." Indra exclaimed in his grief,

"Shall I be even like these?" These five Indras, like the "Seven

Sleepers", awaited the time when they would be called forth. They were

ultimately reborn as the five Pandava warriors.[132]

 

The ferocious, black-faced Scottish mother goddess, Cailleach Bheur,

who appears to be identical with Mala Lith, "Grey Eyebrows" of

Fingalian story, and the English "Black Annis", figures in Irish song

and legend as "The Old Woman of Beare". This "old woman" (Cailleach)

"had", says Professor Kuno Meyer, "seven periods of youth one after

another, so that every man who had lived with her came to die of old

age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and races".

When old age at length came upon her she sang her "swan song", from

which the following lines are extracted:

 

Ebb tide to me as of the sea!

Old age causes me reproach ...

It is riches

Ye love, it is not men:

In the time when _we_ lived

It was men we loved ...

My arms when they are seen

Are bony and thin:

Once they would fondle,

They would be round glorious kings ...

I must take my garment even in the sun:

The time is at hand that shall renew me.[133]

 

Freyja, the Germanic mother goddess, whose car was drawn by cats, had

similarly many lovers. In the Icelandic poem "Lokasenna", Loki taunts

her, saying:

 

Silence, Freyja! Full well I know thee,

And faultless art thou not found;

Of the gods and elves who here are gathered

Each one hast thou made thy mate.

 

Idun, the keeper of the apples of immortal youth, which prevent the

gods growing old, is similarly addressed:

 

Silence, Idun! I swear, of all women

Thou the most wanton art;

Who couldst fling those fair-washed arms of thine

About thy brother's slayer.

 

Frigg, wife of Odin, is satirized as well:

 

Silence, Frigg! Earth's spouse for a husband,

And hast ever yearned after men![134]

 

The goddesses of classic mythology had similar reputations. Aphrodite

(Venus) had many divine and mortal lovers. She links closely with

Astarte and Ashtoreth (Ishtar), and reference has already been made to

her relations with Adonis (Tammuz). These love deities were all as

cruel as they were wayward. When Ishtar wooed the Babylonian hero,

Gilgamesh, he spurned her advances, as has been indicated, saying:

 

On Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,

Thou didst lay affliction every year.

Thou didst love the brilliant Allalu bird

But thou didst smite him and break his wing;

He stands in the woods and cries "O my wing".

 

He likewise charged her with deceiving the lion and the horse, making

reference to obscure myths:

 

Thou didst also love a shepherd of the flock,

Who continually poured out for thee the libation,

And daily slaughtered kids for thee;

But thou didst smite him and didst change him into a leopard,

So that his own sheep boy hunted him,

And his own hounds tore him to pieces.[135]

 

These goddesses were ever prone to afflict human beings who might

offend them or of whom they wearied. Demeter (Ceres) changed

Ascalaphus into an owl and Stellio into a lizard. Rhea (Ops) resembled

 

The tow'red Cybele,

Mother of a hundred gods,

 

the wanton who loved Attis (Adonis). Artemis (Diana) slew her lover

Orion, changed Actaeon into a stag, which was torn to pieces by his

own dogs, and caused numerous deaths by sending a boar to ravage the

fields of Oeneus, king of Calydon. Human sacrifices were frequently

offered to the bloodthirsty "mothers". The most famous victim of

Artemis was the daughter of Agamemnon, "divinely tall and most

divinely fair".[136] Agamemnon had slain a sacred stag, and the

goddess punished him by sending a calm when the war fleet was about to

sail for Troy, with the result that his daughter had to be sacrificed.

Artemis thus sold breezes like the northern wind hags and witches.

 

It used to be customary to account for the similarities manifested by

the various mother goddesses by assuming that there was constant

cultural contact between separate nationalities, and, as a result, a

not inconsiderable amount of "religious borrowing". Greece was

supposed to have received its great goddesses from the western

Semites, who had come under the spell of Babylonian religion.

Archaeological evidence, however, tends to disprove this theory. "The

most recent researches into Mesopotamian history", writes Dr. Farnell,

"establish with certainty the conclusion that there was no direct

political contact possible between the powers in the valley of the

Euphrates and the western shores of the Aegean in the second

millennium B.C. In fact, between the nascent Hellas and the great

world of Mesopotamia there were powerful and possibly independent

strata of cultures interposing."[137]

 

The real connection appears to be the racial one. Among the

Mediterranean Neolithic tribes of Sumeria, Arabia, and Europe, the

goddess cult appears to have been influential. Mother worship was the

predominant characteristic of their religious systems, so that the

Greek goddesses were probably of pre-Hellenic origin, the Celtic of

Iberian, the Egyptian of proto-Egyptian, and the Babylonian of

Sumerian. The northern hillmen, on the other hand, who may be

identified with the "Aryans" of the philologists, were father

worshippers. The Vedic Aryo-Indians worshipped father gods,[138] as

did also the Germanic peoples and certain tribes in the "Hittite

confederacy". Earth spirits were males, like the Teutonic elves, the

Aryo-Indian Ribhus, and the Burkans, "masters", of the present-day

Buriats, a Mongolian people. When the father-worshipping peoples

invaded the dominions of the mother-worshipping peoples, they

introduced their strongly individualized gods, but they did not

displace the mother goddesses. "The Aryan Hellenes", says Dr. Farnell,

"were able to plant their Zeus and Poseidon on the high hill of

Athens, but not to overthrow the supremacy of Athena in the central

shrine and in the aboriginal soul of the Athenian people."[139] As in

Egypt, the beliefs of the father worshippers, represented by the

self-created Ptah, were fused with the beliefs of the mother

worshippers, who adored Isis, Mut, Neith, and others. In Babylonia

this process of racial and religious fusion was well advanced before

the dawn of history. Ea, who had already assumed manifold forms, may

have originally been the son or child lover of Damkina, "Lady of the

Deep", as was Tammuz of Ishtar. As the fish, Ea was the offspring of

the mother river.

 

The mother worshippers recognized male as well as female deities, but

regarded the great goddess as the First Cause. Although the primeval

spirits were grouped in four pairs in Egypt, and apparently in

Babylonia also, the female in the first pair was more strongly

individualized than the male. The Egyptian Nu is vaguer than his

consort Nut, and the Babylonian Apsu than his consort Tiamat. Indeed,

in the narrative of the Creation Tablets of Babylon, which will

receive full treatment in a later chapter, Tiamat, the great mother,

is the controlling spirit. She is more powerful and ferocious than

Apsu, and lives longer. After Apsu's death she elevates one of her

brood, named Kingu, to be her consort, a fact which suggests that in

the Ishtar-Tammuz myth survives the influence of exceedingly ancient

modes of thought. Like Tiamat, Ishtar is also a great battle heroine,

and in this capacity she was addressed as "the lady of majestic rank

exalted over all gods". This was no idle flattery on the part of

worshippers, but a memory of her ancient supremacy.

 

Reference has been made to the introduction of Tammuz worship into

Jerusalem. Ishtar, as Queen of Heaven, was also adored by the

backsliding Israelites as a deity of battle and harvest. When Jeremiah

censured the people for burning incense and serving gods "whom they

knew not", he said, "neither they, ye, nor your fathers", they made

answer: "Since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and

to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and

have been consumed by the sword and the famine". The women took a

leading part in these practices, but refused to accept all the blame,

saying, "When we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out

drink offerings unto her, did we make our cakes and pour out drink

offerings unto her without our men?"[140] That the husbands, and the

children even, assisted at the ceremony is made evident in another

reference to goddess worship: "The children gather wood, and the

fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes

to the queen of heaven".[141]

 

Jastrow suggests that the women of Israel wept for Tammuz, offered

cakes to the mother goddess, &c., because "in all religious bodies ...

women represent the conservative element; among them religious customs

continue in practice after they have been abandoned by men".[142] The

evidence of Jeremiah, however, shows that the men certainly

co-operated at the archaic ceremonials. In lighting the fires with the

"vital spark", they apparently acted in imitation of the god of

fertility. The women, on the other hand, represented the reproductive

harvest goddess in providing the food supply. In recognition of her

gift, they rewarded the goddess by offering her the cakes prepared

from the newly ground wheat and barley--the "first fruits of the

harvest". As the corn god came as a child, the children began the

ceremony by gathering the wood for the sacred fire. When the women

mourned for Tammuz, they did so evidently because the death of the god

was lamented by the goddess Ishtar. It would appear, therefore, that

the suggestion regarding the "conservative element" should really

apply to the immemorial practices of folk religion. These differed

from the refined ceremonies of the official cult in Babylonia, where

there were suitable temples and organized bands of priests and

priestesses. But the official cult received no recognition in

Palestine; the cakes intended for a goddess were not offered up in the

temple of Abraham's God, but "in the streets of Jerusalem" and those

of other cities.[143]

 

The obvious deduction seems to be that in ancient times women

everywhere played a prominent part in the ceremonial folk worship of

the Great Mother goddess, while the men took the lesser part of the

god whom she had brought into being and afterwards received as

"husband of his mother". This may account for the high social status

of women among goddess worshippers, like the representatives of the

Mediterranean race, whose early religion was not confined to temples,

but closely associated with the acts of everyday life.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

WARS OF THE CITY STATES OF SUMER AND AKKAD

 

 

Civilization well advanced--The Patesi--Prominent City

States--Surroundings of Babylonia--The Elamites--Biblical References

to Susa--The Sumerian Temperament--Fragmentary Records--City States

of Kish and Opis--A Shopkeeper who became a Queen--Goddess

Worship--Tammuz as Nin-Girsu--Great Dynasty of Lagash--Ur-Nina and

his Descendants--A Napoleonic Conqueror--Golden Age of Sumerian

Art--The First Reformer in History--His Rise and Fall--The Dynasty

of Erech--Sargon of Akkad--The Royal Gardener--Sargon Myth in

India--A Great Empire--The King who Purchased Land--Naram Sin the

Conqueror--Disastrous Foreign Raid--Lagash again Prominent--Gudea

the Temple Builder--Dynasty of Ur--Dynasty of Isin--Another Gardener

becomes King--Rise of Babylon--Humanized Deities--Why Sumerian Gods wore Beards.