The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

M >> Morris Jastrow >> The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

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Confining ourselves here to the earlier phases of Ea, it seems probable
that he was originally regarded as the god of Eridu,--one of the most
ancient of the holy cities of Southern Babylonia, now represented by
Abu-Shahrein, and which once stood on the shores of the Persian Gulf.
Ur-Bau expressly calls the god the 'king of Eridu.' The sacredness of
the place is attested by Gudea, who boasts of having made the temple of
Nin-girsu as sacred as Eridu.[43] It is over this city that Ea watches.
The importance of the Persian Gulf to the growth of the city, would make
it natural to place the seat of the god in the waters themselves. The
cult of water-deities arises, naturally, at places which are situated on
large sheets of water; and in the attributes of wisdom which an older
age ascribed to Ea, there may be seen the embodiment of the tradition
that the course of civilization proceeds from the south. The superiority
of the Persian Gulf over the other waters of Babylon--over the two great
rivers with their tributary streams and canals--would be another factor
that would lead to the god of the Persian Gulf being regarded as the
personification of the watery element in general. For the Babylonians,
the Persian Gulf, stretching out indefinitely, and to all appearances
one with the great ocean whose ulterior shores could not be reached, was
the great 'Okeanos,' that flowed around the earth and on which the earth
rested. Ea, accordingly (somewhat like En-lil), was delocalized, as it
were, and his worship was maintained long after the recollection of his
connection with Eridu had all but disappeared. At the same time, for the
very reason that he was cut loose from local associations, no place
could lay claim to being the seat of the deity. Ur-Bau, when erecting a
sanctuary to Ea at Girsu, significantly calls the god 'the king of
Eridu.' The sanctuary is not, in this case, the dwelling-place of the
god.

We are justified, therefore, in going back many centuries, before
reaching the period when Ea was, merely, the local god of Eridu. Whether
Ea is to be regarded as the real name of the god, or is also an
ideograph like En-ki, is again open to doubt. If Ea is the real
pronunciation, then the writing of the name is a play upon the character
of the deity, for it is composed of two elements that signify 'house'
and 'water,'--the name thus suggesting the character and real seat of
the deity. A point in favor of regarding Ea as the real name, albeit not
decisive, is the frequent use of the unmistakable ideographic
description of the god as En-ki. The consort of Ea who is Dam-kina also
occurs in the historical texts of the first period.

The origin of Babylonian civilization at the Persian Gulf, together with
the dependence of Babylonia for her fertility upon the streams and
canals, account for the numerous water-deities to be found in the
ancient Babylonian pantheon, some of which have already been discussed.
We will meet with others further on. Every stream, large or small,
having its special protecting deity, the number of water-deities
naturally increases as the land becomes more and more dissected by the
canal system that conditioned the prosperity of the country.

Ea, as we shall see, appears under an unusually large number of
names.[44] One of these is

Nin-a-gal,

which, signifying 'god of great strength,' is given to him as the patron
of the smith's art.[45] A god of this name is mentioned by Ur-Bau,[46]
who speaks of a sanctuary erected in honor of this deity. But since the
king refers to Ea (as En-ki) a few lines previous, it would appear that
at this period Nin-agal is still an independent deity. The later
identification with Ea appears to be due to the idea of 'strength'
involved in the name of Nin-agal. In the same way, many of the names of
Ea were originally descriptive of independent gods who, because of the
similarity of their functions to those of the great Ea, were absorbed by
the latter. Their names transferred to Ea, are frequently the only trace
left of their original independent existence.

Nergal.

Nergal, the local deity of Cuthah (or Kutu), represented by the mound
Tell-Ibrahim, some distance to the east of Babylon, was of an entirely
different character from Ea, but his history in the development of the
Babylonian religion is hardly less interesting. The first mention of his
famous temple at Cuthah is found in an inscription of Dungi (to be read
Ba'u-ukin, according to Winckler[47]) who belongs to the second dynasty
of Ur (_c._ 2700 B.C.). Its origin, however, belongs to a still earlier
period. Such was the fame of the temple known as E-shid-lam, and the
closeness of the connection between the deity and his favorite seat,
that Nergal himself became known as shid-lam-ta-ud-du-a, _i.e._, the god
that rises up from E-shid-lam. It is by this epithet that the same Dungi
describes him in one of his inscriptions.[48] Down to the latest period
of Assyro-Babylonian history, Nergal remains identified with Kutu, being
known at all times as the god of Kutu.[49] When Sargon, the king of
Assyria, upon his conquest of the kingdom of Israel (_c._ 722 B.C.),
brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, and so forth, across to the
lands of the Jordan to take the place of the deported Israelites, the
Hebrew narrator (II Kings, xvii. 24-35) tells us in an interesting
manner of the obnoxious foreign worship which these people brought to
the land, each division bringing the gods of their place with them. The
men of Cuthah, he adds (v. 30), made a statue of Nergal. Singamil, of
the dynasty, having its capital at Uruk (_c._ 2750 B.C.), likewise
testifies to his devotion to Nergal by busying himself with improvements
and additions to his temple at Cuthah. His worship, therefore, was not
confined to those who happened to reside at Cuthah; and closely as he is
identified with the place, the character of the god is a general and not
a special one. The full form of his name appears to have been
Ner-unu-gal, of which Nergal, furnished by the Old Testament passage
referred to, would then be a contraction or a somewhat corrupt form. The
three elements composing his name signify "the mighty one of the great
dwelling-place," but it is, again, an open question whether this is a
mere play upon the character of the god, as in the name of Ea (according
to one of the interpretations above suggested), or whether it is an
ideographic form of the name. The Old Testament shows, conclusively,
that the name had some such pronunciation as Nergal. Jensen, from other
evidences, inclines to the opinion that the writing Ner-unu-gal is the
result of a species of etymology, brought about by the prominence given
to Nergal as the god of the region of the dead. It is in this capacity
that he already appears in the inscription of Singamil, who calls him
'king of the nether world.' The "great dwelling-place," therefore, is
clearly the dominion over which Nergal rules, and when we come to the
cosmogony of the Babylonians,[50] it will be found that this epithet for
the nether world--the great dwelling-place--accords with their
conception of the life after death. But while Nergal, with a host of
lesser demons about him, appears as the Babylonian Pluto, particularly
in the religious texts, his functions are not limited to the control of
the dead. He is the personification of some of the evils that bring
death to mankind, particularly pestilence and war. The death that
follows in his path is a violent one, and his destructive force is one
that acts upon large masses rather than upon the individual. Hence, one
of the most common ideographs used to express his name is that which
signifies 'sword.'

War and pestilence are intimately associated in the mind of the
Babylonians. Among other nations, the sword is, similarly, the symbol of
the deity, as the plague-bringer as well as the warrior.

To this day, a pestilence is the general accompaniment of war in the
East, or follows in its wake. Different from Nin-ib, who is also a god
of war, Nergal symbolizes more particularly the _destruction_ which
accompanies war, and not the strong champion who aids his subjects in
the fight. Nergal is essentially a destroyer, and the various epithets
applied to him in the religious texts, show that he was viewed in this
light. He is at times the 'god of fire,' again 'the raging king,' 'the
violent one' 'the one who burns'; and finally identified with the
glowing heat of flame. Often, he is described by these attributes,
instead of being called by his real name.[51] Dr. Jensen has recently
shown in a satisfactory manner, that this phase of his character must be
the starting-point in tracing the order of his development. As the
'glowing flame,' Nergal is evidently a phase of the sun, and Jensen
proves that the functions and aspects of the sun at different periods
being differentiated among the Babylonians, Nergal is more especially
the hot sun of midsummer or midday, the destructive force of which was
the chief feature that distinguished it. The hot sun of Babylonia, that
burns with fierce intensity, brings pestilence and death, and carries on
a severe contest against man. From being the cause of death, it is but a
step, and a natural one, to make Nergal preside over the region,
prepared for those whom he has destroyed. The course taken by Babylonian
theology is responsible for the prominence given to the latter role of
Nergal, which finally overshadows his other phases to the extent of
suggesting the fanciful interpretation of his name as the 'ruler of the
great dwelling place for the dead.' In the light of the facts set forth,
another explanation for his name must be looked for that would connect
the god with solar functions. The name may in fact be divided into two
elements, the first having the force of chief or ruler, the second
'great.' The combination would be an appropriate designation for the
sun, in the role of a destructive power. But Nergal, after all,
represents only one phase of the sun-god. The god who was worshipped as
the personification of the sun _par excellence_ and the sun as a whole,
was

Shamash.

Written with an ideograph that describes him as the 'god of the day,'
there is no deity whose worship enjoys an equally continued popularity
in Babylonia and Assyria. Beginning at the earliest period of Babylonian
history, and reaching to the latest, his worship suffers no
interruption. Shamash, moreover, maintains his original character with
scarcely any modification throughout this long period. For all that, he
bears a name which signifies 'attendant' or 'servitor,' and which
sufficiently shows the subsidiary position that he occupied in the
Babylonian pantheon. One of the rulers belonging to the dynasty of Isin
calls the sun-god, the offspring of Nannar,--one of the names of the
moon-god,--and the last king of Babylonia, Nabonnedos, does the same. In
combination with the moon-god, the latter takes precedence of
Shamash,[52] and in the enumeration of the complete pantheon, in the
inscriptions of both Assyrian and Babylonian kings, the same order is
preserved. Other evidence that points to the superior rank accorded to
Sin, the moon-god over the sun deity in Babylonia, is the reckoning of
time by the moon phases. The day begins with the evening, and not with
sunrise. The moon, as the chief of the starry firmament, and controlling
the fate of mankind, was the main factor in giving to the orb of night,
this peculiar prominence. The 'service,' accordingly implied in the name
of Shamash appears to have been such as was demanded by his subsidiary
position to the moon-god. Beyond the general recognition, however, of
this relationship between the two, it does not appear that the worship
paid to Shamash, was at all affected by the secondary place, that he
continued to hold in the theoretically constructed pantheon. Less than
is the case with the other gods, is he identified with any particular
city, and we therefore find in the most ancient period, two centers of
Southern Babylonia claiming Shamash as their patron saint,--Larsa,
represented by the mound of Senkereh, and Sippar, occupying the site of
the modern Abu-Habba. It is difficult to say which of the two was the
older; the latter, in the course of time, overshadowed the fame of the
former, and its history can be traced back considerably beyond the
sun-worship at Larsa, the first mention of which occurs in the
inscriptions of rulers of the second dynasty of Ur (_c._ 2900 B.C.).
Since Ur, as we shall see, was sacred to the moon-god, it is hardly
likely that the Shamash cult was introduced at Larsa by the rulers of
Ur. The kings of Ur would not have forfeited the protection of Sin, by
any manifestation of preference for Shamash. When Ur-Gur, therefore,
tells us that he 'built' a temple to Shamash at Larsa, he must mean, as
Sin-iddina of the dynasty of Larsa does, in using the same phrase, that
he enlarged or improved the edifice. What makes it all the more likely
that Ur-Gur found sun-worship at Larsa in existence is, that in the
various places over which this ruler spread his building activity, he is
careful in each case to preserve the status of the presiding deity. So
at Nippur, he engages in work at the temples of En-lil and of Nin-lil;
while at Uruk he devotes himself to the temple of Nana. In thus
connecting their names with the various sacred edifices of Babylonia,
the rulers emphasized, on the one hand, their control of the territory
in which the building lay, and on the other, their allegiance to the
deity of the place, whose protection and favor they sought to gain.

The mention of a temple to Shamash at Sippar reverts to a still earlier
period than that of its rival. Nabonnedos tells us that it was founded
by Naram-Sin. Sargon has put his name on some object[53] that he
dedicates to the sun-god at Sippar. That there was an historical
connection between the two temples may be concluded from the fact that
the name of the sacred edifices was the same in both,--E-babbara,
signifying the 'house of lustre.' Such a similarity points to a
dependence of one upon the other, and the transfer or extension of the
worship directly from one place to the other; but, as intimated, we have
no certain means of determining which of the two is the older. In view
of the general observation to be made in what pertains to the religion
of the Babylonians, that fame and age go hand in hand, the balance is in
favor of Sippar, which became by far the more famous of the two,
received a greater share of popular affection, and retained its
prominence to the closing days of the neo-Babylonian monarchy. We shall
have occasion in a succeeding chapter to trace the history of the
sun-temple at Sippar so far as known. It is interesting to note that
Nabonnedos, feeling the end of his power to be near, undertakes, as one
of the last resorts, the restoration of this edifice, in the hope that
by thus turning once more to the powerful Shamash, he might secure his
protection, in addition to that of Marduk, the head of the later
Babylonian pantheon.

In Ur itself, Shamash was also worshipped in early days by the side of
the moon-god. Eannatum, of the dynasty of Isin (_c._ 2800 B.C.), tells
of two temples erected to him at that place; and still a third edifice,
sacred to both Nannar (the moon god) and Shamash at Ur, is referred to
by a king of the Larsa dynasty, Rim-Sin (_c._ 2300 B.C.). The titles
given to Shamash by the early rulers are sufficiently definite to show
in what relation he stood to his worshippers, and what the conceptions
were that were formed of him. He is, alternately, the king and the
shepherd. Since the kings also called themselves shepherds, no especial
endearment is conveyed by this designation. In the incantations, Shamash
is frequently appealed to, either alone, or when an entire group of
spirits and deities are enumerated. He is called upon to give life to
the sick man. To him the body of the one who is smitten with disease is
confided. As the god of light, he is appropriately called upon to banish
'darkness' from the house, darkness being synonymous with misfortune;
and the appeal is made to him more particularly as the 'king of
judgment.' From this, it is evident that the beneficent action of the
sun, was the phase associated with Shamash. He was hailed as the god
that gives light and life to all things, upon whose favor the prosperity
of the fields and the well-being of man depend. He creates the light and
secures its blessings for mankind. His favor produces order and
stability; his wrath brings discomfiture and ruin to the state and the
individual. But his power was, perhaps, best expressed by the title of
"judge"--the favorite one in the numerous hymns that were composed in
his honor. He was represented as seated on a throne in the chamber of
judgment, receiving the supplications of men, and according as he
manifested his favor or withdrew it, enacting the part of the decider of
fates. He loosens the bonds of the imprisoned, grants health to the
sick, and even revivifies the dead. On the other hand, he puts an end to
wickedness and destroys enemies. He makes the weak strong, and prevents
the strong from crushing the weak. From being the judge, and, moreover,
the supreme judge of the world, it was but natural that the conception
of justice was bound up with him. His light became symbolical of
righteousness, and the absence of it, or darkness, was viewed as
wickedness. Men and gods look expectantly for his light. He is the guide
of the gods, as well as the ruler of men.

While there are no direct indications in the historical texts known at
present, that this conception of the sun-god existed in all its details
before the days of Hammurabi, there is every reason to believe that this
was the case; the more so, in that it does not at all transcend the
range of religious ideas that we have met with in the case of the other
gods of this period. Nor does this conception in any way betray itself,
as being due to the changed political conditions that set in, with the
union of the states under Hammurabi. Still, the age of the religious
texts not being fixed, it is thus necessary to exercise some caution
before using them without the basis of an allusion in the historical
texts.

Utu.

It but remains, before passing on, to note that the same deity appears
under various names. Among these are Utu[54] and apparently also
Babbar[55] in the old Babylonian inscriptions. For the latter, a Semitic
etymology is forthcoming, and we may therefore regard it as representing
a real pronunciation, and not an ideographic writing. Babbar, a
contracted form from Barbar, is the reduplication of the same stem
_bar_[56] that we have already met with, in the name of the temple
sacred to Shamash. Like E-babbara, therefore, Babbar is the "brilliantly
shining one,"--a most appropriate name for the sun, and one frequently
applied to him in the religious texts. As to Utu, there is some doubt
whether it represents a real pronunciation or not. My own opinion is
that it does, and that the underlying stem is _atu_, which in Babylonian
has almost the same meaning as _bar_ or _baru_, viz., 'to see.' 'Utu'
would thus again designate the sun as 'that which shines forth.'

It will be recalled, that other instances have been noted of the same
god appearing under different names. The most natural explanation for
this phenomenon is, that the variation corresponds to the different
localities where the god was worshipped. The identification would not be
made until the union of the various Babylonian states had been achieved.
Such a union would be a potent factor in systematizing the pantheon.
When once it was recognized that the various names represented, in
reality, one and the same deity, it would not be long before the name,
peculiar to the place where the worship was most prominent, would set
the others aside or reduce them to mere epithets.

It may well be that Shamash was the name given to the god at Sippar,
whereas at Ur he may have been known as Utu. Ur-Bau (of the first Ur
dynasty) calls him Utu also, when speaking of the temple at Larsa, but
it would be natural for the kings of Ur to call the sun-god of Larsa by
the same name that he had in Ur. That Hammurabi, however, calls the
sun-god of Larsa, Utu, may be taken as an indication that, as such he
was known at that place, for since we have no record of a sun-temple at
Babylon in these days, there would be no motive that might induce him to
transfer a name, otherwise known to him, to another place. The testimony
of Hammurabi is therefore as direct as that of Sargon, who calls the
sun-god of Sippar, Shamash. It is not always possible to determine, with
as much show of probability, as in the case of the sun-god, the
distribution of the various names, but the general conclusion, for all
that, is warranted in every instance, that a variety of names refers,
originally, to an equal variety of places over which the worship was
spread,--only that care must be exercised to distinguish between
distinctive names and mere epithets.

A.

A consort of the sun-deity, appearing frequently at his side in the
incantation texts, is A. It is more particularly with the Shamash of
Sippar, that A is associated. She is simply the 'beloved one' of the
sun-deity, with no special character of her own. In the historical
texts, her role is quite insignificant, and for the period with which we
are at present concerned she is only mentioned once by a North
Babylonian ruler, Ma-an-ish-tu-su,[57] who dedicates an object to her.
The reading of the ideogram A, or Nin-A (_i.e._, Lady A), is doubtful.
Malkatu ("mistress" or "queen") is offered as a plausible
conjecture.[58] Lehman (_Keils Bibl._ iii. I, 202) suggests _A-Ja_, but
on insufficient grounds. In any case A has the force of mistress, and
Nin-A simply designates the goddess as the lady, mistress, or queen. It
is likely that A was originally an independent deity, and one of the
names of the sun-god in a particular locality. It occurs in proper names
as a title of Shamash. Instead, however, of becoming identified with
Shamash, A degenerated into a pale reflection of Shamash, pictured under
the relationship of consort to him. This may have been due to the union
of Shamash with the place where A was worshipped. If, as seems likely,
that near Sippar, there was another city on the other side of the
Euphrates, forming a suburb to it (as Borsippa did to Babylon), the
conclusion is perhaps warranted that A was originally the sun-god
worshipped at the place which afterwards became incorporated with
Sippar.[59] Such an amalgamation of two originally male deities into a
combination of male and female, strange as it may seem to us, is in
keeping with the lack of sharp distinction between male and female in
the oldest forms of Semitic religions. In the old cuneiform writing the
same sign is used to indicate "lord" or "lady" when attached to deities.
Ishtar appears among Semites both as a male[60] and as a female deity.
Sex was primarily a question of strength. The stronger god was viewed as
masculine; the weaker as feminine.

Nannar and Sin.

Nannar, a reduplicated form like Babbar, with the assimilation of the
first r to n (nar-nar = nannar), has very much the same meaning as
Babbar. The latter, as we have seen, is the "lustrous one," the former,
the "one that furnishes light." The similarity in meaning is in keeping
with the similarity of function of the two deities, thus named: Babbar
being the sun and Nannar, the moon. It was under the name of Nannar that
the moon-god was worshipped at Ur, the most famous and probably the
oldest of the cities over which the moon-god presided. The association
of Nannar with Ur is parallel to that of Shamash with Sippar,--not that
the moon-god's jurisdiction or worship was confined to that place, but
that the worship of the deity of that place eclipsed others, and the
fame and importance at Ur led to the overshadowing of the moon-worship
there, over the obeisance to him paid elsewhere.

What further motives led to the choice of the moon-god as the patron of
Ur, lies beyond the scope of our knowledge. Due allowance must be made
for that natural selection, which takes place in the realm of thought as
much as in the domain of nature. Attention has already been called to
the predominance given by the Babylonians to the moon over the sun. The
latter is expressly called the "offspring of the lord of brilliant
beginning," that is, the moon-god (Delitzsch, _Assyr. Hdw._, p. 234
_a_). It is needless, therefore, to do more, at this place, than to
emphasize the fact anew. The moon serving much more as a guide to man,
through the regular character of its constant changes, than the sun, was
connected in the religious system with both the heavenly and the
terrestrial forces. In view of Nannar's position in the heavens, he was
called the "heifer of Anu." Anu, it will be recalled, was the god of
heaven (and heaven itself), while the "heifer"[61] is here used
metaphorically for offspring, the picture being suggested probably by
the "horn" that the moon presents at a certain phase. This 'horn'
constitutes his crown, and he is frequently represented on seal
cylinders with a crescent over his head, and with a long flowing beard,
that is described as having the color of lapislazuli. A frequent title
is the 'lord of the crown.' On the other hand, by virtue of its
influence on the earth, regulating, as the ancients observed, the tides,
the moon was connected by the Babylonians with the reckoning of time.
Because of this connection with the 'lower world,' it seems, he was also
regarded as the first-born of Bel. His sacred edifice at Ur was one to
which all rulers of the place devoted themselves. Ur-Gur, Nur-Ramman,
Sin-iddina, and Kudur-mabuk tell of their embellishment of the temple,
each one appropriating to himself the title of 'builder,' in which they
gloried. So close, again, was the identification of the city with the
deity, that the latter was frequently known simply as the god of Ur, and
the former, as the city of Nannar.