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Greece and Babylon
D&TE DUE
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HLma
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GREECE
BABYLON
AND
A COMPARATIVE SKETCH OF
MESOPOTAMIAN, ANATOLIAN
AND HELLENIC RELIGIONS
BY
LEWIS
R.
FARNELL,
D.LITT.,
M.A.
AUTHOR OF
"CULTS OF THE GREEK STATES" DEVOLUTION OF RELIGION"
EDINBURGH
T.
&
T.
CLARK,
191
38 GEORGE STREET
Printed ly
&
T.
CLARK, EDINBURGH.
NEW YORK
co. LIMITED.
TO
DR.
HENRY WILDE
ARE DEDICATED
BY
If!
CONTENTS.
......
CHAPTER
INAUGURAL LECTURE
CHAPTER
I.
PAGE
i
II.
pursue
.......
CHAPTER
29
III.
CHAPTER
.40
IV.
CONTENTS
viii
features, especially of
daimoniac powers
Mystic imagina-
Some
CHAPTER
V.
CHAPTER
THE DEITIES
Shamash the sun-god
VI.
AS NATURE-POWERS.
from the
but the Babylonian deities develop
their personality independently of their nature-origin,
which is often doubtful Importance of Sin, the moon-god
Star-worship in Babylonian cult No clear recognition of
an earth-goddess Tammuz a vegetation-power Western
Canaanites worship nature-deities in the second millennium,
probably with moral attributes The Hittites a thundergod and corn-god The Phrygians a mother-goddess of the
earth and lower world On the whole, pre-Homeric Hellas
worships ethical personalities rather than nature-powers
Distinguished from Mesopotamia by comparative insigderives his personal character
nature-phenomenon
81
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
THE DEITIES
The
ix
PAGE
VII.
AS SOCIAL-POWERS.
Slight evidence from Mesopoearly Greece Early Mesopotamian kingThe king inspired and occasionally
ship of divine type
The Hittite monuments show the divine
worshipped
associations of the king Proto-Hellenic kingship probably
Social usages protected by religion
of similar character
in the whole of this area
No family cult of the hearth
religious origin of the city
tamia,
more from
an equally stiong
social force,
but
many
of its social
CHAPTER
116
VIII.
as beneficent
and righteous,
fessional stress
life
in
CHAPTER
141
IX.
.163
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER
X.
CHAPTER
.173
XI.
The
religion, entire
absence of
it in
the Hellenic
CHAPTER
XII.
Mesopotamia
190
CONTENTS
xi
PAGE
in
CHAPTER
XIII.
The
Mourning for Tammuz In other Semitic communiIn Hittite worship, Sandon of Tarsos Attis of Phrygia
Emasculation in Phrygian ritual, alien to Babylonian as
Death of divinity in Cretan
to Hellenic religious sentiment
In genuine Hellenic religion, found
ritual, and in Cyprus
only in agrarian hero-cults, such as Linos, Eunostos ; these
having no connection with Tammuz Babylonian liturgy
mainly a service of sorrow, Greek mainly cheerful A holy
ritual
ties
ritual
at Boghaz-Keui,
mortal the consort of
relief
divinity,
by anthropology
Criticism
of different
views
Their
Hellas and
CONTENTS
xii
.....
CHAPTER
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
.221
XIV.
304
I.
INAUGURAL LECTURE.
THE
may
be allowed or
difficult
copious
fields
of study,
fruit,
and
will
ment
of this
found encouragement
more, perhaps,
than
in other fields
plicity of aspects
no predecessor,
from which
it
may
be studied.
may
Having
be called upon
One guidance,
have
But we have
exponent
recently
of
in the University
these themes
in
Mr.
one accomplished
Marett,
and
until
Tylor
the exposition of Comparative Religion should be mainly
an elucidation and comparison of the higher forms and
ideas in the more advanced religions.
And I can
;
have been
in
much
also of religious
ethic,
INAUGURAL LECTURE
excursions
into
outlying tracts
afford
that
it.
It had its
it
which
special inheritance,
fruitfully developed,
from the North, from its proto-Aryan past, and which
we shall be able to define with greater clearness when
own
its
religious
peoples, of
and hope
the
thereby to indicate the main problems
student of comparative religion must try to solve, or
the leading questions he must ask, and thus, perhaps,
to be able to suggest to others as well as to myself
which
of
any
has
religion that
We
wish to
definite
functions,
personality
and whether
with
it
character
complex
is
imagined
or
and
presented
the record
is
religion
unusually defective
is
is
monotheistic
is
the other morphological questions that press themselves upon us, whether the polytheism is an organised
system of co-ordinated and subordinated powers or a
and morality
and
in this quest
we may hope
to gain
social organisation,
and
ethics.
religion
is
We
shall also
dogmatic or not
wish to
that
is
INAUGURAL LECTURE
to say, whether
definitions
it
whether
or a revelation
whether
as a cardinal virtue.
to consider whether
possible
it
it is always interesting
has engendered a cosmogony,
Further,
it
its
origin,
and whether
maintenance, and
it
is
instinctively
anthropomorphic
religions,
is
matrilinear society.
to the divinity,
we may endeavour
to discern certain
from a
belief in divinities
finite
phenomenon
no
of the
we
is
of
more
There
concerning ritual,
less significance.
the
of
none
but
often very minute,
What are the forms of worship, sacrifice, prayer, adoraAs
tion ?
sacrifice, is it deprecatory merely, a
regards
bribe to avert wrath, or
?
In
worshipper a temporary union of body and soul
the study of ritual we may consider the position of the
the
priesthood, its power over the religion, and through
by no means
exhaustive.
may
legitimately arise,
and
is
the
appeal,
its
real
control
of
the
people's
when we can
believe that
record
It
is
it
may
also
monuments.
has formulated
this
demand
as
Certainly
belongs to the scientific
treatment of our subject to note the circumstances and
operative causes that induced a certain people to abandon
might
fulfil.
it
and
cults
INAUGURAL LECTURE
will
It
and our
I will
which I,
one last query
it
for,
questions, or
answer them
if
it
the
myself.
main
one,
But I should
and that the
it is
is
to be
we abandon
precisely,
it
is
in despair the
none the
less
attempt to
fruitful to
nor
and
complex
physical traits
doubt
no
ideas
cruder
moral nature. Vaguer and
the
and
survived right through the historic period,
Hellene may once have lived in
primitive ancestor of the
the religious phase of thought in which the personal god
the
has not yet emerged or not yet been detached from
But I believe
or the world of living matter.
of
individual
definite
phenomenon
him
phase far more remotely behind
have
lightly supposed,
than certain modern theorists
period had
left this
It
is
common
heritage of several
before
that
they crossed
quite possible
among
that this was the type of religion that they would mainly
find among the peoples of the Minoan- Mycenaean
culture.
We
it
also,
Mediterranean area.
In the
Ahura-Mazda
Jahwe
of Israel,
whatever
his
of Babylon,
The same
is
INAUGURAL LECTURE
Speaking generally,
in
spite
of
many important
we may regard
am
defining
these peoples,
by the
Hellenic.
Also,
among
in Hellas,
we
we
all
find Helios
and the
deities of the
as,
wind,
difference
moon,
is
find sun-worship or
We
moral
personalities,
religious
for instance,
imagina-
had Helios
io
it
and
it
religious
by the
must have been
it
an aversion
to the
contrast
minor phenomenon
and attest this. All
certain
will illustrate
in
of
these
them
we may sometimes
them, or
Plutarch
personifications of moral or abstract ideas.
of
the
GoodPersian
mentions
Truth,
worship
specially
emanations,
as
call
Law-abidingness, Wisdom, emanations of AhuraMazda, which in the light of the sacred books we may,
will,
divine beings
had
system we
little
when we
Now
really
to have been mentally unable to allow his consciousness
of these things or these forces to remain just at that
point.
his
Once, no doubt,
ancestors
it
was
dimly imagined Eros, or the half-personal Curse-power 'Apa; but he himself could only
cherish Eros under the finished and concrete form of a
INAUGURAL LECTURE
him when
it
touch on
what
is
now
it
in respect of their
anthropomorphism.
Philosophically,
that
man
intelligible
to
his
reflecting
his
own
But, apart
the
the
exact
though idealised
divinity
counterpart of man, and construct the divine society
purely on the lines of the human, or refrain from doing
picture
as
through weakness and obscurity of imagination or in deference to a different and perhaps more
this either
Now,
of the
its
strengthened
it,
in
it
shaped the
12
may
Oriental.
In
the
first
place,
the
anthropomorphic
chiefly
this
of
remained
idolatry,
almost
mysticism.
still
measure at
least to the
Roman,
it
owed works
divine,
of the
of the Hellenes
type that
may
for to
it
they
be called the human;
man.
I
its
main
effects.
It
INAUGURAL LECTURE
13
material fact.
god as a
It increased
polytheism by multiplying
the separate figures of worship, often, perhaps, without
intention.
It assisted the imagination to discard what
the
Nor was
introduction
destinies
of
force
its
of
Christianity,
the Greek
for
it
we should
anthropomorphic
idea.
Persia,
Hittite
of
the
deities are
is
unstable.
Often animal
and
And
traits
I4
has a lion's
appear in parts of the divine figure. Nergal
in the
invoked
is
head; even the warrior Marduk
"
Black Bull of the Deep, Lion
mystic incantations as
l
In fact, over a large part of anof the dark house."
terior
anthropomorphism
Asia,
exist side
by
and
theriomorphism
and
religious art.
theriomorphism
many
questions
and
posterior, the
evolution of religion.
They can
easily,
and frequently
do,
and embody
his
cannot prove in
There was
i.
p. 251.
INAUGURAL LECTURE
to
entirely adequate
15
"
ancient enthusiast avers,
having once seen him thus,
could
not
him
otherwise."
But when a
you
imagine
whom
to
divinity
already come
high
to attach
in
religious
conceptions
have
presented,
might be
with the head of a jackal or
as
is
it
will receive a
godhead
will
Plutarch,
in the
our witnesses.
He
De
Iside
et
Osiride,
is
one of
P. 382, c.
1908, vol.
i.
p. 192.
16
"
the high vagueness of the
Logos," too stable in his
beautiful humanity to sink into the ape.
shifter,
conceived
this subject I
now
as
bull,
now
as serpent,
now
every
admitted to be the highest god, yet we may believe
Athena counted more than he for the Athenians, and
Hera more for the Argives. And we have evidence
of the passionate devotion of many
communities to the mother Demeter
urban and
village
dominate the
latter
INAUGURAL LECTURE
17
we
Father-God.
system
how
far it
of counting descent
is
to be connected with a
is
call
of
anthropomorphism,
it
minded anthropomorphism
Oriental extravagance.
1
2
i.
p. 545.
i8
If
we now
divinities of
conceptions attached to the high State
Greece and the East, we should be struck with a general
in the point of view of the various culture-
similarity
The higher
stocks.
deities,
and the worship of Greece falls here into line with the
Hebraic conceptions of a god of righteousness. But in
one important particular Hellenic thought markedly
In the
differs from Oriental, especially the Persian.
religion throughout Hellas the deities are, on the
people's
them.
Ares
cult.
and
evil spirits,
and the
days of Hellenic
.magic.
He
personify
it
INAUGURAL LECTURE
Persia.
The
and
Egyptian
Assyrian
19
records
bear
strong impress
prominence and power of the
belief in evil spirits.
The high gods of Assyria were
invoked
and implored by the worcontinually being
to
save
the
him
from
demons, and one of these,
shipper
Ira, a demon of pestilence, seems to have received
actual worship
and much of Egyptian private ritual
was protective magic against them.
But nowhere did the power of evil assume such grand
proportions as in the old Mazdean creed of Persia, and
the dualism between the good and evil principle became
of the
its
its
not to doubt.
struggle between
this struggle con-
We
Further,
should be observed that the Mazdean dualism between
common with
good and
evil
antithesis
spirit
and
expressed
in
has nothing in
the Platonic
Buddhism.
way
Only he developed
the doctrine of purity into a code more burdensome
than can be found, I think, elsewhere. The ideas of
ritual-purity on which he framed this code are found
broadcast through the East and in Egypt, and appear
tyranny of a morbid
ascetisrn.
20
in
the
Hellenic
also.
religion
be
developed races,
to determine with certainty the comparative strength of
the religious sanction of morals in the ancient societies
The ethical-religious force of the
of the Mediterranean.
Zarathustrian faith seems
We
Hebraic.
should judge
to
it
occasionally
conduct as
confessor, encouraged a high standard of
the ancient
in
as the average found elsewhere
high
world.
We may
Hellenic code
nor Greek
note,
neither
religion,
virtue of truth
however,
Greek
ethics,
on the whole,
and a divine
of society
Vide
my Evolution
INAUGURAL LECTURE
21
and we are
is
of the State/'
Terminus,
"
"
who
and who,
Zeus
like
opiog,
as yet rich
religion
played
constructive
part
in
the
oldest
civilisations,
We may
is
curiously secular
and
in
many
respects modern.
Greek
societies
pursued in the
no other religion of
fruitfully
for
study
which we have any record was so political as the Hellenic,
not even, as I should judge, the Roman, to which it bears
;
name
and
Greek
1.
132.
22
manence
of the city's
life.
And
we
in Greece
is
find
of great
significance
was mpai^popos
instance, Apollo
in Asia
Minor
cities,
To
would imply
ancient Greek world. There can be no theocracy where
In Asia Minor the priest might
there is no theocrat.
be a great political power, but in Greece this was never
Here
so.
the
politicians,
and
and immersed
as
become
and even
divinities
in secular affairs,
strife,
interest
utilitarian
some
of the religious
Thus Greek
attest.
insanity,
pensating
The high
religion.
secular,
political,
dominates the
by
what
Therefore,
Hebrew
still
more
in the
liturgies.
Another
Hellenism than
creed.
owed
We
to Apollo
it
life
of the
INAUGURAL LECTURE
23
We
we know
show glimpses
area
of this
of
who was
is
Greek
than
this
religion,
that
it
both.
Egyptian
when
gnosis,"
of theosophy,
till
is
we come
to
no longer pure.
We
discover
24
also a
vacuum
of the earlier
in the religious
Greek
any name
"
faith/
differed
also
essentially not
only
Buddhistic votary.
blood-sacrifice of animals,
same
that which
commended
human
an established system or as an
The motives that prompted it
present an important and intricate question to the
modern inquirer. The two nations that
grew to abhor
it and to
protest against it were the Hebrew and the
sacrifice, either as
occasional expedient.
Greek, though the latter did not wholly escape the taint
INAUGURAL LECTURE
of
it
he
for
ancestral past,
25
Now, an
expounded
of
act, of
which there
is
no
Old Testament,
appears to have been
traces of
it
We
find doubtful
in the Eleusinian
also a glimpse of
But
it
and Hellenised
I
it is
service as well.
problem.
I
lished
some years
mental idea
to
ago.
the
The
Greek States
is
of
the
p. 192.
2
appeal
"
Sacrificial
i.
26
later
days
of paganism, especially in
period of struggle with
That strangest rite of the expiring
Christianity.
or the baptism in bull's blood,
the
its
rwpofifaov,
polytheism,
in the worship of Kybele, has been successfully traced
back by M. Cumont to the worship of the Babylonian
The sacramental concept was the stronghold
Anaitis.
In
fact,
be able to tell
Meantime,
this
us,
phenomenon
of precise
grades of
the sacramental
concept,
about
for
loose
state-
it.
is
another
mode
and the strange legend of Pasiphae and the bullgod lends itself naturally to this interpretation. The
Hellenic religion also presents us with a few examples
And
in
the mysteries of
INAUGURAL LECTURE
later paganism, as well as in certain
27
more
more momentous than the
the divinity.
is
Babylonian ritual, in
a salient feature
of the
Sumerian-
Thammuz was
in
human immortality
is
the symbol
deity
idea and this ritual appears to have been alien to the
native Hellenic religion. The Hellenic gods and goddesses do not die
and
rise again.
some savagery
28
god
fertile
moral conceptions.
mood
it
but
it
religions,
as
it
was to the
native Hellenic.
I
more
spiritual
stated
ancestors.
still
invite
Many
the
of
problems
further research,
which
may
have
con-
it
and ancient
Much remains
Roman
of
some
to be done
religions, still
more
for
the study
is
CHAPTER
II.
THE
We
The Hittite
of Comparative Religion.
are witnesses of primary value concerning
but the Hittite script may reveal
Hittite religion
the
service
monuments
much more
that
is
vital to
our view of
it,
and without
we know more
of the
Minoan-Mycenaean
religion
3o
is
it
is
desirable to look
around
Eastern Europe, and the question of their relationships, this is now, I feel, a seasonable thing to do
all the more because the Asiatic region has been mainly
explored by specialists, who have worked, as was profitable and right, each in his special province, without
having the time or perhaps the training to achieve
a comparative survey of the whole. We know also by
long experience the peculiar dangers to which specialists
in their enthusiastic devotion to their own
are prone
;
human
secret places of
And now
history.
certain scholars,
who
31
Sumerian- Assyrian religion and culture played a dominating part in the evolution of the Mediterranean
civilisation,
and
of the religious
beliefs
that
of
distinguished
writer
on Greek
religion,
O.
Dr.
from a
single centre,
of
deepest impression of
ful vitality,
and
its
of its intensity of
its force-
"
What
is
more
its
own than a
was
people's gods
said,
"
?
we
1
Vide the critical remarks on such a view by Prof. Jastrow in
Transactions of the Third International Congress of the History of
Religions, vol. i. pp. 234-237.
32
"
What is less its own than a people's
rather ask,
"
?
gods
always, however, remembering that racetradition, inherited instinctive feeling and thought, is
may
to
its
while
expression,
will,
modes
ancestral
of
will
it
ritual.
these lectures
title of
it
may be applied either to
naturally twofold
the earlier or the later periods of the Hellenic and
is
Hellenic-Roman history.
though much
later period,
critical research is
needed for
far simpler
society
is
Samuel
in
of the
Roman
Western Empire
Reinach in
Society
in
the
his Orpheus.
to
last
scholar,
Century
am
writer in
Paiens dans
Dill,
by
by the same
not going to
may have
I
am
to
going
final
promise
results.
proved
It
will
33
be gain
we can dimly
enough
and
more
still
We may then
what are
the
of
air
if
may
light
a reasoned scientific
we can
come.
we can hope
before
for
any
we
to answer with
by
may
venture upon
and
it
Nor can
do more than
comparative survey of Greece, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, as this task has never yet been critically performed.
Something like an attempt was made by
3
34
when
which
We
can no longer
Hellenic invasion of Greece to a very
our inquiry.
than 1500
becomes
were
less
likely
B.C.
On
life,
occurred not
this hypothesis,
much
our quest
We
B.C. in
By
this date
we may
Vide Annual
it
35
alien
this
particular sphere
the Hellene in many essentials
own
in the
Homeric period.
we
and
feel
that in
spiritual life
his
Therefore, in trying to
is
of
The
PP-
and many
of the
communities
Vide Zimmern, Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament (K. A.T.)
S
,
36
Minor
relations
is
As
far as
can discern,
and
of
habitants
the
Troad,
Phrygia,
Cilicia, as varieties of
Lydia, possibly
terranean stock to which the people of the MinoanAegean culture themselves belonged. At any rate,
for the purposes of our religious comparison,
they are to
which as through
influence from Mesopotamia
were not
Mesopotamian
own
influence
religious
life.
is
by
method
and
of
all
that
is
at
for discovering
and then we
more, concerning the Hittite religion
must glean all we can of the earliest forms of cult in
;
in
the
early
world
the
of
37
Minoan-Mycenaean
culture.
of borrowing
For often
of the
myth and
cult
ruled out,
is
we must have
which
ing,
whom we
same
when
Now,
one's
way
shall
in beginning this
first difficulty is
be definite and
attempt a mere synoptical outline of the Babylonianthose whom that might content
Sumerian religion
will find one in Dr. Pinches' handbook, The Religion
;
laborious
and
critical
Religion Balyloniens
Assyrians.
But
for
me
to
38
is
as follows
is
the
or
State,
and
to
to,
morality,
and
I will consider
what we
The comparison
religious
here
it
will
and
psychology
peoples
will be useful to analyse and define that element
of
the
different
We may
from a comparison
concerning man's future destiny and his posthumous existence. Finally, we must compare the various
beliefs
cult-objects
and forms
the position and organisation of the priestand here it will be convenient to consider the
sacrifice
hood
ritual of
magic as well as
part played
religion.
39
If
of these
and the
CHAPTER
III,
As
I said in
as the Hellenic/
be now
briefly
The grounds
shown.
of this
judgment
may
most
of these together
under
between that
religious
this day.
Vide supra, p.
40
9.
41
Roman Empire
ethical
cult
And
element.
at least
"
on such a basis
non-moral/'
of distinction as
moral
and
to
it is fruitless
is
cuneiform texts
of the
of the
us in
Sumerian-Babylonian society
doubt how we should answer these questions in behalf
does
leave
When
the peoples in the Mesopotamian valley.
the Semitic tribes first pushed their way into these
of
religious
1
Westermarck maintains the view in his Origin and Development
Moral Ideas, pp. 663-664, that in many savage religions the gods
have no concern with ordinary morality ; but the statistics he gives
need careful testing.
of
42
literature
Sumerian
the
language
with
interlinear
"
drums and tramplings of all the conquerors from the
time of Sargon ist and the kings before Hammurabi to
the day of the Macedonian Seleukos. And in a sketch
of this system as it prevailed in the second millennium B.C.
to distinguish
it is quite useless for our purpose to try
more
It is
valuable to formulate this obvious fact, that a widespread belief in personal concrete divinities, upon
which an advanced polytheism was based, was an
in this region.
Tiele's
hyponot
so
was
that the earliest Sumerian system
thesis
much a polytheism as a polydaimonism, out of which
certain definite gods gradually emerged some time
immemorial phenomenon
1
The
earliest texts
is
2
faith in real divine personalities as the latest witness
that interesting relief recently found on a slab in the
caravan route near Zohab, on which the goddess In:
Hinni
is
We may
period earlier than that of King Hammurabi.
shows
which
relief
compare with this the impressive
1
in
Op. cit., p. 170 as far as I know, only one fact might be cited
support of Tide's view, a fact mentioned by Jastrow, op. cit. p. 52,
that the idiogram of Enlil, the god of Nippur, signifies Lord-Daimon
"
but we might equally well interpret it Lord of Winds,"
( Lil=Daimon)
2
Vide Hiising, Der Zagros und seine Volker, p. 16.
;
43
showing a
faith
was as
monotheistic Israelite
Babylonian as in the
of evil
and
disease
who
so
dom-
we
remote past of
this
combat these.
away from the
shall see, to
earliest
rolls
home
of
human
culture,
"
Orient, 1906.
2
Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de I'art, Assyrie, p. 109,
Lexikon,
ii.
p. 2358).
fig.
29 (Roscher,
44
where
The
and
the
process
gods, as far
at least it is
me may hope
evidence
early
inscriptions,
records,
literary
and
legends
is
and
it is
enough
in
and Tanit;
Carthaginian inscriptions of Baal-Hammon
Arabian
for
witness
earliest
religion, Herodofrom our
tus,
we
named
their
two
chief
and
Alilat,
Greek
societies
them
all,
45
Adonis,
Osiris.'
tablet
(circ.
ratified
;
the thousand
certain
Possibly a witness
date speaks in the Tel-Amarna letters,
the earliest diplomatic correspondence in the world one
of
still
earlier
is
Amenhotep
in., in
the
of
46
for she
power
desire
in the land of
by an oracle
"
Egypt
"
to Egypt
;
The Mitani
chieftains bear
aim
it is
the general
Babylonian
system may have reached the Mediterranean
in the second millennium, would receive a certain vrai-
religious
fact revealed
by the
letter of
King
names
who
3
interpret as the fetich-emblem of the thunder.
In
fact,
Halaf und
a somewhat similar
47
monuments would be proof sufficient of the high development of personal religion in these regions. A relief
with Hittite inscriptions, found near Ibriz, the old
Kybistra, near the Cilician gates north of Tauros, shows
us a deity with corn and grapes, and a priest adoring l
;
he
ancient Pteria. 2
facts
we can add
And now
to
all
this
testimony
of a
monuments
and worship
of
personal
divinities,
anthropo-
1
2
Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de I' art, iv. p. 354 (fig.)Vide Garstang, The Land of the Hittites, pi. Ixiii.-lxxi.
schmidt, op,
cit, t
pp. 26-27.
Messer-
48
and when
their
Therefore
if,
him
in place of the
mediate
peoples
But that the proto-Hellenic peoples were in that backward condition of religious thought, is in the highest
degree improbable. We must suppose that early
they were slowly pushing
their way down through the Balkans and through the
country that is afterwards Thrace. So far as the earliest
in the
second millennium
of this region
by a
throw some
light
on
its
prehistoric darkness,
it
great god.
possibly their kinsmen the Bithynoi, penetrated into
the same region, they brought with them a father-god,
pp. 14 seq.
49
we must
all,
is
At any
for
making
the
is
to
my
conviction that
the different
when
early Greece,
facts of the
Homer was
it
tribes,
he
is
his entry
50
common
by Wilamowitz
may
be urged
in his
brilliant
for this
The
view
force of
is
ignored
Greek
religion appears
be accepted,
special evidence.
it
CHAPTER
IV.
IN ASIA
same
religious plane
when the
first
glimmer of what
may
of religious influence
emanating
imagined.
way
in
first
chapter.
art-monuments,
the
divinities
51
52
as
imagined
human
glorified
forms.
The
of
figure
enthroned inspiring
Shamash on the relief,
1
Hammurabi, the form of Ninni bringing the captives
to Annabanini, 2 prove a very early dominance of anthro-
where he
sits
Museum,
British
the statue of
Nebo
The seven
wholly anthropomorphic.
humanare
from
relief
the
on
Maltaija
planetary deities
4
the
of
we may say the same
procession
entirely
are
cylinders,
shaped
on the
relief
containing
Museum he
is
represented with
The types
type.
of
Ramman
may
we must note
theriomorphic. On the other hand,
the cuneiform
one
of
In
rule.
this
general
exceptions to
certain types of deities, we read
inscriptions that describe
"
Horn of a bull, clusters of hair falling on
the following :
back
his
wings
1
a
*
Vide
Vide
Vid&
Vide
and
lion's
body."
And
this
description
"
Roscher, Lexikon, vol. iii. p. 48, s.v. Nebo."
Roscher, op. cit., iii. p. 67 (Mitth. aus dem Orient. Sammlung.
zu Berlin, Heft
6
human
xi. p. 23).
Monuments
P. 43Roscher, op.
of Nineveh,
cit.,
i.
p. 65 (Roscher, op.
cit., ii.
p. 2350).
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
IN ASIA
MINOR
53
the gate of the palace of Nineveh. And we must therethem as gods, not as mere genii and he
of
gives some reason for regarding them as a type
fore interpret
1
Nergal, the god of the underworld.
Further,
we
find in
"
an inscription of Asarhaddon
May the gracious bull-god and
my royalty/'
is
afforded
all
wisdom and
science.
According
a human
entirely a fish body, but
feet
human
the
of
head
the
fish,
head had grown under
voice
human
out of the fish's tail, and he spoke with
to Berosos, he
had
still
existing at
Babylon accord-
3
4
pi, vi.
i, 3.
(Roscher, op.
cit. t iii.
p. 580).
54
his
girdle
downwards
is
preserved on a
life.
Here, then,
as
is
theriomorphism
we
see
it
strikingly
some
Mesopotamian
deities were
the
when
was
religion
purely theriomorphic,
as
and
animals, and that
imagined
represented merely
the human-shaped deities whom we find standing on
anthropologists
lions in the
theriomorphic religion on the other hand, severe anthropomorphism among the ancient religions is to be found
;
Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, fig, 2. Reseller, op. cit., iii. p. 580.
2
In the Amer. Journ. Archael, 1887, pp. 59-60, Frothingham cites
examples from Assyrian cylinders of birds on pillars or altar with
one of these shows us a seated god in
worshippers approaching
front of the bird (pi. vii. i) on another, a warrior approaches a tabernacle, within which is a horse's head on an altar, and near it a bird on
:
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
IN ASIA
MINOR
55
of the lower
world
for this
she was
goddess Ishtar might assume a lion's head when
text.
unusually wroth, though this rests on a doubtful
We may say, then, with fair degree of accuracy, that the
art belong
theriomorphic forms of Babylonian religious
to demonology; and in this domain the Babylonian
artist
The phrase
"
unstable anthropomorphism
applies
literature, to the Sumerian-Baby-
itself
theriomorphic imagery.
1
*
56
"
to the warrior
Ram
of
Eridu."
But
this
is
It naturally
as
metaphysical
emanations,
thus
losing
Op.
cit. t
p. xix.
ii.
p. 127.
faith
57
and per-
theism
concrete
of
personalities.
who was
epithet which
consecrate/* 1
is
Allat,
the
by the
Even
was half
spiritualised
At
tradition of Atargatis-Derketo,
combined. In the cult of Esmun in Phoenicia, Baudissin 2 suspects the incarnation of the god in a snake,
which
about
brought
his
later
identification
with
Astarte
found
images
in
prehistoric
Palestine
are
human
mainly
type, but one gives her the curving
horns of a ram, and a rude bronze was found at
Tel Zakariya of an amphibious goddess with human
head and the tail of a fish. 3 Something real underlies
of
Langdon,
op.
cit. t
p. 159, n. 18.
the children of
Law
deified
P- 93-
"
2
Eschmun- Asklepios/* in Orient. Stud, zu Th.
Vide his article on
Noldeke am joten Geburtstag gewidmet the proofs are doubtful, but
snake-worship in Phoenicia is attested by Sanchuniathon, Eus. Praep.
:
58
own head
the head of a
bull. 1
and as the
But these are exceptional phenomena
Hellenes in the later period were usually able to identify
the leading Semitic deities with their own, we may see
;
is
theologic phrasing.
In a
real
belief
hymn
and what
of
praise to
is
mere
Ishtar,
the
composed
a beard
"
but Jastrow
is
tinctions of sex,
disrise
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
IN ASIA
MINOR
59
of winds, father
"
and
father."
refers
inscriptions
to
temple
of
Moloch-Astarte. 3
of
under
tells
Gebete, p.
11
60
women
men wore
male.
This
"
2
Pamphylia under the Persian domination.
But, at the
phenomenon,
most, we can only
a local eccentricity, and a morbid development of a
idea that was working sporadically in the
certain
vague
We
some have
occasionally
have no
ventured,
the
peoples generally accepted
right to assert, as
that
dogma
the
of
Semitic
a bisexual
divinity.
we
Hittite kingdoms,
find
that
the
Hittite deity
is
On the great
form.
of the human
the
distinctions
relief of Boghaz-Keui,
we may
family appear in the divine forms, in whom
with her
recognise the father god, the mother goddess
usually
son, or
young
young
lover.
of divinity to
human
in
presented
it
which
human
at the
same time.
On
the
relief
at Boghaz-Keui, nearest
Holy
of Holies,
R. lisa.
2
Vide Head, Hist. Num.,
p. 586.
is
"
an
idol
Aphrodite/'
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
human
visage with a
arrangement of lion-forms
of
main
to the
of
two
deities
IN ASIA
MINOR
61
we note a
strange representation
and to
still
is
is
afforded
site at
represented
on
by another
relief
found
We
with the
consecrated.
3
Again, the relief on the gate at Sinjerli affords us
another clear example of a divinity only partly anthropomorphic a god with the body of a man and the head
:
and a hare
Sayce,
1
op,
in the other,
we gather
cit.>
2
as he bears a hunting
p. 256.
Supra, p 43.
Messerschmidt, op. cit., p. 23.
Jown. Roy. Asiat. Soc. 1909, p. 971.
t
iv. fig.
329
cf.
Garstang,
62
of Sinjerli. 1
As regards the
test, then,
that
we
are at present
though
It
in the former.
is
also
approximations,
between the Hittites and the Assyrian Babylonian kingdom. The Hittite god Teshup, with the double-headed
hammer
or axe
close kin
and
in his hand,
is
of
and Babylonian
But the evidence does not yet seem
to
me
to
make
it
clear
we
find
it
the
Boghaz-Keui sculptured
and again on the relief of Gargamich, on which
on a lion and a
is a winged male deity standing
3
and later among
a
on
also
lion;
priest behind him,
the Tarsos representations of the Hittite Sandon
it
was in vogue at the Syrian Bambyke and at
The assumption of Perrot 4 is that it was
Babylon.
slabs
Op,
tit., ii.
pp. 642-644.
iii.
Taf. 42, 43
cf, fig.
278.
cf.
63
later goddess
a primitive
a god brandishing a
thunderbolt and holding a shield has been found near
Amasia. 1 Speaking generally, we must pronounce the
in Pontus, as
native pre-Hellenic
littoral, of
far as
it
relief of
religious
art
of
the
Asia Minor
tried at all to
is
the
intention of these
is
Cumont, Voyage
d' exploration
dans
le
Pont, p. 139.
64
1
pillar,"
At any
mophism either
cause.
rate,
we have no
be the
may
cannot well be kept apart, as much of the evidence concerning the former is derived from records of myths
and
religious
not express
art-type.
its
If
actual imagination of
this
were
so,
its divinities
we should not be
in
any
able to
its
private chapels
goddess
1
Vide Perrot et Chipiez, op, ctt., vol. iv. fig. 107 ; cf. the relieffigure of Cybele on a Phrygian rock-tomb, wearing on her head a polos,
with two lions rampant raising their paws to her head, published by
Ramsay, Hell. Jouvn. t 1884, vol. v. p. 245 ; cf, Perrot et Chipiez, iv.
("little more than the earlier columnar form of the goddess
fig.
slightly hewn," Evans, Hell. Journ., 1901, p. 166).
no
Vide
<
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
brandishing a
snake
x
:
IN ASIA
again,
MINOR
Minoan
65
signet-ring
holding a spear.
These
may
be actual reproductions
before a sacred
his
standing as
or heroon. 4
if
In
lions
a god
who
is
some-
thirdly,
1
Evans,
"
Brit. School,
1902-1903,
delta
66
To
B.C.
Mesopotamia.
But
Aegean
this
civilisation
Greece which has been supposed by some to have preceded the former in order of time and in the logical
process of evolution, and which at any rate survived by
the side of it. Traces of the same phenomenon have
Lang
in his Citstom
it
with a
theory of totemism that does not concern us here. Afterwards, a systematic treatment of the problem in the
light of the monuments of the Cretan and Mycenaean
periods was presented
by Mr. Cook
in a paper published
on "Animal Worship in
"
and again in 1895 by an essay on
the Mycenaean Age
"
a very full collection
"The Bee in Greek Mythology
in the Hellenic Journal of 1894
;
of the
De Graecorum
humanam
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
(1900).
Miss
the same
J.
lines,
IN ASIA
MINOR
67
and
Pillar
Now
in relation to
Worship
Ouranian Divinities."
researches
is
it is
impossible to consider
them
in
which
and, again, the writers above mentioned are deeply concerned with theories about the origins, or at least the
earlier stages in the evolution of religion.
And
as I
am
of origin.
Nevertheless,
of
facts
group
may provide us
summary survey
with important clues towards the solution of our main
But a few general criticisms of the assumpquestion.
tions which, whether latent or explicit, are commonly
made in the writings just quoted, may be useful at the
"
"
outset.
First, one finds that the word
worship
is used very loosely by the ancients as well as by contemporary writers and by its vague and indiscriminate
employment an effort is made to convince us that the
pre-Hellenic and proto-Hellenic world worshipped the
:
the ox, the horse, the ass, the stag, the wolf, the pig,
the bird, especially the dove, the eagle, and lastly even
the cock. We should have to deal with a savage reand we should not need to
ligion rioting in theriolatry,
lion,
But one
68
precisely,
What
is
was worshipped,
"
wortheir
does
And
divine?
the whole species being
"
mean that the superstitious people prayed to
ship
built altars or sacred columns, or even shrines to
them,
them,
them
some such
and
offered
sacrifice?
has
It
become
word as
urgent to reserve
a sense of the distinction bethis, in order to preserve
a real personal divinity and
of
tween our ritual-service
the various, often trifling, acts that may be prompted
by the uneasy
feeling or reverential
piece
to some high divinity is not to worship flies. All
these things the civilised Greeks could do, but they
with worshipping
ought not for that to be charged
whole species of animals directly as gods. Next let us
bear well in mind that secular animals, like secular
sacred through contact
things, can become temporarily
thus the ox
who
voluntarily approached
and
by
we should not
hastily believe
who
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
Finally, I
divinity.
of
supposing
MINOR
that
anthropomorphism
IN ASIA
theriomorphism
for
always
69
the fallacy
precedes
an ever-increasing mass
of
other
if
this is so, it
accompanied by a
lion or
we
ments, before
and
thetically so,
this
generally
and
"
relies
are
the great
Phaistos sarcophagus,
Ann.
70
arms outspread
like wings,
traditional type. 1
of these
formed goddess
of the Neolithic
last,
naked human-
Aegean period.
The question depends wholly on the true interpretaas regards the Phaistos sarcotion of the monuments
;
when
compare the
ritual of east
and west
this
much
two axes are inserted and on the axes are two birds
"
the
immediately clear that
birds are objects of a definite cult," as Miss Harrison
othermaintains ? 2 This may be strongly disputed
painted black.
Is
it
wise
we must say
and the
the
described
sacrifice doubtless of
1
ii.
p. 155.
is
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
IN ASIA
MINOR
71
the worshippers
being performed before them here
well
believe
the
of bloodthat
influence
combined
may
:
would he descend?
The carver
of
that signet-ring
any bird
of the bactylic
2
This does not prove or necessarily lead
convincing.
to "bird-worship." Further, he suggests 3 that as the
dove was originally posed on the top of the column
1
Op.
cit., i.
Ann.
p. 254.
Brit. School, 1900-1901, p. 29, n, 3.
Ib., p. 98.
72
temple by the
birds.
and power
would manifest
to reveal some-
This
we may
call
this
Mediterranean
the bird.
We
kind that
Here
1
it is
"
"
Lucian,
on coins
p. 679.
2
and the Athenians put a man to death lor slaying one Vav. Hist., v. 17).
Did Asklepios as an anthropomorphic divinity emerge from the
sparrow ? What, then, should we say of the sacred snake who might
better claim to be his parent ?
Was Hermes as a god evolved from a
(
sacred cock ? Miss Harrison believes it (op. cit., ii. p. 161), because
he is represented on a late Greek patera standing before a cock on
a pillar. But the cock came into Europe perhaps one thousand years
after Hermes had won to divine manhood in Arcadia.
On the same
evidence we might be forced to say that the goddess Leto came from
the cock (vide Roscher's Lexikon, ii p. 1968, cock on gem in Vienna,
with inscription A^rw
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
the Dove-goddess
is
of Oriental influence
IN ASIA
MINOR
73
rowed
where, as Dr.
and Anatolia/' *
As regards Mr. Cook's theory
it
worship,
is
not
now
of
necessary to examine
length.
interpreted the
ous
"
monsters
mummery, wearing
etc.,
bringing
"
as
men engaged
in
religi-
sacrificial
And we
two
1
lions to sacrifice
Ann.
Reinach,
"
Anthropologie/' vi,
"
30
La
Egypt; or
74
Asia
is
there
any record
of a lion-sacrifice, a
ceremony
which would be
The
difficult to
They
kamp and
We
may
Only
rarely,
are ritualistically
tree or column, 3
motive
is
"
later in the
these
Evans
p. 108.
2
3
p. 101, fig. i
cf.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
IN ASIA
MINOR
75
type.
figure of a
tail
1
;
armour. 2
we
the
bull,
god
cult.
To conclude, this brief survey of the Minoan-Mycenaean monuments points to a contemporary religion
that preferred the aniconic agalma to the human idol,
but imagined the divinity mainly as anthropomorphic,
though this imagination was probably not so fixed as
to discard the theriomorphic type entirely. Therefore
is on the same plane with that of Mesopotamia rather than with that of Egypt.
this religion
my
of personal polytheism
and the
Peninsula
the
southern
conquering
cults
and
combined evidence of the facts of myths
before
justifies
the anthropomorphism as
a religious
76
principle
the
in
was predominant
more progressive
a minute
in all probability
the old hieratic epithet fioSvig
a cow-faced goddess, but it
originally designated
it
it
for ox-eyed,
is
an epithet signifying
its
perception
and the
belief
we
detect the
same
close
communion
numerous indications in
the deity was occasionally incarnate
much
It is
in
the animal,
not
my
fact
necessary for my purpose to emphasise the
that there is fair evidence for some direct zoolatry in
it is
Vide
my Cults,
iv. p. 115.
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
As
IN ASIA
MINOR
77
"
"
the worship
of animals.
Thus Clemens
"
"
informs us 1 that the Thessalians
ants,
worshipped
spoke of
"
worshipped
being
ci|3g;j>.
religious
"
little
of
a sheep
But accurate
:
statements
concerning
nicest discrimination
We may
is."
suspect
to be remarked that
when one
We
:
De
cited
above
the Samian
shows us how
It
is
little
quite possible
Protrept., p. 34, P.
Protrept., p. 34; P.
Diodorus
Op.
tells
tit.,
pp. 129-152.
78
feast of Apollo
on the promontory
of
Leukas
this I
flies.
temple of Athena
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
Now
IN ASIA
MINOR
79
religious
the story
of female sex,
is
may
whom
with
important
Hellenic,
millennium
B.C.
was the
it
was always
linked in this
From
of religion
Commentary on Pausanias,
vol.
iii.
p. 55.
8o
the lower
circles.
Arcadia,
in 1898,
period found at Lykosoura
a
cow. 1
head
of
the
with
form
representing the female
This resume of the facts, so far as it has gone, apwith which it started, that
pears to justify the theorem
"
"
in the
the
peoples and proto-Hellenes
Mycenaean
in
the
on
were
whole,
second millennium
respect of the
of
the
Roman
of their religion,
morphology
appears that
in the cults
theriomorphism played slightly more part
of the West than in those of the Sumerianand
those of the Euphrates valley;
only
it
legends
Babylonian culture.
It is
compared
And so
of borrowing.
proves nor disproves a theory
far there seems no occasion for resorting to such a
at Phigaleia
theory, unless the type of the fish-goddess
be considered a reason for supposing Semitic influences
CHAPTER
V.
THE
of
throw some
Wherever anthropomorphism
one.
possess
is
is,
lie
some
who eschew
it
it
often
and the
will
it
religious
psychology of
from those
differ
probably
be likely to engender a
will
82
Athena
for
the
Athenians
such
is
Mediterranean Christendom.
Greeks, such is Kala at this moment in India, a dangerous and living force that threatens our rule. Again,
the goddess may encourage purity in the sexual relations
;
this
in
in
This
may
tion here to
its
we have
itself at
record.
"
The
83
monument
Nini
is
attests
*
on which the goddess
already described
to
the King Annabanini;
presenting captives
the prevalence
millennium
and
of
Tiele
goddess-cult
supposes
in
without,
the third
I
think,
sufficient evidence
that
it
Semitic Anatolia.
phonetic equivalents in
Also at least by the second millenits
nium
help us
now
mias and
are
all
mother.
to consider the theorem put out by Jereothers that the various Babylonian goddesses
emanations and varieties of one original AllOnly the mighty Ishtar remains for the most
2
;
and
for
them she
is
the great
perhaps the most fervent and moving of all the Babylonian collection, she seems exalted to a supreme place
above all other divinities ; another 4 displays the same
ecstasy in adoration of the goddess Belit, imputing omnipotence to her, as one to whom the very gods offer
prayers.
The same
1
2
idea
may be
expressed in a
3
4
16.; p. 24.
p. 20.
difficult
84
1
his dialogue
phrase in a hymn to Nebo which contains
"
has
who
with Assurbanipal
Nebo,
grasped the feet
of the divine goddess, Queen of Nineveh/' the goddess
:
We
should certainly
to the goddess than to the god.
and
wider
be wrong, as a more critical
survey of the
facts, so far as they are at present accessible, would
These hymns imputing supreme omnipotence to the goddess, whether Ishtar or another,
may be merely examples of that tendency very marked
in the Babylonian liturgies, to exalt the particular
convince us.
divinity to
paid above
whom
all
moment being
at that
is
worship
others.
is
always
Belit, in
contradicting himself.
the last-mentioned hymn, a phrase is attached which
"
Zimmern interprets as she who carries out the com-
mands
of Bel," as
if
'
the mother of the great gods, may daily speak a favourable word for Sanherib, the king of Assyria, before
Ashur."
spite
But the
of the great
intercessor
power
of
is
Zeitschr.
f.
and in
and the fervent
not supreme
Ishtar
iii.
p. 62, $.v.
"
Nebo/'
3
ct the inscription of the last of
Jastrow, op. cit. t vol. i. p. 525
the Babylonian kings, Nabuna 'id, who prays to Ningal, the mother of
the great gods, to plead for him before Sin (Keilinschy. Bibl, iii.
;
is
85
predomin-
antly masculine.
a goddess
by the
in his treatise,
god
"
side of
a god.
Arabien vor
According to Weber,
in the
nomadic
is
Ishtar
by the
Ramman, Adad
side
of
many
(1904), p. 20.
p. 19.
2
2, i, n. , 113.
"
Sanda, Der Alte Orient, Die Aramaer," p. 24.
5
les
sur
Etudes
religions semitiques, p. 492.
Lagrange,
86
But we
that the queen may give him favour in the eyes of the
2
Astarte
gods and in the eyes of the people of his land.
and on
the later Imperial coinage we see her image drawn in
a car. Two representations of her have been found,
in one of which she is seated in front of the king, 3 the
other shows her embracing him. 4 King Tabnit of Sidon,
whose sarcophagus is in the Museum of Constantinople,
was par
of Sidon,
' '
5
styles himself priest of Astarte, King of the Sidonians."
But in the other Phoenician settlements, such as Tyre,
this
may
of the aboriginal
Speaking
however,
generally,
Aegean
we
may
it
may
conclude
that
tion in
their
society,
let
us
xxi. 29.
C. I. Sem.,
4
5
i, ii.
ad
init.
Ib., i, 7, p. 2.
Von Landau,
op.
cit. 9
p. 14.
87
cults,
the
reliefs
at
Euzuk we
scriptions found
1
Adonis, Attis,
on the
Osiris,
site,
2nd
ed.,
108;
Garstang,
pi. Ixv.
2
op.
cit.,
88
But
B.C. 1
900
way amounts
evidence in no
this
to
suggestion of the
or affords
predominance
any
and the Tel-El-Amarna correspondence
of the Hittite kings implies that the male and female
divinity were linked in an equal union in the Hittite
The text of the treaty between Rameses 11.
religion.
any proof
of the goddess
(circ.
1290
B.C.) includes
various sun-gods,
of
the
Soil,
the
Mistress
Mountains/'
of
Coming now
first
millennium
flourished,
we
where in the
the Hellenic colonisation and culture
Garstang,
priest.
op.
cit.,
Ancient Palestine, p. 73
Winckler, Tel-el-
pp.
175-176,
interprets
fig. 7.
the
figure
as
89
presented
We
is
name
it
Minoan
associations
l
;
and Olba
it
At the former
power.
the supremacy of Baal-Tars and Sandon-Herakles.
At
name Tarku.
It
in Lycia
we have heard
Professor Wilamowitz
brilli-
1
2
cf.
Vide
Artemis-References, R. 7Q m .
2nd
ed., p. 129.
Adonis, etc.,
Religion of the Semites, p. 52.
In lecture delivered in Oxford on "Apollo," and published 1909;
Ms
article in
Hermes, 1903,
p. 575.
90
think,
concern us here.
and paramount
It
all
is
his
we would wish
Lada
Leto.
as
Furthermore,
the
geography of the
The
waned.
mention Leto
are
all of
and again
In Caria, at Labranda,
we have proof
the
centre of
cult
associating
1
2
the Carian
name
of
Panamaros, and
Cults, vol.
"
ii.,
Artemis
"
called
Coin-Pi. B, n, 28.
Hera or
Hekate,
partner.
It
to
be the predominant
is
not
till
that
Ephesos
supremacy.
is
91
admittedly
place.
Her
brother
ffr$<puvq<f)6pog
will
When we
The god
1 The
inscriptions throwing light on the cult at Panamara are
contained in Butt. Corr. Hell., n, 12, 15 (years 1887, 1888, 1891) ;
"
Panamaros."
cf. the article in Roscher's Lexikon, vol. Hi., s.v.
2
Vide my Cults, vol. iv. p. 173 ; cf. ib., Apollo Geogr. Reg.,
"
s.v.
Phrygia," p. 452, and R. 57.
Ephesian idol
is late.
92
male
divinity.
orgiastic liturgy
and
ecstatic
tenderness
in
There are
many
links revealed
cult
to
goddess,
Ma who
later.
speak
ness
"
It
was Comana
centre
am
of
1
view put forward by Sir Arthur Evans.
the
probable that in the Mycenaean religion as in
of the
is
predominseems to have, down to the matriThe male divinity is not so much the
it
archal system.
consort as the son or the youthful favourite." If we
put aside the suggestion of a matriarchal theory here,
the
main idea
in
this
it
has himself
us.
It is
93
Minoan
influence
cult
and
thunder-god,
borrow
it.
religious
supremacy of the
female divine partner. It is Zeus, not Rhea, that inspired
Minos, as Jahwe inspired Moses, and Shamash Hammurabbi. Yet the view is probably right on the whole
that the mother-goddess was a more frequent figure in
1
94
May we
goddesses
line of inquiry to a
question will bring this particular
leading
close.
we
If
find
the
among
goddess-supremacy
early
an Aryan-Hellenic
Hellenes, shall we interpret
trait in their
tradition, or as an alien and borrowed
are
If
?
borrowed,
they more likely to
composite religion
their immediate
from
or
have derived it from the East
it
as
The
of Aegean culture?
predecessors in the regions
to
able
be
to
we
it
if
latter question,
arises,
ought
answer at
last.
We
the
1
Professor Dieterich's treatise establishes,
is
sufficient
itself.
that is
religious imagination
tive.
name and
1
cult of Hestia
"
is
certainly
2
Vide
my
Aryan/'
only
we
call
95
the period
their
way
into
invincible
supremacy
boy: we hear of such strange cult-products as AttisTIcwcttoG, Father Attis, and one of the old Aryan titles
whom
I venture,
The
Celtic question
is
more
difficult
Prof.
Rhys
in
Ms
male
excellent
matriarchal
2
Herod.,
i,
phenomena
94 ;
4,
religion
p. 242.
96
guidance
we may draw
this
impor-
of
an
population.
their
isolation,
male
deity.
regards
at
the
excavations
Dr. Waldstein to prove the worship of a great goddess
on that site, going back in time to the third millennium
3
of the god-worshipB,c., a period anterior to the advent
ping
Hellenes.
Aryan
And
this
goddess
' '
remained
' '
p. 102),
2
counts very
little
for
was vastly
older.
97
the god.
were
all
The
her
developed
centuries
into
of
98
We
they found
it
on the
soil
of the
Aegean
lands, as a
is
always forcing
its
again.
we are brought up
The Western world is divided
from the
Eastern
the
scholars
older
connection.
And
it
by
this
used
may
to
very
phenomenon that
proving a
well have been the Western
regard
as
CHAPTER
THE DEITIES
VI.
AS NATURE-POWERS.
So
upon
Many
striking
of
points
argument, since
likeness
of
all
dissimilar features,
First, in
we
certain strikingly
find any.
omenon
background of
their personality,
applicfacts
associ-
will
make
this clear.
is
99
ioo
collection reveals
out
intelligible
1
but in another published by Zimmern, his personbecomes more spiritual and mystical he is at once
ality
"
an
mother-body who
the
bears
all
and the
life,
who has
pitiful
2
to have become a god of war.
him
in grandeur
spiritual
of
it might be well for Assyriologists to take note
have
theories
similar
the confusion and darkness that
Thus we are
of
him
who
Marduk
although
is
the
spring-sun,
his connection
specially close
with
yet Jeremias,
3
that
expresses this opinion, believes also
Marduk
"
phrase
is
quite innocent
if
we only mean by
it
that any
Bab.
Hym.
u. Gebet^ p.
Jastrow, op.
cit.,
u.
p. 230.
In Reseller's Lexikon,
ii.
2371
cf. ib. t
2367.
regarded by Jeremias
hymn
of praise
101
on the ground
but the con-
Storm-Sun, as Jensen would have us ? or is it not allowable to suspect that solar terms of religious description
became a
later
attract
he
is
war-god
"
God
nor a pious Babylonian poet from exalting him as
3
of the little ones, he of the benevolent visage/'
In one of the Tel-El-Amarna texts he is designated
of
iron."
means "the
correct, is an illus-
certainly
if
whole career
may
1
originally
Reseller, Lexikon,
Jeremias, op.
iii.
cit., iii.
p. 364.
p. 250.
p. 83.
103
god
of storms,
was an immemorial
to say, magic. As for
cult,
is
the great Nebo of Borsippa, Jeremias, 2 who is otherwise devoted to solar theories, has some good remarks
on the absence of any sign of his nature-origin his
:
is,
of self-development parallel
with the
is
is
2
8
4
is
denied
by leading modern
Assyri-
cit. 9
Jastrow, op.
p. 484.
Rescuer, Lexikon, iii., s.v.
As Jeremias
"Nebo."
ologists,
Shamash
103
dogma
is
declares at the
This planetary association of the deities is well illustrated by the memorial relief of Asarhaddon found at
Sinjerli,
their heads
3
;
we
fail to
as a
worship, any clear worship of the earth regarded
Hellenes
regarded
personal and living being, as the
Gaia. The great goddesses, Ishtar, the goddess at
once warlike and luxurious, virgin and yet unchaste,
terrible and merciful, the bright virgin of the sky,
It
seems that
if
Winckler, ib.,p. n.
Roscher, Lexikon, iii. pp. 66-67.
104
"
The
storm
Earth-Mountain
great
is
whose shoulders
he,
foundation
is
is
Enlil,
the mountain-
whose
"
and again,
2
;
"
Lord,
who
in the earth
substance
that
life
lord
he
is
rather the
move on and
of winds."
He
equivalent of Gaia.
god
and
in the earth,
"
hence he
is
the
Belit,
in
an
hymn
of lamentation addressed to
"
her
she
is
who
menting
for
3
5
Langdon,
Hymn xiii. p.
Jastrow, op.
199.
Id., p. 277.
cit.,
p. 55.
/&., p. 221.
223
Langdon, op.
Ibff pt
cit.,
p, 257.
hand and
105
In spite of
all accretions
and the
interpreted to
is
3
we can
still
the
in
mean
recognise
Lord
is
expressed
by some
dwelling, the
Lord
till
of his
Lord
he returns.
names,
"
the
of the shepherd's
God
of grain/'
"
in his
manhood
in the
submerged
be
be
held
shall
the
how
green things
long
imprisoned,
" 5
An interesting title found in some
in bondage ?
:
"how
grain he lay";
long
still
is
"
that of
the shepherd,"
like
cf. "Nidaba,
a goddess of agriculture.
Babylonische Gott Tamuz," in Abh. Konig. Sachs. Gesell.
Jastrow, op.
2 " Der
cit.,
p. 95,
Vide
Zimmern,
Zimmern
ib. } p.
106
Assyrian pantheon,
them
all,
and
his
No
fraternity
of
or
corn-spirits
Tammuz.
the inspiration
other of that vast
vegetation-spirits
initiated us,
In one of his
into
"
it
might have
changed
aspect of Babylonian
shall see, the ideas naturally
the
But, as we
eschatology.
attaching to vegetation, to the kindly
and
fair life of
seeds
a later occasion.
have now to consider the other Anatolian cults
from the point of view of nature-worship. The survey
need not detain us long as our evidence is less copious.
rites I shall reserve for
We
may
moon and
of the earth,"
we
"
the stars,"
or
the
first
Baalshamin
Aramaic and
"
107
an
god, and Sanchuniathon
but Robertson Smith gives
Phoenician
of
the heavens,
1
explained him as the sun
good reason for the view that the earliest conception
of the local Baal was of a deity of the fertilising spring,
;
and
cattle. 2
plot,
hence the
Minoan goddess
From
Also,
of Cyprus,
it
of
is
earliest
and
and men.
her, does
she was
life
no
doubt wor-
and animals
bear in mind
of plants
some value
to
thunder-god at
Palmyra, where
Adad-Rimmon,
religion.
the
later
distinction
may have
it.
2
Rel. of Sem., pp. 96-100.
Eus., Praep. Ev. 9 I, 10, 7.
Polyb., 7, 9 (the Carthaginian oath of alliance with Philip of
Macedon).
io8
at Ibreez
we
discern the
may
form
of the
of vegetation
god
and
corn
crops,
and
is
doubtful;
as
the
and
title of
and another
"
the Mistress
of the Soil/'
Yet evidently the Hittite religion is
the
too complex to be regarded as mere nature-worship
2
solemn and
some
spiritual
Aegean
and perhaps
we have no
peoples,
explicit
in race
to the
ancient records
we have
supreme power.
is
functions,
1
celestial,
109
life
mountain-side
one legend she emerged from the rock Agdos, and hence
took the name Agdestis. The myth of her beloved
Attis is clear ritual-legend associated with vegetation
;
We
to her
x
;
as
is
v. p. 261
my
Cults,
iii.
p. 299.
Cults, vol. v, p.
The
no
that
and
to that part
of its
to
power
religion
Nature-worship, we discern
place it on the same plane
the Mesopotamian.
their
now
which we
may
respects with
some
show
Poseidon mainly
But
in the water, Demeter in the land, Zeus in the air.
to
that
limited
of none of these is the power wholly
and each has acquired, like the high gods of
element
and Babylon and Jahwe of Israel, a complex
:
Assyria
cannot
be
derived,
we can
Nebo and
first
canals
We
nameless daimones of
*'
Igigi,
:
and
may
in
be regarded as products of
deceive
polytheisms
in two
no trained inquirer
;
Greek polytheism,
as
In the
was
Helios did not necessarily connote for them an anthropomorphic god. But the insignificance of his figure
actual cult.
Vol. v. 417-420.
H2
Even more
parison of
lunar-cult.
personality, as
it
of Nature.
was wholly
a vague record
in Greece she
She
mentioned in
without worship.
"
as one of the divinities to whom vqpdXict,
wineless
is
offerings,"
she had an
late
and
insignificant.
have attracted to
this aspect of her was not pronounced.
Here, then, is another point at which the theory of
early Babylonian influence in nascent Hellenic religion
And in this comparison of
seriously breaks down.
Nature-cults
The pantheon
astral
breaks
it
of
character.
doubtless
Vide
Cults, v. pp.
and
"
113
superstitious practices
evoked by celestial
teratology/' by striking phenomena, such as eclipses, comets, falling stars. 1 But
there is no record suggesting that they paid direct worship to the stars, or that their deities were astral personations, or were in the early period associated with the
stars
it
arose,
is
merely a
sign of that wave of Oriental influence that moved westward in the later centuries. The only clear evidences
have been
Lykophron and
a late Byzantine author indicate a cult of Zeus 'Acrepiog
in Crete, which cannot, even if real, be interpreted as
of star-cult
communities that
in Hellenic
3
;
and an Attic
inscription
of
whom we must
then,
interpret
as
stellar
beings.
Roman
the
tp&ffpopot,
4
What,
whom we
are
on
appears to
me
in-
1
(the Spartan ephors every nine
E.g. Plutarch, Vit. Agid., c.
years watch the sky, and if a star falls take it for a sign of some religious
offence of one of the kings, who is suspended until the Delphic oracle
determines about him)
"
2
Zeus," R. 30.
Cults, vol. i.,
3
16., vol. v. p. 452, R. 41.
.
n4
of
originally
their
most ancient
ritual includes
to heroes
lectisternium," which properly belonged
and
lower world.
personages of the
the
nature-worship of the Hellenes was preLastly,
with Ge-meter,
eminently concerned with Mother-earth
and this divine power in its varied personal forms was
the nearest and dearest to the
perhaps of all others
of their ritual was concerned
popular heart : so much
scholars have supposed,
not
but
unnaturally, that all the
erroneously, I think,
Hellenic goddesses arose from this aboriginal
directly with her.
And some
leading
animistic idea.
whatever,
show
in
religion.
if
of
Demeter
Artemis,
any, was
many
But, as I have
indicated above,
impossible to find in the early
to Ge
though
Mesopotamian religion a parallel figure
Ishtar was naturally possessed of vegetative functions
it
is
so that,
world,
all
vegeta-
that by the time the Semites brought her to Mesofrom the West, she had lost all direct nature-
potamia
significance,
still
and
The concept
of
115
a Ge-Themis, of
righteousness, and of Motherof
CHAPTER
VII.
THE next
important section of our survey is the comparison of the social and ethical aspects of the religions
more advanced
societies of
explicit
record.
religion is
is
was by a law
phenomenon,
communities
much
is
all
still
research.
much towards
question.
We may
assume
of the
Mesopotamian as of other
"
social origins
were partly religious
peoples, that its
of
the
in
the
Euphrates, society had already
only
valley
"
study of
deities
fifth
are
millennium
having
national,
already
that the
B.C.
be always problematic.
origins will
its
117
developed
The
far
we begin to
deal
with the
to
not
have
we
but
of
complex
And
and kingdoms.
the
aggregates,
such as
great cities
cities
begins.
is
to say,
and the
the
may
Nusku the
fire-god,
who
is called
lights the sacrifices,
"
Jastrow, op.
Id,, p. 146.
cit.,
cit.,
ii.
497-
p. 76.
p. 246.
6
P- 297-
n8
political history of
fuller
and
such names as
The reason
of such
is
development
many
con-
tribes,
is
votetg
name
home
still
who leads
name to the
the god
gives his
"
numerous Apolloniai."
its
new
my
Cities
7, 8,
119
Of all
deity.
the
that
truth
with
said
be
Oriental autocracies,
may
instinctive bias of the people to an autocratic system
the relations
of
is
the beloved
dynasty dared to speak of themselves as
x
the
more
But
of
Nana."
king was
consort
usually
Nippur
to
Adad my
my
and
didst drink
Keilinschy. BibL,
iii.
i,
p. 87.
ii.
Jeremias, inRoscner,
King, Hammurabi, pi. 191, no. 97, col.
Lexikon, iv. p. 29, s.v. "Ramman."
s
iii. p. 62.
Jeremias, s.v. "Nebo," in Roscher, op. cit.>
4
Zimmern, K.A.T.*, p. 379-
120
At
Marduk
is
man
was
in a sense
least in
the
called
is
vegetative.
much more
real
and
living belief
than was
reign
and
was taken in
from
his hands,
Jahwe
or
4
5
etc., p, 27.
dem
121
"
in his code,
arise
enactments.
The
religious confidence
Sargon
722-705) proclaims
that he owes his penetrating genius to Ea, " the Lord
"
of Wisdom/' and his understanding to the
Queen
of the
crown
of heaven."
(B.C.
We
find
them
also,
the
of destiny
and
in the Hall of
Assembly at
Reproduced on
Winckler, op.
priests.
title-page of Winckler,
cit.,
p. 10.
Ifc.,p. 39.
4 Keilinschy.
BibL, ii p. 47.
Vide Knudtzon, Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott, p. 241.
6
Vide Langdon, Expositor, 1909, p. 149 cf. Jeremias, s.v. "Nebo,"
Roscher, op. cit., iii. p. 55.
5
122
the priesthood in
by
in the
much
was
glorified
darling
of Zarpanit."
of the church, himself a
king, then, is the head
was high-priest of Ningirsu, and
high-priest, as Gudea
The
expert
shipped
in
his
Assyriologists,
practice.
In
life ?
and
the
This
certain
is
maintained by some
evidence
conversation
points
between
to
Nebo
the
and
in
sacrifices to his
own
statues.
But
Zimmern
considers
that
the
direct
2
4
123
reason to suppose that the king or patesi who conNippur had alone the right to be deified, Nippur
is
trolled
1
being the original centre of the Sumerian religion.
The sacred character of the king implied that he
moon
the dynasty of
dark of the
One
"
of the kings of
the exorciser of the
crown.
son of Chemosh
the
is
son of Hadad. 4
found at
protectors of the
of Sidon, Tabnit, in the in-
special
King
of the Sidonians."
King
of Byblos or Gobal, in
1
Vide Hilprecht in Babyl. Exped. Univ, Pennsylv,, vol. v. series D,
pp. 24-29.
2
Vide Langdon, Transactions of Congress of History of Religions,
vol.
3
i.
p. 251.
Keilinschr. BibL,
iii. i,
p. 97.
Op.
cit.,
p. 481.
124
the
high
fifth
to his
regards himself as called
the
of
State, and
the Baalat, the goddess
century
office
by
B.C.,
him length of
and mention has
because he is a just king
days
monuments
showing
already been made of Phoenician
the King of Sidon seated with Astarte and embraced by
prays that she
"
her.
may
bless
him and
give
"
The claim
made by
"
Thou hast said,
reproaches him with the blasphemy
midst of the
the
in
of
God,
I am a God, I sit in the Seat
:
Seas."
The
Hittite
was a group
Hittite king
whom
god with
the hand
arm round
he
is
of the
embracing.
cance belongs to certain scenes in the great relief of
on one of the slabs we discern an armed
Bogha2-Keui
:
his
a smaller
of
hand grasping
whose emblem and dress
figure,
C. I.
Sem.
von Landau,
i, i, i (cf.
in
Der Alte
Ezek. xxix.
The same
"
figure
interpret
pp. 103-108).
125
it
by Cybele and
was the
Astarte.
origin of those,
significance
May we
political
religion
on the
and
its
site of
This
is
Op.
cit.,
pp. 57-5S-
Strab., p. 535-
cf.
Rex Mydonius
4
CHI.,
i,
473
vide
Cook
126
There
The
value, then, in
is
friend of
God who
itself
to the tribe
tribes
and
points to have
certain deities have
many
with
the
of
facts
other
communities
compels
us
of
them
tions,
and Crete
Anatolia,
Mesopotamia,
as the god-born,
who can
Homer
regards
of depig.
The
fire
the
life
of the
fire
community
and
perpetual
Prytaneum
of the wokig represented the ancient sacred hearth-fire
of the king. 1 ^Also, when the monarchy was generally
abolished,
the
many
king.
But
graphic
the priest
who
carried
on the
shadow
value.
Primitive
was
Hellenism
own
in
these
inherited traditions,
On
independence of
1
Vide
my Cults,
Prytaneum, Temple
its intellect
v. pp.
and even
in its earliest
of Vesta."
"
The
127
in
same astonishing
spiration
and
as
Assyria.
much
institutions
and the
and
cult
upon
religious
Law
integrity of the
ideas.
Justice
by
of the
Shamash,
to
he
those
Shamash hates
*
The respect
weights."
which the
latter phrase
"
shall
who
was maintained by
King Asurbanipal
the Babylonians
"
for
that had been wrongfully taken away,
2
of
inscribed
number
A
Bel and Nebo."
their fields
fear
of
found with
boundary-stones have been
carved upon them,
symbols of the various high gods
to
deter trespassers,
name
with invocations in their
3
or those who would remove their neighbour's landmark.
Babylonian
One
of these
is
Keilinschr. Bibl-,
Jeremias, Holle
ii.
f*.
p. 131-
Paradies, p. 17.
128
him
to
perform the
"
shall
funeral
rites.
Probably other
Phrygian
the
which, however,
inscription,
an early Phrygian
name
divine
religious
may
testify to
"
Opo(pfau%,
Boundary-guardian/'
its
system of land-
world
by
129
when we
society
is
for
is
correlation of
Nevertheless,
study the
it
is
interesting
code
corpus.
by the
is
principles,
moral and
is
sphere
intellectual
view,
Laws and
9
Contracts.
I 3o
modern
of our
murdered Agamemnon
paled Clytemnestra
with culpable homicide and unintentional. Hammurabi
being himself a master-builder, is severe with bad archi:
tects
kill
who
"
without knowledge
of tribal barbarism. 1
Neither
is
there
any
homicide.
of
Further,
we note
that
Hammurabi's
The son
slaughter.
op.
cit.,
p. 116).
131
The enactments
incest.
cases
the
The
house.
first
is
first
in
two punishments
reveal,
the
is
perpetual exile
in the third, he
;
with three
and stepmother
the sinner
first,
alive
think,
than in
caust.
Still
it
is
only by surmise
we
that
detect
in fact, it
religious colour in the code at this point
note that the
emerges clearly only in a few clauses.
:
We
anced
also civilised
till
fairly
recent times.
for
he enacts that
132
these later on
Apart from
this great
further evidence
is
of ritual
document,
is
dealt with.
do not know
if
on the
social
itself
from
religion in the
main
the
Shamash
we
guild of
votaries
also,
light perhaps
"
the
Much
We
religious side
was
3
6
cit.;
p. 85.
tit,,
p. 90.
cit.,
p. 77.
Op.
cit.,
p. 83.
133
Yet
may be cited to prove, if rightly interpreted, that the hearth could be occasionally deified in a
Babylonian liturgy for in a hymn to Nusku the fire-god,
;
of absolution
from
sins,
we
find
"
the phrase, May the hearth of the house deliver you and
absolve you," x but the same litany speaks also of the
canals as deified.
And we may
is
it
clear
Translated
by
Scheil
in
Rev. de
I' hist,
des
Religions,
1897,
p. 205.
134
throw some
light
some
also
religious side to it
am
aware,
a very
is
other peoples.
As
adduce any
for the
ritual
parallel to it
from
or religious feeling
by a
religious motive,
less
parents to have
namely, by the desire of the childan heir who might continue the
it is
But no document
very doubtful
if
is
we
We
Babylonian ancestor-worship.
suspect that the writer has been misled by the
ought to speak
may
and
of
For exceptions,
Johns, op.
cit.,
feelings.
135
Roman
family
cult.
In
this, as in
modern and
other respects,
was Babylonian
secular,
No
society.
trace
much developed.
On the other
we
mind
as
at least
it
is
develops
only apparent.
an instrument
for
And
tradiction
as
making, which
Hellenic religion
department of Hellenic
to
life
its
utilitarian
constructing his
for
ends,
social
religion
order,
as
was
less
marked
than elsewhere
in his midst
as usual,
in
my
Cults
have
interesting
136
will only
confining myself
as far as possible to those that belong to the protoHellenic period. Our knowledge, of course, of the
and hypothetical
glimpses
Homer
we have
and
dim
affords us
have
of
the
a
"
had already
the
political character, as deities of the assembly or
first
a
divine
at
Thus
Apollo 'Ayviwg,
agora/'
some
and
land, at once a divinity of the city
name
from the
scholars would derive his very
on the
in their hands
These
words
137
The
oracles
for this
is
common
pre-Homeric days
and
to
this
earliest
epoch
may
Od., 3, 215.
Ib., p. 202.
Vide
16.,
pp. 104-106.
I 38
of
left
its
and religion
deep imprint on historic Greek society;
and
domestic
the
with
phratric
is intimately interwoven
with
concerned
much
in that these are
cults, not
only
but that the high
worship of heroes and ancestors,
and
Athena
divinities also, Zeus <parp;o,
<E>parp/a
their
institutions under
charge.
'Awrovpfa, take these
Hence all adoptions and admissions of new members
into the phratry had to be performed at the altar.
the
many
divinities
Xcuos,
it
political
such as
and
social
Tiohtevg,
of the
titles
'Ayopwog,
Hellenic
Ti&vliifbog,
Bov-
terminology of Babylon.
!&.,
pp. 53~55-
139
of view.
In Greece that conception
the
Homeric
and pre-Homeric societies
post-Homeric
were still in the stage of law in which homicide is treated
is
was a
namely, when the slain person was a supThe religious feeling in respect of the
sin,
pliant or a kinsman.
*
partly arises from the old Aryan Hearth-worship
in respect of the second, it is associated with a primitive
first
munities, I
that
or
is
Esv/0.
in the ninth
and
have
deity.
It is
sitiveness
open to us to explain
concerning purity as
a mark of Oriental
influence, which was reaching Greece in the first millennium B.C. But at least we ought not to derive it from
140
But, as
principle of the Babylonian law of murder.
we have seen, we discern here only the secular result :
the religious force that may have worked towards it is
too far removed in the background of the past. Summarily, we must conclude that the political application
of
Hellenic religion
and
reflected
life.
CHAPTER
VIII.
THE
social
monuments can
scarcely
some
the
an
rise of
142
is
direct
and
explicit,
interpretation of
hypothetical.
make
it.
2
3
Vorstellungen
Tode, p. 68,
4
Gebete, p. 20.
We
with Nergal
him
x
;
name
an obscure deity,
Ira/'
and at times identified
but that a direct cult was attached to
143
"
of
of pestilence,
is
not shown.
And
it is
enemy
one,
that
"
the merciful
among
follows a law
being,
itself
expresses
of
the
religious
psychology, which
quasi-magical phraseology of
prayer.
from
in
his
good and
strain the
god to be so
and
from the
whole
Zimmern,
Langdon,
op.
cit.,
cit. t
p. 83.
4
Reseller, Lexikon, vi. p. 47, s.v.
op.
*'
Ramman."
144
good gods.
And
this
may
The
of development where Homer presents it to us.
high deities are worshipped on the whole as moral beings
and
as beneficent
that
is,
mythology with
worship, and supposing that if the mythology is licentious
or immoral, the deity is worshipped in that character.
All students of mythology and religion are aware that
this is false.
We might be able to show that the religious
and
statement of Homer at times fall below
imagination
always
the
is
common emotion
men
145
earliest stage of
or surmise.
dislike
when
We may
affirm
generally,
of
an
evil
then,
that the
Meso-
and
is
far less
emphasised
than
it
that
is, it
potamian, but
own
1
religion
still
is
A.<f>poSLT7)
dvdpo(j>6vos
or
IO
d^crios,
Cults,
ii.
p.
665,
and
146
from
this,
dangerous
with the higher forms of cult.
aboriginal thunder gods and
the term
"
"
god advisedly)
been civilised and moralised
before Homer's time. Poseidon had always his wild
and to the end
side as god of storms and earthquakes
he remains rather more a non-moral nature-power than
:
both are therefore concerned with the arts of metalwork; but Hephaistos remains a handicraftsman, and
1
Jastrow, op,
cit.,
pp. 297, 4 8 7-
147
has
;
yet an irrepressible
vein of wildness and a spirit that refuses to conform
to the ethical ideal of Hellas remains in him. A god
so highly placed at Babylon would have been clothed
many an
ecstatic phrase of
temple liturgy.
It would be interesting to go more into detail concerning the special moral virtues consecrated by the two
religions, or
much moral
evolution.
It
is
magical in
its
origin
dangerous
148
by
whom
we have
"
1
yea for nay, and nay for yea?
But in no Hellenic record have I ever been able to find
asks,
"Has he
said,
was most
ever reprobated it more. In regard to ordinary truthfulness, Hellenic religion had nothing to say, no message
to give, and Hellenic ethics very little. In the poetic story,
Athena smiles on the audacious mendacities of Odysseus,
and Hermes loves the liar Autolykos. Not that the religion
consecrated mendacity, only it failed to consecrate truth.
It is only the great Achilles who hates with the hate
man who
it
The
p. 8.
Weber, DdmonenbescTiwoyung
bei
149
is
members
of the
same
tribe or
community,
we cannot doubt
150
Zeus
cult of
'Epxtiog,'
but
it is
evident that
The
it
had been
earliest
moral
tie of
of peace
and
political
community,
this
of political
is
the
first
holy hearth
is
2
And to this early age
people of his own township/'
we must also impute the religious morality of the monogamic family the son fears the curse of the father and of
:
"
the mother, even of the elder brother
thou knowest
of
that the powers
judgment defend the right of the elder:
8
says warningly to Poseidon.
The Erinyes
the
with
preservation of the
specially charged
morality of the family and clan, and with the punishment
born"
Iris
are
of the
kin,
two
murder and
Of the
incest.
first,
literature that
sin,
15, 204.
IL> g> 63
Od., ii, 280.
151
interest
son, mother and daughter, father-in-law and daughterin-law, brother and brother, friend and friend, partner
and partner?
against his
misconduct are supposed to give a man into the possession of the evil demon, which must be exorcised before
God will admit him to his fellowship again. Though
magical ideas are operative in the ceremony, yet we
discern here a high religious morality. And among the
other moral offences clearly considered as sins in the
same formula
We
Weber,
op.
cit. t
p. 8.
Thou
shalt
not
152
"
was a
religious
law
It excites
We may
we
still
the tribe or the family are one flesh, one corporate unit
of life, so the members are collectively responsible, and
"
the sins of the fathers are visited on the children."
This was the familiar law of old Hellas, and we may say
of the ancient Mediterranean society the first to make
;
deliverance prays
grandfather,
my
"
may
mother,
the sins of
my
my
father, of
grandmother,
u. Gebete, p. 18.
my
my
Hymn
family,
i.
my
circle of kindred,
One
and
other
feeling
is
153
may
they
side."
is
and non-moral.
The
confessional
formula
"
that
it,
my
of
god
that which
is
is
This must
many, great
my transgression/
contact with unclean things
be taken quite literally
or with unclean persons, eating of forbidden food, is
put in the same category with serious offences against
social morality, and all these expose a man equally
sins are
is
God's protection.
ment
1
And
demon and
this is
half-civilised develop-
Weber,
op.
cit.,
p. 9.
Zimmern,
op.
cit.,
p. 23.
I 54
law of tabu
nor, as I think,
is
by
is
which
is
physically unclean,
This mental attitude is supported in the older and
later
system by a vivid polydaimonism
is
Mesopotamian
can
tell
is
The utterance
offence. 1
how
oft
attributed to
Hebrew
of the
he offendeth
cleanse
all illness
some unknown
"
who
Thou me from
psalmist,
my
secret faults,"
may
hymn
"
that
the sins
Babylonian penitential
have done I know not
;
have committed
know
not."
"
take
here deep and very moving
a
cloak
as
wickedness
God,
from
me
my "
my
away
though my sins be seven times seven, yet undo my sins
The
feeling of sin
is
"
Zimmern,
op.
cit.,
pp. 23-24.
cit.,
p. 26).
155
all
earth,
of
exclaims
is
of no understanding
what do they understand ?
is
good
God.
who hath
searched
it
out
"
in the
making.
Certain
156
that
is
to say, the
earliest
reflex
of that
&$
as
he
calls
his brother.
upon
man
incest,
and
we might
troubled by any ritualistic pharisaic code
none
at all
was
there
that
even take him as a witness
;
The
discovery,
would be
childish.
may be
able to consider
the
when I
we have
157
up
it
In
fact, Hellenic
Homer
We
"
hear even in
"
a black Ker
;
almost,
we may
say, a
devil.
Certain
days,
according to Hesiod, might be unlucky, because perhaps
Erinyes or ghosts were walking about, though that
blood or mud.
Therefore,
Vide
my Evolution of Religion,
p. 128.
158
therefore,
circles
Pythagorean
where we
detect
may
Oriental
influence.
more
would lead us
the
people,
of
yet the higher culture
earliest
period which we are
to suppose
in
the
by
some extent by the Babylonian,
figures of death
than
and
disease, ghostly
shadows rather
we
and West.
Despite
the
trait is more
Babylonian-Assyrian theology, no divine
movingly insisted on in the liturgies than the merciful-
159
" l
"
ness of the deity Nebo is the merciful, the gracious
;
"
Ishtar is
the mighty lady of the world, queen of
humanity, merciful one, whose favour is propitious,
who hath received my prayer " ; 2 Sarpanitum is
:
"
addressed as
unknown Assyrian
general epithet of an
deity.
him
At
so.
any
rate,
Babylonian
religion
;
and
as
is
given to
"
it,
is
Roscher, Lexikon,
Langdon,
op.
cit.,
iii.
p. 49.
p. 269.
Jastrow, op. cit., p. 536. For the idea of the goddess as the
pleader for man before the high god, cf the prayer of Ashurbanapal
to Ninlil (Jastrow, p. 525).
4
Zimmern, op. cit., p. 15 ; *&. p. n.
5
Jastrow, op. cit. t p. 200.
.
160
of divine
quasi-liturgical
formula to
many
is
mercy gave
attached as a
of the leading
gods
of the dead
2
:
and
all
life
languishes
Tammuz
specially
sonates the
home am
I."
It is
slumbers,
1
3
4
5
6
the
n., 9, 497
Langdon,
op.
Jastrow, op.
cit.,
cit. t
p. 225.
p. 490.
Ib., p. 529.
Langdon,
op.
cit.,
p. 3.
also
161
when he
"
of life perishes/
Still more explicit is another Tammuz hymn, in which, while bewailing the departed god,
the
of the earth,
"
the wailing is
are
not
they
produced the wailing
is for the grain, ears are not produced
the wailing is for
the habitations, for the flocks, the flocks bring forth
for the herbs
all
.
life
no more.
for
In
all
of divinity
immanent
with
in living nature
is
inconsistent
defined
severely
anthropomorphic religion
hence we scarcely find it in the earlier religion of Hellas.
Zeus is called the father of men and gods, but in a
reverential rather than in any literal creative sense
;
nor
is
morphism we
discern in
Hellenic
myth
or
cult
the
diffused
2
in the Attic cult on the Akropolis of Demeter XXop?,
which title expresses the immanence in the verdure of
1
Langdon,
op.
cit. t
p. 319.
Cults,
iii.
p. 33.
i6z
the
Skephros of
did, to that
die
lineaments
of
life is
But we
life
and whose
of the earth.
religion.
CHAPTER
IX.
WE
demanding
embedded
it
is
any
the purifier
by
in their worshippers.
Marduk is called
in one of the incantation-texts, in allusion
on purity
to his
law
this ritual-
who
((
From
"
arises of
"
cleansing processes.
ritual
of
prescribes
evil
demon
of sickness
The
will
differ
according to the
instincts
for instance, in
is
164
"
purity of heart," we
should naturally include purity in respect of sexual
to the Mesoindulgence. But in applying this test
a singular
with
confronted
potamian religion we are
we speak
of
difficulty.
In the
pure in our
scribes, to
or
may be
it
whom we owe
us, deliberately
165
and
form
I
shall
give
practice.
by
certain cunei-
texts.
some consideration to
But
this
view of Ishtar
this
phenomenal
is
utterly contrary
to that presented of her in the hymns and liturgies.
Not only are certain hymns to Ishtar transcendently
noble and spiritual in tone, surpassing most of the
was
fear
I."
This
virgin-character
of
hers
must
4
6
7
Langdon,
op.
cit.,
which seems to us
p. 191.
3
16., p. 193.
Ib., p. 3.
Ib., p. 289.
Tabl. 9,1, n.
Istar."
BuHe
die
166
impure
votaries of the
same
"
Kedesh
"
is
and
This
Syria.
conception of Ishtar's
ritual in Phoenicia
voluptuous
of
is
divinity, as it
interest
"
;*
and
in
some
of the older
3
Virgin-Goddess/'
Similarly, in the hymn to Nana
"
"
she is called in one place the Virgin-Goddess of Heaven
"
in another,
Mother of the faithful breasts." 4 Another
;
E.g.
3
6
Jastrow, op.
cit.,
460.
Keilinschr. BibL,
/&., p. 289.
ii.
p. 47.
these
conception
it too
press
a dogma.
phrases,
of
far, or
167
then,
suppose at
all
that
it
crystallised into
is
therefore
any divine
offspring or of
any
literal
this idea
life
therefore she must be recognised
and supplication as a mother
the adorer
propagation of
in prayer
same
races,
we
168
1
But we can trace
quickened by spiritual significance.
the
double
Asia
Minor
concept of mother and
through
consort of Baal
Anath
in
a mother-goddess, bearing,
resemblance to Rhea, and placed in the temple by the
side of her husband, Bel or Zeus.
Among the Sabaean
inscriptions of
some parents
Umm-Attar,
"
name
Mother Astarte
"
that signifies
3
)
and a
"
Mother-Attar
>J
(or
"
"
whom
1
Only a late Greek inscription from Berytos designates Baal as
the pure God 0e ayty (Dittenberger, Orient. Graec. Inscr., 590)
2
Lagrange, Etttdes sur Us religions s&mitiques, p. 482.
3
Vide Weber, Arabien vor dem Islam, p. 18.
.
*
5
Epiphanies, Panayium, 51
C. I. Sem., i, i, 195.
cf.
my Cults,
ii.
629.
169
1
Heavenly Virgin, then either the dual concept was
mystically combined in the same personage, or the
Carthaginian goddess was worshipped at different
times and at different seasons as the mother and then as
the maid. But the evidence is quite uncertain, and we
must not combine too rashly the records of different ages.
may
is now given us
the names of Hittite divinities in cuneiform texts
;
among
Asiatic Society*
Assyrian
C(
the mother/'
tion
was the
god entered.
isolation of
From this
Ma
which no
hazardous
/gpo
As
1
De
Civ. Dei, 2, 4
C.I.L., 8, 9796.
2
Perrot et Chipiez, op.
3
Year 1909.
of.
Reseller, Lexikon,
280.
i.,
s.v.
"
Caelestis."
170
it
very
frail.
it
is
inconsistent with
any dogma of
traced.
who was
What we
discern in Crete
is
and a mother.
a great mother-goddess
"
Vide
305-306
Sir
Journ. Arch., 1887, p. 348, expressed his belief in the prevalence of the
cult of an Anatolian goddess in the later period, regarded as a virginmother and named Artemis-Leto the fact is merely that the goddess
Anaitis was usually identified with Artemis, but occasionally with
j
Leto
but we nowhere find Artemis explicitly identified with Leto,
and the interpretation which he gives to the Messapian inscription
;
me unconvincing.
2
The fact that a part of her temple at Kyzikos was called Hap9v6v
does not indicate a virgin-goddess. M. Reinach is, in my opinion,
"
**
the apartment of the maidens
where the
right in explaining it as
maiden priestesses assembled (Bull. Cory. Hell, 1908, p. 499).
When we examine
know.
171
we do not
we
Hera
late
of
Homer
was
an
old
significance
"
Hagne,
1
of
Apollo, and
"
Pure/'
well have been
cult-title
may
Athena/'
Cults, vol. i.,
different view of the
its
We
root-
hear of
probably a reverential
R. 66.
2
whole question might be presented if I
A
was dealing here with the evidence gleaned from the period just before
Christianity.
172
name
for
Kore
at
x
:
and on
it,
times.
solemn and beautiful, the latter often singularly impure. In fact, both in the Phrygian and Hellenic
popular imagination we detect an extraordinary vein
of grossness, that seems to mark off these Aryan peoples
sharply from the Mesopotamians, and equally, as far
as we can see, from the other Semites.
3
Cults,
iii.
p. 206.
8, 44, 5.
CHAPTER
X.
WE may
profitably
hymn may so
to whom it is
ticular
deity
illusive.
birds
up to heaven."
of the
hymns
where she
city,
streets."
It
is
"
is
own
as a helpless
probable that
the
Langdon,
op.
cit.,
173
pp.
I, 7.
174
as a group
system, that the higher divinities acting
are stronger than any other alien principle in the
when Marduk,
or originally,
Tiamit. 1 The evil
perhaps Ninib, won his victory over
indeed active
power embodied in the demons remains
and
and much
strong,
of the divine
And
to combating them.
is
agency
devoted
Thus
god
man
repents
power the demon if the demon-ridden
and returns to communion with his deity by penance
and confession.
Furthermore, the ancient documents reveal the
deities as the arbiters of destiny.
Babylonian
is
named
"
Destiny
the Leader of
King Neriglassar
to the
allusions
have
and we
frequent
the yearly fates at an annual meeting.
by
2
Marduk
"
gods fixing
Nebo the scribe is the writer and the keeper of the
"
"
of Heaven, and this book is called
Doomsbook
"the tablets that cannot be altered, that determine
3
Fate
the bounds (or cycle) of Heaven and Earth."
neither personified nor magnified into a transcendent
cosmic force overpowering and shaping the will of the
is
gods.
How
2
a
175
In
is occasionally expressed
we
must
that this deity had
believe
.and
dogma,
risen to this commanding position before the Homeric
as a
period, at
least
among
Marduk
lonian system.
was
no Hellenic evidence
of so
Were
it,
indeed,
is
176
phrase occurs,
It
The
and
Psalmist's phrase
1
"
The voice
Weber, Ddmonenbeschworung
bei
of the
Lord
is
Roscher, Lexihon,
ii.
p. 2355,
mighty
P-72
the
the
quoting
Hymn iv.
cf. p. xix.
p. 8.
R. 29,
i.
in operation."
Bel-Marduk
of
is
177
said to be
the theme
stronger than any exorciser or diviner, and is
"
1
a net
as
another
in
is
described
It
of a special hymn.
The
of majesty that encompasseth heaven and earth."
Word
of
declares that
"
ee
The
trees/'
spirit of
the
sea,
Word
is
Enlil
name
phenomenon, which
religious
a strange
originated in the
itself is
also
domain
of magic,
created the world, the heavens were hushed of themselves/' 5 In the Babylonian poem of creation the
"
no god had yet
primal state of Chaos is thus described,
fixed/'
Number
Fifty.
Now,
Dhorme, Choix,
etc., p. 343.
n. 4)
Reseller, Lexikon, ii p. 2367 (iv. R. 26,
3
Langdon, op. cit., pp. 39, 994 Vide
essays in Evolution of Religion, pp. 184-192,
-
my
5
6
12
7
Jeremias, Holle und Paradies, p.
" Ninib/' iii.
368.
p.
12
Roscher, Lexikon,
s.v.
178
1
Magic had doubtmarkedly different.
less the same hold on early Greece as it has on most
We can conclude
societies at a certain stage of culture.
religion
this
are
of it revealed
by
as such
of sudden
of
safely believe that they were part
growth we can
an ancient tradition
while Babylonian
always alive among the people. But
in
the
great religious litermagic proclaims itself loudly
ature and highest temple ritual, Greek magic is barely
is
essentially
ritual.
demoniac
Again, Baby-
but we have no
Had Greek
religion
it difficult
nor can
cerned with the later history of the concept)
of God
the
name
Greek
earliest
in
the
we find
period
:
179
names. 1
We may also
What
of record.
is
is
If
we can
detect
and
Babylonian
in-
in-
lennium
less likely
if
that
it
and
given
by
main
in the
record, then,
is
hymn
Babylonian
for part of
that
has
it
been discovered. 2
The
document
is
i8o
religion.
When we
anything
surmise in early Hellenic thought. It is true that the
that the earliest
Babylonian theory starts with the dogma
thought in
and the
salt.
We
"
the
Okeanos as
Homer, who speaks
2
But the
including even the gods.
things/
of
source of
all
myths
there is a glimmer of
then, can be
it
of
No conclusion,
If we
coincidence.
drawn from so
slight a
careful
of the
etc.
Pp. 52-100
;
Zimmern,
cf.
op.
cit.,
488-506.
cf.
181
dominant
tive.
over
the
other
in
the
narra-
Hesiodic
in
different
the
two systems.
who
the Earth-mother,
religion.
We
decidedly
evil,
terror.
and the
early dynasty of Titan-powers is peaceful and is stimulated by the power of love, Eros, who has his obvious
double in the
Kama
moment
tradition post-Homeric
is
in respect of
we may
to the
theomachy
in Hesiod, as
Again,
an event
when
it
has
literary
we come
mere
divinities,
i8s
shifting of population nor are the Titans more representative of evil or of a lower order of things than the
:
Olympian
treats of
On
it
deities
at
all,
The curious
not expressed in the Titanomachy.
the
that
universe
was
also
compacted out of
conception
is
all,
but as a struggle
On
the other
different
2
3
Macdonell, op.
Zimmern,
cti.,
JK.A.T.*, p. 497.
ii.
waged
against Labbu,
as a
mainly
huge snake
183
and Marduk
in clouds and
a
the
lightning
descending to the conflict
no
for
has
obvious
cosmogony, for
legend
significance
it places the event after the creation of the world and of
:
men and cities. But it has this interest for us, that it may
be the prototype for the legend of Zeus' struggle with
Typhoeus, which is known to Homer, and which he places
in the country of the Arimoi, regarded by many of the
ancient interpreters, including Pindar, as Cilicia. 2 Now,
myth
nor
is
it
is
of his
The
mentioned
is
striking,
and becomes
all
3
body of a lion or a bull.
The Typhoeus-legend belongs also essentially to the AsiaMinor shores, and if Cilicia was really the country whence
it came to the knowledge of the Homeric Greeks, it is a
was just this corner of the AsiaMinor coast that felt the arms of the earliest Assyrian
conquerors in the fourteenth century B.C. and it is just
significant fact that
it
such myths
1
3
Zimmern, K.A.T.
p.
Lydia
(ib, t
Cf.
and
far.
p. 579).
King, op.
2.
cit.,
184
If
many
here,
is
reasonable
more reasonable
in
it
to
it
if
indication that
The
it
theme
last
of
buted to Bel, who, after the victory over Chaos, commanded one of the gods to cut off his head and to make
men and
and
by an
own
blood,
old cuneiform
text that
is
creation of
man
to
called Aruru,
of
man
to god,
is
is
found, developed
into a high spiritual doctrine, in the later Orphic Zagreusmystery. But there is no trace of it in genuine Hellenic
men
ash-trees
1
it
may
Zimmern, K.A.T*,
King, op.
cit.,
p. 497.
pp. 88-91 ; Zimmern, op.
cit.,
p.
498
(b).
185
vogue
primitive folklore.
found in the
and
But nothing
lepog Xo<yo$
of
occurrence in other
its
like it
Mesopotamia.
We
religion.
We may
of
trinitarian
indications of
But
it
cult
in the
in
early Carthage,
Minoan-Mycenaean
and
slight
4
pillar-ritual.
is
1
Ad Ov. Metam., I, 34 (the authenticity of the Lactantius passage
doubted ; vide Bapp in Roscher's Lexikon, iii. p. 3044)
2
The first is specially Babylonian, the second in Esarhaddon's
.
i86
to beget a living
We
in
and Son if we concentrated our attention on the BoghazKeui reliefs; but the other Hittite evidence, both
no hint of this as a
literary and monumental, gives
In fact, in most polyidea in the religion.
working
and
in Hellas.
It
if
we could
might
arise.
This
is
by genuine
cult.
No
earliest period of
1
Vide, however, Zimmern, K.A.T*, p. 419, who tries to derive the
Christian Trinity ultimately from Babylon.
2
Vide Roscher, Lexikon, iii. p. 67, s.v. "Nebo."
187
religion,
Orchomenos. 1
We
tendency
and
were
if it
we
so,
it
to
early Mesopotamian
does not appear in the Eastern religion with such force
and strength as to be likely to travel far.
As
importance
in
cult of the
complex
A#5g;ea
appear to belong to
foot
And so far
period
religion.
I have been able to discern nothing that justifies the
4
that the principle of unification or divine
suggestion
the earliest
grouping
of
in
Greek
Mediterranean
early
polytheism
came
from Babylon.
subordinated,
might
evolve
a monotheism.
And
in
making
this
direction.
One
tablet
contains
an
2
3
Vide
Cults, v. p. 431.
cit., vol. iii. pp.
Vide op.
Vide op.
cit. t
vol.
Made by Weber
284-285.
dem Islam,
p. 19.
i88
land, 1
of
That
all
or
was
seriously
made
been seriously
(B.C. 811-782),
in
who introduced
now
honour
set
Museum,
in the British
of the king,
which
is
up by a governor
valuable for
its
in
ethical
"Oh
ecstatic
trust in
Babylonian votary
called Nebo,
What, then,
is
"
tribes
deities in
must have
They must have
adopted
many
Quoted by Jeremias in
iii p. 49.
cit.,
n. i.
p. 118 ; Jastrow, op. cit., p. 203,
" Nebo " in
his article on
Roscher, Lexikon,
if
they wished to do
so.
We
189
must there-
penetrated
by the
human
society,
so that the higher thinkers entered on a track of speculation that leads to monotheism, the masses did not
idols.
alities,
we may
title of
E.B.
10, 37, 3
Tylor,
I97
cf.
my
P- 92).
CHAPTER XL
THE RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENT OF THE
EASTERN AND WESTERN PEOPLES.
A MORE
interesting
and
fruitful
ground of comparison
is
emotional relation of the individual towards the godAs I observed before, a clear judgment on this
head.
them
at least
may
him.
we have many
private
And
self.
hymns
of
be-
penance
On
religious
testimony.
We know much
about
the
191
and a few
hymns
lyric
and
literature
from that
man
in the
historic periods,
of the
if
common
to other
members
stimulus.
rites
The
that
could
individual
afford
seems
to
physico-psychic
have
regarded
angry when
he sins and becomes favourable and a mediator in
In private
his behalf with other gods when he repents.
slave, of his
own
letters of the
time of Hammurabi
"
May
tutelary divinity,
who
is
we
192
common
is
god
"I, whose
so-and-so."
is
In
the
to the god
who
created him/'
With
we may
this
... As a dove
in
moans I abound
and sighing,
that
tears
remorse,
Abject
sighings/'
casting-down of the countenance, are part of the ritual
that turns away the anger of the deity
hence fear
:
of
God and
"
described as a fool
Lord of Lords,"
ethical
maxim
fear his
god
4
,
shaped
in another inscription,
is
cut
who
down
"
name
He who
5
"1
like a reed/'
Nebukadnezar
of the
in a general
does not
love the
temper
we know
much
of the
is
consonant
modern
The
religious
all
that
3
4
5
Keilinschr. Bibl.,
iii.
2, p.
n.
i.
p. 254.
Votstell.
vom
193
sighs, the
individual heart,
but by ritual
acts,
solemn
as
Achilles.
Nor
we
find in earlier Hellenic ethic the clear recognition of fear and humility among the religious virtues, 2
of
pride.
and
act.
Such
is
God
the
Greek
And
Christian
the
by
calling
common
tombs,
phrase found on
Sovhog rov Qeov, has
4
This
passed into Christianity from Semitic sources.
better
than
fact
illustrates, perhaps
any other,
single
as
Pap.,
i.
p. 1 08,
11.
745-6.
i 94
found in Malta,
bilingual Graeco-Phoenician inscription
commemorating a dedication to Melkarth or to Herakles
'
Ap^yer^
Phoenicians
the
recommend themselves
use neither
to the
this
In
tattooing
cutting,
as slave or familiar follower to the divinity.
him
practice,
which
of
great
The
antiquity,
by
tradition. 2
In
fact,
it
is
we
find
gods,
closet
the
of
gods
195
"),
Ili-kariba,
and
we find
Lord
will
God
"My
"
God is mighty
This
is
also illustrated
by another
fashion, possibly
nomenclature
named
name
of the individual.
Of
not only
this practice
among
era give
1
&sog 'Avpov,
&sog
196
0soY
names
in the genitive
'Apzpov
We
of Abraham," "the God of Jacob/'
of
view
in
the
the
same
of
an
point
example
may
if
we take
Qupvcutov in Pontus,
Phrygian title of
the most probable explanation, namely, that it is
derived from the Persian Pharnakes, the founder of
the cult 2 and again in a Carian dedication to Zeus
"the God
find
MW
Panamaros 'Apyvpov,
neighbourhood as the
same
name
at
which
is
characteristic
the
of
of
Babylonian
tone
now and
this
hymns
to Tarn-
Cults, vol. L,
>J
Sarpedonios
we
local-geographical.
4)
as regards "Apollo
title
197
"
of our
it belongs to the
Greek phrase
we are familiar
and
religion,
with it in our own service. No echo of it is heard
in the older Greek religious literature nor in any record
of Greek liturgy.
We can, indeed, scarcely pronounce
on the question as to the tone to which primitive Greek
koristic,"
to use a
feminine sentiment in
We
Greek
Hyakinthos, as
may have
we hear
Linos
and
women
in a
bewailed
ment
The other
trait that
is
best
known by
its
deadly
results
but in
itself it is
We
impute fanati-
Langdon, op. cit., pp. 309, 321 cl the lines in the hymn, p. 335 :
"
I am the child who upon the flood was cast out
Damn, who on the
flood was cast out, the anointed one who on the flood was cast out."
;
iii p. 654.
198
influence,
self-mortification.
festation
is
as
over-ascetic
life,
by
and most usual mani-
in
alien creed.
its
but as an act in
itself
ethical
sympathy or a
Islam,
and
sensitive
humanism;
for the
chief record of
it is
inheritance of
all
it
these stocks.
The more
fervent the
those
who worship
meant,
Only this must
be carefully distinguished from the other more innocent
199
all
As regards Mesopotamia,
same
Religions Tiele finds in Assyrian history the
1
So
traces of murderous fanaticism as in Israelitish.
far as I
For
Palestine,
for instance,
mercy
the
conquered.
is
On
work
his will
2
upon them.
And
of the great Assyrian Empire, the deities appear prominently as motive forces, and the most cruel treatment
is
Pp. 222-223.
Keittnschr. BibL>
2
ii.
p. 191.
200
"
and
after I
softened the
acts, I
who were
a
little
King
of the
name
of the
Chaldaeans,
who
did not
fear the
Lord of Lords
broke the statues of
the great gods and refused his present to me/ 2 Yet it
would be a misunderstanding to speak of these, as Tiele
.
does, as
if
religion, like
the Crusades
king's
profit
than a
pal,
the insult
1
Keil Bibl,
ii.
p.
n.
Ib., p. 69.
J6., p.
257.
201
to torture
stand
why
religion,
Keil. BibL,
ii.
pp. 133-134.
Ib.,
16., p.
205.
302
fanaticism.
sympathy may be termed a passive
the
in
traced
be
savagery
The same fanatic temper might
of moral
the
of
religion,
code.
the
State-
and was
communities we
on the
polytheistic Semitic
no record, so far as I am aware, that bears
From
have
against
other
phenomenon that we
plains
why he
woman, and
slaughtered
"
child,
for I
all
had devoted
it
to Chemosh.
JJ
religious
of Europe, we must pronounce the Hellenic temperament of the earlier and classical period as wholly innocent
of fanaticism.
any "war
of
etc., p. 95).
203
owed
this
cooler religious
CHAPTER
XII.
differ
fundamentally in
ism,
in the
second
Our knowledge
of the former
is
"
The Descent of
epic poems, the Epic of Gilgamesh,
and
the
with
the
Ishtar,"
poem dealing
marriage of
Nergal and Erishkigal, the Queen of the dead secondly,
;
"
sufficiently
former
necropoleis/'
set
forth
for
The Hellenic
the
present
facts
205
have been
purpose in a
series of lectures.
but none closer than they reveal with the conceptions of other peoples. Both accept as an un-
able,
doubted
common
origin of belief
the death-lore of
"
Vide Dr. Langdon's paper on Babylonian Eschatology;" in Essays
to Professor Briggs, 1911), p. 139.
offered
(papers
2 Vide
Jeremias, Hdlle und Paradies, p. 30; cf. King, Bab. ReL,
"
formula for laying a troubled and dangerous ghost
let him
p. 46
the
west
into
to
the
the
Chief
Porter
of
Underworld, I
Nedu,
depart
;
consign him." The west was suggested to the Hellene because of
the natural associations of the setting sun ; to the Babylonian, perhaps,
according to Jeremias, op. cit., p. 19, because the desert west of Babylon
was associated with death and demons.
3 The *' waters of death "
figure in the Epic of Gilgamesh, e.g.
1
in
Modern Theology
'*
ii.
2,
pp. 75-77, 79
Ea,
206
"
the house wherein he who
pathos. The dead inhabit
enters is excluded from the light, the place where dust
their bread, and mud their food. They behold not
the light, they dwell in darkness, and are clothed, like
birds, in a garment of feathers and over door and bolt
is
the dust
scattered/'
is
the Homeric
meadow
This
is
joy.
literature
my
my
my
my whole body
my own family and
he plagueth
whether
it
be the
Now
is
ancient, as
it
was
the
1
is
cit.,
p. 20.
207
tales of
of Iceland
figure
from
secular
who have
struggled
Such
life.
also
But such
demons and
spectres.
208
miasma
of the dead.
eat
I will
and drink
not enter, I
burst the
will
of the door
may
What
is
ghost-world as the
The mode
light
on the
"
The peoples
of the
the de-
Minoan-Mycenaean culture
parted.
interred their dead, Homeric society cremated them,
while the recent excavations have revealed that both
systems were in vogue side by side throughout an
indefinite period in Mesopotamia * and such being the
facts, we cannot safely deduce from them any marked
More illuminating is the
difference in spiritual beliefs.
fact that the pre-Homeric society in Greek lands appears
generally to have buried its dead in or near their habita;
cit.
if
209
spirits,
Greece.
we have
<c
parent alia/' communionmeals to which the ancestral spirits were invited to feast
Hellas,
clear trace of
we examine
these,
we
whom we
Hellas and
found in
1
3
these, toys for children, cosmetics for girls,
14
and
Ethics.
210
"The
Descent of Ishtar" about the barrenness and nakedness of the land of the dead were either not universally
admitted or not acted upon.
may
The
Queen
of Hell
The
secret place
In kingly oil
I gently laid him.
The grave-stone
And
I set
Unto the
And unto
I
What
Was
it done to
purify them by the
and
thus
to fit them for the use
god
u. Paradies, p. 12.
dead
211
of
in
question
is
No doubt
been found. 1
In these practices the primitive Hellene and Semite
level, nor is it likely that either was
the pupil of
at
the
least
other.
for
and Oriental
nor in
trace of the teaching of the Babylonian priest
the blood-offerings to the dead. For the Babylonian
:
of his funeral-
civvSpos.
212
rites
specially
water.
It
earliest period,
is
and
On a couch he
And drinketh pure
The man who was
in the later
lieth
water,
slain in battle.
And
This
is
man who
gets
The
spirit's
It
is
expressed on
if
man
breaks
museums
and
of Paris
them
"
his spirit in
the
Clay-cylinders in the
that
doubtless come from
Berlin,
man who
"
may
his
5
departed spirit in the world below drink clear water/'
The old idea survives in the belief of modern Islam
on the grave.
3
.
Langdon,
op.
King, op.
cit.,
cit.
p. 176.
cit.,
p. 41.
cit.,
p. 15.
213
of Babylon.
Again, in Greece this tendance of the spirits, in the
case of the great ones of the community the king, the
hero, or the priest was undoubtedly linked at an early
But
if
this
it
Babylonian,
that under certain circumstances the king might be
worshipped in his lifetime and after, but we do not yet
know that the departed head or ancestor of the family
received actual cult
scholars,
it
may
where
this is asserted
by modern
sufficient
dead. 2
This at
all
may
and
West
this fact
been able to
find
any indication
of
it
in
Baby-
E.g. Peiser,
my
p. 417.
214
"
that such a man's posterity may be rooted out
May
they have no root in the world below, nor fruit above,
nor any bloom in the life under the sun/' * These
:
the
strange words contain the idea of a family-tree
fruit and the bloom are the living members who are
;
we can
So
it
far,
no combetween the
little
or
is
the hero
spells, so as to
One evidence
is
and question
evidence, which
of actual
is
consulted,
of these
may
215
much
so
it
would seem
Babylonian
period had not
advanced even as far as the Homeric, possibly the
pre-Homeric, Greek. For even in Homer's picture of
Hades and the after-life 1 there already is found this
that the
of
important
trait
the
earlier
that
many
of the righteous
of
Moreover, this
Menelaos
the average
period might
but if Homer is
not hope for happiness after death
his spokesman he could fear special punishment, and
the threat of it was already a moral force.
;
It
called
"
religion.
2
and the
heroes) .
men
of the golden
and the
silver ages
216
popular
And
Greece
is
giving voice to a
common
belief.
in
may
who have
But those
might emanate.
force
Babylonian
"
belief in
posthumous
"
attached
god
judgment
to Nergal might have merely a political significance.
"
"
is a fairly frequent
awakener of the dead
Again,
no
of
but
context where it
divinities
epithet
many
occurs suggests for it an eschatologic intention. 2 In
judgment
the
title
of
Tel-El-Amarna
much
of
tablets,
which
we
is
recovered from
find reference to
the
Food of Life " and the " Water of Life," 3 that the
God of Heaven might have given to Adapa and thereby
made him immortal
and in the story of Ishtar's
;
descent,
1
Vide
Zimmern
Paradies, p. 25
nacTi dem Tode.
2
it is
cf.
in
K.A.T. 3
Zimmern,
op.
cit, t
p.
520
King, op.
cit.,
p. iSB.
u.
Leben
217
But nowhere
was restored.
as
yet has any hint been found that these waters of life
were available for any mortal man, and even Adapa,
In the myth-
ology of
thus
"
and
let
the river."
at the
off
mouth
of
life,
was supposed
The prayers
in Egypt.
offered to deities
of the lower
obstacles
may
to
his
apotheosis.
Panammu
of
Other Semitic
nations
at least
an inscription
of
King
of Tiglath-Pileser in.,
' '
Adad." 2
But no evidence has
as yet
king's,
and
as they
2i8
belief in
We find
Kore-Persephone,
divinities
Zeus
the picture
there
is
are
benign
only the reverse of
a chance of development for a
Xd6vto$,
is
Demeter-Kore that the eschatologic promise of the Greek mysteries was confirmed.
But the Babylonian Queen of Hell, Allatu, is wholly
repellent in character and aspect, nor do we find that
she was worshipped at all the only indication of a softer
this double aspect of
"
the passage in
The Descent of Ishtar,"
which describes the sorrow of Allatu for the sufferings
vein in her
is
brought upon
men through
ii.
219
as the tipper
his nature
Only once
or
twice
is
of
of the underworld-god,
which
is
possible,
it is
significant
isolated utterances,
it is
If
doubtful
if
Lord
have had a
Tammuz had
the gentle
as the
if
of death,
effect this. 6
different career.
3
4
"
Jastrow, op.
Ib. 9 p. 473-
cit.,
pp. 472-473.
/&., p. 472.
Zimmern
in
Sitzungsber.
d.
Kon.
SdcJis.
GeseH.
Wiss.
1907*
iii.
p. 251.
6
It
is
doubtful
if
220
faith, as far as
we
rites of Attis,
"
his
own
lot.
the Phrygian
ened
For
it
is
and
perhaps
between
religion,
eschatologic faith.
religious
contact.
We
re-
earliest
or
The
much
later
is
a story of entirely
CHAPTER XIIL
BABYLONIAN, ANATOLIAN, AND AEGEAN RITUAL.
then, there
in its earliest
will
is
them
222
millennium.
by
Furthermore,
later testimony, of
of date
is
no
may
attest.
these are
common
features of East
and West.
But
if
we
modern world
of
It
savage society.
if
will
be
more
when we examine
223
is
of
Semites
first
how
at Gezer
of a sacred character. 1
their divinities in
we have the
monuments
:
In Phrygia, the
to be a sleeping-chamber for the god. 3
artificial shrine may have been late in supplanting the
natural cavern or hole in the rock that was once the
sufficient
home
4
of the cult of the great goddess.
From
224
Greeks, for
to
and
priestess of
Athena in Troy, 3
shared with Erechtheus, 4 and the stonethreshold of Apollo at Delphi, that guarded already
which
many
she
treasures within
it.
And we
also
know from
on some at
find temples
Minoan
culture.
of
least
the sites
of
the
Crete
of
cave
be
as
on Dikte
all
merely
domestic
though
the
chapels
in
the
king's
palace,
B.C.
We
have, then, proof sufficient of temple-construcand the Aegean islands before the period
of Homer ; and if we must have recourse to the theory
tion in Greece
VideAthen.
225
we should
Crete.
and actually
deified the
temple
itself
of
Boghaz-Keui.
But
it
of
"
p. 203.
15
226
and many
them
of
preferred the
"
"
or post, or heap of
Ashera
aniconic emblem, the
stones or pillar, to the iconic statue ; in fact, that temple
idolatry in its developed forms as it presents itself in
later Mediterranean history
was
and
Western Semitic
regions,
and some
of these
be of
may
great antiquity
in. (of the fifteenth century B.C.) carried off from
1
Megiddo and the Lebanon, or the "Astarte' '-plaques
;
found on the
But
site of Gezer.
in Semitic
communities of the
earlier period
such
and
of
many
of
the non-
in Phrygia, for
Semitic peoples of Western Anatolia
of
emblem
instance, the earliest
Kybele was the rude
;
pillar
or cone-shaped stone,
and
this survived
down
Cook, op.
cti.,
p. 28.
"
Religion of the Samites, pp. 185-195 ;
Mycenaean. Tree and Pillar
Cult," Hell. Jouyn., 1901. It is interesting to note that Baitylos, a
name derived from the Semitic description of the sacred stone as the
**
House of God," is given as the name of a divine king in the cosmogony
2
of Philo Byblius, Muller, Frag. Hist. Graec., Hi. p. 567 ; cf. the baitylos
with human head found at Tegea inscribed Aids SropTriw (fifth century
" Zeus
of the lightning" (Eph. Arch., 1906, p. 64),
B.C.),
227
human
chapel of the
god descending
in the air
full
above the
pillar
on the Minoan
cone-shaped
pillars
as divine
emblems
Now
treatise
mentioned above
at
which
he
The most
Vide Evans, op. cit., and Annual of British School, 1908, 1909.
Vide my Cults, i. pp. 13-18, 102 ; ii. pp. 520, 670 iv. pp. 4, 149,
307
3
a pillar-cult of Apollo Agyieus and Karaeios
Cults, vol. iv. pp. 307-308.
coming from the north, vide
"
4
The pillars known as Kndurru," with emblems of the various
divinities
op.
cit. t i.
228
The
iconic impulse
pillar
Babylon.
This comparison of the cult-objects set up in shrines
or holy places must take into account the phallic emblem
This was
a phallic character attached to them. The MinoanMycenaean culture has been regarded as innocent of
this, since the phallic emblem does not appear among
the
monuments
who may
yet found
and
this opinion is
somewhat
corroborated
its
1
*
6,
269.
Op.
cit. t
vol. v. p. 8.
Cults, ii 445.
But
Aphrodite.
that
has
Phrygian religion,
Cyprian
Crete,
the
many
evidence
229
from
the
doubtful
two
of the pillars
2
but Robertson
supposed to possess phallic attributes
Smith has well protested against the foolish tendency
to interpret sacred pillars generally as phalloi, 3 and even
;
Hierapolis,
later
as
Other statements of
Hellenic misinterpretation.
us to believe that a
cause
may
regard
as
it
many
monuments
in the religious
ethnic
emblem
of the Hittites,
anywhere
though Perrot would give this interpretation to one of
the cult-objects carved on the relief of Boghaz-Keui. 5
Finally, its vogue in Babylonia seems to have been
confined to private superstition ; from the second
millennium onwards it was employed as an amulet,
1
Arnob. Adv. Gent., 5, 19 (in the mysteries of the Cyprian Venus),
referunt phallos propitii numinis signa donates."
2
Cook, Religion of Ancient Palestine, p. 28 cf. Corp. Inscr. Sem.,
i. IT. 6, inscription found in cave, dedicated perhaps by the hierodulai,
"
"
pudenda muliebria carved on the wall.
"
Rel
De Dea
Histoire de
of
D.
230
and one
mo
about
B.C., is in-
but we
scribed on a tablet that represents a phallos
cannot argue from this or any other evidence yet adduced,
so far as I am aware, that the emblem was used in public
;
ritual.
we can discern at present, then, the Babyand Hellenic phenomena are divergent in respect
1
pillar-cult and phallic ritual.
The most interesting part of our present inquiry
the comparison of the ceremonies and the concept
At the first glance we
sacrifice in East and West.
So
far as
lonian
of
is
of
In the
note, as usual, a certain general similarity.
both
wild and
earliest period we find various animals,
domestic, offered upon the altars, but in Babylonia no
special rules concerning their sex, such as were pre-
scribed
ritual.
In
all
these
an inscription of
Gudea mentioning
figs,
fire/'
We
ritual,
between
g/^srypa
in
Baby-
religious
it
was in
"
"
"
"
Izdubar and Nebo in Roscher's
Jeremias, in his articles on
ii.
and
iii.
Lexikon,
p. 792
p. 65, concludes that a phallic emblem
was employed in the ritual of Ishtar ; but he bases his view on the
translation of the word ibattu in the Gilgamesh Epic, which is differently
1
p. 69.
231
"
Athena Lindia
of
at Rhodes,
mystic
was the technical
cereals
and
and
name
for
Zeus in certain
of
were aVupa, or
rites of Crete,
"
which
the oblations of fruits and
fireless,"
Greek
and was a tradition of the age of man's innoThis pregnant idea has not yet been discovered in
Mesopotamian or in any other old Semitic religion the
oblation,
cence.
deities received
Babylonian
There
is
another
is
observed
distinction
some importance
in
Greek
in the later
However
hero.
this
hypothesis explains
tradition,
1
This
and no
single
all
taught in
may
distinction arose
the cases
it
Vide Cults,
i.
p.
88
v. p. 199.
232
we any
no wine/'
of
of
is
Hellas,
only
imagined
as
possible
for
Dionysos.
We
of
have the
wine in certain
have been derived from an older Aegean tradifor two of the deities to whom it was applied,
cases,
tion
may
goddess of Caria.
These are differences of some importance, and doubtless of great antiquity between the ritual of East and
West
more
value for
Vide
Ib. }
ii.
p. 646,
R, 57^.
21.
is
233
is
234
which
this
societies
feeling.
is
it
to
it
2
especially at Praisos in later times,
been a legacy of Minoan religion; also the
in Crete,
may have
and
But the
facts
am
not aware of any other text that mentions swineIt was associated in some way with the god
sacrifice.
" 5
"
but no
Ninib, one of whose appellatives means swine
I
evidence
is
it
was
offered to him.
235
Robertson Smith in
new theory
of
the
his epoch-
Semites,
was the
whether generally to win his favour, or in special circumfor instance, after sin has been committed to
stances
appease his wrath, or as a thank-offering for favour received (6) the communion sacrifice, where the community
;
made
sacred
by the
to
spirit or personality, which is thus communicated
these
to
for
the
the partaker. It is best
regard
present
three as separate and independent, without trying to
determine which
is
prior
and which
posterior.
The
first
type,
1
Robertson Smith's theory that the gift-sacrifice was a later
is unconvincing ; vide specially
degeneracy from the communion-type
"
an article by Ada Thomson, Der Trug von Prometheus," Arch. Relig,
236
deities,
sufficiently attested
is
by Homer
of the early
evolved
not wholly
are
first
clear,
but
it
placed on the
may
altar,
is
inherent there,
and then the beast is touched with these on the forehead and thereby becomes himself filled with the spirit
of
godhead
3
;
the second
is
life,
which
is
now
infused
"
"
the extraordinary degree of supernatural force or Mana
which the altar itself possesses, a force which may have
1
"Sacrificial
Communion
in
1904.
2
and
.
salt
KpiB&s
S &4pta\op rots 6&ftu<rt xdptv eti<f>oplas) ; Schol. Arist. Equ., 1167, rocs dtificurur
Vide Fritz. Hermes, 32, 235 for another theory,
vide Stoll, "Alte Taufgebraiiche," in Arch. Relig. Wissensch., 1905,
eirtftdb\6fjtjHu [ic/>t0a(].
Beiheft, p. 33.
237
which established
plunging into
The
it
bcuvvcrSav
seems to
arise partly
unless
ous services
of
for these a
common
religious
its
special
meal formed
To
great antiquity of this type of sacrifice in Greece.
1 Vide
Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult/* Hell. Journ.,
1901, pp. 114-115.
2
Od., 14, 426 ; cf. the custom reported from Arabia of mingling
hair from the head of a worshipper with the paste from which an idol
is
made.
3
238
the actual statement of the details given us by Theophrastos and Pausanias, much is added by the curious
aetiological legends that
grew up around
it.
We
see
it
As he
were,
by the god
into
communion with
is
who
becomes himself a
eats
feast
vegetation.
and
For
own
religious conscious-
deity.
Vide
we
force
its
meaning.
239
1
We
sacrifice
his
is
the story of
the kinsman
much
not so
is
common
offered rather
may
partaking of his
than the animal,
eat their god, but
their
his
The
origin.
And
it is
Greek Dionysiac
t(
1
Sacrificial Communion in Greek Religion/*
In my article on
Hibbert Journal, 1904, p. 320, I have been myself guilty of this, in
about the
quoting the story told by Polynaenns (Strafegem. 8, 43),
devouring of the mad buli with golden horns by the Erythraean host,
as containing an example of a true sacrament.
Vide
Cults, vol.
i.
p. 145.
s,v.
"
Harpalyke."
240
in
murder
of the
Greek
The record
altar.
of
which the
salient features
have been
slightly sketched
above,
it
Babylonian-Assyrian
have
liturgies,
failed to disclose
is
1
IZ>.,
and
v. pp. 161-172.
v. p. 165.
The
chronicles
of the sacrifice
Vide Cults,
epics,
general
for the
The
sent/'
Babylonian
deities are
sacrifice
"
is
kishtn
supposed to eat
241
"
or
what
is
"
pre-
given
Hellenic
communion-sacrifice.
On
the
contrary,
no
which he com-
And
we
find that
this positive
among
we
are
dead in certain
ritual,
it
appears, privi-
K.A.T*,
16
He might
p. 596.
242
vegetation,
Tammuz
ritual
rests
at
present only on
of Attis-Adonis cult and of the Tammuz-worship among
the heathen Syrians of Harran in the tenth century of
our era. 1
It
belongs
to
the Babylonian
conception of the
own
life
that
to say,
is
when
sacrifice
"
A
1
offered
by way
of exorcism
is
very explicit
28.
cf.
"
Communion
in
243
Another inscription 2
sheep shall die, but I shall live."
throws further light on the ritual of the vicarious
of the
neck of the
man/* Whether this solemn manipulation was performed after or before the sacrifice, its object must have
been to establish by contact a communion between the
man and
attest
clearly
victims
substitutes
as
with
usually
and atonement.
many
it
iv.
slightly
3
Jeremias, op.
cit,,
Kenan's thesis
dominant
in the
p. 597.
p. 29.
(C. I. Sem.,
i.
p. 229)
2,
24, a passage
sacrifice.
The
which contains an
sin-offering is indicated
sin, so
was
entirely lacking
he quotes Porph. De Abstin.,
incomplete theory of Greek
sacrifice,
by Homer, and
is
recognised
244
when
the ritual of
in
the
fiction,
as,
for instance,
But though this idea is common to the Mesopotamian and Hellenic communities, they differ widely in
respect of the evidence they afford, of the prevalence of
human sacrifice. As regards ancient Greece, the evidence
is
indubitable, though
modern
scholars
is
much
due to
human
by
later,
the
became repugnant
to the advancing
ethical thought of the nation, but according to one
authority did not wholly die out till the age of
sacrifice
On
Hadrian.
monument
ence
of
In one of his
Cults,
ii.
p. 441.
Vide K.A.T. 3 pp. 434, 599, where Zimmern refers to the monuments, published by Menant, Pievres gravees, i figs. 94, 95, 97, as
possibly showing a scene of human sacrifice. But Menant's interpreta2
"
published by Prof. Sayce (Trans. Soc. B-ibl. Arch., iv. pp. 25-29) are
2
translated differently by Dr. Langdon, so that the first one (iv.
a
the
sacrifice
of
not
an
refers
to
of
infant.
The
No.
miskid,
26,
6)
pi.
interpretation of the inscription has misled Trumbull (Blood Covenant,
The statement in 2 Kings xvii. 31 about the Sepharvites
p. 1 66).
in Samaria does not necessarily point to a genuine Babylonian ritual,
even if we are sure that the Sepharvites were Babylonians.
245
human
sacrifice.
by fire to a god or goddess and, as incense and cedarwood are mentioned in the same context as concomitants
;
the
conclusion
seems
human
of
threatened
the
ceremony,
sacrifice
inflicted
as
by the
Yet
Anatolia.
it
credit
of
the
it.
in Greece
246
borrowed the
Hellenes
practice
human
of
sacrifice
communion
of the idea of
we
and Hebrews.
2
Mesopotamia except one passage quoted by Zimmern,
in which the sacrificer is ordered to sprinkle some part
It
is
not
incapable of the
hands
which
is
called
"
have evolved
1
3
4
it
in early times,
or they
may
K.A.T*,
Jastrow, op.
cit., i.
p, 500.
Might
the
ways"
5
Zimmern's
247
power the
to suppress
priests
it
reveal
common
and Hebrews, and probably to other Semitic communities. 2 The idea of sin-transference on which it
rests was familiar enough to the ancient Babylonian but
;
As
to effect
this
by
far as
all
pact.
to the
1
On the famous bronze plaque of the Louvre (Jeremias, Hdlle und
Paradies, p. 28, Abb. 6) we see two representatives of Ea in the fishskin of the god ; and on a frieze of Assur-nasir-pal in the British Museum
(Hell. Journ.,
i, pi. 30),
two men
of -sacrifice.
2
248
of
his
his
of
sons,
land.
his
The same
ones,
great
Mati'ilu breaks
If
this
like the
of
the
people of
the head of
oath,
head
of this sheep."
idea underlies the oath-sacrifice in the Iliad*
off,
though
or such
"
his brains
jured a similar fate, or with a prayer that
JJ
The
out
this
be
wine.
like
original idea
may
poured
is magical
the symbolic explanation is later. Another
:
is
parallel
divination.
It is Professor Jastrow's
the
that
chief
of
motive
the Babylonian sacrifice
opinion
was the inspection of the liver of the victim, from the
4
is
so elaborate
in adjacent countries,
it
and
artificial
that
if
we
find
it
it
*,p. 49.
2
300
19, 265-267.
Polybius, 3, 25, ty& /j,6vo$
3,
Op.
cit. t ii.
p. 217.
ttcirfooifii otfrws
ws
tiSe
\lOos
They
349
it
Homeric times
and we note here, as in other cases
where the influence of Babylon upon Greece can be reason;
sacrifice
us
finally
with
another
problem
again to
life,
either
festival.
belong necessarily to the sphere of totemism, as Robertson Smith supposed, and M. Reinach is still inclined to
maintain.
It
is
not
my
it is
slain as a divinity.
the
phenomena
250
dogma
attests.
And
may
We may note,
and resurrection
spicuous example
ritual
of
is
Tammuz, 1
Tammuz was
With them
is
251
another
great motive of the religious imagination which neighbouring peoples and faiths were quick to capture and
We
is
have seen
Tammuz
is
that
the
life
and we discern a pure naturereligion unmoralised and without dogma, but evoking
a mood and a sentiment that might supply the motive
force to more complex and more spiritual creeds.
It
was not suited to the religious atmosphere of the Assyrian
and Babylonian courts
but its influence spread far
of the crops
and
fruits
captivated the other polytheistic Semites, and at times, as Ezekiel shows us, the
women of Israel, revealing to these latter, no doubt, a
It
unknown
Mosaic monotheism.
borrowed from the
The
ritual
Tammuz
in
the austere
Adonis
of
service.
is mainly
For instance,
"
the rite of planting the short-lived
garden of Adonis,"
of which possibly the earliest record is in Isaiah xvii. 10,
The
figure of
Tammuz
is
Tammuz hymn. 3
thereprimevally Sumerian
the
various
Semitic
among
;
them by some
scholars, it
doubtful validity.
1
is
an aboriginal
Josephus
attributed to
4 tells
"
Langdon,
Sumerisch-Babylonische
Tamuzlieder,"
Antiqu,,
8,
5,
cf.
Clem. Recogn.,
10,
24; Baudissin
in his
252
resurrection of Herakles
but
this
Sandon
And
if
the
of
annually.
But as regards the non-Semitic peoples of anterior
Asia, the question of borrowing is more difficult to
No
Hittite
yet revealed
Tammuz.
But
that the idea of the death of the god was not unfamiliar
to the Hittite religion or to some of the communities
On
the
Bibl. t 573
Perrot-Chipiez, Histoire de
I*
viii.
253
and
to
have
All
we know
found
it
in
Hadad
is
merely a conjuncture.
is
clearer
254
and Lydian
cult
and legend
of Attis.
if
but
it is
possible,
necessary
It seems
aboriginal motives of the myth and cult.
likely that the earliest form of the Phrygian religion
with a son or
lover,
dies prematurely,
a necessary complement of the other. The family likeness of Attis to Tammuz strikes us at first sight. As
Tammuz
and
hymn, which
inspired by an ancient
tradition,
is
invoked as
"
is
the
And
and
Phrygian religions
ment, sorrowful, romantic, and yearning.
Vide supra, p. 91
cf.
Cults,
of
ii.
pp.
644649
iii.
pp. 300305.
their ascent to
of
Ganymede
255
Phrygia
name
Attis itself
is
of
"
cannot so explain
It is non-Semitic, and
Attis ."
must be regarded as belonging to an Anatolian languagegroup, nor can we yet discover its root-meaning.
Again, there are
many
was
tabu.
If this is
an original fact
of Attis-cult, it counts
of
derivation from
the
pig does
256
on the shores
of Asia
Minor
animal.
from the
Mesopotamian communities.
of ascetism,
of
the
aware
wildest
excesses
of
of this particular
form
self-inflicted
so far as I
am
of self-destruction. 1
Dr. Frazer, in Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings (G. B., vol. ii.
from N. Tsackni (La Russie Sectaire, p. 74) an example
of a fanatic Christian sect in modern Russia
practising castration.
I have not been able to find this treatise.
p. 45), quotes
257
little
many mental
Nor,
the Galloi of Bambyke, according to Lucian, were possessed by strong though impotent sexual desires and were
full license with women.
The form of communion most ardently sought with the Phrygian goddess
and with the later Sabazios was a marriage symbolised
by a sexual act and Greek and Latin writers, both
pagan and Christian, agree in reprobating the obscenities
of Kybele-Attis worship we may note also that Phrygian
sacred mythology is somewhat grosser than the Hellenic.
We are compelled to seek another explanation, and
I can suggest none other than that which I have hazarded
allowed
elsewhere
tion
was an
17
258
but
ministration for
the
power
to have performed
eunuch
to
evidence
no
direct
have
we
priesthood in Phrygia
"
"
for
tradition
Hittite
figures
prove. It may be a
his
life.
How
early
was
this institution of a
may
We
whom
human-sacrifice;
Marsyas
point to a ritual
stands for is doubtful, but in the Lityerses legend it is
is slain, and neither
merely the passing stranger who
of these traditions is explicitly linked with Attis-cult.
of
Finally,
hypothesis of the
from Mesopotamia to
arising
259
shy of forcing
feels
It is generally felt to
tradition
an
infant,
the
and then
new fragment
as a
boy
of the
Kovpos, as
hymn
he
is
invoked in
of the Kouretes
and
mature
Again, there appears an orgi-
independent personality.
astic emotion and passion in the ritual that strikes a
note in harmony with the Phrygian Kybele-Attis worship.
The very early associations of Crete and the countries
We
and character
why
festival
260
hitherto
The
and death.
birth
ritual-legend
is
incomplete:
from ancient
Unfortunately
literature
is
by Rohde,
"
a grave.
Still,
"
the
we may ask, could the phrase
a
become
have
people
prevalent among
grave of Zeus
with whom the worship of this god was still a living
creed, unless the faith also prevailed that the god who
"
died rose again to power ? In that case the
grave of
Zeus
"
could be a
ritual of the
for
1
Porph. Vit, Pyth., 17 cf. Callim. H. ad. Jov,, 8
vide Cults, i. pp. 36-3?2
Hell. Journ.,x.vn. 350.
Vide A. Evans
;
Diod.
Sic., 3,
61
261
We
shown
The Aphrodite
of
Cyprus
is
most probably of
"
Minoan
"
of
We
can
now
of Artemis,
Kallisto as a
form
but
it is very
probable that Artemis in Arcadia and many
other of her cult-centres represents the pre-Hellenic
Leukothea
and bewail her
"If you regard her as a deity, do
not bewail her if as human, do not sacrifice/ 4
But when we descend from the higher religion to
asked him whether they ought to
sacrifice to
"
1
Vide Cults, vol. ii. p. 651 cf. Clem. Recogn.,
Cypriae Veneris apud Cyprum."
2
/&., pp. 651-652.
8
Vide Cults, vol. ii. pp. 447, n. c., 478, 638, n. a.
;
10, 24,
"sepulcrum
262
sorrowful
attached
is
Hyakinthos,
choly harvest-song of pre-Homeric days
"
"
or may
who
land
the
Laconian
the
of
may
youth
;
to play a world-part
Like to them
realised forms of poetic folk-religion.
1
is Bormos of Bithynia, whose death was bewailed at
the harvest-time with melancholy songs, accompanied
by sad flute-music, and Lityerses of Phrygia, whom
the reapers lamented around the threshing-floor.
Shall we say that all these are merely reflections
cast afar by the great cult-figure of Babylon ?
is
Athenae, p. 620
(^relv avrbv TQIJS a-rrb TTJS %c6/xxs perd TWOS jue/AeXyVOV Bprjvov Kal dya/cX^o-eoJs)
Pollux., 4, 54.
;
2
2
Frazer,
, vol. ii p. 106.
GB
263
We
difference
and
and
in its remoteness
resurrection of the
further
removed
Hellenic religion
from that of Catholic Europe than
deity,
was
was
Bibliothek,
i.
p. 77.
264
ritual
Ariadne
may have
nuptiae
is
It
idols,
only begins to be of
drama
is
played by a
human
representative.
Cults,
Ib.,
iii.
p. 176
cf.
For
vol. iv. p.
34
n. b.
3
5
pp, 123-124.
pp. 189-190.
Ib.,
iii.
Ib.,
i.
and practice
of
it
may
265
divinity
whether the
question
Mesopotamian religion presents us with evidence of a
"holy marriage" solemnised between a mortal and the
Christian
symbolism.
The
tamian institution
of temple-prostitutes.
But, leaving
moment, we
Herodotus to the
immediately concerned. In describing the great temple
of Bel at Babylon, 1 he asserts, on the authority of his
"
Chaldean priests/ that the deity chose as his nightly
mony
in
all
men
and he
Hammurabi
woman
fulfilling
ii, 181.
Vide, for instance, Dr. Langdon in the Expositor, 1909, p. 143.
8
Winckler, Die Gesetze Hammurabi, p. 182.
266
religions,
communion with
Phrygian
up
The
in various forms.
age
1
;
it
of
an immemo-
Hermetic theosophy.
that a woman serves as the bride of the god, could probdistant
ably be traced far afield through many widely
peoples.
of the
3
According to Sahagun, the human sacrifices
Mexicans had sometimes the purpose of
away a woman victim into divine wedlock.
sending
In pre-Christian Sweden
we
find
a priestess generally
and enjoying
regarded as the wife of the god Freyr,
4
Similar
considerable power from the connection.
comexamples can be quoted from modern savage
institution
same
the
find
if
we
munities. Therefore
an unfortunate
hettenistischenMystevun-yeligionen.
2 Vide
Herzog's Real-Encyclop.,
3
as
s.v.
"
Montanisnms.'
Jourdanet
Golther,
Manahardt, Baumkuttus,
p. 589.
p.
229
cf
267
akin at least to
course.
if
Of more value
is
sexual inter-
priestess
we may
suspect
of the temple-ritual
been able to
find,
that
in the
and
be a
The
It
and secures
historic fact
1
Pausan.,
1904, p. 74
may
its
prosperity
2, 33, 3; 9, 27,
cf.
fruitfulness
myth
this
of the union
and
Cults, v. pp.
217-219.
me more
doubtful.
268
of
Althaia,
let
Finally,
Hellenic
should
call
we
We may
of a
puppet or image
for dating
B.C. 1
than 1000
We now
Our
document of
value is the code of Hammurabi, in which we find
certain social regulations concerning the status of a
class of women designated by a name which Winckler
Mesopotamian temple-ritual.
translates doubtfully as
first
"
merely as "votary/
It is
entering a wine-shop under penalty of death.
to
know
as
as
this
even
about
much
them,
something
1
Vide
Cults, v. p. 109.
Winckler, op.
tit.,
p.
no
Johns, op.
cit, t
p. 54.
269
Is it to their
"
down concerning
Certain rules
187).
(
their inheritance of property,
they had
any, who might be adopted into private families. Evi"
"
dently these
Qadishtu were a permanent institution,
of their children,
if
and there
is
the courtesan
who
to the retinue of
Ishtar of Erech.
From
other, for
which Herodotus
is
we must
our
distinguish that
earliest authority
4
:
Code,
probably a
182.
t
Zimmern
4
i,
in K.A.T.
199-
3
,
423.
of
178,
180,
181
cf.
also
270
But he
ness.
Some devoted
throw
ordinary civilised
man
civilisation of otherwise
how an ancient
advanced morality could have
to understand
it
nor
is it sufficient
evidence
Strabo
merely
may
vouches
for.
This usage
271
first-fruits of
was a
rite
The
first
The code
example
of
its close
mediaeval, and
Christian,
women.
earliest
type has
Hammurabi
what may
of
from the
earliest period,
tion
usually,
The first to insist emphatically on the necessity of their distincwas Mr. Hartland, in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B.
through
TyloY, pp. 190-191; but he has there, I think, wrongly classified
a misunderstanding of a phrase in Aelian the Lydian custom that
Herodotus (r, 93) and Aelian (Var. Hist., iv. i) refer to both these
writers mention the custom of the women of Lydia practising prosAelian does not mention the motive that
titution before marriage.
Herodotus assigns, the collection of a dowry; neither associates it
with religion. Aelian merely adds that when once married the
Lydian women were virtuous this need have nothing to do with the
;
Mylitta-rite.
Aryan
states.
The second
class of
We
women
consecrated
certain cult-centres
temple-harlots in
served as
of Asia
Minor.
emanated
cannot say that the custom
for there is reason to think that it was a
in all cases
from Babylon
We
by both
slave
was
women
at least semi-Semitic
and
it
is
which
Corinth. 6
In these cases
Semitic influences at
of Cappadocia
Kybele
affinities
and
Ma
with her,
for
it
i Kings
E.g. Hosea iv. 13 ; Deut. xxiii. 18
Weber, Ardbien vor dem Islam, p. 18.
;
2
3
4
5
cult of
C. 7. Sem.,
i,
Aphrodite
xiv. 24.
263.
Strab., 272.
Strab., 559.
Find. Frag., 87
Strab., 378
(Cults, il p. 746,
R. 992).
least,
273
was identical
at the command of an
temple service
and
that
her
female
ancestors
had done likeoracle/'
herself in the
wise.
stone
to the State. 2
The
other
custom
recorded
by
Herodotus
of
harlotry,
carried
on
for
some
considerable
period,
Baalbec.
1 Cities and
In his comment he rightly points
Bishoprics, I 94.
out that the woman is Lydian, as her name is not genuine Roman
but he is wrong in speaking of her service as performed to a god
(Frazer, Adonis, etc., p. 34, follows him). This would be a unique fact,
for the service in Asia Minor is always to a goddess but the inscription neither mentions nor implies a god. The bride of Zeus at Egyptian
Thebes was also a temple-harlot, if we could believe Strabo, p. 816 ;
but on this point he contradicts Herodotus, i, 182.
;
Et.
Mag.,
18
s.v. 'i
274
but
that only strangers were allowed to enjoy them
if
them
that this service was only imposed upon
they
1
refused to cut off their hair in lamentation for Adonis.
;
by
declares that
that
it
was
it
reliqua
intercourse
strangers,
Phoenices
18, 5-
deliverance from a
dangerous war.
275
But
in
the
an
same ancient
in Lydia.
and
in a temple,
of each maiden's
antagonism
between the early religious sentiment of the East and
the West. Of no European State is there any record,
or other, that the sacrifice before marriage
of a woman's virginity to a mortal was at any time
religious
if
the
women
Pp. 532-533.
The
institution that
is
being discussed.
276
ordained
that
this
of
sacrifice
Modern
To take the
rite
described
Tammuz,
represent vegetation,
and
represents Adonis
human
then,
is
acting of a divine
partly
drama,
at
Babylon,
connecting
for
the
supposing
1
Byblos,
There
Babylonian
that
the
Antike Wald u.
is
rite
with
Tammuz,
women were
FeU
or
representing
goddess,
or
that
act
their
277
influenced
directly
the crops, except in the sense that all due performance of religious ceremonies has been considered at
certain stages of belief as
of the land.
Sir William
favouring the
prosperity
and
Ramsay,
custom
as
the
would
Bishoprics of Phrygia*
explain
in his Cities
as I think, wrongly
the
when
religion
demanded the
do not find
this theory
royal man-god.
even with
itself
it fails
That state
of
life
communism when
it
of the
coherent
to explain
imagines data
period which can come into our ken. When the Byzantine
Sokrates gravely tells us that the men of Heliopolis
1
and why,
if
we
Op.
cit.,
p. 35, etc.
Op.
cit.,
p. 44.
278
had
he
their wives in
is
saying.
And
if
or
priest
some head-man?
This
ill-considered
sociologic
1
stranger.
Prof. Westermarck, in his Origin
and Development of
the
Ideas, regards
Mylitta-rite as intended to
ensure fertility in women through direct appeal to the
the
Moral
woman on
this appeal.
been noted.
custom
is
Wissensch., 1904, p. 81
developed
2
Vol.
Mr.
S.
an
Hartland has
.also,
/.
Relig.
independently,
ii.
p. 446.
279
uncultured or semi-cultured tribes that the medicineman or the priest should take the virginity of the bride
before the marriage ceremony. 1 These are probably
illustrations of the working of the same idea as that
which inspired the Babylonian custom. Marriage involves the entering upon a new state ; change of life
is
generally dangerous,
removal
method
So the Babylonian
safeguards the coming marriage by offering the firstfruits of his daughter to the goddess who presides over
life
and
birth.
Under her
danger
or
if
there
of the stranger.
is
my
explanation, which I
first
put
2'8o
in the ritual
ing for his presence as a necessary agent,
of Semitic
communities
of at least four widely separate
race
it
this
as
stranger
in
it.
But puberty-ceremonies are generally performed at initiation-mysteries, and none of the rites
that we are considering appear to have been associated
with mysteries except, perhaps, at Cyprus, where the
follows. 1
by Kinyras
2
;
but with insufficient clearness in t~h.QArcMv.fur Religionswissenmainly on the ground that^it does not naturally
apply to general temple-prostitution nor to the prostitution of married
women. But it was never meant to apply to these, but only to the
forth
Cf.
Arnob. Adv.
and Clemens,
Gent., 5, 19,
Protrept.,
c. 2,
p, 12, Pott.
281
is
attainment of the blessing of fertility, as Dr. Westermar ck would regard it. And this idea, the removal of a
*
tabu, seems expressed in the phrase of Herodotus by
which he describes the state of the woman after the
that
"
"
institution, the
"
"
hierodoulai
"
in temples
as
who
maintenance of
consecrated
"
women,
a period of years
kadeschim/' unmarried,
indulged in sexual intercourse with visitors, the original
intention
and significance of it
is
for
hard to decide.
We may
be sure that
it
fertility.
The
1,
199-
28s
Armenia,
for
succession or the
is
A
death of a royal victim.
"
hierodoulai," or temple-
that the
simpler suggestion
women, were the human vehicles for diffusing through
the community the peculiar virtue or potency of the
goddess, the much-coveted blessing of human fertility.
Thus to consecrate slaves or even daughters to this
service was a pious social act.
The
significance
of the
that
facts
we have been
examining
is
We
who
in
private
life
valued
"
kadistu,"
purity and morality, called the women
"
"
in
the
ritualistic
or
clean
that is,
sense, or as
pure
"
not unclean." 2
Zimmern interprets the ideogram,
In
an anti-sexual
Op.
cit.,
p. 199.
bias,
possible biological
K.A.T*,
p. 423.
283
is
and
purification.
an early stage in
;
So
am
ritual.
far as I
"
"
hetairai
in
The
many
**
The
them
2
Vide Cults
iv. p. 301.
284
rite in
line that
he renders
"
whom
Son
in the sacred
bowl she
House
of
"
Washing
or
"
House
of
"
Baptism
was the
be
And
in
all
of a peculiar purity
water must
itself
4
rain-water, for instance, or
Doom-
fixing.
According to the Babylonian view ordinary
water was naturally impure (we may well believe that
was
so
6
unpurified water.
scrupulous, for
we
the
religious
or sea-water,
head
5
6
7
i.
p. 75.
p. 250.
Delitsch, Worterbuch,
i.
"
(Langdon,
ib. p.
252).
79-80.
Vide Hippocrates
(Littre), vi.
362
Handbuch,
p,
no).
285
we hear
of
it first
and
Kotytto.
away the
evil magicians/'
and we may
believe that
Greek cathartic
worthy example
is
the purification of
ritual
a note-
Lemnos by the
5
the curious Attic
bringing of holy fire from Delos ;
ritual of running with the new-born babe round the
"
Baptai."
cf .
my Cults,
5
v. p. 196.
Cults, vol. v. pp. 383-384
cf. iv. p.
301.
286
intention
often mentioned
among the
usual implements of cleansing. 3 The Eleusinian myth
concerning Demeter holding the infant Demophon in
the flame to make him immortal was suggested probably
in the later records fire
by some
is
purificatory rite in
which
fire
was used.
Finally,
Nusku
rose in the
Babylonian.
We
employment
the animal-victim.
One
and the
most
sacrificial
skin of
of the
1
Cults, v. p. 356 ; cf. p. 363 (the purifying animal carried round
the hearth).
3
Eur. Here, Fur., 928.
Dio Chrys.
Or.,
48 (Dind., vol.
ii.
/*?/
ffKlXKy [jL^k
80,81, TroXi)
KadapcaTfyip
purgationes, nam aut taeda purgant aut sulphure aut aqua abluunt
aut aere ventilant."
"
4 "
To take fire and swear by God is a formula that occurs in
the third tablet of Surpu vide Zimmern, Beitrage zuv Kenntniss BabyL
;
cf.
xtpfaov in
Greek
ritual).
287
underlying
this
free
rule
The
from wrong. 1
is
intelligible
all
by a North-American Indian
the Peruvians
and formerly by
may be added the
tribe,
to these instances
"
statement by Livy, 3 that in the Roman
lectisternia,"
when a table with offerings was laid before the gods,
no quarrelling was allowed and prisoners were released,
We
Vedic,
5, 13. 6.
Vide
Cults,
iii.
pp. 303-304
Cults, v. p.
322
288
cance
for
had a higher
it
spiritual
and
religious signifi-
and prayers
agree with the Hellenic, but one who was only versed
in the latter would find much that was strange and
unintelligible both in the particulars and in general
atmosphere.
We
discern
an
interesting
mixture
of
is
identified
divinity
the
p.
123
cf.
Weber,
Damomn-
289
fact,
the
them
aid.
differences
of
resemblance were
than they
For
striking
the strength of
it
it
Homeric poems
Homer
will prove.
by water
necessity of purification
or libation to the gods
is
aware of the
before
making prayer
hands and
II,,
xvi. 228.
I9
Od.>
ii.
261,
II.,
i.
313.
290
There
is
Homeric
any
*a0apor/$
re-
animistic belief.
is
valuable
and
idea of impurity and of a complex system of purification, especially in regard to homicide, leading to im-
whom
and
for
little
terror or interest.
and
who
ideas
tion survived,
home where
the
and cathartic
rites
291
of
If we
purifying prophet Epiinenides.
believe, then, that the post-Homeric blood-purification
lent to
was
Athens
its
an older
indigenous culture, we should use this as another argument for the view that the Greece of the second mil-
lennium was untouched or scarcely touched by Babylonian influence. For, as we have seen, purification by
blood or from blood appears to have been wholly alien
to Babylonian religious and legal practice.
The ritual of purification belongs as much to the
history
religion
of
is
of magic
religion.
its
consideration even
Vide
300
To suppose that
Hellas learnt
cathartic rites
292
little
inference that
period of the
we can venture
Greek race
some
of the
in
By way
of salient illustration
we may quote
l
<pap/jtiaz6$ f
Lykaios
"
"
Magi
spells,
own
we hear at Kleonai of an
who controlled the wind and
2
official class
the weather
of
by
and occasionally
hands,
like
p. 755, Pott.
293
blood-magic is the process of waterfinding by pouring human blood about the earth, a
method revealed by an old legend of Haliartos in
thrilling
example
of
to find
it
his
and
striking
and
But before prejudging the question, some salient
and peculiar developments of Babylonian magic ought
to
be considered.
One
achievement of Meso-
great
associated with magic and put to magic uses. Astrological observation led to the attachment of a magic
value to numbers and to certain special numbers, such as
294
had
less,
most races
have had
new moon
the
moon unlucky
is
another,
it."
His page
we should
find
it
legislators that
month
fifth
day
list
that
for
on
of the
in fact,
is
this
2
day the Erinyes are wandering about.
be
may
strictly called
work on
3
4
on a more primitive
s.v.
Ib.,
Mta/wl
I.
804.
senti-
295
when the
was a
for this
Plynteria were going on
cathartic ceremony, and evil influences were
;
we
"
it
is
may
arrest
attention
by
still
more
hypo-
thesis of race-contact.
In Babylonian thaumaturgy nothing is more significant than the magic power of the Word, whether spoken
and the Word, as we have noted, was raised
or written
:
Hell., i, 4, 12.
Cults, iv. p.
259.
Vide
296
of words.
is
found, indeed,
round
all
the globe.
risen
above or shaken
off
is its
constant
accompaniment.
dog
conjecture
that in a great
Langdon
hymn
is
justified in his
In
fact,
tablets
seven demons
who
is
to
p. 196.
who
is
297
in a
"
slip in
Now
it is
the Hellene
of
by means
of his sacred
texts.
Babylonian sorcery, whether legitimate or illegitimate, was intended to work upon or through demons
and its familiarity with the names and special qualities
;
of
demons
peculiar mark.
is its
idols play
were set up before the sick man, then the evil spirits of
(t
Oh ye all wicked, all evil,
sickness are invited thus
who pursue so-and-so, if thou art male, here is thy
:
if
other of
these
Knudtzon, Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott, p. 78 (texts belonging to period of Asarhaddon, civc. 68 1).
2
Ziminern, Beitrage, etc., p. 161.
1
298
may
away.
And
buried.
it is
exorcism
this
is
all
slain,
and
because Labartu
is
it
them 4
interprets
who
This
Equinox/*
is
dramatic
magic helpful to
the
gods.
The
unseen foes
and a number
1
3
4
the exerciser
all
about his
Zimmern,
cit., p. 401.
Expositor, 1909, p. 150, giving text from
iv.
R. 40.
299
"
Utuk they are seven, they are seven, they are neither
male nor female, they take no wife and beget no
"l
children
for knowledge of the name or nature of the
;
ficent
of spirits of
It
evil.
was
also in
and speech. 2
We
have already
noticed
the
that
Babylonian
gods themselves work magic, and that it was also worked
on behalf of the gods. 3 And in the ritual-records much
that might be interpreted as religion may find its truer
for instance,
account from the other point of view
;
"
might appear at
sight as a
first
same
we may
to combat the
demon
of
idols
sickness
by
were supposed
their
magical
influence.
we
Zimmern,
Zimmern,
Beitrdge, p. 173.
cit., p. 169.
op.
300
is
of evil.
as a magic transference
a rope
is
(or his
priest)
then breaks
it
This
away.
There are many features in these methods of exorcism, such as the apotropaeic use of idols, that are
common
ture
to other peoples at a certain stage of culthere remains much also that seems peculiar to
Babylon.
uniquely characteristic of this Mesopotamian people, and at the same time most un-Hellenic,
is the all-pervading atmosphere of magic, which colours
But what
is
and
and
invisible world.
and
established invariably seeks to exclude magic
the priest does his best to discredit the magician.'
The psalmody of Babylon, with its occasional outbursts
;
Zimmern,
Beitrdge,
practice of tying
the
pp.
30-31
up a sheepskin or a
fillet
fire.
2
Zimmern,
op.
2
Frazer, G.B. vol.
,
cit.,
i.
Roman
People,
301
would
magic would have
appealed to many a modern African. The Babylonian
the high gods accept
prophet does not frown on it
the
is
its skilled and beneficent practitioner.
it,
priest
And at no other point, perhaps, is the contrast between
the Hellenic and the Mesopotamian religions so glaring
spiritual insight,
its
as at this.
close
that
influence.
the
victim's
entrails,
is,
the
especially
inspection of
liver
and that
by
a similar practice in Hellas is a passage in the Agamemnon of ^Eschylus, of which the true meaning has hitherto
4
And here, as usual, an
escaped the interpreters.
obvious example of Mesopotamian influence on Hellenic
custom belongs only to a late epoch. It is also true
1
iv. p.
191.
For the main facts relating to the Babylonian system and the
baru "-priests, vide Zimmern, Beitvage, etc., pp. 82-92; for the
2
"
Hellenic, vide Cults, iv. 190-192, 224-231 also vol. iii 9-12.
3 The
documentary evidence, from a very early period,
;
by Zimmern,
*
same
L. 322
vessel
is
given
302
it is
But
in the matter of
phenomena
dream-prophecy
in its simplest
difference
We have also
Keil. Bibl.,
ii.
p. 179.
(in
plain prose) ,
303
is
the
that
fact
of
Some
about
it.
demoniac possession was occasionally found in the preHomeric divination of Hellas, 5 an inheritance perhaps
*
Zimmern,
Lucian,
Vide
op.
cit.,
De Dea
p. 89.
Syr., 43.
191-192
iii.
p.
n.
Cults,
iii.
p.
Cults,
iii.
p. 297.
297.
CHAPTER
XIV.
SUMMARY OF RESULTS.
THIS comparative exposition of the Sumerian-Babylonian and the most complex and developed pre-Christian
in this
broad
field of inquiry.
The
verdict
must
still
Confining ourselves
lennium
B.C.,
generally
we have surveyed
to
and
vital
theory
of
enough
differences, striking
to be serious stumbling-blocks to a
affiliation.
These
304
differences
concern
the
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
305
have
of the
and
They concern
the cult of
the eschatologic ideas of the two peoples
the dead and some idea of a posthumous judgment
:
They concern,
finally,
the ritual
salient
sin
methods
of purification
of
of
magic and
its
nificant
it is
20
incidentally noticed
well in a final summing
importance as negative
3 o6
evidence.
The
European
religion
mysteries, a
first
concerns
the
phenomenon
of dateless antiquity,
and
of
ritual.
It
Those who
still
Babylonia
may
identity of divine
attribute.
names or
of
some
peculiar divine
Isis
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
307
or
by the
of the Hittite
god
Teschub in the Graeco-Roman guise of Jupiter Dolichenos
as far as
attribute of the
any trace
of
is
lacking
among
No single
Babylonian name
is recognisable in its religious or
mythologic nomenclature ;
no
as
just
characteristically Babylonian fashion is found
in
So
is
was
fertilised
by the deep
religion or theosophy.
its spiritual
springs of Babylonian
62,
101-102, 142,
1.43-
Animism, 43.
Anthropomorphism, in Greece, 10-12,
75-80; in Mesopotamia, 51-52,
55-57 9 * n Canaan, 57-58 ; in
in
60-6 1
Hittite
religion,
Phrygia, 63-64 in Crete, 64-75.
Aphrodite, Cretan-Mycenaean, 96 ; in
Arabian
Aramaic
102
Athena,
Attis,
91,
254-258, 266
ILaTralos,
Baalbec, 273-274.
Baptism, 284.
Bau, Babylonian goddess, 263.
Belit, Babylonian goddess, 83, 84,
104.
Chemosh, of Moab,
59, 86.
Assyrian conquests
(vide Typhoeus).
Cilicia,
in,
35
in
Convent-system
Mesopotamia,
268-269.
Cook, Mr., 66, 69, 73.
Cosmogonies, 179-182.
Courtesans, sacred, 269-283.
Cowley, Dr., 90.
Creation of man, 184-185.
in,
prostitution
Cyprus, religious
Death
238-240,
249-263.
Demeter, 80.
Demonology, 154, 206-208, 297-300.
Dionysos, 239-240; marriage with
Queen- Archon, 267.
Divination, through sacrifice, 248249, 301-302 ; ecstatic, 303.
Dualism, 19, 158.
309
3 io
Enlil,
Eschatology, 204-220.
Esmun, Phoenician god, 57.
Eunostos, Tanagran vegetation-hero,
262.
Eunuchs, in Phrygian religion, 92,
256-258.
Euyuk,
167
religious
virtue
in
Greece, 23-24.
Fanaticism, in Mesopotamia, 197203.
Fassirlir, Lion-goddess at, 88.
Father-god, 48, 95.
Fetichism, 225-228.
Fire-ejod, in Greece and Babylon,
146-147, 285.
Fire-purification, 285-286.
Frazer, Dr., 17, 60, 79, 89, 257 n. i,
277, 282.
Functional
deities
(Sondergotter),
no,
133.
Hammer,
131-
not
142.
Eros, cosmic principle, 181.
Faith,
Hammurabi, code
i,
Hearth-worship, 132-133.
Helios, at Tyre and Palmyra, 107 ;
in Greece, uo-in.
Hell,
Babylonian
conception of,
205-206
? Aryan -Hellenic, 96;
Hera,
83,
103,
descent
of,
120, 142,
204, 208.
among
Hittites,
124-125
in
demon -goddess,
Labartu,
298.
169, 272.
Semites,
85-86;
at
Olba and
Mannhardt, 276.
Marduk, 103, 120, 265.
Marriage of god and goddess, 263268 ; marriage ceremonies in
Babylon, 134.
Mercy, attribute of divinity, 158-160.
Minotaur, 74, 266-267.
Mitani inscriptions, 46.
Monotheism, 187-189.
Monsters, in Cretan art, 74-75.
76.
Hierodoulai, 272.
Hittite ethnology, 36.
Morality and
Hogarth, Dr.,
74.
164-
Moon-worship, Semitic, 85
112.
religion, 20.
Hellenic,
Nebo,
100,
of,
58-60.
302.
Njnlil, 84.
Ninni,
Sex, confusion
Shamash,
311
Nusku, 117.
Omnipotence, divine
attribute,
173-
I7S-
Pan-Babylonism, 30-33.
Pantheism, 161-162.
Perjury, 147-149.
Tammuz,
hymns,
225.
of,
66-75
in Greece, 75-80.
Tiftmat, in
181.
Poseidon, 146.
Babylonian cosmogony,
8 1, 199.
Purity, 163-172.
Qadistu, meaning
of,
269.
Typhoeus, legend
Ramman,
vide Adad.
Sir William, 117, 170, 273,
Ramsay,
Van Gennep,
Ver Sacrum,
277.
279.
in Greece, 137.
Virginity, sacrifice
240-242;
chthonian,
230-231;
human, 244-
269-281.
166-171.
of,
bloodless,
233
at oath-taking, 247-248
246
"sober," 231-232; vicarious,
242-244.
Sandon, 252-253.
of,
Virgin-Mother, idea
196-197.
Westermarck, Professor, 41
Wilde, Dr., I.
of,
n. i, 278.
15,
re-
57,
Zeus,
in
56,
176-179, 295-297.
Worship, ambiguity in term, 67, 77.
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