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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

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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 calam-ity", 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

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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 de-

structive 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 Goodfellow, 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,

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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.

As most representatives of the spirit world were enemies of the living, so were the ghosts of dead men and women. Death chilled all human affections; it turned love to hate; the deeper the love had been, the deeper became the enmity fostered by the ghost. Certain ghosts might also be regarded as particularly virulent and hostile if they happened to have left the body of one who was ceremonially impure. The most terrible ghost in Babylonia was that of a woman who had died in childbed. She was pitied and dreaded; her grief had demented her; she was doomed to wail in the darkness; her impurity clung to her like poison. No spirit was more prone

to work evil against mankind, and her hostility was accompanied by the most tragic sorrow. In Northern India the Hindus, like the ancient Babylonians, regard as a fearsome demon the ghost of a woman who died while pregnant, or on the day of the child's birth. [92] A similar belief prevailed in Mexico. In Europe there are many folk tales of dead mothers who return to avenge themselves on the cruel fathers of neglected children.

A sharp contrast is presented by the Mongolian Buriats, whose outlook on the spirit world is less gloomy than was that of the ancient Babylonians. According to Mr. Jeremiah Curtin, this interesting people are wont to perform a ceremony with purpose to entice the ghost to return to the dead body--a proceeding which is dreaded in the Scottish Highlands.[93] The Buriats address the ghost, saying: "You shall sleep well. Come back to your natural ashes. Take pity on your friends. It is necessary to live a real life. Do not wander along the mountains. Do not be like bad spirits. Return to your peaceful home.... Come back and work for your children. How can you leave the little ones?" If it is a mother, these words have great effect; sometimes the spirit moans and sobs, and the Buriats tell that there have been instances of it returning to the body.[94] In his Arabia Deserta[95] Doughty relates that Arab

women and children mock the cries of the owl. One explained to him: "It is a wailful woman seeking her lost child; she has become this forlorn bird". So do immemorial beliefs survive to our own day.

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The Babylonian ghosts of unmarried men and women and of those without offspring were also disconsolate night wanderers. Oth-ers who suffered similar fates were the ghosts of men who died in battle far from home and were left unburied, the ghosts of travellers who perished in the desert and were not covered over, the ghosts of drowned men which rose from the water, the ghosts of prisoners starved to death or executed, the ghosts of people who died violent deaths before their appointed time. The dead required to be cared for, to have libations poured out, to be fed, so that they might not prowl through the streets or enter houses searching

for scraps of food and pure water. The duty of giving offerings to the dead was imposed apparently on near relatives. As in India, it would appear that the eldest son performed the funeral ceremony: a dreadful fate therefore awaited the spirit of the dead Babylonian man or woman without offspring. In Sanskrit literature there is a reference to a priest who was not allowed to enter Paradise, although he had performed rigid penances, because he had no children.[96]

There were hags and giants of mountain and desert, of river and ocean. Demons might possess the pig, the goat, the horse, the lion, or the ibis, the raven, or the hawk. The seven spirits of tempest, fire, and destruction rose from the depths of ocean, and there were hosts of demons which could not be overcome or baffled by man without the assistance of the gods to whom they were hostile. Many were sexless; having no offspring, they were devoid of mercy and compassion. They penetrated everywhere:

The high enclosures, the broad enclosures, like a flood

they pass through,

From house to house they dash along. No door can shut them out;

No bolt can turn them back.

Through the door, like a snake, they glide, Through the hinge, like the wind, they storm, Tearing the wife from the embrace of the man, Driving the freedman from his family home.[97]

These furies did not confine their unwelcomed attentions to mankind alone:

They hunt the doves from their cotes, And drive the birds from their nests, And chase the marten from its hole....

Through the gloomy street by night they roam, Smiting sheepfold and cattle pen,

Shutting up the land as with door and bolt.

R.C. Thompson's Translation.

The Babylonian poet, like Burns, was filled with pity for the animals which suffered in the storm:

List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle, I thought me o' the ourie cattle,

Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle

O' winter war....

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing! That in the merry months o' spring Delighted me to hear thee sing,

What comes o' thee?

Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, And close thy e'e?

According to Babylonian belief, "the great storms directed from heaven" were caused by demons. Mankind heard them "loudly roaring above, gibbering below".[98] The south wind was raised by Shutu, a plumed storm demon resembling Hraesvelgur of the Icelandic Eddas:

Corpse-swallower sits at the end of heaven, A Jotun in eagle form;

From his wings, they say, comes the wind which fares

Over all the dwellers of earth.[99]

The northern story of Thor's fishing, when he hooked and wounded the Midgard serpent, is recalled by the Babylonian legend of Adapa, son of the god Ea. This hero was engaged catching fish, when Shutu, the south wind, upset his boat. In his wrath Adapa immediately attacked the storm demon and shattered her pinions. Anu, the sky god, was moved to anger against Ea's son and sum-

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moned him to the Celestial Court. Adapa, however, appeared in garments of mourning and was forgiven. Anu offered him the water of life and the bread of life which would have made him immortal, but Ea's son refused to eat or drink, believing, as his father had warned him, that the sky god desired him to partake of the bread of death and to drink of the water of death.

Figure IV.1. TWO FIGURES OF DEMONS

The upper head is that of Shutu, the demon of the southwest wind, whose wings were broken by Adapa, son of Ea (British Mu-seum)

Figure IV.2. WINGED HUMAN-HEADED COW (?) From Kouyunjik (Nineveh): now in the British Museum

Another terrible atmospheric demon was the southwest wind, which caused destructive storms and floods, and claimed many hu-man victims like the Icelandic "corpse swallower". She was depicted with lidless staring eyes, broad flat nose, mouth gaping horribly, and showing tusk-like teeth, and with high cheek bones, heavy eyebrows, and low bulging forehead.

In Scotland the hag of the southwest wind is similarly a bloodthirsty and fearsome demon. She is most virulent in the springtime. At Cromarty she is quaintly called "Gentle Annie" by the fisher folks, who repeat the saying: "When Gentle Annie is skyawlan (yell-ing) roond the heel of Ness (a promontory) wi' a white feather on her hat (the foam of big billows) they (the spirits) will be harrying (robbing) the crook"--that is, the pot which hangs from the crook is empty during the spring storms, which prevent fishermen going to sea. In England the wind hag is Black Annis, who dwells in a Leicestershire hill cave. She may be identical with the Irish hag Anu, associated with the "Paps of Anu". According to Gaelic lore, this wind demon of spring is the "Cailleach" (old wife). She gives

her name in the Highland calendar to the stormy period of late spring; she raises gale after gale to prevent the coming of summer. Angerboda, the Icelandic hag, is also a storm demon, but represents the east wind. A Tyrolese folk tale tells of three magic maidens who dwelt on Jochgrimm mountain, where they "brewed the winds". Their demon lovers were Ecke, "he who causes fear"; Vasolt, "he who causes dismay"; and the scornful Dietrich in his mythical character of Donar or Thunor (Thor), the thunderer.

Another Sumerian storm demon was the Zu bird, which is represented among the stars by Pegasus and Taurus. A legend relates that this "worker of evil, who raised the head of evil", once aspired to rule the gods, and stole from Bel, "the lord" of deities, the Tablets of Destiny, which gave him his power over the Universe as controller of the fates of all. The Zu bird escaped with the Tablets and found shelter on its mountain top in Arabia. Anu called on Ramman, the thunderer, to attack the Zu bird, but he was afraid; other gods appear to have shrunk from the conflict. How the rebel was overcome is not certain, because the legend survives in fragmentary form. There is a reference, however, to the moon god setting out towards the mountain in Arabia with purpose to outwit the Zu bird and recover the lost Tablets. How he fared it is impossible to ascertain. In another legend--that of Etana--the mother serpent, addressing the sun god, Shamash, says:

Thy net is like unto the broad earth;

Thy snare is like unto the distant heaven! Who hath ever escaped from thy net?

Even Zu, the worker of evil, who raised the head of evil [did not escape]!

L.W. King's Translation.

In Indian mythology, Garuda, half giant, half eagle, robs the Amrita (ambrosia) of the gods which gives them their power and renders them immortal. It had assumed a golden body, bright as the sun. Indra, the thunderer, flung his bolt in vain; he could not wound Garuda, and only displaced a single feather. Afterwards, however, he stole the moon goblet containing the Amrita, which Garuda

had delivered to his enemies, the serpents, to free his mother from bondage. This Indian eagle giant became the vehicle of the god

Vishnu, and, according to the Mahabharata, "mocked the wind with his fleetness".

It would appear that the Babylonian Zu bird symbolized the summer sandstorms from the Arabian desert. Thunder is associated with the rainy season, and it may have been assumed, therefore, that the thunder god was powerless against the sandstorm demon, who was chased, however, by the moon, and finally overcome by the triumphant sun when it broke through the darkening sand drift and brightened heaven and earth, "netting" the rebellious demon who desired to establish the rule of evil over gods and mankind.

In the "Legend of Etana" the Eagle, another demon which links with the Indian Garuda, slayer of serpents, devours the brood

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of the Mother Serpent. For this offence against divine law, Shamash, the sun god, pronounces the Eagle's doom. He instructs the Mother Serpent to slay a wild ox and conceal herself in its entrails. The Eagle comes to feed on the carcass, unheeding the warning of one of his children, who says, "The serpent lies in this wild ox":

He swooped down and stood upon the wild ox,

The Eagle ... examined the flesh;

He looked about carefully before and behind him;

He again examined the flesh;

He looked about carefully before and behind him, Then, moving swiftly, he made for the hidden parts. When he entered into the midst,

The serpent seized him by his wing.

In vain the Eagle appealed for mercy to the Mother Serpent, who was compelled to execute the decree of Shamash; she tore off the Eagle's pinions, wings, and claws, and threw him into a pit where he perished from hunger and thirst.[100] This myth may refer to the ravages of a winged demon of disease who was thwarted by the sacrifice of an ox. The Mother Serpent appears to be identical with an ancient goddess of maternity resembling the Egyptian Bast, the serpent mother of Bubastis. According to Sumerian belief, Nintu, "a form of the goddess Ma", was half a serpent. On her head there is a horn; she is "girt about the loins"; her left arm holds "a babe suckling her breast":

From her head to her loins

The body is that of a naked woman; From the loins to the sole of the foot Scales like those of a snake are visible.

R.C. Thompson's Translation.

The close association of gods and demons is illustrated in an obscure myth which may refer to an eclipse of the moon or a night storm at the beginning of the rainy season. The demons go to war against the high gods, and are assisted by Adad (Ramman) the thunderer, Shamash the sun, and Ishtar. They desire to wreck the heavens, the home of Anu:

They clustered angrily round the crescent of the moon god,

And won over to their aid Shamash, the mighty, and Adad, the warrior, And Ishtar, who with Anu, the King,

Hath founded a shining dwelling.

The moon god Sin, "the seed of mankind", was darkened by the demons who raged, "rushing loose over the land" like to the wind. Bel called upon his messenger, whom he sent to Ea in the ocean depths, saying: "My son Sin ... hath been grievously bedimmed". Ea lamented, and dispatched his son Merodach to net the demons by magic, using "a two-coloured cord from the hair of a virgin kid and from the wool of a virgin lamb".[101]

As in India, where Shitala, the Bengali goddess of smallpox, for instance, is worshipped when the dreaded disease she controls becomes epidemic, so in Babylonia the people sought to secure immunity from attack by worshipping spirits of disease. A tablet relates that Ura, a plague demon, once resolved to destroy all life, but ultimately consented to spare those who praised his name and exalted him in recognition of his bravery and power. This could be accomplished by reciting a formula. Indian serpent worshippers believe that their devotions "destroy all danger proceeding from snakes".[102]

Like the Ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians also had their kindly spirits who brought luck and the various enjoyments of life. A good "labartu" might attend on a human being like a household fairy of India or Europe: a friendly "shedu" could protect a household against the attacks of fierce demons and human enemies. Even the spirits of Fate who served Anu, god of the sky, and that "Norn" of the Underworld, Eresh-ki-gal, queen of Hades, might sometimes be propitious: if the deities were successfully invoked they could cause the Fates to smite spirits of disease and bringers of ill luck. Damu, a friendly fairy goddess, was well loved, because she inspired pleasant dreams, relieved the sufferings of the afflicted, and restored to good health those patients whom she selected to favour.

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the kindly spirits are overshadowed by the evil ones, because the various magical spells which were put on record were directed against those supernatural beings who were enemies of mankind. Similarly in Babylonia the fragments of this class of literature which survive deal mainly with wicked and vengeful demons. It appears probable, however, that

the highly emotional Sumerians and Akkadians were on occasion quite as cheerful a people as the inhabitants of ancient Egypt. Although they were surrounded by bloodthirsty furies who desired to shorten their days, and their nights were filled with vague lowering phantoms which inspired fear, they no doubt shared, in their charm-protected houses, a comfortable feeling of security after

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performing magical ceremonies, and were happy enough when they gathered round flickering lights to listen to ancient song and

story and gossip about crops and traders, the members of the royal house, and the family affairs of their acquaintances.

The Babylonian spirit world, it will be seen, was of complex character. Its inhabitants were numberless, but often vaguely defined, and one class of demons linked with another. Like the European fairies of folk belief, the Babylonian spirits were extremely hostile and irresistible at certain seasonal periods; and they were fickle and perverse and difficult to please even when inclined to be friendly. They were also similarly manifested from time to time in various forms. Sometimes they were comely and beautiful; at other times they were apparitions of horror. The Jinn of present-day Arabians are of like character; these may be giants, cloudy shapes, comely women, serpents or cats, goats or pigs.

Some of the composite monsters of Babylonia may suggest the vague and exaggerated recollections of terror-stricken people who have had glimpses of unfamiliar wild beasts in the dusk or amidst reedy marshes. But they cannot be wholly accounted for in this way. While animals were often identified with supernatural beings, and foreigners were called "devils", it would be misleading to assert that the spirit world reflects confused folk memories of human and bestial enemies. Even when a demon was given concrete human form it remained essentially non-human: no ordinary weapon could inflict an injury, and it was never controlled by natural laws. The spirits of disease and tempest and darkness were creations of fancy: they symbolized moods; they were the causes which explained effects. A sculptor or storyteller who desired to convey an impression of a spirit of storm or pestilence created monstrous

forms to inspire terror. Sudden and unexpected visits of fierce and devastating demons were accounted for by asserting that they had

wings like eagles, were nimble-footed as gazelles, cunning and watchful as serpents; that they had claws to clutch, horns to gore, and powerful fore legs like a lion to smite down victims. Withal they drank blood like ravens and devoured corpses like hyaenas. Monsters were all the more repulsive when they were partly human. The human-headed snake or the snake-headed man and the man with the horns of a wild bull and the legs of a goat were horrible in the extreme. Evil spirits might sometimes achieve success by practising deception. They might appear as beautiful girls or handsome men and seize unsuspecting victims in deathly embrace or leave them demented and full of grief, or come as birds and suddenly assume awesome shapes.

Fairies and elves, and other half-human demons, are sometimes regarded as degenerate gods. It will be seen, however, that while certain spirits developed into deities, others remained something between these two classes of supernatural beings: they might attend upon gods and goddesses, or operate independently now against mankind and now against deities even. The "namtaru", for instance, was a spirit of fate, the son of Bel-Enlil and Eresh-ki-gal, queen of Hades. "Apparently", writes Professor Pinches, "he executed the instructions given him concerning the fate of men, and could also have power over certain of the gods."[103] To this middle class belong the evil gods who rebelled against the beneficent deities. According to Hebridean folk belief, the fallen angels are divided into three classes--the fairies, the "nimble men" (aurora borealis), and the "blue men of the Minch". In Beowulf the "brood of Cain" includes "monsters and elves and sea-devils--giants also, who long time fought with God, for which he gave them their reward".[104] Similarly the Babylonian spirit groups are liable to division and subdivision. The various classes may be regarded as relics of the various stages of development from crude animism to sublime monotheism: in the fragmentary legends we trace the floating material from which great mythologies have been framed.

[78] The Acts, xvii, 22-31.

[79] Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, vol. ii, p. 149 et seq. [80] Egyptian Myth and Legend, xxxix, n.

[81] Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, J.H. Breasted, pp. 38, 74.

[82] Custom and Myth, p. 45 et seq.

[83] The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 108.

[84] Act iv, scene 1.

[85] Paradise Lost, book ix.

[86] Chapman's Caesar and Pompey. [87] Natural History, 2nd book.

[88] Indian Myth and Legend, 70, n.

[89] Indian Myth and Legend, pp. 202-5, 400, 401. [90] Teutonic Myth and Legend, p. 424 et seq.

[91] Indian Myth and Legend, p. 164 et seq.

[92] Popular Religion and Folk Lore of Northern India, W. Crooke, vol. i, p. 254.

[93] When a person, young or old, is dying, near relatives must not call out their names in case the soul may come back from the spir-it world. A similar belief still lingers, especially among women, in the Lowlands. The writer was once present in a room when a child was supposed to be dying. Suddenly the mother called out the child's name in agonized voice. It revived soon afterwards. Two old women who had attempted to prevent "the calling" shook their heads and remarked: "She has done it! The child will never do any good in this world after being called back." In England and Ireland, as well as in Scotland, the belief also prevails in certain localities

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that if a dying person is "called back" the soul will tarry for another twenty-four hours, during which the individual will suffer great agony.

[94] A Journey in Southern Siberia, Jeremiah Curtin, pp. 103, 104.

[95] Vol. i, p. 305.

[96] Adi Parva section of Mahabharata, Roy's trans., p. 635.

[97] Jastrow's Aspects of Religious Belief in Babylonia, &c., p. 312.

[98] R.C. Thompson's trans.

[99] The Elder or Poetic Edda, Olive Bray, part i, p. 53.

[100] Babylonian Religion, L.W. King, pp. 186-8.

[101] The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, R. Campbell Thompson, vol. i, p. 53 et seq. [102] Omens and Superstitions of Southern India, E. Thurston, p. 124.

[103] The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 110. [104] Beowulf, Clark Hall, p. 14.

Chapter V. Myths of Tammuz and Ishtar

Abstract

Forms of Tammuz--The Weeping Ceremony--Tammuz the Patriarch and the Dying God--Common Origin of Tammuz and other Deities from an Archaic God--The Mediterranean Racial Myth--Animal Forms of Gods of Fertility--Two Legends of the Death of Tammuz--Attis, Adonis, and Diarmid Slain by a Boar--Laments for Tammuz--His Soul in Underworld and the Deep--Myth of the Child God of Ocean--Sargon Myth Version--The Germanic Scyld of the Sheaf--Tammuz Links with Frey, Heimdal, Agni, &c.-

-Assyrian Legend of "Descent of Ishtar"--Sumerian Version--The Sister Belitsheri and the Mother Ishtar--The Egyptian Isis and Nepthys--Goddesses as Mothers, Sisters, and Wives--Great Mothers of Babylonia--Immortal Goddesses and Dying Gods--The Various Indras--Celtic Goddess with Seven Periods of Youth--Lovers of Germanic and Classic Goddesses--The Lovers of Ishtar--Racial Significance of Goddess Cult--The Great Fathers and their Worshippers--Process of Racial and Religious Fusion--Ishtar and Tiamat-

-Mother Worship in Palestine--Women among Goddess Worshippers.

Among the gods of Babylonia none achieved wider and more enduring fame than Tammuz, who was loved by Ishtar, the amorous Queen of Heaven--the beautiful youth who died and was mourned for and came to life again. He does not figure by his popular name in any of the city pantheons, but from the earliest times of which we have knowledge until the passing of Babylonian civilization, he played a prominent part in the religious life of the people.

Tammuz, like Osiris of Egypt, was an agricultural deity, and as the Babylonian harvest was the gift of the rivers, it is probable that one of his several forms was Dumu-zi-abzu, "Tammuz of the Abyss". He was also "the child", "the heroic lord", "the sentinel", "the healer", and the patriarch who reigned over the early Babylonians for a considerable period. "Tammuz of the Abyss" was one of the members of the family of Ea, god of the Deep, whose other sons, in addition to Merodach, were Nira, an obscure deity;

Ki-gulla, "world destroyer", Burnunta-sa, "broad ear", and Bara and Baragulla, probably "revealers" or "oracles". In addition there was a daughter, Khi-dimme-azaga, "child of the renowned spirit". She may have been identical with Belitsheri, who is referred to in the Sumerian hymns as the sister of Tammuz. This family group was probably formed by symbolizing the attributes of Ea and his spouse Damkina. Tammuz, in his character as a patriarch, may have been regarded as a hostage from the gods: the human form of Ea, who instructed mankind, like King Osiris, how to grow corn and cultivate fruit trees. As the youth who perished annually, he was the corn spirit. He is referred to in the Bible by his Babylonian name.

When Ezekiel detailed the various idolatrous practices of the Israelites, which included the worship of the sun and "every form of creeping things and abominable beasts"--a suggestion of the composite monsters of Babylonia --he was brought "to the door of the gate of the Lord's house, which was towards the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz".[105]

The weeping ceremony was connected with agricultural rites. Corn deities were weeping deities, they shed fertilizing tears; and the sowers simulated the sorrow of divine mourners when they cast seed in the soil "to die", so that it might spring up as corn. This ancient custom, like many others, contributed to the poetic imagery of the Bible. "They that sow in tears", David sang, "shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."[106] In Egypt the priestesses who acted the parts of Isis and Nepthys, mourned for the slain corn god Osiris.

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!...

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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 Ninshach, who appears to have

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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 dovelike

voice, yea dovelike.[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?

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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

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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 seafarers, 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 expressions 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

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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:

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 earrings, 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,

Figure V.1. ISHTAR IN HADES From the Painting by E. Wallcousins

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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 Papsukal, 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", Belitsheri. 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]

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As Ishtar and Belitsheri 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, Ishtarate, 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:

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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

46

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]

CYLINDER-SEAL IMPRESSIONS. (British Museum)

Figure V.2. Female figure in adoration before a goddess

Figure V.3. The winged Ishtar above the rising sun god, the river god, and other deities

Figure V.4. Gilgamesh in conflict with bulls (see page 176)

Figure V.5. PLAQUE OF UR-NINA

In Limestone. From the original in the Louvre, Paris. (See pages 117, 118)

Jastrow suggests that the women of Israel wept for Tammuz, offered cakes to the mother goddess, &c., because "in all religious bod-ies ... 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

47

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.

[105] Ezekiel, viii. [106] Psalms, cxxvi.

[107] The Burden of Isis, J.T. Dennis (Wisdom of the East series), pp. 21, 22. [108] Religion of the Semites, pp. 412, 414.

[109] Egyptian Myth and Legend, pp. 45 et seq.

[110] Langdon's Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, pp. 319-321. [111] Campbell's West Highland Tales, vol. iii, p. 74.

[112] West Highland Tales, vol. iii, pp. 85, 86.

[113] If Finn and his band were really militiamen--the original Fenians--as is believed in Ireland, they may have had attached to their memories the legends of archaic Iberian deities who differed from the Celtic Danann deities. Theodoric the Goth, as Dietrich von Bern, was identified, for instance, with Donar or Thunor (Thor), the thunder god. In Scotland Finn and his followers are all giants. Diarmid is the patriarch of the Campbell clan, the MacDiarmids being "sons of Diarmid".

[114] Isaiah condemns a magical custom connected with the worship of Tammuz in the garden, Isaiah, xvii, 9, 11. This "Garden of

Adonis" is dealt with in the next chapter.

[115] Quotations are from Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, translated by Stephen Langdon, Ph.D. (Paris and London, 1909), pp.

299-341.

[116] Beowulf, translated by J.R. Clark Hall (London, 1911), pp. 9-11.

[117] For Frey's connection with the Ynglings see Morris and Magnusson's Heimskringla (Saga Library, vol. iii), pp. 23-71. [118] The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 72.

[119] Langdon's Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, pp. 325, 339.

[120] Professor Oldenberg's translation.

[121] Osiris is also invoked to "remove storms and rain and give fecundity in the nighttime". As a spring sun god he slays demons; as a lunar god he brings fertility.

[122] Like the love-compelling girdle of Aphrodite.

[123] A wedding bracelet of crystal is worn by Hindu women; they break it when the husband dies. [124] Quotations from the translation in The Chaldean Account of Genesis, by George Smith. [125] Langdon's Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, p. 329 et seq.

[126] The Burden of Isis, translated by J.T. Dennis (Wisdom of the East series), pp. 24, 31, 32, 39, 45, 46, 49.

[127] The Burden of Isis, pp. 22, 46.

[128] Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, p. 137, and Herodotus, book i, 199. [129] The Burden of Isis, p. 47.

[130] Original Sanskrit Texts, J. Muir, London, 1890, vol. i, p. 67.

[131] Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. i, p. 44.

[132] Adi Parva section of Mahabharata (Roy's translation), pp. 553, 555. [133] Ancient Irish Poetry, Kuno Meyer (London, 1911), pp. 88-90.

[134] Translations from The Elder Edda, by O. Bray (part i), London, 1908. [135] Babylonian Religion, L.W. King, pp. 160, 161.

[136] Tennyson's A Dream of Fair Women.

[137] Greece and Babylon, L.R. Farnell (Edinburgh, 1911), p. 35.

[138] The goddesses did not become prominent until the "late invasion" of the post-Vedic Aryans.

[139] Greece and Babylon, p. 96. [140] Jeremiah, xliv.

[141] Jeremiah, vii, 18.

[142] Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 348, 349.

[143] Jeremiah, vii, 17.

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Chapter VI. Wars of the City States of Sumer and Akkad

Abstract

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.

When the curtain rises to reveal the drama of Babylonian civilization we find that we have missed the first act and its many fascinating scenes. Sumerians and Akkadians come and go, but it is not always possible to distinguish between them. Although most Semites are recognizable by their flowing beards, prominent noses, and long robes, some have so closely imitated the Sumerians as to suffer almost complete loss of identity. It is noticeable that in the north the Akkadians are more Semitic than their contemporaries in the south, but it is difficult at times to say whether a city is controlled by the descendants of the indigenous people or those of later settlers. Dynasties rise and fall, and, as in Egypt at times, the progress of the fragmentary narrative is interrupted by a sudden change of scene ere we have properly grasped a situation and realized its significance.

What we know for certain is that civilization is well advanced. Both in the north and the south there are many organized and independent city states, and not unfrequently these wage war one against another. Occasionally ambitious rulers tower among their fellows, conduct vigorous military campaigns, and become overlords of wide districts. As a rule, a subjugated monarch who has perforce to acknowledge the suzerainty of a powerful king is allowed to remain in a state of semi-independence on condition that he pays a heavy annual tribute of grain. His own laws continue in force, and the city deities remain supreme, although recognition may also be given to the deities of his conqueror. He styles himself a Patesi--a "priest king", or more literally, "servant of the chief

deity". But as an independent monarch may also be a pious Patesi, it does not always follow when a ruler is referred to by that title he is necessarily less powerful than his neighbours.

When the historical narrative begins Akkad included the cities of Babylon, Cutha, Kish, Akkad, and Sippar, and north of Babylonia proper is Semitic Opis. Among the cities of Sumer were Eridu, Ur, Lagash, Larsa, Erech, Shuruppak, and probably Nippur, which was situated on the "border". On the north Assyria was yet "in the making", and shrouded in obscurity. A vague but vast area above Hit on the Euphrates, and extending to the Syrian coast, was known as the "land of the Amorites". The fish-shaped Babylonian valley lying between the rivers, where walled towns were surrounded by green fields and numerous canals flashed in the sunshine, was bounded on the west by the bleak wastes of the Arabian desert, where during the dry season "the rocks branded the body" and occasional sandstorms swept in blinding folds towards the "plain of Shinar" (Sumer) like demon hosts who sought to destroy the

world. To the east the skyline was fretted by the Persian Highlands, and amidst the southern mountains dwelt the fierce Elamites, the

hereditary enemies of the Sumerians, although a people apparently of the same origin. Like the Nubians and the Libyans, who kept watchful eyes on Egypt, the Elamites seemed ever to be hovering on the eastern frontier of Sumeria, longing for an opportunity to raid and plunder.

The capital of the Elamites was the city of Susa, where excavations have revealed traces of an independent civilization which

reaches back to an early period in the Late Stone Age. Susa is referred to in the Old Testament--"The words of Nehemiah.... I was in Shushan the palace".[144] An Assyrian plan of the city shows it occupying a strategic position at a bend of the Shawur river, which afforded protection against Sumerian attacks from the west, while a canal curved round its northern and eastern sides, so that Susa was completely surrounded by water. Fortifications had been erected on the river and canal banks, and between these and the high city walls were thick clumps of trees. That the kings of Elam imitated the splendours of Babylonian courts in the later days of Es-ther and Haman and Mordecai, is made evident by the Biblical references to the gorgeous palace, which had "white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble; the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble".[145] Beyond Elam were the plains, plateaus, and grassy steppes occupied

by the Medes and other peoples of Aryan speech. Cultural influences came and went like spring winds between the various ancient

communities.

For ten long centuries Sumer and Akkad flourished and prospered ere we meet with the great Hammurabi, whose name has now be-come almost as familiar as that of Julius Caesar. But our knowledge of the leading historical events of this vast period is exceedingly fragmentary. The Sumerians were not like the later Assyrians or their Egyptian contemporaries--a people with a passion for history. When inscriptions were composed and cut on stone, or impressed upon clay tablets and bricks, the kings selected as a general rule to record pious deeds rather than to celebrate their victories and conquests. Indeed, the average monarch had a temperament resem-

49

bling that of Keats, who declared:

The silver flow

Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, Fair Pastorella in the bandits' den,

Are things to brood on with more ardency

Than the death day of empires.

The Sumerian king was emotionally religious as the great English poet was emotionally poetical. The tears of Ishtar for Tammuz, and the afflictions endured by the goddess imprisoned in Hades, to which she had descended for love of her slain husband, seemed to have concerned the royal recorder to a greater degree than the memories of political upheavals and the social changes which passed over the land, like the seasons which alternately brought greenness and gold, barrenness and flood.

City chronicles, as a rule, are but indices of obscure events, to which meagre references were sometimes also made on mace heads, vases, tablets, stelae, and sculptured monoliths. Consequently, present-day excavators and students have often reason to be grateful that the habit likewise obtained of inscribing on bricks in buildings and the stone sockets of doors the names of kings and others. These records render obscure periods faintly articulate, and are indispensable for comparative purposes. Historical clues are also obtained from lists of year names. Each city king named a year in celebration of a great event--his own succession to the throne, the erection of a new temple or of a city wall, or, mayhap, the defeat of an invading army from a rival state. Sometimes, too, a monarch gave the name of his father in an official inscription, or happily mentioned several ancestors. Another may be found to have made

an illuminating statement regarding a predecessor, who centuries previously erected the particular temple that he himself has piously restored. A reckoning of this kind, however, cannot always be regarded as absolutely correct. It must be compared with and tested

by other records, for in these ancient days calculations were not unfrequently based on doubtful inscriptions, or mere oral traditions, perhaps. Nor can implicit trust be placed on every reference to historical events, for the memoried deeds of great rulers were not always unassociated with persistent and cumulative myths. It must be recognized, therefore, that even portions of the data which had of late been sifted and systematized by Oriental scholars in Europe, may yet have to be subjected to revision. Many interesting and important discoveries, which will throw fresh light on this fascinating early period, remain to be made in that ancient and deserted land, which still lies under the curse of the Hebrew prophet, who exclaimed: "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in

their desolate houses and dragons in their pleasant palaces."[146]

The curtain rises, as has been indicated, after civilization had been well advanced. To begin with, our interests abide with Akkad, and during a period dated approximately between 3000 B.C. and 2800 B.C., when Egypt was already a united kingdom, and the Cretans were at the dawn of the first early Minoan period, and beginning to use bronze. In Kish Sumerian and Akkadian elements had apparently blended, and the city was the centre of a powerful and independent government. After years have fluttered past dimly, and with them the shadow-shapes of vigorous rulers, it is found that Kish came under the sway of the pronouncedly Semitic city of Opis, which was situated "farthest north" and on the western bank of the river Tigris. A century elapsed ere Kish again threw off the oppressor's yoke and renewed the strength of its youth.

The city of Kish was one of the many ancient centres of goddess worship. The Great Mother appears to have been the Sumerian Bau, whose chief seat was at Lagash. If tradition is to be relied upon, Kish owed its existence to that notable lady, Queen Azag-Bau. Although floating legends gathered round her memory as they have often gathered round the memories of famous men, like Sargon of Akkad, Alexander the Great, and Theodoric the Goth, who became Emperor of Rome, it is probable that the queen was a prominent historical personage. She was reputed to have been of humble origin, and to have first achieved popularity and influence as the keeper of a wine shop. Although no reference survives to indicate that she was believed to be of miraculous birth, the Chronicle of Kish gravely credits her with a prolonged and apparently prosperous reign of a hundred years. Her son, who succeeded her, sat on

the throne for a quarter of a century. These calculations are certainly remarkable. If the Queen Azag-Bau founded Kish when she was only twenty, and gave birth to the future ruler in her fiftieth year, he must have been an elderly gentleman of seventy when he began to reign. When it is found, further, that the dynasty in which mother and son flourished was supposed to have lasted for 586 years, divided between eight rulers, one of whom reigned for only three years, two for six, and two for eleven, it becomes evident that the historian of Kish cannot be absolutely relied upon in detail. It seems evident that the memory of this lady of forceful character, who flourished about thirteen hundred years before the rise of Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt, has overshadowed the doubtful annals of ancient Kish at a period when Sumerian and Semite were striving in the various states to achieve political ascendancy.

Meanwhile the purely Sumerian city of Lagash had similarly grown powerful and aggressive. For a time it acknowledged the suzerainty of Kish, but ultimately it threw off the oppressor's yoke and asserted its independence. The cumulative efforts of a succession of energetic rulers elevated Lagash to the position of a metropolis in Ancient Babylonia.

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The goddess Bau, "the mother of Lagash", was worshipped in conjunction with other deities, including the god Nin-Girsu, an agricultural deity, and therefore a deity of war, who had solar attributes. One of the titles of Nin-Girsu was En-Mersi, which, according to Assyrian evidence, was another name of Tammuz, the spring god who slew the storm and winter demons, and made the land fertile so that man might have food. Nin-Girsu was, it would seem, a developed form of Tammuz, like the Scandinavian

Frey, god of harvest, or Heimdal, the celestial warrior. Bau was one of the several goddesses whose attributes were absorbed by the Semitic Ishtar. She was a "Great Mother", a creatrix, the source of all human and bestial life, and, of course, a harvest goddess. She was identified with Gula, "the great one", who cured diseases and prolonged life. Evidently the religion of Lagash was based on the popular worship of the "Queen of Heaven", and her son, the dying god who became "husband of his mother".

The first great and outstanding ruler of Lagash was Ur-Nina, who appears to have owed his power to the successful military operations of his predecessors. It is uncertain whether or not he himself engaged in any great war. His records are silent in that connection, but, judging from what we know of him, it may be taken for granted that he was able and fully prepared to give a good account of himself in battle. He certainly took steps to make secure his position, for he caused a strong wall to be erected round Lagash. His inscriptions are eloquent of his piety, which took practical shape, for he repaired and built temples, dedicated offerings to deities, and increased the wealth of religious bodies and the prosperity of the State by cutting canals and developing agriculture. In addition to serving local deities, he also gave practical recognition to Ea at Eridu and Enlil at Nippur. He, however, overlooked Anu at Erech, a fact which suggests that he held sway over Eridu and Nippur, but had to recognize Erech as an independent city state.

Among the deities of Lagash, Ur-Nina favoured most the goddess Nina, whose name he bore. As she was a water deity, and perhaps identical with Belitsheri, sister of "Tammuz of the Abyss" and daughter of Ea, one of the canals was dedicated to her. She was also honoured with a new temple, in which was probably placed her great statue, constructed by special order of her royal worshipper. Like the Egyptian goddess, the "Mother of Mendes", Nina received offerings of fish, not only as a patroness of fishermen, but also as a corn spirit and a goddess of maternity. She was in time identified with Ishtar.

A famous limestone plaque, which is preserved in the Louvre, Paris, depicts on its upper half the pious King Ur-Nina engaged in the ceremony of laying the foundations of a temple dedicated either to the goddess Nina or to the god Nin-Girsu. His face and scalp are clean shaven, and he has a prominent nose and firm mouth, eloquent of decision. The folds of neck and jaw suggest Bismarckian traits. He is bare to the waist, and wears a pleated kilt, with three flounces, which reaches almost to his ankles. On his long head he

has poised deftly a woven basket containing the clay with which he is to make the first brick. In front of him stand five figures. The

foremost is honoured by being sculptured larger than the others, except the prominent monarch. Apparently this is a royal princess, for her head is unshaven, and her shoulder dress or long hair drops over one of her arms. Her name is Lida, and the conspicuous part she took in the ceremony suggests that she was the representative of the goddess Nina. She is accompanied by her brothers, and at least one official, Anita, the cup-bearer, or high priest. The concluding part of this ceremony, or another ceremonial act, is illustrated on the lower part of the plaque. Ur-Nina is seated on his throne, not, as would seem at first sight, raising the wine cup to his lips and toasting to the success of the work, but pouring out a libation upon the ground. The princess is not present; the place of honour next to the king is taken by the crown prince. Possibly in this case it is the god Nin-Girsu who is being honoured. Three male figures, perhaps royal sons, accompany the prominent crown prince. The cup-bearer is in attendance behind the throne.

The inscription on this plaque, which is pierced in the centre so as to be nailed to a sacred shrine, refers to the temples erected by

Ur-Nina, including those of Nina and Nin-Girsu.

After Ur-Nina's prosperous reign came to a close, his son Akurgal ascended the throne. He had trouble with Umma, a powerful city, which lay to the north-west of Lagash, between the Shatt-el-Kai and Shatt-el-Hai canals. An army of raiders invaded his territory and had to be driven back.

The next king, whose name was Eannatum, had Napoleonic characteristics. He was a military genius with great ambitions, and was successful in establishing by conquest a small but brilliant empire. Like his grandfather, he strengthened the fortifications of Lagash; then he engaged in a series of successful campaigns. Umma had been causing anxiety in Lagash, but Eannatum stormed and captured that rival city, appropriated one of its fertile plains, and imposed an annual tribute to be paid in kind. An army of Elamites swept down from the hills, but Ur-Nina's grandson inflicted upon these bold foreigners a crushing defeat and pursued them over

the frontier. Several cities were afterwards forced to come under the sway of triumphant Lagash, including Erech and Ur, and as his

suzerainty was already acknowledged at Eridu, Eannatum's power in Sumeria became as supreme as it was firmly established.