The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria(巴比龙尼亚和阿西里亚的宗教)
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THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
1
THE RELIGION OF
BABYLONIA AND
ASSYRIA
Theophilus G. Pinches, LL.D.
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
2
CHAPTER I
FOREWORD
Position, and Period.
The religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was the polytheistic
faith professed by the peoples inhabiting the Tigris and Euphrates valleys
from what may be regarded as the dawn of history until the Christian era
began, or, at least, until the inhabitants were brought under the influence
of Christianity. The chronological period covered may be roughly
estimated at about 5000 years. The belief of the people, at the end of that
time, being Babylonian heathenism leavened with Judaism, the country
was probably ripe for the reception of the new faith. Christianity, however,
by no means replaced the earlier polytheism, as is evidenced by the fact,
that the worship of Nebo and the gods associated with him continued until
the fourth century of the Christian era.
By whom followed.
It was the faith of two distinct peoples--the Sumero-Akkadians, and
the Assyro-Babylonians. In what country it had its beginnings is unknown-
-it comes before us, even at the earliest period, as a faith already well-
developed, and from that fact, as well as from the names of the numerous
deities, it is clear that it began with the former race--the Sumero-
Akkadians--who spoke a non-Semitic language largely affected by
phonetic decay, and in which the grammatical forms had in certain cases
become confused to such an extent that those who study it ask themselves
whether the people who spoke it were able to understand each other
without recourse to devices such as the "tones" to which the Chinese resort.
With few exceptions, the names of the gods which the inscriptions reveal
to us are all derived from this non-Semitic language, which furnishes us
with satisfactory etymologies for such names as Merodach, Nergal, Sin,
and the divinities mentioned in Berosus and Damascius, as well as those
of hundreds of deities revealed to us by the tablets and slabs of Babylonia
and Assyria.
The documents.
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
3
Outside the inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria, there is but little
bearing upon the religion of those countries, the most important fragment
being the extracts from Berosus and Damascius referred to above. Among
the Babylonian and Assyrian remains, however, we have an extensive and
valuable mass of material, dating from the fourth or fifth millennium
before Christ until the disappearance of the Babylonian system of writing
about the beginning of the Christian era. The earlier inscriptions are
mostly of the nature of records, and give information about the deities and
the religion of the people in the course of descriptions of the building and
rebuilding of temples, the making of offerings, the performance of
ceremonies, etc. Purely religious inscriptions are found near the end of the
third millennium before Christ, and occur in considerable numbers, either
in the original Sumerian text, or in translations, or both, until about the
third century before Christ. Among the more recent inscriptions--those
from the library of the Assyrian king A 殮ur-bani-鈖li and the later
Babylonian temple archives,--there are many lists of deities, with
numerous identifications with each other and with the heavenly bodies,
and explanations of their natures. It is needless to say that all this material
is of enormous value for the study of the religion of the Babylonians and
Assyrians, and enables us to reconstruct at first hand their mythological
system, and note the changes which took place in the course of their long
national existence. Many interesting and entertaining legends illustrate and
supplement the information given by the bilingual lists of gods, the
bilingual incantations and hymns, and the references contained in the
historical and other documents. A trilingual list of gods enables us also to
recognise, in some cases, the dialectic forms of their names.
The importance of the subject.
Of equal antiquity with the religion of Egypt, that of Babylonia and
Assyria possesses some marked differences as to its development.
Beginning among the non-Semitic Sumero-Akkadian population, it
maintained for a long time its uninterrupted development, affected mainly
by influences from within, namely, the homogeneous local cults which
acted and reacted upon each other. The religious systems of other nations
did not greatly affect the development of the early non-Semitic religious
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
4
system of Babylonia. A time at last came, however, when the influence of
the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria was not to be gainsaid,
and from that moment, the development of their religion took another turn.
In all probably this augmentation of Semitic religious influence was due to
the increased numbers of the Semitic population, and at the same period
the Sumero- Akkadian language began to give way to the Semitic idiom
which they spoke. When at last the Semitic Babylonian language came to
be used for official documents, we find that, although the non-Semitic
divine names are in the main preserved, a certain number of them have
been displaced by the Semitic equivalent names, such as 奱ma* for the
sun-god, with Kittu and M 隁aru ("justice and righteousness") his
attendants; Nab* ("the teacher" = Nebo) with his consort Ta 歮阾 u ("the
hearer"); Addu, Adad, or Dadu, and Rammanu, Ramimu, or Ragimu =
Hadad or Rimmon ("the thunderer"); B 阬 and B 阬tu (Beltis = "the lord"
and "the lady" /par excellence/), with some others of inferior rank. In place
of the chief divinity of each state at the head of each separate pantheon,
the tendency was to make Merodach, the god of the capital city Babylon,
the head of the pantheon, and he seems to have been universally accepted
in Babylonia, like A 殮ur in Assyria, about 2000 B.C. or earlier.
The uniting of two pantheons.
We thus find two pantheons, the Sumero-Akkadian with its many gods,
and the Semitic Babylonian with its comparatively few, united, and
forming one apparently homogeneous whole. But the creed had taken a
fresh tendency. It was no longer a series of small, and to a certain extent
antagonistic, pantheons composed of the chief god, his consort, attendants,
children, and servants, but a pantheon of considerable extent, containing
all the elements of the primitive but smaller pantheons, with a number of
great gods who had raised Merodach to be their king.
In Assyria.
Whilst accepting the religion of Babylonia, Assyria nevertheless kept
herself distinct from her southern neighbour by a very simple device, by
placing at the head of the pantheon the god A 殮ur, who became for her
the chief of the gods, and at the same time the emblem of her distinct
national aspirations--for Assyria had no intention whatever of casting in
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
5
her lot with her southern neighbour. Nevertheless, Assyria possessed,
along with the language of Babylonia, all the literature of that country--
indeed, it is from the libraries of her kings that we obtain the best copies of
the Babylonian religious texts, treasured and preserved by her with all the
veneration of which her religious mind was capable,--and the religious
fervour of the Oriental in most cases leaves that of the European, or at
least of the ordinary Briton, far behind.
The later period in Assyria.
Assyria went to her downfall at the end of the seventh century before
Christ worshipping her national god A 殮ur, whose cult did not cease with
the destruction of her national independence. In fact, the city of A 殮ur,
the centre of that worship, continued to exist for a considerable period; but
for the history of the religion of Assyria, as preserved there, we wait for
the result of the excavations being carried on by the Germans, should they
be fortunate enough to obtain texts belonging to the period following the
fall of Nineveh.
In Babylonia.
Babylonia, on the other hand, continued the even tenor of her way.
More successful at the end of her independent political career than her
northern rival had been, she retained her faith, and remained the
unswerving worshipper of Merodach, the great god of Babylon, to whom
her priests attributed yet greater powers, and with whom all the other gods
were to all appearance identified. This tendency to monotheism, however,
never reached the culminating point--never became absolute-- except,
naturally, in the minds of those who, dissociating themselves, for
philosophical reasons, from the superstitious teaching of the priests of
Babylonia, decided for themselves that there was but one God, and
worshipped Him. That orthodox Jews at that period may have found, in
consequence of this monotheistic tendency, converts, is not by any means
improbable--indeed, the names met with during the later period imply that
converts to Judaism were made.
The picture presented by the study.
Thus we see, from the various inscriptions, both Babylonian and
Assyrian--the former of an extremely early period--the growth and
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
6
development, with at least one branching off, of one of the most important
religious systems of the ancient world. It is not so important for modern
religion as the development of the beliefs of the Hebrews, but as the creed
of the people from which the Hebrew nation sprang, and from which,
therefore, it had its beginnings, both corporeal and spiritual, it is such as
no student of modern religious systems can afford to neglect. Its legends,
and therefore its teachings, as will be seen in these pages, ultimately
permeated the Semitic West, and may in some cases even had penetrated
Europe, not only through heathen Greece, but also through the early
Christians, who, being so many centuries nearer the time of the Assyro-
Babylonians, and also nearer the territory which they anciently occupied,
than we are, were far better acquainted than the people of the present day
with the legends and ideas which they possessed.
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
7
CHAPTER II
THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS
The Sumero-Akkadians and the Semites.
For the history of the development of the religion of the Babylonians
and Assyrians much naturally depends upon the composition of the
population of early Babylonia. There is hardly any doubt that the Sumero-
Akkadians were non-Semites of a fairly pure race, but the country of their
origin is still unknown, though a certain relationship with the Mongolian
and Turkish nationalities, probably reaching back many centuries--perhaps
thousands of years--before the earliest accepted date, may be regarded as
equally likely. Equally uncertain is the date of the entry of the Semites,
whose language ultimately displaced the non-Semitic Sumero-Akkadian
idioms, and whose kings finally ruled over the land. During the third
millennium before Christ Semites, bearing Semitic names, and called
Amorites, appear, and probably formed the last considerable stratum of
tribes of that race which entered the land. The name Martu, the Sumero-
Akkadian equivalent of Amurru, "Amorite", is of frequent occurrence also
before this period. The eastern Mediterranean coast district, including
Palestine and the neighbouring tracts, was known by the Babylonians and
Assyrians as the land of the Amorites, a term which stood for the West in
general even when these regions no longer bore that name. The
Babylonians maintained their claim to sovereignty over that part as long as
they possessed the power to do so, and naturally exercised considerable
influence there. The existence in Palestine, Syria, and the neighbouring
states, of creeds containing the names of many Babylonian divinities is
therefore not to be wondered at, and the presence of West Semitic
divinities in the religion of the Babylonians need not cause us any
surprise.
The Babylonian script and its evidence.
In consequence of the determinative prefix for a god or a goddess
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
8
being, in the oldest form, a picture of an eight-rayed star, it has been
assumed that Assyro-Babylonian mythology is, either wholly or partly,
astral in origin. This, however, is by no means certain, the character for
"star" in the inscriptions being a combination of three such pictures, and
not a single sign. The probability therefore is, that the use of the single star
to indicate the name of a divinity arises merely from the fact that the
character in question stands for /ana/, "heaven." Deities were evidently
thus distinguished by the Babylonians because they regarded them as
inhabitants of the realms above--indeed, the heavens being the place
where the stars are seen, a picture of a star was the only way of indicating
heavenly things. That the gods of the Babylonians were in many cases
identified with the stars and planets is certain, but these identifications
seem to have taken place at a comparatively late date. An exception has
naturally to be made in the case of the sun and moon, but the god
Merodach, if he be, as seems certain, a deified Babylonian king, must have
been identified with the stars which bear his name after his worshippers
began to pay him divine honours as the supreme deity, and naturally what
is true for him may also be so for the other gods whom they worshipped.
The identification of some of the deities with stars or planets is, moreover,
impossible, and if 蔭, the god of the deep, and Anu, the god of the
heavens, have their representatives among the heavenly bodies, this is
probably the result of later development.[*]
[*] If there be any historical foundation for the statement that
Merodach arranged the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars, assigning
to them their proper places and duties--a tradition which would make him
the founder of the science of astronomy during his life upon earth--this,
too, would tend to the probability that the origin of the gods of the
Babylonians was not astral, as has been suggested, but that their
identification with the heavenly bodies was introduced during the period
of his reign.
Ancestor and hero-worship. The deification of kings.
Though there is no proof that ancestor-worship in general prevailed at
any time in Babylonia, it would seem that the worship of heroes and
prominent men was common, at least in early times. The tenth chapter of
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
9
Genesis tells us of the story of Nimrod, who cannot be any other than the
Merodach of the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions; and other examples,
occurring in semi-mythological times, are /En-we-dur-an-ki/, the Greek
Edoreschos, and /Gilgame*/, the Greek Gilgamos, though Aelian's story of
the latter does not fit in with the account as given by the inscriptions. In
later times, the divine prefix is found before the names of many a
Babylonian ruler--Sargon of Agad*,[*] Dungi of Ur (about 2500 B.C.),
Rim-Sin or Eri-Aku (Arioch of Ellasar, about 2100 B.C.), and others. It
was doubtless a kind of flattery to deify and pay these rulers divine
honours during their lifetime, and on account of this, it is very probable
that their godhood was utterly forgotten, in the case of those who were
strictly historical, after their death. The deification of the kings of
Babylonia and Assyria is probably due to the fact, that they were regarded
as the representatives of God upon earth, and being his chief priests as
well as his offspring (the personal names show that it was a common thing
to regard children as the gifts of the gods whom their father worshipped),
the divine fatherhood thus attributed to them naturally could, in the case of
those of royal rank, give them a real claim to divine birth and honours. An
exception is the deification of the Babylonian Noah, Ut-napi 歵im, who,
as the legend of the Flood relates, was raised and made one of the gods by
Aa or Ea, for his faithfulness after the great catastrophe, when he and his
wife were translated to the "remote place at the mouth of the rivers." The
hero Gilgame*, on the other hand, was half divine by birth, though it is not
exactly known through whom his divinity came.
[*] According to Nabonidus's date 3800 B.C., though many
Assyriologists regard this as being a millennium too early.
The earliest form of the Babylonian religion.
The state of development to which the religious system of the
Babylonians had attained at the earliest period to which the inscriptions
refer naturally precludes the possibility of a trustworthy history of its
origin and early growth. There is no doubt, however, that it may be
regarded as having reached the stage at which we find it in consequence of
there being a number of states in ancient Babylonia (which was at that
time like the Heptarchy in England) each possessing its own divinity--who,
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
10
in its district, was regarded as supreme--with a number of lesser gods
forming his court. It was the adding together of all these small pantheons
which ultimately made that of Babylonia as a whole so exceedingly
extensive. Thus the chief divinity of Babylon, as has already been stated,
as Merodach; at Sippar and Larsa the sun-god 奱ma* was worshipped; at
Ur the moon-god Sin or Nannar; at Erech and D阹 the god of the heavens,
Anu; at Muru, Ennigi, and Kakru, the god of the atmosphere, Hadad or
Rimmon; at 蕆idu, the god of the deep, Aa or 蔭; at Niffur[*] the god
Bel; at Cuthah the god of war, Nergal; at Dailem the god Ura*; at Ki* the
god of battle, Zagaga; Lugal-Amarda, the king of Marad, as the city so
called; at Opis Zakar, one of the gods of dreams; at Agad*, Nineveh, and
Arbela, I 歵ar, goddess of love and of war; Nina at the city Nina in
Babylonia, etc. When the chief deities were masculine, they were naturally
all identified with each other, just as the Greeks called the Babylonian
Merodach by the name of Zeus; and as Zer-pan 顃um, the consort of
Merodach, was identified with Juno, so the consorts, divine attendants,
and children of each chief divinity, as far as they possessed them, could
also be regarded as the same, though possibly distinct in their different
attributes.
[*] Noufar at present, according to the latest explorers. Layard (1856)
has Niffer, Loftus (1857) Niffar. The native spelling is Noufer, due to the
French system of phonetics.
How the religion of the Babylonians developed.
The fact that the rise of Merodach to the position of king of the gods
was due to the attainment, by the city of Babylon, of the position of capital
of all Babylonia, leads one to suspect that the kingly rank of his father 蔭,
at an earlier period, was due to a somewhat similar cause, and if so, the
still earlier kingship of Anu, the god of the heavens, may be in like manner
explained. This leads to the question whether the first state to attain to
supremacy was D 阹, Anu's seat, and whether D 阹 was succeeded by 蕆
idu, of which city 蔭 was the patron--concerning the importance of
Babylon, Merodach's city, later on, there is no doubt whatever. The rise of
Anu and 蔭 to divine overlordship, however, may not have been due to
the political supremacy of the cities where they were worshipped--it may
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