Myths of Babylonia and Assyria 9

Myths of Babylonia and Assyria 9

Gods and men before the face of the gods are weeping for

thee at the same time, when they behold me!...

All thy sister goddesses are at thy side and behind thy couch,

Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou are prostrate upon

thy bed!...

Live before us, desiring to behold thee.[107]

 

It was believed to be essential that human beings should share the

universal sorrow caused by the death of a god. If they remained

unsympathetic, the deities would punish them as enemies. Worshippers

of nature gods, therefore, based their ceremonial practices on natural

phenomena. "The dread of the worshippers that the neglect of the usual

ritual would be followed by disaster, is particularly intelligible",

writes Professor Robertson Smith, "if they regarded the necessary

operations of agriculture as involving the violent extinction of a

particle of divine life."[108] By observing their ritual, the

worshippers won the sympathy and co-operation of deities, or exercised

a magical control over nature.

 

The Babylonian myth of Tammuz, the dying god, bears a close

resemblance to the Greek myth of Adonis. It also links with the myth

of Osiris. According to Professor Sayce, Tammuz is identical with

"Daonus or Daos, the shepherd of Pantibibla", referred to by Berosus

as the ruler of one of the mythical ages of Babylonia. We have

therefore to deal with Tammuz in his twofold character as a patriarch

and a god of fertility.

 

The Adonis version of the myth may be summarized briefly. Ere the god

was born, his mother, who was pursued by her angry sire, as the river

goddesses of the folk tales are pursued by the well demons,

transformed herself into a tree. Adonis sprang from the trunk of this

tree, and Aphrodite, having placed the child in a chest, committed him

to the care of Persephone, queen of Hades, who resembles the

Babylonian Eresh-ki-gal. Persephone desired to retain the young god,

and Aphrodite (Ishtar) appealed to Zeus (Anu), who decreed that Adonis

should spend part of the year with one goddess and part of the year

with the other.

 

It is suggested that the myth of Adonis was derived in post-Homeric

times by the Greeks indirectly from Babylonia through the Western

Semites, the Semitic title "Adon", meaning "lord", having been

mistaken for a proper name. This theory, however, cannot be accepted

without qualifications. It does not explain the existence of either

the Phrygian myth of Attis, which was developed differently from the

Tammuz myth, or the Celtic story of "Diarmid and the boar", which

belongs to the archaeological "Hunting Period". There are traces in

Greek mythology of pre-Hellenic myths about dying harvest deities,

like Hyakinthos and Erigone, for instance, who appear to have been

mourned for. There is every possibility, therefore, that the Tammuz

ritual may have been attached to a harvest god of the pre-Hellenic

Greeks, who received at the same time the new name of Adonis. Osiris

of Egypt resembles Tammuz, but his Mesopotamian origin has not been

proved. It would appear probable that Tammuz, Attis, Osiris, and the

deities represented by Adonis and Diarmid were all developed from an

archaic god of fertility and vegetation, the central figure of a myth

which was not only as ancient as the knowledge and practice of

agriculture, but had existence even in the "Hunting Period". Traces of

the Tammuz-Osiris story in various forms are found all over the area

occupied by the Mediterranean or Brown race from Sumeria to the

British Isles. Apparently the original myth was connected with tree

and water worship and the worship of animals. Adonis sprang from a

tree; the body of Osiris was concealed in a tree which grew round the

sea-drifted chest in which he was concealed. Diarmid concealed himself

in a tree when pursued by Finn. The blood of Tammuz, Osiris, and

Adonis reddened the swollen rivers which fertilized the soil. Various

animals were associated with the harvest god, who appears to have been

manifested from time to time in different forms, for his spirit

pervaded all nature. In Egypt the soul of Osiris entered the Apis bull

or the ram of Mendes.

 

Tammuz in the hymns is called "the pre-eminent steer of heaven", and a

popular sacrifice was "a white kid of the god Tammuz", which, however,

might be substituted by a sucking pig. Osiris had also associations

with swine, and the Egyptians, according to Herodotus, sacrificed a

pig to him annually. When Set at full moon hunted the boar in the

Delta marshes, he probably hunted the boar form of Osiris, whose human

body had been recovered from the sacred tree by Isis. As the soul of

Bata, the hero of the Egyptian folk tale,[109] migrated from the

blossom to the bull, and the bull to the tree, so apparently did the

soul of Osiris pass from incarnation to incarnation. Set, the demon

slayer of the harvest god, had also a boar form; he was the black pig

who devoured the waning moon and blinded the Eye of Ra.

 

In his character as a long-lived patriarch, Tammuz, the King Daonus or

Daos of Berosus, reigned in Babylonia for 36,000 years. When he died,

he departed to Hades or the Abyss. Osiris, after reigning over the

Egyptians, became Judge of the Dead.

 

Tammuz of the Sumerian hymns, however, is the Adonis-like god who

lived on earth for a part of the year as the shepherd and

agriculturist so dearly beloved by the goddess Ishtar. Then he died so

that he might depart to the realm of Eresh-ki-gal (Persephone), queen

of Hades. According to one account, his death was caused by the fickle

Ishtar. When that goddess wooed Gilgamesh, the Babylonian Hercules, he

upbraided her, saying:

 

On Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,

Thou didst lay affliction every year.

 

_King's Translation_.

 

References in the Sumerian hymns suggest that there also existed a

form of the legend which gave an account of the slaying of the young

god by someone else than Ishtar. The slayer may have been a Set-like

demon--perhaps Nin-shach, who appears to have symbolized the

destroying influence of the sun. He was a war deity, and his name,

Professor Pinches says, "is conjectured to mean 'lord of the wild

boar'". There is no direct evidence, however, to connect Tammuz's

slayer with the boar which killed Adonis. Ishtar's innocence is

emphasized by the fact that she mourned for her youthful lover,

crying:

 

Oh hero, my lord, ah me! I will say;

Food I eat not ... water I drink not ...

Because of the exalted one of the nether world, him of the

radiant face, yea radiant,

Of the exalted one of the nether world, him of the dove-like

voice, yea dove-like.[110]

 

The Phrygian Attis met his death, according to one legend, by

self-mutilation under a sacred tree. Another account sets forth,

however, that he was slain by a boar. The Greek Adonis was similarly

killed by a boar. This animal was a form of Ares (Mars), god of war

and tempest, who also loved Aphrodite (Ishtar). The Celtic Diarmid, in

his character as a love god, with lunar attributes, was slain by "the

green boar", which appears to have been one of the animals of a

ferocious Hag, an earth and air "mother" with various names. In one of

the many Fingalian stories the animal is

 

... That venomous boar, and he so fierce,

That Grey Eyebrows had with her herd of swine.[111]

 

Diarmid had eloped with the wife of Finn-mac-Coul (Fingal), who, like

Ares, plotted to bring about his rival's death, and accordingly set

the young hero to hunt the boar. As a thunder god Finn carried a

hammer with which he smote his shield; the blows were heard in

Lochlann (Scandinavia). Diarmid, like Tammuz, the "god of the tender

voice and shining eyes", had much beauty. When he expired, Finn cried:

 

No maiden will raise her eye

Since the mould has gone over thy visage fair...

Blue without rashness in thine eye!

Passion and beauty behind thy curls!...

Oh, yesternight it was green the hillock,

Red is it this day with Diarmid's blood.[112]

 

Tammuz died with the dying vegetation, and Diarmid expired when the

hills apparently were assuming their purple tints.[113] The month of

Tammuz wailings was from 20th June till 20th July, when the heat and

dryness brought forth the demons of pestilence. The mourners chanted:

 

He has gone, he has gone to the bosom of the earth,

And the dead are numerous in the land....

Men are filled with sorrow: they stagger by day in gloom ...

In the month of thy year which brings not peace hast thou gone.

Thou hast gone on a journey that makes an end of thy people.

 

The following extract contains a reference to the slaying of the god:

 

The holy one of Ishtar, in the middle of the year the fields

languish...

The shepherd, the wise one, the man of sorrows, why have they

slain?...

In his temple, in his inhabited domain,

The child, lord of knowledge, abides no more...

In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of life perishes.

 

There is wailing for Tammuz "at the sacred cedar, where the mother

bore thee", a reference which connects the god, like Adonis and

Osiris, with tree worship:

 

The wailing is for the herbs: the first lament is, "they are not

produced".

The wailing is for the grain, ears are not produced.

The wailing is for the habitations, for the flocks which bring

forth no more.

The wailing is for the perishing wedded ones; for the perishing

children; the dark-headed people create no more.

 

The wailing is also for the shrunken river, the parched meadows, the

fishpools, the cane brakes, the forests, the plains, the gardens, and

the palace, which all suffer because the god of fertility has

departed. The mourner cries:

 

How long shall the springing of verdure be restrained?

How long shall the putting forth of leaves be held back?

 

Whither went Tammuz? His destination has already been referred to as

"the bosom of the earth", and in the Assyrian version of the "Descent

of Ishtar" he dwells in "the house of darkness" among the dead, "where

dust is their nourishment and their food mud", and "the light is never

seen"--the gloomy Babylonian Hades. In one of the Sumerian hymns,

however, it is stated that Tammuz "upon the flood was cast out". The

reference may be to the submarine "house of Ea", or the Blessed Island

to which the Babylonian Noah was carried. In this Hades bloomed the

nether "garden of Adonis".

 

The following extract refers to the garden of Damu (Tammuz)[114]:--

 

Damu his youth therein slumbers ...

Among the garden flowers he slumbers; among the garden flowers

he is cast away ...

Among the tamarisks he slumbers, with woe he causes us to be

satiated.

 

Although Tammuz of the hymns was slain, he returned again from Hades.

Apparently he came back as a child. He is wailed for as "child, Lord

Gishzida", as well as "my hero Damu". In his lunar character the

Egyptian Osiris appeared each month as "the child surpassingly

beautiful"; the Osiris bull was also a child of the moon; "it was

begotten", says Plutarch, "by a ray of generative light falling from

the moon". When the bull of Attis was sacrificed his worshippers were

drenched with its blood, and were afterwards ceremonially fed with

milk, as they were supposed to have "renewed their youth" and become

children. The ancient Greek god Eros (Cupid) was represented as a

wanton boy or handsome youth. Another god of fertility, the Irish

Angus, who resembles Eros, is called "the ever young"; he slumbers

like Tammuz and awakes in the Spring.

 

Apparently it was believed that the child god, Tammuz, returned from

the earlier Sumerian Paradise of the Deep, and grew into full manhood

in a comparatively brief period, like Vyasa and other super-men of

Indian mythology. A couplet from a Tammuz hymn says tersely:

 

In his infancy in a sunken boat he lay.

In his manhood in the submerged grain he lay.[115]

 

The "boat" may be the "chest" in which Adonis was concealed by

Aphrodite when she confided him to the care of Persephone, queen of

Hades, who desired to retain the young god, but was compelled by Zeus

to send him back to the goddess of love and vegetation. The fact that

Ishtar descended to Hades in quest of Tammuz may perhaps explain the

symbolic references in hymns to mother goddesses being in sunken boats

also when their powers were in abeyance, as were those of the god for

part of each year. It is possible, too, that the boat had a lunar and

a solar significance. Khonsu, the Egyptian moon god, for instance, was

associated with the Spring sun, being a deity of fertility and

therefore a corn spirit; he was a form of Osiris, the Patriarch, who

sojourned on earth to teach mankind how to grow corn and cultivate

fruit trees. In the Egyptian legend Osiris received the corn seeds

from Isis, which suggests that among Great-Mother-worshipping peoples,

it was believed that agricultural civilization had a female origin.

The same myths may have been attached to corn gods and corn goddesses,

associated with water, sun, moon, and stars.

 

That there existed in Babylonia at an extremely remote period an

agricultural myth regarding a Patriarch of divine origin who was

rescued from a boat in his childhood, is suggested by the legend which

was attached to the memory of the usurper King Sargon of Akkad. It

runs as follows:

 

"I am Sargon, the mighty King of Akkad. My mother was a

vestal (priestess), my father an alien, whose brother inhabited

the

mountain.... When my mother had conceived me, she bare

me in a hidden place. She laid me in a vessel of rushes, stopped

the door thereof with pitch, and cast me adrift on the river....

The river floated me to Akki, the water drawer, who, in drawing

water, drew me forth. Akki, the water drawer, educated me as

his son, and made me his gardener. As a gardener, I was beloved

by the goddess Ishtar."

 

It is unlikely that this story was invented by Sargon. Like the many

variants of it found in other countries, it was probably founded on a

form of the Tammuz-Adonis myth. Indeed, a new myth would not have

suited Sargon's purpose so well as the adaptation of an old one, which

was more likely to make popular appeal when connected with his name.

The references to the goddess Ishtar, and Sargon's early life as a

gardener, suggest that the king desired to be remembered as an

agricultural Patriarch, if not of divine, at any rate of semi-divine

origin.

 

What appears to be an early form of the widespread Tammuz myth is the

Teutonic legend regarding the mysterious child who came over the sea

to inaugurate a new era of civilization and instruct the people how to

grow corn and become great warriors. The Northern peoples, as

archaeological evidence suggests, derived their knowledge of

agriculture, and therefore their agricultural myths, from the

Neolithic representatives of the Mediterranean race with whom they

came into contact. There can be no doubt but that the Teutonic legend

refers to the introduction of agriculture. The child is called "Scef"

or "Sceaf", which signifies "Sheaf", or "Scyld, the son of Sceaf".

Scyld is the patriarch of the Scyldings, the Danes, a people of mixed

origin. In the Anglo-Saxon _Beowulf_ poem, the reference is to

"Scyld", but Ethelweard, William of Malmesbury, and others adhered to

"Sceaf" as the name of the Patriarch of the Western Saxons.

 

The legend runs that one day a boat was seen approaching the shore; it

was not propelled by oars or sail. In it lay a child fast asleep, his

head pillowed upon a sheaf of grain. He was surrounded by armour,

treasure, and various implements, including the fire-borer. The child

was reared by the people who found him, and he became a great

instructor and warrior and ruled over the tribe as king. In _Beowulf_

Scyld is the father of the elder Beowulf, whose grandson Hrothgar

built the famous Hall. The poem opens with a reference to the

patriarch "Scyld of the Sheaf". When he died, his body, according to

the request he had made, was laid in a ship which was set adrift:

 

Upon his breast lay many treasures which were to travel with him

into the power of the flood. Certainly they (the mourners)

furnished him with no less of gifts, of tribal treasures, than

those had done who, in his early days, started him over the sea

alone, child as he was. Moreover, they set besides a

gold-embroidered standard high above his head, and let the flood

bear him--gave him to the sea. Their soul was sad, their spirit

sorrowful. Who received that load, men, chiefs of council, heroes

under heaven, cannot for certain tell.[116]

 

Sceaf or Scyld is identical with Yngve, the patriarch of the Ynglings;

with Frey, the harvest and boar god, son of Njord,[117] the sea god;

and with Hermod, referred to as follows in the Eddic "Lay of Hyndla":

 

To some grants he wealth, to his children war fame,

Word skill to many and wisdom to men,

Fair winds to sea-farers, song craft to skalds,

And might of manhood to many a warrior.

 

Tammuz is similarly "the heroic lord of the land", the "wise one", the

"lord of knowledge", and "the sovereign, lord of invocation".

 

Heimdal, watchman of the Teutonic gods, also dwelt for a time among

men as "Rig", and had human offspring, his son Thrall being the

ancestor of the Thralls, his son Churl of churls, and Jarl of

noblemen.

 

Tammuz, like Heimdal, is also a guardian. He watches the flocks and

herds, whom he apparently guards against the Gallu demons as Heimdal

guards the world and the heavens against attacks by giants and

monsters. The flocks of Tammuz, Professor Pinches suggests, "recall

the flocks of the Greek sun god Helios. These were the clouds

illuminated by the sun, which were likened to sheep--indeed, one of

the early Sumerian __EXPRESSION__s for 'fleece' was 'sheep of the sky'.

The name of Tammuz in Sumerian is Dumu-zi, or in its rare fullest

form, Dumuzida, meaning 'true or faithful son'. There is probably some

legend attached to this which is at present unknown."[118]

 

So the Sumerian hymn-chanters lamented:

 

Like an herdsman the sentinel place of sheep and cattle he

(Tammuz) has forsaken...

From his home, from his inhabited domain, the son, he of wisdom,

pre-eminent steer of heaven,

The hero unto the nether herding place has taken his way.[119]

 

Agni, the Aryo-Indian god, who, as the sky sentinel, has points of

resemblance to Heimdal, also links with Tammuz, especially in his

Mitra character:

 

Agni has been established among the tribes of men, the son of the

waters, Mitra acting in the right way. _Rigveda_, iii, 5, 3.

 

Agni, who has been looked and longed for in Heaven, who has been

looked for on earth--he who has been looked for has entered all herbs.

_Rigveda_, i, 98.[120]

 

Tammuz, like the Egyptian lunar and solar god Khonsu, is "the healer",

and Agni "drives away all disease". Tammuz is the god "of sonorous

voice"; Agni "roars like a bull"; and Heimdal blows a horn when the

giants and demons threaten to attack the citadel of the gods. As the

spring sun god, Tammuz is "a youthful warrior", says Jastrow,

"triumphing over the storms of winter".[121] The storms, of course,

were symbolized as demons. Tammuz, "the heroic lord", was therefore a

demon slayer like Heimdal and Agni. Each of these gods appear to have

been developed in isolation from an archaic spring god of fertility

and corn whose attributes were symbolized. In Teutonic mythology, for

instance, Heimdal was the warrior form of the patriarch Scef, while

Frey was the deified agriculturist who came over the deep as a child.

In Saxo's mythical history of Denmark, Frey as Frode is taken prisoner

by a storm giant, Beli, "the howler", and is loved by his hag sister

in the Teutonic Hades, as Tammuz is loved by Eresh-ki-gal, spouse of

the storm god Nergal, in the Babylonian Hades. Frode returns to earth,

like Tammuz, in due season.

 

It is evident that there were various versions of the Tammuz myth in

Ancient Babylonia. In one the goddess Ishtar visited Hades to search

for the lover of her youth. A part of this form of the legend survives

in the famous Assyrian hymn known as "The Descent of Ishtar ". It was

first translated by the late Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum.

A box containing inscribed tablets had been sent from Assyria to

London, and Mr. Smith, with characteristic patience and skill,

arranged and deciphered them, giving to the world a fragment of

ancient literature infused with much sublimity and imaginative power.

Ishtar is depicted descending to dismal Hades, where the souls of the

dead exist in bird forms:

 

I spread like a bird my hands.

I descend, I descend to the house of darkness, the dwelling of the

god Irkalla:

To the house out of which there is no exit,

To the road from which there is no return:

To the house from whose entrance the light is taken,

The place where dust is their nourishment and their food mud.

Its chiefs also are like birds covered with feathers;

The light is never seen, in darkness they dwell....

Over the door and bolts is scattered dust.

 

When the goddess reaches the gate of Hades she cries to the porter:

 

Keeper of the waters, open thy gate,

Open thy gate that I may enter.

If thou openest not the gate that I may enter

I will strike the door, the bolts I will shatter,

I will strike the threshold and will pass through the doors;

I will raise up the dead to devour the living,

Above the living the dead shall exceed in numbers.

 

The porter answers that he must first consult the Queen of Hades, here

called Allatu, to whom he accordingly announces the arrival of the

Queen of Heaven. Allatu's heart is filled with anger, and makes reference to those whom Ishtar caused to perish: