Myths of Babylonia and Assyria 7

Myths of Babylonia and Assyria 7

O Varuna, whatever the offence may be

That we as men commit against the heavenly folk,

When through our want of thought we violate thy laws,

Chastise us not, O god, for that iniquity.

 

_Rigveda_, vii, 89.[73]

 

Shamash was similarly exalted in Babylonian hymns:

 

The progeny of those who deal unjustly will not prosper.

What their mouth utters in thy presence

Thou wilt destroy, what issues from their mouth thou wilt

dissipate.

Thou knowest their transgressions, the plan of the wicked thou

rejectest.

All, whoever they be, are in thy care....

He who takes no bribe, who cares for the oppressed,

Is favoured by Shamash,--his life shall be prolonged.[74]

 

The worshippers of Varuna and Mitra in the Punjab did not cremate

their dead like those who exalted the rival fire god Agni. The grave

was the "house of clay", as in Babylonia. Mitra, who was identical

with Yama, ruled over departed souls in the "Land of the Pitris"

(Fathers), which was reached by crossing the mountains and the rushing

stream of death.[75] As we have seen, the Babylonian solar god Nergal

was also the lord of the dead.

 

As Ma-banda-anna, "the boat of the sky", Shamash links with the

Egyptian sun god Ra, whose barque sailed over the heavens by day and

through the underworld of darkness and death during the night. The

consort of Shamash was Aa, and his attendants were Kittu and Mesharu,

"Truth" and "Righteousness".

 

Like the Hittites, the Babylonians had also a sun goddess: her name

was Nin-sun, which Jastrow renders "the annihilating lady". At Erech

she had a shrine in the temple of the sky god Anu.

 

We can trace in Babylonia, as in Egypt, the early belief that life in

the Universe had a female origin. Nin-sun links with Ishtar, whose

Sumerian name is Nana. Ishtar appears to be identical with the

Egyptian Hathor, who, as Sekhet, slaughtered the enemies of the sun

god Ra. She was similarly the goddess of maternity, and is depicted in

this character, like Isis and other goddesses of similar character,

suckling a babe. Another Babylonian lady of the gods was Ama, Mama, or

Mami, "the creatress of the seed of mankind", and was "probably so

called as the 'mother' of all things".[76]

 

A characteristic atmospheric deity was Ramman, the Rimmon of the

Bible, the Semitic Addu, Adad, Hadad, or Dadu. He was not a presiding

deity in any pantheon, but was identified with Enlil at Nippur. As a

hammer god, he was imported by the Semites from the hills. He was a

wind and thunder deity, a rain bringer, a corn god, and a god of

battle like Thor, Jupiter, Tarku, Indra, and others, who were all sons

of the sky.

 

In this brief review of the representative deities of early Babylonia,

it will be seen that most gods link with Anu, Ea, and Enlil, whose

attributes they symbolized in various forms. The prominence accorded

to an individual deity depended on local conditions, experiences, and

influences. Ceremonial practices no doubt varied here and there, but

although one section might exalt Ea and another Shamash, the religious

faith of the people as a whole did not differ to any marked extent;

they served the gods according to their lights, so that life might be

prolonged and made prosperous, for the land of death and "no return"

was regarded as a place of gloom and misery.

 

When the Babylonians appear before us in the early stages of the

historical period they had reached that stage of development set forth

so vividly in the _Orations_ of Isocrates: "Those of the gods who are

the source to us of good things have the title of Olympians; those

whose department is that of calamities and punishments have harsher

titles: to the first class both private persons and states erect

altars and temples; the second is not worshipped either with prayers

or burnt sacrifices, but in their case we perform ceremonies of

riddance".[77]

 

The Sumerians, like the Ancient Egyptians, developed their deities,

who reflected the growth of culture, from vague spirit groups, which,

like ghosts, were hostile to mankind. Those spirits who could be

propitiated were exalted as benevolent deities; those who could not be

bargained with were regarded as evil gods and goddesses. A better

understanding of the character of Babylonian deities will therefore be

obtained by passing the demons and evil spirits under review.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV.

 

DEMONS, FAIRIES, AND GHOSTS

 

 

Spirits in Everything and Everywhere--The Bringers of Luck and

Misfortune--Germ Theory Anticipated--Early Gods indistinguishable

from Demons--Repulsive form of Ea--Spirit Groups as Attendants of

Deities--Egyptian, Indian, Greek, and Germanic parallels--Elder Gods

as Evil Gods--Animal Demons--The Babylonian

"Will-o'-the-Wisp"--"Foreign Devils"--Elves and Fairies--Demon

Lovers--"Adam's first wife, Lilith"--Children Charmed against Evil

Spirits--The Demon of Nightmare--Ghosts as Enemies of the

Living--The Vengeful Dead Mother in Babylonia, India, Europe, and

Mexico--Burial Contrast--Calling Back the Dead--Fate of Childless

Ghosts--Religious Need for Offspring--Hags and Giants and Composite

Monsters--Tempest Fiends--Legend of Adapa and the Storm Demon--Wind

Hags of Ancient Britain--Tyrolese Storm Maidens--Zu Bird Legend and

Indian Garuda Myth--Legend of the Eagle and the Serpent--The Snake

Mother Goddess--Demons and the Moon God--Plague

Deities--Classification of Spirits, and Egyptian, Arabian, and

Scottish parallels--Traces of Progress from Animism to Monotheism.

 

 

The memorable sermon preached by Paul to the Athenians when he stood

"in the midst of Mars' hill", could have been addressed with equal

appropriateness to the ancient Sumerians and Akkadians. "I perceive",

he declared, "that in all things ye are too superstitious.... God that

made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of

heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is

worshipped with men's hands as though he needed any thing, seeing he

giveth to all life, and breath, and all things ... for in him we live,

and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have

said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the

offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto

gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device."[78]

 

Babylonian temples were houses of the gods in the literal sense; the

gods were supposed to dwell in them, their spirits having entered into

the graven images or blocks of stone. It is probable that like the

Ancient Egyptians they believed a god had as many spirits as he had

attributes. The gods, as we have said, appear to have evolved from

early spirit groups. All the world swarmed with spirits, which

inhabited stones and trees, mountains and deserts, rivers and ocean,

the air, the sky, the stars, and the sun and moon. The spirits

controlled Nature: they brought light and darkness, sunshine and

storm, summer and winter; they were manifested in the thunderstorm,

the sandstorm, the glare of sunset, and the wraiths of mist rising

from the steaming marshes. They controlled also the lives of men and

women. The good spirits were the source of luck. The bad spirits

caused misfortunes, and were ever seeking to work evil against the

Babylonian. Darkness was peopled by demons and ghosts of the dead. The

spirits of disease were ever lying in wait to clutch him with cruel

invisible hands.

 

Some modern writers, who are too prone to regard ancient peoples from

a twentieth-century point of view, express grave doubts as to whether

"intelligent Babylonians" really believed that spirits came down in

the rain and entered the soil to rise up before men's eyes as stalks

of barley or wheat. There is no reason for supposing that they thought

otherwise. The early folks based their theories on the accumulated

knowledge of their age. They knew nothing regarding the composition of

water or the atmosphere, of the cause of thunder and lightning, or of

the chemical changes effected in soils by the action of bacteria. They

attributed all natural phenomena to the operations of spirits or gods.

In believing that certain demons caused certain diseases, they may be

said to have achieved distinct progress, for they anticipated the germ

theory. They made discoveries, too, which have been approved and

elaborated in later times when they lit sacred fires, bathed in sacred

waters, and used oils and herbs to charm away spirits of pestilence.

Indeed, many folk cures, which were originally associated with magical

ceremonies, are still practised in our own day. They were found to be

effective by early observers, although they were unable to explain why

and how cures were accomplished, like modern scientific investigators.

 

In peopling the Universe with spirits, the Babylonians, like other

ancient folks, betrayed that tendency to symbolize everything which

has ever appealed to the human mind. Our painters and poets and

sculptors are greatest when they symbolize their ideals and ideas and

impressions, and by so doing make us respond to their moods. Their

"beauty and their terror are sublime". But what may seem poetic to us,

was invariably a grim reality to the Babylonians. The statue or

picture was not merely a work of art but a manifestation of the god or

demon. As has been said, they believed that the spirit of the god

inhabited the idol; the frown of the brazen image was the frown of the

wicked demon. They entertained as much dread of the winged and

human-headed bulls guarding the entrance to the royal palace as do

some of the Arab workmen who, in our own day, assist excavators to

rescue them from sandy mounds in which they have been hidden for long

centuries.

 

When an idol was carried away from a city by an invading army, it was

believed that the god himself had been taken prisoner, and was

therefore unable any longer to help his people.

 

In the early stages of Sumerian culture, the gods and goddesses who

formed groups were indistinguishable from demons. They were vaguely

defined, and had changing shapes. When attempts were made to depict

them they were represented in many varying forms. Some were winged

bulls or lions with human heads; others had even more remarkable

composite forms. The "dragon of Babylon", for instance, which was

portrayed on walls of temples, had a serpent's head, a body covered

with scales, the fore legs of a lion, hind legs of an eagle, and a

long wriggling serpentine tail. Ea had several monster forms. The

following description of one of these is repulsive enough:--

 

The head is the head of a serpent,

From his nostrils mucus trickles,

His mouth is beslavered with water;

The ears are like those of a basilisk,

His horns are twisted into three curls,

He wears a veil in his head band,

The body is a suh-fish full of stars,

The base of his feet are claws,

The sole of his foot has no heel,

His name is Sassu-wunnu,

A sea monster, a form of Ea.

 

_R.C. Thompson's Translation._[79]

 

Even after the gods were given beneficent attributes to reflect the

growth of culture, and were humanized, they still retained many of

their savage characteristics. Bel Enlil and his fierce son, Nergal,

were destroyers of mankind; the storm god desolated the land; the sky

god deluged it with rain; the sea raged furiously, ever hungering for

human victims; the burning sun struck down its victims; and the floods

played havoc with the dykes and houses of human beings. In Egypt the

sun god Ra was similarly a "producer of calamity", the composite

monster god Sokar was "the lord of fear".[80] Osiris in prehistoric

times had been "a dangerous god", and some of the Pharaohs sought

protection against him in the charms inscribed in their tombs.[81] The

Indian Shiva, "the Destroyer", in the old religious poems has also

primitive attributes of like character.

 

The Sumerian gods never lost their connection with the early spirit

groups. These continued to be represented by their attendants, who

executed a deity's stern and vengeful decrees. In one of the

Babylonian charms the demons are referred to as "the spleen of the

gods"--the symbols of their wrathful emotions and vengeful desires.

Bel Enlil, the air and earth god, was served by the demons of disease,

"the beloved sons of Bel", which issued from the Underworld to attack

mankind. Nergal, the sulky and ill-tempered lord of death and

destruction, who never lost his demoniac character, swept over the

land, followed by the spirits of pestilence, sunstroke, weariness, and

destruction. Anu, the sky god, had "spawned" at creation the demons of

cold and rain and darkness. Even Ea and his consort, Damkina, were

served by groups of devils and giants, which preyed upon mankind in

bleak and desolate places when night fell. In the ocean home of Ea

were bred the "seven evil spirits" of tempest--the gaping dragon, the

leopard which preyed upon children, the great Beast, the terrible

serpent, &c.

 

In Indian mythology Indra was similarly followed by the stormy Maruts,

and fierce Rudra by the tempestuous Rudras. In Teutonic mythology Odin

is the "Wild Huntsman in the Raging Host". In Greek mythology the

ocean furies attend upon fickle Poseidon. Other examples of this kind

could be multiplied.

 

As we have seen (Chapter II) the earliest group of Babylonian deities

consisted probably of four pairs of gods and goddesses as in Egypt.

The first pair was Apsu-Rishtu and Tiamat, who personified the

primordial deep. Now the elder deities in most mythologies--the

"grandsires" and "grandmothers" and "fathers" and "mothers"--are ever

the most powerful and most vengeful. They appear to represent

primitive "layers" of savage thought. The Greek Cronos devours even

his own children, and, as the late Andrew Lang has shown, there are

many parallels to this myth among primitive peoples in various parts

of the world.

 

Lang regarded the Greek survival as an example of "the conservatism of

the religious instinct".[82] The grandmother of the Teutonic deity Tyr

was a fierce giantess with nine hundred heads; his father was an enemy

of the gods. In Scotland the hag-mother of winter and storm and

darkness is the enemy of growth and all life, and she raises storms to

stop the grass growing, to slay young animals, and prevent the union

of her son with his fair bride. Similarly the Babylonian chaos

spirits, Apsu and Tiamat, the father and mother of the gods, resolve

to destroy their offspring, because they begin to set the Universe in

order. Tiamat, the female dragon, is more powerful than her husband

Apsu, who is slain by his son Ea. She summons to her aid the gods of

evil, and creates also a brood of monsters--serpents, dragons, vipers,

fish men, raging hounds, &c.--so as to bring about universal and

enduring confusion and evil. Not until she is destroyed can the

beneficent gods establish law and order and make the earth habitable

and beautiful.

 

But although Tiamat was slain, the everlasting battle between the

forces of good and evil was ever waged in the Babylonian world.

Certain evil spirits were let loose at certain periods, and they

strove to accomplish the destruction of mankind and his works. These

invisible enemies were either charmed away by performing magical

ceremonies, or by invoking the gods to thwart them and bind them.

 

Other spirits inhabited the bodies of animals and were ever hovering

near. The ghosts of the dead and male and female demons were birds,

like the birds of Fate which sang to Siegfried. When the owl raised

its melancholy voice in the darkness the listener heard the spirit of

a departed mother crying for her child. Ghosts and evil spirits

wandered through the streets in darkness; they haunted empty houses;

they fluttered through the evening air as bats; they hastened, moaning

dismally, across barren wastes searching for food or lay in wait for

travellers; they came as roaring lions and howling jackals, hungering

for human flesh. The "shedu" was a destructive bull which might slay

man wantonly or as a protector of temples. Of like character was the

"lamassu", depicted as a winged bull with human head, the protector of

palaces; the "alu" was a bull-like demon of tempest, and there were

also many composite, distorted, or formless monsters which were

vaguely termed "seizers" or "overthrowers", the Semitic "labashu" and

"ach-chazu", the Sumerian "dimmea" and "dimme-kur". A dialectic form

of "gallu" or devil was "mulla". Professor Pinches thinks it not

improbable that "mulla" may be connected with the word "mula", meaning

"star", and suggests that it referred to a "will-o'-the-wisp".[83] In

these islands, according to an old rhyme,

 

Some call him Robin Good-fellow,

Hob-goblin, or mad Crisp,

And some againe doe tearme him oft

By name of Will the Wisp.

 

Other names are "Kitty", "Peg", and "Jack with a lantern". "Poor

Robin" sang:

 

I should indeed as soon expect

That Peg-a-lantern would direct

Me straightway home on misty night

As wand'ring stars, quite out of sight.

 

In Shakespeare's _Tempest_[84] a sailor exclaims: "Your fairy, which,

you say, is a harmless fairy, has done little better than played the

Jack with us". Dr. Johnson commented that the reference was to "Jack

with a lantern". Milton wrote also of the "wandering fire",

 

Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,

Hovering and blazing with delusive light,

Misleads th' amaz'd night wand'rer from his way

To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool;

There swallowed up and lost from succour far.[85]

 

"When we stick in the mire", sang Drayton, "he doth with laughter

leave us." These fires were also "fallen stars", "death fires", and

"fire drakes":

 

So have I seen a fire drake glide along

Before a dying man, to point his grave,

And in it stick and hide.[86]

 

Pliny referred to the wandering lights as stars.[87] The Sumerian

"mulla" was undoubtedly an evil spirit. In some countries the "fire

drake" is a bird with gleaming breast: in Babylonia it assumed the

form of a bull, and may have had some connection with the bull of

lshtar. Like the Indian "Dasyu" and "Dasa",[88] Gallu was applied in

the sense of "foreign devil" to human and superhuman adversaries of

certain monarchs. Some of the supernatural beings resemble our elves

and fairies and the Indian Rakshasas. Occasionally they appear in

comely human guise; at other times they are vaguely monstrous. The

best known of this class is Lilith, who, according to Hebrew

tradition, preserved in the Talmud, was the demon lover of Adam. She

has been immortalized by Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

 

Of Adam's first wife Lilith, it is told

(The witch he loved before the gift of Eve)

That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,

And her enchanted hair was the first gold.

And still she sits, young while the earth is old,

And, subtly of herself contemplative,

Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,

Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where

Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent

And soft shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?

Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went

Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent

And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

 

Lilith is the Babylonian Lilithu, a feminine form of Lilu, the

Sumerian Lila. She resembles Surpanakha of the _Ramayana_, who made

love to Rama and Lakshmana, and the sister of the demon Hidimva, who

became enamoured of Bhima, one of the heroes of the _Mahabharata_,[89]

and the various fairy lovers of Europe who lured men to eternal

imprisonment inside mountains, or vanished for ever when they were

completely under their influence, leaving them demented. The elfin

Lilu similarly wooed young women, like the Germanic Laurin of the

"Wonderful Rose Garden",[90] who carried away the fair lady Kunhild to

his underground dwelling amidst the Tyrolese mountains, or left them

haunting the place of their meetings, searching for him in vain:

 

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As ere beneath the waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon lover...

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey dew hath fed

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

 

_Coleridge's Kubla Khan._

 

Another materializing spirit of this class was Ardat Lili, who appears

to have wedded human beings like the swan maidens, the mermaids, and

Nereids of the European folk tales, and the goddess Ganga, who for a

time was the wife of King Shantanu of the _Mahabharata_.[91]

 

The Labartu, to whom we have referred, was a female who haunted

mountains and marshes; like the fairies and hags of Europe, she stole

or afflicted children, who accordingly had to wear charms round their

necks for protection. Seven of these supernatural beings were reputed

to be daughters of Anu, the sky god.

 

The Alu, a storm deity, was also a spirit which caused nightmare. It

endeavoured to smother sleepers like the Scandinavian hag Mara, and

similarly deprived them of power to move. In Babylonia this evil

spirit might also cause sleeplessness or death by hovering near a bed.

In shape it might be as horrible and repulsive as the Egyptian ghosts

which caused children to die from fright or by sucking out the breath of life.