Title: Greece and Babylon : A comparative sketch of Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Hellenic religions
Author: Farnell, Lewis Richard
Language: English
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 GREECE and BABYLON

 A COMPARATIVE SKETCH OF
 MESOPOTAMIAN, ANATOLIAN
 AND HELLENIC RELIGIONS

 BY
 LEWIS R. FARNELL, D.Litt., M.A.
 FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD
 AUTHOR OF
 “CULTS OF THE GREEK STATES,” “EVOLUTION OF RELIGION,”
 “HIGHER ASPECTS OF GREEK RELIGION” (HIBBERT LECTURES)



 Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street
 1911



 [IMPRINT.]

 _Printed by_
 Morrison & Gibb Limited,
 FOR
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
 LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.
 NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.



 [DEDICATION.]

 TO
 Dr. HENRY WILDE
 THE FOUNDER OF THE WILDE LECTURESHIP
 IN NATURAL AND COMPARATIVE RELIGION
 IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
 THESE FIRST-FRUITS OF HIS ENDOWMENT
 ARE DEDICATED
 BY
 THE FIRST WILDE LECTURER


Exeter College, Oxford,

_November_ 1911.



CONTENTS.

{vii}

 CHAPTER I.
 Inaugural Lecture

 CHAPTER II.
 Statement of the Problem and the Evidence.

Indebtedness of primitive Greek religion to Mesopotamian
influences--Various kinds of evidence to be considered: Texts and
Monuments of Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, Hittite Kingdom, Asia-Minor
coast, Minoan-Mycenaean area--Necessity of determining when the
North-Aryan tribes entered Greece, and what they brought with
them--Influences from Mesopotamia on Greece of the second millennium
at least not direct--Precariousness of theory of religious
borrowing--Special lines that the inquiry will pursue

 CHAPTER III.
 Morphology of the Compared Religions.

Distinction between nature religions and ethical religions
unsound--The degree of personality in the cult-objects a better
criterion--The earliest system known in Mesopotamia a polytheism with
personal deities, but containing certain products of animism and
polydaimonism--Other Semitic and non-Semitic peoples of Asia Minor,
the Minoan-Mycenaean races, the earliest Greek tribes, already on the
plane of personal theism in the second millennium B.C.

 CHAPTER IV.
 Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism in Anatolia and the Mediterranean.

Mesopotamian religious conception generally anthropomorphic, but the
anthropomorphism “unstable”--Theriomorphic {viii} features, especially
of daimoniac powers--Mystic imagination often
theriomorphic--Individuality of deities sometimes indistinct--Female
and male sometimes fused--The person becomes the Word--Similar
phenomena in other Semitic peoples--Theriolatry more prominent in
Hittite religion, though anthropomorphism the prevalent idea--The
Minoan-Mycenaean religion also mainly anthropomorphic--The evidence of
theriolatry often misinterpreted--The proto-Hellenic religion partly
theriomorphic--Some traces of theriolatry even in later period, in
spite of strong bias towards anthropomorphism

 CHAPTER V.
 Predominance of the Goddess.

Importance of the phenomenon in the history of religions--In
Mesopotamia and other Semitic regions the chief deity male, except
Astarte at Sidon--Evidence from Hittite kingdoms doubtful, but at
points on the Asia-Minor coast, such as Ephesos, and notably in
Phrygia, the supremacy of the goddess well attested--The same true on
the whole of Cretan religion--The earliest Hellenes, like other Aryan
communities, probably inclined to exalt the male deity, and did not
develop the cult of Virgin goddesses--Therefore Athena and Artemis
probably pre-Hellenic

 CHAPTER VI.
 The Deities as Nature-Powers.

Shamash the sun-god derives his personal character from the
nature-phenomenon; 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
thunder-god 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 insignificance of solar, lunar, astral
cults--Also by the great prominence of the earth-goddess and the
association of certain eschatological ideas with her

{ix}

 CHAPTER VII.
 The Deities as Social-Powers.

The religious origin of the city--Slight evidence from Mesopotamia,
more from early Greece--Early Mesopotamian kingship of divine
type--The king inspired and occasionally worshipped--The Hittite
monuments show the divine associations of the king--Proto-Hellenic
kingship probably of similar character--Social usages protected by
religion in the whole of this area--No family cult of the hearth at
Babylon--The code of Hammurabi--Comparatively secular in its
enactments concerning homicide--Religious feeling perceptible in the
laws concerning incest--The legal system attached to religion at
certain points, but on the whole, independent of it--In early Hellas
the religion an equally strong social force, but many of its social
manifestations different--Religion tribal and “phratric” in Greece;
not so in Babylon--Purification from bloodshed could not have been
borrowed from Mesopotamia

 CHAPTER VIII.
 Religion and Morality.

The deity conceived on the whole as beneficent and righteous, but the
divine destructive power more emphasised in Babylonia--Every
Babylonian deity moralised, not every Hellenic--In both societies
perjury a sin, untruthfulness only in Babylonian religious
theory--International morality--The ethics of the family very vital in
both societies, but more complex in Babylonia--Ritualistic tabus a
heavier burden on the Babylonian conscience--Morality more daimonistic
than in Greece--In the Babylonian confessional stress laid on unknown
involuntary sin, hence tendency to pessimism--In Greece less timidity
of conscience, less prominence of magic--Mercifulness a prominent
divine attribute in both religions--More pantheistic thought and a
clearer sense of the divinity of all life in Babylonian theology, as
in the Tammuz-myth

 CHAPTER IX.
 Purity a Divine Attribute.

Ritual purity generally demanded--Babylonian mythology far purer than
the Greek--Character of Ishtar--Virginity a divine attribute--Mystic
conception of a virgin-mother, the evidence examined in East and West

{x}

 CHAPTER X.
 Concept of Divine Power and Ancient Cosmogonies.

Neither in Babylon nor Greece any clear and consistently maintained
dogma of divine omnipotence--Yet the divinities collectively the
strongest power in the universe--No developed theory of dualism--The
divine power combined with magic in Babylonia, but not in Greece--No
early Hellenic consciousness of the Word as a creative force--The
magic power of the divine name felt by the Hellenes, but not realised
as a creative force--Babylonian cosmogonies not traceable in the
earliest Greek mythology, nor in Hesiod, but the myth of Typhoeus
probably from Babylonian sources--Babylonian myths concerning creation
of man not known in early Greece--Organisation of the polytheism into
divine groups--Evidence of Trinitarian idea and of monotheistic
tendency--No proof here of Greek indebtedness to Mesopotamia

 CHAPTER XI.
 The Religious Temperament of the Eastern and Western Peoples.

The relation of the individual to the deity more intimate in
Mesopotamia than in Greece--The religious temper more ecstatic, more
prone to self-abasement, sentimentality, rapture--Humility and the
fear of God ethical virtues in Babylonia--The child named after the
god in both societies--In some Semitic communities the deity takes a
title from the worshipper--Fanaticism in Mesopotamian religion, entire
absence of it in the Hellenic

 CHAPTER XII.
 Eschatologic Ideas of East and West.

General resemblances between Mesopotamian and early Hellenic rites of
tendance of dead--Mesopotamian theory of the lower world gloomier--The
terror of the spectre stronger in the East than in the West; yet both
fear the miasma of the dead--In both, the literary evidence clashes
somewhat with the evidence from the graves--Certain important
differences in tendance of dead--Water essential in later Babylonian,
wine and the triple libation in early Hellenic--Hero-cult strong in
early Hellas, at least very rare in Mesopotamia--Hellenic idea of
re-incarnation not {xi} yet found in Babylonian records--The evocation
of ghosts, and the periodic meals with or in memory of the dead,
common to both peoples--General All Souls’ festival--But in Babylonia
no popular belief in posthumous punishments and rewards--The powers of
the lower world more gloomy and repellent than in Hellas--No mysteries
to develop the germs of a brighter eschatologic faith

 CHAPTER XIII.
 Comparison of the Ritual.

In the second millennium all Semitic communities had evolved the
temple, and Babylonia the idol--In Greece, temple-building was coming
into vogue, but the cults still aniconic--The pillar and the phallic
emblem common in early Greece, very rare in Mesopotamia--Sacrifice
both in East and West of two types, the blood-sacrifice and the
bloodless, but in Hellas νηφάλια ἱερά in early vogue, not yet found in
the East--Incense unknown to the pre-Homeric Greeks--The distinction
between Chthonian and Olympian ritual not found at
Babylon--Communion-sacrifice and sacrament in early Greece, not found
as yet in Mesopotamia--Vicarious piacular sacrifice common to both
regions, but human sacrifice rife in early Greece, not found in
Mesopotamia--Mystic use of blood in Greek ritual, immolation or
expulsion of the scape-goat not yet discovered in Mesopotamia--The
death of the divinity in Babylonian ritual--Mourning for Tammuz--In
other Semitic communities--In Hittite worship, Sandon of Tarsos--Attis
of Phrygia--Emasculation in Phrygian ritual, alien to Babylonian as to
Hellenic religious sentiment--Death of divinity in Cretan ritual, and
in Cyprus--In genuine Hellenic religion, found 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 marriage at Babylon, on Hittite relief at
Boghaz-Keui, in Minoan and Hellenic ritual--A mortal the consort of
divinity, an idea found in many races widely removed--Greek
evidence--Consecrated women in Mesopotamia, two types--Their functions
to be distinguished from the consecration of virginity before marriage
mentioned by Herodotus--Other examples of one or the other of these
customs in Asia Minor--Various explanations of these customs offered
by anthropology--Criticism of different views--Their religious
significance--Ritual of purification--Cathartic use of water and
fire--Preservation of peace during public purification--Points of
agreement between Hellas and {xii} Babylonia--Points of difference,
Babylonian confessional--Value of Homer’s evidence concerning early
Hellenic purification--Babylonian magic in general contrast with
Greek--Astrologic magic--Magic value of numbers, of the
word--Babylonian exorcism--Magic use of images--No severance in
Mesopotamia between magic and religion--Babylonian and Hellenic
divination

 CHAPTER XIV.
 Summary of Results.

 INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS.

 ENDNOTES.



 GREECE AND BABYLON.

{1}

 CHAPTER I.
 Inaugural Lecture.

The newly-elected holder of a University professorship or
lectureship, before embarking on the course of special discussion that
he has selected, may be allowed or expected to present some outlined
account of the whole subject that he represents, and to state
beforehand, if possible, the line that he proposes to pursue in regard
to it. This is all the more incumbent on me, as I have the honour to
be the first Wilde Lecturer in Natural and Comparative Religion--the
first, that is, who has been officially charged by the University to
give public teaching in the most modern and one of the most difficult
fields of study, one that has already borne copious fruit, and will
bear more in the future. I appreciate highly the honour of such a
charge, and I take this opportunity of expressing my deep sense of the
indebtedness of our University and of all students of this subject to
Dr. Wilde for his generous endowment of this branch of research, which
as yet has only found encouragement in a few Universities of Europe,
America, and Japan. I feel also the responsibility of my charge. Years
of study have shown me the magnitude of the subject, the pitfalls that
here--more, perhaps, {2} than in other fields--beset the unwary, and
the multiplicity of aspects from which it may be studied. Having no
predecessor, I cannot follow, but may be called upon rather to set, a
precedent.

One guidance, at least, I have--namely, the expressed wishes of the
founder of this post. He has formulated them in regard to Comparative
Religion in such a way that I feel precluded, in handling this part of
the whole field, from what may be called the primitive anthropology of
religion. I shall not, therefore, deal directly with the embryology of
the subject, with merely savage religious psychology, ritual, or
institutions. It is not that I do not feel myself the fascination of
these subjects of inquiry, and their inevitableness for one who wishes
wholly to understand the whole of any one of the higher
world-religions.

But we have in the University one accomplished exponent of these
themes in Mr. Marett, and until recently we have been privileged to
possess Professor Tylor; and Dr. Wilde has made his wishes clear that
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 cheerfully accept this limitation, as for years I
have been occupied with the minute study of the religion of Greece, in
which one finds much, indeed, that is primitive, even savage, but much
also of religious thought and religious ethic, unsuspected by former
generations of scholars, that has become a rich inheritance of our
higher culture. He who wishes to succeed in this new field of arduous
inquiry should have studied at least one of the higher religions of
the old civilisation _au fond_, and he must have studied it by the
comparative method. He may then make this religion the point of
departure for wide {3} excursions into outlying tracts of the more or
less adjacent religious systems, and he will be the less likely to
lose himself in the maze and tangle of facts if he can focus the
varying light or doubtful glimmer they afford upon the complex set of
phenomena with which he is already familiar.

And the Greek religion serves better than any other that I know for
such a point of departure, the influences being so numerous that
radiated upon it. It had its own special inheritance, which it
fruitfully developed, from the North, from its proto-Aryan past, and
which we shall be able to define with greater clearness when
comparative religion has done its work upon the religious records of
the early Aryan peoples. Also, the Hellene had many intimate points of
contact with earlier and alien peoples of the ancient Mediterranean
culture whom he conquered and partly absorbed, or with whom he entered
into intellectual or commercial relations. Therefore the religions of
the Minoan Age, of the Anatolian peoples, of Egypt, and finally of
Babylon and Persia, come inevitably to attract the student of the
Hellenic.

As far, then, as I can see at present, I may have to limit my
attention in the lecture-courses of these three years during which I
fill this post, to the phenomena of the Mediterranean area, and these
are more than one man can thoroughly elucidate in a lifetime, as the
manifold activity in various departments of this field, attested by
the Transactions of our recent Congress of the History of Religions,
will prove to those who read them. And I shall endeavour in the future
to follow out one main inquiry through a short series of lectures, as
this is the best method for a reasoned statement of consecutive
thought. But I propose in this lecture to sketch merely in outlines
the salient features of some {4} of the religions of the Mediterranean
area, and hope thereby to indicate the main problems which the 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 special lines of future research and discussion.

What, then, are the questions which naturally arise when we approach
the study of any religion that has advanced beyond the primitive
stage? We wish to discover with definiteness what is the idea of
divinity that it has evolved, in what forms and with what concepts
this idea is expressed--whether, for instance, the godhead is
conceived as a vague “numen,” or as a definite personality with
complex character and functions, and whether it is imagined or
presented to sense in anthropomorphic forms.

The question whether the religion is monotheistic or polytheistic is
usually answered at a glance, unless the record is unusually
defective; but in the case of polytheism careful inquiry is often
needed to answer the other morphological questions that press
themselves upon us, whether the polytheism is an organised system of
co-ordinated and subordinated powers or a mere medley of uncorrelated
deities. If the former, whether the unifying tendency has developed in
the direction of monotheism or pantheism.

Again, the study of the attributes and functions ascribed and the
titles attached to the deity will enable us to answer the questions
concerning his relation to the world of Nature, to the social sphere
of law, politics, and morality; and in this quest we may hope to gain
fruitful suggestions concerning the interaction of religion, social
organisation, and ethics. We shall also wish to know whether the
religion is dogmatic or not--that is {5} to say, whether it lays
stress on precise theological definitions; whether it claims to
possess sacred books or a revelation; whether it contains the idea of
faith as a cardinal virtue. Further, it is always interesting to
consider whether it has engendered a cosmogony, a theory of the
cosmos, its origin, maintenance, and possible dissolution; and whether
it is instinctively favourable or antagonistic to the growth of the
scientific spirit, to the free activity of the intellect; and,
finally, whether it gives prominence to the belief in the immortality
of the soul and to the doctrine of posthumous rewards and punishments.

There are also certain special questions concerning the nature and
powers of the divinity that are found to be of importance. The
distinction of sex in the anthropomorphic religions, the paramountcy
of the god or the goddess, is observed to produce a singular effect in
religious psychology, and may be associated with fundamental
differences in social institutions, with the distinction, for
instance, between a patrilinear and a matrilinear society. As regards
the powers attributed to the divinity, we may endeavour to discern
certain laws of progress or evolution in progressive societies--an
evolution, perhaps, from a more material to a more spiritual
conception, or, again, from a belief in divinities finite and mortal
to a dogma that infinity, omniscience, and immortality are their
necessary attributes. On this line of inquiry we are often confronted
with the phenomenon of the death of the god or goddess, and no single
fact in the history of religions is of more interest and of more
weight. Also, we frequently find an antagonism between malevolent and
benevolent powers, whence may arise a philosophic conception of
dualism in Nature and the moral world.

{6}

There are, further, the questions concerning ritual, often very
minute, but of none the less significance. What are the forms of
worship, sacrifice, prayer, adoration? As regards sacrifice, is it
deprecatory merely, a bribe to avert wrath, or is it a gift to secure
favour, or is it a token of friendly trust and affection, or a mystic
act of communion which effects between the deity and the worshipper a
temporary union of body and soul? In the study of ritual we may
consider the position of the priesthood, its power over the religion,
and through the religion over the State, and the sources of that
power.

This enumeration of the problems is long, but I fear by no means
exhaustive. I have not yet mentioned the question that may
legitimately arise, and is the most perplexing of all--that which is
asked concerning the vital power and influence of a certain religion,
its strength of appeal, its real control of the people’s thoughts and
acts. The question, as we know, is difficult enough when we apply it
to modern societies; it may be quite hopeless when applied to an
ancient State. It is only worth raising when the record is unusually
ample and varied, and of long continuity; when we can believe that it
enshrines the thoughts of the people, not merely of the priest or of
the philosopher. We are more likely to believe this when the record is
rich not only in literature, but in monuments.

It may also be demanded that the history of religions should include a
history of their decay, and, in his brilliant address at the recent
Congress, Professor Petrie has formulated this demand as one that
Egyptology might fulfil. Certainly it belongs to the scientific
treatment of our subject to note the circumstances and operative
causes that induced a certain people to abandon their ancestral
beliefs and cults; but whether from the {7} careful study of each
special case certain general laws will emerge by process of induction
may be doubted. It will depend partly on the completeness of our
records and our skill in their interpretation.

I will conclude this sketch of an ideal programme, which I, as least,
can never hope to make actual, with one last query--Is it the main
object of this comparative study to answer the inquiry as to the
reciprocal influences of adjacent religions, to distinguish between
the alien and the native elements in any particular system--to
estimate, for instance, what Greece owed to Babylon, to Egypt, to
India? Certainly the problem is proper to our province, is attractive,
and even hopeful, and I have ventured to approach it myself. But I
should hesitate to allow that it is the main one, and that the value
of our study is to be measured by our success in solving it; for,
whatever answer we finally give to such questions, or if we abandon in
despair the attempt to answer them precisely, it is none the less
fruitful to compare the Babylonian, Indo-Iranian, Egyptian, and
Hellenic systems of belief--for instance, to consider the Orphic
eschatology in relation to the Buddhistic, even if we reject the
theory that Buddhistic influences could have penetrated into early
Orphism.

I will now sketch what I have perceived to be the higher elements or
more developed features in Hellenic religion, and will consider in
regard to each of these how it contrasts with or resembles the cults
of the other leading peoples of this area. The Hellenic high divinity
is, in the first place, no mere shadowy “numen,” no vague spirit-power
or semi-personal divine force, such as the old Roman belief often
seems to present us with, nor is he usually conceived as a divine
element immanent in certain things; but he appears as a concrete
personal {8} individual of definite physical traits and complex moral
nature. Vaguer and cruder ideas no doubt survived right through the
historic period, and the primitive ancestor of the Hellene may once
have lived in the religious phase of thought in which the personal god
has not yet emerged or not yet been detached from the phenomenon or
the world of living matter. But I believe that the Greek of the
historic, and even of the Homeric, period had left this phase far more
remotely behind him than certain modern theorists have lightly
supposed, and I am convinced that the proto-Hellenic tribes had
already before the conquest of Greece developed the cult of certain
personal deities, and that some, at least, of these were the common
heritage of several tribes. It is quite possible that before they
crossed the northern frontier of Greece they found such divinities
among their Aryan kinsfolk of Thrace, and it is certain that this was
the type of religion that they would mainly find among the peoples of
the Minoan-Mycenaean culture.

We discern it also, where the record allows us to discern anything,
among the nearer and remoter stocks of the Asiatic side of the
Mediterranean area. In the Zend-Avesta, the sacred books of the
Persian religion, Ahura-Mazda is presented as a noble ethical figure,
a concrete personal god, like Jahwé of Israel, whatever his original
physical significance may have been. Marduk of Babylon, whom
Hammurabi, the consolidator of the Babylonian power, raised to the
rank of the high god, may once have been a sun-god, but he transcended
his elemental nature, and appears in the records of the third
millennium as a political deity, the war-god, and leader of the
people, as real a personality as Hammurabi himself. The same is true
of Asshur, once the local {9} deity of the aboriginal land of the
Assyrians, but later raised by the imperial expansion of this people
almost to the position of a universal god, the guardian of the land,
the teacher and the father of the kings; nor can we discern that he
was ever an elemental god.

Speaking generally, in spite of many important differences, we may
regard the religious structure to which the cults of Anatolia and
Egypt belonged as morphologically the same as that which I am defining
as Hellenic. Also, among all these peoples, by the side of the few
higher deities who have developed moral personalities, we find special
elemental divinities, as, in Hellas, we find Helios and the deities of
the wind, Hephaistos the fire-god.

The distinction between the religions of the Hellenes and “the
barbarians,” which Aristophanes defines as the difference between the
worship of ideal divine personages, such as Zeus, Apollo, and Demeter,
and the direct worship of elementary powers, such as sun and moon, is
not borne out by modern research. Where we find sun-worship or
moon-worship in the East, it does not appear to have been directed
immediately to the thing itself regarded as a living or animate body,
but to a personal god of the sun or the moon--Bel, Shamash, or Sin. We
can only distinguish the Greek from the Oriental in respect of
Nature-religion by the lesser degree of devotion that the Hellene
showed to it. Only those of his divinities whose names connoted
nothing in the material or natural world, could develop into free
moral personalities, and dominate the religious imagination of the
people. Nowhere, for instance, had Helios any high position in the
Greek world except at Rhodes, where we must reckon with pre-Hellenic,
Minoan, and later with Semitic influences. Therefore, when, shortly
{10} before and after the beginning of the Graeco-Roman period, a wave
of sun-worship welled from the East over the West, it may have brought
with it religious ideas of high spirituality and ethical purity, yet
by the race-consciousness of the Hellenes it must have been judged to
be a regress towards a barbaric past.

The instinct of the Greek in his creation of divine forms shows always
a bias towards the personal and the individual, an aversion to the
amorphous and vague, and herein we may contrast him with the Persian
and Egyptian. A certain minor phenomenon in these religions will
illustrate and attest this. All of them admitted by the side of the
high personal deities certain subordinate personages less sharply
conceived, divine emanations, as we may sometimes call them, or
personifications of moral or abstract ideas. Plutarch specially
mentions the Persian worship of Truth, Goodwill, Law-abidingness,
Wisdom, emanations of Ahura-Mazda, which in the light of the sacred
books we may, perhaps, interpret as the Fravashis or Soul-powers of
the High God; and in certain Egyptian myths and religious records we
hear of a personification of Truth, whose statue is described by the
same writer. But at least in the Persian system we may suspect that
such divine beings had little concrete personality, but, rather, were
conceived vaguely as daimoniac forces, special activities of divine
force in the invisible world. Now the Greek of the period when we
really know him seems to have been mentally unable to allow his
consciousness of these things or these forces to remain just at that
point. Once, no doubt, it was after this fashion that his ancestors
dimly imagined Eros, or the half-personal Curse-power Ἀρά; but he
himself could only cherish Eros under the finished and concrete form
of a {11} beautiful personal god, and the curse was only vitalised for
him when it took on the form of the personal Erinys. This topic is a
fruitful one, and I hope to develop it on a later occasion.

It suggests what is now the next matter I wish to touch on--the
comparison of the Mediterranean religions in respect of their
anthropomorphism. Philosophically, the term might be censured as
failing to distinguish any special type of religion; for we should all
admit that man can only envisage the unseen world in forms
intelligible to his own mind and reflecting his own mental structure.
But, apart from this truism, we find that religions differ essentially
and vitally according as this anthropomorphism is vague and indefinite
or sharply defined and dominating; according as they picture the
divinity as the exact though idealised counterpart of man, and
construct the divine society purely on the lines of the human, or
refrain from doing this either through weakness and obscurity of
imagination or in deference to a different and perhaps more elevated
law of the religious intellect. Now, of the Hellenic religion no
feature is salient as its anthropomorphism, and throughout its whole
development and career the anthropomorphic principle has been more
dominating and imperious than it has ever been found to be in other
religions.[11.1] At what remote period in the evolution of the
Hellenic mind this principle began in force, what were the influences
that fostered and strengthened it, in what various ways it shaped the
religious history of the Hellenic people, are questions that I may be
able to treat more in detail in the future. {12} But there are two
important phenomena that I will indicate now, which we must associate
with it, and which afford us an illuminating point of view from which
we may contrast the Greek world and the Oriental. In the first place,
the anthropomorphic principle, combining with an artistic faculty the
highest that the world has known, produced in Greece a unique form of
idolatry; and, in the second place, in consequence chiefly of this
idolatry, the purely Hellenic religion remained almost incapable of
that which we call mysticism.

Now, much remains still to be thought out, especially for those
interested in Mediterranean culture, concerning the influence of
idolatry on religion; and not only the history, but the psychology of
religion, must note and estimate the influence of religious art. It
may well be that the primitive Greeks, like the primitive Roman, the
early Teuton, and Indo-Iranian stocks, were non-idolatrous, and this
appears to have been true to some extent of the Minoan culture.
Nevertheless, the Mediterranean area has from time immemorial been the
centre of the fabric and the worship of the eikon and the idol. The
impulse may have come from the East or from Egypt to the Hellene; he
in his turn imparted it to the Indian Aryans, as we now know, and in
great measure at least to the Roman, just as the Assyrian-Babylonian
temple-worship imparted it to the Persian. Nowhere, we may well
believe, has the influence of idolatry been so strong upon the
religious temperament as it was upon that of the Hellenes; for to it
they owed works of the type that may be called the human-divine, which
surpass any other art-achievement of man.

I can here only indicate briefly its main effects. It {13} intensified
the perception of the real personal god as a material fact. It
increased polytheism by multiplying the separate figures of worship,
often, perhaps, without intention. It assisted the imagination to
discard what was uncouth and terrifying in the Hellenic religion, and
was at once the effect and the cause of the attachment of the Hellenic
mind towards mild and gracious types of godhead. The aniconic emblem
and uncouth fetich-formed figures were here and there retained,
because of vague ideas about luck or for superstitious fetichistic
reasons; but the beautiful idol was cherished because it could arouse
the enthusiastic affection of a sensitive people, and could bring them
to the very presence of a friendly divine person. The saying that the
Olympian deities died of their own loveliness means a wrong
interpretation of the facts and the people. But for a beautiful
idolatry, Hellenic polytheism would have passed away some centuries
before it did, the deities fading into alien types or becoming fused
one with the other. Nor was its force and influence exhausted by the
introduction of Christianity, for it shaped the destinies of the Greek
Church, and threw down a victorious challenge to the iconoclastic
Emperors.

If now we were to look across the Mediterranean, and could survey the
religious monuments of Persia, Assyria and Babylonia, Phoenicia, and
the Hittite people, we should find a general acceptance of the
anthropomorphic idea. The high personal deities are represented mainly
in human form, but the art is not able to interpret the polytheistic
beliefs with skilfully differentiated types. In Chaldaic and Assyrian
art one type of countenance is used for various divinities, and this
such as might inspire awe rather than affection. And the
anthropomorphism is unstable. Often animal traits {14} appear in parts
of the divine figure. Nergal has a lion’s head; even the warrior
Marduk is invoked in the mystic incantations as “Black Bull of the
Deep, Lion of the dark house.”[14.1] In fact, over a large part of
anterior Asia, anthropomorphism and theriomorphism exist side by side
in religious concept and religious art. We may say the same of Egypt,
but here theriomorphism is the dominating factor.

As regards the explanation of this phenomenon, many questions are
involved which are outside my present province. I would only express
my growing conviction that these two distinct modes of representing
the divine personage to the worshipper are not necessarily prior and
posterior, the one to the other, in the evolution of religion. They
can easily, and frequently do, coexist. The vaguely conceived deity
shifts his shape, and the same people may imagine him mainly as a
glorified man of human volition and action, and yet think of him as
temporarily incarnate in an animal, and embody his type for purposes
of worship or religious art in animal forms.

I would further indicate here what I cannot prove in detail--that
theriomorphism lends itself to mysticism, while the anthropomorphic
idolatry of Greece was strongly in opposition to it. The mystic
theosophy that pervaded later paganism, and from which early
Christianity could not escape, originated, as Reitzenstein has well
shown, mainly in Egypt, and it arose partly, I think, in connection
with the hieratic and allegorical interpretation of the theriomorphic
idol. There was nothing mystic about the Zeus of Pheidias, so far as
the form of the god was concerned. The forms were {15} entirely
adequate to the expression of the physical, moral, and spiritual
nature of the god. The god was just that, and there was nothing
behind, and, as the ancient enthusiast avers, “having once seen him
thus, you could not imagine him otherwise.” But when a divinity to
whom high religious conceptions have already come to attach is
presented, as it might be in Egyptian religious art, with the head of
a jackal or an ape, the feeling is certain to arise sooner or later in
the mind of the worshipper that the sense-form is inadequate to the
idea. Then his troubled questioning will receive a mystic answer, and
the animal type of godhead will be given an esoteric interpretation.

Plutarch, in the _De Iside et Osiride_,[15.1] is one of our
witnesses. He finds a profounder significance for theosophy in the
beetle, the asp, and the weasel than in the most beautiful
anthropomorphic work of bronze or marble. He here turns his back on
his ancestors, and goes over to the sect of the Egyptian mystic.

But the most curious testimony to my thesis is borne by an inscription
on an Egyptian lamp--an invocation of the God Thoth: “O Father of
Light, O Word (λόγος) that orderest day and night, come show thyself
to me. O God of Gods, in thy ape-form enter.”[15.2] Here the
association of so mystic a concept as the “Logos,” the divine Reason,
an emanation of God with the form of an ape, is striking enough, and
suggests to us many reflections on the contrast between the Egyptian
theriomorphism and the human idolatry of the Greek. The Hermes of
Praxiteles was too stubborn a fact before the people’s eyes to fade or
to soar into {16} the high vagueness of the “Logos,” too stable in his
beautiful humanity to sink into the ape.

But before leaving this subject I would point out a phenomenon in the
Hellenic world that shows the working of the same principle. The
Orphic god Dionysos-Sabazios-Zagreus was πολύμορφος, a shape-shifter,
conceived now as bull, now as serpent, now as man, and the Orphic
sects were penetrated with a mystic theosophy; and, again, they were a
foreign element embedded in Greek society and religion.

While we were dealing with the subject of anthropomorphism, we should
consider also the question of sex, for a religion that gives
predominance to the god is certain to differ in some essential
respects from one in which a goddess is supreme. Now, although the
conception of an All-Father was a recognised belief in every Greek
community, and theoretically Zeus was 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 urban and village communities to the mother Demeter
and her daughter Kore, to whom the greatest mysteries of Greece, full
of the promise of posthumous salvation, were consecrated. Also, in the
adjacent lands of earlier culture we mark the same phenomenon. In
Egyptian religion we have the commanding figure of Isis, who, though
by no means supreme in the earlier period, seems to dominate the
latter age of this polytheism. In the Assyrian-Babylonian Pantheon,
though the male deity is at the head, Ishtar appears as his compeer,
or as inferior only to Asshur. Coming westward towards Asia Minor, we
seem to see the goddess overshadowing the god. On the great Hittite
monument at Boghaz-Keui, {17} in Cappadocia, skilfully interpreted by
Dr. Frazer, we observe a great goddess with her son coequal with the
Father-God. In the lands adjacent to the coast a Mother-Goddess,
sometimes also imagined as virgin, Kybele of Phrygia, Ma of
Cappadocia, Hipta of Lydia, Astarte of Askalon, Artemis of Ephesos who
was probably a blend of Hellenic and Oriental cult-ideas, appears to
have been dominant from an immemorial antiquity; and Sir Arthur Evans
has discovered the same mysterious feminine power pre-eminent in the
Minoan religion. We may even affirm that she has ruled a great part of
the Mediterranean down to the present day.

The various questions suggested by this predominance of
goddess-worship are fascinating and subtle. The sociological one--how
far it is to be connected with a system of counting descent through
the female, with a matrilinear society--I have partly discussed
elsewhere.[17.1] I may later be able to enter on the question that is
of more interest for the psychology of religion--the effect of such
worships on the religious sentiment. Here I can merely point to the
phenomenon as a natural and logical product of the principle of
anthropomorphism, but would call attention to the fact that in the
East it sometimes developed into a form that, from the anthropomorphic
point of view, must be called morbid and subversive of this principle;
for the rivalry of divine sex was here and there solved by the fusion
of the two natures in the divinity, and we find a bisexual type--a
male Astarte, a bearded Ishtar.[17.2] The healthy-minded
anthropomorphism of the Hellene rejects this Oriental extravagance.

{18}

If we now could consider in detail the various moral conceptions
attached to the high State divinities of Greece and the East, we
should be struck with a general similarity in the point of view of the
various culture-stocks. The higher deities, on the whole, are ethical
beings who favour the righteous and punish transgressors; 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 differs from Oriental, especially the Persian. In the
people’s religion throughout Hellas the deities are, on the whole,
worshipped as beneficent, as doing good to their worshippers, so long
as these do not offend or sin against them. The apparent exceptions
are no real exceptions. Ares may have been regarded as an evil god by
the poet or the philosopher, but we cannot discover that this was ever
the view of the people who cared to establish his cult. The Erinyes
are vindictive; nevertheless, they are moral, and the struggle between
them and Apollo in the Aeschylean drama is only the contest between a
more barbaric and a more civilised morality. In the list of Greek
divine titles and appellatives, only one or two at most can be given a
significance of evil.

Doubtless, beneath the bright anthropomorphic religion lurked a fear
of ghosts and evil spirits, and the later days of Hellenic paganism
were somewhat clouded with demonology. But the average Greek protected
himself sufficiently by purification and easy conventional magic. He
did not brood on the principle of evil or personify it as a great
cosmic power, and therefore he would not naturally evolve a system of
religious dualism, though the germs from which this might grow may be
found in Orphic tradition and doctrine. Contrast this with the
evidence from Egypt, Assyria, and {19} Persia. The Egyptian and
Assyrian records bear strong impress of the prominence and power of
the belief in evil spirits. The high gods of Assyria were continually
being invoked and implored by the worshipper to save him from the
demons, and one of these, 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 here the foundation of a great religion that
spread its influence wide through the West. The religion had its
prophet, Zarathustra, in whose historic reality we ought not to doubt.
In his system the faithful Mazdean is called upon to play his part in
the struggle between Ahura-Mazda and Angra-Mainyu, and this struggle
continues through the ages till in the final cataclysm the Daevas, or
evil demons, will be overthrown. We note here that this faith includes
the idea of a final Judgment, so familiar to Judaic and Christian
thought, but scarcely to be found in the native Hellenic religion.
Further, it should be observed that the Mazdean dualism between good
and evil has nothing in common with the Platonic antithesis between
mind and sense, or St. Paul’s between spirit and flesh, or with the
hatred of the body that is expressed in Buddhism. The good Mazdean
might regard his body as good and pure, and therefore he escaped, as
by a different way did the Greek, from the tyranny of a morbid
asceticism. 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 {20} in the Hellenic religion also.
The Greek, however, did not allow himself to be oppressed by his own
cathartic system, but turned it to excellent service in the domain of
law, as I have tried to show elsewhere.[20.1]

Generally, as regards the association of religion and morality, we
find this to be always intimate in the more developed races, but our
statistics are insufficient for us to determine with certainty the
comparative strength of the religious sanction of morals in the
ancient societies of the Mediterranean. The ethical-religious force of
the Zarathustrian faith seems to approach that of the Hebraic. We
should judge it to be stronger, at least, than any that was exercised
in Hellas, for Hellas, outside the Orphic sects, had neither sacred
books of universal recognition nor a prophet. Yet all Hellenic
morality was protected by religion, and the Delphic oracle, which
occasionally was able to play the part of the father-confessor,
encouraged a high standard of conduct--as high as the average found
elsewhere in the ancient world. We may note, however, one lacuna in
the Hellenic code: neither Greek ethics, on the whole, nor Greek
religion, emphasised or exalted or deified the virtue of truth; but we
hear of a goddess of Truth in Egypt, and it becomes a cardinal tenet
and a divine force in the Zarathustrian ideal.

Again, in all ancient societies religion is closely interwoven with
political, legal, and social institutions, and its influence on these
concerns the history of the evolution of society and law. It is only
in modern society, or in a few most ideal creeds at periods of great
exaltation, that a severance is made between Cæsar and God. Save
Buddhism, the religions of the ancient societies of the East and of
Egypt were all in a sense political. Darius {21} regards himself as
specially protected by Ahura-Mazda, and we are told by
Herodotus[21.1] that in the private Persian’s prayers no separate
personal benefits were besought, but only the welfare of the King and
the Persian community. The gods of Assyria inspire counsel and order
the campaign; Shamash, the sun-god, is “Just Ruler” and the “Lord of
Law”; and Ninib is styled the god “who lays for ever the
foundation-stone of the State,” and who, like Zeus ὅριος, and the
Latin Terminus, “protects the boundaries of the cornfield.” The Syrian
goddess of Bambyke, Kybele of Phrygia, Astarte of Askalon, all wear
the mural crown, the badge of the city goddess. But I doubt if our
materials are as yet rich enough to inform us in what precise way
religion played a constructive part in the oldest
civilisations,--namely, those of Assyria and Egypt. We may observe
that the code of Hammurabi, our oldest legal document, is curiously
secular and in many respects modern.

The question can be most fruitfully pursued in the study of the Greek
societies; for no other religion of which we have any record was so
political as the Hellenic, not even, as I should judge, the Roman, to
which it bears the closest resemblance in this respect. The very
origin of the πόλις, the city-state, was often religious; for the name
or title of the deity often gave a name to the city, and the temple
was in this case probably the centre of the earliest residence. In the
organised and complex Greek societies, every institution of the
State--the assembly, the council, the law-courts, the agrarian
economy, all the regulations of the family and clan--were consecrated
and safeguarded by the supervision of some deity. Often he or she was
worshipped as in a literal sense the {22} State ancestor, and in one
of the temples might be found burning the perpetual fire which
symbolised the permanence of the city’s life. And in Greece we find a
unique phenomenon, which, though small, is of great significance--the
deity might here and there be made to take the office and title of a
civic magistrate. For instance, Apollo was στεφανηφόρος in Asia Minor
cities, and in the later days of Sparta, as the recent excavations
have shown, the ghost of Lykourgos was elected as the chief inspector
of the education of the young.

To the superficial observer, then, the Greek civic society might
appear a theocracy. But such a view would imply ignorance of the
average character of the ancient Greek world. There can be no
theocracy where there is no theocrat. In Asia Minor the priest might
be a great political power, but in Greece this was never so. Here the
political, secular, utilitarian interest dominates the religion. The
high divinities become politicians, and immersed in secular affairs,
and even take sides in the party strife, as some of the religious
titles attest. Thus Greek religion escaped morbidity and insanity,
becoming genial and human, and compensating by its adaptability to the
common needs of social life for what it lacked of mystery and
aloofness. Therefore, also, in Greek invocations and hymns we do not
often hear the echo of that sublimity that resounds in the Iranian,
Assyrian, and still more in the Hebrew liturgies.

Another interesting point of comparison is the relation of religion to
the arts and sciences. Their association may be said to have been more
intimate in Hellenism than it has been found to be in any other creed.
We can estimate what music and the drama owed to Apollo and Dionysos,
and how the life of the {23} philosopher, artist, and poet was
considered consecrated to certain divinities. We hear of the Delphic
oracle encouraging philosophic pursuits. The name “Museum” is a
landmark in the religious history of education, and we know that the
temple of Asklepios in Kos was the cradle of the school of modern
medicine. The records of the other religions of this area show
glimpses of the same association, and more extended research may throw
further light on it. The Babylonian gods Nebo and Ea were divinities
of wisdom and the arts, and to the former, who was the inventor of
writing, the library of Ashurbanapal was consecrated. Chaldean
astronomy was evolved from their astrology, which was itself a
religious system. But demonology was stronger in Assyria, Persia, and
Egypt than in Hellas, and demonology is the foe of science. In the
Zend-Avesta the priestly medicine-man, who heals by spell and
exorcism, is ranked higher than the scientific practitioner. A chapter
might be written on the negative advantages of Greek religion, and
none was of greater moment than this--that it had no sacred books or
authoritative religious cosmogony to oppose to the dawn and the
development of scientific inquiry. Asklepios had been a practitioner
in the method of thaumaturgic cures, but he accepted Hippokrates
genially when the time came.

As regards the relation between Greek philosophy and Greek religion,
something may remain to be discovered by any scholar who is equally
familiar with both. It would be absurd to attempt to summarise the
facts in a few phrases here. I wish merely to indicate the absence in
pure Hellenic speculation of any elaborated system of theosophy, such
as the late Egyptian “gnosis,” till we come to Neo-Platonism, when the
Greek intellect is no longer pure. We discover {24} also a vacuum in
the religious mind and nomenclature of the earlier Greek: he had
neither the concept nor any name to express the concept of what we
call “faith,” the intellectual acceptance and confessional affirmation
of certain dogmas concerning the divinity; and in this respect he
differed essentially not only from the Christian, but also from the
Iranian and Buddhistic votary.

A great part of the study of ancient religion is a study of ritual,
and it is interesting to survey the Mediterranean area, so as to
discern similarities or divergencies in the forms of religious
service. Everywhere we observe the blood-sacrifice of animals, and
very frequently the harmless offering of fruits and cereals, and now
one, now the other, in Greece as elsewhere, was regarded as the more
pious. The former is of the higher interest, for certain ideas which
have been constructive of higher religions--our own, for example--have
grown out of it. At first sight the animal oblation seems everywhere
much the same in character and significance. The sacrificial ritual of
Leviticus does not differ in any essential trait from that which
commended itself to the Greeks and the other peoples of these lands.
Certain animals are everywhere offered, at times as a free and
cheerful gift, at other times as an atonement to expiate sin and to
deprecate wrath. Certain other animals are tabooed, for reasons that
may repay searching out.

In most regions we have evidence of the practice of human sacrifice,
either as an established system or as an occasional expedient. 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 Greek, though the latter
did not wholly escape the taint {25} of it; for he had inherited the
practice from his ancestral past, and he found it indigenous in the
lands he conquered. Repellent as the rite may be, it much concerns the
study of the religions of the cultured races.

Now, an interesting theory concerning sacrifice was expounded and
brought into prominent discussion by Professor Robertson Smith in his
_Religion of the Semites_, and in an earlier article in the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_--namely, that a certain type of ancient
sacrifice was a mystic sacramental communion, the worshipper partaking
of some sacred food or drink in which the spirit of the deity was
temporarily lodged. This mystic act, of which there is no clear trace
in the Old Testament, is reported from Egypt,[25.1] and it appears to
have been part of the Attis ritual of Phrygia. We find doubtful traces
of it in the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries; also a glimpse of
it here and there in the public religion of Hellas. But it is best
attested as a potent force in the Dionysiac worship, especially in a
certain savage ritual that we may call Thracian, but also in the
refined and Hellenised service as well.

I cannot dwell here on the various aspects of this problem. The
Hellenic statistics and their significance I have partly collected and
estimated in a paper published some years ago.[25.2] The application
of the sacramental idea to the explanation of the Eleusinian
mysteries, ingeniously attempted by Dr. Jevons, I have discussed in
the third volume of my _Cults of the Greek States_; and the Dionysiac
communion-service is considered at length in the fifth.

The attractiveness of the mystic appeal of the {26} Sacrament appears
to have increased in the later days of paganism, especially in its
period of struggle with Christianity. That strangest rite of the
expiring polytheism, the ταυροβόλιον, or the baptism in bull’s blood,
in the worship of Kybele, has been successfully traced back by M.
Cumont to the worship of the Babylonian Anaitis. The sacramental
concept was the stronghold of Mithraism, but can hardly be regarded as
part of its heritage from Persia, for it does not seem to have been
familiar to the Iranian religion nor to the Vedic Indian. In fact, the
religious history of no other Aryan race discloses it with clearness,
save that of the Thraco-Phrygian and Hellenic. Was it, then, a special
product of ancient “Mediterranean” religious thought? It would be
important to know, and Crete may one day be able to tell us, whether
King Minos took the sacrament. Meantime, I would urge upon those who
are studying this phenomenon in the various religions the necessity of
precise definition, so as to distinguish the different grades of the
sacramental concept, for loose statements are somewhat rife about it.

Apart from the ritual of the altar, there is another mode of attaining
mystic union with the divinity--namely, by means of a sacred marriage
or simulated corporeal union. This is suggested by the initiation
formulæ of the mysteries of Attis-Kybele. The cult of Kybele was
connected with that of the Minoan goddess, and the strange legend of
Pasiphae and the bull-god lends itself naturally to this
interpretation. The Hellenic religion also presents us with a few
examples of the holy marriage of the human bride with the god, the
most notable being the annual ceremony of the union of the “Queen,”
the wife of the King Archon, at Athens, with Dionysos. And in the
mysteries of {27} later paganism, as well as in certain forms and
symbolism of early Christianity, Professor Dieterich has traced the
surviving influence of this rite.

Among all the phenomena of ritual, none are more interesting or in
their effects more momentous than the rites that are associated with
the dogma of the death of the divinity. That the high gods are
naturally mortal and liable to death is an idea that is certainly
rare, though it may be found in Egyptian and old Teutonic mythology;
but the dogma of the annual or periodic death and resurrection of the
divinity has been, and is, enacted in much peasant ritual, and worked
for the purposes of agrarian magic in Europe and elsewhere. More
rarely we find the belief attached to the mystic forms and faith of
some advanced religion, and it is specially in the Mediterranean area
where it appears in a high stage of development. It is a salient
feature of the Egyptian worship of Isis; of the Sumerian-Babylonian
ritual, in which the dead Thammuz was bewailed, and which penetrated
Syria and other parts of Asia Minor; of the worship of Attis and
Adonis in Phrygia and the Lebanon; and of certain shrines of the
Oriental Aphrodite. It is associated often with orgiastic sorrow and
ecstatic joy, and with the belief in human immortality of which the
resurrection of the deity is the symbol and the efficacious means.
This 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.

Only in one Aryan nation of antiquity, so far as I am aware, was the
idea clear and operative--the Thraco-Phrygian, in the religion of
Dionysos-Sabazios. This alien cult, when transplanted into Greece,
retained still some savagery in the rite that enacted the death of the
{28} god; but in the Orphic sects the ritual idea was developed into a
doctrine of posthumous salvation, from which the later pre-Christian
world drew spiritual comfort and some fertile moral conceptions. This
Thracian-Dionysiac influence in Hellas, though chastened and sobered
by the sanity of the national temperament, initiated the Hellene into
a certain spiritual mood that was not naturally evoked by the native
religion; for it brought into his polytheism a higher measure of
enthusiasm, a more ecstatic spirit of self-abandonment, than it
possessed by its own traditional bent. Many civilised religions appear
to have passed beyond the phase of orgiastic fervour. It emerges in
the old Egyptian ritual, and most powerfully in the religion of
Phrygia and of certain districts of Syria; but it seems to have been
alien to the higher Semitic and the Iranian religions, as it was to
the native Hellenic.

I have only been able here, without argument or detailed exposition,
to present a short summary of the more striking phenomena in the
religious systems of our spiritual ancestors. Many of the problems I
have stated still invite further research, which may considerably
modify our theories. I claim that the subject possesses a masterful
interest both in its own right and for the light it sheds on ancient
philosophy, ancient art, and ancient institutions. And it ought in the
future to attract more and more the devotion of some of our
post-graduate students. Much remains to be done even for the Hellenic
and Roman religions, still more for those of Egypt and Assyria. Here,
in our University of Oxford, under whose auspices the Sacred Books of
the East were translated, and where the equipment for the study is at
least equal to that of any other centre of learning, this appeal ought
not to be made in vain.



 CHAPTER II.
 Statement of the Problem and the Evidence.

{29}

The subject I have chosen for this course may appear over-ambitious;
and the attempt to pass critical judgment upon the facts that arise in
this wide comparative survey may be thought premature. For not only is
the area vast, but large tracts of it are still unexplored, while
certain regions have yielded materials that are ample and promising,
but of which the true interpretation has not yet been found. We have,
for instance, abundant evidence flowing in with ever-increasing volume
of the Sumerian-Babylonian religion, but only a portion of the
cuneiform texts has as yet been authoritatively translated and made
available for the service of Comparative Religion. The Hittite
monuments are witnesses of primary value concerning Hittite religion:
but the Hittite script may reveal much more that is vital to our view
of it, and without the help of that script we are not sure of the
exact interpretation of those religious monuments; but though we have
recently heard certain encouraging expressions of hope, the
master-word has not yet been found that can open the door to this
buried treasure of knowledge. And again, the attempt to gauge
accurately the relation and the indebtedness of Greek religion to that
of the near East cannot be wholly successful, until we know more of
the Minoan-Mycenaean religion; {30} and our hope hangs here partly on
the discovery of more monuments, but mainly, I am convinced, on the
decipherment of the mysterious Minoan writing, to which great
achievement Sir Arthur Evans’ recent work on the _Scripta Minoa_ is a
valuable contribution. Therefore the time is certainly not yet ripe
for a final and authoritative pronouncement on the great questions
that I am venturing upon in this course.

But even the early premature attempts to solve a problem may
contribute something to the ultimate satisfying solution. And often in
the middle of our investigations, when new evidence continues to pour
in, there comes a moment when it is desirable to look around and take
stock, so to speak, to consider whether we can draw some general
conclusions with safety, or in what direction the facts appear at this
stage to be pointing. In regard to the religions of anterior Asia and
South-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 are prone; in their enthusiastic
devotion to their own domain, they are apt to believe that it supplies
them with the master-key whereby to unlock many other secret places of
human history. This hope, soon to prove an illusion, was regnant when
the interpretation of the Sacred Vedic Books was first accomplished.
And now certain scholars, who are distinguished specialists in
Assyriology, are putting forward a similar claim for Babylon, and are
championing the view that the {31} Sumerian-Assyrian religion and
culture played a dominating part in the evolution of the Mediterranean
civilisation, and that therefore much of the religious beliefs and
practices of the early Greeks and other European stocks must be traced
back to Mesopotamia as their fountain-head.[31.1] This will be
encouraging to that distinguished writer on Greek religion, Dr. O.
Gruppe, who almost a generation ago proclaimed in his _Griechische
Mythologie_ the dogma of the emanation of all religion from a single
centre, and the dependence of Greece upon the near East.

Now there ought to be no prejudice _a priori_ against such a theory,
which stands on a different footing from what I may call the Vedic
fallacy: and it is childish to allow to the Aryan, or any other racial
bias, any malignant influence in these difficult discussions. Those
who have worked for years upon the marvellously rich records of
Mesopotamian culture, whether at first hand or, like myself, at second
hand, cannot fail to receive the deepest impression of its imperial
grandeur and its forceful vitality, and of its intensity of thought
and purpose in the sphere of religion. Naturally, they may feel, such
spiritual power must have radiated influence far and wide over the
adjacent lands; and no one could maintain that South-Eastern Europe
was too remote to have been touched, perhaps penetrated, by it. For we
know that, under certain conditions, the race-barrier falls down
before the march of a conquering and dominating religion. And now, in
the new light of a wider historical survey, instead of saying, as once
was said, “What is more its own than a people’s gods?” we {32} may
rather ask, “What is less its own than a people’s gods?” always,
however, remembering that race-tradition, inherited instinctive
feeling and thought, is very strong in these matters, and that a
people will, often unconsciously, cling to its ancestral modes of
religious consciousness and expression, while it will freely borrow
alien forms, names, and ritual.

The inquiry indicated by the title of these lectures is naturally
twofold; it may be applied either to the earlier or the later periods
of the Hellenic and Hellenic-Roman history. The question concerning
the later period, though much critical research is needed for its
clear solution, is far simpler and more hopeful: for the evidence is
immeasurably fuller and more precise, and historical dates and
landmarks are there to help. The history of the invasion of the West
by Mithraism has been masterfully stated by Cumont; the general
influence of the Anatolian religions upon Graeco-Roman society is
presented and estimated by the same writer in his _Religious
Orientales_; by Toutain, in his _Les Cultes Paiens dans l’Empire
Romain_; by our own scholar, Samuel Dill, in _Roman Society in the
last Century of the Western Empire_; and more summarily by Salomon
Reinach in his _Orpheus_. Therefore I am not going to pursue the
inquiry at this end, although I may have to notice and use some of the
later evidence. I am going to raise the question concerning the very
origins of the Hellenic religious system, so as to test the recently
proclaimed dogma of certain Assyriologists, and to determine, if
possible, whether the Orient played any formative part in the organic
development of Greek religion. For this is just the question which, I
venture to maintain, has never yet been critically explored. From what
I have said at the beginning, it is obvious that I cannot {33} promise
final and proved results. It will be gain enough if we can dimly
discern something behind the veil that shrouds the origins of things,
can reach to something that has the air of a reasoned scientific
hypothesis, and still more if we can indicate the paths along which
one day light may come.

We may then begin at once with stating more clearly what are the
necessary conditions for a successful solution of the problem. First,
we must accomplish a thorough exploration of the religions of the
Anatolian and Mesopotamian lands; secondly, we must explore the
Minoan-Mycenaean religion, and estimate the strength of its influence
on the later period; thirdly, we must be able to decide what beliefs
and practices the Hellenes brought with them from the North; lastly,
before we can hope for any precision in our results, we must be able
to answer with some degree of accuracy a burning chronological
question: What was the date of the arrival through the Balkans from
the North of those Aryan-speaking tribes that by mingling with the
Southerners formed the Hellenic people of history? For only then shall
we be able to test the whole question, by considering the position of
the Eastern powers at this momentous epoch. The third of these
inquiries, concerning the aboriginal religious ideas of the earliest
Aryan Hellenes, is perhaps the most troublesome of all. I may venture
upon it at a later occasion, but it is far too difficult and extensive
to combine it with the others in a short treatise. Nor can I do more
than touch lightly on the Minoan-Mycenaean period; for I wish to
devote the greater part of these lectures to the comparative survey of
Greece, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, as this task has never yet been
critically performed. Something like an attempt was made by {34} Tiele
in his _Histoire des anciennes Religions_, but when that book was
written much of the most important evidence had not yet come in.

But before beginning the exploration of any large area, whether for
the purposes of Comparative Religion, archaeology, or anthropology, we
must possess or acquire certain data of ethnography and secular
history. We must, for instance, face the chronological question that
I mentioned just above, before we can estimate the formative
influences at work in the earliest phases of Hellenic development.
Recent archaeological evidence, which I cannot here discuss, renders
us valuable aid at this critical point of our inquiry. We can no
longer relegate the earliest Hellenic invasion of Greece to a very
remote period of Mediterranean history. The arguments from the Minoan
culture, combined with the still more striking evidence, of which the
value is not yet fully appreciated, obtained by the recent excavations
of the British School on the soil of Thessaly,[34.1] point to the
conviction that this, the epoch-making event of the world’s secular
and spiritual life, occurred not much earlier than 1500 B.C. On this
hypothesis, our quest becomes less vague. We can consider what
influences were likely to be radiating from the East upon the opposite
shores of the Aegean during those few centuries, in which the Hellenic
tribes were passing from barbarism to culture, and the religious
beliefs and ritual were developing into that comparatively advanced
and complex form of polytheism which is presented about 1000 B.C. in
the Homeric poems. By this date we may assert that the Hellenic spirit
had evolved certain definite traits and had acquired a certain
autonomous power. While continuing always to be quickly responsive to
{35} alien influence, it would not henceforth admit the alien product
with the submissive and infantine docility of barbarians In fact, when
we compare the Homeric religion with that of the fifth century, we
feel that in this particular sphere of the social and spiritual life
the Hellene in many essentials had already come to his own in the
Homeric period. Therefore, in trying to track the earliest streams of
influences that moulded his religious consciousness, what was
operative before the tenth century is of more primary importance than
what was at work upon him afterwards.

Now the most recent researches into Mesopotamian history establish
with certainty the conclusion that there was no direct political
contact possible between the powers in the valley of the Euphrates and
the western shores of the Aegean, in the second millennium B.C. It is
true that the first Tiglath-Pileser, near the end of the twelfth
century, extended the Assyrian arms to the shores of South-Eastern
Asia, to Cilicia and Phoenicia[35.1]; but there does not seem to have
been any permanent Assyrian or Babylonian settlement on this littoral.
The city of Sinope in the north, which, as the legend attests and the
name that must be derived from the Assyrian god Sin indicates, was
originally an Assyrian colony, was probably of later foundation, and
geographically too remote to count for the present inquiry. In fact,
between the nascent Hellas and the great world of Mesopotamia, there
were powerful and possibly independent strata of cultures interposing.
We have to reckon first with the great Hittite Kingdom, which included
Cappadocia and Northern Syria, and was in close touch with Phrygia and
many of the communities {36} of the shore-line of Asia Minor; and
which at the period of the Tel-el-Amarna correspondence was in
diplomatic relations and on terms of equality with the Assyrian and
Egyptian powers. And the tendency of modern students, such as
Messerschmidt in his _Die Hettiter_, is to extend this ethnic name so
as to include practically all the Anatolian peoples who were other
than the Aryan and Semitic stocks. As far as I can discern, at the
present stage of our knowledge this is unscientific; and it is at
present safer to regard the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Troad,
Phrygia, Lycia, Caria, and Lydia, possibly Cilicia, as varieties of an
ancient Mediterranean stock to which the people of the Minoan-Aegean
culture themselves belonged. At any rate, for the purposes of our
religious comparison, they are to be counted as a third stratum,
through which as through the Hittite the stream of influence from
Mesopotamia would be obliged to percolate before it could discharge
itself upon the Hellenic world. And these interjacent peoples are
races of great mental gifts and force; they were not likely to
transmit the Mesopotamian influence pure and unmingled with currents
of their own religious life.

Therefore this great problem of old-world religion is no light one;
and fallacies here can only be avoided by the most critical
intelligence trained on the best method of comparative religious
study. We must endeavour to seize and comprehend the most essential
and characteristic features of the Babylonian-Assyrian cults and
theology; we must discover all that is at present possible, and trust
to the future for discovering more, concerning the Hittite religion;
and then we must glean all we can of the earliest forms of cult in
vogue among the other peoples of the Asia-Minor coast, {37} and in the
early world of the Minoan-Mycenaean culture.

And if the phenomena of this area present us with certain general
resemblances to the Hellenic, we must not too hastily assume that the
West has borrowed from the East. For often in comparing the most
remote regions of the world we are struck with strange similarities of
myth and cult; and, where the possibility of borrowing is ruled out,
we must have recourse to the theory of spontaneous generation working
in obedience to similar psychical forces. The hypothesis of borrowing,
which is always legitimate where the peoples with whom we are
concerned are adjacent, is only raised to proof either when the
linguistic evidence is clear, for instance when the divine names or
the names of cult-objects are the same in the various districts, or
when the points of resemblance in ritual or religious concept are
numerous, striking, and fundamental, or peculiar to the communities of
a certain area. This is all the more necessary to insist on, because
many superficial points of resemblance will be found in all religions
that are at the same stage of development.

Now, in beginning this wide comparative survey, one’s first difficulty
is to arrange the material in such a way as to enable one to present a
comparison that shall be definite and crucial. It would be useless to
attempt a mere synoptical outline of the Babylonian-Sumerian religion;
those whom that might content will find one in Dr. Pinches’ handbook,
_The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_, or Mr. King’s _Babylonian
Religion_, while those who desire a more thorough and detailed
presentation of it will doubtless turn to the laborious and critical
volumes of Prof. Jastrow, _Die Religion Babyloniens u. Assyriens_. But
for me to {38} try to present this complex polytheism _en bloc_ would
be useless in view of my present object; for two elaborate religious
systems cannot effectively be compared _en bloc_. A more hopeful
method for those who have to pass cursorily over a great area, is to
select certain salient and essential features separately, and to see
how, in regard to each one, the adjacent religious systems agree or
differ. And the method I propose to pursue throughout this course is
as follows: Ignoring the embryology of the subject, that is to say,
all discussions about the genesis of religious forms and ideas that
would contribute nothing to our purpose, I will try to define the
morphology of the Mesopotamian and Anatolian religions; and will first
compare them with the Hellenic in respect of the element of
personality in the divine perception, the tendency to, or away from,
anthropomorphism, the relation of the deities to the natural world, to
the State, and to morality, and I will consider what we can deduce
from the study of the famous law-code of Hammurabi. A special question
will arise concerning the supremacy of the goddess, a phenomenon which
may be of some importance as a clue in our whole inquiry. The
comparison will then be applied to the religious psychology of the
different peoples; and here it will be useful to analyse and define
that element of the religious temper which we call fanaticism, and
which sometimes affords one of the crucial distinctions between one
religion and another.

We may also obtain evidence from a comparison of the cosmogonic ideas
prevalent over this area, so far as the records reveal any, as well as
of the eschatological beliefs concerning man’s future destiny and his
posthumous existence. Finally, we must compare the various
cult-objects and forms of ritual, the significance of the {39}
sacrifice; the position and organisation of the priesthood; and here
it will be convenient to consider the ritual of magic as well as of
the higher service and the part played by magic within the limits of
the higher religion. If under each of these heads we have been able to
discover certain salient points of divergence or resemblance between
the Hellene and the Mesopotamian, we may be able to draw a general
deduction of some probability concerning the whole question. In any
case we may be encouraged by the assurance that the comparison of two
complex and highly developed religions is fruitful and interesting in
itself, whether it yields us definite historical conclusions or not.



 CHAPTER III.
 The Morphology of the Compared Religions.

{40}

As I said in a previous lecture,[40.1] “we must regard the
religious structure to which the cults of Anatolia and Mesopotamia
belonged as morphologically the same as the Hellenic.” The grounds of
this judgment may be now briefly shown. In his _Histoire des anciennes
Religions_, Tiele classifies most of these together under the category
of Nature-Religions, which he distinguishes from the ethical: he is
thinking of the distinction between that religious view in which the
divinity is closely associated, or even identified, with some natural
object, and that in which the divinity is a moral being merely, stript
of all attributes that are derived from the world of nature. Serious
objection may be taken to the terms in which this classification of
religions is expressed. The only religions which would fall under the
ethical class would be the Judaic, the Moslem, and the Christian: and
yet the Hebrews in the most exalted period of their religion prayed to
their god for rain and crops, and the Christian Churches do the same
to this day. A deity whose interest is purely ethical has only existed
in certain philosophic systems: he has never had an established cult.
On the other hand, a nature-religion, at the stage when personal
deities have been somewhat developed, which is not also {41} moral,
has yet to be discovered. Religion, in its origin possibly non-moral,
must, as society advances, acquire the closest relations with the
social moral code. A Sun-god or Thunder-god--Shamash, for instance, of
Babylon, Mithras of Persia, Sol Invictus of the later Roman
Empire--may become a great divinity of an ethical cult and yet retain
his association with the element. And it is fruitless to classify
higher religions at least on such a basis of distinction as “moral”
and “non-moral.”[41.1]

It is more to the purpose of our present comparison to employ as one
of our test-standards the degree of personality in the cult-objects of
the different races. Is the popular imagination still on the level of
animism which engenders mere vaguely conceived daimones, shadowy
agents, working perhaps in amorphous groups, without fixed names or
local habitations or special individuality? Or has it reached that
stage of religious perception at which personal deities emerge,
concrete individualities clothed with special attributes, physical,
moral, spiritual? The most superficial study of the cuneiform texts
and the religious monuments of the Sumerian-Babylonian society does
not leave us in doubt how we should answer these questions in behalf
of the peoples in the Mesopotamian valley. When the Semitic tribes
first pushed their way into these regions, swarming probably, as
usual, from Arabia, at some remotely early date, they found there the
non-Semitic Sumerian people possessed of a highly complex religious
pantheon. Bringing with them their own Shamash the sun-god, Adad the
storm-god, and the {42} great goddess Ishtar, and perhaps other
divinities, they nevertheless took over the whole Sumerian pantheon,
with its elaborate liturgy of hymns and incantations; and for the
record of this great and fascinating hieratic literature the Sumerian
language--with interlinear Babylonian-Assyrian paraphrase--was
preserved down to the beginning of our era. This religious system of
dateless antiquity suffered little change “from the drums and
tramplings” of all the conquerors from the time of Sargon 1st 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. it
is quite useless for our purpose to try to distinguish between
Sumerian and Semitic elements. It is more valuable to formulate this
obvious fact, that a widespread belief in personal concrete
divinities, upon which an advanced polytheism was based, was an
immemorial phenomenon in this region. Tiele’s hypothesis[42.1] that
the earliest Sumerian system was not so much a polytheism as a
polydaimonism, out of which certain definite gods gradually emerged
some time before the Semitic period, is merely _a priori_ theorising.
The earliest texts and monuments reveal as vigorous a faith in real
divine personalities as the latest: witness[42.2] that interesting
relief recently found on a slab in the caravan route near Zohab, on
which the goddess In-Hinni is bringing captives to the King
Annubanini: the evidence of the text accompanying it points to a
period earlier than that of King Hammurabi. We may compare with this
the impressive relief which shows {43} us the stately form of
Hammurabi receiving his code of laws from the sun-god Shamash seated
on his throne[43.1]; and of a later date, the alabaster relief from
Khorsabad showing a sacrifice to Marduk, a speaking witness to the
stern solemnity of the Babylonian worship and to the strength of the
faith in personal divinity.[43.2] That this faith was as real in the
polytheistic Babylonian as in the monotheistic Israelite is evinced
not merely by the monuments, but still more clearly and impressively
by the Sumerian hymns and liturgies.

Nevertheless the phenomena of animism coexist in all this region with
those of developed theism. By the side of these high personal deities
we find vague companies of divine powers such as the Igigi and the
Anunnaki, who are conceived more or less as personal but without
clearly imagined individuality, the former being perhaps definable as
the daimones of heaven, the latter as the daimones of earth.
Similarly, in the Hellenic system we note such nameless companies of
divine agencies as the Ἐρινύες and Πραξιδίκαι, conceived independently
of the concrete figures of the polytheism. But, further, in the
Mesopotamian religion we must reckon seriously with lower products of
polydaemonism than these, the demons of evil and disease who so
dominated the imagination and much of the religious life of the
private person that the chief object of the elaborate ritual was, as
we shall see, to combat these. Only, as the curtain gradually rolls
away from the remote past of this earliest home of human culture, it
is not given us to see the gradual emergence of the divine
personalities, or trace--as perhaps we may elsewhere--the {44} process
from polydaimonism to theism. The gods, as far as we can discern, were
always there, and at least it is not in the second millennium B.C.
that me may hope to find the origins of theistic religion.

As regards the other Semitic stocks, the cumulative evidence of early
inscriptions, literary records, and legends is sufficient proof that
the belief in high personal divinities was predominant in this
millennium. It is not necessary to labour here at the details of the
proof; the other lines of inquiry that I am soon going to follow will
give sufficient illustration of this; and it is enough to allude to
the wide prevalence of the designation of the high god as Baal or Bel,
which can be traced from Assyria through Syria, in the Aramaean
communities, in Canaan and Phoenicia, and in the Phoenician colonies:
the Moabite Stone tells us of Chemosh; the earliest Carthaginian
inscriptions of Baal-Hammon and Tanit; from our earliest witness for
Arabian religion, Herodotus,[44.1] we learn that the Arabs named
their two chief divinities, Orotal and Alilat, a god and a goddess,
whom he identifies with Dionysos and Aphrodite Ourania.

It is still more important for us to know the stage reached by the
Hittite religion in this early period; for in the latter half of the
second millennium the influence of the Hittite culture had more chance
of touching the earliest Greek societies than had that of the remote
Mesopotamia or of the inaccessible Canaanites. In the last thirty
years the explorers of Asia Minor, notably Sir William Ramsay and Dr.
Hogarth, have done inestimable service to the comparative study of the
Mediterranean area by the discovery and interpretation of the
monuments of Hittite art: and the greatest of them all, the rock-cut
reliefs of Boghaz-Keui in Cappadocia, {45} has given material to Dr.
Frazer for constructing an elaborate theory of Hittite sacrifice in
his ‘_Attis, Adonis, Osiris_.’ But, before dealing with the Hittite
monuments, the student should note the literary evidence which is
offered by the treaty inscribed on a silver tablet (_circ._ 1290 B.C.)
found in Egypt, which was ratified between Ramses II. and the Hittite
King Chattusar;[45.1] the witnesses to the treaty are the thousand
gods and goddesses of the Hittite land and the thousand gods and
goddesses of Egypt. We are certainly here not dealing with mere vague
pluralities of spirits, such as may be found in an animistic system of
Shamanism; the thousand is only a vague numeral for the plurality of
divinities in the Hittite and Egyptian polytheism; the difference of
sex would alone suffice to prove that the Hittite had developed the
cult of personal deities, and the document expressly quotes the great
heaven-god of the Hittites, called by the Egyptian name Sutekh, and
regarded as compeer of the Egyptian Ra. Other personal Hittite deities
are alluded to in the document, and among them appears to be mentioned
a certain “Antheret of the land of Kheta.”[45.2] Possibly a witness
of still earlier date speaks in the Tel-Amarna letters, the earliest
diplomatic correspondence in the world; one of these, written in
cuneiform to Amenhotep III., in the fifteenth century B.C., is from
Tushratta, the King of the Mitani people.[45.3] Tushratta sends his
daughter in marriage to Pharaoh, and prays that “Shamash and Ishtar
may go before her,” and that Amon may “make her correspond to my
brother’s wish.” He even dispatches a statue of Ishtar of Nineveh,
that “she may {46} exercise her beneficent power in the land of
Egypt”; for she had revealed her desire by an oracle--“to Egypt to the
land that I love will I go.”

The Mitani chieftains bear names that show a convincingly Aryan
formation, and we know from the momentous inscriptions found in 1907
at Boghaz-Keui recording treaties between the king of the Hittites and
the king of the Mitani (B.C. 1400), that the dynasts of the latter
people had Aryan gods in their pantheon.[46.1] But the Mitani
themselves were not Aryans, and are assumed by Winckler and
Messerschmidt to be Hittites.[46.2] If this were proved, the theory
which it is the general aim of these lectures to consider, that the
Babylonian religious system may have reached the Mediterranean in the
second millennium, would receive a certain _vraisemblance_ from the
fact revealed by the letter of King Tushratta, namely, that the Mitani
of this period had adopted some of the Mesopotamian personal
divinities, and might therefore have transmitted them to the coast of
Asia Minor. Yet the Hittites had their own local divine names; from
the cuneiform inscriptions written in the Hittite language found at
Van in Armenia, we gather the names of various Hittite gods, Teshup,
for instance, who appears on a column found at Babylon holding the
lightning, and in his right hand a hammer, which, from the analogy of
other religions, we may interpret as the fetich-emblem of the
thunder.[46.3]

In fact, apart from the literary evidence, the Hittite {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;[47.1] he
is evidently conceived, like Baal by the Semites of Canaan, as a local
god of the earth and of vegetation. But the most striking of all the
Hittite monuments, and one that is all-sufficient in itself for our
present purpose, is the great series of reliefs on the rock at
Boghaz-Keui in Cappadocia, not far from the site of the ancient
Pteria.[47.2] Here is revealed a great and probably mystic pageant of
an advanced polytheism with an elaborate ritual and a clear faith in
high gods and goddesses: the whole procession seems to be passing
along the narrowing gorge towards a Holy of Holies, the inner
cave-shrine of the Mystery.

As we draw nearer to the Mediterranean, the facts are too well known
to need reiteration here. Everywhere we find proofs of a personal
theism reaching far back into prehistoric times: whether it be the
cult of a high god such as the Cilician divinity, called Zeus or
Herakles by the later Greeks, or the Lycian “Apollo,” or a great
goddess such as Ma of Comana, Cybele of Phrygia and Lydia. And now to
all this testimony we can add the recently discovered monuments of a
developed Minoan-Mycenaean religion with the elaborate ritual and
worship of personal divinities, anthropomorphically imagined on the
whole.

Such was the religious world lying before the feet of the Aryan
Hellenes descending from the north; {48} and when their expansion
across the islands to the Asiatic shores began, they would find
everywhere a religion more or less on the same plane of development.
Therefore if, as some students appear to imagine, the aboriginal
Hellene had not developed personal gods before he arrived,[48.1] it
would be irrational to conclude that Babylon had taught him to worship
such beings in place of the vague and flitting daimon. His immediate
teachers would be the Minoan-Mycenaean peoples; and that their
theistic system was derived from Babylon is a theory lacking both
positive evidence and _a priori_ probability, as I may afterwards
indicate. 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 in the second millennium they were slowly
pushing their way down through the Balkans and through the country
that is afterwards Thrace. So far as the earliest myths and records of
this region throw some light on its prehistoric darkness, it appears
to have been dominated by a great god. When the Thraco-Phrygian race,
and possibly their kinsmen the Bithynoi, penetrated into the same
region, they brought with them a father-god, who accompanied members
of these stocks into Asia Minor, and settled in Phrygia, Pontus, and
Bithynia by the side of an earlier goddess. Their cousins of the
Indo-Iranian stock had certainly reached the stage of personal
polytheism before 1400 B.C., as the epoch-making discovery of the
Hittite-Mitani inscriptions at Boghaz-Keui, referred to above,
sufficiently indicates.[48.2] We cannot believe that the Hellenes of
the earliest {49} migration were inferior in culture to those
Thracians, Bithynians, or even Indo-Iranians; for various reasons we
must believe the reverse. And we now know from modern anthropology
that peoples at a very low grade of culture, far lower than that which
the Aryan stocks had reached at the time of the great migrations, have
yet attained to the idea of personal and relatively high gods. In
fact, that scepticism of certain philological theorists who, a few
years ago, were maintaining that the Aryans before their separation
may have had no real gods at all, is beginning to appear audacious and
uncritical. At any rate, in regard to the Hellenes, the trend of the
evidence is to my mind weighty and clear, making for the conviction
that the different stocks not only possessed the cult of personal
gods, but had already the common worship of certain deities when first
they entered Greece. Otherwise, when we consider the mutual hostility
of the various tribes and the geographical difficulties in the way of
intercourse in early Greece, it would be difficult to explain the
religious facts of the Homeric poems. We might, indeed, if Homer was
our only witness, suspect him of representing what was merely local
Achaean religion as common to all Greece. But we can check him by many
other witnesses, by ancient myths and cults of diverse localities.
Zeus was worshipped by some, at least, of the main tribes, when they
were in the neighbourhood of Olympus: he is no more Thessalian than he
is Dryopian. One of the earliest Hellenic immigrants were perhaps the
Minyai, and their aboriginal god was Poseidon. The ritual of Apollo
preserves the clearest reminiscence of his entry from the north, and
he is the high god of one of the oldest Hellenic tribes, the Dryopes,
and the wide diffusion of his cult suggests that aboriginally it was a
{50} common inheritance of several stocks. The force of the evidence
that may be urged for this view is ignored by Wilamowitz in his
brilliant but fallacious theory of the Lycian origin of the god. We
must reject the hypothesis of a proto-Hellenic godless period; but, on
the other hand, the mere fact that the early Greek religion appears on
the same plane as the Mesopotamian, in respect of the worship of
personal beings, gives no support at all to the theory of Oriental
influence. If it is to be accepted, it must be sustained by more
special evidence.



 CHAPTER IV.
 Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism in Asia
 Minor and the Mediterranean.

{51}

A comparison made according to the test we have just applied is not
so important as that which arises in the second stage of the inquiry.
Assuming that the peoples on the east and west of the Aegean were
already on the same religious plane when the first glimmer of what may
be called history begins, can we discern certain striking resemblances
or differences in their conception and imagination of divinity,
sufficient to prove or disprove the theory of borrowing or of a
movement across large areas of certain waves of religious influence
emanating from a fixed centre?

The comparison now becomes more complex, and can only be summarily
attempted. The first leading question concerns the way in which the
personal divine being is imagined. In Mesopotamia was the religious
perception dominatingly anthropomorphic, not merely in the sense that
the higher divine attributes were suggested by the higher moral and
spiritual life of humanity, but in the more material sense that the
deity was imagined and represented habitually in human form? This
question has been summarily treated in the first chapter. The
Mesopotamian cults are mainly anthropomorphic; in the earliest hymns
and liturgies, as well as in the art-monuments, the divinities appear
to have been {52} imagined as glorified human forms. The figure of
Shamash on the relief, where he sits enthroned inspiring
Hammurabi,[52.1] the form of Ninni bringing the captives to
Annabanini,[52.2] prove a very early dominance of anthropomorphic art
in Mesopotamia. And the rule holds true on the whole of nearly all the
great divinities of the Pantheon; the statue of Nebo the scribe-god in
the British Museum,[52.3] and the representation of him on the
cylinders, are wholly anthropomorphic. The seven planetary deities on
the relief from Maltaija are human-shaped entirely;[52.4] we may say
the same of the procession of deities on the relief from a palace of
Nineveh published by Layard,[52.5] except that Marduk has horns
branching from the top of his head; just as on the alabaster relief
containing the scene of worship noted above,[52.6] and on the
wall-relief in the British Museum he is represented with wings; but
even the rigorous anthropomorphism of Greece tolerated both these
adjuncts to the pure human type. The types of Ramman the
weather-god,[52.7] and the representations of a Babylonian goddess,
who is occasionally found with a child on her knee, and whom sometimes
we may recognise as Ishtar, show nothing that is theriomorphic. On the
other hand, we must note exceptions to this general rule. In one of
the cuneiform inscriptions that describe certain types of deities, we
read the following: “Horn of a bull, clusters of hair falling on his
back; human countenance, and strength of a…; wings… and lion’s body.”
And this description {53} agrees exactly, as Jeremias has pointed out,
with the winged colossal figures, half-lion, half-man, that guarded
the gate of the palace of Nineveh. And we must therefore interpret
them as gods, not as mere _genii_; and he gives some reason for
regarding them as a type of Nergal, the god of the underworld.[53.1]

Further, we find in an inscription of Asarhaddon the following prayer:
“May the gracious bull-god and lion-god ever dwell in that palace,
protecting the path of my royalty.”[53.2]

There is some doubt in regard to the winged figures with eagles’ heads
on the reliefs from Khorsabad, in the British Museum (pl. 38-40): they
are represented holding pine-cones and a “cista mystica” on each side
of the sacred tree, and might be _genii_ engaged in worship; but on
one of the reliefs Assur-nasir-Pal is standing before one of them in
attitude of adoration.

But the most clear and definite evidence on this point is afforded by
the legend and monuments of the god whom Berosos calls Oannes,[53.3]
but whom modern Assyriology interprets as the ocean-born god Ea or Ae
of Eridu, the god of all wisdom and science. According to Berosos, he
had entirely a fish body, but a human head had grown under the head of
the fish, human feet out of the fish’s tail, and he spoke with human
voice: a statue of this type was still existing at Babylon according
to this writer in the time of Alexander. Now the exact type is
presented in the form that appears on various Babylonian cylinders;
there is one that presents the fish-man-god standing before the tree
of Life--receiving a ray perhaps from the sun above:[53.4] and half
{54} his form from the girdle downwards is preserved on a bas-relief
published by Layard,[54.1] showing him holding the bread of life in
one hand and in the other a vase containing the water of life. Here,
then, is theriomorphism struggling with anthropomorphism as we see it
strikingly in the religious monuments of Egypt.

But we have no need of the theory, dear to some anthropologists--that
the earliest period of Mesopotamian religion was purely theriomorphic,
when the deities were imagined and represented merely as animals, and
that the human-shaped deities whom we find standing on lions in the
Babylonian art had once been divine lions and nothing more, and had at
a later period emerged from the animal into divine manhood.
Theriomorphism and anthropomorphism can and generally do confusedly
co-exist: neither in the lowest savagery or at the highest culture is
there found a purely theriomorphic art or theriomorphic religion; on
the other hand, severe anthropomorphism among the ancient religions is
to be found only in the Hellenic, and we may add in the Judaic, though
here with a quite different mode of expression and far more sternly
controlled. In Mesopotamia we have nothing that points to a direct
worship of animals,[54.2] but we discern that the anthropomorphism is
unstable; {55} the religious artist mainly clung to it, except when he
was embodying forms of terror, the destructive demons, and especially
the powers of the lower world: for this purpose he selected the most
portentous types of bestiality, such as we find on that bronze tablet,
which used to be regarded as revealing an interesting glimpse into
Babylonian eschatology: at least we may be sure that the lion-headed
female above the horse in the canoe, at whose breasts two small lions
are sucking, is the goddess of Hell.[55.1] It was probably through
his association with the world of death that Nergal acquired something
of the lion’s nature, and even the very human goddess Ishtar might
assume a lion’s head when she was unusually wroth, though this rests
on a doubtful text. We may say, then, with fair degree of accuracy,
that the theriomorphic forms of Babylonian religious art belong to
demonology; and in this domain the Babylonian artist has shown the
same powerful imagination as the Mycenaean: it is the former to whom
we are indebted for the attractively alarming type of the
scorpion-man.

The phrase “unstable anthropomorphism” applies also to the religious
literature, to the Sumerian-Babylonian hymns. The imagination of the
poets in their highest exaltation was certainly anthropomorphic on the
whole; the high divinities are conceived and presented with the
corporeal, moral, and spiritual traits of glorified humanity. But
often in the ecstasy of invocation the religious poets felt the human
image too narrow and straightened for their struggling sense of the
Infinite. Then the expression becomes mystic, and by virtue of a
curious law that I indicated above, it avails itself of theriomorphic
imagery.[55.2] I quoted the hymn {56} to the warrior Marduk that
invokes him as “Black Bull of the deep, Lion of the Dark House.” Of
still more interest is the invocation of Enlil, the earth-god of
Sumer: “Overpowering ox, exalted overpowering ox, at thy word which
created the world, O lord of lands, lord of the word of life, O Enlil,
Father of Sumer, shepherd of the dark-haired people, thou who hast
vision of thyself.”[56.1] Seven times the words “overpowering ox” are
added in this mystic incantation. In another hymn Enlil is “the Bull
that overwhelms”; Ea, “the Ram of Eridu.”

But this is mystic symbolism, rather than a clear perception of divine
personality; and we may say the same of such vaguely picturesque
phrases as “Bel, the great mountain,” “Asur, the great rock,” an
expression parallel to our “Rock of Ages.”[56.2]

It naturally happens in a religion of unstable anthropomorphism that
the different personalities are unfixed and may melt away one into the
other, or may become conceived as metaphysical emanations, thus losing
concrete individuality. As Dr. Langdon remarks of Babylonian religious
phraseology, “the god himself becomes mystified, he retires into the
hazy conception of an all-pervading spirit, and his _word_ becomes the
active agent.”[56.3] Thus even the strongly personal goddess “Nana”
is identified with the word of Enlil; she herself exclaims, “Of the
Lord his word am I.” His statement accords with the general impression
that the liturgies and monuments of this vast and complex religion
make upon the student. One discerns that the religious art, and to
some extent the religious poetry, developed {57} and strengthened the
anthropomorphic faith and perception of the people, but not so
powerfully as to preclude a mysticising tendency towards metaphysical
speculation that transcended the limits of a polytheism of concrete
personalities. Even Allatu, the goddess of Hell, she who was presented
with the dog’s head and the lions at the breast, was half
spiritualised by the epithet which is rendered “spirit-wind of the
consecrate.”[57.1]

In the other ancient Semitic communities we find the same phenomenon,
a prevailing anthropomorphism with some slight admixture of
theriomorphic idea. At Bambyke, the later Hierapolis, we have the
record and tradition of Atargatis-Derketo, of human and fish-form
combined. In the cult of Esmun in Phoenicia, Baudissin[57.2] suspects
the incarnation of the god in a snake, which brought about his later
identification with Asklepios, and he suggests that the bronze serpent
that healed the Israelites in the desert was borrowed from a Canaanite
idol of a healing snake. The Astarte-images found in prehistoric
Palestine are mainly of human 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.[57.3]
Something real underlies the statement of Sanchuniathon, quoted by
Eusebios, {58} that Astarte placed on her own head the head of a
bull.[58.1]

But these are exceptional phenomena; and as the Hellenes in the later
period were usually able to identify the leading Semitic deities with
their own, we may see in this another proof that the Western and
Eastern religions were nearly on the same plane as regards their
perception of divine personality.

Only, we discern signs in Canaan as in Mesopotamia, that the
anthropomorphism is, as I have called it, unstable; for not only can
the divinity be imagined as embodied in other forms than the human,
but the demarcations of individuality tend at certain points to fall
away: the most curious instance of this is that the female divinity
seems at times to have been almost absorbed in the god. We must,
however, distinguish here between what is real belief and what is mere
theologic phrasing. In a hymn of praise to Ishtar, composed for the
King Ashurbanapal, the equality of the goddess with the great Assyrian
god Asshur is quaintly expressed by the phrase, “like Ashur, she wears
a beard”; but Jastrow[58.2] protests against the inference that the
goddess was therefore really regarded as male in the Mesopotamian
religion. And indeed this is probably only a fantastic expression of
the idea that Ishtar is the compeer in power of the god, and has much
of the masculine temperament. Even in the full vogue of an
anthropomorphic religion which insists on the distinctions of sex, a
mystical religious thinker could rise to the idea that the divinity
might assume the powers {59} of both natures, an idea of which we find
a glimpse in the later Greek and Greek-Egyptian theosophy. Thus a
Sumerian hymn to Enlil characterises him as “Lord of winds, father and
mother who creates himself”;[59.1] and a well-known hymn to Sin
speaks of him as “Maternal Body that brings everything to birth,” and
in the next line as “Compassionate, gracious father.”[59.2]

The close approximation of the goddess to the god is more clearly
discernible in the Canaanite religion. On the Moabite Mesha stone,
Ashtar-Chemosh appears as a double divinity; and one of the earlier
Carthaginian inscriptions refers to a temple of Moloch-Astarte.[59.3]
Again Astarte, in the inscription on the sarcophagus of Eshmounazar of
Sidon, is called Astart-Shem-Baal, which signifies Astarte the Face of
Baal; and in the Carthaginian inscriptions the same designation occurs
for Tanit. Renan has interpreted the phrase as expressing the dogma
that the goddess is an emanation of the god, but Dr. Langdon would
explain it as arising from the close opposition of the two statues
face to face, Astart-Shem-Baal merely meaning, then, “She who fronts
Baal.” Whichever interpretation be correct, such close assimilation of
the pair might evolve here and there the concept of a bisexual
divinity. Unless the evidence of the classical writers is false, it
did so at a later period under Phoenician influences in Cyprus.
Macrobius tells us that there was in that island a statue of a bearded
deity in female dress, regarded as bisexual, and he quotes Philochoros
as witness to the fact, and to the curious phenomenon in the ritual in
which the {60} men wore female dress and the women male. This explains
Catullus’ phrase “duplex Amathusia” of the bisexual goddess. Servius
and the Christian fathers repeat the statement, and Joannes Lydus
asserts that the Pamphylians at one time worshipped a bearded
Aphrodite;[60.1] if we trust his authority, we might explain the fact
as due to late Semitic influence, which is somewhat attested by
inscriptions on the coinage of Pamphylia under the Persian
domination.[60.2] But, at the most, we can only regard this cult as a
late phenomenon, a local eccentricity, and a morbid development of a
certain vague idea that was working sporadically in the old Semitic
religion. We have no right to assert, as some have occasionally
ventured, that the Semitic peoples generally accepted the dogma of a
bisexual divinity.

Turning now to the other great area of culture that lay between
Mesopotamia and the coast, that of the Hittite kingdoms, we find that
the Hittite deity is usually presented in human form. On the great
relief of Boghaz-Keui, the distinctions of the human family appear in
the divine forms, in whom we may recognise the father god, the mother
goddess with her young son, or it may be, as Dr. Frazer suggests, with
her young lover. And the other Hittite representations of divinity to
which I have referred above are of purely human form, and so also are
the small Hittite bronze idols in the Ashmolean Museum. Nevertheless
here, as in Mesopotamia, the theriomorphic fancy was active at the
same time. On the relief at Boghaz-Keui, nearest to the innermost
shrine, the Holy of Holies, is an idol {61} of human visage with a
body composed of a bizarre arrangement of lion-forms; and in the
procession near to the main deities we note a strange representation
of two bulls in mitred caps of Hittite fashion, and to these mystic
beasts we may apply the name theanthropic, which Robertson Smith
suggested for the sacrificial animal that was half-divine, half-human.
And clearer evidence still is afforded by another relief found not far
from this site at the palace of Euiuk, where a bull is represented on
a pedestal with worshippers approaching.[61.1] He is not here the
sacrificial animal, for he and the altar before him are on a higher
plane, while the priest and priestess below are raising their hands to
him as if in adoration, and are leading rams evidently as victims to
the bull-god. We may be sure, then, that there was some close
association of the Hittite divinity with the bull, as there was with
the lions upon which both god and goddess are standing; and this is
further illustrated by the horns that adorn the conical cap of the god
at Ibriz,[61.2] to whom the grapes and corn were consecrated.

Again, the relief on the gate at Sinjerli[61.3] affords us another
clear example of a divinity only partly anthropomorphic: a god with
the body of a man and the head of a lion; as he bears a hunting weapon
in one hand and a hare in the other, and on each shoulder a bird is
sitting, we may regard him as a deity of the chase. Finally, from
certain cuneiform texts found at Boghaz-Keui, and recently published
and interpreted by Professor Sayce,[61.4] we gather that the eagle,
probably the double-headed {62} eagle which appears as an ensign on
Hittite monuments, was deified; for we appear to have a reference to
“the house” or temple “of the eagle” (Bit Id Khu), and this fact may
help to explain the figure of a man’s body with a bird’s head on a
relief of Sinjerli.[62.1]

As regards the test, then, that we are at present applying, it seems
that the Hittite and the Mesopotamian religions were more or less on
the same plane, though we may suspect that theriolatry was stronger in
the former. It is also important for our purpose to register in
passing the clear proof of certain religious approximations, probably
in the second millennium B.C., between the Hittites and the
Assyrian-Babylonian kingdom. The Hittite god Teshup, with the
double-headed hammer or axe and the forked lightning in his hand, is
of close kin and similar in type to the Canaanite, Syrian, and
Babylonian Ramman-Adad, the god of storms.[62.2] But the evidence
does not yet seem to me to make it clear which people or group of
peoples was in this case the borrower, which the lender. And the same
doubt arises in respect of the striking art-type of the divinity
standing on the lion; we find it in the early Hittite monuments, such
as the Boghaz-Keui sculptured slabs; and again on the relief of
Gargamich, on which is a winged male deity standing on a lion and a
priest behind him, also on a lion;[62.3] and later among the Tarsos
representations of the Hittite Sandon: it was in vogue at the Syrian
Bambyke and at Babylon. The assumption of Perrot[62.4] is that it was
{63} of Babylonian origin, but the art-chronology does not seem to
speak decisively in this matter. It is not necessary here to prejudge
this difficult problem: it does not directly affect our present
question, as the type of the goddess with lions comes into Hellas only
at a later period. As regards the other Anatolian peoples who came
into close contact with the Hellenes, we may find abiding influences
of certain Hittite religious ideas and motives of religious art. We
may admit that the lion-borne goddess of Boghaz-Keui is the prototype
of Kybele, even the crenelated headdress that she wears suggesting the
turreted diadem of the later goddess: it is likely that the ancient
type of Teshup, the weather-god with hammer or axe and the lightning,
survived in Commagene in the cult-figure that was afterwards
interpreted as Jupiter Dolichenus: and it may have influenced the
ideas about the thunder-god in Pontus, as a primitive relief of a god
brandishing a thunderbolt and holding a shield has been found near
Amasia.[63.1] Speaking generally, we must pronounce the native
pre-Hellenic religious art of the Asia Minor littoral, of Phrygia,
Lydia, Caria, anthropomorphic, so far as it tried at all to embody the
imagined form of the divinity. The record is generally blurred by the
later Hellenic influences. But we have at least in Phrygia rude images
of the pre-Hellenic Cybele; the intention of these is anthropomorphic,
and in the rough outline of the goddess’s form as hewn out of the rock
of Sipylos above Smyrna, the Hellenes could discern their sorrowing
Niobe. Where the anthropomorphism fails, as in the Phrygian monument,
which shows Cybele seated with a phiale and human-shaped in other
respects, but with a head fashioned like “the round capital of a {64}
pillar,”[64.1] the influence of the aniconic fetich may be the cause.
At any rate, we have no clear trace of theriomorphism either in the
legend nor in the monuments of the great mother, the Kybele of
Phrygia, or the Mā of Cappadocia. The power of the mountain-goddess
was incarnate in the lions, but we have no ground for saying that she
herself was ever worshipped as a lion.

We turn at last to the Minoan-Mycenaean and proto-Hellenic periods;
for our present purpose the two cannot well be kept apart, as much of
the evidence concerning the former is derived from records of myths
and religious customs that were in vogue in the later period. Our
first glimpse of the Minoan religion, which Sir Arthur Evans more than
any one else has revealed to us,[64.2] gave us the impression of an
aniconic worship that had for its sacred “agalmata” such fetich
objects as the sacred pillar or double-headed axe, but which did not
express its actual imagination of its divinities in any art-type. If
this were so, we should not be able to answer the question how far the
Minoan religion was purely anthropomorphic until we have found the
interpretation of Minoan writing. But our store of monuments has been
much enriched by later discoveries in the Palace of Knossos, and in
one of its private chapels in which the Cross was the central sacred
emblem, Sir Arthur Evans found the interesting figure of the
snake-goddess--purely human, but holding snakes in her hands and
girdled with snakes, while before her stands a votary {65} brandishing
a snake:[65.1] again, a Minoan signet-ring published by him[65.2]
revealed the great mountain-goddess herself on the summit of a peak
flanked by lions and holding a spear. These may be actual
reproductions of cult-images; and many other gems and other works have
now been published by him and others proving that the people who
belonged to this great Aegean culture of the second millennium
habitually conceived of their gods in human form, even if they did not
as a rule erect their idols in their temples. Thus on a gem which
shows us an act of worship performed by a female votary before a
sacred pillar, a human-shaped god with rays round his head and holding
a spear is hovering in the air above it;[65.3] and on the great
sarcophagus of Praisos we have on the one side a complex scene of
ritual, conspicuous for the absence of any idol or eikon of the
divinity, and at the other end a human form of god, or it may be hero,
standing as if he had just come forth from his shrine or
heroön.[65.4] In fact, the Minoan-Mycenaean religious monuments have
revealed to us at least three personages, anthropomorphically
conceived, of the popular religion of the period that we may call
pre-Hellenic: a great goddess, often represented as throned, with
fruits and emblems of vegetation around her, or as standing on a
mountain and associated with lions; a god who is sometimes conversing
with her or is descending from the sky armed with spear and
shield,[65.5] and sometimes rayed; thirdly, the goddess with the
snake as her familiar. {66} To this extent, then, the Minoan-Mycenaean
peoples were on the same plane of religion as those of Mesopotamia:
and the record of the anthropomorphic divinity can be traced in the
Aegean area back to the fourth millennium B.C. by the nude figures in
stone of a goddess of fecundity with arms pressed across her breasts,
a type belonging to the Neolithic period.

In passing, let us observe that neither the earliest prehistoric art
of the Mediterranean nor the great religious types of the Minoan
divinities recall the art style of Mesopotamia.

But this developed anthropomorphism of the early Aegean civilisation
is not the whole story. Modern research has accumulated evidence that
seems to point to a theriomorphic religion in Crete and in Mycenaean
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 been noted in the Hittite area, and more faintly in the valley of
the Euphrates. The first modern writer who proclaimed with emphasis
the theriomorphic elements in the prehistoric religions of Greece was
Mr. A. Lang in his _Custom and Myth_, connecting 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
in the _Hellenic Journal_ of 1894 on “Animal Worship in the Mycenaean
Age”; and again in 1895 by an essay on “The Bee in Greek Mythology”: a
very full collection of the materials, with some exposition of
important religious theory, will be found in De Visser’s treatise, _De
Graecorum Diis non referentibus speciem humanam_ {67} (1900). Miss J.
Harrison has worked further along the same lines, and has published
some special results in her paper read before the Congress of the
History of Religions, 1908, and published in its _Transactions_, on
“Bird and Pillar Worship in relation to Ouranian Divinities.”

Now the material that forms the fabric of these researches is so
intricate, the relevant facts so manifold and minute, that it is
impossible to consider them in detail within the limits of this
present inquiry, of which the leading object is an important question
of history concerning the religious influence of the East on the West;
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 only comparing East and West in a
limited and somewhat advanced period of their history, I am not
necessarily bound to deal with problems of origin. Nevertheless, a
summary survey of this group of facts may provide us with important
clues towards the solution of our main question. But a few general
criticisms of the assumptions 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 lion, 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 religion rioting in theriolatry, and we should not need
to trouble any longer about the theory of its Mesopotamian origin, for
as we have seen theriomorphism played a very small part in the
Sumerian-Babylonian cult. But one {68} must ask more precisely, What
is worship, and what does lion-worship, for instance, imply? Are we to
believe that every one of these animals was worshipped, the whole
species being divine? And does their “worship” mean that the
superstitious people prayed to them, built altars or sacred columns,
or even shrines to them, and offered them sacrifice? It has become
urgent to reserve some such strict sense for the word as this, in
order to preserve a sense of the distinction between our
ritual-service of a real personal divinity and the various, often
trifling, acts that may be prompted by the uneasy feeling or
reverential awe evoked by the presence of a curious or dangerous
animal. Thus, to abstain from eating or injuring mice or weasels is
not to worship mice or weasels: to lament over a dead sea-urchin is
not to worship sea-urchins: to give a wolf a decorous funeral is not
to worship wolves: to throw a piece of sacrificial meat to flies
before a great sacrifice to some high divinity is not to worship
flies. All these things the civilised Greeks could do, but they ought
not for that to be charged with worshipping whole species of animals
directly as gods. Next let us bear well in mind that secular animals,
like secular things, can become temporarily sacred through contact
with the altar: thus the ox who voluntarily approached the altar and
ate of the grain or cakes upon it, might be believed by the Hellenes
to become instantly divine, full of the life of the divinity, and most
ceremonious respect resembling worship might be meted out to him; but
we should not hastily believe that the Greeks who might feel like this
towards that particular ox worshipped all oxen; or that the society of
King Minos worshipped all axes wherever found, because in peculiar
circumstances and ritual an axe might become charged with {69}
divinity. Finally, I may again protest against the fallacy of
supposing that theriomorphism always precedes anthropomorphism: for an
ever-increasing mass of evidence forces one to the conviction that
they are often co-existent and always compatible one with the other;
if this is so, it is rash and unscientific to say, as is so easy to
say and is so often said, when one meets in the Mediterranean or
elsewhere a human god or goddess accompanied by a lion or a cock, that
the anthropomorphic divinity has been evolved from the animal.

Looking now directly to the Minoan-Mycenaean monuments, before we
consider the early Hellenic records, we must distinguish between those
that are obviously cult-scenes and those that are not obviously but
only hypothetically so, and this second class are those with which Mr.
Cook’s papers mainly deal. The former have been treated masterfully by
Sir Arthur Evans in his paper on “Tree and Pillar Cult”; from these we
gather that the worshipper did not usually pray before an idol, but
before a pillar or a sacred tree combined often with horns of
consecration or an axe; also that he imagined his deity generally in
human form, the pillar serving as a spiritual conductor to draw down
the divinity from heaven. Therefore I may remark that the phrase
“pillar-cult” here, and in Miss Harrison’s paper quoted above, does
not express the inwardness of the facts. But the latter writer
endeavours to prove the prevalence of a direct cult of birds in this
period; and further maintains the dogma that “in the days of pillar
and bird anthropomorphism was not yet.” The Minoan monuments on which
she relies are the great Phaistos sarcophagus, the trinity of
terra-cotta pillars surmounted by doves found in an early shrine of
the Palace of Knossos,[69.1] with {70} which are to be compared the
dove-shrine of Mycenae and the gold-leafed goddesses of Mycenae with a
dove perched on their heads; and finally, the semi-aniconic idol of a
dove goddess, with the dove on her head and her arms outspread like
wings, found in another shrine of the palace of Knossos, and
descending from a pre-Mycenaean traditional type.[70.1] Whatever we
may think of these monuments, they cannot be quoted as the memorials
of a time “when anthropomorphism was not yet”; for the earliest of
them, probably that mentioned last, is of later date than the type of
the naked human-formed goddess of the Neolithic Aegean period.

The question depends wholly on the true interpretation of the
monuments; as regards the Phaistos sarcophagus, the exact significance
of the ritual is still a matter of controversy, to which I may return
later, when I compare the ritual of east and west; this much is clear,
that a holy service of blood-oblation is being performed before two
sacred trees, into the top of which two axes are inserted and on the
axes are two birds painted black. Is it immediately clear that “the
birds are objects of a definite cult,” as Miss Harrison
maintains?[70.2] This may be strongly disputed; otherwise we must say
that the axe and the tree are equally direct objects of cult. But the
illuminative scene on the signet-ring described above[70.3] suggests
that the function of the pillar was to serve as a powerful magnet to
attract a personal divinity. And Sir Arthur Evans has well shown that
the tree and the pillar were of equal value as sacred objects in
Minoan-Mycenaean religion. A sacrifice doubtless of mystic and magical
power is {71} being performed before them here: the worshippers may
well believe that the combined influence of blood-offering, sacred
tree, and sacred axe will draw down the divinity of the skies. In what
form visible to the eye would he descend? The carver of that
signet-ring dared to show him above the pillar in human form, as the
mind’s eye though not the sense-organ of the worshipper discerned him.
But the artist of the Phaistos sarcophagus is more reserved. As the
Holy Ghost descended in the form of a dove, so the unseen celestial
divinity of Crete might use any bird of the air as his messenger,
perhaps by preference the woodpecker or dove. And this natural idea
would be supported by the fact that occasionally birds did alight on
the top of sacred columns, and they would then instantly be charged
with the sanctity of that object and would be regarded as a sign of
the deity’s presence and as an auspicious answer to prayer and
sacrifice. Thus many birds in Greece became sacred by haunting
temples; and Dr. Frazer has suggested that the swallows and sparrows
that nested on the temple or on the altar at Jerusalem acquired
sanctity by the same simple religious logic.[71.1] But it is futile
to argue that therefore the Hellenes and Hebrews once worshipped
either the whole species of swallows and sparrows or any single one.
And Sir Arthur Evans’ own interpretation of the doves on the triple
group of columns, as being merely “the image of the divine descent,
and of the consequent possession of the bactylic column by a spiritual
being,” is sane and convincing.[71.2] This does not prove or
necessarily lead to “bird-worship.” Further, he suggests[71.3] that
as the dove was originally posed on the top of the column {72} as a
gracious sign of the divine presence, so when the human form was
beginning to take the place of the column the dove would then be seen
on the human head, as in the case of the statuettes of goddesses
mentioned above, and as it appeared on the head of the golden image at
Bambyke, which some called Semiramis.[72.1] The close association of
the Mediterranean goddess and of the goddess of Askalon, Phoenicia,
and Bambyke with doves may have been caused by several independent
reasons; one may well have been the habitual frequenting of her temple
by the birds. This would easily grow into a belief that the goddess
when she wished to reveal something of her presence and power to the
external eye would manifest herself in the bird. This we may call
theriomorphic imagination that goes _pari passu_ easily with the
anthropomorphic. But none of these monuments come near to proving that
this Mediterranean race directly worshipped birds, nor do they suggest
any such theory as that the human divinity emerged from the bird. We
shall, in fact, find that evidence of this kind that I have been
examining, used recklessly in similar cases, leads to absurd
results.[72.2]

Here it is well to remark in passing that the cult of {73} the
Dove-goddess is a test case for trying the question of Oriental
influence on the west. It cannot be traced back to Babylon, and no one
would now maintain the old theory that the dove-shrines of Mycenae
were an import from the Phoenician Astarte cult. Sir Arthur Evans’
discoveries enable us to carry back this particular worship in the
Aegean to pre-Mycenaean times. We could with better right maintain
that the Syrians borrowed it from the Aegean or possibly from Askalon,
where, as Dr. Evans has pointed out, Minoan influences were strong.
But the most reasonable view is that which he expresses that “the
divine associations of the dove were a primitive heritage of primitive
Greece and Anatolia.”[73.1]

As regards Mr. Cook’s theory of Mycenaean animal-worship, it is not
now necessary to examine it at any length. It was based mainly on a
comparison of a fairly large number of “Mycenaean” seals and gems from
Crete and elsewhere showing monsters bearing animals on their
shoulders or standing by them. He interpreted the “monsters” as men
engaged in a religious mummery, wearing the skins of lions, asses,
horses, bulls, stags, swine, that is, as ministers of a divine lion,
ass, etc., bringing sacrificial animals to these animal-deities, and
he raised the large questions of totemism and totemistic
cult-practices. His theory presents a picture of zoolatric ritual that
cannot be paralleled elsewhere in the world either among primitive or
advanced societies. And we begin to distrust it when it asks us to
interpret the figures in a gem-representation as an ass-man bearing
two lions to sacrifice; for neither in Greece, Egypt, or {74} Asia is
there any record of a lion-sacrifice, a ceremony which would be
difficult to carry out with due solemnity. The more recent discovery
of a set of clay-sealings at Zakro in Crete by Dr. Hogarth, who
published them in the _Hellenic Journal_ of 1902, has rendered Mr.
Cook’s view of the cult-value of these “monsters” now untenable. They
are found in combinations too widely fantastic to be of any value for
totemistic or a zoolatric theory, and the opinion of archaeologists
like Sir Arthur Evans and Winter[74.1] that these bizarre forms arose
from modifications of foreign types, such as the Egyptian hippopotamus
goddess, crossed at times with the hippokamp and the lion, has
received interesting confirmation from the discovery of a shell relief
at Phaistos showing a series of monsters with hippopotamus heads, and
in a pose derived undoubtedly from a Nilotic type.[74.2] We may
venture to say that the exuberant fancy of the Minoan-Mycenaean artist
ran riot and amused itself with wild combinations of monsters, men and
animals, to which no serious meaning was attached.

Only rarely, when the monsters are ritualistically engaged in watering
a sacred palm tree or column,[74.3] does the religious question
arise. And here we may find a parallelism in Assyrian religious art,
in the representation of “winged genii fertilising the adult palms
with the male cones”; but according to Sir Arthur Evans this motive is
later in the Eastern art than in the Mycenaean. Perhaps only one type
of monster found on these gems and seals is derived from a real
theriomorphic figure of the contemporary religion, namely, the
Minotaur {75} type. A few of the Zakro sealings show the sealed figure
of a human body with bovine head, ears, and tail[75.1]; and a clay
seal-impression found at Knossos presents a bovine human figure with
possibly a bovine head sealed in a hieratic attitude before a warrior
in armour.[75.2] Such archaeological evidence is precarious, but when
we compare it with the indigenous Cretan legends of the bull-Zeus and
the union of Pasiphae with the bull, we are tempted to believe that a
bull-headed god or a wholly bovine deity had once a place in Minoan
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 this religion is
on the same plane with that of Mesopotamia rather than with that of
Egypt.

Turning now to the proto-Hellenic period, which, without prejudging
any ethnic question, I have kept distinct from the Mycenaean, we have
here the advantage of literary records to assist the archaeological
evidence. I have stated my conviction that the earliest Hellenes had
already reached the stage of personal polytheism before conquering the
southern Peninsula; and the combined evidence of the facts of myths
and cults justifies the belief that their imagination of the deity was
mainly anthropomorphic. By the period of the Homeric poems, composed
perhaps some five centuries after the earliest entrance of the
Hellenes, we must conclude that the anthropomorphism as a religious
{76} principle was predominant in the more progressive minds that
shaped the culture of the race: a minute but speaking example of this
is the change that ensued in accordance with Homeric taste in the
meaning of the old hieratic epithet βοῶπις; in all probability it
originally designated a cow-faced goddess, but it is clear that he
intends it for ox-eyed, an epithet signifying the beauty of the large
and lustrous human eye. The bias that is felt in the religious poetry
of Homer comes to determine the course of the later religious art, so
that the religion, art, and literature of historic Greece may be
called the most anthropomorphic or anthropocentric in the world. Yet
we have sufficient proof that in the pre-Homeric age the popular mind
was by no means bound by any such law, and that the religious
imagination was unfixed and wavering in its perception of divinity:
and the belief must have been general that the god, usually imagined
as a man, might manifest himself at times in the form of some animal.
Apollo Lykeios, the wild god of the woods, was evidently in the habit
of incarnating himself in the wolf, so that wolves might be
sacramentally offered to him or sacrifice offered to certain
wolves.[76.1] In the Artemis legend of Brauron and Aulis we detect
the same close communion of the goddess with the bear. Now, upon the
fairly numerous indications in cult-legend and ritual that the deity
was occasionally incarnate in the animal, much fallacious
anthropological theory has been built. It is not now my cue to pursue
this matter _au fond_. But it is necessary for my purpose to emphasise
the fact that there is fair evidence for some direct zoolatry in the
proto-Hellenic period, though there is less than is often supposed,
and it needs always careful criticism. {77} As I have already said,
the ancients of the later learned period were often vague and
unprecise when they spoke of “the worship” of animals. Thus Clemens
informs us[77.1] that the Thessalians “worshipped” ants, and on the
authority of Euphorion that the Samians “worshipped” a sheep: the word
used in each case being σέβειν. But accurate statements concerning
religious psychology demand the nicest discrimination: “a little more,
and how much it is.” We may suspect that the word σέβειν was as
vaguely used in antiquity as the term “worship” in loose modern
writing: and it is to be remarked that when one authority uses this
word, another may employ the verb τιμᾶν, which does not imply so much.
For instance, Clemens states that the Thebans “honoured” the weasel;
Aelian, that they “worshipped” it.[77.2] We are nearly always left in
doubt how much is meant: whether the animal was merely treated
reverentially and its life spared, or whether sacrifice and prayers
were offered to it: the former practice may be found in almost any
society modern or ancient, the latter is savage zoolatry, and is a
fact of importance for the religious estimate of a people.

I cannot consider all the cases which are given with sufficient
fullness in the work that I have cited by De Visser.[77.3] But the
instance cited above--the Samian worship of the sheep
[πρόβατον]--shows us how little we have to build our theories on. It
is quite possible that such a story arose from some ritual in which
the sheep was offered reverentially, treated as a theanthropic {78}
animal, half-human, half-divine, like the bull-calf of Tenedos in the
cult of Dionysos,[78.1] an interesting form of sacrifice to which I
shall have occasion to refer again. Clear records of actual sacrifice
to animals in Greece are exceedingly rare. We have the quaint example
of the so-called “Sacrifice” to the flies before the feast of Apollo
on the promontory of Leukas; this I have discussed elsewhere,[78.2]
pointing out that it seems only a ritual trick to persuade the flies
to leave the worshippers alone, and certainly does not suggest the
“worship” of flies.[78.2] There is also a dim ritual-legend attaching
to the temple of Apollo the wolf-god in Sikyon, which appears to point
to some sacrifice to wolves in or near the temple at some early
period.[78.3] The third case is more important: the “sacrifice to the
pig,” which Athenaeus, quoting from Agathokles of Kyzikos, attests was
an important service at Praisos in Crete, performed as a προτελὴς
θυσία, that is, as a preliminary act in the liturgies of the higher
religion.[78.4] The ritual-legend explained the act as prompted by
the service that a sow had rendered to the infant Zeus; but it remains
mysterious, and we would like to have had more clear information as to
the actual rite. Finally, we have the most important type of zoolatric
ritual in Greece, the worship of certain sacred snakes: various
records attest this in the cult of Trophonios at Lebadeia and in the
temple of Athena Polias at Athens; in the cult of Zeus-Meilichios in
the Piraeus, in the sacred grove of Apollo in Epeiros, probably in the
shrines of Asklepios at Epidauros and Kos, and elsewhere.

{79}

Now it is important to note that these ritual records nowhere suggest
that whole species of animals were worshipped, but that only certain
individuals of that species, haunting certain places to which a sense
of religious mystery attached, such as a cave or a lonely grove, or
else found in or near some holy shrine, were thus marked out as
divine. Also, we observe that in all the examples just quoted, the
cult of the animal is linked to the cult of some personal god or
goddess or hero: the snake, for instance, is the natural incarnation
of the underworld divinity or hero. The only exception to this latter
rule that may be reasonably urged is the prehistoric worship of Python
at Delphi, which, as Dr. Frazer has pointed out, is curiously like the
ritual and cult of a fetich-snake in Dahomey.[79.1] Yet, for all we
know, Python, who in the earliest version of the story is of female
sex, may at a very early time have been regarded not as a mere snake,
but as an incarnation of the earth-goddess Gaia, who ruled at Delphi
before Apollo came. The question whether the ancestors of the Hellenes
or the pre-Hellenic peoples with whom they mixed were ever on the
lowest plane of theriolatry does not concern us here. What is
important is, that the records, both Mycenaean and Hellenic, justify
us in believing that the dominant religion in Greece of the second
millennium B.C. was the worship of personal divinities humanly
conceived who could occasionally incarnate themselves in animal form,
and that where animal worship survived it was always linked in this
way to the cults of personal polytheism. From the Homeric period
onward, the higher Hellenic spirit shows itself averse to the
theriomorphic fashion of religion; yet this never disappeared wholly
from {80} the lower circles. Arcadia, the most backward and
conservative of the Greek communities, never accepted the rigid
anthropomorphic canon. This is shown by the record of the Phigaleian
Demeter with the horse’s head; the mysterious goddess Eurynome of
Phigaleia, half-woman, half-fish; the Arcadian Pan, the daimon of the
herds, imagined as with goat legs and sometimes with goat’s head; and,
finally, by the Arcadian idols of the Roman period found at Lykosoura
in 1898, representing the female form with the head of a cow.[80.1]

This résumé of the facts, so far as it has gone, appears to justify
the theorem with which it started, that the “Mycenaean” peoples and
proto-Hellenes in the second millennium were on the whole, in respect
of the morphology of their religion, on the same plane as those of the
Euphrates valley; only it appears that theriomorphism played slightly
more part in the cults and legends of the West than in those of the
Sumerian-Babylonian culture. It is obvious to any student of
comparative religion that such general similarity which we have here
observed, and which we might observe if we compared early Greece with
Vedic India, neither proves nor disproves a theory of borrowing. And
so far there seems no occasion for resorting to such a theory, unless
the type of the fish-goddess at Phigaleia be considered a reason for
supposing Semitic influences here at work and for tracing her ancestry
to Derketo of Bambyke. For such transference of cult we might have to
invoke the help of Phoenicians, who arrive on the scene too late to
help us in the present quest, and who are not likely to have been
attracted into the interior of Arcadia.



 CHAPTER V.
 The Predominance of the Goddess.

{81}

The next clue that I propose to follow in our general comparison is
the relative prominence of the goddess-cult in the areas that we are
surveying. The subject is of importance and interest, partly because
it may throw some light on the question of the interdependence of the
adjacent religions, partly because it brings into view certain
striking facts of religious psychology. A religion without a goddess
is liable to differ markedly in tone and colour, and probably in
ritual, from those that possess one. Wherever anthropomorphism is
allowed free play, the same instinct which evolves the father-god will
evolve the mother-goddess; and when the religion is one of the type
which Tiele calls “Nature-religions,” one, that is, where ideas
reflecting the forces of the natural world lie on the surface of the
conception of the divine personality, some of these forces are so
naturally regarded as feminine that the evolution of a goddess appears
inevitable; and the only world-religions that have rejected this idea
are the Judaic, the Islamic, and Protestant Christianity. Now
goddess-cult is often found to exercise a powerful influence on the
religious emotion; and the religious psychology of a people devoted to
it will probably differ from those who eschew it; often it will be
likely to engender a peculiar sentiment of tenderness, of
sentimentality in {82} an otherwise austere and repellent religious
system; and the clinging entreaty of the child is heard in the prayers
or reflected in the ritual; and just as the mother frequently stands
between the children and the father as the mild intercessor, so the
goddess often becomes the mediator of mercy to whom the sinners turn
as their intercessor with the offended god. Such was Isis for the
Graeco-Roman world; such at times was Athena for the Athenians; such
is the Virgin for Mediterranean Christendom.

Or the goddess may be more merciless than any god, more delighting in
bloodshed, more savage in resisting progress: such often was Artemis
for the 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 was the potential value of the
ideal of Artemis in Greece, and perhaps the actual value of Mariolatry
in the Middle Ages. Or the goddess-cult may be the source of what to
us appears gross licentiousness, as was the case in Babylon and some
parts of Asia Minor. This discordance in the character of
goddess-cults may reflect the diversity of the masculine feeling
towards women, and also to some extent the position of women at
different stages of culture in the family and in the State. The whole
subject has many fascinating aspects, which relevance prevents me
presenting in detail. I have considered elsewhere the sociologic
questions involved in goddess-cult;[82.1] and I must limit my
attention here to its value as ethnic evidence.

In Mesopotamia the phenomenon presents itself at the very earliest
period of which we have record. The {83} monument already
described[83.1] on which the goddess Nini is presenting captives to
the King Annabanini, attests the prevalence of goddess-cult in the
third millennium; and Tiele supposes--without, I think, sufficient
evidence--that it was stronger in the Sumerian than in the Semitic
period. At all events, the conquering Semites may have found the cult
of goddesses well developed in the land; and in all probability they
brought at least one of their own with them, namely, Ishtar, whose
name has its phonetic equivalents in Semitic Anatolia. Also at least
by the second millennium B.C., the Babylonian pantheon was organised
after the type of the human family to this extent, that each male
divinity has his female consort; and it would not help us now to
consider the theorem put out by Jeremias and others that the various
Babylonian goddesses are all emanations and varieties of one original
All-mother. Only the mighty Ishtar remains for the most part aloof
from the marriage system, and her power transcends that of the other
goddesses. Originally the chief goddess of the Sumerian Erech, she was
raised by the Assyrians to the highest position next to their national
god Asshur;[83.2] and for them she is the great divinity of war, who,
armed with bow, quiver, and sword, orders the battle-ranks. In a
famous hymn,[83.3] perhaps the most fervent and moving of all the
Babylonian collection, she seems exalted to a supreme place above all
other divinities; another[83.4] 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 idea may be expressed in a
difficult {84} phrase in a hymn to Nebo[84.1] which contains his
dialogue with Assurbanipal: “Nebo, who has grasped the feet of the
divine goddess, Queen of Nineveh,” the goddess who came to be regarded
as Ishtar.

From such isolated indications we might conclude that the
Babylonian-Assyrian religion was more devoted to the goddess than to
the god. We should certainly be wrong, as a more critical and wider
survey of the facts, so far as they are at present accessible, would
convince us. 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
divinity to whom worship is at that moment being paid above all
others. The ecstatic poet is always contradicting himself. To the
omnipotent Belit, in the last-mentioned hymn, a phrase is attached
which Zimmern interprets as “she who carries out the commands of Bel,”
as if after all she were only a vicegerent. In the beautiful prayer to
Ishtar proffered by the Assyrian King Asurnasirabal (18th cent. B.C.)
he implores her to intercede for him, “the Priest-King, thy favourite…
with Thy beloved the Father of the gods.”[84.2] The beloved wife
naturally plays the Madonna part of the intercessor; thus Sanherib
prays that Ninlil “the consort of Ashur, the mother of the great gods,
may daily speak a favourable word for Sanherib, the king of Assyria,
before Ashur.”[84.3] But the intercessor is not supreme; and in spite
of the great power of Ishtar and the fervent {85} devotion she
aroused, the state-pantheon is predominantly masculine.

Nor can we, looking at the ancient records of the other Semitic
peoples, which are often too scanty to dogmatise about, safely speak
of the supremacy of the goddess in any Semitic community, except in
Sidon. All that we find everywhere, except among the Israelites, is a
goddess by the side of a god. According to Weber, in his treatise,
“Arabien vor dem Islam,”[85.1] the aboriginal god of all the Semites
when they were in the nomadic condition was the moon-god; and the male
divinity is nowhere found to be displaced. He is prominent among the
polytheistic Arabs under the name Athtar.[85.2] Some of the Arab
deities in North Arabia are revealed to us in an inscription dating
probably from the fifth century B.C., which mentions the gods Salm,
Sangala, Asira, and of these Salm was evidently a war-god, as he is
represented on a relief with a spear.[85.3]

The Aramaic inscriptions only reveal the goddess Ishtar by the side of
many powerful gods such as Ramman, Adad the god of storms, Shamash the
sun-god, Reshef the god of lightning and war, Baal-charran the Lord of
Harran.[85.4] An eighth-century Aramaic inscription found at Sinjerli
in North Syria, written in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III., mentions
no goddess, but regards the kings as under the protection of Hadad,
Elreshef, and Shamash.[85.5] Even in Canaan and Phoenicia we have no
reason to say that Astarte rose above Baal; such an epithet as “the
Face of Baal” appears to maintain the supremacy of the God. In Moab we
have {86} the evidence of the Mesha stone, which mentions the divine
pair Ashtor-Chemosh, and in Numbers[86.1] the Moabites are called the
people of Chemosh. But we have Phoenician inscriptions of the period
of Persian supremacy in which the king of Byblos, Jachumelek, speaks
of himself as raised to the kingdom by the Baalat, the queen-goddess
of that state; and he prays to her that the queen may give him favour
in the eyes of the gods and in the eyes of the people of his
land.[86.2] Astarte was _par excellence_ the city-goddess of Sidon,
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,[86.3] the other shows her embracing him.[86.4]
King Tabnit of Sidon, whose sarcophagus is in the Museum of
Constantinople, styles himself “priest of Astarte, King of the
Sidonians.”[86.5] But in the other Phoenician settlements, such as
Tyre, Cyprus, and Carthage, the memorials of the male divinity,
whether Baal, Baal Samin, Baal Ammon, Reshef Mikal, Esmun-Melqart, are
at least as conspicuous. It is likely that at certain places in the
Mediterranean the Semites were touched by the influences of the
aboriginal Aegean goddess’s cult; this may well have been the case at
Sidon, and still more probably at Askalon, and it may have penetrated
as far as Bambyke.

Speaking generally, however, we may conclude that among the early
Semites the male divinity was dominant. And if we could believe that
this is a reflection in their theology of the patriarchal system in
society, let us observe that the earliest Babylonian {87} evidence
proves that the patriarchal type of family was dominant in Babylonia
in the third millennium.

Passing over to the non-Semitic group of Anatolian cults, and
considering first the Hittite, we have ample evidence in the great
relief of Boghaz-Keui of the importance of the goddess; and it may
well be, as Dr. Frazer has conjectured, that that monument, on which
we see the great god borne on the shoulders of his worshippers to meet
the goddess on the lion, gives us the scene of a Holy marriage.[87.1]
We find the male and female divinity united in a common worship on a
relief found near Caesarea in the middle of Cappadocia, on the left
side of which is depicted a warrior-god standing before a
pillar-shaped altar, while a man in the guise of a warrior is pouring
a libation before him; on the right is a similar scene, making
libation before a seated goddess, on whose altar a bird is
seated.[87.2] Besides this, we have another type of goddess shown us
on a Hittite votive-relief, on which is carved a large seated female
figure with a child on her knees; we may surely interpret this as a
θεὰ κουροτρόφος.[87.3] Again, on two of the reliefs at Euzuk we find
a seated goddess holding a goblet and approached with prayers,
libations, and other offerings by priest and priestess,[87.4] and we
may venture to add to this list of Hittite types the mysterious veiled
goddess found by Von Oppenheim at Tel-Halaf in Mesopotamia on the
Chabur, a branch of Euphrates, with an inscription containing the name
Asshur, a work which, on the evidence of other cuneiform inscriptions
found on the site, he would date near to {88} 900 B.C.[88.1] But this
evidence in no way amounts to any proof or affords any suggestion of
the predominance of the goddess--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 religion. The text of the
treaty between Rameses II. and the Kheta (_circ._ 1290 B.C.) includes
various sun-gods, Sutekh, the Egyptian name for the Hittite war-god,
and Antheret (possibly a form of the name Astoret), and other
goddesses called “the Queen of Heaven, the Mistress of the Soil, the
Mistress of Mountains.”[88.2] Can we draw any conclusions from that
extraordinary monument from Fassirlir[88.3] on the borders of
Lycaonia and Pisidia, representing a young god in a high cap that
suggests Hittite fashion, standing on the neck of a stooping goddess
at whose side are two lions? This might seem a naïve indication of
male supremacy; but the sex of the supporting figure does not seem
clear.[88.4]

Coming now to the Asia-Minor shore, where in the first millennium B.C.
the Hellenic colonisation and culture flourished, we find the traces
of a great goddess-cult discoverable on every important site; though
recorded only by later writers, as a rule, and interpreted to us by
the later Greek names, such as Artemis, Leto, Aphrodite, more rarely
Athena, we can still discern clearly that she belongs to a
pre-Hellenic stock. The evidence of this can be gathered from many
sources, and it is unnecessary {89} to detail it here. What is more
important, and not so easy, is to detect clear proof of the
predominance of the goddess over the god, a phenomenon that has not
yet presented itself clearly in the Semitic communities, except at
Sidon and perhaps Byblos. We find goddess-cult in Cilicia, where
“Artemis Sarpedonia” is a name that trails with it Minoan
associations;[89.1] but, as Dr. Frazer has pointed out,[89.2] at
least at Tarsos and Olba it appears that the male deity was the
dominant power. At the former city a long series of coins attests the
supremacy of Baal-Tars and Sandon-Herakles. At Olba the ruling
priesthood were called the Τευκρίδαι, and claim descent from Teukros
and Aias, but Greek inscriptions giving such names as “Teukros” the
priest, son of Tarkuaris, support the view that Teukros is a
Hellenisation of the divine Hittite name Tarku. It is in Lycia where
we ought, in accordance with a popular theory, to find the clearest
proof of goddess-supremacy; for we know that the Lycians had the
matrilinear family system, and this was supposed by Robertson Smith to
lead logically to that religious product.[89.3] And recently we have
heard Professor Wilamowitz[89.4] brilliantly expound the theory that
Leto was the aboriginal mother-goddess of Lycia, called there in the
Lycian tongue “Lada,” and worshipped as supreme with her son Apollo,
both of whom the Hellenes found there, and while they transformed Lada
“the Lady-goddess” into Leto, surnamed Apollo Λητοίδης, in obedience
to the Lycian rule of calling a son after his mother. And where a son
is worshipped merely as the son of his {90} mother, we may regard the
mother-goddess as supreme. The theory about Apollo’s Lycian origin,
which, I think, contradicts all the important facts, does not concern
us here. It is his view that Leto is the aboriginal and paramount
divinity of Lycia which we would wish to test. So far as it rests on
the equation between Leto and Lada, its philology is bad; for, as Dr.
Cowley has pointed out on the evidence of Lycian-Greek transcribed
names, the Greeks would not have transcribed Lada as Leto.
Furthermore, the geography of the Leto-cult gives no _vraisemblance_
to the theory of its Lycian origin; neither have we any proof at all
of the cult of any goddess in Lycia at an early period, though no
doubt it existed; the coin of Myra, showing a goddess emerging from
the split trunk of a tree,[90.1] is of the Imperial period, but
preserves an ancient legend and an archaic idol-type. But the earliest
fact of Lycian religion recorded is the predominance of Apollo, and
the Lycians maintained him as their chief divinity throughout their
history and long after the very early influences of Hellenic
colonisation had waned. The inscriptions of Lycia that mention Leto
are all of the later period; her temple near Xanthos and her two holy
groves on the coast that Strabo mentions[90.2] are just on the track
along which the earliest Hellenic influence travelled: and the most
tenable view is that the Hellenes introduced her. In Caria, at
Labranda, and again in the vicinity of Stratonikeia, we have proof of
the early supremacy of a great god whom the Hellenes called Zeus,
attaching to him in the latter centre of cult the Carian name of
Panamaros, and associating him with a native goddess called Hera or
{91} Hekate, who did not claim to be the predominant partner.[91.1]

It is not till we come to the neighbourhood of Ephesos that we can
speak positively of goddess-supremacy. Artemis, as the Greeks called
her here, is admittedly πρωτοθρονία, the first in power and in place.
Her brother Apollo himself served as the στεφανηφόρος of the Artemis
of Magnesia, that is, as her officiating magistrate,[91.2] and
Artemis of Magnesia we may take to be the same aboriginal goddess as
the Ephesian. Certain features of her worship will be considered later
in a comparative survey of ritual and cult-ideas. I will only indicate
here the absence of any proof of the Semitic origins of the Ephesian
Artemis,[91.3] and the associations that link her with the great
mother-goddess of Phrygia. When we reach the area within which this
latter cult and its cognate forms prevailed, we can posit the
predominance of the goddess as a salient fact of the popular religion
imprinting indelible traits upon the religious physiognomy of the
people. The god Attis was dear to the aboriginal Phrygian as to the
later generations, but he was only the boy-lover, the young son who
died and rose again. The great goddess was supreme and eternal; and
her power spread into Lydia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and Galatia, and far
and wide in the later period across the sea. {92} Her counterpart in
Cappadocia was Mā, the great goddess of Comana, in whose worship we
hear nothing of the male divinity. In this wide area, governed by the
religion of the Great Mother, we can trace a similar ritual and
something of the same religious psychology in the various peoples:
orgiastic liturgy and ecstatic passion, a craving for complete
identification with the goddess that led to acts of sexual madness
such as emasculation; also a marked tone of sorrow and tenderness in
the legends and religious service. In following back to its
fountain-head the origins of this cult, we are led inevitably to
Minoan Crete.

There are many links revealed both by legend and cult that associate
Crete with the country adjacent to the Troad, with Lydia and Caria.
And we may tentatively hold to the dogma that Kybele-Rhea, Hipta of
Lydia, who appears now as a virgin, now as a mother-goddess, Mā who
appears in Caria, but whose chief historic centre was Comana of
Cappadocia, were all descended from or specialised forms of an
aboriginal Aegean or Anatolian goddess whose cult was also maintained
by the Hittites. Of her nature and ritual I may speak later. I am only
concerned here with the correctness of the view put forward by Sir
Arthur Evans.[92.1] “It is probable that in the Mycenaean religion as
in the later Phrygian, the female aspect of divinity predominated,
fitting on, as it seems to have, down to the matriarchal system. The
male divinity is not so much the consort as the son or the youthful
favourite.” If we put aside the suggestion of a matriarchal theory
here, the main idea in this judgment accords generally with the
evidence that the author of it has himself done most to accumulate and
to present to us. It is {93} not insignificant that the earliest type
of Aegean idol in existence is that of a goddess, not a god; and in
the more developed Minoan period the representations of the goddess
are more frequent and more imposing than those of the god; while in
the few scenes of cult where the male deity appears in her company, he
appears in a subordinate position, either in a corner of the field or
standing before her throne.[93.1] And a strong current of early Greek
legend induces us to believe that when the earliest Hellenes reached
Crete they found a powerful goddess-cult overshadowing the island,
associated with the figure of a young or infant god: hence spread the
Cretan worship of Rhea and the Μήτηρ τῶν θεῶν, and hence there came to
a few places on the Hellenic mainland, where Minoan influence was
strong, the cult and the cult-legend of the infant Zeus.[93.2] Yet we
must not strain the evidence too far; besides the youthful or infant
Cretan god, there may have been the powerful cult of a father-god as
well. On three monuments we catch a glimpse of the armed deity of the
sky.[93.3] What is more important is the prominence of the
double-headed axe in the service of the Minoan palace; and this must
be a fetichistic emblem mystically associated with the thunder-god,
though occasionally the goddess might borrow it. The prominence and
great vogue of this religious emblem detracts somewhat from the weight
of the evidence as pointing to the supremacy of the female divine
partner. It is Zeus, not Rhea, that inspired Minos, as Jahwé inspired
Moses, and Shamash Hammurabbi. Yet the view is probably right on the
whole that the mother-goddess was a more frequent figure in {94} the
Minoan service, and was nearer and dearer to the people.

May we also regard her as the prototype of all the leading Hellenic
goddesses? The consideration of this question will bring this
particular line of inquiry to a close.

If we find goddess-supremacy among the early Hellenes, shall we
interpret it as an Aryan-Hellenic tradition, or as an alien and
borrowed trait in their composite religion? If borrowed, are they more
likely to have derived it from the East or from their immediate
predecessors in the regions of Aegean culture? The latter question, if
it arises, we ought to be able to answer at last.

We might guard ourselves at the outset against the uncritical dogma
which has been proclaimed at times that the goddesses in the various
Aryan polytheisms were all alien, and borrowed from the pre-Aryan
peoples in whose lands they settled. Any careful study of the Vedic
and old-Germanic, Phrygo-Thracian religions can refute this wild
statement: the wide prevalence in Europe of the worship of “Mother
Earth,” which Professor Dieterich’s treatise establishes,[94.1] is
sufficient evidence in itself. Nor could we believe that the early
Aryans were unmoved by an anthropomorphic law of the religious
imagination that is almost universally operative. The Hellenic Aryans,
then, must be supposed to have brought certain of their own goddesses
into Greece, and perhaps philology will be able one day to tell us who
exactly they were. On linguistic and other grounds, Dione and Demeter
may be accepted as provedly old Hellenic: on the same grounds,
probably, Hera; also the name and cult of Hestia is certainly
“Aryan,”[94.2] only we {95} dare not call her in the earliest, and
scarcely at any period, a true personal goddess. Now, there is a
further important induction that we may confidently make: at the
period when the Aryan conquerors were pushing their way into Aegean
lands and the Indo-Iranians into the Punjaub and Mesopotamia, they had
a religious bias making for the supremacy of the Father-God and
against the supremacy of the goddess. We can detect the same instinct
also in the old Germanic pantheon.[95.1] Its operation is most
visible when the Thrako-Phrygian stock, and their cousins the
Bithynian, broke into the north of Asia Minor, and the regions on the
south of the Black Sea. The god-cult they bring with them clashes with
the aboriginal and--as it proved--invincible supremacy of the goddess
linked to her divine boy: we hear of such strange cult-products as
Attis-Παπαῖος, Father Attis, and one of the old Aryan titles of the
High God appears in the Phrygian Zeus Βαγαῖος, Bagha in old Persian
and Bog in Slavonic meaning deity. The Aryan hero-ancestor of the
Phrygian stock, Manes, whom Sir William Ramsay believes to be
identical with the god Men, becomes the father of Atys;[95.2] also we
have later proof of the powerful cult of Zeus the Thunderer, Zeus the
Leader of Hosts, in this region of the southern shore of the Black
Sea. Another induction that I venture, perhaps incautiously, to make,
is that in no Aryan polytheism is there to be found the worship of an
isolated or virgin-goddess, keeping apart from relations with the male
{96} deity: the goddesses in India, Germany, Ireland, Gaul,[96.1]
Thrace, and Phrygia are usually associated temporarily or permanently
with the male divinity, and are popularly regarded as maternal, if not
as wedded. Trusting to the guidance of these two inductions, and
always conscious of the lacunae in our records, we may draw this
important conclusion concerning the earliest religious history of
Hellas: namely, that where we find the powerful cult of an isolated
goddess, she belongs to the pre-Hellenic population. The axiom applies
at once and most forcibly to Artemis and Athena; the one dominant in
certain parts of Arcadia and Attica, the other the exclusive deity of
the Attic Acropolis. Their virginal character was probably a later
idea arising from their isolation, their aversion to cult-partnership
with the male deity.[96.2] The Aryan Hellenes were able to plant
their Zeus and Poseidon on the high hill of Athens, but not to
overthrow the supremacy of Athena in the central shrine and in the
aboriginal soul of the Athenian people. As regards Hera, the question
is more difficult: the excavations at the Heraeum have been supposed
by Dr. Waldstein to prove the worship of a great goddess on that site,
going back in time to the third millennium B.C.,[96.3] a period
anterior to the advent of the god-worshipping Aryan Hellenes. And this
goddess remained {97} dominant through all history at Argos and Samos.
But we have no reason for supposing that her name was Hera in that
earliest period. Phonetically, the word is best explained as “Aryan”:
if it was originally the name brought by the Hellenes and designating
the wife-goddess of the sky-god--and in spite of recent theories that
contradict it I still incline to this view--the Hellenes could apply
it to the great goddess of the Argolid, unless her aversion to
matrimony was a dogma, or her religious isolation a privilege, too
strong to infringe. This does not seem to have been the case. The
goddess of Samian cult, a twin-institution with the Argive, was no
virgin, but united with the sky-god in an old ἱερὸς γάμος.
Nevertheless, throughout all history the goddess in Argos, and
probably in Samos, is a more powerful cult-figure than the god.

As regards Aphrodite, few students of Greek religion would now assign
her to the original Aryan-Hellenic polytheism. Most still regard her
as coming to the Greek people from the Semitic area of the Astarte
cult. And this was the view that I formerly developed in the second
volume of my _Cults_. But at that time we were all ignorant of the
facts of Minoan-Mycenaean religion, and some of us were deceived
concerning the antiquity of the Phoenician settlements in Cyprus and
Hellas. The recently discovered evidence points, I think, inevitably
to the theory that Sir Arthur Evans supports; that the goddess of
Cyprus, the island where the old Minoan culture lived longest, is one
form of the great goddess of that gifted Aegean people, who had
developed her into various manifestations through long centuries of
undisturbed religious life. Let us finally observe that it is just
these names, Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, that have hitherto defied
linguistic {98} explanation on either Aryan or Semitic phonetic
principles. We do not yet know the language of King Minos.

A cursory and dogmatic answer may now be given to the two questions
posed above. The Aryan Hellenes did not bring with them the supremacy
of the goddess, for the idea was not natural to them: they did not
borrow it from any Semitic people in the second millennium, for at
that time it was not natural to the Semites: they found it on the soil
of the Aegean lands, as a native growth of an old Mediterranean
religion, a strong plant that may be buried under the deposits of
alien creeds, but is always forcing its head up to the light again.

Therefore in tracing goddess-cult from the Euphrates valley to the
western Aegean shores, as a test of the influence of the East on the
West, we are brought up sharply at this point. The Western world is
divided from the Eastern by this very phenomenon that the older
scholars used to regard as proving a connection. And it may well have
been the Western cult that influenced the western Semites.



 CHAPTER VI.
 The Deities as Nature-Powers.

{99}

So far as we have gone our main question must be still regarded as
an open one. We may now compare the particular conceptions concerning
divinity that prevailed at the period to which our search is limited,
in the valley of the Euphrates, and in the other communities that are
in our route of comparison. Many striking points of general similarity
will present themselves, upon which we must not lay too much weight
for our argument, since all polytheisms possess a certain family
likeness: of more importance will be certain strikingly dissimilar
features, if we find any.

First, in regard to the general concepts or characters of the
divinities, the same formula seems mainly applicable to the
Mesopotamian as to the Hellenic facts: the leading divinities have
usually some distinct association with the world of nature; but the
natural phenomenon or elemental fact that may be there in the
background of their personality, becomes overlaid and obscured by the
complex ethical and mental traits that are evolved. Therefore the mere
nature-fact rarely explains the fully-developed god, either of Babylon
or of Hellas. A few salient examples will make this clear. It is only
perhaps Shamash the sun-god of Sippar, and Sin the moon-god of Ur,
that retain their nature-significance rarely obscured. The hymn to Sin
in Dr. Langdon’s {100} collection reveals an intelligible lunar
imagery throughout; but in another published by Zimmern,[100.1] his
personality becomes more spiritual and mystical; he is at once “the
mother-body who bears all life, and the pitiful gracious father,” the
divinity who has created the land and founded temples; under the
Assyrian régime he seems to have become a god of war.[100.2] Shamash
even surpasses him in grandeur and religious value, so far as we can
judge from the documents; but his whole ethical and spiritual
character, clearly articulated as it is, can be logically evolved from
his solar. But in studying the characters of Marduk and Nergal, for
instance, we feel that the physical theories of their origin help us
but little, and are at times self-contradictory; and it might be well
for Assyriologists to take note of the confusion and darkness that
similar theories have spread in this domain of Hellenic study. Thus we
are told that the Sun in the old Sumerian-Babylonian system gave birth
to various special personalities, representing various aspects of him:
Marduk is the spring-sun, rejoicing in his strength, although his
connection with Shamash does not seem specially close; yet Jeremias,
who expresses this opinion,[100.3] believes also that Marduk is a
storm-god, because “his word can shake the sea.” Shall we say, then,
that Jahwé is a storm-god “because the voice of the Lord shaketh the
cedar-trees”? The phrase is quite innocent if we only mean by it that
any and every personal God could send a storm; it becomes of doubtful
value if it signifies here that Marduk is an impersonation of the
storm. The texts seem sometimes to contradict each other; Ninib, for
instance, {101} is regarded by Jeremias[101.1] as the rising sun, on
the ground of certain phrases in his hymn of praise; but the concept
of him as a storm-god is more salient in the oldest texts, and thus he
is pre-eminently a deity of destruction and death, and becomes
specially an Assyrian war-god. Does it help us if we imagine him
originally as the Storm-Sun, as Jensen would have us? or is it not
allowable to suspect that solar terms of religious description became
a later Babylonian convention, and that any deity might attract them?
Nergal, again, the god of Kutha, has been supposed to have had a solar
origin, as the god of the midday and destructive sun;[101.2] yet his
special realm is Hades, where he ruled by the side of the goddess
Allatu, and his name is doubtfully interpreted as the Lord of the
Great Habitation, and thus he is regarded as a god of disease and
death. This did not hinder him from becoming with Ninib the great
war-god of the Assyrians and their god of the chase, nor a pious
Babylonian poet from exalting him as “God of the little ones, he of
the benevolent visage.”[101.3] In one of the Tel-El-Amarna texts he
is designated by an ideogram, that almost certainly means “the god of
iron.”[101.4] This last fact, if correct, is an illustration of that
which a general survey of the Babylonian texts at last impresses upon
us: the physical origin of the deity, if he had one, does not often
shape and control his whole career; the high god grows into manifold
forms, dilates into a varied spiritual personality, progresses with
the life of his people, reflects new aspects of life, altogether
independently of any physical idea of him that may have originally
prevailed. Adad, the {102} god of storms, becomes a god of prophecy,
and is addressed as a god of mercy in the fragment of a hymn.[102.1]
Ea the god of waters becomes _par excellence_ the god of wisdom, not
because waters are wise, but probably because Eridu, the seat of his
cult, was an immemorial home of ancient wisdom, that is to say, magic.
As for the great Nebo of Borsippa, Jeremias,[102.2] who is otherwise
devoted to solar theories, has some good remarks on the absence of any
sign of his nature-origin: his ideogram designates “the prophet,” in
his earliest character he is the writer, his symbol is the “stilus” of
the scribe. Yet he does not confine himself to writing: he is
interested in vegetation, and eulogised in one hymn as “he who openeth
the springs and causeth the corn to sprout, he without whom the dykes
and canals would run dry.” Surely this interest comes to him, not from
the planet Mercury,[102.3] but from his wisdom and his concern with
Babylonian civilisation, which depended upon dykes and canals. We are
presented here with a progressive polytheism, that is, one of which
the divinities show the power of self-development parallel with the
self-development of the people.

The question we have just been considering, the physical character of
the Babylonian deities in relation to their whole personality,
suggests two last reflections. Their gods have a certain relation to
the planets, which is preserved even in our modern astronomy. That the
early Sumerians worshipped stars is probable,[102.4] as the Sumerian
sign for divinity is a star; but that the Sumerian-Babylonian high
gods were personal forms of the planets, is denied by leading modern
Assyriologists,[103.1] {103} except in the case of the sun and the
moon, Shamash and Sin. It was only the Chaldaean astronomic theory
that came to regard the various planets in their varying positions as
special manifestations of the powers of the different personal gods;
and the same planet might be a manifestation, according to its
different positions, of different gods: the “star Jupiter at one point
is Marduk, at another point Nebo”; this dogma is found on a
seventh-century tablet, which declares at the same time that “Mercury”
is Nebo.[103.2] This planetary association of the deities is well
illustrated by the memorial relief of Asarhaddon found at Sinjerli,
and the relief of Maltaija, showing stars crowning their
heads;[103.3] but both these are later than the period with which we
are here immediately concerned.

Lastly, we fail to observe in that domain of the old Babylonian
religion which may be called nature-worship, any clear worship of the
earth regarded as a personal and living being, as the Hellenes
regarded 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, Bau, the wife of Ninib, the “amorous
lady of heaven,” are certainly not of this character. Still less is
Allatu, the monstrous and grim Queen of Hell, at whose breast the
lions are suckled. It seems that if the early Sumerians conceived the
earth as a personal divinity at all, they imagined it as a male
divinity. For in the inscriptions of Nippur, Enlil or Bel appears as a
Lord of the underworld, {104} meaning our earth as distinct from the
heavens: he is hymned as the “lord of the harvest-lands, lord of the
grain-fields”[104.1]--he is the “husbandman who tends the fields”;
when Enlil is angry, “he sends hunger everywhere.” In another hymn he
is thus described: “The great Earth-Mountain is Enlil, the
mountain-storm is he, whose shoulders rival the heavens, whose
foundation is the bright abyss”;[104.2] and again, “Lord, who makest
to abound pure oil and nourishing milk;… in the earth Lord of life art
thou”; “to give life to the ground thou dost exist.”[104.3] It is
evident that Enlil is more than the personal earth regarded as a solid
substance; he is rather the god of all the forces and life that move
on and in the earth, hence he is “the lord of winds.”[104.4] He is
more, then, than the mere equivalent of Gaia. One might have expected
to find a Sumerian counterpart for this goddess in Ninlil or Belit,
the wife and female double of Enlil or Bel: but in an inscription that
is dated as early as 4000 B.C. she is styled “The Queen of Heaven and
Earth,”[104.5] and though in a hymn of lamentation addressed to
her[104.6] she is described as the goddess “who causeth plants to
come forth,” yet the ecstatic and mysticising Babylonian imagination
has veiled and clouded her nature-aspect.

This strange religious poetry which had been fermenting for thousands
of years, was likely enough to transform past recognition the simple
aboriginal fact. It is only the lesser deities, the “Sondergötter” of
the Sumerian pantheon, whose nature-functions might remain clear and
unchanged: for instance, such a corn-deity as we see on a cylinder,
with corn-ears in {105} his hand and corn-stalks springing from his
shoulders.[105.1] Even the simple form of Tammuz, the darling of the
Sumerian people, has been somewhat blurred by the poetry of passion
that for long ages was woven about him. As Zimmern has shown in a
recent treatise,[105.2] he was never the chief deity of any
Babylonian or Assyrian state, but nevertheless one of great antiquity
and power with the Sumerian people, and his cult and story were
doubtless spreading westward in the second millennium. In spite of all
accretions and the obscurity of his name, which is interpreted to mean
“real son of the water-deep,”[105.3] we can still recognise the form
of the young god of vegetation who dies in the heat of the summer
solstice and descends to the world below, leaving the earth barren
till he returns. This idea is expressed by some of his names, “the
Lord of the land’s fruitfulness, the Lord of the shepherd’s dwelling,
the Lord of the cattle-stall, the God of grain,”[105.4] and by many
an allusion to his legend in the hymns, which are the most beautiful
and pathetic in the old Sumerian psalmody: “in his manhood in the
submerged grain he lay”; “how long still shall the verdure be
imprisoned, how long shall the green things be held in
bondage?”[105.5] An interesting title found in some of the
incantation liturgies is that of “the shepherd,” and like some other
vegetation-powers he is at times regarded as the Healer. Though he was
not admitted {106} as the compeer of the high gods into the Babylonian
or Assyrian pantheon, he may be said to have survived them all, and
his name and myth became the inspiration of a great popular religion.
No other of that vast fraternity of corn-spirits or vegetation-spirits
into which Dr. Frazer has initiated us, has ever had such a career as
Tammuz. In one of his hymns he is invoked as “Lord of the world of
Death,” because for a time he descended into Hell.[106.1] If this
idea had been allowed to germinate and to develop its full
potentiality, it might have changed the aspect of Babylonian
eschatology. But, as we shall see, the ideas naturally attaching to
vegetation, to the kindly and fair life of seeds and plants, were
never in Babylonia properly harmonised with those that dominated
belief concerning the lower world of the dead. The study of the
Tammuz-rites I shall reserve for a later occasion.

We 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. As regards the western Semites, our
trustworthy records are in no way so ancient as those that enlighten
us concerning Mesopotamia. Philo of Byblos, the interpreter of the
Phoenician Sanchuniathon, presents us only with a late picture of the
Canaanite religion, that may be marred by their own symbolic
interpretations. Because we are told[106.2] that “the Phoenicians and
Egyptians were the first to worship the sun and the moon and the
stars,”[106.2] or “the first to deify the growths of the
earth,”[106.3] we cannot conclude that in the second millennium the
religion of the Phoenicians was purely solar or astral, or merely the
cult of vegetation-gods. {107} “Baalshamin” means the lord of the
heavens, an Aramaic and Phoenician god, and Sanchuniathon explained
him as the sun;[107.1] but Robertson Smith gives good reason for the
view that the earliest conception of the local Baal was of a deity of
the fertilising spring, a local divine owner of a well-watered plot,
hence the giver of all life to fruits and cattle.[107.2] Nor are we
sure what was the leading “nature-aspect” of the cult of Astarte. The
title “Meleket Ashamaim,” “the Queen of the Heavens,” which Ezekiel
attaches to her, does not inform us precisely concerning her earliest
and original character. From her close association with the Minoan
goddess of Cyprus, she was no doubt worshipped as the source of the
life of plants and animals and men. Also, it is of some value to bear
in mind the later records concerning the worship of Helios at Tyre in
the Roman Imperial period, and of Helios and the thunder-god at
Palmyra, where Adad-Rimmon, the storm-god who was in power among the
western Semites in the earliest period, may have survived till the
beginning of Christianity. We may conclude from all this that in the
oldest period of the western Semite societies the cult of special
nature-deities was a prominent feature of the religion. But even these
may already in the second millennium have acquired a complex of
personal attributes ethical and spiritual. In the later Carthaginian
religion, the personal deities are clearly distinguished from the mere
nature-powers, such as the sun, earth, and moon; and this important
distinction may have arisen long before the date of the document that
proves it.[107.3]

{108}

Of the Hittite gods we may say this much at least, that the monuments
enable us to recognise the thunder-god with the hammer or axe, and in
the striking relief at Ibreez we discern the form of the god of
vegetation and crops, holding corn and grapes. The winged disk, carved
with other doubtful fetich-emblems above the head of the god who is
clasping the priest or king on the Boghaz-Keui relief, is a solar
emblem, borrowed probably from Egyptian religious art. And the Hittite
sun-god was invoked in the Hittite treaty with Rameses II.[108.1]
Whether the mother-goddess was conceived as the personal form of Gaia
is doubtful; her clear affinity with Kybele would suggest this, and in
the Hittite treaty with Rameses II. mentioned above, the goddess
Tesker is called the Mistress of the Mountains, the express title of
the Phrygian Mother, and another “the Mistress of the Soil.”[108.2]
Yet evidently the Hittite religion is too complex to be regarded as
mere nature-worship: the great relief of Boghaz-Keui shows a solemn
and elaborate ritual to which doubtless some spiritual concepts were
attached.

As regards the original ideas underlying the cults of those other
Anatolian peoples who were nearer in geographical position and perhaps
in race to the Aegean peoples, we have no explicit ancient records
that help us to decide for the second millennium. For some of these
various communities the goddess was, as we have seen, the supreme
power. The great Phrygian goddess Kybele is the cult-figure of most
importance for our purpose, and it is possible to divine her original
character with fair certainty.[108.3] In her attributes, functions,
and form, we can discern nothing celestial, {109} solar or lunar; she
was, and remained to the end, a mother-goddess of the earth, a
personal source of and life of fruits, beasts, and man: her favourite
haunt was the mountains, and her earliest image that we know, that
which the Greeks called Niobe on Mount Sipylos, seems like a human
shape emerging from the mountain-side: she loved also the mountain
caverns, which were called after her κύβελα; and according to 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; and Greek poetry and Greek cult definitely
linked her with the Greek Gaia. We gather also from the legend of
Attis and other facts that her power descended to the underworld, and
the spirits of the dead were gathered to her;[109.1] hence the snake
appears as her symbol, carved as an akroterion above her sepulchral
shrine, where she is sculptured with her two lions at Arslan
Kaya--“the Lion Rock in Phrygia”;[109.2] and her counterpart, the
Lydian Mother Hipta, is addressed as χθονίη.[109.3]

In all her aspect and functions she is the double of the great Minoan
mother-goddess described already, whose familiar animals are the lion
and the serpent, who claims worship from the mountain-top, and whose
character is wholly that of a great earth goddess with power doubtless
reaching down to the lower world of the dead. Only from Crete we have
evidence which is lacking in pre-Aryan Phrygia of the presence of a
thunder or sky-god by her side.[109.4]

{110}

Turning our attention now to the early Hellenic world, and to that
part of its religion which we may call Nature-worship, we discern
certain general traits that place it on the same plane in some
respects with the Mesopotamian. Certain of the higher deities show
their power in certain elemental spheres, Poseidon mainly in the
water, Demeter in the land, Zeus in the air. But of none of these is
the power wholly limited to that element: and each has acquired, like
the high gods of Assyria and Babylon and Jahwé of Israel, a complex
anthropomorphic character that cannot be derived, though the old
generation of scholars wearily attempted to derive it, from the
elemental nature-phenomenon. Again, other leading divinities, such as
Apollo, Artemis, Athena, are already in the pre-Homeric period, as far
as we can discern, pure real personalities like Nebo and Asshur,
having no discoverable nature-significance at all. Besides these
higher cults, we discern a vast number of popular local cults of
winds, springs, rivers, at first animistically and then
anthropomorphically imagined. So in Mesopotamia we find direct worship
of canals and the river. Finally, we discern in early Hellas a
multitude of special “functional” divinities or heroes,
“Sondergötter,” like Eunostos, the hero of the harvest: and it may be
possible to find their counterparts in the valley of the
Euphrates.[110.1] We have also the nameless groups of divine
potencies in Hellas, such as the Πραξιδίκαι, Μειλίχιοι, these being
more frequent in the Hellenic than in the Mesopotamian religion, which
presents such parallels as the Annunaki and the Igigi, nameless
daimones of the lower and upper world: and {111} these in both regions
may be regarded as products of animism not yet developed into theism.

But such general traits of resemblance in two developed polytheisms
deceive no trained inquirer; and it would be childish to base a theory
of borrowing on them. What is far more important are the marked
differences in the nature-side of the Greek polytheism, as compared
with the Sumerian-Babylonian. In the latter, the solar-element was
very strong, though perhaps not so omnipresent as some Assyriologists
assure us. On the contrary, in the proto-Hellenic system it was
strikingly weak, so far as we can interpret the evidence. The earliest
Hellenes certainly regarded the Sun as a personal animate being,
though the word Helios did not necessarily connote for them an
anthropomorphic god. But the insignificance of his figure in the
Homeric poems agrees well with the facts of actual cult. As I have
pointed out in the last volume of my _Cults_,[111.1] it was only at
Rhodes that Helios was a great personal god, appealing to the faith
and affections of the people, revered as their ancestor and the author
of their civilisation, and descending, we may believe, from the period
of the Minoan culture[111.2] with which Rhodes was closely associated
in legend. And it appears from the evidence of legend and Minoan art
that sun-worship was of some power in the pre-Hellenic Aegean
civilisation. In the Mycenaean epoch he may have had power in Corinth,
but his cult faded there in the historic age before that of Athena and
Poseidon. The developed Hellene preferred the more personal {112}
deity, whose name did not so obviously suggest a special phenomenon of
nature. And if he inherited or adopted certain solar personages, as
some think he adopted a sun-god Ares from Thrace, he seems to have
transformed them by some mental process so as to obliterate the traces
of the original nature-perception.

Even more significant for our purpose is the comparison of the two
regions from the point of view of lunar-cult. We have sufficiently
noted already the prominence of the moon-god Sin in the Babylonian
pantheon, an august figure of a great religion: and among all the
Semitic peoples the moon was a male personality, as it appears to have
been for the Vedic Indians and other Aryan peoples. The Hellenic
imagination here presents to us this salient difference, that the
personal moon is feminine, and she seems to have enjoyed the scantiest
cult of all the great powers of Nature. Not that anywhere in Greece
she was wholly without worship.[112.1] She is mentioned in a vague
record as one of the divinities to whom νηφάλια, “wineless offerings,”
were consecrated in Athens: she had an ancient place in the aboriginal
religion of Arcadia; of her worship in other places the records are
usually late and insignificant. The great Minoan goddess may have
attracted to herself some lunar significance, but this aspect of her
was not pronounced.

Here, then, is another point at which the theory of early Babylonian
influence in nascent Hellenic religion seriously breaks down. And in
this comparison of Nature-cults it breaks down markedly at two others.
The pantheon of Mesopotamia had early taken on an astral-character.
The primitive Hellenes doubtless had, like other peoples, their
star-myths; and their {113} superstitions were aroused and
superstitious practices evoked by celestial “teratology,” by striking
phenomena, such as eclipses, comets, falling stars.[113.1] 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: such association, where it arose, is
merely a sign of that wave of Oriental influence that moved westward
in the later centuries. The only clear evidences of star-cult in
Hellenic communities that I have been able to find do not disturb this
induction: Lykophron and a late Byzantine author indicate a cult of
Zeus Ἀστέριος in Crete, which cannot, even if real, be interpreted as
direct star-worship:[113.2] at Sinope, a city of Assyrian origin,
named after the Babylonian moon-god, a stone with a late inscription
suggests a cult of Seirios and the constellations;[113.3] and an
Attic inscription of the Roman Imperial epoch, mentions a priest of
the φωσφόροι, whom we must interpret as stellar beings.[113.4] What,
then, must we say about the Dioskouroi, whom we are generally taught
to regard as the personal forms of the morning- and the evening-star?
Certainly, if the astral character of the great Twin-Brethren of the
Hellenes were provedly their original one, the general statement just
put forth would have to be seriously modified. But a careful study of
their cult does not justify the conventional view; and the theory that
Wide has insisted on[113.5] appears to me the only reasonable account
{114} of them, namely, that originally they were heroic “chthonian”
figures, to whom a celestial character came later to be attached: it
is significant that the astral aspect of them is only presented in
comparatively late documents and monuments, not in Homer or the
Homeric hymn, and that their most ancient ritual includes a
“lectisternium,” which properly belonged to heroes and personages of
the lower world.

Lastly, the nature-worship of the Hellenes was pre-eminently concerned
with Mother-earth--with Ge-meter, and this divine power in its varied
personal forms was perhaps of all others the nearest and dearest to
the popular heart: so much of their ritual was concerned directly with
her. And some scholars have supposed, erroneously, I think, but not
unnaturally, that all the leading Hellenic goddesses arose from this
aboriginal animistic idea. We may at least believe this of Demeter and
Kore, the most winning personalities of the higher Hellenic religion.
And even Athena and Artemis, whatever, if any, was their original
nature-significance, show in many of their aspects and much of their
ritual a close affinity to the earth-goddess. But, as I have indicated
above, it is impossible to find in the early Mesopotamian religion a
parallel figure to Ge: though Ishtar was naturally possessed of
vegetative functions--so that, when she disappears below the world,
all vegetation languishes--yet it would be hazardous to say that she
was a personal form of earth: we may rather suspect that by the time
the Semites brought her to Mesopotamia from the West, she had lost all
direct nature-significance, and was wholly a personal individual.

Finally, the cleavage between the two groups of peoples in their
attitude towards the powers of nature is still further marked in the
evolution of certain moral and {115} eschatologic ideas. The concept
of a Ge-Themis, of Earth as the source of righteousness, and of
Mother-earth as the kindly welcomer of the souls of the dead, appears
to have been alien to Mesopotamian imagination, for which, Allatu, the
Queen of the lower world, is a figure wholly terrible.



 CHAPTER VII.
 The Deities as Social-Powers.

{116}

The next important section of our survey is the comparison of the
social and ethical aspects of the religions in the eastern and western
areas. Here again the former warning may be repeated, not to draw rash
conclusions from the observance of mere general points of similarity,
such as occur in the religious systems of all the more advanced
societies of which we have any explicit record.

The idea that religion is merely a concern of the private individual
conscience is one of the latest phenomena in all religious history.
Both for the primitive and the more cultured communities of ancient
history, religion was by a law of its nature a social phenomenon, a
force penetrating all the institutions of the political life, law and
morality. But its precise contribution to the evolution of certain
social products in the various communities is still a question
inviting and repaying much research. It will be interesting to compare
what may be gleaned from Assyriology and the study of Hellenism
bearing on this inquiry, although it may not help us much towards the
solution of our main question.

We may assume of the Mesopotamian as of other peoples, that its
“social origins” were partly religious; only in the valley of the
Euphrates, society had already {117} so far advanced in the fifth
millennium B.C. that the study of its origins will be always
problematic. The deities are already national, having developed far
beyond the narrow tribal limits before we begin to discern them
clearly; we have not to deal with the divinities of clans, phratries,
or septs, but of complex aggregates, such as cities and kingdoms. And
the great cities are already there before our knowledge begins.

In the Sumerian myth of creation, it is the high god himself who,
after settling the order of heaven and earth, immediately constructs
cities such as Borsippa; a passage in Berosus speaks of Oannes, that
is to say, Ea as the founder of cities and temples;[117.1] and the
myths may enshrine the truth that the origin of the Mesopotamian city
was often religious, that the temple was its nucleus. I cannot
discover that this is indicated by the names of any other of the great
cities, Babylon, Borsippa, Sippar, Kutha; but it is shown by the name
of Nineveh and its connection with the Sumerian goddess Nin or Nina,
possibly a form of Ishtar.[117.2] And in the inscription of Sargon
giving the names of the eight doors of his palace, all named after
deities, Ninib is described as the god “who lays the ground-stone of
the city for eternity”;[117.3] also we find designations of
particular cities, as the city of such-and-such a deity.[117.4]
Finally, it may be worth noting in this direction that Nusku the
fire-god, who lights the sacrifices, is called “the City-Founder, the
Restorer of Temples.”[117.5]

The evidence of Anatolia is late, but it tells the same story: Sir
William Ramsay has emphasised the {118} importance for early political
history of such names as Hieroupolis, the City of the Temple,
developing into Hierapolis, the Holy City.[118.1] In Hellas the
evidence is fuller and older of the religious origin of some, at
least, of the πόλεις, for some of the old names reveal the personal
name or the appellative of the divinity. Such are Athenai (the
settlements of Athena); Potniai, “the place of the revered ones”;
Alalkomenai, “the places of Athena Alalkomene”; Nemea, “the sacred
groves of Zeus”; Megara, probably “the shrines of the goddess of the
lower world”; Diades, Olympia and others. The reason of such
development is not hard to seek: the temple would be the meeting-place
of many consanguineous tribes, and its sanctuary would safeguard
intertribal markets, and at the same time demand fortification and
attract a settlement. Mecca, the holy city of Arabia in days long
before and after Islam, had doubtless this origin.[118.2] We have
traces of the same phenomenon in our English names: Preston, for
instance, showing the growth of a city out of a monastery. In the
later history of Hellenism the religious origin of the πόλεις is still
more frequently revealed by its name: the god who leads the colonists
to their new home gives his name to the settlement; hence the very
numerous “Apolloniai.”

But though it is not permissible to dogmatise about the origin of the
great cities in the valley of the Euphrates, we have ample material
supplied by Babylonian-Assyrian monuments and texts of the close
interdependence of Church and State, to illustrate what I remarked
upon in my inaugural lecture, the political character of the pantheon.
This emerges most clearly when we consider {119} the relations of the
monarch to the deity. Of all Oriental autocracies, it may be said with
truth that the instinctive bias of the people to an autocratic system
is a religious instinct: the kingship is of the divine type of which
Dr. Frazer has collected the amplest evidence. And this was certainly
the type of the most ancient kingship that we can discover in the
Mesopotamian region. The ancient kings of the Isin dynasty dared to
speak of themselves as “the beloved consort of Nana.”[119.1] But more
usually the king was regarded as the son or fosterling of the
divinity, though this dogma need not have been given a literal
interpretation, nor did it clash with the well-established proof of a
secular paternity. An interesting example is the inscription of
Samsuilina, the son of Hammurabi, who was reigning perhaps as early as
the latter part of the third millennium:[119.2] the king proclaims,
“I built the wall in Nippur in honour of the goddess Nin, the walls of
Padda to Adad my helper, the wall of Lagab to Sin the god, my
begetter.” The tie of the foster-child was as close as that of actual
sonship; and Assurbanipal is regarded as the foster-child of the
goddess of Nineveh. Nebo himself says to him in that remarkable
conversation between the god and the king that an inscription has
preserved,[119.3] “weak wast thou, O Assurbanipal, when thou sattest
on the lap of the divine Queen of Nineveh, and didst drink from her
four breasts.” Similarly, the early King Lugalzaggisi declares that he
was nourished by the milk of the goddess Ninharsag, and King Gudea
mentions Nina as his mother.[119.4] In an oracle of encouragement
{120} given by the goddess Belit to Assurbanipal, she speaks to him
thus, “Thou whom Belit has borne, do not fear.”[120.1]

Now a few isolated texts might be quoted to suggest that this idea of
divine parentage was not confined to the kings, but that even the
private Babylonian might at times rise to the conception that he was
in a sense the child of God. At least in one incantation, in which
Marduk is commissioned by Ea to heal a sick man, the man is called
“the child of his god”;[120.2] and Ishtar is often designated “the
Mother of Gods and men” and the source of all life on the earth,
human, animal, and vegetative.[120.3] But the incantation points only
to a vague spiritual belief that might be associated with a general
idea that all life is originally divine. We may be sure that the
feeling of the divine life of the king was a much more real and living
belief than was any sense that the individual might occasionally
cherish of his own celestial origin. The king and the god were
together the joint source of law and order. The greatest of the early
Babylonian dynasts, Lugalzaggisi, whose reign is dated near to 4000
B.C., styles himself the vicegerent (Patesi) of Enlil, the earth-god
of Nippur;[120.4] and in early Babylonian contracts, oath was taken
in the names both of the god and the king.[120.5] Hammurabi converses
with Shamash and receives the great code from his hands, even as Moses
received the law from Jahwé or Minos from Zeus. Did any monument ever
express so profoundly the divine origin of the royal authority and the
State institutions as the famous {121} Shamash relief?[121.1] It is
the gods who endow Hammurabi with his various mental qualities: he
himself tells us so in his code, “Marduk sent me to rule men and to
proclaim Righteousness to the world”;[121.2] and he speaks similarly
of the sun-god Shamash: “At the command of Shamash, the great Judge of
Heaven and Earth, shall Righteousness arise up in the land.”[121.3]
He proclaims himself, therefore, the political prophet of the Lord;
and curses with a portentous curse any one who shall venture to
abolish his enactments. The later Assyrian kings have the same
religious confidence: Sargon (B.C. 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.”[121.4] We find them also, the
Assyrian kings, consulting the sun-god by presenting to him tablets
inscribed with questions as to their chances of success in a war, or
the fitness and loyalty of a minister whom they proposed to
appoint.[121.5]

And this religion affords a unique illustration of the intimacy of the
bond between the king as head of the State and the divine powers. The
gods are the rulers of destiny: and in the Hall of Assembly at Esagila
each year the Council of the Gods under the presidency of Nebo fixed
the destiny of the king and the Empire for the ensuing year.[121.6]
This award must have signified the writing down of oracles concerning
the immediate future, and no doubt the questions were prepared by the
king and the priests. The good king {122} who was devoted to the
service of the gods was glorified by the priesthood in much the same
terms as are applied in the Old Testament to the king who was devoted
to the service of Jahwé: in the cult-inscription of Sippar in the
British Museum,[122.1] Nabupaladdin, who reigned 884-860 B.C., and
who re-established the cult of Shamash, is praised by the priest as
“the called of Marduk, the darling of Anu and Ea, the man wholly after
the heart of Zarpanit.”

The king, then, is the head of the church, himself a high-priest, as
Gudea was high-priest of Ningirsu, and as the Assyrian kings described
themselves as the priests of Asshur, the professional priesthood
serving as their expert advisers and ministers. Was he actually
worshipped in his life? This is maintained by some Assyriologists, and
certain evidence points to the practice. In the conversation between
Nebo and Assurbanipal, to which reference has been made, the god
promises to the king, “I will raise up thy head and erect thy form in
the temple of Bit-Mashmash”;[122.2] the names of old Babylonian kings
are marked with the ideogram of divinity, and Professor
Jastrow[122.3] mentions an inscription of the fourth millennium B.C.
in which Gudea ordains sacrifices to his own statues. A document is
quoted by Mr. Johns,[122.4] recording the dedication of a piece of
land by a private citizen “for his life,” that is to say, to bring a
blessing on himself, to the King Lugalla who is called a god, and to
his consort. But Zimmern[122.5] considers that the direct deification
of kings was a practice of the earliest period only, and was never
pushed so far as it was in Egypt. {123} There is reason to suppose
that the king or patesi who controlled Nippur had alone the right to
be deified, Nippur being the original centre of the Sumerian
religion.[123.1]

The sacred character of the king implied that he could exercise
miraculous functions or put forth divine “mana” on behalf of his
people. We find him in the earlier period reciting incantations in the
dark of the moon to avert evil from the land.[123.2] One of the kings
of the dynasty of Ur assumed the title “the exorciser of the holy tree
of Eridu,” which may point to certain magic functions performed by the
king on the sacred tree.[123.3]

This political aspect of religion appears pronounced also in other
early communities of the Semitic race; the high god or goddess is the
head of the State; the people of Moab are the sons and daughters of
Chemosh; the goddess of Askalon and Sidon wears the mural crown. And
doubtless the early Semitic kingship was of the same sacred character
elsewhere as in Mesopotamia. The King of Moab on the Mesha Stone calls
himself the son of Chemosh; and Ben-Hadad, King of Damascus, is the
son of Hadad.[123.4] In the Aramaic inscription found at
Sinjerli,[123.5] the gods Hadad, El-Reschef, and Shamash are regarded
as special protectors of the kings. One of the last kings of Sidon,
Tabnit, in the inscription on his sarcophagus, places his priestly
office before his royal title, “I, Tabnit, priest of Astarte, King of
the Sidonians.”[123.6] King of Byblos or Gobal, in {124} the fifth
century B.C., regards himself as called to his high office by the
Baalat, the goddess of the State, and prays that she may bless him and
give him length of days “because he is a just king”:[124.1] and
mention has already been made of Phoenician monuments showing the King
of Sidon seated with Astarte and embraced by her. The claim to actual
godship may have really been made by the King of Tyre, as the prophet
Ezekiel twice reproaches him with the blasphemy: “Thou hast said, I am
a God, I sit in the Seat of God, in the midst of the Seas.”[124.2]

The Hittite monuments and the text of the Hittite treaty with Rameses
II. reveal a religion of the same political type. The gods are not
only witnesses to the political contract, but the great Hittite god of
heaven puts his own seal to it; and the last few lines of the text
contain a careful description of that seal, which reveals the
sacrosanct character of the Hittite kingship; for the design chosen
was a group of the god and the Hittite king whom he is embracing. The
same significance belongs to certain scenes in the great relief of
Boghaz-Keui: on one of the slabs we discern an armed god with his arm
round the neck and his hand grasping the hand of a smaller figure,
whose emblem and dress suggest a sacerdotal rather than a royal
personality. But the happy coincidence of the description in the
Hittite-Egyptian treaty proves that this is no mere priest, but a
Hittite King[124.3] of sacred function and semi-divine {125}
character in affectionate union with his god; it suggests also a date
not far from the thirteenth century for the Boghaz-Keui relief; and it
makes unnecessary and improbable the mystic explanation of this scene
that Dr. Frazer has ventured.[125.1] At this early period of the
Hittite empire, the kingship may not yet have been detached from the
priesthood; even later at Comana, in the same country of Cappadocia,
the priests and the kings were drawn from the same stock.[125.2] One
more detail bearing perhaps on the present subject may be noted in
this monument at Boghaz-Keui: the goddess wears a crenelated cap, that
reminds us somewhat of the later mural or turreted crown borne by
Cybele and Astarte. May we suppose that this was the origin of those,
and had the same political significance?

Again, it may be noted that in Phrygia itself, the land of the
goddess, we have vague evidence in the legend of Midas that the early
kings called by that name were regarded as the sons of Kybele.[125.3]

As regards the Minoan-Mycenaean religion and its relation to the
State, the excavations on the site of Knossos suggest that there at
least the whole of the state-cult was in the hands of the kings; for
no public temples have been found, but only shrines in the palaces.
This is the strongest proof of the sacral power of the Minoan ruler,
and we can well believe that he was deified after his death; nor need
we wholly discredit that vague statement of Tzetzes that the old kings
of Crete were given the divine name of Zeus [Δίες].[125.4] {126}
There is value, then, in Homer’s picture of Minos as the friend of God
who holds converse with him.

The political significance of Greek religion impresses itself upon us
at a thousand points and under endless aspects. The deity belongs not
to the individual but to the tribe; and as in the earliest Hellenic
period the tribes were conscious of a certain community of blood,
their earliest religion appears at many points to have transcended the
tribal limits, and certain deities have developed a national
character. Now evidence--vague and legendary, it is true, but valuable
when compared with the facts of other communities--compels us to
conceive of the early Hellenic kings having the same character as
those that we have observed in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Crete; Homer
regards them as the god-born, who can exercise religious functions,
whose decrees have the force of θέμις. The fire that burnt on their
hearth was sacred and embodied the life of the community; and in the
later period the perpetual fire that was maintained in the Prytaneum
of the πόλις represented the ancient sacred hearth-fire of the
king.[126.1] Also, when the monarchy was generally abolished, many of
the cities felt compelled to retain the title of βασιλεύς for the
priest who carried on the religious functions as the shadow of the
ancient priest-king. But these similar phenomena are of little
ethnographic value. Primitive Hellenism was in these respects only
maintaining its own inherited traditions, and following the same lines
of early social evolution as those of other communities. On the other
hand, the distinctness of developed Hellenism is the secular
independence of its intellect; and even in its earliest {127} mythic
period we can believe that the divine character of the Basileus was
less impressively felt, his association with the divinity less
intimate, than was the case in Mesopotamia. Neither Agamemnon nor his
predecessors would speak, we may be sure, with the same astonishing
self-consciousness of their divine inspiration as the earliest and
later kings of Babylon and Assyria.

Returning to the Mesopotamian societies, we find much other evidence
of the dependence of State-institutions upon cult and religious ideas.
Justice and the integrity of the Law were virtues consecrated by old
Babylonian religion. One of the most striking of the Shamash hymns
exhibits the sun-god as the guardian of right judgment--“the wicked
judge thou makest to behold bondage--him who receives not a bribe, who
has regard to the weak, shall be well-pleasing to Shamash, he shall
prolong his life”: “Shamash hates those who falsify boundaries and
weights.”[127.1] The respect for the rights of property to which the
latter phrase alludes, was maintained by the force of religious
sanctions. The King Asurbanipal declares that he has restored to the
Babylonians their fields that had been wrongfully taken away, “for
fear of Bel and Nebo.”[127.2] A number of inscribed Babylonian
boundary-stones have been found with symbols of the various high gods
carved upon them, with invocations in their name to deter trespassers,
or those who would remove their neighbour’s landmark.[127.3] One of
these is marked with a curse as follows:[127.4] “May Ninib, the Lord
of Boundaries, deprive him of {128} his son the water-pourer”--meaning
that the man who violates the boundaries shall leave no son behind him
to perform the funeral rites. Probably other examples of this practice
are to be found in non-Hellenic Asia Minor; at present I can only
quote one, a late Phrygian inscription, which, however, may testify to
an early Phrygian religious function, on a slab with the divine name
Ὁροφύλαξ, “Boundary-guardian,” inscribed beneath a carved
relief-figure of the god Men bearing a club.[128.1] In Greece, as is
well known, religion contributed the same aid to the evolution of the
law of private property in land; the boundary is put under the
protection of Zeus Ὅριος, a power similar to the Latin Jupiter
Terminus, or of Hermes Ἑπιτέρμαιος.[128.2] In this function they are
regarded as nether-deities, whose divinity is latent in the soil. But
though Hellas may have borrowed from Babylon its system of
land-measurement, it did not need to borrow this religious idea and
practice. For these are widespread over the world: in the Teutonic
north the rights of the owner were sanctified by carrying holy fire
from the hearth round the boundary; and in savage modern societies by
the use of the terrible weapon of the tabu and by the erection of
fetiches on the boundary mark which serve as ἀποτρόπαια.[128.3] We
have here a salient example of religion as a constructive force in
framing a great social institution, while the motive desire is secular
and purely human.

But we must not, I think, hope to be able to trace with any exactness
the part played by religion in constructing the various departments of
the social fabric {129} of Babylonia; for when we get our first
glimpse of that society it is already so far advanced, so complex in
its civilisation, in a sense so modern, that its embryology is likely
to escape us. Nevertheless, it is interesting for our purpose to study
the earliest material, the code of Hammurabi, to watch what light it
throws on the correlation of religious and secular life.

Some parts of it are missing, but we may be allowed to pass a
temporary judgment on that which is preserved, and which appears to be
the greater part of the whole corpus.[129.1] The code, as I have
mentioned, is inspired by the god, safeguarded by the god, and the
legislation is in that sense theocratic; but as compared, for
instance, with the Jewish books of the Law, it impresses us as the
work of a cool-headed lawyer, of secular utilitarian principles,
bringing legal acumen to bear on the problems of a complex society. At
certain points it is still on the barbaric plane: the principle of “an
eye for an eye” is enacted; the sense of individual responsibility for
wrong-doing is not yet so far developed but that vicarious punishment
is still allowed; a man’s son or daughter might be put to death for
his own offence. But in many respects it reveals an advanced moral and
intellectual view, and the religious atmosphere is absent where we
should most expect to find an infusion of it. In the enactments
dealing with the fees due to a physician, we seem to discern that
medicine has become a free and secular science. Still more important
for our purpose are the clauses concerning homicide, for it is
particularly in regard to homicide that religious feeling has been
most operative in the {130} early legislation of society, and the
evolution of our modern morality concerning this offence has been at
times retarded by religion. Only one clause in the code happens to
deal with deliberate murder, and only murder in special circumstances,
those in which Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon: Hammurabi would have
impaled Clytemnestra: a few other clauses are concerned with culpable
homicide and unintentional. Hammurabi being himself a master-builder,
is severe with bad architects who build houses so weakly that they
fall in and kill the owners: in such a case he kills the architect.
But he is singularly equitable and mild with a man who is drawn into a
quarrel in which blows are passed, and who unthinkingly wounds or
kills his opponent; if he can take an oath that he acted “without
knowledge or without will,” he has only to pay the physician if the
man is wounded, and half a mina of silver if the man is killed and was
of free birth. Here there is no mention of the blood-feud, and
Babylonian society seems wholly to have escaped from that dangerous
principle of tribal barbarism.[130.1] Neither is there any hint of
the inherent impurity of all bloodshed, whatever is the manner of the
shedding; and it seems that this society was no longer in bondage to
that religious feeling, to which our modern moral sense concerning
murder is in many ways indebted, but which is often obstructive of
legal and ethical progress, and which coloured so deeply the early
Judaic and Hellenic law of homicide. Further, we note that Hammurabi’s
code has come to allow the consideration of motives {131} and
extenuating circumstances; and in this vital respect it ranks with
modern civilised legislation. Between such a society and the
proto-Hellenic community, at least in regard to the view of homicide,
there was a great gulf fixed.

But for the present let us pursue the code further. Another crime that
early society regards with religious horror, and of which religion
always takes cognisance, is incest. The enactments of the code deal
only with three cases: incest with daughter, mother, and stepmother;
in the first, the sinner is driven from the land, probably into
perpetual exile; in the second, both parties are burned alive; in the
third, he is merely driven from the paternal house. The first two
punishments reveal, I think, religious feeling, stronger in the second
case than in the first: the sinner pollutes the land, therefore the
pollution must be purged by his flight, or when most deadly must be
purged away by fire; for execution by burning had often the religious
significance of a holocaust. Still it is only by surmise that we
detect religious colour in the code at this point: in fact, it emerges
clearly only in a few clauses. We note that the code allows of
expurgation by oath-taking; so did the early Greeks and our own
forefathers, and the practice is not distinctive of any particular
people or group. The code allows the ordeal in certain cases, as did
the Greek, and as probably every community has done at a certain stage
of religious feeling; also civilised Babylon countenanced trials for
witchcraft, and enacted a similar water-ordeal to that which prevailed
in England till fairly recent times.

One clause is of interest as showing that Hammurabi was not afraid of
any opposition from the priesthood if he wished to tax Church
property; for he enacts that {132} the ransom of his captured feudal
followers (about whom he is particularly thoughtful) “shall be paid
out of the property of the temple nearest to the place where they were
taken prisoners.”[132.1] But the most interesting part of the code
from the religious point of view, are the enactments concerning a
class of women who are devoted to the service of religion, sisters or
wives, as they are here called, of Marduk: but it will be more
convenient to consider these later on when the question of ritual is
dealt with.

Apart from this great document, I do not know if further evidence is
forthcoming of the precise influence of religion on the social system
of Babylonia. The two spheres may once have been closely
interdependent; but we can see from the earliest legal contracts that
law had already freed itself from religion in the main; the judge is a
secular authority;[132.2] the scribe who draws up the contracts is a
professional notary, and it is not clear that he had any necessary
connection with the temples;[132.3] we only hear of certain elders
who assisted the judge, many of whom were temple officials or members
of the guild of Shamash votaries;[132.4] also, we find trials taking
place in the temples, especially the temple of Shamash at Sippara,
where the legal judgment was called “the judgment of Shamash in the
house of Shamash.”[132.5] Much light has yet to come, no doubt, from
Babylon, and new light perhaps from Anatolia, to illuminate the part
played by religion in the evolution of society. We would wish to know
more concerning the religious side of family institutions, whether,
for instance, there was any direct cult of the family hearth to which
the Hellenes owed so much. Robertson Smith definitely denies that
{133} any of the Semitic races knew of such an institution; and he is
very probably right, for it belongs more naturally to the colder
climates, where the fixed and carefully placed hearth is a necessary
centre of the dwelling-room, than to the hotter, where the inhabitants
could be content in winter with a movable brazier. Yet one text at
least 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, which contains a litany of absolution from
sins, we find the phrase, “May the hearth of the house deliver you and
absolve you,”[133.1] but the same litany speaks also of the canals as
deified. And we may value these two examples of that polydaimonism to
which we could find parallels in early Hellas. But this evidence does
not point to any established and regulated hearth-worship which might
serve as the religious bond of family morality. More than one
inscription, however, attests the worship of a family house-god
(ilu-biti), to whom it seems a small domestic chapel was
consecrated.[133.2] Similarly, we have in Hellas Zeus Ἑρκεῖος and
Ζεὺς Κτήσιος. And the Babylonian ilu-biti is mentioned, in association
with a divinity of the street, ila-sûki,--a name which reminds us of
Apollo Ἀγυιεύς. Only, these household and street-divinities in Babylon
may have been mere “daimones” rather than θεοί; nor is it clear
whether these family cults were ancestral, the heritage of a
particular clan, or whether they were merely consecrated to the
personal protective deity of the householder, or what part they played
in the family organisation, for instance, in the {134}
marriage-ceremonies, births, and adoptions. So far as I have been able
to study them, the Babylonian litanies and hymns seem rarely to
reflect the religious side of the family life[134.1]; they are
prompted by the needs of the city and the empire, or by the emotional
crises of the individual soul. The legal contracts preserved on the
brick tablets throw some light on the forms of the marriage ceremony,
which appears to have been performed usually in a registration-office
rather than a church. There must surely have been also some religious
side to it; but the only evidence, so far as I am aware, is a very
curious and doubtful document that has been published by Dr. Pinches,
containing details of a religious ceremony which appears to be part of
a bridal.[134.2] I will not quote the quaint and bizarre formulae, as
the renderings are said to be highly conjectural: if they prove
correct, one may judge that the service belongs to a highly advanced
religion; but I cannot adduce any parallel to it from other peoples.
As for the ritual or religious feeling connected with adoption or
birth, I am not aware that the documents have so far disclosed
anything: it is stated vaguely by Peiser, in his sketch of Babylonian
society, that adoption at Babylon might be prompted by a religious
motive, namely, by the desire of the childless parents to have an heir
who might continue the ancestor-worship of the family. But no document
is quoted in proof of this; and it is very doubtful if we ought to
speak of Babylonian ancestor-worship.[134.3] We may suspect that the
writer has been misled by the {135} well-known facts of Vedic,
Hellenic, and Roman family cult.

In this, as in other respects, we may feel how advanced, modern and
secular, was Babylonian society. No trace has appeared as yet of the
tribal or phratric system; the family is the unit of the State, but
individualism is much developed.

On the other hand, the function of religion as a constructive force in
early Greek society, in the evolution of tribal and intertribal law,
is more obvious and transparent, for in this land we are fortunate
enough to catch glimpses of civilised society in its making, which are
denied to us in Mesopotamia. Hellenic religion penetrated every domain
and department of Hellenic life to an even greater degree than did
Babylonian religion the society of Babylon. And yet the Greek mind as
it develops becomes pronouncedly secular, at least in comparison with
the Oriental. The contradiction is only apparent. The Hellene used
religion as an instrument for constructing his social order, for
utilitarian ends, as a serviceable minister that could rarely, and
never for long, establish a tyranny. He even used it to assist and
glorify his sports, yet he varied and arranged these according to his
pleasure. The detrimental tendency of religion to petrify custom was
less marked in his midst than elsewhere; as usual, it often lagged
behind in the progress of the race, yet it followed the progress on
the whole, and often assisted it.

I cannot here give a detailed account of the social functions of Greek
religion; and some of its more interesting phenomena I have tried to
analyse in detail in my _Hibbert Lectures_ and in various chapters of
my _Cults_: one of the most important of the special questions, the
social or political influence of the cults of ancestors, {136} entered
into the course that I delivered last year. I will only attempt here a
brief indication of the salient facts that will repay special study,
confining myself as far as possible to those that belong to the
proto-Hellenic period. Our knowledge, of course, of the relation of
religion to the social order of life, law, and morality in the second
millennium in Greece, is only dim and hypothetical: here and there
Homer affords us glimpses; for the rest, we have legends and cult
evidence which must be carefully and tactfully used. I have already
touched on the religious character of the ancient kingship, and the
evidence of the religious origin of some of the Hellenic πόλεις. It is
probable that some of the deities had already in the proto-Hellenic
period a political character, as deities of the assembly or the
“agora.” Thus Apollo Ἀγυιεύς, at first a divine leader of the
invasion, becomes, when the conquerors settle on the land, at once a
divinity of the city; and some scholars would derive his very name
from the ἀπέλλα, the political assembly. In order to ensure the
settlement and development of law, the debates and judgments in the
market-place must be secured from armed disturbance such as frequently
threatened the peace of the Icelandic Thing: therefore, in pre-Homeric
days the market-place was consecrated as a holy place, and the elders
who give judgment “hold in their hands the sceptres of clear-voiced
heralds.”[136.1] These words probably refer to the κηρύκειον, the
badge of Hermes, the god of the market-place, which as a religious
amulet confers inviolability on the bearer. The same fetich-badge,
giving security to the herald and ambassador, assisted the development
of international law; and the only spiritual sanction of treaties
{137} and covenants with other communities was a religious one, the
force of the oath sworn and the ordeal-ritual which accompanied the
conclusion of a treaty or contract. The temple on the borderland of
different tribes served as a secure place for intertribal intercourse,
commercial and festive, and might become the centre of an Amphictyony,
or federal union of tribes. The constitution of the Delphic
Amphictyony points back to the proto-Hellenic period. The oracles were
beginning in the second millennium to play a political part, as they
did with greater effect in the first. For Zeus was already at Dodona,
and Apollo, the political god _par excellence_, at Pytho.

Our indications are slight and dim; but the poet of the _Odyssey_
seems to be aware that an ὀμφή or oracular deliverance might be used
to dethrone a royal dynasty.[137.1] The dedication of a tithe of the
captives taken in war to Apollo was a custom connected with the
earliest settlements and migration, for Apollo disposed of his
captives by colonising them on some vacant land. The practice appears
to have been a very early one, for this is the legend of the
pre-Dorian settlement of the Dryopes in the Peloponnese;[137.2] also
there is evidence for the institution in pre-historic Greece of that
religious system of colonisation which the Latins called the Ver
Sacrum.[137.3] In fact, the religion of Apollo, especially the common
worship of Apollo Πυθαεύς, served more than any other cult as a bond
of connection between the independent communities already--I
believe--in pre-Homeric days; and to this earliest epoch may belong
that interesting ritual of the Hyperborean offerings brought by
sacrosanct Hellenic pilgrims down from the north along the primeval
routes of the Aryan immigration.[137.4]

{138}

The narrower systems of family and phratry tell the same story of the
constructive power of religion. The primitive grouping into septs and
phratries and tribal subdivisions, of which the traces are not yet
discovered in the civilisation of Babylon, has left its deep imprint
on historic Greek society; and religion is intimately interwoven with
the domestic and phratric cults, not only in that these are much
concerned with worship of heroes and ancestors, but that the high
divinities also, Zeus Φράτριος, Athena Φρατρία and Ἀπατουρία, take
these institutions under their charge. Hence all adoptions and
admissions of new members into the phratry had to be performed at the
altar. The marriage ceremony was a religious ritual--in Attica, at
least, a religious communion like the Roman Confarreatio,[138.1] and
the mutual duties of parents and children, kinsmen and tribesmen, were
consecrated by the early ideas concerning the divine nature.[138.2]

A festival such as the Ἀπατούρια, instituted to cement a social
organisation, and to all appearances of great antiquity, has nothing
like it in the Babylonian festival calendar, so far as I am aware; and
again, to the many political and social titles of the Hellenic
divinities such as Πολιεύς, Ἀγοραῖος, Πάνδημος, Βουλαῖος, it would be
hard to find parallels in the cult-terminology of Babylon.

In considering a religion under its social or legal aspects, the laws
concerning homicide will often yield telling evidence. There is a
whole aeon of development dividing the code of Hammurabi and the
Homeric and pre-Homeric theory in this matter. The Babylonian had
arrived, as we have seen,[138.3] in some indefinitely {139} early
period at the conception of murder as a crime against the whole State,
at what we may call the advanced secular point of view. In Greece that
conception is post-Homeric: the Homeric and pre-Homeric societies were
still in the stage of law in which homicide is treated as a private
affair of the kinsmen, a matter to be settled by the blood-feud or
weregild. Only in certain cases it was a sin, namely, when the slain
person was a suppliant or a kinsman. The religious feeling in respect
of the first partly arises from the old Aryan Hearth-worship;[139.1]
in respect of the second, it is associated with a primitive tribal
horror of shedding kindred blood: and, though the feeling of the
religious sanctity of the guest, the suppliant, and the kinsman was
strong in Semitic communities, I cannot find any special Babylonian
cult that is analogous to that of Zeus Μειλίχιος, or Ἱκέσιος, or
Ξένιος. I have traced elsewhere the development in the ninth and
eighth centuries of the more civilised legislation concerning homicide
in Greece, and I have tried to indicate the precise part played by
religion in aiding the evolution:[139.2] to get to the facts one must
specially study the worship of Athena and Apollo. I have connected it
with a growing sense of the impurity of bloodshed, which might express
itself in a definite religious way, as fear of the ghost or of the
offended deity. It is open to us to explain this increased
sensitiveness 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 Mesopotamia until we find evidence of
purifications from bloodshed as a common ritual in Babylonian
religion, and the impurity of bloodshed an underlying {140} principle
of the Babylonian law of murder. But, as 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 seems wholly a native and independent product of the Hellenic
spirit, and reflected the characteristically Hellenic forms of civic
life.



 CHAPTER VIII.
 Religion and Morality.

{141}

The comparison must also consider the relation in these various
societies between religion and morality, both social and individual.
From this point of view, as we are dealing with the second millennium
only, it must be a comparison mainly between the Mesopotamian and the
Hellenic; for except for a few Hittite letters that reveal little,
there is no evidence concerning our races of the west of Asia Minor,
since monuments can scarcely be direct witnesses concerning ethics; at
least, the Asia Minor monuments are not, and we must await the further
discovery and interpretation of Hittite literature. For the
proto-Hellenic period also, it may be said, we have no explicit and
direct evidence. But we have Homer, whose poems belong to the end of
that period and the beginning of the second; and we cannot suppose
that the average morality that they represent had all grown up in the
century before them, still less that Homer had discovered it as an
original teacher. Therefore, cautiously and critically handled, his
poems throw some light on the moral facts of the centuries behind
them. There is also some evidence to be gleaned from the rich field of
Greek mythology and cult; only we must realise that we rarely can
determine the date of the rise of an old Hellenic legend or the
institution of an old Hellenic cult. The Mesopotamian evidence, {142}
then, is direct and explicit, depending solely on the right
interpretation of documents; the Hellenic evidence concerning the
earliest period is indirect and often hypothetical.

A careful study of all the sources will allow this induction, that the
deities of this period in both societies are on the side of whatever
morality is current, inspiring it, protecting it, and avenging the
breach of it; we are dealing, in fact, with a religion of personal
moral powers. Concerning the Mesopotamian, this is a trite observation
to make; the most superficial glance of a few hymns confirms it.
Shamash is the great god of justice, the protector of the weak; Enlil
“destroyeth the evil-minded”;[142.1] Ishtar judges the cause
according to right--she maintains the right of the oppressed and the
downcast; Righteousness and Judgment are the sons of Shamash.
Ga-tum-duga, “she who produces good,” is an appellative of
Bau.[142.2] And yet this is not the whole account. The destructive
and evil character of some of the deities in Mesopotamia occasionally
appears in the hymns, and is expressed apparently in certain titles.
This might be the case at times when those deities are addressed that
were powers of death and the lower world; for instance, Nergal, the
lord of destruction; Isum, a little-known deity to whom a phrase is
attached that is said to mean “the exalted murderer.”[142.3] And this
might be explained by the fact that these powers personified, as it
were, the baneful forces of nature, or, as perhaps in the case of
Martu, whom Jeremias cites as one of the evil gods, were
aliens.[142.4] {143} We find also the name of an obscure deity,
“Ira,” who was a god of pestilence, and at times identified with
Nergal;[143.1] but that a direct cult was attached to him in this
baneful character is not shown. And it is unlikely that any Babylonian
deity was worshipped definitely as an evil power: moral speculation
could always explain the evil that he appeared to work as a punishment
for sin or as righteous vengeance on the enemy; that is to say, the
evil element becomes moralised, and the worshipper is always convinced
that the god can become good to him. Thus in the same context Nergal
is called the “Lord of Destruction,” and yet he is “the god of the
little ones, he of the beneficent visage.”[143.2] The dark storm-god
Adad, before whose wrath the high gods rise up in terror, the pitiless
one, can yet be implored as “the merciful among the great
gods.”[143.3] This transformation, by which a destructive
nature-power could become a benevolent being, follows a law of
religious psychology, which expresses itself in the quasi-magical
phraseology of prayer. The worshipper wishes to get some good from his
deity or some mercy: therefore he calls him good and merciful, feeling
that such spell-words constrain the god to be so; and belief will
arise from the continual repetition of formulae. Therefore, by the
time our record begins, all the deities that the Babylonian and
Assyrian worshipped are beneficent on the whole: the Epic of Creation
supposes the existence of primeval bad powers, but these had been
conquered, and some pardoned, by Marduk. The evil personal agencies
that remained active were demons, and these {144} were not worshipped,
but exorcised or averted by the good gods.[144.1]

And this may serve as a fairly accurate description of the moral
character of Greek religion at that stage of development where Homer
presents it to us. The high deities are worshipped on the whole as
moral beings and as beneficent: that is, as the guardians of the
social morality of the period, whatever that was. The usual popular
writer does not perceive this, because he is always liable to the
error of confusing 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 imagination and
statement of Homer at times fall below the level of contemporary cult,
at times rise above it. At any rate, he is evidently addressing a
world of religious-minded people, who impute their own moral ideals to
their highest divinities, especially to their high god Zeus. Νέμεσις,
the social feeling of indignation which is at the psychic basis of
social morality, is the common emotion excited both in gods and men by
the same acts; and though much of Greek religion was still not yet
penetrated with morality, the higher personal gods were generally
regarded as on the side of righteousness. One or two Greek myths, such
as that of Prometheus, as Hesiod narrates it, might suggest that the
deity was not necessarily conceived as the friend, but sometimes even
as the enemy, of man. But Hesiod’s narrative does not strike us as
primitive or {145} popular; and, at any rate, such a view is
inconsistent with the earliest stage of worship that we can discover
or surmise. The poets and philosophers might dislike Ares; but the
Hellenes, who worshipped him, did not worship him as an evil god, with
apotropaeic rites: nor is it proved or likely that any deity to whom
actual service was paid, was regarded as in his nature maleficent by
his worshippers. The dread powers of the lower world were also givers
of vegetation. The Erinyes had scarcely a recorded cult, and their
wrath was moralised as righteous indignation; nor was ghost-cult, when
it arose, merely a service of terror and aversion. It is a striking
confirmation of the view here expressed, that among the very long list
of cult-appellatives attached to the Greek divinities, some of which
have a moral value, there are only two doubtful examples of an evil
connotation attaching to the word.[145.1]

We may affirm generally, then, that the Mesopotamian and Hellenic
religions are more or less on the same level of thought in respect of
the moral and beneficent character of the deities. But careful study
of the Hellenic will give us the impression that the terrible and
destructive power of divinity is far less emphasised by cult than it
was in the Eastern Semitic world. Every deity might be dangerous if
neglected, and certainly would be if insulted. The idea of the
“jealous god” is non-moral, and can easily become immoral: that is, it
tends to divorce the conception of the divine character from the
purely human moral ideal. And this idea is palpable not only in the
Hellenic and Mesopotamian, but still more in the Judaic religion, and
our own religion is not yet delivered from it. But apart {146} from
this, the Hellenic imagination, so far as we can discern it, even in
its infancy, did not construct manifold forms of fear out of the
dangerous powers in the nature-world, and worship them with the higher
forms of cult. We do not come upon aboriginal thunder gods and storm
gods _per se_ (I use the term “god” advisedly): Zeus the thunderer had
been civilised and moralised before Homer’s time. Poseidon had always
his wild side as god of storms and earthquakes; and to the end he
remains rather more a non-moral nature-power than the others; but
destructive force was certainly not the centre of his personality, and
in the pre-historic days he had become the father of the Minyan and
Ionic people, and the guardian of their family life. The wind-powers
might develop into beneficent gods or ancestors; or might occasionally
be regarded from the lower standpoint of polydaimonism, and averted by
magical means. The higher Hellenic religion did not admit such beings
as “Ira,” the god of pestilence, or a special god of storms or
earthquakes, and it is far less than the Babylonian a religion of
fear. This difference will emerge more clearly in the study of ritual.

One more difference strikes us in comparing the ethical character of
the two religions. The Greek high divinity is a moral being, but not
every divinity was moralised to such an extent as were the higher
powers of Mesopotamia. A few Hellenic deities remain ethically
undeveloped and crude, Ares, for instance, and in a certain sense
Hestia. A salient example is the contrast between the fire-god
Hephaistos and the Babylonian-Sumerian Nusku or Girru.[146.1] Both
are elemental powers of fire, both are therefore concerned with the
arts of metalwork; but Hephaistos remains a handicraftsman, and {147}
has little or nothing to do with moral life; whereas the Babylonian
deity acquires an exalted moral and spiritual character. Dionysos
becomes a most potent force in the later Hellenic world; 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 with moral attributes in 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 the various moral
attributes specially attributed to the divinities. Such a study would
demand two long treatises on Greek and Babylonian ethics. I have only
time and power to indicate here a few points. The peoples of the old
world show many general points of resemblance with each other in their
moral ideas, and as compared with ourselves many salient points of
difference. And moral statistics have rarely any value for proving the
influence of one race upon another. As the Babylonian society was more
complex in the second millennium than was the Hellenic, so must its
morality have been; but it will not be found futile from the point of
view of our main purpose to compare the two in respect of some special
virtues, as we have already compared them incidentally in regard to
the ideas about homicide.

The idea of the sin of perjury belongs to the earliest stage of
religious ethic, and is the starting-point of much moral evolution. It
is magical in its origin; for the oath-taker enters into communion
with the divinity, by touching some sacred object or eating sacred
food charged with divine power, which, being now within him, will
blast him if he forswears. This dangerous power becomes interpreted as
the anger {148} of the deity by whom the person swears falsely. Hence
the belief arose in early Mesopotamia and Greece, and generally in the
cults of personal gods, that they punish perjury as a dire offence:
such punishment will fall on the community or individual, and often on
both: therefore a social moral instinct arises against perjury. This
might develop into a moral idea among a progressive people that
truthfulness, quite apart from the ritual of the oath, was dear to God
in any case, and was therefore a religious virtue. And of this
religious virtue attaching to truthfulness, however it came to attach,
we have evidence in a Babylonian ritual of confession; before the evil
demon can be exorcised, the priest asked certain questions of the
penitent, and twice he asks, “Has he said, yea for nay, and nay for
yea?”[148.1] But in no Hellenic record have I ever been able to find
a religious parallel to this. The Hellenic religious spirit was most
sensitive in respect to perjury, and no religion 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 of hell the man
who says one thing with his tongue and hides another thing in his
heart.[148.2] This is the voice of northern honour, but it has no
religious import.

The ideas connected with perjury have this further value for the
history of ethics, that they contributed much to the growth of
international morality. It is {149} often supposed that the earliest
morality is merely tribal or clannish, and that in respect of the
alien it is nonexistent; but this account of morality is false
wherever perjury is found to be a sin. For one great occasion for
oath-taking is a treaty or a contract with an alien power. And Homer
is our witness that it was considered an immoral act for either
Achaeans or Trojans to break their mutual oath. And this early idea of
international morality inspires the Tel-El-Amarna correspondence and
the Hittite treaty with Rameses. International morality also includes
the duty of hospitality, and the pre-Homeric world had developed this
moral sense strongly, and no doubt through the aid of religion; the
stranger who puts himself into communion with Hestia, the holy hearth,
or with Zeus Xenios, has a moral right to protection, and the
abduction of Helen was regarded as a sin on the part of Paris against
Zeus the god of the guest-right. I have not yet been able to find a
cult-concept in Babylonian religion parallel to that of Zeus Xenios,
or any reference to hospitality as a sacred duty; yet we know that
this was and is as highly regarded by some Semitic races as it ever
was by the Hellenic. We may suspect, however, that as Babylonian
society was in many respects very modern and complex, the religious
sanction of hospitality had decayed.

Looking now at the moral code as regulating the relations of members
of the same tribe or community, we cannot doubt that clan-morality was
already highly developed in the proto-Hellenic period: the rights and
duties of kinsmen are the basis of this morality, and these were
consecrated by the worship around the altar of Zeus “in the
courtyard,” which may have been a primitive religious gathering-place
for the kinsfolk of the early Aryan household. Homer is our first
witness for the {150} cult of Zeus Ἑρκεῖος,[150.1] but it is evident
that it had been long in existence before his time. The earliest moral
duty that the tie of kinship imposes is the maintenance of peace and
goodwill, and as the kindreds grow into a political community, this
becomes the basis of political morality and the corner-stone of the
religion of the city. The Homeric age, and probably their
predecessors, have attained this ethical religious idea; and though
Homer is the first to give voice to it, we will not suppose that he
discovered it: “outcast from clan, from holy law, and holy hearth is
he who longs for bitter battle among the people of his own
township.”[150.2] And to this early age 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
that the powers of judgment defend the right of the elder-born”--Iris
says warningly to Poseidon.[150.3] The Erinyes are specially charged
with the preservation of the morality of the family and clan, and with
the punishment of the two chief offences against the sacred blood of
the kin, murder and incest. Of the first, enough has been said; the
religious view of the earliest Greeks concerning the second is first
attested by Homer, who mentions “the woes of Oedipus that the Furies
of his mother bring to pass for him”;[150.4] he is thinking more of
the incestuous marriage than of the parricide. As regards ordinary
adultery, it is only from the later period of Greek literature that we
hear protests against it as a sin, though the sentiment of moral
indignation against the adulterer is no doubt pre-Homeric. One or two
Greek myths that may reflect very early thought express the severe
reprobation on the part of the father of {151} unchastity in his
unmarried daughter; myths telling of cruel sentences of death imposed
for the offence. But these suggest no religious feeling; the sentiment
may well have arisen from the fact that under the patriarchal system
the virgin-daughter was the more marriageable and commanded a higher
bride-price.

Looking at the code of family and social duties in the ethical
religion of Babylon, of which the private penitential hymns and
confessional ritual of exorcism are the chief witnesses, we find no
figures whose concept and function remind us at all of the Erinyes,
the curse-powers on the side of righteousness; but there is evidence
in the literature of a family morality more advanced and more
articulate than the primitive Greek. Among the sins mentioned in the
ritual of confession, alluded to above, those indicated by the
following questions are of interest: “Has he caused variance between
father and son, mother and daughter, father-in-law and
daughter-in-law, brother and brother, friend and friend, partner and
partner? Has he conceived hatred against his elder brother, has he
despised his father and mother, insulted his elder sister?”[151.1]
All these acts of social 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 are such as shedding one’s neighbour’s blood,
committing adultery with one’s neighbour’s wife, stealing from one’s
neighbour. We find also a certain morality in the matter of property
and commerce given a religious sanction in this text: “Thou shalt not
{152} remove thy neighbour’s landmark” was a religious law in ancient
Babylonian ethics as in our present liturgy; it would appeal to the
Hellene who reverenced Zeus Ὅριος; and there are reasons for believing
this cult-idea to have been in vogue very early in Greece. The
Babylonian code also recognises the sin of using false measure or
false coin. And the confessional liturgy agrees in many points with
the famous hymn to Shamash, where phrases occur such as “Shamash hates
him who falsifies boundaries and weights”; “Shamash hates the
adulterer.”[152.1] It excites our envy also, by stamping as sins
certain unpatriotic acts, such as “the spreading a bad report
concerning one’s city,” or “bringing one’s city into evil repute.”

We may say, then, that we find a high degree of morality in early
Greece, a still higher at a still earlier period in Babylon, and both
are obviously indigenous and natural products. And both reveal the
phenomenon that marks an early stage of social morality: as 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 the
momentous protest against it, and to proclaim the responsibility of
the individual conscience, was Theognis for the Hellenes and Ezekiel
for the Hebrews. The Babylonian, advanced in moral thought as he was,
had not escaped the bondage of the older clan-faith: in an
incantation-hymn to Marduk,[152.2] the man who is seeking deliverance
prays “may the sins of my father, of my grandfather, my mother, my
grandmother, my family, {153} my whole circle of kindred, not come
near me, may they depart from my side.”

One other characteristic of early moral thought and feeling is that
the sense of sin is not wholly ethical according to our modern
criteria, but is partly regarded as something external to the will and
purpose, something inherent in certain acts or substances of which the
performance or the contagion renders a man a sinner. Thus in the
Babylonian confessional liturgy and hymns of penitence, while there is
much that would appeal to the most delicate moral consciousness, and
is on the same level with the most spiritual passages in the Hebrew
psalms, there is also a strong admixture of what is alien and
non-moral. The confessional formula[153.1] asks a man, for instance,
“whether he has sat in the chair of a person under a ban,” that is, “a
man forbid,” a person impure and under a curse; “whether he has met
him, has slept in his bed, has drunk from his cup.” In one of the
penitential hymns that might be addressed to any god, “to the god that
I know, and to the god that I do not know,” as the formula expresses
it, we find such sorrowful confessions as “without knowing it, I have
eaten of that which is abominable in the sight of my god: without
knowing it, I have trodden on that which is filthy in the sight of my
goddess”; “my sins are many, great is my transgression.”[153.2] This
must be taken quite literally: contact with unclean things 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 to the power of the evil demon and to the loss of his
God’s protection. And this is a half-civilised development in
Babylonian psychology of the primeval savage {154} law of tabu: nor,
as I think, is there yet any proof that the people of the Mesopotamian
culture ever attained to the highest plane of ethical enlightenment;
the later Zarathustrian religion of the Persian domination is strongly
fettered by this ritualistic morality, in which the distinction
between that which is morally wrong and that which is physically
unclean, is never clearly apprehended.

This mental attitude is supported in the older and later Mesopotamian
system by a vivid polydaimonism; the evil demon is on the alert to
destroy the family and the individual; and where the demon is in
possession the god departs. As the demon takes advantage of every
accidental act, whether conscious or unconscious, the idea arises in
the over-anxious spirit that one cannot be sure when or how often one
has sinned, and all illness or other misfortune is attributed to some
unknown offence.[154.1] The utterance of the Hebrew psalmist, “who
can tell how oft he offendeth: cleanse Thou me from my secret faults,”
may express the intense sensitiveness of a very spiritual morality, or
it may be merely ritualistic anxiety. This latter is certainly the
explanation of the strikingly similar phrases in a Babylonian
penitential hymn--“the sins that I have done I know not; the trespass
that I have committed I know not.”[154.2] The feeling of sin is here
deep and very moving--“take away from me my wickedness as a cloak… my
God, though my sins be seven times seven, yet undo my sins”; yet the
context that illustrates this passionate outpouring of the heart,
shows that the sin might be such as the accidental stepping on filth.
Such ideas, allowed to obsess the mind, easily engender despondency
and {155} pessimism; and this tone is heard and once or twice is very
marked in some of the most striking products of Babylonian religious
poetry; for instance, in the penitential hymn just quoted from, the
poet sorrowfully exclaims: “Men are dumb, and of no understanding: all
men who live on the earth, what do they understand? Whether they do
right, or wrong, they understand nothing.” But the strangest example
of this is a lyric of lamentation that reminds us vividly of the book
of Job, found in the library of Assurbanipal, and of great antiquity
and of wide vogue, as Zimmern shows.[155.1] It is a masterpiece of
the poetry of pessimism: the theme is the sorrow and tribulation of
the righteous who has served God faithfully all his life, and feels at
the last that he has had no profit of it; and his main thought is
expressed in the lines, “If I only knew that such things were pleasing
before God; but that which seems good to a man’s self, is evil in the
sight of God: and that which according to each man’s sense is to be
despised, is good in the sight of his God. Who can understand the
counsel of the Gods in heaven? A god’s plan is full of darkness, who
hath searched it out?”

It is easy in all this to detect the intimate associations with
Biblical thought and feeling; and we may trace back to Babylon the
daimonistic theory of morals that colours the New Testament, and has
prevailed throughout the centuries of Christendom, and is only slowly
losing its hold. But at the same time all this sharply divides early
Babylonian thought from what we can discern of the early Hellenic, and
more than any other evidence confirms the belief that the great
Eastern and Western races were not in close spiritual contact at the
time when Hellenism was in the making. Certain {156} external
resemblances in the thought and feeling about these matters are to be
found in Hellas and in Mesopotamia; that is to say, the germs are
identical, for they are broadcast all over the world; but the
intensity of their cultivation, and their importance in relation to
other life-forces, are immeasurably different. In the earliest Greek
legend we discover the reflex of that external unpurposive morality
that I have tried to define above: the acts of Oedipus were not
according to our moral judgment ethically wrong, for they were wholly
unintentional: yet in the oldest legend he is πᾶς ἄναγνος, as he calls
himself in Sophocles’ play, and a sinner in the eyes of the gods; nor
could all the virtue and valour of Bellerophon save him from the wrath
of heaven aroused by the accidental slaying of his brother. Certain
acts were supposed to put upon a man a quasi-physical, quasi-spiritual
miasma, without reference to will or purpose, and render him hateful
to God and man. But the bondage of the Greek mind to this idea was
slighter and more temporary. And after all, the external sins in these
legends were parricide, incest, and fratricide, dreadful things enough
in themselves. We do not hear of any Hellene’s agony of remorse on
account of treading accidentally on filth, or eating malodorous food.
Homer, indeed, is marvellously untroubled by any ritualistic pharisaic
code; we might even take him as a witness that there was none at all
in earliest Hellas. We should be undoubtedly wrong. The early Greek
must have had, like all mankind, his “tabus” in plenty; for to suppose
that all that we find in Hesiod and in the later inscriptions were a
sudden discovery, would be childish. I may be able to consider the
evidence concerning early Greek tabus when I compare the ritual. I
will only say here that we have {157} reason to believe that at no
period was the Hellene morbidly perturbed about these, or ever
moralised them up to that point where they could exercise a spiritual
tyranny over his moral sense. He might object to touching a corpse or
to approaching an altar with blood upon him; but it does not seem to
have occurred to him, as it did to the Persian, and with almost equal
force to the Babylonian, that accidental contact with an impure thing
instantly started into existence an army of demons, who would rush
abroad to destroy the world of righteousness.[157.1]

In fact, Hellenic tabus and purification-laws, except, indeed, the law
concerning purification from bloodshed, had only this contact with
religion, that the breach of them might offend an irritable divinity,
which it would be unwise to do; they were not religious, so far as we
can discern, in the sense that they were associated with a vivid
belief in evil spirits, as they were in the Babylonian and Persian
creeds. There were germs indeed which might have developed into a
vigorous daimonistic theory in early Hellas. We hear even in Homer of
such unpleasant things as “a black Kér”; and a mythic hero of Megara
kills a monster called a ποινή, almost, we may say, a devil. Certain
days, according to Hesiod, might be unlucky, because perhaps Erinyes
or ghosts were walking about, though that popular poet is not clear
about this. But certainly not in early nor often in later Greece were
men habitually devil-ridden: nor did they see devils in food or blood
or mud. Therefore, on the whole and comparatively, early Greek
religion, when we first catch a glimpse of it, appears bright and
sane, a religion of the healthy-minded and of men in the open air. And
{158} therefore, when secular philosophy arose, Greek moral theory
made no use of evil spirits except in certain Pythagorean circles
where we may detect Oriental influence. Superstition and magic must
have been more rife in ancient Greece than the Homeric picture would
lead us to suppose: yet the higher culture of the people, in the
earliest period which we are considering, was comparatively free from
these influences and refused to develop by religious speculation or
anxious brooding the germs of daimonism always embedded in the lower
stratum of the national mind. The Universe could not, therefore, be
viewed by the Hellene as it was by the Zarathustrian, and to some
extent by the Babylonian, as the arena of a cosmic struggle between
the powers of good and the powers of evil. Nor could the Hellene
personify the power of evil majestically, in such a guise as Ahriman
or Satan; he only was aware of certain little daemon-figures of death
and disease, ghostly shadows rather than fully outlined personages; or
such vaguely conceived personal agencies as Ate and Eris, which
belonged not to religion, but to the poetic-moral thought of the
people. When we compare the various rituals, we shall discern that the
Hellenic was by no means wholly bright or shallow, but that some of
its most ancient forms were gloomy and inspired by a sense of sin or
sorrow: nevertheless, it is just in respect of the comparative
weakness of this sense that it differed most markedly from the
Babylonian.

There are other aspects of the divine character interesting to compare
in the religious theory of East and West. Despite the apparent
grimness of the Babylonian-Assyrian theology, no divine trait is more
movingly insisted on in the liturgies than the mercifulness {159} of
the deity: Nebo is “the merciful, the gracious”;[159.1] Ishtar is
“the mighty lady of the world, queen of humanity, merciful one, whose
favour is propitious, who hath received my prayer”;[159.2] Sarpanitum
is addressed as “the intercessor, the protectress of the
captive”;[159.3] Shamash as “the merciful god, who liftest up those
that are bowed down and protectest the weak”;[159.4] Sin as “the
compassionate, gracious Father”; and “Gamlat the merciful” is
mentioned as a descriptive general epithet of an unknown Assyrian
deity.[159.5]

These phrases may attest in the end a genuine and fervent faith; but
originally they were probably inspired by the word-magic of penitence,
the sinner believing that he can make the deity merciful by repeatedly
calling him so. At any rate, Babylonian religion catches thus the glow
of a high ethical ideal; and as the deities were invoked and regarded
as by nature merciful, so the private man was required at certain
times to show mercy, as the confessional formula proves. The same
idea, though a less fervent and ecstatic expression is given to it, is
found in the oldest record of Greek religion: “Even the gods are moved
to pity… them men turn aside from wrath by sacrifice, libation, and
gentle prayers, when a man hath sinned and trespassed against them.
For prayers are the daughters of great God,… and if a man do them
honour when they come anigh him, to him they bring great blessings,
and hear him when he prayeth.” This Homeric utterance {160} in the
great speech of Phoenix[160.1] is the voice of a high and civilised
religion; and the idea inspires the ancient cults of Zeus μειλίχιος
and ἱκέσιος.

The Babylonian conception of divine mercy gave rise to an interesting
phrase which is attached as a quasi-liturgical formula to many of the
leading gods and goddesses--“the awakener of the dead,” “thou who
raisest up the dead”: a phrase which has erroneously been supposed to
refer to an actual resurrection of the dead:[160.2] various contexts
attest its real significance as an expression of the divine grace
shown in restoring the sick to health, in saving men from the hand of
death. Hellenic religious vocabulary affords no parallel to this
formula nor to that title of Enlil--“Lord of the breath of life of
Sumer”;[160.3] or that of Bel, “Lord of the life of the
Land.”[160.4] In some passages of Babylonian literature we mark the
glimmering of the idea that life in its varied forms on the earth is
a divine substance sustained by the personal deity. Ishtar is
described as the protectress of all animate existence, and all life
languishes when she descends to the nether regions.[160.5] The
goddess of Erech, identified with Ishtar, speaking of her own
functions, exclaims, “In the place of giving birth in the house of the
begetting mother, guardian of the home am I.”[160.6] It is specially
Tammuz who, by the side of Ishtar, impersonates the life of the soil,
as appears in the striking refrain recurring in his hymn of lament:
“When he slumbers, the sheep and the lambs slumber also; {161} when he
slumbers, the she-goats and the kids slumber also”;[161.1] and the
same thought may have inspired a phrase that is doubtfully translated
at the end of the hymn: “In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of
life perishes.” Still more explicit is another Tammuz hymn, in which,
while bewailing the departed god, they wail for all the life of the
earth, “the wailing is for the herbs;… they are not produced: the
wailing is for the grain, ears are not produced: the wailing is for
the habitations, for the flocks, the flocks bring forth no more. The
wailing is for the perishing wedded ones, for the perishing children;
the dark-headed people create no more.”

In all this we see the reflection of a pantheistic feeling that links
the living world and the personal divine power in a mystic sympathy.
Now the idea of divinity immanent in living nature is inconsistent
with a severely defined 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 there found any trace of the idea that divine
power is immanent in the life or soul of man, till we come to the
later period of philosophic speculation and Orphism. Only here and
there behind the anthropomorphism we discern in Hellenic myth or cult
the vaguer thought of diffused and immanent divinity; this reveals
itself more than once in the myth and cult of Demeter, whose anger and
sorrow at the loss of her daughter causes a sympathetic disappearance
of the crops and the fruits of the earth; and it is embodied in the
Attic cult on the Akropolis of Demeter Χλόη,[161.2] which title
expresses the immanence in the verdure of {162} the life-giving
potency of the goddess. The ancient folklore of Greece, and a few
cult-records of the primitive village-communities, reveal figures that
recall faintly the lineaments of Tammuz, Eunostos of Tanagra, Skephros
of Tegea, who may belong, as Linos certainly did, to that group of
heroes of crop and harvest, who die and are bewailed in the fall of
the year, and whose life is sympathetically linked with the life of
the earth. But we find this type of personage in other parts of
Europe, and there is every reason for believing that the western
shores of the Mediterranean had not been touched by the Tammuz-myth
and service in the second millennium B.C.

The evidence then suggests that the pregnant idea of the godhead as
the source of life was more prominent and more articulate in
Babylonian than in Hellenic religion.



 CHAPTER IX.
 Purity a Divine Attribute.

{163}

We may next consider the attribute of purity as a divine
characteristic, to see whether in this respect the East differed
markedly from the West. As regards ritual-law, all the religions of
the old world agree in demanding ritual-purity: the worshipper who
approaches the deities must be free from physical taint and impurity:
this idea is so world-wide and so deeply embedded in primitive
thought, that the mere presence of it is of no service for proving the
interdependence of any religions in the historic period. From this
ritual-law the concept naturally arises of “pure gods,” deities who
themselves are believed to be pure because they insist on purity in
their worshippers. Marduk is called “the purifier” in one of the
incantation-texts, in allusion to his power of exorcising the evil
demon of sickness by cleansing processes.[163.1] The cathartic rules
that the law of ritual prescribes will differ according to the
instincts and prejudices of different societies. But the Babylonian
service demanded more than mere ritual-purity; for instance, in a
fragment of a striking text published by Delitsch, we find this
injunction: “In the sight of thy God thou shalt be pure of heart, for
that is the distinction of the Godhead.”[163.2]

{164}

As regards the moral and spiritual sense of purity, the sense in which
we speak of “purity of heart,” we should naturally include purity in
respect of sexual indulgence. But in applying this test to the
Mesopotamian religion we are confronted with a singular difficulty. In
the first place, the mythology is strikingly pure in our modern sense
of the word, so far as the materials have as yet been put before us.
It agrees in this respect with the Hebraic, and differs markedly from
the Hellenic; the gods live in monogamic marriage with their
respective goddesses, and we have as yet found no licentious stories
of their intrigues. It may be that generally the Babylonian
imagination was restrained by an austerity and shy reverence that did
not control the more reckless and lighter spirit of the Hellene; or it
may be that the priestly and royal scribes, to whom we owe the whole
of the Babylonian religious literature that has come down to us,
deliberately excluded any element of licentiousness that they may have
found in the lower folklore. But there is one curious exception. In
the Epic of Gilgamesh the hero repulses the proffered love of Ishtar,
and taunts her with her cruel amours, giving a long list of her lovers
whom she had ruined: one of these is Tammuz, “the spouse of thy
youth,” upon whom “thou didst lay affliction every year”: then he
mentions her other lovers who suffered at her hands--a singular list:
a bird, a lion, a horse, a shepherd of the flock, some Babylonian
Paris or Anchises, whom Ishtar treated as Artemis treated Aktaion. We
must suppose these allusions are drawn from Babylonian folklore, of
which nothing else has survived, concerning the amorous adventures of
the goddess. Hence modern accounts are apt to impute a licentious
character to Ishtar, as a goddess of violent {165} and lawless
passion, and to connect with this aspect of her the institution in her
temple at Erech of the service of sacred prostitutes, attested by
certain cuneiform texts. In comparing the ritual of East and West, I
shall give some consideration to this phenomenal practice. But this
view of Ishtar 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
greatest works of Babylonian religious poetry, but certain phrases
specially exalt her as the virgin-goddess. In one of the lamentations
we read, “Virgin, virgin, in the temple of my riches, am I.”[165.1]
“The spirit-maid, glory of Heaven: the Maiden Ishtar, glory of
Heaven.”[165.2] In a psalm to Nana, one of the by-names of Ishtar,
she is called “Virgin-goddess of Heaven”;[165.3] in another she
speaks of herself, “she of the pure heart, she without fear was
I.”[165.4] This virgin-character of hers must then be regarded as
fixed by such epithets and phrases, of which more examples might no
doubt be found. Therefore the phrase attached to her in the Epic of
Gilgamesh,[165.5] “Kadisti Ilani,” must not be translated as Dhorme
would translate it,[165.6] “the courtesan of the Gods,” merely on the
ground that the same word is applied to her temple-harlots: for the
word properly means “pure” from stain, hence “holy,”[165.7] and in
this latter sense it could be applied to her consecrated votaries, in
spite of their service, which seems to us {166} impure: the same word
“Kedesh” is used for the votaries of the same ritual in Phoenicia and
Syria. This apparent contradiction in the conception of Ishtar’s
character is sometimes explained[166.1] by the suggestion that she
was really a combination of two distinct goddesses, a voluptuous and
effeminate goddess of Erech, and a pure and warlike Assyrian goddess
of Nineveh. But there is no real contradiction; for in Babylonian
religious and liturgical literature the lower view of Ishtar is never
presented at all. She is always worshipped as pure and holy; the
licentiousness of folklore, if there was any such in vogue, was not
allowed to intrude into the temple-service. Therefore Ishtar is no
real exception to the rule that purity, even in our sense, is a
prevailing characteristic of Babylonian divinity, as it was of the
Hebraic.

But now another phenomenon claims our interest: while being a
virgin-goddess, she is sometimes addressed as a mother. In the
inscription of Sargon (722-705 B.C.) she is described as “the Lady of
the Heavenly Crown, the Mother of the Gods”;[166.2] and in some of
the older hymns, which have already been quoted, she speaks of herself
at one time as mother and at another as maid: “Mother who knows
lamentation,” and “I am the Virgin-Goddess.”[166.3] Similarly, in the
hymn to Nana she is called in one place “the Virgin-Goddess of
Heaven”; in another, “Mother of the faithful breasts.”[166.4] Another
goddess, Bau, who is eminently the mother or the wife-goddess, the
spouse of Ningirsu or Ninib, is characterised in a hymn to the latter
god as “thy spouse, the maid, the Lady of Nippur.”[166.5]

{167}

From these phrases, then, seems to emerge the conception of a
virgin-mother. Only we must not press it too far, or suppose at all
that it crystallised into a dogma. It is characteristic of the
ecstatic Babylonian imagination that in the swoon of rapture the
intellect does not sharply hold contradictions apart, and the mystic
enthusiasm reconciles contrary ideas as fused in one divine
personality. Thus even a divinity naturally and properly male, might
be mystically addressed as Father-Mother, for the worshipper craves
that the godhead should be all in all to him. Thus motherhood is the
natural function and interest of the goddess; therefore the Babylonian
supplicated his goddess as mother, even as mother of the gods, without
thinking of any divine offspring or of any literal genealogy or
theogony. Virginity is also beautiful, and a source of divine power
and virtue. Therefore the mother Bau might rejoice to be addressed
occasionally as maid. As for Ishtar, she was aboriginally, perhaps, a
maid, in the sense that no god entered into her worship; and this idea
shaped the early spiritual conception of her. But as a great goddess
she must show her power in the propagation of life; therefore she must
be recognised in prayer and supplication as a mother; the adorer
wishing to give her the virtue of both states, probably without
dogmatising or feeling the contradiction. This explanation appears
more likely, when we consider the psychologic temper of the Babylonian
poetry, its often incoherent rapture, than the other obvious one that
Ishtar the virgin happened in many places to appropriate to herself
the cult of a mother-goddess, though this might easily happen.

As regards the other polytheistic Semitic races, we can infer that the
same religious ideas concerning ritual-purity {168} were in vogue; but
our scanty records do not enable us to determine whether and how far
they were quickened by spiritual significance.[168.1] But we can
trace through Asia Minor the double concept of mother and virgin in
the personality of the goddesses; though it is difficult to decide
whether they ever coincided, and with what degree of definiteness, in
the same personage. Astarte must have been imagined generally as a
mother-goddess, and she appears conspicuously as the female consort of
Baal; thus her Hellenic equivalent is often given as Aphrodite; yet in
another aspect of her worship she must have appeared as virginal, for
she is also often identified with Artemis, just as a similar goddess
Anath in Cyprus was identified with Athena.[168.2] The goddess
Atargatis of Hierapolis, described by Lucian, was evidently a
mother-goddess, bearing, according to him, a marked resemblance to
Rhea, and placed in the temple by the side of her husband, Bel or
Zeus. Among the Sabaean inscriptions of South Arabia, we find a
dedication by some parents in behalf of their children to the goddess
Umm-Attar, a name that signifies “Mother-Attar” (or “Mother
Astarte”[168.3]; and a late record, too late to serve as witness for
the early period we are considering, speaks of a virgin-mother among
the Arabs.[168.4] Finally, the earliest Carthaginian inscriptions
record the cult of the great goddess Tanit, addressed usually as the
“Lady Tanit, the Face of Baal,” and called in one dedication “The
Great Mother.”[168.5] If she is the same as the divinity whom
Augustine describes as the Virgo Caelestis, the {169} Heavenly
Virgin,[169.1] 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.

Looking at the non-Semitic races of Asia Minor, we have noted the
monumental evidence among the Hittites for the worship of a
mother-goddess, who with her son figures in the procession on the
reliefs at Boghaz-Keui. It may be she who appears on a Hittite votive
relief as a large seated female with a child on her knees,[169.2] a
type which the Greeks would call κουροτρόφος. Her name may have been
Umma; for this divine word is now given us among the names of Hittite
divinities in cuneiform texts recently discovered, which have been
published and interpreted by Professor Sayce in the _Journal of the
Royal Asiatic Society_.[169.3] He there connects the word with the
Assyrian Umma = Mother, and regards this Hittite goddess as the
ancestress both by name and nature of the Cappadocian goddess Mā,
famous at Comana in the later period. Now the name Mā designates “the
mother,” and yet the Hellenes identified this goddess not only with
the great mother Kybele, but freely with Artemis. I believe the
external inducement to this latter assimilation was the isolation of
Mā in her cult, into which no god entered. From this late evidence it
is too hazardous to infer an early Hittite virgin-mother, especially
as the processional relief at Boghaz-Keui seems to present us with a
ἱερὸς γάμος, the solemn union of a god and a goddess. As regards the
great goddess of the Asia-Minor coast, it {170} has been somewhat
hastily concluded that here and there her cult included the mystic
idea of a virgin-mother. We have only some evidence from a late
period, and in any case it would be a bold leap to argue back from it
to the second millennium. But the evidence is weak. I have criticised
it elsewhere, and I found it and still find it very frail.[170.1] I
have not been able to detect any clear consciousness of the idea in
the cult and cult-legends of Kybele: we must not build much on the
Pessinuntian story that Arnobius gives us concerning her resistance to
the love of Zeus, for certainly the general legend of Kybele and Attis
is inconsistent with any dogma of the goddess’s virginity, nor was she
ever called Παρθένος in cult. She was rather the mother-goddess, with
whom the worshipper himself in a mystic ritual might be united in
corporeal union.[170.2]

If we search the other parts of the Asia-Minor littoral, neither in
the prehistoric nor in the later periods before Christianity is the
concept we are seeking clearly to be traced. I cannot find the
Leto-Artemis, the goddess who was at once essentially a virgin and a
mother. What we discern in Crete is a great mother-goddess and a
virgin, Ἀφαία or Britomartis, “the Sweet Maid.” That the prehistoric
or later Cretans mystically combined {171} the two concepts in one
personality we do not know. When we examine legends and ritual,
usually dateless, of early Hellas, we are aware that a goddess who was
worshipped as a Maid in one locality might be worshipped as a Mother
in another; or the same goddess at different times of the year might
be worshipped now under one aspect, now under another. Hera of Argos
yearly renews her divinity by bathing in a certain stream. Kore, the
young earth-goddess, was probably an early emanation from Demeter. How
powerful in pre-Hellenic days was the appeal of the virginal aspect of
certain goddesses, is shown by the antiquity and the tenacity of the
dogma concerning the virginity of Artemis and Athena. Yet the latter
was called Μήτηρ at Elis[171.1]. But it would be very rash to declare
that here at last the Virgin-Mother is found in old Greece. Athena has
no offspring; there is neither loss nor miraculous preservation of her
virginity. Only the Elean women, wishing themselves to be mothers,
pray to the Virgin-goddess for offspring, and strengthen their prayer
by applying a word to Athena of such powerful spell-efficacy as
“Mother.” It would be a misinterpretation of the method of ancient
hieratic speech to suppose that Athena Μήτηρ was mystically imagined
as herself both Virgin and Mother.[171.2]

The ritualistic value of purity was probably a postulate of the
religious feeling of early Hellas, though Homer gives us only faint
glimpses of the idea. Φοῖβος was an old cult-title of Apollo, and its
root-significance may well have been “Pure.” We hear of Hagné, “the
pure goddess,” probably a reverential {172} name for Kore at the
Messenian Andania:[172.1] and on the hilltop above the Arcadian
Pallantion, Pausanias records the cult of a nameless group of
divinities called οἱ καθαροὶ θεοί,[172.2] a cult which, according
to his account of it, appears to have descended from very ancient
times. The question of purity in Greek ritual may be reserved for a
later stage in our comparative study. I will only remark here on the
fact that Greek worship, early and late, was in marked antagonism in
this respect to Greek mythology, the former being on the whole 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.



 CHAPTER X.
 The Concept of Divine Power and the
 Ancient Cosmogonies.

{173}

We may profitably compare the Eastern and Western peoples according
to their respective conceptions of the divine power. Looking carefully
at the Babylonian hymns and liturgies, we cannot say that the idea of
divine omnipotence was ever an assured dogma, vividly present to the
mind and clearly expressed. Any particular hymn may so exalt the
potency of the particular deity to whom it is addressed that, in the
ecstasy of prayer and adoration, the worshipper may speak as if he
believed him or her to be powerful over all things in heaven and
earth. But this faith was temporary and illusive. The power of the
deity in the popular creed, and indeed in the hieratic system, was
bound up with his temple and altar. When Sanherib laid waste Babylon
and the temples, the “gods must flee like birds up to heaven.” In the
Babylonian epic the deities themselves are greatly alarmed by the
flood. In one of the hymns of lamentation, Ishtar laments her own
overthrow in her ruined city, where she “is as a helpless stranger in
her streets.”[173.1] It is probable that the popular belief of
Babylon agreed in this respect with that of all other nations of the
same type of religion; for the popular religious mind is incapable of
fully {174} realising or logically applying the idea of divine
omnipotence. But this at least is clear in the Babylonian system, that
the higher divinities acting as a group are stronger than any other
alien principle in the Universe, from the period when Marduk, or
originally, perhaps Ninib, won his victory over Tiamit.[174.1] The
evil power embodied in the demons remains indeed active and strong,
and much of the divine agency is devoted to combating them. And the
demons are impressive beings, impersonating often the immoral
principle, but they do not assume the grandeur of an Ahriman, or rise
to his position as compeers of the high god. Thus the Babylonian
theology escapes the duality of the Zarathustrian; the god can always
exorcise and overpower the demon if the demon-ridden man repents and
returns to communion with his deity by penance and confession.

Furthermore, the ancient documents reveal the Babylonian deities as
the arbiters of destiny. Marduk is named by King Neriglassar “the
Leader of Destiny”;[174.2] and we have frequent allusions to the gods
fixing the yearly fates at an annual meeting. Nebo the scribe is the
writer and the keeper of the “Doomsbook” of Heaven, and this book is
called “the tablets that cannot be altered, that determine the bounds
(or cycle) of Heaven and Earth.”[174.3] Fate is neither personified
nor magnified into a transcendent cosmic force overpowering and
shaping the will of the gods.

How the other religions of polytheistic Asia Minor dealt with these
matters is not revealed; and the {175} comparison here, as in many
other points, must be immediate between Mesopotamia and Hellas. Much
that has just been said of the former may be affirmed of the latter in
this respect. In Homer the pre-eminence, even the omnipotence, of Zeus
is occasionally expressed as a dogma, and we must believe that this
deity had risen to this commanding position before the Homeric period,
at least among the progressive tribes;[175.1] and throughout the
systematised theology of Greece his sovereignty was maintained more
consistently than, owing to the shifting of the powers of the cities,
was that of Marduk or Bel or Enlil in the Sumerian-Babylonian system.
Probably the high idea of divine omnipotence was as vaguely and feebly
realised by the average primitive Hellene as we have reason to suspect
that it was by the average Babylonian. Also, as Hellas was far less
centralised than Babylonia, the efficacy of the local or village god
or goddess or daimon might often transcend the influence of Zeus. But
at least we have no Hellenic evidence of so narrow a theory, as that
the deity’s power depended upon his temple or his image, or even upon
his sacrifice.

It has often been popularly and lightly maintained that the Hellenic
deities were subordinate to a power called Fate. This is a shallow
misjudgment, based on a misinterpretation of a few phrases in Homer;
we may be certain that the aboriginal Hellene was incapable of so
gloomy an abstraction, which would sap the vitality of personal
polytheism, and which only appears in strength in the latter periods
of religious decay. Were it, indeed, a root-principle of Hellenic
religion, it would strongly differentiate it from the Mesopotamian.

{176}

In thus comparing the two religions according to their respective
conceptions of divine power, we note two striking phenomena in the
Eastern world. The Mesopotamian gods are magicians, and part of their
work is worked by magic. Marduk and Ea, the wise deity of Eridu, serve
as exorcisers of demons in behalf of the other gods.[176.1] In a
panegyric on the former, the strange phrase occurs, “the spittle of
life is thine,”[176.2] which probably alludes to the well-known
magical qualities of the saliva. Eridu, the home of Ea, was also the
original home of Chaldean magic. When in the early cosmic struggle
between the powers of light and darkness, Tiamat, the mother and queen
of the latter, selects her champion Qingou as leader, she proclaims,
“I have pronounced thy magic formula, in the assembly of the gods I
have made thee great.”[176.3] In magic, great is the power of the
spoken word, the λόγος; and the Word, of which the efficacious force
arose in the domain of magic, has been exalted, as we are well aware,
by higher religion to a great cosmic divine agency, sometimes
personified. It was so exalted in early Babylonian religion. The deity
acts and controls the order of the world by the divine Word. Many of
the Sumerian hymns lay stress on its quasi-personal virtue or “mana”;
and often on its terrible and destructive operation; and in one, as we
have seen, the goddess Nana is identified with the Word of
Enlil.[176.4] In a great hymn to Sin,[176.5] the might of his Word
is glorified in verses that recall the Psalmist’s phrase: “The voice
of the Lord is mighty {177} in operation.” The Word of Bel-Marduk is
said to be stronger than any exorciser or diviner, and is the theme of
a special hymn.[177.1] It is described in another as “a net of
majesty that encompasseth heaven and earth.” The Word of Marduk shakes
the sea,[177.2] as the Hebrew poet declares that “the voice of the
Lord shaketh the cedar-trees.” “The spirit of the Word is Enlil… the
Word which stilleth the heavens above… a prophet it hath not, a
magician it hath not,”[177.3]--that is, no prophet can fully
interpret, no magician can control, the Word. A most potent word is
the name of the divinity, and the partial apotheosis of the name
itself is a strange religious phenomenon, which also originated in the
domain of magic, and has played a momentous part in the Egyptian,
Judaic, Christian, and other high religions.[177.4] It appears also
in Mesopotamian religion. In a hymn to Enlil we find the phrase: “at
thy name, which created the world, the heavens were hushed of
themselves.”[177.5] In the Babylonian poem of creation the primal
state of Chaos is thus described, “no god had yet been created, no
name had yet been named, no destiny fixed.”[177.6] The gods name the
fifty names of Ninib, and the name of fifty becomes sacred to him, so
that even in the time of Gudea a temple was actually dedicated to
Number Fifty.[177.7]

Now, in the respects just considered, the earliest aspect of Greek
religion that is revealed to us presents a striking contrast. The
relations between magic and {178} religion are markedly
different.[178.1] Magic had doubtless the same hold on early Greece
as it has on most societies at a certain stage of culture. We can
conclude this from the glimpses of it revealed by Homer and some
ancient myths, such as the story of Salmoneus, as well as by the
evidence of its practice in later Greece, and as such phenomena are
not of sudden growth we can safely believe that they were part of an
ancient tradition always alive among the people. But while Babylonian
magic proclaims itself loudly in the great religious literature and
highest temple ritual, Greek magic is barely mentioned in the older
literature of Greece, plays no part at all in the hymns, and can only
with difficulty be discovered as latent in the higher ritual. Again,
Babylonian magic is essentially demoniac; but we have no evidence
suggesting that the pre-Homeric Greek was demon-ridden, or that
demonology and exorcism were leading factors of his consciousness and
practice: the earliest mythology does not suggest that he habitually
imputed his physical or moral disorders to demons, nor does it convey
any hint of the existence in the early society of that terrible
functionary, the witch-finder, or of the institution of witch-trials.

Had Greek religion and mythology been deeply impregnated with
Babylonian influences we should find it difficult to account for this
momentous difference.

The same reflection is forced upon us when we observe that the Λόγος
or Divine Word conceived as a cosmic power plays no part in the
earliest Hellenic theology of which we have any cognisance (we are not
here concerned with the later history of the concept): nor can we find
in the earliest Greek period the name of God exalted into the position
of a divine creative force; {179} although, as I have shown elsewhere,
the earliest Hellene, as the later, was fully sensitive to the
magico-divine efficacy of names.[179.1]

We may also gather something for our present purpose from a comparison
between the cosmogony or cosmic myths of East and West. Of these it is
only the Babylonian and Hebraic that can claim a great antiquity of
record. What is reported of Phoenician belief concerning these matters
is of late authority, Eusebios quoting from Sanchuniathon or Philo
Byblios, and this is too much permeated with later elements to be
useful here. As regards the Hellenic theory of the origin of the world
and of man, putting aside a few scattered hints in the Homeric poems,
we have Hesiod for our first and insufficient witness. If we can
detect Babylonian influence in the Hesiodic system, we must not
hastily conclude that this was already rife in the second millennium:
on the other hand, if Hesiod seems to have escaped it, it is far less
likely that it was strong upon the proto-Hellenes.

For early Babylonian cosmogony our main evidence is the epic poem of
creation, preserved on tablets found in the library of King
Assurbanipal, which elucidates, and in the main corroborates, the
fragments of the story given by Berosos in the third century B.C. Our
earliest record, then, is actually of the seventh century, but
Assyriologists have given reasons for the view that the epic copied
for Assurbanipal descends from a period as early as B.C. 2000; for
part of it accords with an old Babylonian hymn that has been
discovered.[179.2] The document is therefore ancient enough for the
purposes of our comparison. It is well known through various {180}
publications, and can be read conveniently in the detailed exposition
of King in his handbook on Babylonian religion.[180.1]

When we consider carefully the more significant features in this
cosmogony, we are struck with its almost total unlikeness to anything
that we can discover or surmise in early Hellenic thought. It is true
that the Babylonian theory starts with the dogma that the earliest
cosmic fact was the element of water. Apsu and Tiâmat are the first
powers in an unordered universe, and these seem to be the personal
forms of the upper and lower waters, the fresh and the salt. We find
the parallel thought in Homer, who speaks of Okeanos as “the source of
all things,”[180.2] including even the gods. But the value of such a
parallelism is of the slightest, for the vague theory of a watery
origin of created things appears widely diffused in the myths of
remote peoples, for instance, North-American Indians, Aztecs, the
Vedic Aryans, and there is a glimmer of it in the old Norse.[180.3]
No conclusion, then, can be drawn from so slight a coincidence. If we
know anything of the cosmogony of the pre-Homeric society we know it
from Hesiod, for Homer himself shows no interest and makes no
revelation on the subject. With certain reservations and after careful
criticism we may be able to regard some parts of the Hesiodic
statement as reflecting the thought of an age anterior to Homer’s.
Therefore it is of some present value to observe how little of
characteristically Babylonian speculation appears in the Hesiodic
Theogony or {181} _Works and Days_. Both systems agree with each
other, and--it may be said--with all theogonies and religious
cosmogonies, in regarding the primeval creative forces as personal
powers who work either by the method of sexual generation or through
mechanical processes of creation: the first of these methods, which
though mythical in form has more affinity with organic science, is
predominant over the other in the Hesiodic narrative. But the personal
powers are different in the two systems. In the Babylonian the
greatest of the primeval dynasts is Tiâmat, the sea, the mother of
the gods and also of all monsters: in the Hesiodic it is Gaia, the
Earth-mother, who does not appear at all in the Eastern cosmogony, but
who claimed this position in the Hellenic through her deep-seated
influence in the ancient religion. We note also that the Babylonian
Sea is decidedly evil, the aboriginal foe of the gods of light, a
conception alien to ordinary Hellenic thought. Again, the Babylonian
creation of an ordered cosmos is a result of the great struggle
between Marduk and Tiâmat, the power of light and the sovereign of
chaos: it is preceded by hate and terror. In the Hellenic account the
generation of the heavens, the mountains, the sea, 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 Kāma or principle of
desire in a cosmogonic hymn of the Rig-Veda, but is not mentioned by
the Babylonian poet. (Nor does it concern us for the moment that this
Eros is in respect of mere literary tradition post-Homeric: we may
surmise at least that he was a pre-Homeric power in Boeotia.) Again,
when we come to the theomachy in Hesiod, as an event it has no
cosmogonic value at all: it has the air merely of a dynastic struggle
between elder and younger divinities, {182} and the myth may really
have arisen in part from the religious history of a shifting of cults
corresponding to a shifting of population: nor are the Titans more
representative of evil or of a lower order of things than the Olympian
deities; and cosmic creation, so far as Hesiod treats of it at all,
seems over before the struggle begins. On the other hand, after Marduk
has destroyed Tiâmat he constructs his cosmos out of her limbs, and
then proceeds to assign their various stations to the great gods, his
compeers. Thus the struggle of the god with the principle of disorder
has a cosmic significance which is not expressed in the Titanomachy.
The curious conception also that the universe was compacted out of the
dismembered limbs of a divine personage, which reminds us of the Vedic
story of the giant Purusa[182.1] and of the Norse legend of Ymir, is
not clearly discoverable in Hellenic mythology: for the Hesiodic myth
of the forms and growths that spring from the blood of the mutilated
Ouranos is no real parallel. And there is another trait in the
Babylonian theory of a world-conflict that distinguishes it from the
Hellenic myths of a Titanomachy or Gigantomachy; it was sometimes
regarded not as a single event, finished with once for all, but as a
struggle liable to be repeated at certain periods.[182.2] On the
other hand, Hesiod’s narrative of the oppression of Gaia’s children by
Ouranos and the outrage inflicted on him by Kronos has its parallels
in Maori and savage legend,[182.3] but none in Mesopotamian, so far
as our knowledge goes at present.

A different Babylonian mythological text from the library of
Assurbanipal speaks of another battle waged {183} by Marduk against
Labbu, a male monster imagined mainly as a huge snake; and Marduk is
described as descending to the conflict in clouds and
lightning:[183.1] the legend has no obvious significance for
cosmogony, for 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.[183.2] Now, the story of this conflict in Hesiod’s theogony
has no connections with the Titanomachy or the Gigantomachy, nor is it
there linked by any device to any known Hellenic myth; nor is it
derived, like the legend of Apollo and Python, from genuine Hellenic
cult-history. It has an alien air and character. Typhoeus is on the
whole regarded as a monstrous dragon, but one of his voices is that of
a lion, another that of a bull. The resemblance of this narrative to
the Babylonian one just mentioned is striking, and becomes all the
more salient when we compare certain Babylonian cylinders which
picture Marduk in combat with a monster, sometimes of serpent form,
sometimes with the body of a lion or a bull.[183.3] The
Typhoeus-legend belongs also essentially to the Asia-Minor shores, and
if Cilicia was really the country whence it came to the knowledge of
the Homeric Greeks, it is a significant fact that it was just this
corner of the Asia-Minor coast that felt the arms of the earliest
Assyrian conquerors in the fourteenth century B.C.; and it is just
such myths that travel fast and far.

{184}

If the hypothesis of Assyrian origin is reasonable here, many will
regard it as still more reasonable in regard to the Deukalion
flood-story. Certain details in it remind us, no doubt, of the
Babylonian flood-myth; and as this latter was far diffused through
Asia Minor, it was quite easy for it to wander across the Aegean and
touch Hellas. But if it did, we have no indication that it reached the
Hellenes in the early period with which we are here concerned, as
Hesiod is our earliest authority for it.

The last theme of high interest in the cosmogonic theory of ancient
Babylonia is the creation of man. According to Berosos, this momentous
act was attributed to Bel, who, after the victory over Chaos,
commanded one of the gods to cut off his head and to make men and
animals out of earth mixed with his own blood, and this story is
partly corroborated by an old cuneiform text that is derived from the
beginning of the second millennium.[184.1] This interesting theory
was not universally accepted, for another and independent text
ascribes the creation of man to Marduk and a goddess called Aruru,
simply as a mechanical act of power.[184.2] The idea implicit in the
former account, of the blood-relationship of man to god, is of the
greater potentiality for religious metaphysic, and a similar notion is
found, developed into a high spiritual doctrine, in the later Orphic
Zagreus-mystery. But there is no trace of it in genuine Hellenic
thought or literature. We have no provedly early Greek version of the
origin of man: only, in the _Works and Days_, we are told that the
Immortals or Zeus made the men of the five ages, the third generation,
out of ash-trees: it may be that the story of Prometheus {185} forming
them out of clay was known to Hesiod, as Lactantius Placidus
attests;[185.1] in any case we may judge it to be of great antiquity
on account of its wide vogue in the later period, and its occurrence
in other primitive folklore. But nothing like it has as yet been found
in the ἱερὸς λόγος of Mesopotamia.

Generally we may say that the Hesiodic cosmogony bears no significant
resemblance to the Babylonian, and this negative fact makes against
the theory of Mesopotamian influence upon pre-Homeric Hellas.

As a divine cosmogony implies some organic theory of the Universe, so
the polytheisms that attempted such speculations would be confronted
also with the problem of finding some principle of order by which they
might regulate the relations of the various divinities, one to the
other. We find such attempts in Mesopotamian religion. Certain deities
are affiliated to others, Marduk to Ea, Nebo to Marduk, though such
divine relationships are less clear and less insisted on than in
Hellenic theology; and the grouping of divinities shifts according to
the political vicissitudes of the peoples and cities. We may discern a
tendency at times to use the triad as a unifying principle, giving us
such trinities as Anu, Bel, Ea, or Sin, Shamash, Adad;[185.2] we have
glimpses of a trinitarian cult in early Carthage,[185.3] and slight
indications of it in the Minoan-Mycenaean pillar-ritual.[185.4] But I
cannot find anything to suggest that among the cultured or uncultured
Semites it was ever in the ancient period a powerful and constructive
idea, able {186} to beget a living dogma that might capture the
popular mind and spread and germinate in adjacent lands.[186.1] We
have perhaps as much right to regard the number seven as a grouping
principle of Babylonian polytheism, in the later period at least, when
we find a group of seven high deities corresponding to the seven
planets.[186.2] We might discover a Hittite trinity of Father,
Mother, and Son if we concentrated our attention on the Boghaz-Keui
reliefs; but the other Hittite evidence, both literary and monumental,
gives no hint of this as a working idea in the religion. In fact, in
most polytheisms of the Mediterranean type it is easy to discover
trinities and easy to deceive oneself about them.

The human family reflected into the heavens naturally suggests the
divine trio of Father, Mother, Child. And this may be found on the
Asia-Minor shore and in Hellas. It would be more important if we could
discover the worship of this triad in an indissoluble union from which
the mystic idea of a triune godhead might arise. This is not
discernible clearly in the older period on either side of the Aegean.
The cult-complex of Zeus, Semele, and Dionysos does not belong to
ancient Hellas and is rare at any period; that of Hades Demeter Kore
is occasionally found in cults of doubtful antiquity, but usually the
mother and daughter were worshipped without the male deity. The
Homeric triad so often invoked in adjurations of Zeus, Athena, and
Apollo, which misled Mr. Gladstone, is due probably to the exigencies
of hexameter verse, and is not guaranteed by genuine cult. No divine
triad in Hellas can be proved to have descended from the earliest
period of {187} Greek religion, except probably that of the Charites
at Orchomenos.[187.1] We have later evidence of a trinity of Zeus,
Poseidon, and Hades, expressing the triad that Nature presents to us
of sky, sea, and earth. But probably one of these figures is an
emanation of Zeus himself; the sky-god having become “chthonian” in a
very early period.[187.2] We cannot say, then, that the earliest
period of Hellenic religion shows a trinitarian tendency; and if it
were so, we could not impute it to early Mesopotamian influence, for
the idea of a trinity does not appear in the Eastern religion with
such force and strength as to be likely to travel far.

As for the artificial group of the twelve Olympians, we should
certainly have been tempted to connect this with Babylonian lore, the
number twelve being of importance in astronomical numeration; only
that the divine group of twelve does not happen to occur in Babylonian
religious records at all. Nor does the complex cult of the Δώδεκα θεοί
appear to belong to the earliest period of Greek religion.[187.3] And
so far I have been able to discern nothing that justifies the
suggestion[187.4] that the principle of unification or divine
grouping in early Mediterranean polytheism came from Babylon.

A severely organised polytheism with one chief divinity, to whom all
the others were in definite degrees subordinated, might evolve a
monotheism. And in Babylonian literature we can mark certain
tendencies making in this direction. One tablet contains an
inscription proclaiming all the high gods to be forms of Marduk,
Nergal the Marduk of war, Nebo the Marduk {188} of land.[188.1] That
all the deities were mere forms or emanations of the Eternal might
have been an esoteric doctrine of certain gifted minds, though it was
difficult thus to explain away and to de-individualise the powerful
self-asserting personality of Ishtar, for an attractive goddess-cult
is always a strong obstacle to pure monotheism. A particular king
might wish at times to exalt the cult of a particular god into a
monotheistic ideal; the attempt was seriously made in Egypt and
failed. It may have been seriously intended by King Rammannirari III.
(B.C. 811-782), who introduced the cult of Nebo, always one of the
most spiritual figures of the Pantheon, into Kelach; hence comes a
long inscription on two statues now in the British Museum, set up by a
governor in honour of the king, which is valuable for its ethical
import, and still more interesting for its monotheistic exhortation at
the close:[188.2] “Oh man, yet to be born, believe in Nebo, and trust
in no other gods but him.” Here is the seed that might have been
developed by a powerful prophet into pure monotheism. But the ecstatic
Babylonian votary is always falling into contradiction, for in the
earlier part of this hymn he has called Nebo, “The beloved of Bel, the
Lord of Lords.” What, then, must the congregation think of Bel?

In Greek religion the germs of monotheistic thought were still weaker
and still less likely to fructify. The earliest Hellenic tribes had
already certain deities in common, and the leading stocks at least
must have regarded Zeus as the supreme god. They must have also
adopted many indigenous deities that they found powerful in their new
homes, whose cult could not be {189} uprooted even if they wished to
do so. We must therefore imagine the pre-Homeric societies as
maintaining a complex polytheism, with some principle of divine
hierarchy struggling to assert itself. Homer, if it is ever true to
speak of him as preaching, seems certainly the preacher of the
supremacy of Zeus. How far this idea was accepted in the various
localities of cult we have not sufficient material for deciding: much
would depend on the degree to which the individuals were penetrated by
the higher literature, which from Homer onwards proclaimed the same
religious tenet.[189.1] We can at the same time be sure that in many
localities the countryfolk would be more under the spell of some
ancient deity of the place than of the sky-father of the Aryan
Hellenes. And though his cult was high placed by the progressive
races, and his personality powerfully pervading in the realm of nature
and human society, so that the higher thinkers entered on a track of
speculation that leads to monotheism, the masses did not and could not
follow them, having, in fact, the contrary bias. The popular
polytheism showed itself most tenacious of divine personalities; and
owing partly to the sacred power of divine names, the various titles
of a single divinity tend occasionally to engender distinct divine
entities. I have also already indicated that art contributed to the
same effect through multiplying idols. So far, then, from displaying
monotheistic potentialities, Greek polytheism, from the pre-Homeric
period we may suspect, and certainly after the Homeric age, tended to
become more polytheistic.



 CHAPTER XI.
 The Religious Temperament of the
 Eastern and Western Peoples.

{190}

A more interesting and fruitful ground of comparison is that which
looks at the inward sentiment or psychic emotion of the different
religions, at the personal emotional relation of the individual
towards the godhead. As I observed before, a clear judgment on this
question is only possible when the religious memorials of a people are
numerous, varied, and personal, so that some of them at least may be
regarded as the expression of the individual spirit. Even if the
priest or the ritual dictates the expression, the pious and frequent
votary may come to feel genuinely what is dictated to him. Hence we
can gather direct testimony concerning the ancient Babylonian as we
can of the ancient Hebrew religious temper and emotion; for though
most of the Mesopotamian documents are concerned with the royal
ceremonial, which does not usually reveal genuine personal feeling,
yet in this case the royal inscriptions, whether religious narrative
or liturgies or prayers, are unusually convincing as revelations of
self. And besides these, we have many private hymns of penance and
formulae of exorcism.

On the other hand, the ancient Western world and even historic Greece
is singularly barren of this kind of religious testimony. We know much
about the {191} State religion, but we have very few ritual formulae
or public or private prayers. Our evidence is mainly the religious
utterances of the higher poetry and literature and a few lyric hymns
composed not for the solitary worshipper, but for common and tribal
ritual-service. But we have also the mythology and the art and the
general manifestations of the Hellenic spirit in other directions that
enable us to conclude something concerning the religious psychology of
the average man in the historic periods, and if we find this markedly
different from that of the oriental, we shall find it hard to believe
that the Babylonian spirit could have worked with any strong influence
on the proto-Hellene.

A sympathetic study of the Babylonian-Assyrian documents impresses us
with certain salient traits of the Mesopotamian religious spirit, some
of which are common to other members of the great Semitic race. In a
certain sense the Babylonian might be described as “ein
Gott-betrunkener Mensch”: as one possessed with the deepest
consciousness of the ineffable greatness of God, of his own utter
dependence, and at the same time of the close personal association
between himself and the divinity. The ecstatic adoration we have
marked in the liturgies is the result of a purely mental
contemplation, will-power, and conviction, not of mystic
initiation--for Babylonia had no mysteries--nor of orgiastic rites
that could afford a physico-psychic stimulus. The individual seems to
have regarded himself at times as the son, more often as the
bond-slave, of his own tutelary divinity, who is angry when he sins
and becomes favourable and a mediator in his behalf with other gods
when he repents. In private letters of the time of Hammurabi we find
the greeting, “May thy protecting god keep thy head well.” A {192}
common formula occurs in the incantations: “I, whose god is so-and-so,
whose goddess is so-and-so.”[192.1] In the penance-liturgy the priest
speaks thus of the suppliant sinner, “Thy slave who bears the weight
of thy wrath is covered with dust,… commend him to the god who created
him.”[192.2] With this we may compare certain phrases in a well-known
penitential psalm, “Oh mighty Lady of the world, Queen of mankind.…
His god and goddess in sorrow with him, cry out unto thee.… As a dove
that moans I abound in sighings.”[192.3] Abject remorse, tears and
sighing, casting-down of the countenance, are part of the ritual that
turns away the anger of the deity: hence fear of God and humility are
recognised religious virtues. Merodach-Baladin of Babylon, in Sargon’s
inscription, is described as a fool “who did not fear the name of the
Lord of Lords,”[192.4] and the idea is shaped in a general ethical
maxim in another inscription, “He who does not fear his god is cut
down like a reed.”[192.5] “I love the fear of God,” says Nebukadnezar
in the record of his life.[192.6]

Such emotion and mental attitude is consonant with the Hebraic and
with much of the modern religious temper; but entirely out of harmony
with all that we know of the Hellenic. The religious habit of the
Hellene strikes us by comparison as sober, well-tempered, often
genial, never ecstatically abject, but even--we may
say--self-respecting. Tears for sin, lamentations {193} and sighs, the
countenance bowed to the ground, the body cleaving to the pavement,
these are not part of his ritual; the wrath of God was felt as a
communal more often than as an individual misfortune, and in any case
was averted, not by emotional outpourings of the individual heart, but
by ritual acts, solemn choruses, soothing sacrifice and songs, or by
special piacular lustrations that wiped off the taint of sin. Tears
are never mentioned,[193.1] except indirectly in the fictitious
lamentations for some buried hero, annually and ceremoniously
lamented, such as Achilles. Nor can we find in earlier Hellenic ethic
the clear recognition of fear and humility among the religious
virtues,[193.2] while both are paraded in the inscriptions of the
later Babylonian kings, even in those that reveal a monstrous excess
of pride.[193.3] The Hellenic god might punish the haughty and
high-minded, he did not love the grovelling, but rather the man of
moderate life, tone, and act. Such is God for the civic religion of
the free man; while the Babylonian liturgy reflects the despotic
society. The Hellene, for instance, does not try to win for himself
the favour of the divinity by calling himself his slave. And the
common phrase found on the Greek Christian tombs, ὁ δοῦλος τοῦ Θεοῦ,
has passed into Christianity from Semitic sources.[193.4] This single
fact illustrates, perhaps better than any other, {194} the different
temper of the old Oriental and old European religions; and there is a
curious example of it in the bilingual Graeco-Phoenician inscription
found in Malta,[194.1] commemorating a dedication to Melkarth or to
Herakles Ἀρχηγέτης: the Phoenicians recommend themselves to the god as
“thy slaves,” the Greeks use neither this nor any other title of
subservient flattery. In this connection it is well to note the
significance of marking the body of the worshipper by branding,
cutting, or tattooing with some sign that consecrated him as slave or
familiar follower to the divinity. The practice, which may have been
of great antiquity, though the evidence is not earlier than the sixth
century B.C., was in vogue in Syria, Phrygia, and in early Israel, and
was adopted by some Christian enthusiasts, but no proof of it has yet
been adduced from Mesopotamia. It was essentially un-Hellenic, but was
apparently followed by some of the Dionysiac thiasoi as a Thracian
tradition.[194.2]

In fact, it is only in the latest periods that we find in Hellas an
individual personal religion approaching the Babylonian in intensity.
The older cult was communal and tribal rather than personal; even the
household gods, such as Zeus Κτήσιος and Ἑρκεῖος, the gods of the
closet and storehouse, the hearth-goddess, were shared by the
householder in common with the nearest circle of kindred. These cults
were partly utilitarian, and the moral emotion that they quickened was
the emotion of kinship: they do not appear to have inspired a high
personal and emotional faith and trust. Nor usually had the average
Hellene of the {195} earlier period the conception of a personal
tutelary divinity who brought him to life, and watched over his
course, preserving, rebuking, and interceding for him. The Babylonian
fancy of the great king sitting in infancy on the lap of the goddess
and drinking milk from her breasts would not commend itself to the
religious sense in Greece.

In Mesopotamia and in the other Semitic communities the fashion of
naming a child after the high god or goddess was very common--commoner
I am inclined to think than in Hellas, though in the latter country
such names as Demetrios, Apollodoros, Zenon, Diogenes, point to the
same religious impulse; but they appear to have arisen only in the
later period. The Hellenic language did not admit, and Hellenic
thought would not have approved of, those mystic divine names, which
express as in a sacred text some quality or action of the divinity,
such as we find in the Bible (“the Lord will provide”), and in
pre-Islamitic inscriptions of Arabia, Ili-kariba, “My God hath
blessed”; Ili-azza, “My God is mighty”; Ili-padaja, “My God hath
redeemed.”[195.1] Such names served as spells for the protection of
the child, and are speaking illustrations of the close personal
dependence of the individual upon the god.

This is also illustrated by another fashion, possibly ancient, of
Semitic religious nomenclature: not only was the individual frequently
named after the deity, but the deity might sometimes receive as a
cult-title the name of the individual. Of this practice among the
polytheistic Semites the only examples of which I am aware come from a
late period and from the region of Palmyra: Greek inscriptions of the
late Imperial era give such curious forms as Θεὸς Ἀὐμοῦ, Θεὸς {196}
Οὐασεάθου, Θεὸς Ἀμέρου:[196.1] and these descriptive names in the
genitive must designate the principal worshipper or founder of the
cult; they are mostly un-Greek, as the religious custom certainly is,
which is illustrated by such ancient Biblical expressions as “the God
of Abraham,” “the God of Jacob.” We may find an example of the same
point of view in the Phrygian title of Μὴν Φαρνάκου in Pontus, if we
take the most probable explanation, namely, that it is derived from
the Persian Pharnakes, the founder of the cult;[196.2] and again in a
Carian dedication to Zeus Panamaros Ἀργύρου, as Ἄργυρος is found in
the same neighbourhood as the name of a living man.[196.3]

The only parallel that Hellenic religion offers is the doubtful one,
Athena Αἰαντίς, whose temple is recorded at Megara:[196.4] it may be
that the goddess took her title from the hero because his grave was
once associated with the temple. In any case, it is not so striking
that the mythic hero should stand in this intimate relation with the
deity as that the living individual should.

The ecstatic and self-prostrating adoration of divinity which is
characteristic of the Babylonian temper might manifest itself at times
in that excess of sentiment that we call sentimentality: we catch this
tone now and again in the childlike entreaties with which the
supplicator appeals to the deity as his father or mother; in the
poetic pathos of the hymns to Tammuz, which sometimes remind us of the
sentimentality {197} of some of our modern hymns: he is called “Lord
of the tender voice and shining eyes”; “he of the dove-like
voice.”[197.1] Such language may be called “hypokoristic,” to use a
Greek phrase; it belongs to the feminine sentiment in religion, and we
are familiar 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 wailing-services were attuned. We have only a
few hints of some simple ancient ritual of sorrow: the pre-Homeric
Greek may have bewailed Linos and Hyakinthos, as we hear that the
Elean women in a later period bewailed Achilles; but if, indeed, the
fragment of a Linos-threnody that the Scholiast on Homer has preserved
for us is really primitive,[197.2] it has some pathos, but much
brightness and nothing of the Babylonian sentimentality. The spirit of
the Greek religious lyric strikes us as always virile, and as likely
to be unsympathetic with the violent and romantic expression of sorrow
or with endearing ecstasy of appeal.

The other trait that should be considered here in the religious spirit
of the Mesopotamian Semites is fanaticism, an emotional quality which
often affords a useful basis of comparison between various religions.
This religious phenomenon is best known by its deadly results; but in
itself it is most difficult to define, as are other special moral
terms that imply blame and are highly controversial. It is only found
among those who feel their religion so deeply as to be relatively
indifferent to other functions of life. We impute fanaticism {198}
when the tension of religious feeling destroys the moral equilibrium
or stunts development of other parts of our nature, or prompts to acts
which, but for this morbid influence, would excite moral indignation.
It may display itself in the artistic and intellectual sphere, as by
iconoclasm or the suppression of arts and sciences; or in the
discipline of individual life, as by over-ascetic self-mortification.
Its coarsest and most usual manifestation is in war and the
destruction of peoples of alien creed. A war or a slaughter is called
fanatical, if its leading motive is the extermination of a rival
religion, not for the sake of morality or civilisation, but as an act
in itself acceptable to one’s own jealous god. The ascetic type of
fanaticism is specially a product of the Far East: the murderous type
is peculiar to the Semitic spirit, when unchastened by a high ethical
sympathy or a sensitive humanism; for the chief record of it is in the
pages of the history of Israel, Islam, and Christianity, so far as
this last religion has been in bondage to certain Semitic influence.
It is a question of interest whether we find fanaticism of this type
in the Mesopotamian area and in the ancient polytheistic communities
of the Western Semites. We might expect to find it because of the
intensity of the religious spirit that seems to have been a common
inheritance of all these stocks. The more fervent the worship, the
more is the likelihood that the dangerous idea of a “jealous” god will
emerge, especially when races are living under the illusion of the
“fallacy of names.” By a fatal logic of devotion, the jealous god may
be thought to favour or ordain the destruction of those who worship
the deity under other names, which meant, for the old world, other
gods. Only this must be carefully distinguished from the other more
innocent {199} idea, proper to all tribal religions, that the deity of
the tribe, like a good citizen, will desire victory for his people’s
arms.

As regards Mesopotamia, in his _History of Ancient Religions_ Tiele
finds in Assyrian history the same traces of murderous fanaticism as
in Israelitish.[199.1] So far as I have been able as yet to collect
the evidence, this statement appears to contain some exaggeration. For
I have not found any record of a war that an Assyrian or Babylonian
ruler undertakes at the command of a “jealous god” against a people
whose only offence is an alien worship. The motives for a war appear
to be of the ordinary human and secular kind; Palestine, for instance,
is attacked, not because Marduk or Asshur personally hates Jahwé, but
because the country holds the key of the route to Egypt. Such Biblical
narratives as the destruction of Jericho, Ai, and the Amalekites find
no real parallel in Mesopotamian chronicles. Yet in these also the
temper of homicidal religion is strong enough to be dangerous. Neither
in the Babylonian nor in the Assyrian divinities is there any spirit
of mercy to the conquered. On that early relief of Annabanini of the
third millennium B.C., the goddess leads to the king the captives by a
hook in their noses to work his will upon them.[199.2] And in the
later records of the great Assyrian Empire, the deities appear
prominently as motive forces, and the most cruel treatment of captives
is regarded as acceptable to them. The worst example that Tiele quotes
is the great inscription of Assurbanipal, who, after speaking of
himself as “the Compassionate, the King who cherishes no
grudge,”[199.3] naïvely proceeds to narrate how he tore out the
tongues {200} of the rebels of Babylon, hewed their flesh into small
pieces, and flung it to the dogs, swine, and vultures; and “after I
had performed these acts, I softened the hearts of the Great Gods, my
Lords.” But the lines that follow suggest that what “softened their
hearts” was not so much the tortures and massacres, which they might
approve of without directly commanding, but the religious measures
that Assurbanipal immediately undertook for the purification of
Babylon, whose temples had been polluted with corpses. Again,
Tiglath-Pileser III. speaks of himself as the Mighty One “who in the
service of Asshur broke in pieces like a potter’s vessel all those who
were not submissive to the will of his god”;[200.1] and a little
later, Sargon recounts how “Merodach-Baladin, King of the Chaldaeans,…
who did not fear the name of the Lord of Lords… broke the statues of
the great gods and refused his present to me.”[200.2] Yet it would be
a misunderstanding to speak of these, as Tiele does, as if they were
wars of religion, like the Crusades or the war against the Albigenses.
Asshur sends the king to the war invariably, but rather for the sake
of the king’s profit and glory than for the propagation of Asshur’s
religion; for his enemies are very frequently of the same religion as
himself. The above phrases must be understood probably in a political
sense rather than a religious; the god and the king are so intimately
associated that whoever insults or injures one, insults or injures the
other. We may suspect that Merodach-Baladin’s breach of the divine
statutes consisted in his omitting to send his usual tribute to
Sargon. When two men had spoken scornfully of the gods of
Assurbanipal, both the king and the gods would wish to avenge the
insult:[200.3] it was natural, therefore, for Assurbanipal {201} to
torture and flay them. In warring against an alien people, the king is
warring against alien gods; therefore if he sacks the alien city he
may capture and take away, or--more rarely--destroy, the city’s gods.
Thus Asarhaddon had taken away the idols of Hazailu, King of Arabia,
and of Laili, King of Iadi; but when these kings had made submission
and won his favour he returned to them the holy images, having first
inscribed them with his own ideogram and a mark of the might of
Asshur:[201.1] thus the gods, having the brandmark of the great king
and the imperial deity, become tributary divinities. Or if he wished
to wipe a people out, the Assyrian conqueror might break their idols
to dust. Thus Assurbanipal broke in pieces the gods of the
Elamites--the most deadly foes of Babylon--and thereby “eased the
heart of the Lord of Lords.”[201.2] But many of the Elamite deities
he led away; and of one of them he speaks in terms of reverence,
Sašinak, the god of destiny, “who dwells in hidden places, whose
working no one sees.”[201.3] It is more difficult to understand why
Sanherib should boast to have destroyed the deities of Babylon after
his capture of the city; for the leading Babylonian divinities
certainly belonged to the Assyrian Pantheon.

The evidence here quoted justifies us in attributing fanaticism to the
religious temper of Babylonia and Assyria; not because the wars were
evangelising, undertaken in the service of religion, but because the
savage cruelty that accompanied them is deemed, as it is in the early
Hebraic view, acceptable to the national gods. The idea of divine
mercy is potent in the liturgies; but neither morality nor religion
would appear to have inculcated any mercy towards the alien foe; and
this lack {202} of moral sympathy may be termed a passive fanaticism.
The same fanatic temper might be traced in the savagery of the
punishments for offences against the State-religion, and was reflected
also at times in the legal code.[202.1]

From other polytheistic Semitic communities we have no record, so far
as I am aware, that bears on the phenomenon that we are considering,
except the famous Moabite Stone, of which the style is in this respect
strikingly Biblical. Mesha regards himself as sent by his god Chĕmosh
to take Nebo from Israel, and he explains why he slaughtered all
within the walls, man, woman, and child, “for I had devoted it to
Chĕmosh.” Fanaticism does not so naturally belong to polytheism as to
monotheism; yet it seems that at times the polytheistic Semites could
be as prone to this vice of the religious temper as the monotheistic
Israelites.

Speaking generally, and in comparison with the ancient Semitic and the
mediaeval and even later spirit of Europe, we must pronounce the
Hellenic temperament of the earlier and classical period as wholly
innocent of fanaticism. The history of Hellas is not stained by any
“war of religion”; and no religious hierarchy in Hellas ever possessed
the power or displayed the will to suppress art or persecute science
and thought. It might occasionally happen that individuals were in
danger of punishment if they insulted or openly flouted the civic
worship or introduced new deities; but that the State should protect
itself thus is not fanaticism. The least tolerant of cities was the
enlightened Athens. But her record in this matter is a spotless page
compared {203} with the history of any later European State. Hellas
owed this happy immunity to her cooler religious temper, to the
equilibrium of the other life-forces within her, and to her
comparative freedom from dark and cruel superstitious fears.

It is specially in regard to such salient features of the religious
temperament as we have been considering that the early Hellene
asserted his spiritual independence of the East.



 CHAPTER XII.
 Eschatologic Ideas of East and West.

{204}

Religions are often found to differ fundamentally in their
conceptions of the fate of the departed spirit of man, and in the
prominence and importance they assign to the posthumous life. There
is, in fact, a group of religions which we might term “other-worldly,”
because certain dogmas concerning the world after death are made the
basis on which their aspirations and ideals of conduct are
constructed; to this group belong Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and
the old Egyptian creed. There are other religions, also of a highly
developed type, in which eschatologic doctrine plays no forcible or
constructive part either in the theology or in the ethics. Such were
the Mesopotamian, primitive Judaism, and the early Hellenic.

Our question concerning the evidences in the second millennium of
Mesopotamian influences on the Western Aegean demands, then, at least
a brief comparison of the Sumerian-Babylonian, and Hellenic
eschatology. Our knowledge of the former is derived from certain epic
poems, the Epic of Gilgamesh, “The Descent of Ishtar,” and the poem
dealing with the marriage of Nergal and Erishkigal, the Queen of the
dead; secondly, from a few inscriptions of various periods, alluding
to burial or the status of the dead; thirdly, and this is the most
important source, from the recent excavations {205} of certain
“necropoleis.”[205.1] The Hellenic facts have been sufficiently set
forth for the present purpose in a former series of lectures.

In the picture of the lower world presented by the two literatures, a
certain general agreement is discoverable, but none closer than they
reveal with the conceptions of other peoples. Both accept as an
undoubted fact the continued existence of the soul after death, and
both imagine this existence as shadowy, profitless, and gloomy. Both
also vaguely locate the abode of the soul under the earth, with a
downward entrance somewhere in the west.[205.2] In both we find the
idea of a nether river to be crossed, or “the waters of
death”;[205.3] of a porter at the gates of “hell,” and of a god and
goddess as rulers of the lower world; while the mountain of the
Babylonian underworld on which the gods were supposed to have been
born was unknown to Hellenic mythology.[205.4] Such coincidences are
no criterion of a common origin of belief; for these traits recur in
the death-lore of many and widely scattered races.

As against them, we must take into account certain salient
differences. The lot of the departed in the Babylonian epic account
appears drearier even than {206} in the Homeric, just as the
Babylonian religious poetry inclines to the more sombre tones and the
more violent pathos. The dead inhabit “the house wherein he who enters
is excluded from the light, the place where dust is 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 the dust is scattered.”[206.1] This is more hopeless than the
Homeric meadow of Asphodel, where the souls still pursue the shadow of
their former interests, and some tidings of the earth may penetrate to
give them joy. Also, the demoniac terrors of the lower world are more
vividly presented in Babylonian than in Hellenic literature and art.
The demons of disease that perform the bidding of Allatu, the Queen of
Hell, are closely connected with the ghost-world; we learn from the
formulae of exorcism that the haunting demon that destroyed a man’s
vital energies might be a wandering spectre. “O Shamash, a horrible
spectre for many days hath fastened itself on my back, and will not
loose its hold upon me.… he sendeth forth pollution, he maketh the
hair of my head to stand up, he taketh the power from my body, he
maketh my eyes to start out, he plagueth my back, he poisoneth my
flesh, he plagueth my whole body… whether it be the spectre of my own
family and kindred, or the spectre of one who was murdered, or whether
it be the spectre of any other man that haunteth me.”[206.2]

Now it is possible that the curse of the demon was powerful both in
the earlier and later periods of ancient, as it is powerful to-day in
modern, Greece; the demon might be a ghost or a _revenant_. And it has
{207} been the ambition of a small group of scholars in this country
to prove that the higher literature and art of Greece, that reveals so
fair and sane an imagination of the unseen world, is only a thin veil
drawn over much that was grotesque and ghastly in the popular
superstition. Even Homer reveals forms of terror in Hades; and we have
ugly tales of demons sucking blood, and ravaging the land like the
Ποινή of Megara. It is not necessary to labour this point. Probably
every ancient race has been sorely tried at one time or other by the
burden of demonology; even our hardy ancient kinsmen of Iceland had
their vampires and strangling ghosts, that figure occasionally in
their saga. But the great peoples of our Western civilisation are
those who have struggled free from this obsession into the light of
progressive secular life. Such also--we have the right to believe--was
the early Greek. To draw the distinction too sharply between the
cultured and the uncultured strata may be a source of fallacy,
especially when it is ancient Hellas that we are dealing with, where
the artist was usually a man of the people and the people certainly
delighted in the work of their poets, and were strangely susceptible
to the healing influences of music. If Greek poetry, then, and art
strove to banish the ugliest forms of the demon-world, and thereby
worked with purifying and tranquillising influence on the temperament,
so much the better for the Greek peasant. It is probably wrong,
therefore, to regard the average Hellene as a nightmare-ridden man.
But we might dare to say this of the Babylonian; and his imaginary
terrors were fostered by his religious liturgical poetry, and to some
extent by his art. For most of his hymns are formulae of exorcisms,
incantations against demons and spectres. But such liturgy played
relatively a very small part in {208} Greek ritual; and this is one of
the strongest facts that can be brought to witness against the theory
of early Babylonian influence.

Yet both the Greek and the Babylonian feared the miasma of the dead.
Ishtar’s threats at the portal of Hell, a tremendous outburst of
infernal poetry, is a strong witness to this feeling: “Thou warder,
open thy door, open thy door that I may enter in. If thou openest not
thy door that I may not enter, I will crash thy door into splinters, I
will burst the bolt, I will splinter the threshold and tear up the
wings of the door: I will lead forth the dead that they shall eat and
drink: the dead shall keep company with the living.” What lends part
of its force to this great passage is the dreadful thought that the
living should be haunted by the multitude of the ghosts that would
pollute the living person and the light of day.

Shamash the sun-god is the natural enemy of ghosts, and is therefore
appealed to in the incantation quoted just above to drive away the
demon-spectres. He seems to stand here in the same relation of
antipathy to the ghost-world as the “pure” Apollo stood for the Greek.

The mode and the place of burial will often throw light on the
feelings of the living in regard to the departed. The peoples of the
Minoan-Mycenaean culture 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;[208.1] and such being the facts, we cannot safely deduce
from them any marked difference in spiritual beliefs. More
illuminating is the fact that the pre-Homeric society in Greek lands
appears generally to have buried its dead in or near their
habitations, {209} as if they desired the companionship of the
spirits, agreeing in this respect with the people of Gezer in
Palestine.[209.1] In Mesopotamia, though in very ancient times the
dead were sometimes buried in temples, the fashion generally prevailed
of establishing a necropolis outside the city, as was the rule also in
post-Homeric Greece. This difference alone suggests that the fear of
the ghost was less powerful in pre-Homeric Greece than in Mesopotamia.

It is clear, however, that the Babylonian, like the Hellene, desired
at times to enter into communion with the departed family-ghost; for
in Mesopotamia, as in Hellas, we have clear trace of “parentalia,”
communion-meals to which the ancestral spirits were invited to feast
with the family. In the Babylonian phrase this was called “breaking
bread with” the dead:[209.2] the parallel facts in Hellas are
familiar to students.

Moreover, a certain general resemblance in the funeral ceremonies can
be detected between the Eastern and Western peoples whom we are
comparing. When we examine these, we discover that neither the Homeric
nor the Babylonian epic-picture of the desolateness and futility of
the life in Hades corresponded altogether with the popular faith as
expressed in tomb-ritual. It is true to say of all races that burial
customs and eschatological theory are never wholly harmonised by any
coherent logic, and generally reveal discord between the dogma and the
ritual. We can note this in ancient Hellas and among ourselves; and
the discovery of Babylonian graves reveals it in Mesopotamia. The
things found in these, toys for children, cosmetics for girls,[209.3]
{210} show that the ideas so powerfully expressed in “The Descent of
Ishtar” about the barrenness and nakedness of the land of the dead
were either not universally admitted or not acted upon.

Those who equip the dead with some of the things that were of use and
delight to the living must believe that the departed soul preserves a
certain energy and power of enjoyment, though a gloomy poet among them
may enlarge impressively on the emptiness of death. The unknown
Assyrian king who describes in an inscription the sumptuous burial
that he gave his father may not have been of the same mind as the poet
of the Ishtar-epic concerning the laws of the Queen of Hell:

 “Within the grave
 The secret place
 In kingly oil
 I gently laid him.
 The grave-stone
 Marketh his resting-place.
 With mighty bronze
 I sealed its [entrance],
 I protected it with an incantation.
 Vessels of gold and silver,
 Such as my father loved,
 All the furniture that befitteth the grave,
 The due right of his sovereignty,
 I displayed before the Sun-God,
 And beside the father who begat me,
 I set them in the grave.
 Gifts unto the princes,
 Unto the spirits of the earth
 And unto the gods who inhabit the grave,
 I then presented.”[210.1]

What is the meaning of the act of exposing the gold and silver vessels
to the sun-god Shamash before placing them on the grave? Was it done
to purify them by the aspect of the pure god and thus to fit them for
the use {211} of the glorified dead? The evidence of the deification
of kings has been collected above. But the ceremony in question is
unique, as far as I am aware.

No doubt in ordinary Semitic burials there was great variety in the
grave-offerings: in the graves of Gezer in Palestine, weapons, jewels,
ostrich-eggs, seals, scarabs, amulets, small figures in human or
animal form have been found.[211.1]

In these practices the primitive Hellene and Semite were on the same
level, nor is it likely that either was the pupil of the other. One
important difference, important at least for our purpose, we can mark,
which is connected with the difference between Hellenic and Oriental
climate. The Hellenic ghost might take water among his offerings, and
the neglected soul might be pitied for being ἄνυδρος[211.2]; he might
also eat his porridge in the Anthesteria; but he preferred wine, and
the offerings of blood--the αἱμακουρία--and especially the sacrifice
of animals. And we may gather from the painting on the Phaistos
sarcophagus that the blood-oblation to the dead was part of the
pre-Hellenic ritual in Crete. The triple-libation, also, that Homer
mentions, of wine, honey-mead, and water, and which the later Greeks
retained, may be regarded as a Minoan tradition, for its great
antiquity among the Aegean people is attested by the libation-table
found by Sir Arthur Evans in the cave of Zeus on Mount Dickte. Here
there is no trace of the teaching of the Babylonian priest: nor in the
blood-offerings to the dead. For the Babylonian ghost, parched with
thirst in the intolerable heat of Mesopotamia, craved not
blood--which, as far as I know, is never mentioned in the description
of his funeral-rites--but {212} beer in the earliest period,[212.1]
and in the later specially water. It is water that was supposed to
make the deceased comparatively happy:

 “On a couch he lieth
 And drinketh pure water,
 The man who was slain in battle.
 His father and his mother [support] his head,
 And his wife [kneeleth] at his side.”[212.2]

This is the lore that in the Epic of Gilgamesh is imparted to the hero
by the ghost of his beloved Eabani, concerning the advantages of the
man who gets due burial over him whose corpse is thrown out into the
field, and whose soul wanders restlessly eating “the dregs of the
vessel, the leavings of the feast, and that which is cast out upon the
street.”

The spirit’s need of water has been an ancient tradition of Semitic
grave-tendance. It is expressed on one of the cylinders of
Gudea;[212.3] and in the Curse of Hammurabi, which is a postscript to
his code of laws, he swears that if a man breaks them “his spirit in
the world below shall lack water.”[212.4] Clay-cylinders in the
museums of Paris and Berlin, that doubtless come from Mesopotamian
graves, contain inscriptions expressing a blessing on the man who
respects the dead, “may his departed spirit in the world below drink
clear water.”[212.5] The old idea survives in the belief of modern
Islam that the soul of the dead yearns for nothing so much as that the
rains or dews of heaven should fall refreshingly on the grave.

These simple differences in the oblations incline {213} us to suppose
that the primitive grave-ritual of Greece was developed independently
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 period with apotheosis of the dead; and
actual hero-cults and actual cults of ancestors became, as we have
seen, a salient phenomenon of Greek religion.

But if this phenomenon is to be noted at all in the Babylonian, it
certainly was not salient. We know 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; where this is asserted by modern scholars,[213.1] it may
be that they have not paid sufficient attention to the important
difference that has been defined between the tendance and the worship
of the dead.[213.2] This at all events, on the evidence already
placed before us, may be said: in respect of the frequency and force
of hero-worship, Mesopotamia stands at the opposite pole to Greece,
and in testing the question of primitive religious influences of East
on West this fact must be weighed in the scale.

Evidence has been adduced pointing to an early Greek belief that the
spirit of the departed ancestor might reincarnate itself in a
descendant: a belief fairly common among savage peoples. I have not
been able to find any indication of it in Babylonian records, nor am I
aware of any trace of it among other Semitic peoples except, possibly,
a late {214} Phoenician inscription from the tomb of Eshmunazar, King
of Sidon about B.C. 300: in the curse which he invokes against the
violator of his tomb he prays 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.”[214.1] These strange
words contain the idea of a family-tree; the fruit and the bloom are
the living members who are in the light of the sun: the root are the
ancestral spirits. If the figure is to be interpreted literally, we
must regard these latter as the source of the life that is on the
earth, and the curse would mean “may the departed ancestors no longer
have the power to reappear in the living.” But we cannot feel sure how
much sense we can press into the words.

So far, it appears that there was little or no communion according to
Babylonian belief between the dead and the living, except at the
family sacramental meal held after the funeral. Only the vexed and
neglected soul of the unburied or the unhallowed dead returned to
disturb the living. And perhaps at times the Babylonians, as the
Israelites, resorted to “necromancy,” the evocation of the dead by
spells, so as to question them concerning the future. One evidence of
this is the passage in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the hero is able
to evoke the spectre of his friend Eabani and question it. This was
probably suggested by an actual practice, which is attested by such
priestly titles as “he who leads up the dead,” “he who questions the
dead.”[214.2] In ancient Greece we have the further evidence, which
is lacking in the Babylonian record, of actual νεκυομαντεῖα or shrines
where the dead were {215} consulted, and some of these may have
descended from the pre-Homeric period; for the evocation of ghosts
seems to have been specially practised in Arcadia, where so much
primitive lore survived.

As regards the higher eschatology, it would seem that the Babylonian
of the earlier 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[215.1] there already is found this important
trait--certain notorious sinners are punished, certain privileged
persons like Menelaos may be wafted to blessedness; while in Hesiod
the idea is outspoken that many of the righteous and distinguished men
of the past enjoy a blessed lot hereafter.[215.2] Moreover, this
important dogma of posthumous punishments and rewards is not confined
to the world of mythic fancy in the Homeric epic, to personages such
as Tantalos, Tityos, Menelaos: the average man in the Homeric period
might not hope for happiness after death; but if Homer is his
spokesman he could fear special punishment, and the threat of it was
already a moral force.

There are two striking passages in the _Iliad_, of which the
importance for our present question is often ignored: in iii. 278
there is reference to the two divinities whom, with Aristarchus, we
must interpret as Hades and Persephone, who punish oath-breakers after
death: in xix. 259 the same function of executing judgment in the
nether world upon the souls of the perjured is ascribed to the
Erinyes: the context in both passages {216} suggests that the poet is
giving voice to a common popular belief.

And in regard to posthumous happiness, early Greece may have believed
more than Homer reports. For who can determine how early this
eschatologic hope came into the Eleusinian mysteries?

The “threats of hell and hopes of Paradise” were never wholly
moralised even by later Greek thought; but here are the germs
discernible in the earliest stage of the religion from which a higher
moral teaching and a new moral force might emanate. But those who have
tried to discover similar ideas in the records of Babylonian
eschatology have hitherto entirely failed. Certain phrases and certain
mythic data may be, and have been, pressed to support the theory that
Babylonian religion and ethics were not without some belief in
judgment and resurrection;[216.1] but it is overpressure, and the
phrases may easily be misunderstood. No clear evidence points to
Babylonian belief in posthumous judgment; the title “god of judgment”
attached to Nergal might have merely a political significance. Again,
“awakener of the dead” is a fairly frequent epithet of many
divinities; but no context where it occurs suggests for it an
eschatologic intention.[216.2] In the story of Adapa, much of which
is recovered from the Tel-El-Amarna tablets, we find reference to the
“Food of Life” and the “Water of Life,”[216.3] that the God of Heaven
might have given to Adapa and thereby made him immortal; and in the
story of Ishtar’s descent, it is said that Allatu kept the waters of
life in {217} hell wherewith Ishtar was restored. But nowhere as yet
has any hint been found that these waters of life were available for
any mortal man, and even Adapa, the son of a god, missed getting them.
In the mythology of Babylon only one mortal, Utnapishtim, the
Babylonian Noah, passes without death to some happy land and becomes
immortal; after the deluge Bel spake thus: “Hitherto hath Utnapishtim
been of mankind, but now let Utnapishtim be like unto the gods, even
us, and let Utnapishtim dwell afar off at the mouth of the
river.”[217.1] Again, as the kings might be considered divine in
life, there was no difficulty in supposing that they joined the
company of the gods after death, as was supposed in Egypt. The prayers
offered to deities of the lower world by the Assyrian king on behalf
of his father, in the tablet quoted above, may be thus explained; the
nether powers are entreated to offer no obstacles to his apotheosis.
Other Semitic nations may have had the same belief concerning the
future blessedness of the king; at least an inscription of King
Panammu of North Syria, vassal of Tiglath-Pileser III., points to
this, for his successor is urged to pray that “the soul of Panammu
shall eat and drink with the good Adad.”[217.2]

But no evidence has as yet been gathered that the ordinary Babylonian
expected any such distinguished lot. Nor does it appear that prayers
were ever offered for his soul, as they might be for the king’s, and
as they habitually were for the ordinary Athenian’s in the
Anthesteria. For the Babylonian, on the whole, the only distinction of
lot between one person and another after death was between him whose
ghost was well {218} cared for by surviving relatives and him who died
an outcast and was neglected. And this was no moral distinction, nor
one that was likely to engender the belief in a righteous judgment.
The duty to the dead was a family duty merely; nor can I find in the
Mesopotamian records any indication of that tender regard of the alien
dead which leads in Greece to a certain higher morality, and which
informs Homer’s pregnant phrase--“it is not righteous to vaunt oneself
over the slain.” We find Assyrian kings revenging themselves by
mutilation and exposure of their enemies’ corpses;[218.1] and Semitic
ferocity and Hellenic αἰδώς are nowhere more vividly contrasted than
in this matter.

Finally, there appears a difference in character between the
Mesopotamian and the Hellenic deities who were concerned with the
surveillance of the world below. In the religion of the Western
people, the latter are as essentially concerned with life as with
death; and Demeter, Kore-Persephone, Plouton, Zeus Χθόνιος, are benign
divinities whose sombre character is only the reverse of the picture;
there is a chance of development for a more hopeful creed when the
dead are committed to the care of the gentle earth-goddess: and it was
through this double aspect of 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 vein in her is the passage in “The Descent of Ishtar,” which
describes the sorrow of Allatu for the sufferings brought upon men
through the departure of the goddess of life and love. Nergal, who is
probably an usurper of the older supremacy of Allatu, has indeed a
celestial character {219} as the upper god of Kutha, but even in the
upper world his nature was regarded as terrible and destructive. Only
once or twice is the gentler Greek conception concerning the rulers of
the lower world found in Babylonian literature.[219.1] Enmesharra--a
name that may be a synonym for Nergal[219.2]--is hailed as “Lord of
Earth, of the land from which none returns (Aralu), great Lord,
without whom Ningirsu allows nothing to sprout in field and canal, no
growth to bloom.”[219.3] Tammuz himself also is once at least styled
“the Lord of the lower world.”[219.4] And if Ningirsu is another name
of the underworld-god, which is possible, it is significant that in an
old Babylonian document the cultivator of the soil is called “the
servant of Ningirsu.”[219.5] These isolated utterances, if they had
penetrated the popular religious thought, might have engendered a
softer and brighter sentiment concerning the world of death. But it is
doubtful if they were potent enough to effect this.[219.6] If the
gentle Tammuz had displaced Allatu and Nergal as the Lord of death,
Babylonian eschatology might have had a different career. But it does
not appear that he ever did. Deeply beloved as he was, he never
reached the position of a high god either in heaven or the lower
world.[219.7] Nor did his resurrection from the {220} dead evoke any
faith, as far as we see at present, that might comfort the individual
concerning his own lot. The personality and the rites of Attis, “the
Phrygian shepherd,” are closely akin to those of Tammuz, and may be
partly of Babylonian origin: and from these were evolved a higher
eschatologic theory that became a powerful religious force in later
Paganism. On the other hand, in Babylonia the germs of higher religion
in the Tammuz-ritual seem to have remained unquickened; possibly
because they were not fostered and developed by any mystic society.
For it is perhaps the most salient and significant difference between
Hellenic and Mesopotamian religions that in the latter we have no
trace of mysteries at all, while in the former not only were they a
most potent force in the popular religion, but were the chief agents
for developing the eschatologic faith.

This exposition of the Eastern and Western ideas concerning death and
the ritual of the dead is merely a slight sketch of a great subject;
but may serve the present purpose, the testing the question of early
religious contact. We have noted much general resemblance, but only
such as is found among various races of the world: on the other hand,
certain striking differences, both in detail and general conception,
that argue strongly against the theory of contact or borrowing in the
second millennium. Nor can we discover in the earliest Greek mythology
a single Mesopotamian name or myth associated with the lower
world.[220.1]



 CHAPTER XIII.
 Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

{221}

A comparison of the forms observed in these regions, both in regard
to the minute details and to the general underlying ideas, ought to
contribute independent evidence to the solution of our question. The
transmission of precise rules of ritual from one people to another,
implies an intercourse of some duration, and more or less regulated;
for while the name of a god or a single myth is volatile, and can be
wafted down remote routes by an itinerant trader, or nomad, or hunter,
the introduction of any organised ritual implies, as a rule, the
presence of the missionary or the foreign priest. If, then, there is
any evidence suggesting that Greece in its earliest period learnt its
ritual from Babylon, the importance of this for the ethnic history of
religion will be great indeed. Therefore it may seem that a detailed
comparison of the Eastern and Western ritual is forced upon us at this
point: but it would be premature to expect at present any finality in
the result, because the Mesopotamian documents have only been very
incompletely examined and published by the linguistic experts.
However, the material that they have presented to us reveals certain
salient facts of immediate value for our present purpose that cannot
be wholly illusory, however much we may have to modify our
interpretation of them in the light of future discovery.

{222}

As regards the Greek evidence, we are not without fairly ample
testimony concerning the earliest period. The Homeric poems present us
with the contemporary religious practices of at least a portion of the
population whom we may conveniently call the Achaeans; though we have
no right to suppose that they give us a complete account even of
those. Again, as ritual does not spring up in a day, and has a
singular longevity, we may be sure that much of Homeric ritual is a
tradition of the second millennium. Furthermore, we can supplement
Homer by later testimony, of which the lateness of date is no argument
against the primitiveness of the fashions that it may attest.

The first superficial comparison of Mesopotamian and Aegean ceremonies
exhibits a general similarity in the mechanism of religion; an
established priesthood, temples, images, altars, prayers, sacrifice,
religious music, holy days, consultation of the gods by methods of
divination, a certain ceremonious tendance of the dead, these are
common features of East and West. But if we were comparing Hellenic
with Egyptian or Vedic, or even Mexican and Peruvian religion, we
should be able to point to the same general agreement in externals,
and many of these institutions are found broadcast over the modern
world of savage society. It will be more important for the present
question, if when we examine the Babylonian, Anatolian, and Hellenic
ritual more minutely we discern salient differences, especially if
these are found in certain organic centres of the religious life such
as was the sacrifice. And we must first try to determine whether the
Hellas of the pre-Homeric days already possessed all those religious
institutions roughly enumerated above. We can deal to some extent with
both these problems together.

{223}

The erection of temples is an important stage in the higher
development of anthropomorphic religion. By the beginning of the
second millennium B.C. this had become an immemorial tradition of
Mesopotamia. But we are not sure at what period the other polytheistic
Semites first evolved the architectural shrine, or how long they were
content to use the natural cave as the house of a divinity, or a high
place or “temenos” with altar or sacred pillar. The recent excavations
at Gezer have revealed a glimpse into the religion of the prehistoric
Semites of Canaan; and one shrine that seems nothing more than a row
of sacred monoliths, but also another that has more the appearance of
an elaborate building of a sacred character.[223.1] Of still greater
antiquity was the shrine that Professor Petrie has discovered at
Serabit in the Sinaitic peninsula, an original cave-temple complicated
with the addition of porticoes and chambers, which he believes to have
been devoted to a double cult, the Egyptian and Semitic.[223.2] At
all events, we may conclude that before 1000 B.C. most of the more
cultured Semitic communities in Asia Minor had come to house their
divinities in more or less elaborated shrines.

As regards the other race that dominated the early period of Anatolian
history, the Hittite, we have the priceless evidence of the
Boghaz-Keui monuments: these reveal a complex temple hewn out of and
into the rocky ravine with a “Holy of Holies” and what appears to be a
sleeping-chamber for the god.[223.3] In Phrygia, the artificial
shrine may have been late in supplanting the natural cavern or hole in
the rock that was once the sufficient home of the cult of the great
goddess.[223.4] From {224} the coast of Asia Minor we have no
evidence concerning the site of any ancient temple that carries us
back to the early period with which we are dealing.[224.1] But the
Homeric poems alone are sufficient proof that the Greeks, for whom
they were composed, were beginning to be familiar with some
architectural type of the deity’s habitation. Apollo Smintheus already
has his shrine and professional priest.[224.2] We hear of the temple
and priestess of Athena in Troy,[224.3] of her shrine at Athens,
which she shared with Erechtheus,[224.4] and the stone-threshold of
Apollo at Delphi, that guarded already many treasures within
it.[224.5] And we also know from the excavations of the last few
years that the Aryan invaders from the North, the proto-Hellenes,
would find temples on some at least of the sites of the Minoan
culture. Crete has preserved certain shrines of the second millennium;
but except the temple-cave on Dikte all of them so far are found to be
merely domestic chapels in the king’s palace, as though the king were
personally responsible for the religion of the community: and so at
Mycenae, Tiryns, and Athens, the oldest temples have been found on the
foundations of “Mycenaean” palaces.[224.6] But the temples of Hera on
the public hill of Argos and at Olympia are now dated near to 800
B.C.[224.7]

We have, then, proof sufficient of temple-construction in Greece and
the Aegean islands before the period of Homer; and if we must have
recourse to the theory that the peoples of the Minoan-Mycenaean
culture took {225} their cue in this important evolution from some
foreign civilisation, we should look to Egypt rather than to Assyria,
as nearer and more closely in touch with early Crete.

We may mark here a difference between Eastern and Western thought in
the religious conception of the temple. It was naturally regarded
everywhere as sacrosanct, because permeated with the virtue of the
divine presence; but Babylonia developed this idea with greater
intensity of conviction than the Hellene, and actually deified the
temple itself: the King Nabopolassar (_circ._ 625 B.C.) prays to it in
such words as these, “Oh, temple, be gracious to the king thy
restorer, and if Marduk enters thee in triumph, report my piety to
him.”[225.1] Such exaggeration is not found in Greek
religion.[225.2]

As regards the emblem of divinity, the cult-object set up in the
shrine to attract and to mark the presence of the deity, the
Mesopotamian religion had, as we have seen, already evolved the eikon
or image at some period considerably earlier than the second
millennium, and the statue of the god or goddess had become an
important factor of early ritual: only the emblem of Asshur remained
aniconic.[225.3] Of equally early vogue was the image, whether human
or theriomorphic, in Egyptian cult. Again, the early Hittite monuments
reveal it clearly, though aniconic fetiches appear also on the reliefs
of Boghaz-Keui. But it is probable that the Western Semites, and the
tribes of Arabia before 1200 B.C., {226} and many of them for
centuries after, preferred the aniconic emblem, the “Ashera” or post,
or heap of 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 alien to the old and genuine tradition of
Semitic public worship. Iconic representations of divinities may
indeed be found in Western Semitic regions, and some of these may be
of great antiquity; such as the silver statue that Thutmose III. (of
the fifteenth century B.C.) carried off from Megiddo and the
Lebanon,[226.1] or the “Astarte”-plaques found on the site of Gezer.

But in Semitic communities of the earlier period such objects belonged
rather to the private religion, and the public service centred round
the sacred pillar or stone, as was the case at Mecca both before and
after Islam arose: the evidence for this has been carefully given and
estimated by Robertson Smith and Sir Arthur Evans.[226.2]

The same statement holds of many of the non-Semitic peoples of Western
Anatolia; in Phrygia, for instance, the earliest emblem of Kybele was
the rude pillar or cone-shaped stone, and this survived down to late
times in the worship of the Anatolian goddess in some of the Greek
cities on the Asiatic coast.

The recent discoveries in the regions of the Minoan and Mycenaean
culture reveal the same phenomenon: the cults in this area of the
Aegean in the second millennium were in the main aniconic, the
favourite emblem being {227} the pillar or tree-trunk, while in
ancient Crete the axe and even the cross has been found.[227.1] Where
the divinity appears in full human shape, as the snake-goddess in the
chapel of the cross, the lion-guarded goddess or the god descending in
the air above the pillar on the Minoan seals, these figures cannot, or
need not, be interpreted as actual temple-idols. And students of the
religion of classical Greece are familiar with the ample evidence of
the aniconic tradition in the λίθοι ἀργοί, and the cone-shaped pillars
and stocks that served as divine emblems in the later temples of
Greece.[227.2]

Now the ethnic question concerning pillar-cult has been critically
discussed by Sir Arthur Evans in his treatise mentioned above; and the
conclusion at which he arrives, that the striking parallelisms in
Semitic Anatolian and Aegean ritual monuments are not to be explained
as the result of direct borrowing from one or the other group of
peoples, but as the abiding influence of a very early Mediterranean
tradition, commends itself as the most reasonable. It is legitimate to
maintain that the earliest Hellenes took over much of this aniconic
cult from the earlier Minoan and Mycenaean civilisation; but we must
not overlook the fact that they also possessed their own, as a
tradition derived from Central Europe.[227.3] The most futile
hypothesis would be to assume that the early Greeks derived it from
Babylon, where it is less in evidence than in any other Semitic
community.[227.4]

{228}

The iconic impulse whereby the tree-trunk and pillar were gradually
supplanted by the fully human statue was beginning to work by the time
that the Homeric poems received their present form; for we have in the
_Iliad_[228.1] an undoubted reference to a seated statue of Athena in
her temple on the Akropolis of Troy. We see here the working of an
instinct that was partly religious, partly, perhaps, aesthetic in its
origin. If we are to connect it with foreign influences, Egypt is at
least a more “proximate cause” than Babylon.

This comparison of the cult-objects set up in shrines or holy places
must take into account the phallic emblem also. This was much in vogue
in the worship of Hermes and Dionysos, and was not unknown even in the
ritual of Artemis.[228.2] Herodotus maintains that it was adopted by
the Hellenes from “the Pelasgians,” but, as I have tried to show
elsewhere,[228.3] we cannot attach real value to his induction. It
may have descended from an old tradition of European cult, and it was
indigenous among other Aryan nations. As regards the Mediterranean
races, we find traces of its use in the Samothracian mysteries and in
the grave-cult of Phrygia; while some of the records of the Sabazian
mysteries suggest that a phallic character attached to them. The
Minoan-Mycenaean culture has been regarded as innocent of this, since
the phallic emblem does not appear among the monuments yet found; and
this opinion is somewhat corroborated by its absence in the ritual of
Aphrodite, who may be regarded as a direct descendant of the great
Cretan goddess; for only a late and somewhat doubtful text attests the
dedication of phalloi to the {229} Cyprian Aphrodite.[229.1] But the
evidence from the Phrygian religion, that has many ethnic affinities
with Crete, and from such ritual-stories as that of Pasiphae, ought to
make us hesitate.

In Semitic ritual the emblem was certainly not commonly in public use,
even if it occurred at all; the evidence for it, at present
forthcoming, is at least very doubtful; two of the pillars found at
Gezer have been supposed to possess phallic attributes;[229.2] but
Robertson Smith has well protested against the foolish tendency to
interpret sacred pillars generally as phalloi,[229.3] and even
regards Lucian’s assertion of the phallic significance of the two
sacred pillars, each three hundred feet in height, that flanked the
propylaea of the temple at Hierapolis,[229.4] as a mistake suggested
to him by the later Hellenic misinterpretation. Other statements of
Lucian in that treatise may cause us to believe that a phallic
character attached to some part of the ritual of the Syrian goddess;
but, if it did, we could not safely regard it as originally Semitic,
since so many ethnic strains are mingled in that complex religion.

It is doubtful whether we can recognise the emblem anywhere in the
religious monuments of the Hittites, though Perrot would give this
interpretation to one of the cult-objects carved on the relief of
Boghaz-Keui.[229.5]

Finally, its vogue in Babylonia seems to have been confined to private
superstition; from the second millennium onwards it was employed as an
amulet, {230} and one of the royal chronicles, about 1110 B.C., is
inscribed on a tablet that represents a phallos; but we cannot argue
from this or any other evidence yet adduced, so far as I am aware,
that the emblem was used in public ritual.

So far as we can discern at present, then, the Babylonian and Hellenic
phenomena are divergent in respect of pillar-cult and phallic
ritual.[230.1]

The most interesting part of our present inquiry is the comparison of
the ceremonies and the concept of sacrifice in East and West. At the
first glance we note, as usual, a certain general similarity. In the
earliest period we find various animals, both wild and domestic,
offered upon the altars, but in Babylonia no special rules concerning
their sex, such as were prescribed by ancient Greek and Judaic ritual.
In all these countries, again, bloodless offerings of cereals and
fruits were in common vogue; and in the earliest Babylonian period,
these were of great variety, an inscription of Gudea mentioning
butter, honey, wine, corn with milk, figs, dates, as the food of the
gods, “untouched by fire.”[230.2] We note here the distinction
familiar in Greek ritual, between ἔμπυρα and ἄπυρα ἱερά; only in
Babylonia it does not seem to have been of religious importance, nor
to have been developed, as it was in Hellas, into a ceremonial law
that might engender an important variation in the moral ideas and
religious concepts of the worshipper; for instance, the altar of {231}
Apollo at Delos was called καθαρός, “the pure altar,” because no blood
could be shed upon it, the sacrifices of Athena Lindia at Rhodes, and
of Zeus in certain mystic rites of Crete, were ἄπυρα, or “fireless,”
which was the technical name for the oblations of fruits and cereals;
and this fact of ritual suggested to later Greek philosophy the
ethical-religious view that the “pure,” that is to say, bloodless,
offering was the more acceptable oblation, and was a tradition of the
age of man’s innocence. This pregnant idea has not yet been discovered
in Mesopotamian or in any other old Semitic religion; the Babylonian
deities received both kinds, and perhaps simultaneously, though in
certain special ceremonies the sacred cake, or the liquid offerings of
milk, honey, wine, and oil, might suffice;[231.1] while, according to
the ancient Hebraic view, as the legend of Cain and Abel indicates,
the deity appears to prefer blood-sacrifice, though each species is
recognised in the pre-exilic sacral literature.[231.2]

There is another distinction observed in Greek ritual, that becomes of
some importance in the later history of ascetic purity, that between
wineless offerings (νηφάλια) and those accompanied with wine: the
former being preferred by the powers of the lower world,[231.3]
though not invariably, and certainly not by the departed hero. However
this distinction arose--and no single hypothesis explains all the
cases--it was not a Semitic tradition, taught in early days to Hellas.
For the {232} Semitic divinities, including Jahwé, have a genial
liking for wine “which cheereth God and man”;[232.1] nor have we any
Semitic example of a taboo on it, except possibly a late Nabataean
inscription from the neighbourhood of Palmyra, mentioning “the god who
drinks no wine.”[232.2] Such a phrase would certainly not apply to
the deities of Babylon; even the sun-god, who in Hellas appears to
have been a total abstainer, is offered wine in the Babylonian
service,[232.3] and, according to one verse in the _Epic of
Creation_, the deities actually get drunk,[232.4] a grossness which,
in the mythic imagination of Hellas, is only imagined as possible for
Dionysos.

We have the right to say, then, that the avoidance of wine in certain
religious services of Hellas helps to confirm the impression of its
early independence of Semitic influences. The Hellenic rule may, in
certain cases, have been derived from an older Aegean tradition; for
two of the deities to whom it was applied, Helios and Aphrodite, may
be believed to have been bequeathed to Greece by the Minoan-Mycenaean
religion; and wine appears to have been prohibited in certain
ceremonies of the Phrygian goddess,[232.5] and of a goddess of
Caria.[232.6]

These are differences of some importance, and doubtless of great
antiquity between the ritual of East and West; more insignificant, yet
of considerable value for {233} our present question, is the fact that
incense was a regular accompaniment of the Babylonian sacrifice, but
did not come into religious use in Greece till some time after the
period of Homer. The fact itself we may consider as proved, both by
Homer’s silence about it, and by the Homeric use of the word θύος,
which means “victim,” and never “incense,” as in later Greek it came
to mean. Had the influence of the Mesopotamian culture been as strong
on Greece in the second millennium as it came to be from 800 B.C.
onwards, we should certainly have expected that the religious use of
incense, which is very attractive and spreads easily from one race to
another, would have been adopted by Greek ritual before the time of
Homer.

A more essential point is the sharp contrast preserved in the Greek
rites between the Olympian and the Chthonian ritual; a contrast that
demanded a difference of terminology and dictated different sacral
laws concerning time, manner, place of sacrifice, and choice of
victim. So far, I have not been able to discover any hint of this
important bifurcation of ritual in any Mesopotamian record. The only
nether-world power who was worshipped at all was Nergal, whether under
this or other names; and it does not appear that his worship differed
in any essential respect from that of any other high god. In fact, the
dualism between powers of the upper and powers of the lower world,
which has been generally remarked, and sometimes exaggerated in
Hellenic polytheism, only appears slightly in the Babylonian, and
seems to have left no impress on the divine service at all.

As regards the animals of sacrifice, the only striking divergence that
Hellenic and Semitic custom presents is in respect of the swine. The
sanctity or horror with {234} which this animal was regarded by most
Semitic societies[234.1] is not reflected in any record of early
Greek feeling. Being the Hellene’s common food, he offered it freely
to the deity, though in local cults there might occasionally be a
taboo on this as elsewhere on other victims, such as sheep or goat.
But it is possible that some of the predecessors of the Hellene in
Crete and Asia Minor, if not in Greece itself, shared the Semitic
sentiment in regard to the pig; and the reverence paid to it in Crete,
and especially at Praisos in later times,[234.2] may have been a
legacy of Minoan religion; also the Carian worship of Hemithea in
which swine were tabooed may have had ancient links with
Crete.[234.3] But the facts of swine-sacrifice or swine-reverence,
though they serve to distinguish the Hellenic from the ordinary
Semitic community, do not bear directly on our present problem, the
proofs of early Mesopotamian influence on the proto-Hellenic race. For
the usual Semitic taboo has not yet been found in Mesopotamia. The pig
is mentioned in a religious text as one of the animals that might be
offered to the gods as a vicarious piacular sacrifice, nor is there
any hint that the animal is being offered as an unclean
animal.[234.4] Certainly, other animals are mentioned much more
frequently as victims; and I am not aware of any other text that
mentions swine-sacrifice. It was associated in some way with the god
Ninib, one of whose appellatives means “swine”;[234.5] but no
evidence is yet forthcoming that it was offered to him.

{235}

A question now arises of greater moment both for our present purpose
and for the wider interests of Comparative Religion. Was the purport
and significance of the sacrificial act the same in the Western
society as that which is revealed in the sacred literature of
Babylonia? No part of the ancient religious system has been the theme
of so much study and speculation in recent years as the ancient
sacrifice. Robertson Smith in his epoch-making book, _The Religion of
the Semites_, was the pioneer of a new theory; which has since been
developed or modified by certain English and a few Continental
scholars following on his track. The result of these labours has been
to formulate and define various forms of sacrifice that prevailed in
the Mediterranean area. Three main types appear to emerge: (_a_) the
gift sacrifice, where an oblation is given over entirely to the deity,
whether generally to win his favour, or in special circumstances--for
instance, after sin has been committed--to appease his wrath, or as a
thank-offering for favour received; (_b_) the communion sacrifice,
where the community or the individual eat with the deity,
strengthening their feeling of fellowship by a common meal; (_c_) the
sacramental type, where the community or the individual may be said to
“eat the god,” that is, to partake of food or drink made sacred by the
infusion of the divine spirit or personality, which is thus
communicated to the partaker. It is best for the present to regard
these three as separate and independent, without trying to determine
which is prior and which posterior.[235.1]

The first type, which is almost ubiquitous in the human societies that
have arrived at the belief in personal {236} deities, is sufficiently
attested by Homer of the early Greeks, who promise and perform the
sacrifice partly as an offering to please or to appease the deity.
What is more important is the evidence, which I have dealt with
elsewhere,[236.1] that Homeric society was familiar also with the
more genial conception of the sacrifice as a communion-meal where the
worshipper and the deity meet around the altar; this emerges clearly
in the accounts that Homer has given us of an Achaean sacrificial
feast.[236.2] Even the germs are already visible of the idea from
which the third or more mystic type of sacrifice, what I have called
the sacramental type, might be evolved; for special significance
attaches to the acts described in the phrases οὐλοχύτας προβάλοντο and
σπλάγχν᾽ ἐπάσαντο, “they threw forward the barley-shreddings” and “they
tasted the entrails”: the first phrase is not wholly clear, but it may
signify that stalks of barley are first placed on the altar, and
thereby consecrated or filled with the divine virtue that is inherent
there, and then the beast is touched with these on the forehead and
thereby becomes himself filled with the spirit of godhead;[236.3] the
second is also a mystic act, for the σπλάγχνα specially contain the
life, which is now infused with divinity, and by tasting them the
worshippers partake of the divine life. All this arises solely from
the extraordinary degree of supernatural force or “Mana” which the
altar itself possesses, a force which may have {237} been an
inheritance from long ages of pillar-worship, if we believe the altar
to have been evolved from the sacred pillar.[237.1] It explains other
details in the old Hellenic sacrificial act; such as the casting the
hairs of the victim into the altar-flame,[237.2] which established a
communion between the animal and the deity, the practice of solemnly
consecrating the lustral water by ceremoniously carrying it round the
altar,[237.3] and charging it with a still more potent infusion of
divinity by plunging into it a lighted brand from the
altar-fire.[237.4]

The communion sacrifice must then have been in vogue in pre-Homeric
times; and the idea that gave it its meaning never wholly faded from
the State-ritual; for the rule, expressed by such formulae as οὐκ
ἀποφορά, δαινύσθων αὐτοῦ, bidding the worshipper conclude the feast
round the altar and take none of the flesh home, seems to arise partly
from the feeling that the ceremony was meaningless unless he feasted
wholly with the deity.[237.5] But it was most vividly realised in the
religious services of the θίασοι, the later religious orders or
fraternities devoted each to the cult of its special divinity; for
these a common religious meal formed the chief binding-tie.[237.6]

Apart from the Homeric evidence, we have the record of the Attic
Bouphonia as attestation of the great antiquity of this type of
sacrifice in Greece. To {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.[238.1] We see the ox
marking himself for sacrifice by voluntarily going up to the altar and
eating the corn upon it, being thus called, as it were, by the god
into communion with himself. As he is thus full of the spirit of the
god, it is regarded a sacrilegious act to slay him; but all the
citizens partake of his flesh, and even the stranger who eats becomes
himself a citizen, as through this feast he enters into kinship with
Zeus Polieus. All this can be explained by the belief that Zeus
Polieus is in the altar; and we need not resort to such theories as
that the ox is a totem-animal or the spirit of vegetation.

We must, however, beware of concluding that because the victim was
thus temporarily possessed with godhead and in this holy state
devoured, he was therefore literally regarded as the full incarnation
of the god, or that the worshipper consciously believed he was eating
his own deity who died in the sacrifice. For religious consciousness
by no means always draws the full logical corollaries of a religious
act. The more mystic idea, that has played a great part in the
religion of Europe, can only be detected or suspected, apart from
written direct ancient testimony, where the animal is treated with
reverence apart from and before his association with the altar, or is
regarded as the habitual incarnation of the deity. The immolation and
devouring of such a victim would be of the true sacramental type,
which Robertson Smith believed was the aboriginal form of all
sacrifice. But we have no clear example of it from the earliest period
of genuine Hellenic religion, unless we {239} force the evidence or
exaggerate its meaning.[239.1] We have only certain myths that we may
doubtfully venture to interpret by means of this hypothesis. And these
are no myths about animals, but about human victims devoured in
sacrifice: the most significant is the story of the cannibalistic
feast held by King Lykaon, who cooked his own son and offered the
flesh to Zeus, a ritual of which some survival, whether mimetic or
half-real, was witnessed by Pausanias himself on Mount Lykaon.[239.2]
This would point to sacramental cannibalism, if we assume that King
Lykaon was the human incarnation of Zeus Lykaios and that his son was
therefore a divine infant. But it is possible that the story enshrines
the remembrance of the more ordinary clan-sacrifice of the life of a
clansman to procure them communion with the clan-god by the common
partaking of his flesh: the kinsman is offered rather than the animal,
not so much that the sacrificers may eat their god, but that the god
by consuming their most valued life may be more closely incorporate
with them.

Again, in one of the darkest and most perplexing of Greek legends, the
story of Klumenos of Argos and his incestuous love of his daughter
Harpalyke, who revenges herself by slaying her own child and offering
it to the father in a sacrificial meal, we may discern the glimmer of
a remembrance of a cannibal sacrament. The associations of the story
dimly indicate a Thracian origin.[239.3] And it is in the range of
the Greek Dionysiac {240} cult, which according to the most probable
view was adopted from Thrace, that we find imprinted on legend and
ritual the tradition of a savage type of sacrament, in which the human
or animal incarnation of the god was devoured. Such is the
significance that we may fairly attach to the Titan-story of the
murder of the infant Dionysos, to the σπαραγμός of the goat or bull or
snake periodically practised by the Bacchoi or Bacchae, and to the
death of Pentheus.[240.1] And in later Greek ritual the consciousness
here and there survived that the victim offered to Dionysos incarnated
the very deity, even before it acquired the temporary mystic afflatus
from contact with the altar. The record of the ritual of Tenedos, in
which a sacred pregnant cow was tended reverently and the calf that
she bore was dressed in the buskins and then sacrificed to Dionysos,
“the render of men,” is the most piquant example.[240.2]

This Dionysiac tradition reaches back undoubtedly to the second
millennium in Greece; the evidence of a similar sacramental ritual in
purely Hellenic worship is shadowy and slight, for the critical
examination of the Eleusinian mysteries does not clearly reveal it;
and the growth and diffusion of the idea in later Paganism does not
concern us now.

But the consideration of the early Hellenic sacrifice, of which the
salient features have been slightly sketched above, is of signal value
for our present purpose. For it reveals at once a marked contrast to
Babylonian ideas so far as these at present are revealed to us. The
Babylonian-Assyrian liturgies, epics, and chronicles have failed to
disclose any other theory of the sacrifice than that which is called
the gift-theory. A general {241} term for the Babylonian sacrifice is
“kishtu” or “present.”[241.1] The deities are supposed to eat what is
given them; in the Epic of the Deluge the naïve phrase occurs, “The
gods smell the savour, the delightful savour, the gods swarm like
flies around the sacrificer.” No evidence is as yet forthcoming that
the sacrificer was supposed or was allowed to eat with the deity, as
in the Hellenic communion-sacrifice. On the contrary, certain texts
can be quoted which seem expressly to forbid such a thing.[241.2] The
document already cited that was found in Assurbanipal’s library,
containing the Job-like lament of the good man who had found no profit
in goodness, contains a verse in which he compares himself with the
sinner who neglects all religious ordinances, and who has even “eaten
the food of God.” And so we find that among the various evil or impure
or unlucky deeds that could bring a man under the ban of the gods, the
“devouring of sacrificial flesh” is expressly mentioned.[241.3]

Unless, then, documents yet to be revealed contradict this positive
and negative evidence, we have here a fact of great weight to set
against the theory that we are discussing. Whencesoever the Hellenes
derived their genial conception of the sacrifice as a communion-meal,
they did not derive it from Babylon. And all Robertson Smith’s
speculations concerning the inner significance of the Semitic
sacrifice cannot yet be applied to Mesopotamia, whence he was not able
to glean any evidence. In Babylonia the sacrificer got no share of the
victim. He might eat with the spirits of the dead in certain ritual,
but he was not, it appears, privileged {242} to eat with the god or
goddess. The deity took the victim, or the sacrifice of cereals and
fruits, as a present, and the priest got his share. But we are not
told that the priest ate with the god, or where he ate; nor can we say
that the priest represented the worshipper.

If a true sacrament is yet to be discovered in Babylonian religion, it
will probably be found in some document of the Tammuz ritual. For it
is probable that Tammuz was identified with the corn as with other
parts of vegetation, and that the mourning for him was accompanied
with abstinence from bread. His resurrection ended the fast, and if in
their joy the worshippers ceremoniously broke bread, they may have
supposed they were eating the body of their risen lord. But such a
reconstruction of the old Tammuz ritual rests at present only on the
indirect evidence of the later records of Attis-Adonis cult and of the
Tammuz-worship among the heathen Syrians of Harran in the tenth
century of our era.[242.1]

It belongs to the Babylonian conception of the sacrifice as a gift,
that the animal was often regarded as a ransom for the man’s own life;
that is to say, when sin had been committed, the deity might be
placated by the gift of an agreeable victim, and be persuaded to
accept it in place of the sinner whose life was properly forfeit. For
instance, a sick man is always supposed to have sinned; and the priest
who is performing an animal sacrifice in his behalf uses the prayer,
“Take his present, take his ransom”;[242.2] and the formula of a
sacrifice offered by way of exorcism is very explicit: “A male sheep,
a female sheep, a living sheep, a dead {243} sheep shall die, but I
shall live.”[243.1] Another inscription[243.2] throws further light
on the ritual of the vicarious sacrifice: “To the high-priest may one
cry out: the kid of substitution for the man, the kid for his soul he
hath brought: place the head of the kid to the head of the man, place
the neck of the kid to the neck of the man, place the breast of the
kid to the breast 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 the victim, so
that the kid might be his most efficacious representative. It thus
became part of the higher ethical teaching of Babylon that “sacrifice
brings life,” just as “prayer takes away sin,” a doctrine expressed in
a fragmentary tablet that contains a text of striking spiritual
import.[243.3]

The type of sacrifice that may be called vicarious must have been an
ancient as well as a later tradition in Greece; for the legends
associated with many sacrifices clearly attest it, explaining certain
animal victims as substitutes for a human life that was formerly
demanded by the offended deity, the vicarious sacrifice usually
carrying with it the ideas of sin and atonement.[243.4] The
substitution might occasionally {244} be apologised for by a legal
fiction, as, for instance, when in the ritual of the Brauronian
Artemis the angry goddess demanded the life of a maiden, and the
Athenian parent sacrificed a goat, “calling it his daughter.”[244.1]

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 much that has been brought
by modern scholars is due to false interpretation of ritual, such as
the scourging of the Spartan boys; later, the human sacrifice became
repugnant to the advancing ethical thought of the nation, but
according to one authority did not wholly die out till the age of
Hadrian. On the other hand, no literary text nor any monument has yet
been found that proves the existence of such a ritual in Babylonia. In
one of his biographical inscriptions Assurbanipal proclaims that he
“sacrificed” prisoners of war to avenge his murdered father on the
spot where his father was slain.[244.2] He boasts of worse things
than this; and we can well believe that he murdered them in cold
blood. But the {245} words by no means suggest a ceremonious
tomb-ritual with human sacrifice.

Slightly more important is a passage in a legal document, to which Mr.
Johns[245.1] calls attention; whence it appears that a forfeit for
reopening an already adjudicated cause was the consecration of one’s
eldest child by fire to a god or goddess; and, as incense and
cedar-wood are mentioned in the same context as concomitants of the
threatened ceremony, the conclusion seems natural that this was once
at least a real threat of human sacrifice inflicted as a legal
punishment. This legal clause gives us the right to conclude that in
the earliest period the Semites and Sumerians of Mesopotamia
occasionally resorted to this rite. They would be indeed a peculiar
people and a favoured nation if they had always been innocent of it.
It is sufficiently attested by direct evidence, either of record or
excavation, or by the suggestion of legend, of the Arabs, Syrians, the
early Canaanites,[245.2] the Israelites, the Phoenicians; also of the
Phrygians and other non-Semitic peoples of Anatolia. Yet it must be
put to the credit of the Babylonian culture of the second millennium,
that the Mesopotamians had either completely or almost abandoned it.
At this time it was doubtless in full vogue in Greece; and certainly
Babylon could not have been their evil teacher in this matter. But
they needed no teachers in what was an ancient tradition of their
northern ancestors, and of the people with whom they mingled. Yet only
twenty years ago a distinguished writer on Greek ritual could say, “It
is certain that the {246} Hellenes borrowed the practice of human
sacrifice from the Orientals.”[246.1]

As we discover no trace of the idea of communion in the ordinary
Babylonian sacrifice, we are the less surprised that scarcely any hint
is given by the sacred literature or monuments of any mystic
application of the blood of the victim, which was used for so many
purposes of communion-ritual by the early Hellenes and Hebrews. I can
find no other evidence for this in Mesopotamia except one passage
quoted by Zimmern,[246.2] in which the sacrificer is ordered to
sprinkle some part of the door with the blood of the lamb. It is not
probable that the Babylonians were incapable of the notion that by
physical contact with certain sacred objects a temporary communion
could be established between the mortal and the divinity: it appears,
for instance, in one of the formulae of the purification-ritual--“May
the torch of the Fire-god cleanse me”[246.3]--in the yearly practice
of the king grasping the hands of the idol of the god, perhaps in the
custom of attaching the worshipper to the deity with a cord,[246.4]
and in the diviner’s habit of grasping the cedar-staff, which is
called “the beloved of the gods.”[246.5] But it may be that they
never applied this notion to the sacrifice, so as to evolve the
institution of the communion-meal; or they may have evolved it in
early times, and through long ages {247} of power the priests may have
become strong enough to suppress it and to substitute for it the
gift-ritual, which would be more profitable for themselves. It accords
with this absence of any mystic significance in the sacrifice that we
do not find in the Babylonian service any mystic use of the
sacrificial skins, of which some evidence can be gathered from various
details of Greek ritual.[247.1]

Again, the Babylonian records have so far failed to reveal any
evidence for any such public ceremony as the sending forth of the
scapegoat, whether human or animal, charged with the sins of the
community. This ritual was common to the Hellenes, Egyptians, and
Hebrews, and probably to other Semitic communities.[247.2] The idea
of sin-transference on which it rests was familiar enough to the
ancient Babylonian; but he seems only to have built upon this a
private system of exorcism and purgation of sin and disease for the
individual. As far as we know, it did not occur to him to effect by
this method a solemn annual expulsion of all the sins of the nation.

On the other hand, there is another type of sacrifice common to
Babylonia and Greece, by which an oath or an engagement might be
cemented: the animal is slaughtered with an imprecation that the same
fate may befall him who breaks his oath or violates the compact.
Zimmern quotes a good example of this, relating to the compact made
between the Assyrian king Assurnirari {248} and Mati’ilu, prince of
Arpad:[248.1] a sheep is sacrificed and the formula pronounced: “This
head is not the head of a sheep, it is the head of Mati’ilu, of his
sons, of his great ones, of the people of his land. If Mati’ilu breaks
this oath, the head of Mati’ilu will be cut off, like the head of this
sheep.” The same idea underlies the oath-sacrifice in the
_Iliad_,[248.2] though it is not expressed with such naïve
make-believe or such logic in the detail; but as the beast is
slaughtered or wine poured, a curse is uttered invoking on the
perjured a similar fate, or with a prayer that “his brains may be
poured out like this wine.” The original idea is magical: the symbolic
explanation is later. Another parallel is the Latin oath over the
stone.[248.3]

Such resemblance in special forms by no means weakens the impression
that we receive from the striking differences discernible in the
Babylonian and Hellenic significance of sacrifice. To those already
noted we may add yet another, which concerns the association of
sacrifice with divination. It is Professor Jastrow’s opinion[248.4]
that the chief motive of the Babylonian sacrifice was the inspection
of the liver of the victim, from the markings of which the skilled
expert could interpret the future by a conventional system revealed to
us in certain ancient Babylonian documents. This superstition is so
elaborate and artificial that if we find it in adjacent countries, it
is more reasonable to suppose that one borrowed it from the other,
than that it was developed independently in each. We find it in later
Greece, Etruria, and Rome; but the evidence of the Homeric poems
suggests that it was unknown to the {249} Hellenes of the earlier
period. They are very likely to have borrowed it from Babylonian
sources in post-Homeric times; and we note here, as in other cases
where the influence of Babylon upon Greece can be reasonably posited,
it reaches the western shores of the Aegean at a post-Homeric rather
than a pre-Homeric epoch.

The comparative study of Mesopotamian and Hellenic sacrifice confronts
us finally with another problem belonging to the history of religions,
and one of the greatest, the dogma of the death of the divinity and
the origin and significance of that belief. For where the mystic type
of communion-sacrifice is found, where the animal that is slain for
the sacrament is regarded as the incarnation of the deity, the
divinity may be supposed himself to die temporarily, doubtless to rise
again to life, either immediately or at some subsequent festival. This
momentous conclusion need not always have been drawn, for religious
logic is not often persistently thorough, nor does the evolution of
the idea belong necessarily to the sphere of totemism, as Robertson
Smith supposed, and M. Reinach is still inclined to maintain. It is
not my concern here to discuss the totemistic hypothesis, but I may
point out that in the rare examples where the totem-animal is slain,
it is not clear that it is slain as a divinity.

Again, the belief in the periodic death of a deity might arise
independently of the sacrifice, namely, from the essential idea of the
godhead itself, when the divine life is identified with the annual
life of vegetation: the phenomena of nature in autumn and spring may
suggest to the worshipper the annual death and resurrection of the god
or goddess. It is important to note that in this, as in the other
source of the belief, the conclusion need not always have been drawn,
for the vegetation-deity {250} might be supposed not to die in autumn
or winter, but merely to disappear, and the story of his or her
disappearance need not carry the same religious consequences as the
story of the divine death.

The immolation of the divine victim in a communion-service, wherein
the worshippers partake symbolically or realistically of the divine
flesh and blood, though suggested by a thought that we must call
savage, may be pregnant with consequences momentous for higher
religion, as the history of Christian dogma attests. And even the
annual death of the nature-god may be raised to a higher significance
than its mere nature-meaning, and may be linked with the promise of
human immortality.

We may note, finally, that a religion which expresses in its ritual
the idea of the deity’s death and resurrection is likely to be charged
with a stronger emotional force than one that lacks it; for the two
events will excite an ecstasy of sorrow and of joy in the believer.

As the phenomenon, then, is of such importance, it is necessary to be
critical and unbiased in the collection of statistics. Our present
field of inquiry is the Eastern and Western Mediterranean area; and
here our conspicuous example is the ancient Sumerian-Babylonian ritual
of Tammuz,[250.1] a folk-service of lamentation and rapture,
psychologically akin in many respects to Christianity, and of most
powerful appeal.

The Tammuz hymns preserved to us are of the highest Babylonian poetry,
and though they are chiefly litanies of lamentation, sorrowing over
the death of the young god, yet one or two echoes are heard at their
close of the rapturous rejoicing over his resurrection.[251.1] {251}
With them is associated the story of the descent of his consort
Ishtar, or of his goddess-sister; another great motive of the
religious imagination which neighbouring peoples and faiths were quick
to capture and adapt to their own religious use. We have seen[251.2]
that the evidence is clear that the life of Tammuz is the life of the
crops and fruits; and we discern a pure nature-religion 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 through Asia Minor. It
captivated the other polytheistic Semites, and at times, as Ezekiel
shows us, the women of Israel, revealing to these latter, no doubt, a
vein of religious sentiment unknown in the austere Mosaic monotheism.
The ritual of Adonis is mainly borrowed from the Tammuz service. For
instance, the rite of planting the short-lived “garden of Adonis,” of
which possibly the earliest record is in Isaiah xvii. 10, appears to
be alluded to in a verse of a Tammuz hymn.[251.3] The figure of
Tammuz is primevally Sumerian; therefore the diffusion of his cult
among the various Semitic communities does not enable us to conclude
that the death and resurrection of a divinity is an aboriginal Semitic
tradition. As regards other evidence on the strength of which this
dogma has been attributed to them by some scholars, it is of late
authority and of doubtful validity. Josephus[251.4] tells us that at
Tyre the {252} resurrection of Herakles was once celebrated by Hiram;
but this might well be a derivative of the non-Semitic Sandon cult of
Tarsos, which will be considered below. And the legend of the death of
Dido at Carthage, even if there is no doubt that the queen was
originally the great goddess of Tyre, is no sufficient proof of a
Phoenician ritual in which the divinity died annually.

But as regards the non-Semitic peoples of anterior Asia, the question
of borrowing is more difficult to answer with certainty.

No Hittite monument nor any Hittite text has as yet revealed to us any
figure that we can identify with Tammuz. But certain indications
incline us to believe that the idea of the death of the god was not
unfamiliar to the Hittite religion or to some of the communities under
Hittite influence. On the Boghaz-Keui relief we have noted the
presence in the religious procession of those mysterious animals,
calves, or bulls, wearing caps of peculiar Hittite fashion.[252.1]
Are not these “theanthropic animals” to be sacrificed as a
communion-link between man and God? We know that the bull was
worshipped as an incarnation of a Hittite deity; and therefore from
the sacrifice of the bull might emerge the dogma that the deity
ceremoniously died at certain periods. From the sanctity of the bull
in ancient Hittite cult-centres may have descended the mystic
communion {253} rite of the Taurobolion or Tauropolion, which Cumont
has shown good reason for supposing to have arisen in the worship of
the Persian Anahita, and to have been adopted into the service of
Kybele.[253.1]

More direct evidence is to be gleaned from the cult of Sandon or
Sandes of Tarsos, a city which was once within the area of Hittite
culture. The god of Tarsos comes later to be identified with the
Tyrian Baal and the Hellenic Herakles; and the legend of the death of
the latter hero may be an echo of a ἱερὸς λόγος of Tarsos, inspired by
an annual rite in which the god of the city was consumed on a funeral
pyre, and was supposed to rise again from the flames in the form of an
eagle.[253.2] The later Tarsian coins display the image of the god,
the pyre, the eagle, the double-headed axe, and the lion;[253.3] and
the last three of these symbols belong to the oldest religious art of
the Hittites. The proof would be complete if it could be shown that
the name Sandon or Sandes belongs to the Hittite language. All we know
at present is that it is not a Babylonian or Sumerian word, or found
in the vocabulary of any Semitic people. Prof. Sayce believes himself
to have found it in a cuneiform inscription of Boghaz-Keui. This would
be the direct proof that we require; but the word that he
transliterates as Sandes is said to be the ideogram of Hadad, the
Syrian Semitic god, and that Hadad is used as the Semitic equivalent
of Sandes is merely a conjuncture.[253.4]

A still clearer and more striking example of the phenomenon with which
we are dealing is the Phrygian {254} and Lydian cult and legend of
Attis. The various and often conflicting details in the story of his
birth, life, and death, the various elements in his cult, are known to
us from late sources; the consideration of the whole question would
not be relevant here; but it is necessary for our purpose to
determine, if possible, what are the aboriginal motives of the myth
and cult. It seems likely that the earliest form of the Phrygian
religion was the worship of the great mother-goddess, coupled with a
son or lover,[254.1] a young and beautiful god who dies prematurely,
and whose death was bewailed in an annual ritual, whose resurrection
was presented in a subsequent or accompanying service. Of the death
and the lamentation we have older evidence than for the resurrection
and the rejoicing, but the one seems to be a necessary complement of
the other. The family likeness of Attis to Tammuz strikes us at first
sight. As Tammuz appears as a young vegetation deity, identified
partly with the life of trees, partly with the corn, so Attis in the
Phrygian legend and ritual is presented as a tree-divinity, and in the
verse of a late hymn, which is inspired by an ancient tradition, is
invoked as “the corn cut by the reaper.”

And these two personalities of the Sumerian and Phrygian religions
evoked the same psychologic sentiment, sorrowful, romantic, and
yearning. The hypothesis naturally suggests itself that the more
Western people borrowed the cult from Mesopotamia, and that this had
happened as early as B.C. 1500.[254.2] All scholars are agreed at all
events that the figure of Attis belongs to the older pre-Aryan stratum
of the population of {255} Phrygia; modern speculation is sometimes
inclined to regard this as Hittite, and we know that the Hittites
adopted some part of the Babylonian religion. But the name Attis
itself is a stumbling-block to the hypothesis of borrowing from
Mesopotamia. Believing Adonis to be a Western-Semitic form of Tammuz,
we can explain the name as meaning merely “the Lord,” a natural
appellative of the Sumerian god. But we cannot so explain “Attis.” It
is non-Semitic, and must be regarded as belonging to an Anatolian
language-group, nor can we yet discover its root-meaning.

Again, there are many features of the Attis-worship and legend that
are not found in the corresponding Sumerian, and one at least that
seems essentially alien to it. The death of the vegetation-god,
originally suggested by the annual phenomenon of nature, may be
explained by various myths, when the personal deity has so far emerged
from his nature-shell that he is capable of personal drama. The death
of Tammuz does not appear to have been mythologically explained at
all. We may suppose that the killing of Adonis by the boar was
borrowed from the Attis legend, for in Phrygia, and also in Lydia--as
the Herodotean Ates story proves--this animal was sometimes regarded
as the enemy that slew the god. It is a reasonable belief that the
boar came to play this part in the story through a misunderstanding of
certain ritual, in which this victim was annually offered as
incarnating the deity, or was reverentially spared through a
sacrificial law of tabu. If this is an original fact of Attis-cult, it
counts somewhat against the hypothesis of derivation from Mesopotamia,
for the pig does not appear to have played any such part, positive or
negative, in Mesopotamian, as in the ritual of the Western Semites and
{256} on the shores of Asia Minor; nor can any connection at present
be discovered between Tammuz and this animal.

But another version of the death of Attis, current at some time among
his worshippers, was that he died from the effects of self-mutilation,
a motive suggested by the emasculation of the Phrygian Galloi. We have
here a phenomenon in the cult and myth that was alien to the religious
habits of the Mesopotamian communities. The eunuch as a secular
functionary is a figure belonging to an immemorial social tradition of
the East; but the eunuch-priest is the morbid product of a very few
religions, and there is no trace of such in Mesopotamia. The
Babylonian church-law demanded an unblemished priesthood of strong
virility, agreeing in this respect with the Judaic and the Hellenic,
and according with an ancient sentiment that the vigour of the priest
was the pledge of that continued flow of divine power which supported
the vigour of the community. Self-emasculation was penalised in the
religious rule of Jahwé, and the Gallos was excluded from
temple-worship by the ritual code of Lesbos. The records of modern
savagery and the history of asceticism, whether in modern and
mediaeval India or in early Christianity, afford us varied
illustration of the wildest excesses of self-inflicted cruelty against
the human body, but not--so far as I am aware--of this particular form
of self-destruction.[256.1]

As a religious practice it is a special characteristic of Phrygia, a
land always fascinating to the student on account of its strange
freaks of religious psychology; and from Phrygia the practice spread
into some adjacent communities, such as Bambyke. One may be allowed
{257} to pause a little to consider the original motive that prompted
it. At first sight one is tempted to explain it as due to a morbid
exaggeration of the craving for purity. But elsewhere, where this
impulse was most powerful, for instance, in the later Orphic and Isis
cults, and in early and mediaeval Christianity, it produced many
mental aberrations but not this particular one. Nor, again, have we
any reason for supposing this craving to have been strong in the
devotees of Phrygia; the Galloi of Bambyke, according to Lucian, were
possessed by strong though impotent sexual desires and were allowed
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 elsewhere; namely, that Phrygian
religious emasculation was an act performed in a frenzy of exaltation
by the priest or _mystes_ desirous of assimilating himself as far as
possible to the female nature of the great divinity.[257.1] {258} The
worship was under male ministration for the highest part; but for the
full exercise of divine power the male priest must become quasi-female
and wear a female dress, the latter part of the rôle being common
enough in primitive “theurgy.” The priest is himself at times the
incarnation of the young god, and is called Attis. Therefore Attis was
himself supposed to have performed the same act, even at the cost of
his life. How early was this institution of a eunuch priesthood in
Phrygia we have no direct evidence to prove. It may be a “Hittite”
tradition; for figures that Perrot reasonably interprets as
eunuch-priests are seen on the reliefs of Boghaz-Keui.

Returning to the topic of the death of the divinity, we may assume
that in Phrygia this was a very ancient tradition, enacted yearly by a
ceremonious laying out of the vegetation puppet on a bier, or the
suspension of it on a pine-tree. We have no direct or otherwise trusty
evidence for the immolation of the priest who incarnates the god;
doubtless the stories about the death of Marsyas and the
harvest-sacrifice of Lityerses point to a ritual of human-sacrifice;
whom Marsyas stands for is doubtful, but in the Lityerses legend it is
merely the passing stranger who is slain, and neither of these
traditions is explicitly linked with Attis-cult.

Finally, we may pronounce the hypothesis of the derivation of the
Phrygian cult from Mesopotamia to be unproved and unnecessary.

Pursuing this phenomenon further afield, we come to the area of
Minoan-Mycenaean culture. If the legend of the death of the Minotaur
could be safely interpreted as arising from the periodic immolation of
a bull-god, the idea that we are in quest of would be proved to belong
to the Minoan Cretans; but the {259} frescoes of Knossos present that
event with such a gay and sporting _entourage_ that one feels shy of
forcing a solemn religious significance into it. More important for
our purpose is the traditional Zeus-legend of Crete. It is generally
felt to be alien to the genuine Hellenic tradition concerning their
high god, as something adopted by the immigrant Hellenes from an
earlier Eteocretan ritual and creed.[259.1] We have a glimpse of a
ritual in which the deity is born, is worshipped as an infant, and
then as a boy--κοῦρος, as he is invoked in the new fragment of the
hymn of the Kouretes--and especially as the son of a great mother, not
as a mature independent personality. Again, there appears an orgiastic
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 adjacent to the Troad are now being revealed
by accumulating evidence, and may point to an affinity of stock. It
may well have been, then, that the Minoan Cretans had their
counterpart to Attis, a young god who was born and died periodically,
whom they may have named Velchanos, the name of the young deity seen
sitting under a tree on a Cretan coin of the fifth century. Though in
age and character so unlike the Hellenic Zeus, we may suppose that the
incoming Hellenes named him so because they found him the chief god of
the island. We can also understand why the later Bacchic mystery
flourished so fruitfully in Crete, if it found here already the ritual
of a young god who died and rose again, and why in later times the
inhabitants celebrated with such enthusiasm the Hilaria,[259.2] the
Easter festival of the resurrection of the Phrygian divinity.

{260}

This attempt to reconstruct a portion of old Cretan religion on the
lines of the early Phrygian has only a precarious value, until some
more positive evidence is forthcoming from the Minoan art-record,
which hitherto has revealed to us nothing concerning an annual divine
birth and death. The ritual-legend is incomplete: we hear sufficiently
of the birth, and we may argue _a priori_ that a periodic ritual of
the god’s birth implies a periodic death. Unfortunately all that we
glean from ancient literature is that there was a grave of Zeus,
perhaps in the Idaean cave, on which Pythagoras is said to have
written an epitaph.[260.1] But a sceptical doubt arises here from the
fact which was pointed out by Rohde, that the grave of a divine
personage was often a misnomer of the underground sanctuary of a
chthonian deity; and either the Idaean cave or the great cavern on
Mount Dikte, whence the interesting relics of an immemorial cult have
recently been gathered,[260.2] might at a later period have come to
be regarded as a grave. Still, we may ask, could the phrase “the grave
of Zeus” have become prevalent among a people 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 name for a sanctuary where the ritual of the death
was enacted preliminary to the ritual of the birth.

This reconstruction then, and the _a priori_ deduction emphasised
above, may claim to be at least legitimate.

Finally, some evidence may be added from Cyprian cult for the view
that the Minoan civilisation was {261} cognisant of the dogma of the
death of the divinity. We hear of the grave of Ariadne-Aphrodite which
was shown in later times in Cyprus,[261.1] and the Cretan and
Cypriote legends of the maidens called Gorgo, Parakuptousa, and
Galatea[261.2] reveal to us an Aphrodite who died periodically and
was laid out on a bier and revived. The Aphrodite of Cyprus is most
probably of “Minoan” origin; and, being a goddess of vegetation, the
idea of periodic death and resurrection might naturally attach to her,
and might be associated with another type of ritual also, the annual
casting of her puppet into the sea, which probably gave rise to such
stories as the leap of Britomartis or Derketo into the waves.[261.3]

We can now deal with the purely Hellenic evidence. Confining our view
first to the cults and legends of the higher divinities of Hellas, we
cannot affirm that the death and resurrection of the deity is a
primitive tradition of the Hellenes. We may suspect it to have been a
leading motive in some of the local Arcadian cults of Artemis, if, for
instance, we interpret the Arcadian Kallisto as a form of the great
goddess herself; but it is very probable that Artemis in Arcadia and
many other of her cult-centres represents the pre-Hellenic divinity of
birth and fruitfulness. What we may dare to call the Hellenic spirit
seems to speak in the answer given by Xenophanes to the people of Elea
when they asked him whether they ought to sacrifice to Leukothea and
bewail her: “If you regard her as a deity, do not bewail her; if as
human, do not sacrifice.”[261.4]

But when we descend from the higher religion to {262} the old Hellenic
agrarian cults associated with the heroes or daimones of the soil and
field, we find evidence of sorrowful rites, ceremonies of bewailing,
which belong to the same type as that of Tammuz; and in the Greek, as
in the Babylonian, the personage to whom they are attached is a
youthful hero or heroine of vegetation: such are Linos, perhaps the
earliest theme of a melancholy harvest-song of pre-Homeric days;
Hyakinthos, the “youth” of the Laconian land who may or may not have
been Hellenic, to whom the greater part of the Hyakinthia were
consecrated; Eunostos of Tanagra; Erigone, “the early-born,” of
Ikaria. The life of all these passes away as the verdure passes, or as
the crops are gathered in; and to one of them at least, Hyakinthos,
and perhaps to the others, the idea of an annual resurrection was
attached. But none of these came like Tammuz to play a world-part;
they remain the naïve, half-realised forms of poetic folk-religion.
Like to them is Bormos of Bithynia,[262.1] 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?

Then we must say the same of the peasant-hero “German” whom the modern
Bulgarians adore and bewail, of the Russian Yarilo,[262.2] and our
own John Barleycorn. And at this point we shall probably fall back on
the theory of independent similar developments, and shall believe that
peasant religion in different parts of the world is capable of
evolving strikingly parallel {263} figures in obedience to the
stimulus of similar circumstances and needs.

We have no surety, then, for a belief that Tammuz, or any shadow of
Tammuz, was borne to the western shores of the Aegean in the days
before Homer. And we know that Adonis, his nearest Anatolian
representative, only arrived late in the post-Homeric period.
Meantime, whatever view we may hold concerning prehistoric religious
commerce between East and West, this vital difference between
Mesopotamian and Hellenic religion must be strongly emphasised:
Babylonian liturgy is mainly a service of sorrow, and part of that
sorrow is for Tammuz; Hellenic worship was mainly cheerful and social,
and only in a few chthonian cults is a gloomier tone discernible, nor
can we anywhere hear the outbursts of violent and ecstatic grief. In
this respect, and in its remoteness from any idea of the death and
resurrection of the deity, Hellenic religion was further removed from
that of Catholic Europe than was the old Phrygian or the Sumerian.

The Babylonian temple-service was complex and varied, and offers many
problems of interest to the comparative student. We gather that a Holy
Marriage was part of a religious drama perhaps performed annually; for
instance, we find reference to the solemn nuptials of Ninib and Bau,
and to the marriage presents given to Bau.[263.1] In every
anthropomorphic polytheism, especially when idolatry provides images
that could be used for religious drama, this ritual act is likely to
occur. It is recorded of the southern Arabians in the days before
Islam, an ancient inscription speaking of the marriage ceremony of
Athtar.[263.2] It is a marriage of the great God {264} and Goddess
that according to the most reasonable interpretation is represented on
the Hittite reliefs of Boghaz-Keui. We may conjecture that it was a
ceremony of Minoan worship; a Mycenaean signet-ring shows us a seated
goddess with a young god standing before her and joining his forearm
to hers, while both make a peculiar gesture with their fingers that
may indicate troth-plighting;[264.1] also, the later legends and the
later ritual commemorating the marriages of Aphrodite and Ariadne may
descend from the pre-Hellenic religious tradition. Finally, we have
fairly full evidence of the same religious act in purely Hellenic
cult. The ἱερὸς γάμος of Zeus and Hera was enacted in many communities
with certain traits of primitive custom;[264.2] the nuptials of Kore
and the lower-world god might be found in the ceremonies of certain
temples;[264.3] while the central scene of the Eleusinia, the greater
if not the lesser, included a Holy Marriage.[264.4] The Roman
religion, in the original form of which there may have been no
marrying or giving in marriage, no family ties or genealogies of
divinities, no doubt borrowed its “Orci nuptiae” from the Greek. But
for the other cases, there is no need to resort to any theory of
borrowing to explain a phenomenon so natural at a certain stage of
religion.

Nor is it an important phenomenon, so long as the ceremony was enacted
merely by puppets or idols, as in the Boeotian Daidala.[264.5] It
only begins to be of higher significance for the history of religious
practice and thought, when the part of one of the divinities in this
drama is played by a human representative. For not only does this
offer indefinite possibilities of exaltation {265} for the mortal, but
it may engender the mystic ideal and practice of communion with the
divinity through sexual intercourse, which played a great part in
Phrygian religion, and left a deep impress on early Christian
symbolism. The question whether the Mesopotamian religion presents us
with evidence of a “holy marriage” solemnised between a mortal and the
divinity must finally involve the more difficult question as to the
function and purpose of that strange Mesopotamian institution of
temple-prostitutes. But, leaving this latter alone for the moment, we
find explicit testimony in Herodotus to the fact with which we are
immediately concerned. In describing the great temple of Bel at
Babylon,[265.1] he asserts, on the authority of his “Chaldean
priests,” that the deity chose as his nightly partner some native
woman, who was supposed to pass the night on the couch with him, and
who was obliged to abstain from all other intercourse with men; and he
compares a similar practice of belief found in the temple of Zeus in
Egyptian Thebes, and in the oracular shrine of Apollo at Patara in
Lycia. Now Herodotus’ trustworthiness in this matter has been doubted
by Assyriologists;[265.2] nevertheless, a phrase used in the code of
Hammurabi concerning a holy woman dedicated to temple service, calling
her “a wife of Marduk,” seems to give some colour to the Herodotean
statement.[265.3] Only, this term might have merely a
spiritual-symbolic significance, like the designation of a nun as “the
bride of Christ”; for the original Babylonian documents have supplied
as yet, so far as I am aware, no evidence of a woman fulfilling the
rôle of Belit, the wife of Bel.

{266}

As regards the adjacent religions, the idea that a mortal might enter
into this mode of communion with the divinity was probably an ancient
heritage of the Phrygian religions, for it crops up in various forms.
The priest of Attis was himself called Attis, and, therefore, probably
had loving intercourse with the goddess, and the later mysteries of
Kybele extended this idea and offered to every votary the glory of a
mystic marriage;[266.1] it was the unconscious stimulus of an
immemorial tradition that prompted the Phrygian heresiarch Montanus to
give himself out as the husband of the Virgin Mary.[266.2] It also
appears as a fundamental tenet of the Sabazian mystery and of the
Hellenistic-Egyptian Hermetic theosophy. The simple ritual-fact,
namely, that a woman serves as the bride of the god, could probably be
traced far afield through many widely distant peoples. According to
Sahagun,[266.3] the human sacrifices of the Mexicans had sometimes
the purpose of sending away a woman victim into divine wedlock. In
pre-Christian Sweden we find a priestess generally regarded as the
wife of the god Freyr, and enjoying considerable power from the
connection.[266.4] Similar examples can be quoted from modern savage
communities. Therefore if we find the same institution in the
Mediterranean, we shall not think it necessary to suppose that it was
an import from Babylon or from any Semitic people. As regards the
Minoan worship, it is legitimate at least to regard the legend of
Pasiphaë and her amour with the bull-god as an unfortunate {267}
aetiologic myth distorting the true sense of a ritual in which a
mortal woman enjoyed this kind of divine communion, and here again we
should mark a religious affinity between Crete and Phrygia. And it is
likely that the idea was not unfamiliar to the Hellenes, though the
record of it is scanty and uncertain. According to the early Christian
fathers, the inspiration of the Pythia of Delphi was due to a
corporeal union with Apollo akin at least to--if not identical
with--sexual intercourse. Of more value is Herodotus’ definite
assertion that the priestess of Patara gained her inspiration by her
nuptial union with Apollo. In the rare cases where the cult of a
Hellenic god was administered by a priestess we may suspect that a
ἱερὸς γάμος was part of the temple-ritual; in the two examples that I
have been able to find, the cults of Poseidon at Kalaureia and of
Heracles at Thespiai, the priestess must be a maiden, as on this
theory would be natural.[267.1] The maiden-priestesses of the
Leukippides, the divine brides of the Dioskouroi at Sparta, were
themselves called Leukippides; in all probability because they were
their mortal representatives in some ceremony of holy
marriage.[267.2] But the most salient and explicitly recorded example
is the yearly marriage of the Queen-Archon at Athens with Dionysos,
the bull-god, in the feast of Anthesteria, the significance of which I
have discussed elsewhere.[267.3] It seems that the Queen by uniting
her body with the god’s, unites to him the whole Athenian state and
secures its prosperity and fruitfulness; this historic fact may also
explain the myth of the union {268} of Althaia, Queen of Kalydon, with
the same god. Finally, let us observe that nothing in any of these
Hellenic records suggests any element of what we should call impurity
in the ritual; we are not told that these holy marriages were ever
consummated by the priest as the human representative of the god; or
that the ceremony involved any real loss of virginity in the
maiden-priestess. The marriage could have been consummated
symbolically by use of a puppet or image of the deity. We may believe
that the rite descends from pre-Homeric antiquity; the ritual which
the Queen-Archon performed might naturally have been established at
the time of the adoption into Athens of the Dionysiac cult, and there
are reasons for dating this event earlier than 1000 B.C.[268.1]

We now come to a very difficult and important question concerning the
position of women in the old Mesopotamian temple-ritual. Our first
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 translates doubtfully as
“God’s-sisters,” regarding it, however, as equivalent to consecrated,
while Johns translates it merely as “votary.”[268.2] At least, we
have proof of a class of holy women who have certain privileges and
are under certain restrictions. They were the daughters of good
families dedicated by their fathers to religion; they could inherit
property, which was exempt from the burden of army-tax; they could not
marry, and were prohibited from setting-up or even entering a
wine-shop under penalty of death. It is something to know even as much
as this about them, {269} but we would very gladly learn more. Is it
to their order that the personage described as “the wife of
Marduk”[269.1] belongs, who has been considered above? Is it from
among them that the priestesses of Ishtar were chosen, who interpreted
the oracles of the goddess?[269.2] It seems clear that a father could
dedicate his daughter to any divinity, that their position was
honourable, and that they are not to be identified with the
temple-prostitutes of Babylon or Erech, who excited the wonder and
often the reprobation of the later Greek world. This peculiar order of
temple-harlots is also recognised--according to some of the best
authorities[269.3]--in Hammurabi’s code, where they are mentioned in
the same context with the “consecrated” or the “God-sisters,” and yet
are clearly distinct from them; another clause seems to refer to male
prostitutes (§ 187). Certain rules are laid down concerning their
inheritance of property, and concerning the rearing of their children,
if they had any, who might be adopted into private families. Evidently
these “Qadishtu” were a permanent institution, and there is no hint of
any dishonour. There may be other references in Babylonian literature
to these temple-women; in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the courtesan who won
over Eabani evidently belongs to the retinue of Ishtar of Erech.

From these two institutions we must distinguish that other, for which
Herodotus is our earliest authority:[269.4] according to his explicit
statement, once in her lifetime every Babylonian woman, high or low,
had to stand in the temple-precincts of the goddess Mylitta--probably
a {270} functional appellative of Ishtar, meaning “the helper of
childbirth”--and to prostitute herself to any stranger who threw money
into her lap and claimed her with the formula, “I invoke the goddess
Mylitta for you.” Herodotus hastens to assure us that this single act
of unchastity--which took place outside the temple--did not afterwards
lower the morality of the women, who, as he declares, were otherwise
exemplary in this respect. But he is evidently shocked by the custom,
and the early Christian and modern writers have quoted it as the worst
example of gross pagan or Oriental licentiousness. Some devoted
Assyriologists have tried to throw doubt on the historian’s
veracity:[270.1] the wish is father to the thought: and it is indeed
difficult for the ordinary civilised man to understand how an ancient
civilisation of otherwise advanced morality could have sanctioned such
a practice. But Herodotus’ testimony ought not to be so impugned; nor
is it sufficient evidence for rejecting it that no reference to the
custom which he describes has been found hitherto in the cuneiform
literature. Strabo merely repeats what Herodotus has said; but
independent evidence of some value is gathered from the apocryphal
Epistle of Jeremias:[270.2] “The women also with cords about them sit
in the ways, burning bran for incense; but if any of them, drawn by
some that pass by, lie with them, she reproacheth her fellow that she
was not thought as worthy as herself, nor her cord broken.” The
context is altogether religious, and this is no ordinary secular
immorality; certain details in the narrative remind us of Herodotus,
and make it clear that the writer has in mind the same social usage
that the historian vouches for. This usage may be described as the
consecration to the goddess of {271} the first-fruits of the woman’s
virginity before marriage; for, though Herodotus does not explicitly
say that it was a rite preliminary to marriage, yet the records of
similar practices elsewhere in Asia Minor assure us on this point.

We have now to begin the comparative search in the adjacent regions,
keeping distinct the three types of consecration which I have
specified above, which are too often confused.[271.1]

The first type has its close analogies with the early Christian,
mediaeval, and modern conventual life of women. The code of Hammurabi
presents us with the earliest example of what may be called the
religious sisterhood; the Babylonian votaries were dedicated to
religion, and while the Christian nuns are often called the brides of
Christ, their earliest prototypes enjoyed the less questionable title
of “God’s-sisters.” We find no exact parallel to this practice in
ancient Greece; from the earliest period, no doubt, the custom
prevailed of consecrating individual women of certain families as
priestesses to serve certain cults, and sometimes chastity was
enforced upon them; but these did not form a conventual society; and
usually, apart from their occasional religious duties, they could lead
a secular life. In fact, the monastic system was of Eastern origin and
only reached Europe in later times, being opposed {272} to the civic
character of the religion of the old Aryan states.

The second class of consecrated women served as temple-harlots in
certain cult-centres of Asia Minor. We cannot say that the custom in
all cases emanated from Babylon; for there is reason to think that it
was a tradition attaching to the cult of the goddess among the
polytheistic Semitic stocks. We have clear allusions in the Bible to
temple-prostitution practised by both sexes in the Canaanite
communities adjacent to the Israelites, who were themselves sometimes
contaminated by the practice.[272.1] We hear of “hierodouli” among
the pagan Arabs,[272.2] of women “of the congregation of the people
of Astarte” at Carthage,[272.3] of numbers of dedicated slave women
in the cult of Aphrodite at Eryx,[272.4] which was at least
semi-Semitic; and it is likely that some of these at least were
devoted to the impure religious practice. As regards non-Semitic
worships, it is only clearly attested of two, namely, of the worship
of Mā at Comana in Pontos,[272.5] and of Aphrodite Ourania in
Corinth.[272.6] In these cases we have the right to assume Semitic
influences at work; for we do not find traces of this practice in the
ancient cult of Kybele; and Ma of Cappadocia and Pontus, who had
affinities with her, was partly contaminated with Anahita, a Persian
goddess, who had taken on Babylonian fashions. Nor can we doubt that
the practice gained recognition at Corinth in post-Homeric times
through its Oriental trade; for it was attached to the cult of
Aphrodite {273} Ourania, whose personality, partly at least, was
identical with that of the Semitic goddess. The practice survived in
Lydia in the later period of the Graeco-Roman culture. For a woman of
Tralles, by name Aurelia Aemilia, erected a column with an inscription
that has been published by Sir William Ramsay,[273.1] in which she
proclaims with pride that she had prostituted herself in the temple
service “at the command of an oracle,” and that her female ancestors
had done likewise. Finally, we may find the cult-practice reflected in
certain legends; in the legend of Iconium, for instance, of the woman
who enticed all strangers to her embraces and afterwards slew them,
but was herself turned to stone by Perseus, and whose stone image gave
the name to the State.[273.2]

The other custom recorded by Herodotus of Babylon, the consecration of
the first-fruits of virginity to the goddess before marriage, which I
have considered as distinct from the foregoing, may often have been
combined or confused with it; for the temple-harlotry, carried on for
some considerable period, might be occasionally a preliminary to
marriage. The most exact parallels to the Babylonian custom are found
in the records of Byblos, Cyprus, and the Syrian Heliopolis or
Baalbec. Lucian attests the rule prevailing at Byblos, that in the
festival of Adonis women exposed themselves for purchase on one single
day, and {274} that only strangers were allowed to enjoy them; but
that this service was only imposed upon them if they refused to cut
off their hair in lamentation for Adonis.[274.1] Similarly the
Byzantine historian Sozomenos declared that at Heliopolis (Baalbec),
in the temple of Astarte, each maiden was obliged to prostitute
herself before marriage, until the custom and the cult were abolished
by Constantine.[274.2] The statements about Cyprus, though less
explicit, point to the same institution: Herodotus, having described
at length the Babylonian practice, declares that it prevailed in
Cyprus also, and Justin[274.3] that it was a custom of the Cyprians
“to send their virgins before marriage on fixed days to the shore, to
earn their dowry by prostitution, so as to pay a first-offering to
Venus for their virtue henceforth (pro reliqua pudicitia libamenta
Veneri soluturas).” The procession to the shore may indicate the rule
that intercourse was only allowed them with strangers,[274.4] and
nothing points to prolonged prostitution. It is probably the same rite
that the Locrians of the West vowed to perform in honour of Aphrodite
in the event {275} of deliverance from a dangerous war.[275.1] But in
the worship of Anaitis at Akilisene in Armenia, according to
Strabo,[275.2] the unmarried women served as temple-harlots for an
indefinite time until they married; and Aurelia Aemilia of Tralles may
have been only maintaining the same ancient ritual in Lydia. In these
two countries, then, it seems as if there had been a fusion of two
institutions that elsewhere were distinct one from another,
harlot-service for a prolonged period in a temple, and the
consecration of each maiden’s virginity as a preliminary to marriage.

Such institutions mark the sharpest antagonism between the early
religious sentiment of the East and the West. Of no European State is
there any record, religious or other, that the sacrifice before
marriage of a woman’s virginity to a mortal was at any time regarded
as demanded by temple ritual. Such a rite was abhorrent to the genuine
Hellenic, as it was to the Hebraic, spirit; and only in later times do
we find one or two Hellenic cult-centres catching the taint of the
Oriental tradition: while such legends as that of Melanippos and
Komaitho and the story of Laokoon’s sin express the feeling of horror
which any sexual licence in a temple aroused in the Greek.[275.3]

{276}

It is imperative to try to understand the original purpose or
significance of the Semitic and Anatolian rites that we have been
dealing with. To regard them as the early Christian and some modern
writers have done, as mere examples of unbridled Oriental lust
masquerading in the guise of religion, is a false and unjust view.
According to Herodotus, the same society that ordained this sacrifice
of virginity upon the daughters of families maintained in other
respects a high standard of virtue, which appears also attested by
Babylonian religious and secular documents. Modern anthropology has
handled the problem with greater insight and seriousness; but certain
current explanations are not convincing. To take the rite described by
Herodotus first, which is always to be distinguished from the
permanent institution of “hierodulai” in the sense of temple-harlots:
Mannhardt, who was the first to apply modern science to the problem,
explained it as a development of vegetation-ritual.[276.1] Aphrodite
and Adonis, Ishtar and Tammuz, represent vegetation, and their yearly
union causes general fertility; the women are playing the part of the
goddess, and the stranger represents Adonis! The Babylonian rite,
then, is partly religious μιμησις, the human acting of a divine drama,
partly religious magic good for the crops. But in spite of Mannhardt’s
great and real services to science, his vegetation-theory leads him
often astray, and only one who was desperately defending a thesis
would explain that stranger, a necessary personage in the ritual at
Babylon, Byblos, Cyprus, and Baalbec, as the native god. There is no
kind of reason for connecting the Babylonian rite with Tammuz, or for
supposing that the women were representing {277} the goddess,[277.1]
or that their act directly influenced the crops, except in the sense
that all due performance of religious ceremonies has been considered
at certain stages of belief as favouring the prosperity of the land.
Sir William Ramsay, in his _Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_,[277.2]
would explain the custom as preserving the tradition of the communism
of women before regular marriage was instituted. Dr. Frazer, who has
dealt more fully with the question, accepts this explanation,[277.3]
as he also accepts Mannhardt’s in full; and, while he associates--as I
think, wrongly--the Babylonian rite with general temple-prostitution,
he adds a third suggestion, prompted by his theory of kingship: the
king himself might have to mate with one or more of the temple-harlots
“who played Astarte to his Adonis”:[277.4] such unions might serve to
maintain the supply of human deities, one of whom might succeed to the
throne, and another might be sacrificed in his father’s stead when
religion demanded the life of the royal man-god. I do not find this
theory coherent even with itself; and, like the others, it fails to
explain all the facts, and, on the other hand, it imagines data which
are not given us by the records.

That state of communism when sexual union was entirely promiscuous is
receding further and further into the anthropological background: it
is dangerous to predicate it of the most backward Anatolian State in
any period which can come into our ken. When the Byzantine Sokrates
gravely tells us that the men of Heliopolis {278} had their wives in
common, he does not know what he is saying. And if this sacrifice of
virginity before marriage was a recognition of the original rights of
all the males of the community, why did not some representative of the
community take the virginity, the priest or some head-man? This
ill-considered sociologic hypothesis shipwrecks on that mysterious
stranger.[278.1]

Prof. Westermarck, in his _Origin and Development of the Moral
Ideas_,[278.2] regards the Mylitta-rite as intended to ensure
fertility in women through direct appeal to the goddess of fertility,
and he explains the formula which the stranger uttered--ἐπικαλέω τοι
τὴν θεὸν Μύλιττα--as signifying generally “May the goddess Mylitta
prosper thee.” Obviously the phrase, “I invoke the goddess for thee,”
could as naturally mean, “I claim thee in the name of the goddess,”
the stranger basing his right to the woman on this appeal. But his
general theory appears not so unsound as those which have just been
noted.

The comparative method ought to help us here; and though we have no
exact parallel, as far as I am aware, recorded of any people outside
the Mediterranean area to the Babylonian custom, we find usages
reported elsewhere that agree with it in one essential. Lubbock quotes
instances from modern India of the rule imposed upon women of
presenting themselves before marriage in the temple of Juggernaut for
the purpose--as he implies--of offering up their virginity, though no
such custom is recorded in the Vedic period of religion;[278.3] cases
also are chronicled of the rule prevailing among {279} uncultured or
semi-cultured tribes that the medicine-man or the priest should take
the virginity of the bride before the marriage ceremony.[279.1] 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, and must be
safeguarded by what Van Gennep has called “rites de passage”; more
especially is the sexual union with a virgin dangerous and liable to
be regarded with awe by primitive sentiment; before it is safe to
marry her, the tabu that is upon her must first be removed by a
religious act securing the divinity’s sanction for the removal; just
as the ripe cornfield must not be reaped before religious rites, such
as the consecration of first-fruits, have loosened the tabu upon it:
we may believe that Hellenic marriage ritual secured the same end as
the Babylonian by what seems to us the more innocent method of
offering the προτέλεια. So the Babylonian safeguards the coming
marriage by offering the first-fruits of his daughter to the goddess
who presides over the powers and processes of life and birth. Under
her protection, after appeal to her, the process loses its special
danger; or if there is danger still, it falls upon the head of the
stranger.[279.2] For I can find no other way of accounting {280} for
his presence as a necessary agent, in the ritual of at least four
widely separate communities of Semitic race: this comparative ubiquity
prevents us explaining it as due to some capricious accidental impulse
of delicacy, as if the act would become less indelicate if a stranger
who would not continue in the place participated in it.

In his essay on the question, Mr. Hartland explains the Babylonian
rite as belonging to the class of puberty-ceremonies; nor would this
account of it conflict with the view here put forth, if, as he
maintains, primitive puberty-ceremonies to which girls are subjected
are usually preliminary to the marriage which speedily
follows.[280.1] 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 late record speaks of mysteries instituted by
Kinyras that had a sexual significance, and which may have been the
occasion of the consecration of virginity that Justin
describes;[280.2] but the institution of mysteries has not {281} yet
been proved for any purely Semitic religion. In any case, Mr.
Hartland’s statement does not explain why the loss of virginity should
be considered desirable in a puberty-ceremony or as a preliminary to
marriage.

The significance of the action, as I have interpreted it, is negative
rather than positive, the avoidance of a vague peril or the removal of
a tabu rather than the attainment of the blessing of fertility, as Dr.
Westermarck would regard it. And this idea, the removal of a tabu,
seems expressed in the phrase of Herodotus[281.1] by which he
describes the state of the woman after the ceremony--ἀποσιωσαμένη τῇ
θεῷ; and the parallel that I have suggested, the consecration of the
first-fruits of the harvest to remove the tabu from the rest of the
crop, is somewhat justified by the words of Justin already
quoted--“pro reliqua pudicitia libamenta Veneri soluturas.”

As regards the other institution, the maintenance of “hierodoulai” in
temples as “consecrated” women, “kadeschim,” unmarried, who for a
period of years indulged in sexual intercourse with visitors, the
original intention and significance of it is hard to decide. We may be
sure that it did not originate in mere profligacy, and the inscription
of Tralles shows that even in the later Roman period it had not lost
its religious prestige.[281.2] Such a custom could naturally arise in
a society that allowed freedom of sexual intercourse among young
unmarried persons--and this is not uncommonly found at a primitive
level of culture--and that was devoted to the worship of a goddess of
sexual fertility. The rituals in the temples of Ishtar of Erech,
Anaitis of {282} Armenia, Mā of Comana, must have been instituted for
some national and social purpose; therefore Mr. Hartland’s suggestion,
that the original object of the Armenian rite was to give the maidens
a chance of securing themselves a suitable husband by experience,
seems insufficient. Dr. Frazer’s theory, that connects the institution
with some of the mystic purposes of kingship,[282.1] floats in the
air; for there is not a particle of evidence showing any relation
between these women and the monarch or the royal harem or the
monarchical succession or the death of a royal victim. A simpler
suggestion is that the “hierodoulai,” or temple-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 facts that we have been examining is of the
highest for the history of religious morality, especially for the
varied history of the idea of purity. We call this temple-harlotry
vile and impure; the civilised Babylonian, who in private life valued
purity and morality, called the women “kadistu,” that is, “pure” or
clean in the ritualistic sense, or as Zimmern interprets the ideogram,
“not unclean.”[282.2] In fact, the Mediterranean old-world religions,
all save the Hebraic, agreed in regarding the processes of the
propagation of life as divine, at least as something not alien or
abhorrent to godhead. But the early Christian propagandists, working
here on Hebraic lines, intensified the isolation of God from the
simple phenomena of birth, thereby engendering at times an anti-sexual
bias, and preparing a discord between any possible biological {283}
view and the current religious dogma, and modern ethical thought has
not been wholly a gainer thereby.

The subject that has been discussed at some length is also connected
with the whole question of ritual-purity and purification. The
primitive conception of purity had at an early stage in its evolution
been adopted by higher religion; and the essential effect of impurity
was to debar a person from intercourse with God and with his
fellow-men. Hence arises a code of rules to regulate temple-ritual. So
far as I am aware, the Babylonian rules for safeguarding the purity of
the shrines were not conspicuously different from the Greek or the
Hebraic.[283.1] The taint of bloodshed and other physical impurities
was kept aloof; and it is in the highest degree probable that the
function of the “hetairai” was only performed outside the temple, for
Herodotus specially tells us that this rule was observed in the
Mylitta-rite. The cathartic methods of East and West agree in many
points. The use of holy water for purifying purposes was known to the
early Greeks.[283.2] It was still more in evidence in the Babylonian
ritual: the holy water of the Euphrates or Tigris was used for a
variety of purposes, for the washing of the king’s hands before he
touched the statues, for the washing of the idol’s mouths,[283.3]
{284} perhaps also for baptism. For we hear of some such rite in a
hymn to Enlil translated by Dr. Langdon[284.1]--the line that he
renders “Son whom in the sacred bowl she baptized,” seems to refer to
a human child. Ablution was prominent also in the exorcism-ritual, and
the “House of Washing” or “House of Baptism” was the centre of a
liturgy that had for its object deliverance from demons.[284.2] The
whole State was at times purified by water.[284.3] And in all this
ritual the water must itself be of a peculiar purity--rain-water, for
instance,[284.4] or the water of the Euphrates, whence came probably
the Water of Life that was kept in Marduk’s temple with which the Gods
and the Annunaki washed their faces, and which was used in the feast
of the Doom-fixing.[284.5] According to the Babylonian view ordinary
water was naturally impure (we may well believe that it was so at
Babylon, where the river and canals were so pressed into the service
of man), and a person incurred impurity by stepping over a puddle or
other unpurified water.[284.6] The Greek did not need to be so
scrupulous, for most water in his land was naturally pure, being
spring or brook; yet in his cathartic rules we find often that only a
special water was suitable for the religious purpose, running water
especially, or sea-water, or in a particular locality one sacred
fountain only.[284.7] But though it was to him as to most {285}
peoples, the simple and natural means of purification, he did not
apply it to such various cathartic purposes as the Babylonian. Nor as
far as we can discover had he developed in old days the interesting
rite of baptism: we hear of it first in the records of the fifth
century, and in relation to alien cults like that of the Thracian
goddess Kotytto.[285.1]

Equally prominent in the cathartic ritual of Mesopotamia was the
element of fire: in the prayer that followed upon the
purification-ceremonies we find the formula, “May the torch of the
gleaming Fire-God cleanse me.”[285.2] The Fire-God, Nusku, is
implored “to burn away the evil magicians,”[285.3] and we may believe
that he owes his development and exalted position as a high spiritual
god to the ritual use of fire, just as in the Vedic religion did Agni.
The conception of fire as a mighty purifying element, which appears in
the Old and New Testaments and in Christian eschatology, has arisen,
no doubt, from the cathartic ritual of the ancient Semites. Doubtless
also the spiritual or magic potency of this element was known in
ancient Europe: it is clearly revealed in the primitive ceremonies of
the old German “Notfeuer,” with which the cattle, fields, and men were
purified in time of pestilence.[285.4] And there are several
indications of its use in Greek cathartic ritual; a noteworthy example
is the purification of Lemnos by the bringing of holy fire from
Delos;[285.5] the curious Attic ritual of running with the new-born
babe round the {286} hearth, called the Amphidromia, may have had a
similar intention;[286.1] even the holy water, the χέρνιψ, seems to
have been hallowed by the insertion of a torch;[286.2] and in the
later records fire is often mentioned among the usual implements of
cleansing.[286.3] The Eleusinian myth concerning Demeter holding the
infant Demophon in the flame to make him immortal was suggested
probably by some purificatory rite in which fire was used. Finally,
the fire-ordeal, which was practised both in Babylonia and
Greece,[286.4] may have been associated at a certain period with the
cathartic properties of fire. Nevertheless, the Hellenic divinities
specially concerned with this element, Hestia and Hephaistos, had
little personal interest in this ritual, and did not rise to the same
height in the national theology as Nusku rose in the Babylonian.

We might find other coincidences in detail between Hellenic and
Assyrian ritual, such as the purificatory employment of salt, onions,
and the sacrificial skin of the animal-victim.[286.5] One of the most
interesting phenomena presented by the cathartic law of old Babylonia
{287} is a rule that possessed an obvious moral value; we find,
namely, on one of the cylinders of Gudea, that during the period when
Gudea was purifying the city the master must not strike the slave, and
no action at law must be brought against any one; for seven days
perfect equality reigned, no bad word was uttered, the widow and the
orphan went free from wrong.[287.1] The conception underlying this
rule is intelligible: all quarrelling and oppression, being often
accompanied with bloodshed and death, disturbs the general purity
which is desired to prevail; and I have indicated elsewhere a similar
law regulating the conduct of the Eleusinian mysteries and the
Dionysiac festival at Athens, both ceremonies of cathartic
value,[287.2] and I have pointed out a similar ordinance observed
recently by a North-American Indian tribe, and formerly by the
Peruvians; to these instances may be added the statement by
Livy,[287.3] that in the Roman “lectisternia,” when a table with
offerings was laid before the gods, no quarrelling was allowed and
prisoners were released, and the historian gives to the institution of
the lectisternia a piacular significance.

We must also bear in mind certain striking differences between the
Hellenic and the Babylonian cathartic systems. In certain
purification-ceremonies of Hellas, those in which the homicide was
purged from his stain, the washing with the blood of the piacular
victim was the most potent means of grace.[287.4] We may find
analogies in Vedic, Roman, and Hebraic ritual, but hitherto none have
been presented by the religious documents {288} of Babylon, where, as
has been already pointed out, scarcely any mystic use appears to have
been made of the blood of the victim.[288.1] Again, the Babylonian
purification included the confession of sins, a purgation unknown and
apparently unnatural to the Hellene;[288.2] and generally the
Babylonian, while most of its methods, like the Hellenic, are modes of
transference or physical riddance of impurity, had a higher spiritual
and religious significance; for it includes lamentations for sin and
prayers to the divinity that are not mentioned in the record of any
Greek “katharsis.”

A long ritual-document is preserved containing the details of the
purification of the king:[288.3] certain forms 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 magic and
religion. The gods are partly entreated, partly bribed, partly
constrained; and at the end the evil is physically expelled from the
palace. The purifier puts on dark garments, just as the ministers of
the underworld-deities did occasionally in Greece. The king himself
performs much of the ceremony, and utters words of power: “May my sins
be rent away, may I be pure and live before Shamash.” The ordering of
the cathartic apparatus is guided partly by astrology. It is curious
also to find that every article used in the process is identified by
name with some divinity: the cypress is the god Adad, the fragrant
spices the god Ninib, the censer the god Ib, etc.; and the commentary
that accompanies the ritual-text explains that these {289} substances
compel the deities thus associated with them to come and give aid.

In fact, the differences between East and West in this religious
sphere are so important that we should not be able to believe that the
cathartic system of Greece was borrowed from Babylonia, even if the
points of resemblance were much more numerous and striking than they
are. For it would be possible to draw up a striking list of
coincidences between Hellenic and Vedic cathartic rites, and yet no
one would be able on the strength of it to establish a hypothesis of
borrowing.

In any case, it may be said, the question of borrowing does not arise
within the narrow limits of our inquiry, which is limited to the
pre-Homeric period, since all Greek “katharsis” is post-Homeric. The
latter dictum is obviously not literally true, as a glance through the
Homeric poems will prove. Homer is aware of the necessity of
purification by water before making prayer or libation to the gods:
Achilles washes his hands and the cups before he pours forth wine and
prays to Zeus,[289.1] Telemachos washes his hands in sea-water before
he prays to Athena[289.2]; and there is a significant account of the
purification of the whole Achaean host after the plague;[289.3] as
the later Greeks would have done, the Achaeans throw away into the sea
their λύματα, the infected implements of purification, wool or
whatever they used, that absorbed the evil from them. But it has been
generally observed that Homer does not appear to have been aware of
any need for purification from the stain of bloodshed or from the
ghostly contagion of death. It is true that Odysseus purifies his hall
with fire and sulphur after slaying the suitors, but we are not sure
that the act had any further significance than {290} the riddance of
the smell of blood from the house. Sulphur is there called κακῶν
ἄκος,[290.1] “a remedy against evil things”; but we cannot attach any
moral or spiritual sense to κακὰ, nor is Homeric κάθαρσις related, as
far as we can see, to any animistic belief. There is one passage where
Homer’s silence is valuable and gives positive evidence; Theoklumenos,
who has slain a man of his own tribe and fled from his home, in
consequence approaches Telemachos when the latter is sacrificing and
implores and receives his protection: there is no hint of any feeling
that there is a stain upon him, or that he needs purification, or that
his presence pollutes the sacrifice.[290.2] All this would have been
felt by the later Greek; and in the post-Homeric period we have to
reckon with a momentous growth of the idea of impurity and of a
complex system of purification, especially in regard to homicide,
leading to important developments in the sphere of law and morality
which I have tried to trace out on other occasions.[290.3] But Homer
may well be regarded as the spokesman of a gifted race, the Achaeans,
as we call them, on whom the burden of the doctrine of purification
lay lightly, and for whom the ghostly world had comparatively little
terror or interest. Besides the Achaeans, however, and their kindred
races there was the submerged population of the older culture who
enter into the composition of the various Hellenes of history.
Therefore the varied development in the post-Homeric period of
cathartic ideas may be only a renaissance, a recrudescence of forces
that were active enough in the second millennium. {291} Attica may
have been the home where the old tradition survived, and cathartic
rites such as the Thargelia and the trial of the axe for murder in the
Bouphonia have the savour of great antiquity. May not the Minoan
religion of Crete have been permeated with the ideas of the impurity
of bloodshed and the craving for purification from sin? For at the
beginning of the historic period Crete seems to have been the centre
of what may be called the cathartic mission; from this island came
Apollo Delphinios, the divine purifier _par excellence_, to this
island the god came to be purified from the death of Python; and in
later times, Crete lent to Athens its purifying prophet
Epimenides.[291.1] If we believe, then, that the post-Homeric
blood-purification was really a recrudescence of the tradition of an
older indigenous culture, we should use this as another argument for
the view that the Greece of the second millennium 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 of magic as
religion. Now, the student of religion is not permitted to refuse to
touch the domain of magic; nor can we exclude its consideration even
from the highest topics of religious speculation. Some general remarks
have already been made[291.2] concerning the part played by magic
both in the worship and in the {292} social life of the peoples that
we are comparing. Any exact and detailed comparison would be fruitless
for our present purpose; for, while the knowledge of early Babylonian
magic is beginning to be considerable, we cannot say that we know
anything definite concerning the practices in this department of the
Hellenic and adjacent peoples in the early period with which we are
dealing. From the Homeric poems we can gather little more than that
magic of some kind existed; and that Homer and his gifted audience
probably despised it as they despised ghosts and demons. It is only by
inference that we can venture to ascribe to the earliest period of the
Greek race some of the magic rites that are recorded by the later
writers. It would require a lengthy investigation and treatise to
range through the whole of Greek ritual and to disentangle and expose
the magic element which was undoubtedly there, and which in some
measure is latent in the ritual of every higher religion yet examined.
By way of salient illustration we may quote the ceremonies of the
scapegoat and the φαρμακός,[292.1] modes of the magic-transference of
sin and evil; the strewing of sacred food-stuff that is instinct with
divine potency over the fields in the Thesmophoria; the rain magic
performed by the priests of Zeus Lykaios;[292.2] we hear at Kleonai
of an official class of “Magi” who controlled the wind and the weather
by spells, and occasionally in their excitement gashed their own
hands, like the priests of Baal;[292.3] such blood-magic being
explicable as a violent mode of discharging personal energy upon the
outer objects which one wishes to subdue to one’s will. Another and
more {293} thrilling example of blood-magic is the process of
water-finding by pouring human blood about the earth, a method
revealed by an old legend of Haliartos in Boeotia about the man who
desired water, and in order to find it consulted Delphi, and was
recommended by the oracle to slay the first person who met him on his
return; his own young son met him first, and the father stabbed him
with his sword; the wounded youth ran round about, and wherever the
blood dripped water sprang up from the earth.[293.1] No one will now
venture to say that all these things are post-Homeric; the natural
view is that they were an inheritance of crude and primitive thought
indigenous to the land. Many of them belong to world-wide custom; on
the other hand, some of the striking and specialised rites, such as
the blood-magic and the ritual of the φαρμακός, are not found at
Babylon.

But before prejudging the question, some salient and peculiar
developments of Babylonian magic ought to be considered. One great
achievement of Mesopotamian civilisation was the early development of
astrology, to which perhaps the whole world has been indebted for good
and for evil, and which was 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 number seven.
Whether the Judaic name and institution of the Sabbath is of
Babylonian origin or not, does not concern our question. But it
concerns us to know that the seventh days, the 14th, the 21st, and
28th of certain months, if not of all, were sacred at Babylon, and
were days of penance and piacular duties when ordinary occupation was
suspended.[293.2] We can discern the origin of the sanctity of this
number: the observation of the {294} seven planets, and the division
of the lunar month into four quarters of seven days. The early Greeks,
doubtless, had their astrological superstitions, as most races have
had; the new moon is naturally lucky, the waning moon unlucky; but no
one can discover any numerical or other principle in the Hesiodic
system, which is our earliest evidence of Hellenic lucky and unlucky
days. His scheme is presented in naïve confusion, and he concludes
humorously, “one man praises one day, one another, and few know
anything about it.”[294.1] His page of verse reflects the anarchy of
the Greek calendars; and we should find it hard to credit that either
Hesiod or the legislators that drew up those had sat attentively at
the feet of Babylonian teachers. But a few coincidences may be noted.
Hesiod puts a special tabu on the fifth day of the month; in fact, it
is the only one in his list that is wholly unlucky, a day when it
would seem to be best to do nothing at all, at least outside the
house, for on this day the Erinyes are wandering about.[294.2] Now, a
Babylonian text published by Dr. Langdon contains the dogma that on
the fifth day of Nisan “he who fears Marduk and Zarpanit shall not go
out to work.”[294.3] This Babylonian rule is the earliest example of
what may be strictly called Sabbatarianism, abstinence from work
through fear of offending the high god. Such would probably not be the
true account of Hellenic feeling concerning the “forbidden days,”
which were called ἀποφράδες or μιαραί.[294.4] The high god had issued
to the Hellene no moral commandment about “keeping the Sabbath-day
holy”; his reluctance to do certain work on certain days rested on a
more primitive sentiment {295} concerning them. Thus it was unlucky
both for himself and the city that Alcibiades should return to the
Piraeus when the Plynteria were going on; for this latter was a
cathartic ceremony, and evil influences were abroad. Nor, as Xenophon
declares, would any one venture to engage in a serious work on this
day.[295.1] Nor were these μιαραὶ ᾑμέραι, like the seventh days of
the Babylonian months, necessarily days of gloom when offended deities
had to be propitiated; on the contrary, the day of Χόες was a day of
merry drinking and yet μιαρά: in fact, we best understand the latter
phrase by translating it “tabooed,” rather than “sad” or
“gloomy.”[295.2]

Another coincidence that may arrest attention is that in Hesiod’s
scheme the seventh day of the month was sacred because Apollo was born
on it; and throughout the later period this god maintains his
connection with the seventh day, also apparently with the first, the
fourteenth, and the twentieth of the month.[295.3] This almost
coincides with the Sabbatical division of the Babylonian months. But
we cannot suppose that in Hellas these were days of mortification as
they were in the East; else they would not have been associated with
the bright deity Apollo.

Such dubious coincidences, balanced by still more striking
diversities, are but frail supports for the hypothesis of
race-contact.

In Babylonian thaumaturgy nothing is more significant than the magic
power of the Word, whether spoken or written: and the Word, as we have
noted, was raised to a cosmic divine power and possessed inherent
creative force.[295.4] This is only a reflection upon the heavens of
the human use of the magical or mesmeric word or set {296} of words.
This use of them is found, indeed, all round the globe. What seems
unique in the Mesopotamian culture is that religion, religious
literature, and poetry should have reached so high a pitch and yet
never have risen above or shaken off the magic which is its constant
accompaniment. Men and gods equally use magic against the demons; the
most fervid hymn of praise, the most pathetic litany, is only part of
an exorcism-ritual; and so inevitably does the shadow of magic dog
religion here that Dr. Langdon is justified in his conjecture[296.1]
that in a great hymn to Enlil, which contains scarcely a prayer but
chiefly ecstatic description of his power, the worshipper is really
endeavouring to charge himself with higher religious magic by this
outpouring. In fact, here and elsewhere, a magic origin for the
practice of theologic exegesis may be obscurely traced; narrative
might acquire an apotropaeic effect; thus tablets containing the
narrative of the achievements of the plague-god, hung up before the
houses, could avert pestilence,[296.2] or, again, the reading aloud
the tablet narrating the victory of Shamash and Ramman over the seven
demons who attacked the moon-god Sin served to defeat the seven demons
by the same sympathetic magic as would be worked by a dramatic
representation of that event.[296.3]

There is no record or hint that the Hellenes recited hymns to Demeter
or wrote up passages of Homer to avert demons.

It belongs to the magic use of formulae that minute exactness in
respect of every syllable is necessary to the power of the spell or
the spell-prayer. An Assyrian {297} king who is consulting the sun-god
concerning success in a war with which he is threatened, prays that
the ritual which the enemy may be employing may go wrong and fail; and
in this context occurs the curious petition, “May the lips of the
priest’s son hurry and stumble over a word.”[297.1] The idea seems to
be that a single slip in the ritual-formulae destroyed their whole
value; and such a view belongs to magic rather than to religion.

Now it is probable that in his earliest mental stage the Hellene had
been in bondage to the religious magic of sacred formulae and sacred
names; and as a tradition of that stage, the divine epithet whereby he
appealed to his deities according to his needs retained always for him
a mysterious potency; but otherwise we have no proof that he worked
word-magic 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 is its peculiar mark. In the ritual of
exorcism of the demons, idols play a prominent and often singular
rôle. The following performance is probably unique: in the exorcism
of disease two idols, male and female, were set up before the sick
man, then the evil spirits of sickness are invited thus: “Oh ye all
wicked, all evil, who pursue so-and-so, if thou art male, here is thy
wife; if thou art female, here is thy husband.”[297.2] The intent of
the exorciser seems to be to attract the demon of disease, of whose
sex he is not sure, into one or the other of these images, and he
lures it by amorous enticement into the figure of opposite sex to its
own; {298} having got the demon into the image, he doubtless takes it
out and burns or buries it. Or the evil spirit may be attracted from
the patient by means of its own image placed near him. One document
prescribes various images of bestial form, all of which are to be
taken by night to the bank of the river, probably that they may be
thrown in and carry the impurity of sickness away.[298.1] Another
shows us how to deal with Labartu, the daughter of Anu;[298.2] her
image, made of clay, is placed above the head of the sick man, so as
to draw her or her power out from him; it is then taken out, slain,
and buried. And this exorcism is all the more notable because Labartu
is rather an evil goddess than a mere demon, being styled in another
text “August lady,” “Mistress of the dark-haired men.”[298.3] Such
magical drama, in which the demon-image might be slain to annul its
potency, seems characteristically Babylonian: it entered also into the
ritual of the high gods. For, at the feast of the New Year, when Nebo
arrived from Borsippa, two images are brought before him and in his
presence decapitated with the sword. Dr. Langdon interprets
them[298.4] as representing probably “the demons who aided the dragon
in her fight with Marduk; they are the captive gods of darkness which
ends with the Equinox.” This is dramatic magic helpful to the gods.

The elaboration of exorcism must have led to a minuter articulation of
the demon-world; the exorciser is most anxious to know and discover
all about his unseen foes: he gives them a name, a sex if possible,
and a number: he says of the powerful storm-demons {299} Utuk “they
are seven, they are seven, they are neither male nor female, they take
no wife and beget no children;”[299.1] for knowledge of the name or
nature of the personality gives magic power.

Many of these examples, which might easily be multiplied, show us
magic applied to private but beneficent purposes, the healing of
disease, the exorcism of spirits of moral and physical evil. It was
also in vogue for national purposes--for instance, for the destruction
of the enemies of the king; one of our documents describes such a
process as the making of a tallow-image of the enemy of the king and
binding his face with a cord, so as to render the living foe impotent
of will and speech.[299.2]

We have already noticed that the Babylonian gods themselves work
magic, and that it was also worked on behalf of the gods.[299.3] And
in the ritual-records much that might be interpreted as religion may
find its truer account from the other point of view; for instance, the
ritual of placing by the bedside of a sick man the image of Nergal or
those of the “twins who overthrow the wicked Gallu”[299.4] might
appear at first sight as a religious appeal to the deities to come to
his aid; but as in form it is exactly similar to the use made on the
same occasion, as noted above, of the images of demons, we may rather
suppose that the intention was magical in this act also, and that the
divine idols were supposed to combat the demon of sickness by their
magical influence. Or, again, in part of the ritual of exorcism we
find acts that bear the semblance of sacrifice, such as throwing
onions and dates into the fire; but they were charged with a curse
before thrown, and the act {300} is more naturally interpreted as a
magic transference of evil.[300.1]

For the purpose of the exorcism, to deliver a “banned” person, the
high god, Marduk or another, might be called in; but Marduk also works
the effect by magic: a rope is woven by Ishtar’s maidens, which Marduk
(or his priest) turns round the head of the sufferer, then breaks it
through and throws it out into the desert.[300.2] This looks like
symbolic magic; the knotted rope represents the ban, which is then
broken and thrown away.

There are many features in these methods of exorcism, such as the
apotropaeic use of idols, that are common to other peoples at a
certain stage of culture; there remains much also that seems peculiar
to Babylon.

But what is uniquely characteristic of this Mesopotamian people, and
at the same time most un-Hellenic, is the all-pervading atmosphere of
magic, which colours their view of life and their theory of the
visible and invisible world. Babylonia, at least, was the one salient
exception to the historic induction that a distinguished
writer[300.3] has recently sanctioned--“religion once firmly
established invariably seeks to exclude magic; and the priest does his
best to discredit the magician.” The psalmody of Babylon, with its
occasional outbursts {301} of inspiration and its gleams of spiritual
insight, would have appealed to an Isaiah; its magic would have
appealed to many a modern African. The Babylonian prophet does not
frown on it; the high gods accept it, the priest is its skilled and
beneficent practitioner. And at no other point, perhaps, is the
contrast between the Hellenic and the Mesopotamian religions so
glaring as at this.

This comparison of Eastern and Western ritual may close with some
observations on another religious function that may be of some value
for the question of early ethnic influence.

It has been remarked that divination played an important, perhaps a
dominant part in the Babylonian ritual of sacrifice, divination, that
is, by inspection of the victim’s entrails, especially the liver; and
that this method was adopted in Greece only in the later
centuries.[301.1] But there are other salient differences between the
Babylonian and the more ancient mantic art of Hellas.[301.2] Another
method much in vogue in the former was a curious mode of divining by
mixing oil and water and watching the movements and behaviour of the
two liquids.[301.3] The first and only indication of a similar
practice in Hellas is a passage in the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, of
which the true meaning has hitherto escaped the interpreters.[301.4]
And here, as usual, an obvious example of Mesopotamian influence on
Hellenic custom belongs only to a late epoch. It is also true {302}
that the ancient divination of the two peoples agreed in certain
respects, namely, in that both used, like most communities at a
certain stage of culture, the auguries of birds and the revelations of
dreams. As regards the facts relating to the former, we know more
about Greece than at present about Babylon. But in the matter of
dream-oracles, it is manifest that the Hellenic phenomena are entirely
independent of Mesopotamian fashion. The Assyrian and Babylonian
documents reveal the fashion of dream-prophecy in its simplest and
highest form: the high deity of his own pleasure sends a dream, and
the divining priest or skilled interpreter interprets it. No hint has
so far been detected of that artificial method of provoking prophetic
dreams by “incubation” or ἐγκοίμησις, the fashion of laying oneself
down in some sacred shrine and sleeping with one’s ear to the ground,
that was much in vogue in ancient Hellas and still survives in parts
of the modern Greek world and which may be regarded as an immemorial
tradition. In this divination, the divine spokesman was the power of
the underworld. And this was the most important difference between the
Western and the Eastern society in respect of the divine agency. In an
early period of Hellenic history that may be called pre-Apolline, the
earth-mother was conspicuously oracular by the vehicle of dreams; and
this power of hers was generally shared by the nether god and buried
heroes. Nor could the religion of Apollo suppress this “chthonian”
divination. But in Mesopotamia the earth-powers and the nether world
have no part or lot in this matter. It is almost the prerogative of
Shamash, the sun-god, though Adad is sometimes associated with
him;[302.1] {303} both being designated as “Bēlē-Biri” or “Lords of
Oracles.”[303.1]

Another remarkable distinction is the fact that the ecstatic or
enthusiastic form of prophecy, that of the Shaman or Pythoness
possessed and maddened by the inworking spirit of god, is not found in
the Babylonian record, which only attests the cool and scientific
method of interpreting by signs and dreams and the stars. Perhaps
Mesopotamia from the third millennium onward was too civilised to
admit the mad prophet and prophetess to its counsels. But such
characters were attached to certain Anatolian cults, especially to
those of Kybele,[303.2] and also to the Syrian goddess at
Hierapolis;[303.3] we have evidence of them also in a record of the
Cretan Phaistos in the service of the Great Mother.[303.4] Some
scholars have supposed that prophetic ecstasy was only a late
phenomenon in Hellas, because Homer is silent about it. But there are
reasons for suspecting that demoniac possession was occasionally found
in the pre-Homeric divination of Hellas,[303.5] an inheritance
perhaps from the pre-Hellenic period.

In any case, the theory that primitive Hellas was indebted to
Babylonia for its divination-system is strongly repugnant to the
facts.



 CHAPTER XIV.
 Summary of Results.

{304}

This comparative exposition of the Sumerian-Babylonian and the most
complex and developed pre-Christian religion of Europe cannot claim to
be complete or at any point finally decisive, but it may at least have
helped to reveal the high value and interest of these phenomena for
the workers in this broad field of inquiry. This was one of the main
objects of this course. The other was the discussion of a question of
religious ethnology, concerning the possible influence of Mesopotamia
on the earliest development of Hellenic religion. The verdict must
still remain an open one, awaiting the light of the new evidence that
the future will gather. But the evidence at present available--and it
may be hoped that none of first importance has been missed--constrains
us to a negative answer or at least a negative attitude of mind.

Confining ourselves generally to the second millennium B.C., we have
surveyed the religions of the adjacent peoples between the valley of
the Euphrates and the western shores of the Aegean; and have observed
that morphologically they are generally on the same plane of
polytheism, but that those of Mesopotamia and Hellas reveal inner
differences, striking and vital enough to be serious stumbling-blocks
to a theory of affiliation. These differences concern the {305}
personality of the divinities and their relations to the various parts
of the world of nature; the most salient being the different attitude
of the two peoples to the divine luminaries of heaven and to the
chthonian powers of the lower world. They concern the cosmogonies of
East and West, their views of the creation of the world, and the
origin of man; on these matters, certain myths which are easily
diffused do not appear to have reached Hellas in this early period.
They concern the religious temperaments of the Babylonian and Hellene,
which appear as separate as the opposite points of the pole; the
rapturous fanatic and self-abasing spirit of the East contrasting
vividly with the coolness, civic sobriety, and self-confidence of the
West. They concern the eschatologic ideas of the two peoples: the cult
of the dead and some idea of a posthumous judgment being found in
early Hellas, while the former was rare, and the latter is scarcely
discoverable, in Mesopotamia. They concern, finally, the ritual; and
here the salient points of contrast are the different views of the
sacrifice, of the sacrificial victim, and the sacrificial blood; the
different methods of purification and the expulsion of sin; the ritual
of sorrow associated with the death of the god, so powerful in
Babylonia and so insignificant (by comparison) in Hellas; the
un-Hellenic Mylitta-rite, and the service of the “hierodoulai”; and,
to conclude with the most vital difference of all, the manifestations
of magic and its relation to the national religions, so complex, so
pregnant for thought and faith, and so dominant in Mesopotamia; on the
other hand, so insignificant and unobtrusive in Hellas.

Two other points have been incidentally noticed in our general survey,
but it is well in a final summing up to emphasise their great
importance as negative {306} evidence. The first concerns the higher
history of European religion: the establishment of religious
mysteries, a phenomenon of dateless antiquity, and of powerful working
in Hellenic and Aegean society, has not yet been discovered in the
Mesopotamian culture. The second is a small point that concerns
commerce and the trivialities of ritual: the use of incense, universal
from immemorial times in Mesopotamia, and proved by the earliest
documents, begins in Greece not earlier than the eighth century B.C.
This little product, afterwards everywhere in great demand, for it is
pleasant to the sense, soothing to the mind, and among the harmless
amenities of worship, was much easier to import than Babylonian
theology or more complex ritual. It might have come without these, but
they could scarcely have come without it. Yet it did not come to
Hellenic shores in the second millennium. And this trifling negative
fact is worth a volume of the higher criticism for the decision of our
question.

Those who still cling to the faith that Babylonia was the centre
whence emanated much Mediterranean religion, may urge that the
negative value of the facts exposed above may be destroyed by future
discoveries. This is true, but our preliminary hypotheses should be
framed on the facts that are already known. Or they may urge that the
generic resemblances of the two religious systems with which we have
been mainly concerned are also great. But, as has been observed, the
same generic resemblance exists between Greek and Vedic polytheism.
And for the question of religious origin general resemblances are far
less decisive than specific points of identity, such, for instance, as
the identity of divine names or of some peculiar divine attribute.
Later we can trace the migrations of Isis {307} and Mithras throughout
Europe by their names or by the sistrum or by the type of the fallen
bull, of the Hittite god Teschub in the Graeco-Roman guise of Jupiter
Dolichenos as far as Hungary, perhaps as far as Scandinavia, by the
attribute of the hammer. It is just this sort of evidence of any trace
of Babylonian influence that is lacking among the records of early
Greece. No single Babylonian name is recognisable in its religious or
mythologic nomenclature; just as no characteristically Babylonian
fashion is found in its ritual or in the appurtenances of its
religion. This well accords with what is already known of the
Mediterranean history of the second millennium. For long centuries the
Hittite empire was a barrier between the Babylonian power and the
coastlands of Asia Minor.

So far, then, as our knowledge goes at present, there is no reason for
believing that nascent Hellenism, wherever else arose the streams that
nourished its spiritual life, was fertilised by the deep springs of
Babylonian religion or theosophy.

{308}



 INDEX OF NAMES AND
 SUBJECTS.

{309}

Adad (Ramman), 62, 101-102, 142, 143.

Adonis, 251, 255, 273-274.

Alilat, 44.

Allatu, 57, 206, 218.

Aniconic worship, 225-230.

Animism, 43.

Anthropomorphism, in Greece, 10-12, 75-80; in Mesopotamia, 51-52,
55-57; in Canaan, 57-58; in Hittite religion, 60-61; in Phrygia,
63-64; in Crete, 64-75.

Aphrodite, Cretan-Mycenaean, 96; in Cyprus, 261; Ourania, 272-273.

Apollo, 49, 295; theory of Lycian origin, 90; Agyieus, 136;
Delphinios, 291; Lykeios, 76.

Arabian divinities, 85, 263.

Aramaic divinities, 85.

Artemis, of Brauron, 244; in Cilicia, 89; at Ephesos, 91; aboriginal
Mediterranean goddess, 96.

Aryan migration into Greece, 34.

Asshur, 58, 225.

Astarte, 57, 58, 59, 86, 107.

Astral cults, in Mesopotamia, 102; in Greece, 111-114.

Atargatis (Derketo), 57.

Athena, aboriginal Mediterranean goddess, 96.

Athtar, Arabian deity, 85, 263.

Attar, in Arabia, 168.

Attis, 91, 254-258, 266; Παπαῖος, 95.

Axe-cult, in Crete, 70, 93.

Baalbec, 273-274.

Baptism, 284.

Bau, Babylonian goddess, 263.

Belit, Babylonian goddess, 83, 84, 104.

Birds, cult of, 63, 69-73.

Boghaz-Keui, reliefs of, 47, 60, 125; cuneiform texts at, 61.

Borrowing, tests of, in religion, 37.

Boundaries, sanctity of, 127-128.

Bouphonia, in Attica, 237-238.

Britomartis, 170.

Bull, Hittite worship of, 252-253.

Burial-customs, 208-210.

Byblos, Adonis-rites at, 273-274.

Chemosh, of Moab, 59, 86.

Cilicia, Assyrian conquests in, 35 (_vide_ Typhoeus).

Cities, religious origin of, 118.

Communion-service with dead, 209.

Confessional-service in Mesopotamia, 151, 288.

Convent-system in Mesopotamia, 268-269.

Cook, Mr., 66, 69, 73.

Cosmogonies, 179-182.

Courtesans, sacred, 269-283.

Cowley, Dr., 90.

Creation of man, 184-185.

Cyprus, religious prostitution in, 273-274.

Days, sacred character of, 293-295.

Dead, worship of, 122, 210, 211, 213; tendance of, 211, 212; evocation
of, 214-215.

Death of deity, 27-28, 238-240, 249-263.

Demeter, 80.

Demonology, 154, 206-208, 297-300.

Dionysos, 239-240; marriage with Queen-Archon, 267.

Divination, through sacrifice, 248-249, 301-302; ecstatic, 303.

Dualism, 19, 158.

{310}

Ea, Babylonian god, 53, 102, 117, 121.

Eagle, Hittite worship of, 63.

Earth, divinity of, in Mesopotamia, 103; in Greece, 114.

Enlil, Babylonian god, 59, 103-104, 142.

Eros, cosmic principle, 181.

Eschatology, 204-220.

Esmun, Phoenician god, 57.

Eunostos, Tanagran vegetation-hero, 262.

Eunuchs, in Phrygian religion, 92, 256-258.

Euyuk, relief at, 61.

Evans, Sir Arthur, 17, 30, 64, 69-71, 73-74, 91, 97, 211, 227.

Evil gods, 19, 142-143.

Faith, not a religious virtue in Greece, 23-24.

Fanaticism, in Mesopotamia, 197-203.

Fassirlir, Lion-goddess at, 88.

Father-god, 48, 95.

Fetichism, 225-228.

Fire-god, in Greece and Babylon, 146-147, 285.

Fire-purification, 285-286.

Frazer, Dr., 17, 60, 79, 89, 257 n. 1, 277, 282.

Functional deities (Sondergötter), 110, 133.

Goddess-worship, importance of, 5, 81-82; in Mesopotamia, 17, 82-84;
among Western Semites, 85-86; Hittites, 87-88; on Asia-Minor coast,
88-91; in Crete, 92-94; Aryan tradition of, 94-96; in early Greece,
96-98.

Hammer, sacred Hittite symbol, 63.

Hammurabi, code of, 129-132, 212.

Harpalyke, legend of, 239.

Harrison, Miss Jane, 67, 69-70.

Hartland, Mr. Sidney, 271 n. 1, 280-281.

Hearth-worship, 132-133.

Helios, at Tyre and Palmyra, 107; in Greece, 110-111.

Hell, Babylonian conception of, 205-206.

Hera, ? Aryan-Hellenic, 96; βοῶπις, 76.

Hierodoulai, 272.

Hittite ethnology, 36.

Hogarth, Dr., 74.

Homicide, Babylonian laws concerning, 129-130; Hellenic religious
feeling about, 138-140; purification from, 287-288.

Hyakinthos, 262.

Ibriz, Hittite monument at, 47.

Idolatry, in Greece, 12-13, 228.

Incense, 231-232, 306.

Incest, Babylonian laws concerning, 131.

Incubation, divination by, 302.

Ira, goddess of plague, 143.

Ishtar, 55, 83, 103, 120, 142, 164-167; descent of, 204, 208.

Jastrow, Prof., 37, 58.

Katharsis, Homeric, 289-291.

Kingship, divine character of, in Mesopotamia, 119, 122-123; among
Western Semites, 123; among Hittites, 124-125; in Phrygia, 125; in
Crete, 125-126; in Greece, 126-127.

Knots, magic use of, 300.

Kybele, 63, 91-92, 109, 170, 226.

Labartu, demon-goddess, 298.

Langdon, Dr., 56, 205 n. 1, 296, 298.

Leto ? Lycian origin of, 89-90.

Leukothea, 261.

Linos, 197, 262.

Lion-divinity, Phrygian Hittite Mesopotamian type, 62-63.

Lykaon, Arcadian sacrifice of, 239.

Ma, Anatolian goddess, 169, 272.

Magic, in Greece, 158, 176-179, 292-293; in Babylon, 291-301.

Male deity, predominant among Semites, 85-86; at Olba and Tarsos and
in Lycia, 89.

Mannhardt, 276.

Marduk, 103, 120, 265.

Marriage of god and goddess, 263-268; 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.

Moon-worship, Semitic, 85; Hellenic, 112.

Morality and religion, 20.

Mylitta, rites of, 269-271.

{311}

Nature-worship, 40-41, 97; in Mesopotamia, 99-106; West-Semitic,
106-107; Hittite, 108; Hellenic, 110-114.

Nebo, 52, 102, 119, 121, 188.

Nergal, 101, 142.

Νηφάλια, wineless offerings, 112.

Ninib, 101, 117, 127, 263.

Ninlil, 84.

Ninni, relief of, 52.

Nusku, 117.

Omnipotence, divine attribute, 173-175.

Orotal, Arabian deity, 44.

Pan-Babylonism, 30-33.

Pantheism, 161-162.

Perjury, 147-149.

Personal religion, 191-196.

Pessimism, in Babylonian hymns, 155.

Petrie, Professor, 223.

Phallic cults, 228-230.

Phratric system, religious sanction of, in Greece, 138; non-existent
(?) in Mesopotamia, 138.

Poseidon, 146.

Punishment, posthumous, 215-216.

Purification, 155-158, 282-291.

Purity, 163-172.

Qadistu, meaning of, 269.

Ramman, _vide_ Adad.

Ramsay, Sir William, 117, 170, 273, 277.

Rewards, posthumous, 216-218.

Sacrament, 25-26, 236-242, 250.

Sacrifice, theory of, 24-26, 235-236, 240-242; bloodless, 230-231;
chthonian, 233; human, 244-246; at oath-taking, 247-248; “sober,”
231-232; vicarious, 242-244.

Sandon, 252-253.

Sayce, Professor, 169, 253.

Scapegoat, 247.

Science, relation to religion, in Greece and Mesopotamia, 23.

Sentimentality, in Babylonian religion, 196-197.

Sex, confusion of, 58-60.

Shamash, Babylonian sun-god, 99, 100, 120-121, 127, 142, 208, 302.

Sin, Babylonian moon-god, 99, 100.

Sin, non-moral ideas of, 152-154.

Sinjerli, relief at, 61.

Smith, Prof. Robertson, 25, 226, 235, 238, 241.

Snake-goddess, in Crete, 64-65; snake-cult, 78.

Tammuz, 105-106, 219-220, 242, 250-263.

Tanit, Carthaginian goddess, 168.

Taurobolion, 253.

Temples, erection of, 223-225; deification of, 225.

Teshup, Hittite god, 46, 62.

Teukridai, at Olba, 89.

Theanthropic animal, 77-78.

Theism, 7-9, 40-49.

Theriomorphism, in Egypt, 15; in Mesopotamia, 14, 52-55; in other
Semitic communities, 57-58; Hittite, 60-62; in Crete, 66-75; in
Greece, 75-80.

Tiâmat, in Babylonian cosmogony, 181.

Tiele, Professor, 40, 42, 81, 199.

Tralles, religious prostitutes at, 275.

Trinities, 185-187.

Truthfulness, religious virtue, 148.

Typhoeus, legend of, 182-183.

Van Gennep, 279.

Ver Sacrum, in Greece, 137.

Virgin-goddesses, not found among Aryans, 95; Mediterranean, 96.

Virginity, sacrifice of, 269-281.

Virgin-Mother, idea of, 166-171.

Westermarck, Professor, 41 n. 1, 278.

Wilde, Dr., 1.

Word, mystic value of, 15, 56, 57, 176-179, 295-297.

Worship, ambiguity in term, 67, 77.

Zeus, 49; grave of, in Crete, 93, 259-260; Herkeios, 149-150; Horios,
152; Kouros, 259; Panamaros in Caria, 90; Polieus, 238; Thunderer in
Bithynia, 95.



 ENDNOTES.

 CHAPTER I NOTES

[11.1] I am aware that there are exceptions to this principle, which I
propose to consider in a future course; no single formula can ever sum
up all the phenomena of a complex religion.

[14.1] _Vide_ Langdon, in _Transactions of Congress of the History of
Religions_, 1908, vol. i. p. 251.

[15.1] P. 382, C.

[15.2] _Vide_ Petrie, in _Transactions of Congress of the History of
Religions_, 1908, vol. i. p. 192.

[17.1] _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, 1904.

[17.2] _Vide_ Jastrow, _Religion Babyloniens u. Assyriens_, vol. i. p.
545.

[20.1] _Vide_ my _Evolution of Religion_, pp. 139-152.

[21.1] 1. 132.

[25.1] _Transactions of Congress of History of Religions_, 1908, vol.
i. p. 192.

[25.2] _Hibbert Journal_, 1904, “Sacrificial Communion in Greek
Religion.”



 CHAPTER II NOTES

[31.1] _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.

[34.1] Vide _Annual of the British School_, 1909, 1910.

[35.1] _Vide_ Zimmern, _Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament_
(K.A.T.)3, pp. 37-38.



 CHAPTER III NOTES

[40.1] _Vide supra_, p. 9.

[41.1] Westermarck maintains the view in his _Origin and Development
of 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.

[42.1] _Op. cit._, p. 170; as far as I know, only one fact might be
cited in support of Tiele’s view, a fact mentioned by Jastrow, _op.
cit._, p. 52, that the ideogram of Enlil, the god of Nippur, signifies
Lord-Daimon (Lil = Daimon); but we might equally well interpret it
“Lord of Winds.”

[42.2] _Vide_ Hüsing, _Der Zagros und seine Völker_, p. 16.

[43.1] _Vide_ Plate in Winckler, “Die Gesetze Hammurabi,” in _Der Alte
Orient_, 1906.

[43.2] Perrot et Chipiez, _Histoire de l’art, Assyrie_, p. 109, fig.
29 (Roscher, _Lexikon_, ii. p. 2358).

[44.1] 3, 8.

[45.1] Messerschmidt, _Die Hettiter_, p. 9; Stanley Cook, _Religion of
Ancient Palestine_, p. 73.

[45.2] So Cook, _op. cit._, p. 73, who interprets her as Astarte.

[45.3] Winckler, _Tel-El-Amarna Letters_, 17.

[46.1] _Vide_ Winckler, _Mittheil des deutsch. Orientgesellsch._,
1907, No. 35.

[46.2] Winckler, _Die Völker Vorderasiens_, p. 21; Messerschmidt,
_op. cit._, p. 5; Kennedy, _Journ. Royal Asiat. Soc._, 1909, p. 1110,
declares that their language has been proved to belong to the
Ural-Altaic group and to be akin to Vannic.

[46.3] _Vide_ Messerschmidt, p. 25 (plate); Von Oppenheim, _Der
Tel-Halaf und die verschleierte Gottin_, p. 17, publishes a somewhat
similar figure holding a kind of club.

[47.1] Perrot et Chipiez, _Histoire de l’art_, iv. p. 354 (fig.).

[47.2] _Vide_ Garstang, _The Land of the Hittites_, pl. lxiii.-lxxi.;
Messerschmidt, _op. cit._, pp. 26-27.

[48.1] e.g. _Outlines of Greek Religion_, by R. Karsten, p. 6.

[48.2] _Vide supra_, p. 46; cf. E. Meyer, _Das erste Auftreten der
Arier in der Geschichte in Sitzungsb. d. konigl. Preuss. Akad.
Wissensch._, 1908, pp. 14 _seq._



 CHAPTER IV NOTES

[52.1] _Vide supra_, p. 43.

[52.2] _Vide supra_, p. 43.

[52.3] _Vide_ Roscher, _Lexikon_, vol. iii. p. 48, _s.v._ “Nebo.”

[52.4] _Vide_ Roscher, _op. cit._, iii. p. 67 (_Mitth. aus dem Orient.
Sammlung. zu Berlin_, Heft xi. p. 23).

[52.5] _Monuments of Nineveh_, i. p. 65 (Roscher, _op. cit._, ii. p.
2350).

[52.6] P. 43.

[52.7] Roscher, _op. cit._, vol. iv. p. 29.

[53.1] Roscher, _op. cit._, iii. p. 254-255.

[53.2] Schrader, _Keil. Bibl._, ii. p. 141.

[53.3] _Frag. Hist. Graec._, ii. p. 496. Frag. 1, 3.

[53.4] _Nineveh and Babylon_, pl. vi. (Roscher, _op. cit._, iii. p.
580).

[54.1] Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_, fig. 2. Roscher, _op. cit._,
iii. p. 580.

[54.2] In the _Amer. Journ. Archael._, 1887, pp. 59-60, Frothingham
cites examples from Assyrian cylinders of birds on pillars or altar
with worshippers approaching: one of these shows us a seated god in
front of the bird (pl. vii. 1); on another, a warrior approaches a
tabernacle, within which is a horse’s head on an altar, and near it a
bird on a column (pl. vii. 2; cf. the boundary-stone of Nebuchadnezzar
I., published by Miss Harrison, _Trans. Congr. Hist. Rel._, 1908, vol.
ii. p. 158); we find also a winged genius adoring an altar on which is
a cock. But cocks and other birds were sacrificial animals in
Babylonian ritual, and might be interpreted in all these cases as mere
temporary embodiments of the divinity’s power; the human-shaped
divinity is once represented by the side of the bird, and might always
have been imagined as present though unseen.

[55.1] Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii. p. 268.

[55.2] _Vide_ chapter i. pp. 14-15.

[56.1] Langdon, _Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms_, p. 127.

[56.2] Schrader, _Keilinsch. Bibl._, ii. pp. 79, 83.

[56.3] _Op. cit._, p. xix.

[57.1] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 159, n. 18. Compare with this the
personification of abstract ideas; the children of Shamash are Justice
(Kettu) and Law (Mésaru), and remain impersonal agencies, unlike the
Greek Θέμις. A deified Righteousness (sedek) has been inferred from
personal names that occur in the Amarna documents; _vide_ Cook,
_Palestine_, p. 93.

[57.2] _Vide_ his article on “Eschmun-Asklepios,” in _Orient. Stud. zu
Th. Nöldeke am 70ten Geburtstag gewidmet_: the proofs are doubtful,
but snake-worship in Phoenicia is attested by Sanchuniathon, Eus.
_Praep. Ev._, 1, 10, 46.

[57.3] Cook, _Religion of Ancient Palestine_, pp. 30-31.

[58.1] _Praep. Ev._, 1, 10, 31. Glaser, _Mittheilungen uber einige
Sabaeische Inschriften_, p. 3-4, gives reasons for affirming the
worship of black bulls in heathen Arabia; but it is not clear in what
relation these stood to the high personal divinities.

[58.2] _Op. cit._, p. 545.

[59.1] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 223.

[59.2] Zimmern, _Babyl. Hymn. w. Gebete_, p. 11.

[59.3] _C. I. Sem._, 250.

[60.1] For references, _vide_ my _Cults of the Greek States_, vol.
ii., “Aphrodite,” R. 113a.

[60.2] _Vide_ Head, _Hist. Num._, p. 586.

[61.1] Perrot et Chipiez, _Histoire de l’art_, iv. fig. 329; cf.
Garstang, _op. cit._, p. 256.

[61.2] _Supra_, p 43.

[61.3] Messerschmidt, _op. cit._, p. 23.

[61.4] _Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc._, 1909, p. 971.

[62.1] Luschan, _Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli_, Heft iii. Taf. 42, 43;
cf. Garstang, _op. cit._, p. 274.

[62.2] _Vide_ Roscher, _op. cit._, iii., _s.v._ “Ramman.”

[62.3] Perrot et Chipiez, _op. cit._, iv. p. 549, fig. 276; cf. fig.
278.

[62.4] _Op. cit._, ii. pp. 642-644.

[63.1] Cumont, _Voyage d’exploration dans le Pont_, p. 139.

[64.1] _Vide_ Perrot et Chipiez, _op. cit._, vol. iv. fig. 107; cf.
the relief-figure 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. Journ._, 1884, vol. v. p. 245; cf. Perrot
et Chipiez, iv. fig. 110 (“little more than the earlier columnar form
of the goddess slightly hewn,” Evans, _Hell. Journ._, 1901, p. 166).

[64.2] _Vide_ “Mycenaean Stone and Pillar-cult,” _Hell. Journ._, 1901.

[65.1] Evans, “Report of Excavations,” _Ann. Brit. School_, 1902-1903,
p. 92, fig. 63.

[65.2] _Ann. Brit. School_, 1900-1901, p. 29, fig. 9.

[65.3] Published by Evans in _Hell. Journ._, 1901, p. 170, fig. 48.

[65.4] _Vide_ Paribeni’s publication in the _Monumenti Antichi della
Accademia dei Lincei_, 1908 (xix.), pp. 6-86, pls. i.-iii.

[65.5] Cf. _Ann. Brit. School_, 1900-1901, p. 59, fig. 38; young god
with shield and spear and lioness or mastiff by his side, on clay seal
impression.

[69.1] _Ann. Brit. School_, 1901-1902, p. 29.

[70.1] _Op. cit._, p. 98, fig. 56.

[70.2] _Trans. Cong. Hist. Relig._, ii. p. 155.

[70.3] P. 65.

[71.1] _Op. cit._, i. p. 254.

[71.2] _Ann. Brit. School_, 1900-1901, p. 29, n. 3.

[71.3] _Ib._, p. 98.

[72.1] Lucian, _De Dea Syr._, 34; cf. Diod. Sic. 2, 5. Dove with
“Astarte” on coins of Askalon, autonomous and imperial, Head, _Hist.
Num._, p. 679.

[72.2] According to Aelian, certain sparrows were sacred to Asklepios,
and the Athenians put a man to death for slaying one (_Var. 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 Λητω Μυχια).

[73.1] _Ann. Brit. School_, 1900-1901, p. 30; cf. the paper by M.
Salomon Reinach, “Anthropologie,” vi., “La sculpture en Europe avant
les influences Gréco-Romaines,” p. 561.

[74.1] Evans in _Hell. Journ._, 1901, p. 169; Winter, _Arch. Anz._,
1890, p. 108.

[74.2] Hogarth, _Hell. Journ._, 1902, p. 92.

[74.3] _Vide_ gem from Vapheio, published by Evans, _Hell. Journ._,
1901, p. 101, fig. 1; cf. p. 117, figs. 13, 14.

[75.1] Hogarth, _op. cit._, pp. 79, 91.

[75.2] Evans, _Palace of Cnossus_, p. 18, fig. 7a.

[76.1] _Vide_ my _Cults_, iv. p. 115.

[77.1] _Protrept._, p. 34, P.

[77.2] _Protrept._, p. 34, P.; Aelian, _Nat. An._, xii. 5. Similarly,
when Diodorus tells us that “the Syrians honoured doves as goddesses”
(2, 5), the statement lets little light on the real religious feeling
and religious practice of the people.

[77.3] _Op. cit._, pp. 129-152.

[78.1] See my _Cults_, v. pp. 165, 167, R. 79.

[78.2] _Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor_, p. 99.

[78.3] _Cults_, iv. p. 115.

[78.4] This view of the passage is more probable than that which I
have taken in _Cults_, i. p. 37 (R. 8, p. 141).

[79.1] _Commentary on Pausanias_, vol. iii. p. 55.

[80.1] _Bull. Corr. Hell._, 1899, p. 635 (plate).



 CHAPTER V NOTES

[82.1] _Archiv. für Religionswissenschaft_, 1904, “Sociologic
hypotheses concerning the position of women in ancient religion.”

[83.1] _Vide supra_, p. 43.

[83.2] _Vide_ Jastrow, _op. cit._, i. p. 216.

[83.3] Zimmern, _Bab. Hymn. u. Gebete_, p. 20.

[83.4] _Ib._, p. 24.

[84.1] A. Jeremias in Roscher’s _Lexikon_, vol. iii. p. 62, _s.v._
“Nebo.”

[84.2] _Zeitschr. f. Assyriologie_, 1890, p. 72.

[84.3] Jastrow, _op. cit._, vol. i. p. 525; cf. the inscription of the
last of the Babylonian kings, Nabuna’id, who prays to Ningal, the
mother of the great gods, to plead for him before Sin (_Keilinschr.
Bibl._, iii. p. 103).

[85.1] _Der Alte Orient_ (1904), p. 20.

[85.2] Weber, _op. cit._, p. 19.

[85.3] _C. I. Sem._, 2, 1, n. 2, 113.

[85.4] Sanda, _Der Alte Orient_, “Die Aramäer,” p. 24.

[85.5] Lagrange, _Études sur les religions sémitiques_, p. 492.

[86.1] xxi. 29.

[86.2] Von Landau, _Die phönizischen Inschriften_, p. 13.

[86.3] _C. I. Sem._, 1, ii. ad init.

[86.4] _Ib._, 1, 7, p. 2.

[86.5] Von Landau, _op. cit._, p. 14.

[87.1] _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, 2nd ed., p. 108; Garstang, _op. cit._,
pl. lxv.

[87.2] Messerschmidt, _Die Hettiter_, pp. 27, 28.

[87.3] Perrot et Chipiez, _op. cit._, figs. 280, 281.

[87.4] Garstang, _op. cit._, pl. lxxiii. pp. 262-263, 267-268.

[88.1] _Der Alte Orient_, 1908; _Der Tel-Halaf und die verschleierte
Göttin_, pp. 33, 36.

[88.2] _Vide_ Cook, _Religion of Ancient Palestine_, p. 73; Winckler,
_Tel-el-Amarna Tablets_; Garstang, _op. cit._, p. 348.

[88.3] Published by Ramsay, _Cities of St. Paul_, p. 134, fig. 7.

[88.4] Garstang, _op. cit._, pp. 175-176, interprets the figure as a
priest.

[89.1] _Vide_ my _Cults_, vol. ii., Artemis-References, R. 79m.

[89.2] _Adonis_, etc., 2nd ed., p. 129.

[89.3] _Religion of the Semites_, p. 52.

[89.4] In lecture delivered in Oxford on “Apollo,” and published 1909;
cf. his article in _Hermes_, 1903, p. 575.

[90.1] _Cults_, vol. ii., “Artemis” Coin-Pl. B, n. 28.

[90.2] Pp. 651, 652, 665.

[91.1] The inscriptions throwing light on the cult at Panamara are
contained in _Bull. Corr. Hell._, 11, 12, 15 (years 1887, 1888, 1891);
cf. the article in Roscher’s _Lexikon_, vol. iii., _s.v._ “Panamaros.”

[91.2] _Vide_ my _Cults_, vol. iv. p. 173; cf. _ib._, _Apollo Geogr.
Reg._, _s.v._ “Phrygia,” p. 452, and R. 57.

[91.3] The type with many breasts might have been suggested by
Babylonian symbolism, for the Goddess of Nineveh is spoken of as
four-breasted (_vide_ Jeremias in Roscher’s _Lexikon_, vol. ii.,
_s.v._ “Nebo”), but Dr. Hogarth’s excavations have shown that this
form of the Ephesian idol is late.

[92.1] _Hell. Journ._, 1901, p. 168.

[93.1] _Vide op. cit._, p. 108, fig. 4, and p. 175, fig. 51.

[93.2] _Cults_, vol. i. pp. 36-38; vol. iii. pp. 294-296.

[93.3] Cf. those cited in note 1 above, and the shield-bearing figure
painted on the tomb of Milato in Crete (_ib._ p. 174).

[94.1] _Mutter Erde_, 1905.

[94.2] _Vide_ my _Cults_, v. pp. 345-365.

[95.1] The Celtic question is more difficult: Prof. Rhys in his
excellent paper on Celtic religion, read as a Presidential address at
the Congress of the History of Religions, 1908 (_Transactions_, ii.
pp. 201-225), gives the impression that the goddess was more in
evidence than the god in old Irish mythology, and doubts whether to
attribute this to the non-Indogermanic strain in the population; he
notices also certain “matriarchal” phenomena in the religion; cf.
_ib._, p. 242.

[95.2] Herod., 1, 94; 4, 45 (note here the Thracian associations of
Manes).

[96.1] The Romanised-Celtic cult of a vague group of “Sanctae
Virgines,” attested by an inscription found near Lyons (Rhys, _Hibbert
Lectures_, p. 102), counts very little against this induction.

[96.2] The warlike character of these Virgin Goddesses, Athena,
Ishtar, might be explained on a sociologic hypothesis that would also
account for Amazonism; in modern Albania the girl who refuses marriage
is allowed to wear man’s dress and to bear arms, vide _Journ. Anthrop.
Inst._, 1910, p. 460.

[96.3] But in a recent paper (_Athenische Mittheilungen_, 1911, p. 27)
Frickenhaus and Müller give reasons for dating the earliest Heraeum
to the eighth century. At any rate, the goddess-cult in this locality
was vastly older.



 CHAPTER VI NOTES

[100.1] _Bab. Hym. u. Gebet._, p. 11.

[100.2] Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 230.

[100.3] In Roscher’s _Lexikon_, ii. 2371; cf. _ib._, 2367.

[101.1] Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii. p. 364.

[101.2] Jeremias, _op. cit._, iii. p. 250.

[101.3] Langdon, _Sum. Babyl. Psalms_, p. 83.

[101.4] Roscher, _Lexikon_, p. 252.

[102.1] Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 484.

[102.2] Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii., _s.v._ “Nebo.”

[102.3] As Jeremias supposes, Roscher, _op. cit._, iii. p. 60.

[102.4] _Vide_ Tiele, _Histoire des anc. relig._, p. 242.

[103.1] _Vide_ Winckler, _Himmels und Weltenbild der Babylonier_, pp.
10-11. Jeremias, Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii. p. 58. But Jastrow, _op.
cit._, p. 84, seems to believe in the planetary origin of Ishtar, and
would explain her character as the planet Venus.

[103.2] Winckler, _ib._, p. 11.

[103.3] Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii. pp. 66-67.

[104.1] Langdon, _Hymn_ xiii. p. 199.

[104.2] _Ib._, p. 221.

[104.3] _Ib._, p. 277.

[104.4] _Ib._, p. 223.

[104.5] Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 55.

[104.6] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 257.

[105.1] Pinches, _Babylonian and Assyrian Religions_, p. 104; cf.
“Nidaba,” Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 95, a goddess of agriculture.

[105.2] “Der Babylonische Gott Tamuz,” in _Abh. König. Sächs. Gesell.
Wiss._, xxvii. (1909).

[105.3] Zimmern regards Dumuzi or Damuzi as shortened from
Dumuzi-Abzu, but Jastrow (_op. cit._, p. 90) would keep the two names
distinct, and interprets Dumuzi simply as “Son of Life.”

[105.4] _Vide_ Zimmern in _Sitzungsb. König. Sächs. Gesell. Wiss._,
1907.

[105.5] Zimmern, _ib._, p. 208; cf. Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 307.

[106.1] Zimmern, _Sitzungsb. König. Sächs. Gesell. Wiss._, p. 220.

[106.2] Eus., _Praep. Ev._, 1, 9, 29.

[106.3] _Ib._, 1, 10, 6.

[107.1] Eus., _Praep. Ev._, 1, 10, 7.

[107.2] _Rel. of Sem._, pp. 96-100.

[107.3] Polyb., 7, 9 (the Carthaginian oath of alliance with Philip of
Macedon).

[108.1] Garstang, _op. cit._, p. 348.

[108.2] _Vide supra_, p. 88.

[108.3] _Vide_ my _Cults_, vol. iii. pp. 295-300.

[109.1] _Vide_ Ramsay, _Hell. Journ._, v. p. 261; my _Cults_, iii. p.
299.

[109.2] Ramsay, _ib._, p. 242.

[109.3] _Cults_, vol. v. p. 296 (Dionysos, R. 63d).

[109.4] The axe, the thunder-fetish, is attached to her at times,
either because it was the prevalent religious symbol in Crete or
because of her union with the Thunder-God.

[110.1] _E.g._ the “Tile-God,” the lord of foundations and tiles,
mentioned in the inscription of Nabonid in _Keilinschr. Bibl._, iii.
p. 101; but cf. Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 176, who regards him as a
special form of Ea.

[111.1] Vol. v. 417-420.

[111.2] For Sun-worship indicated by Minoan monuments _vide_ Evans,
_Hell. Journ._, 1901, pp. 172-173; on a stone at Tenos we find a
curious inscription, Ἡλιοσαρπήδονος (_Cults_, v. p. 451, R. 37), and
Sarpedon is a Minoan-Rhodian figure.

[112.1] Vide _Cults_, v. pp. 450-453, for references.

[113.1] _E.g._ Plutarch, _Vit. Agid._, c. 11 (the Spartan ephors every
nine 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).

[113.2] _Cults_, vol. i., “Zeus,” R. 30.

[113.3] _Ib._, vol. v. p. 452, R. 41.

[113.4] _Ib._, p. 450, R. 24.

[113.5] _Lakonische Kulte_, p. 316.



 CHAPTER VII NOTES

[117.1] Müller, _Frag. Hist. Gr._, ii. 497.

[117.2] _Vide_ Pinches, _op. cit._, p. 76.

[117.3] Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 246.

[117.4] _Id._, p. 146.

[117.5] _Id._, p. 297.

[118.1] _Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia_, p. 681.

[118.2] _Vide_ Margoliouth, _Life of Mahomet_, pp. 7, 8.

[119.1] _Keilinschr. Bibl._, iii. 1, p. 87.

[119.2] King, _Hammurabi_, pl. 191, no. 97, col. ii.; Jeremias, in
Roscher, _Lexikon_, iv. p. 29, _s.v._ “Ramman.”

[119.3] Jeremias, _s.v._ “Nebo,” in Roscher, _op. cit._, iii. p. 62.

[119.4] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 379.

[120.1] Schiel in _Rev. de l’histoire des religions_, 1897, p. 207.

[120.2] Jeremias, _Bab. Assyr. Vorstellungen von dem Leben nach dem
Tode_, p. 91.

[120.3] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 430.

[120.4] Jastrow, _op. cit._, vol. i. p. 34.

[120.5] Johns, _Babylonian and Assyrian Laws_, etc., p. 27.

[121.1] Reproduced on title-page of Winckler, _Die Gesetze Hammurabi_.

[121.2] Winckler, _op. cit._, p. 10.

[121.3] _Ib._, p. 39.

[121.4] _Keilinschr. Bibl._, ii. p. 47.

[121.5] _Vide_ Knudtzon, _Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott_, p.
241.

[121.6] _Vide_ Langdon, _Expositor_, 1909, p. 149; cf. Jeremias,
_s.v._ “Nebo,” Roscher, _op. cit._, iii. p. 55.

[122.1] Jeremias, _Die Cultus-tafel von Sippar_.

[122.2] See Jeremias, Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii. pp. 62-63.

[122.3] _Op. cit._, p. 170.

[122.4] _Op. cit._, p. 223.

[122.5] _K.A.T._3, pp. 639-640.

[123.1] _Vide_ Hilprecht in _Babyl. Exped. Univ. Pennsylv._, vol. v.
series D, pp. 24-29.

[123.2] _Vide_ Langdon, _Transactions of Congress of History of
Religions_, vol. i. p. 251.

[123.3] _Keilinschr. Bibl._, iii. 1, p. 97.

[123.4] _Vide_ Frazer’s paragraph on the divine character of Semitic
kings in _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_2, pp. 12-13.

[123.5] Lagrange, _Études sur les religions sémitiques_, p. 492.

[123.6] _Op. cit._, p. 481.

[124.1] _C. I. Sem._ 1, 1, 1 (cf. “Die Phönizischen Inschriften,” by
Freiherr von Landau, in _Der Alte Orient_, 1907, p. 13).

[124.2] Ezek. xxix. 2, 9; quoted by Frazer, _supra_.

[124.3] The same figure which I interpret as the priest-king occurs in
other religious scenes of Hittite sculpture; the type might often have
been used for the priest pure and simple, as Dr. Frazer would always
interpret it (_vide op. cit._, pp. 103-108).

[125.1] _Op. cit._, pp. 57-58.

[125.2] Strab., p. 535.

[125.3] _Vide_ Ramsay, _Hell. Journ._, x. p. 158; cf. Hyginus, 191
(Midas Rex Mydonius filius matris Deae).

[125.4] _Chil._, 1, 473; _vide_ Cook in _Class. Rev._, 1903, p. 408.

[126.1] _Vide_ my _Cults_, v. pp. 350-354; Frazer, _Journ. Philol._,
xiv. “The Prytaneum, Temple of Vesta.”

[127.1] C. D. Gray, _The Samas Religious Texts_ (Brit. Mus.), Hymn 1.

[127.2] _Keilinschr. Bibl._, ii. p. 131.

[127.3] Cook, _Religions of Ancient Palestine_, p. 109.

[127.4] Jeremias, _Hölle u. Paradies_, p. 17.

[128.1] Sterrett, _Epigraphical Journey_, No. 65.

[128.2] Vide _Cults_, vol. v. p. 19.

[128.3] _Vide_ Frazer, _Psyche’s Task_, pp. 18-30.

[129.1] _Vide_ Winckler’s “Die Gesetze Hammurabi” in _Der Alte
Orient_, 1906; an English version of the code in Johns’ _Babylonian
and Assyrian Laws and Contracts_.

[130.1] The son of the slain man could claim compensation for
manslaughter. In an Assyrian document a slave-girl is handed over to
the son at the grave of the slain man. This is interesting, for it
seems to point to some consideration for the feelings of the ghost
(_vide_ Johns, _op. cit._, p. 116).

[132.1] _Vide_ Johns, _op. cit._, p. 77.

[132.2] _Op. cit._, p. 83.

[132.3] _Op. cit._, p. 85.

[132.4] _Op. cit._, p. 86.

[132.5] _Op. cit._, p. 90.

[133.1] Translated by Scheil in _Rev. de l’hist. des Religions_, 1897,
p. 205.

[133.2] Zimmern in _K.A.T._3, p. 455; cf. his _Beiträge zur Kenntniss
der Babyl. Religion_, ii. p. 147, “for the House-God, the
House-Goddess, for the House-daimon thou shalt erect three altars.”

[134.1] For exceptions, _vide infra_, pp. 213, 217.

[134.2] _Vide_ Johns, _op. cit._, p. 133; quoting from paper by Dr.
Pinches in _Proceedings of the Victoria Institute_, 1892-93, “Notes on
some recent Discoveries in the Realm of Assyriology.”

[134.3] Johns, _op. cit._, p. 154, etc., treats Babylonian adoption
wholly as a secular business based on secular feelings.

[136.1] _Il._, 18, 505.

[137.1] _Od._, 3, 215.

[137.2] Vide _Cults_, iv. pp. 201-202.

[137.3] _Ib._, p. 202.

[137.4] _Ib._, pp. 104-106.

[138.1] _Vide_ my _Cults_, iii. pp. 80-81.

[138.2] _Ib._, pp. 53-55.

[138.3] _Vide supra_, pp. 129-131.

[139.1] _Vide_ my _Cults_, v. p. 345.

[139.2] _Evolution of Religion_, pp. 139-152.



 CHAPTER VIII NOTES

[142.1] Zimmern, _Babylonische Hymnen und Gebete_, p. 20.

[142.2] Pinches, _op. cit._, p. 77.

[142.3] _Vide_ Jeremias, _Bab. Assyr. Vorstellungen vom Leben nach dem
Tode_, p. 68.

[142.4] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, pp. 433-434.

[143.1] Zimmern, _op. cit._, pp. 412, 587.

[143.2] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 83.

[143.3] Roscher, _Lexikon_, vi. p. 47, _s.v._ “Ramman.”

[144.1] Certain other minor powers or daimones, such as the
corn-deity, the Lord of Watercourses (Shuqamunu), may have remained
purely “functional,” and have acquired no moral attributes beyond the
beneficent exercises of their special function. But the habitual
Babylonian tendency is to moralise all the gods and goddesses.

[145.1] Ἀφροδίτη ἀνδροφόνος or ἀνόσιος, _Cults_, ii. p. 665, and
Διόνυσος ἀνθρωπορραίστης, _ib._, v. p. 156.

[146.1] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, pp. 416-418; Jastrow, _op. cit._, pp. 297,
487.

[148.1] Weber, _Dämonenbeschwörung bei den Babyloniern und Assyrern_,
p. 8.

[148.2] _Il._, 9, 312.

[150.1] _Od._, 22, 334.

[150.2] _Il._, 9, 63.

[150.3] _Il._, 15, 204.

[150.4] _Od._, 11, 280.

[151.1] Weber, _op. cit._, p. 8.

[152.1] Gray, _Samaš Religious Texts_ (British Museum), Hymn 1.

[152.2] Zimmern, _Babylonische Hymnen u. Gebete_, p. 18.

[153.1] Weber, _op. cit._, p. 9.

[153.2] Zimmern, _op. cit._, p. 23.

[154.1] “I have sinned and am therefore ill,” is the conventional
formula in the confessional exorcism (Zimmern, _op. cit._, p. 26).

[154.2] Zimmern, _op. cit._, pp. 23-24.

[155.1] _Op. cit._, pp. 28-30.

[157.1] _Vide_ my _Evolution of Religion_, p. 128.

[159.1] Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii. p. 49.

[159.2] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 269.

[159.3] 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).

[159.4] Zimmern, _op. cit._, p. 15; _ib._, p. 11.

[159.5] Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 200.

[160.1] _Il._, 9, 497; cf. my _Cults_, i. pp. 72-73, 75-77.

[160.2] _Vide_ Jeremias in Roscher’s _Lexikon_, ii. p. 2355.

[160.3] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 225.

[160.4] Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 490.

[160.5] _Ib._, p. 529.

[160.6] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 3.

[161.1] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 319.

[161.2] _Cults_, iii. p. 33.



 CHAPTER IX NOTES

[163.1] Roscher, _Lexikon_, ii. p. 2354.

[163.2] _Vide_ Jeremias, _Die Cultus-Tafel von Sippar_, p. 29.

[165.1] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 191.

[165.2] _Ib._, p. 193.

[165.3] _Ib._, p. 289.

[165.4] _Ib._, p. 3.

[165.5] Tabl. 9, 1, 11.

[165.6] _Choix des textes religieux Assyriens Babyloniens_, p. 270.

[165.7] _Vide_ Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 423; but cf. his _Beiträge zur
Kenntniss d. Babyl. Relig._, ii. p. 179, “trefflich ist die grosse
Buhle die herrliche Istar.”

[166.1] _E.g._ by Dhorme, _op. cit._

[166.2] _Keilinschr. Bibl._, ii. p. 47.

[166.3] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 11.

[166.4] _Ib._, p. 289.

[166.5] Jastrow, _op. cit._, 460.

[168.1] Only a late Greek inscription from Berytos designates Baal as
the pure God θεῷ ἁγίῳ (Dittenberger, _Orient. Graec. Inscr._, 590).

[168.2] Lagrange, _Études sur les religions sémitiques_, p. 482.

[168.3] _Vide_ Weber, _Arabien vor dem Islam_, p. 18.

[168.4] Epiphanius, _Panarium_, 51; cf. my _Cults_, ii. 629.

[168.5] _C. I. Sem._, 1, 1, 195.

[169.1] _De Civ. Dei_, 2, 4; cf. Roscher, _Lexikon_, i., _s.v._
“Caelestis.” _C.I.L._, 8, 9796.

[169.2] Perrot et Chipiez, _op. cit._, iv. fig. 280.

[169.3] Year 1909.

[170.1] Vide _Cults_, iii. pp. 305-306; Sir William Ramsay, in _Amer.
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
virgin-mother and named Artemis-Leto; the fact is merely that the
goddess Anaitis was usually identified with Artemis, but occasionally
with Leto; but we nowhere find Artemis explicitly identified with
Leto, and the interpretation which he gives to the Messapian
inscription (Artamihi Latho[i], vide _Rhein. Mus._, 1887, p. 232,
Deeke) appears to me unconvincing.

[170.2] The fact that a part of her temple at Kyzikos was called
Παρθενών does not indicate a virgin-goddess. M. Reinach is, in my
opinion, right in explaining it as “the apartment of the maidens”
where the maiden priestesses assembled (_Bull. Corr. Hell._, 1908, p.
499).

[171.1] _Cults_, vol. i., “Athena,” R. 66.

[171.2] A different view of the whole question might be presented if I
was dealing here with the evidence gleaned from the period just before
Christianity.

[172.1] _Cults_, iii. p. 206.

[172.2] 8, 44, 5.



 CHAPTER X NOTES

[173.1] Langdon, _op. cit._, pp. 1, 7.

[174.1] _Vide_ Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 225.

[174.2] _Vide_ Roscher, _Lexikon_, ii. p. 2348.

[174.3] _Vide_ Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 401.

[175.1] Even the Pythian Apollo, in our earliest record of his oracle,
is only the voice of “the counsels of God” (cf. Hom. _Od._, 8, 79).

[176.1] Weber, _Dämonenbeschwörung bei den Babyloniern und Assyrern_,
p. 7.

[176.2] Roscher, _Lexikon_, ii. p. 2355, quoting Hymn iv. R. 29, 1.

[176.3] Dhorme, _Choix_, etc., p. 25, l. 39.

[176.4] _E.g._ Langdon, _op. cit._, pp. 39-41; cf. p. xix.

[176.5] Zimmern, _Babyl. Hymne u. Gebete_, p. 8.

[177.1] Dhorme, _Choix_, etc., p. 343.

[177.2] Roscher, _Lexikon_, ii. p. 2367 (iv. R. 26, n. 4).

[177.3] Langdon, _op. cit._, pp. 39, 99.

[177.4] _Vide_ my essays in _Evolution of Religion_, pp. 184-192.

[177.5] Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 129.

[177.6] Dhorme, _op. cit._, p. 5, l. 7.

[177.7] Jeremias, _Hölle und Paradies_, p. 12; Roscher, _Lexikon_,
_s.v._ “Ninib,” iii. p. 368.

[178.1] _Vide infra_, pp. 291-293.

[179.1] _Evolution of Religion_, pp. 186, 187.

[179.2] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, pp. 490, 491, 497.

[180.1] Pp. 52-100; cf. Pinches, _Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_,
p. 30, etc.; Zimmern, _op. cit._, 488-506.

[180.2] _Il._, 14, 246, 302.

[180.3] _E.g._, _vide_ A. Lang, _Myth Ritual and Religion_, pp. 182,
198, 203; cf. Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, pp. 13, 14; Golther,
_Handbuch der German. Mythologie_, pp. 512-514.

[182.1] Macdonell, _op. cit._, pp. 12, 13.

[182.2] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 497.

[182.3] _Vide_ A. Lang, _Myth Ritual and Religion_, ii. pp. 29, 30.

[183.1] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 498; cf. King, _op. cit._, pp. 84-86.

[183.2] _Vide_ Strab., p. 626; others placed it in the volcanic region
of Lydia (_ib._, p. 579).

[183.3] Cf. King, _op. cit._, pp. 101, 102 (plate); and Zimmern,
_K.A.T._3, pp. 502, 503, n. 2.

[184.1] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 497.

[184.2] King, _op. cit._, pp. 88-91; Zimmern, _op. cit._, p. 498 (b).

[185.1] Ad Ov. _Metam._, 1, 34 (the authenticity of the Lactantius
passage is doubted; _vide_ Bapp in Roscher’s _Lexikon_, iii. p. 3044).

[185.2] The first is specially Babylonian, the second in Esarhaddon’s
inscriptions (_vide_ Jastrow, _op. cit._, pp. 248, 249).

[185.3] “La Trinité Carthaginoise” in _Gazette Archéol._, 1879-1880.

[185.4] Evans, in _Hell. Journ._, 1901, p. 140.

[186.1] _Vide_, however, Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 419, who tries to
derive the Christian Trinity ultimately from Babylon.

[186.2] _Vide_ Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii. p. 67, _s.v._ “Nebo.”

[187.1] Vide _Cults_, v. p. 431.

[187.2] _Vide op. cit._, vol. iii. pp. 284-285.

[187.3] _Vide op. cit._, vol. i. pp. 84, 85.

[187.4] Made by Weber in _Arabien vor dem Islam_, p. 19.

[188.1] _Vide_ Pinches, _op. cit._, p. 118; Jastrow, _op. cit._, p.
203, n. 1.

[188.2] Quoted by Jeremias in his article on “Nebo” in Roscher,
_Lexikon_, iii. p. 49.

[189.1] It is interesting to note the cult of the supreme god under
the title of Μέγιστος in the remote district and city of Boulis, which
excited the attention of Pausanias. Yet the men of Boulis were no
monotheists, for they had temples of Artemis and Dionysos (Paus., 10,
37, 3; cf. my article in _Anthropological Essays presented to E. B.
Tylor_, 1907, p. 92).



 CHAPTER XI NOTES

[192.1] _Vide_ Langdon, _Transactions of Congress of Rel._, 1908, i.
p. 254.

[192.2] Zimmern, _Babylon. Hymn. u. Gebete_, p. 27.

[192.3] Langdon, _Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms_, p. 269.

[192.4] _Keilinschr. Bibl._ (Schrader), vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 69.

[192.5] iv. R. 3, 5; quoted by Jeremias in _Bab. Assyr. Vorstell. vom
Leben nach dem Tode_.

[192.6] _Keilinschr. Bibl._, iii. 2, p. 11.

[193.1] In Aesch. _Agam._, l. 70, the words οὔτε δακρύων are spurious,
as I have argued in _Class. Review_, 1897, p. 293.

[193.2] We might perhaps infer their recognition from the occasional
use of the word δεισιδαίμων in a partly good sense, _e.g._ Aristot.
_Pol._, 5, 11, 25; Xen. _Ages._, 11, 8; but its bad sense is more
emphasised by Theophrastos in his “Characters.”

[193.3] Nebukadnezar (of all people) calls himself more than once “the
humble, the submissive,” _e.g._ _Keilinschr. Bibl._, iii. p. 63.

[193.4] We find the phrase δοῦλος ὑμέτερος also in the Greek magic
papyri, but these are charged with the Oriental spirit; Kenyon, _Greek
Pap._, i. p. 108, ll. 745-6.

[194.1] _C. I. Sem._, 1, No. 122.

[194.2] These facts are collected and exposed in a valuable article by
Perdrizet in _Archiv. für Relig. Wissensch._, 1911, pp. 54-129; cf.
_Revue des Études anciennes_, 1910, pp. 236-237; _Hell. Journ._, 1888,
pl. vi.

[195.1] _Vide_ O. Weber, _Arabien vor dem Islam_, p. 21.

[196.1] Dittenberg, _Orient. Graec. Inscr._, 619 (= Lebas-Waddington,
_Inscr._, iii. 2393); the reading here is Θεὸν Αὐμόν, probably a
mistake for Αὐμοῦ; cf. Lebas-Wadd., 2395 and 2455.

[196.2] _Vide_ Roscher’s _Lexikon_, ii. p. 2752.

[196.3] _Vide ib._, iii. p. 1496.

[196.4] _Cults_, vol. i., “Athena,” R. 96_b_ (Paus., 1, 42, 4); as
regards “Apollo Sarpedonios” we are uncertain whether the title was
not merely local-geographical.

[197.1] Langdon, _op. cit._, pp. 309, 321; cf. the lines in the hymn,
p. 335: “I am the child who upon the flood was cast out--Damu, who on
the flood was cast out, the anointed one who on the flood was cast
out.”

[197.2] Bergk’s _Lyr. Graec._, iii. p. 654.

[199.1] Pp. 222-223.

[199.2] _Vide supra_, p. 42.

[199.3] _Keilinschr. Bibl._, ii. p. 191.

[200.1] _Keil. Bibl._, ii. p. 11.

[200.2] _Ib._, p. 69.

[200.3] _Ib._, p. 257.

[201.1] _Keil. Bibl._, ii. pp. 133-134.

[201.2] _Ib._, pp. 203, 207.

[201.3] _Ib._, p. 205.

[202.1] We note the indication of a cruel human
sacrifice--consecration of a child to a god or goddess by fire--as a
legal punishment for reopening adjudicated causes (Johns, _Babylonian
and Assyrian Laws_, etc., p. 95).



 CHAPTER XII NOTES

[205.1] _Vide_ Dr. Langdon’s paper on “Babylonian Eschatology;” in
_Essays in Modern Theology_ (papers offered to Professor Briggs,
1911), p. 139.

[205.2] _Vide_ Jeremias, _Hölle und Paradies_, p. 30; cf. King, _Bab.
Rel._, p. 46--formula for laying a troubled and dangerous ghost--“let
him depart into the west; to Nedu, the Chief Porter of the Underworld,
I 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.

[205.3] The “waters of death” figure in the Epic of Gilgamesh, _e.g._
King, _op. cit._, p. 169.

[205.4] _Vide_ inscr. of Sargon II. in _Keil. Bibl._, ii. 2, pp.
75-77, 79: “Ea, Sin, Shamash, Nabu, Ramman, Ninib, and their benign
spouses, who were rightfully born on Iharsaggalkurkurra, the Mountain
of the Underworld.”

[206.1] Passage in “The Descent of Ishtar,” Jeremias, _op. cit._, p.
20.

[206.2] King, _op. cit._, pp. 45-46.

[208.1] _Vide_ Langdon, _op. cit._

[209.1] Cook, _Religion of Ancient Palestine_, p. 36.

[209.2] _Vide_ Langdon, _op. cit._

[209.3] _Vide_ Prof. Margoliouth’s article on “Ancestor-worship” in
Hastings’ _Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_.

[210.1] King’s translation in _Babyl. Relig._, pp. 48-49. Cf.
Jeremias, _Hölle u. Paradies_, p. 12.

[211.1] Cook, _The Religion of Ancient Palestine_, p. 35.

[211.2] _E.g._ Eur. _Troad._, 1085, σὺ μὲν φθίμενος ἀλαίνεις ἄθαπτος,
ἄνυδρος.

[212.1] Langdon, _op. cit._

[212.2] King, _op. cit._, p. 176.

[212.3] Thureau-Dangin, _Les cylindres de Goudéa_, p. 57: Les héros
morts leur bouche auprès d’une fontaine il plaça.

[212.4] Winckler, _op. cit._, p. 41.

[212.5] Jeremias, _op. cit._, p. 15.

[213.1] _E.g._ Peiser, _Sketch of Babylonian Society_, in the
Smithsonian Institute, 1898, p. 586, speaks as if it was
ancestor-worship that held the Babylonian family together.

[213.2] _Vide_ my article on “Hero-worship” in _Hibbert Journal_,
1909, p. 417.

[214.1] V. Landau, _Phönizische Inschr._, p. 15.

[214.2] Jeremias, _Hölle u. Paradies_, p. 37.

[215.1] It would be idle for my purpose to distinguish between the
so-called “Achaean” and “Pelasgian” elements in the Homeric Νέκυια;
even if the latter ethnic term was of any present value for Greek
religion.

[215.2] Hesiod, Ἔργ. 110-170 (the men of the golden and the silver
ages and the heroes).

[216.1] _Vide_ Zimmern in _K.A.T._3, pp. 636-639; Jeremias, _Hölle u.
Paradies_, p. 25; cf. his _Die Babyl. Assyr. Vorstellungen rom. Leben
nach dem Tode_.

[216.2] _Vide supra_, p. 160.

[216.3] Zimmern, _op. cit._, p. 520; King, _op. cit._, p. 188.

[217.1] King, _op. cit._, p. 138.

[217.2] Lagrange, _Études sur les religions sémitiques_, p. 493.

[218.1] Cf. _Keil. Bibl._, ii. 109; Jeremias, _Hölle u. Paradies_, pp.
13-14.

[219.1] Jastrow, _op. cit._, pp. 472-473.

[219.2] _Ib._, p. 473.

[219.3] _Ib._, p. 472.

[219.4] Zimmern in _Sitzungsber. d. Kön. Sächs. Gesell. Wiss._ 1907,
“Sumerisch-Babylonische Tanzlieder,” p. 220.

[219.5] _Vide_ Jeremias in his article on “Nergal” in Roscher’s
_Lexikon_, iii. p. 251.

[219.6] It is doubtful if any argument can be based on the name
Ningzu, occasionally found as the name of the consort of Ereshkigal
(Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 637) and said to mean “Lord of Healing,” in
reference, probably, to the waters of life.

[219.7] Only in the story of Adapa he appears as one of the warders of
the gates of heaven (Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 521).

[220.1] The story of Aphrodite descending into Hades to seek Adonis is
much later than the period with which we are dealing. Nergal’s descent
to satisfy the wrath of Allatu and his subsequent marriage with her
(Jeremias, _Hölle und Paradies_, p. 22) is a story of entirely
different motive to the Rape of Kore.



 CHAPTER XIII NOTES

[223.1] Cook, _The Religion of Ancient Palestine_, p. 17.

[223.2] _Researches in Sinai_, p. 72, etc., 186: he would carry back
the foundation to the fourth millennium B.C.

[223.3] Vide _Arch. Anzeig._, 1909, p. 498.

[223.4] Vide _Cults_, iii. p. 299.

[224.1] _Vide_ Hogarth’s evidence for the date of the earliest
Artemision, _Excavations at Ephesus_, p. 244.

[224.2] _Il._, i. 38.

[224.3] _Ib._, vi. 269, 299-300.

[224.4] _Ib._, ii. 550.

[224.5] _Ib._, ix. 405.

[224.6] _Vide_ Stengel, _Griechische Sacral-Altertümer_, p. 17.

[224.7] Vide _Athen. Mittheil._, 1911, pp. 27, 192.

[225.1] _Vide_ Jeremias in Roscher, _Lexikon_, ii. p. 2347, _s.v._
“Marduk.”

[225.2] Something near to it would be found in the cult-phrase Ζεὺς
Νᾶος of Dodona, which is a form commoner in the inscriptions than Ζεὺς
Νάϊος, if, with M. Reinach (_Rev. Archéol._, 1905, p. 97), we
regarded this as the original title and interpreted it as
“Zeus-Temple.” But the interpretation is hazardous.

[225.3] A disk on the top of a pole, _vide_ Jastrow, _Rel. Bab.
Assyr._, vol. i. p. 203.

[226.1] Cook, _op. cit._, p. 28.

[226.2] _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 185-195; “Mycenaean Tree and
Pillar Cult,” _Hell. Journ._, 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 of Philo Byblius, Müller, _Frag. Hist. Graec._, iii. p.
567; cf. the baitylos with human head found at Tegea inscribed Διὸς
Στορπάω (fifth century B.C.), “Zeus of the lightning” (_Eph. Arch._,
1906, p. 64).

[227.1] _Vide_ Evans, _op. cit._, and _Annual of British School_,
1908, 1909.

[227.2] _Vide_ my _Cults_, i. pp. 13-18, 102; ii. pp. 520, 670; iv.
pp. 4, 149, 307; v. pp. 7, 240, 444.

[227.3] For the evidence of a pillar-cult of Apollo Agyieus and
Karneios coming from the north, vide _Cults_, vol. iv. pp. 307-308.

[227.4] The pillars known as “Kudurru,” with emblems of the various
divinities upon them, served merely as boundary-stones (_vide_
Jastrow, _op. cit._, i. p. 191; Hilprecht in _Babylonian Expedition of
University of Pennsylvania_, vol. iv.).

[228.1] 6, 269.

[228.2] _Cults_, ii. 445.

[228.3] _Op. cit._, vol. v. p. 8.

[229.1] Arnob. _Adv. Gent._, 5, 19 (in the mysteries of the Cyprian
Venus), “referunt phallos propitii numinis signa donatos.”

[229.2] Cook, _Religion of Ancient Palestine_, p. 28; cf. _Corp.
Inscr. Sem._, i. 11. 6, inscription found in cave, dedicated perhaps
by the hierodulai, “pudenda muliebria” carved on the wall.

[229.3] _Rel. of Sem._, pp. 437-438.

[229.4] _De Dea Syria_, c. 16 and c. 28.

[229.5] _Histoire de l’Art_, iv. pl. viii, D.

[230.1] Jeremias, in his articles on “Izdubar” and “Nebo” in Roscher’s
_Lexikon_, ii. p. 792 and iii. 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 rendered by King, _Babylonian Religion_, p. 163, and
Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 572.

[230.2] Thureau-Dangin, _Les Cylindres de Goudéa_, p. 69.

[231.1] This may explain the double phrase, used concerning the
institution and endowment of temple-rites in an inscription of the
time of Tiglath-Pileser III., which Zimmern translates by
“Opfer-Mahlzeiten,” _Keil. Bibl._, iv. p. 103; cf. especially _K.B._,
iii. p. 179 (inscr. of ninth century); Zimmern, _Beiträge zur
Kenntniss der Babyl. Relig._, ii. p. 99 (sacred loaves offered before
consultation of divinity).

[231.2] _Vide_ Robertson Smith, _op. cit._, p. 200.

[231.3] Vide _Cults_, i. p. 88; v. p. 199.

[232.1] Judges ix. 13; cf. Robertson Smith, _op. cit._, p. 203.

[232.2] Lagrange, _Études sur les religions sémitiques_, p. 506.
This seems to agree with the statement in Diodorus (19, 94) that the
Nabataeans tabooed wine; yet Dusares, the Arabian counterpart of
Dionysos, was a Nabataean god.

[232.3] Gray, _Shamash Religious Texts_, p. 21.

[232.4] Dhorme, _Choix_, etc., p. 41, l. 136.

[232.5] Vide _Cults_, iii. p. 390, R. 57h.

[232.6] _Ib._, ii. p. 646.

[234.1] Robertson Smith, _op. cit._, pp. 272-273.

[234.2] Athenae. 376_a_ (_Cults_, i. p. 141).

[234.3] _Cults_, ii. pp. 646-647.

[234.4] O. Weber, _Dämonenbeschwörung_, p. 29; his note on the
passage “that the unclean beast is offered as a substitute for an
unclean man” is not supported by any evidence.

[234.5] Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, pp. 409-410.

[235.1] Robertson Smith’s theory that the gift-sacrifice was a later
degeneracy from the communion-type is unconvincing; _vide_ specially
an article by Ada Thomsen, “Der Trug von Prometheus,” _Arch. Relig.
Wissensch._, 1909, p. 460.

[236.1] “Sacrificial Communion in Greek Religion,” in _Hibbert
Journal_, 1904.

[236.2] _E.g._ _Il._, 1, 457-474; _Od._, 3, 1-41; 14, 426.

[236.3] Cf. Schol. _Od._, 3, 441 (who defines οὐλοχύται as barley and
salt mixed with water or wine… καὶ ἔθυον αὐτὰ πρὸ τοῦ ἱερείου…
κριθὰς δὲ ἐνέβαλον τοῖς θύμασι χάριν εὐφορίας); Schol. _Arist. Equ._,
1167, τοῖς θύμασιν ἐπιβαλλόμεναι [κριφαί]. _Vide_ Fritz. _Hermes_,
32, 235; for another theory, _vide_ Stoll, “Alte Taufgebraüche,” in
_Arch. Relig. Wissensch._, 1905, Beiheft, p. 33.

[237.1] _Vide_ Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,” _Hell.
Journ._, 1901, pp. 114-115.

[237.2] _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.

[237.3] Aristoph. _Pax._, 956.

[237.4] Athenae, p. 419, B.

[237.5] Vide _Arch. Rel. Wiss._, 1909, p. 467; Thomsen there explains
it wholly from the idea of tabu.

[237.6] The common meal of the thiasotaï is often represented on later
reliefs, _vide_ Perdriyet, “Reliefs Mysiens,” _Bull. Corr. Hell._,
1899, p. 592.

[238.1] Vide _Cults_, i. pp. 56-58, 88-92.

[239.1] In my article on “Sacrificial Communion in Greek Religion,”
_Hibbert Journal_, 1904, p. 320, I have been myself guilty of this, in
quoting the story told by Polynaenus (_Strategem._ 8, 43), about the
devouring of the mad bull with golden horns by the Erythraean host, as
containing an example of a true sacrament.

[239.2] Vide _Cults_, vol. i. p. 145.

[239.3] See Crusius’ article in Roscher’s _Lexikon_, _s.v._
“Harpalyke.”

[240.1] Vide _Cults_, v. pp. 161-172.

[240.2] _Ib._, v. p. 165.

[241.1] _K.A.T._3, p. 596.

[241.2] Jeremias, _Die Cultus-Tafel von Sippar_, p. 26.

[241.3] Zimmern, _Beiträge zur Kennt. Bab. Rel._, p. 15.

[242.1] _Vide_ Frazer, _Adonis-Attis-Osiris_, p. 189; cf. “Communion
in Greek Religion,” _Hibbert Journ._, 1904, p. 317.

[242.2] Jeremias, _Die Cultus-Tafel von Sippar_, p. 28.

[243.1] Weber, _Dämonenbeschwörung_, etc., p. 29.

[243.2] iv. R2, pl. 26, No. 6; this is the inscription quoted by Prof.
Sayce (_vide infra_, p. 182, n.) as a document proving human
sacrifice. I owe the above translation to the kindness of Dr. Langdon;
it differs very slightly from Zimmern’s in _K.A.T._3, p. 597.

[243.3] Jeremias, _op. cit._, p. 29.

[243.4] Renan’s thesis (_C. I. Sem._, i. p. 229) that the idea of sin,
so dominant in the Hebrew and Phoenician sacrifice, was entirely
lacking in the Hellenic, cannot be maintained; he quotes Porph. _De
Abstin._, 1, 2, 24, a passage which contains an incomplete theory of
Greek sacrifice. The sin-offering is indicated by Homer, and is
recognised frequently in Greek literature and legend; only no
technical term was invented to distinguish it from the ordinary
cheerful sacrifice.

[244.1] _Cults_, ii. p. 441.

[244.2] Vide _K.A.T._3, pp. 434, 599, where Zimmern refers to the
monuments published by Ménant, _Pierres gravées_, i. figs. 94, 95,
97, as possibly showing a scene of human sacrifice. But Ménant’s
interpretation of them is wrong; _vide_ Langdon, _Babyloniaca_, Tome
iii. p. 236, “two Babylonian seals”; the kneeling figure is the owner
of the seal; the personage behind him is no executioner, but Ramman or
Teschub holding, not a knife, but his usual club. The inscriptions
published by Prof. Sayce (_Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, iv. pp. 25-29)
are translated differently by Dr. Langdon, so that the first one (iv.
R2, pl. 26, No. 6) refers to the sacrifice of a kid, not of an infant.
The misinterpretation of the inscription has misled Trumbull (_Blood
Covenant_, p. 166). The statement in 2 Kings xvii. 31 about the
Sepharvites in Samaria does not necessarily point to a genuine
Babylonian ritual, even if we are sure that the Sepharvites were
Babylonians.

[245.1] _Babylonian and Assyrian Laws_, p. 95.

[245.2] The excavations at Gezer have revealed almost certain evidence
of the early practice of human sacrifice; a number of skeletons, one
of a girl sawn in half, were found buried under the foundation of
houses (_vide_ Cook, _op. cit._, pp. 38-39).

[246.1] Stengel, _Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer_, p. 89.

[246.2] _K.A.T._3, p. 599.

[246.3] Jastrow, _op. cit._, i. p. 500.

[246.4] Might this be the meaning of a line in a hymn translated by
Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 549, “I turn myself to thee (O Goddess Gula),
I have grasped thy cord as the cord of my god and goddess” (_vide_
King, _Babyl. Magic_, No. 6, No. 71-94); or of the phrase in the
Apocrypha (_Epist. Jerem._, 43), “The women also with cords about them
sit in the ways”?

[246.5] Zimmern’s _Beiträge_, etc., p. 99.

[247.1] On the famous bronze plaque of the Louvre (Jeremias, _Hölle
und Paradies_, p. 28, Abb. 6) we see two representatives of Ea in the
fish-skin of the god; and on a frieze of Assur-nasir-pal in the
British Museum (_Hell. Journ._, 1894, p. 115, fig. 10; Layard,
_Monuments of Nineveh_, 1, pl. 30), two men in lions’ skins; but these
are not skins of animals of sacrifice.

[247.2] _Vide_ my _Evolution of Religion_, pp. 118-120.

[248.1] _K.A.T._3, p. 49.

[248.2] 3, 300; 19, 265-267.

[248.3] Polybius, 3, 25, ἐγὼ μόνος ἐκπέσοιμι οὕτως ὡς ὅδε λίθος νῦν.

[248.4] _Op. cit._, ii. p. 217.

[250.1] According to Dr. Langdon (_op. cit._, p. xvi.), the wailing
for Tammuz was developed in the early Sumerian period of the fourth
millennium.

[251.1] Langdon, _op. cit._, 300-341; cf. Zimmern,
“Sumerisch-Babylonische Tamuzlieder,” in _Sitzungsber. König. Sächs.
Gesell. Wissen._, 1907, pp. 201-252, and his discussion, “Der
Babylonische Gott Tamuz,” in _Abhandl. König. Sächs. Gesell. Wissen._,
1909.

[251.2] _Vide supra_, p. 105.

[251.3] _Vide_ Langdon, _op. cit._, p. 501.

[251.4] _Antiqu._, 8, 5, 3; cf. Clem. _Recogn._, 10, 24; Baudissin in
his _Eschmun-Asklepios_ (_Oriental. Stud. zu Nöldeke gewidmet_, p.
752) thinks that the Healer-god, Marduk Asclepios Eschmun, is himself
one who died and rose again in Assyrian and Phoenician theology. For
Asklepios of Berytos we have the almost useless story of Damascius in
Phot. _Bibl._, 573 H.; the uncritical legend in Ktesias (c. 21) and
Ael. _Var. Hist._, 13, 3, about the grave of Belitana at Babylon (to
which Strabo also alludes, p. 740), does not justify the view that the
death of Marduk was ever a Babylonian dogma.

[252.1] Perrot-Chipiez, _Histoire de l’Art_, iv. pl. viii.

[253.1] _Rev. de Philol._, 1893, p. 195.

[253.2] _Vide_ Frazer, _op. cit._, pp. 98-99.

[253.3] K. O. Müller, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. ii. pp. 102-103.

[253.4] _Journ. Roy. Asiat. Soc._, 1909, pp. 966, 971; the information
about the true meaning of the ideogram I owe to Dr. Langdon.

[254.1] _Vide supra_, p. 91; cf. _Cults_, ii. pp. 644-649; iii. pp.
300-305.

[254.2] The Babylonian myths of Etana and Adapa, and their ascent to
heaven, may have given the cue to the Phrygian stories of Ganymede and
Tantalos.

[256.1] Dr. Frazer, in _Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings_ (_G.
B._, vol. ii. p. 45), quotes 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.

[257.1] Vide _Cults_, iii. pp. 300-301. Dr. Frazer’s theory is that
the act of castration was performed in order to maintain the
fruitfulness of the earth (_op. cit._, pp. 224-237). But this is
against the countless examples which he himself has adduced of the
character and function of the priest or priest-king as one whose
virile strength maintains the strength of the earth; the sexual act
performed in the field by the owner increases the fruitfulness of the
field (Frazer, _GB_2, ii. p. 205). Why should the priest make himself
impotent so as to improve the crops? The only grounds of his belief
appear to be that the priest’s testicles were committed to the earth
or to an underground shrine of Kybele (Arnob. _Adv. Gent._, v. 14, and
Schol. Nikand. _Alexipharm._, 7; vide _Cults_, 3; Kybele Ref. 54_a_);
but such consecration of them to Kybele would be natural on any
hypothesis, and Arnobius’ words do not prove that they were buried in
the bare earth.

[259.1] Vide _Cults_, i. pp. 36-38.

[259.2] Vide _Evolution of Religion_, p. 62.

[260.1] Porph. _Vit. Pyth._, 17; cf. Callim. _H. ad. Jov._, 8; Diod.
Sic., 3, 61; vide _Cults_, i. pp. 36-37.

[260.2] _Vide_ A. Evans in _Hell. Journ._, xvii. 350.

[261.1] Vide _Cults_, vol. ii. p. 651; cf. Clem. _Recogn._, 10, 24,
“sepulcrum Cypriae Veneris apud Cyprum.”

[261.2] _Ib._, pp. 651-652.

[261.3] Vide _Cults_, vol. ii. pp. 447, n. _c._, 478, 638, n. _a._

[261.4] Aristot. _Rhet._, 2, 23.

[262.1] Athenae, p. 620 A (ζητεῖν αὐτὸν τοὺς ἀπὸ τῆς χώρας μετά τινος
μεμελῳδημένου θρήνου καὶ ἀνακλήσεως); Pollux., 4, 54.

[262.2] Frazer, _GB_2, vol. ii. p. 106.

[263.1] _Vide_ Thureau-Dangin, _Vorderasiatische Bibliothek_, i. p.
77.

[263.2] Weber, _Arabien vor dem Islam_, p. 19.

[264.1] _Vide_ Evans in _Hell. Journ._, 1901, p. 176.

[264.2] _Cults_, i. pp. 184-191.

[264.3] _Ib._, iii. pp. 123-124.

[264.4] _Ib._, iii. p. 176; cf. vol. iv. p. 34 n. _b._

[264.5] _Ib._, i. pp. 189-190.

[265.1] 1, 181.

[265.2] _Vide_, for instance, Dr. Langdon in the _Expositor_, 1909, p.
143.

[265.3] Winckler, _Die Gesetze Hammurabi_, p. 182.

[266.1] _Vide_ Dieterich, _Mithras-Liturgie_, pp. 126-127;
Reizenstein, _Die hellenistischen Mysterien-religionen_.

[266.2] _Vide_ Herzog’s _Real-Encyclop._, _s.v._ “Montanismus.”

[266.3] _Jourdanet et Siméon transl. of Sahagun_, pp. 147-148.

[266.4] Golther, _Handbuch der Germanischen Mythologie_, p. 229; cf.
Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, p. 589.

[267.1] Pausan., 2, 33, 3; 9, 27, 6; cf. my article in _Archiv. für
Religionswiss._, 1904, p. 74; E. Fehrle, _Die Kultische Keuschheit im
Alterthum_, p. 223, gives other examples which appear to me more
doubtful.

[267.2] Paus., 3, 16, 1.

[267.3] _Cults_, v. pp. 217-219.

[268.1] Vide _Cults_, v. p. 109.

[268.2] Winckler, _op. cit._, p. 110; Johns, _op. cit._, p. 54.

[269.1] Code, § 182.

[269.2] Jastrow, _op. cit._, ii. 157.

[269.3] _Vide_ Winckler’s interpretation of §§ 178, 180, 181; cf. also
Zimmern in _K.A.T._3, 423.

[269.4] 1, 199.

[270.1] _E.g._ Zimmern in _K.A.T._3, p. 423.

[270.2] Verse 43.

[271.1] The first to insist emphatically on the necessity of their
distinction was Mr. Hartland, in _Anthropological Essays presented to
E. B. Tylor_, pp. 190-191; but he has there, I think, wrongly
classified--through a misunderstanding of a phrase in Aelian--the
Lydian custom that Herodotus (1, 93) and Aelian (_Var. Hist._, iv. 1)
refer to; both these writers mention the custom of the women of Lydia
practising prostitution before marriage. Aelian does not mention the
motive that 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.

[272.1] _E.g._ Hosea iv. 13; Deut. xxiii. 18; 1 Kings xiv. 24.

[272.2] Weber, _Arabien vor dem Islam_, p. 18.

[272.3] _C. I. Sem._, 1, 263.

[272.4] Strab., 272.

[272.5] Strab., 559.

[272.6] Pind. _Frag._, 87; Strab., 378; (_Cults_, ii. p. 746, R. 99g).

[273.1] _Cities and Bishoprics_, i. 94. In his comment he rightly
points 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, 1, 182.

[273.2] _Et. Mag._, s.v. Ἱκόνιον.

[274.1] _De Dea Syr._, 6; cf. Aug. _De Civ. Dei_, 4, 10: “cui (Veneri)
etiam Phoenices donum dabant de prostitutione filiarum, antequam eas
jungerent viris”: religious prostitution before marriage prevailed
among the Carthaginians in the worship of Astarte (Valer. Max., 2, ch.
1, sub. fin.: these vague statements may refer either to defloration
of virgins or prolonged service in the temple).

[274.2] See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 33, n. 1, quoting Sozomen. _Hist.
Eccles._, 5, 10, 7; Sokrates, _Hist. Eccles._, 1, 18, 7-9; Euseb.
_Vita Constantin._, 3, 58. Eusebius only vaguely alludes to it.
Sokrates merely says that the wives were in common, and that the
people had the habit of giving over the virgins to strangers to
violate. Sozomenos is the only voucher for the religious aspect of the
practice; from Sokrates we gather that the rule about strangers was
observed in the rite.

[274.3] 18, 5.

[274.4] This is confirmed by the legend given by Apollodoros (_Bibl._,
3, 14, 3) that the daughters of Kinyras, owing to the wrath of
Aphrodite, had sexual intercourse with strangers.

[275.1] Justin, 21, 3; Athenaeus, 516 A, speaks vaguely, as if the
women of the Lokri Epizephyrii were promiscuous prostitutes.

[275.2] Pp. 532-533.

[275.3] The lovers, Melanippos and Komaitho, sin in the temple of
Artemis Triklaria of the Ionians in Achaia; the whole community is
visited with the divine wrath, and the sinners are offered up as a
piacular sacrifice (Paus., 7, 19, 3); according to Euphorion,
Laokoon’s fate was due to a similar trespass committed with his wife
before the statue of Apollo (Serv. _Aen._, 2, 201). It may be that
such legends faintly reflect a very early ἱερὸς γάμος once performed
in temples by the priest and priestess: if so, they also express the
repugnance of the later Hellene to the idea of it; and in any case
this is not the institution that is being discussed.

[276.1] _Antike Wald u. Feld Kulte_, p. 285, etc.

[277.1] Why should not the priestess rather play the part of the
goddess, and why, if we trust Plutarch (_Vit. Artaxerx._, 27), was the
priestess of Anaitis at Ekbatana, to whose temple harlots were
attached, obliged to observe chastity after election?

[277.2] Vol. i. pp. 94-96.

[277.3] _Op. cit._, p. 35, etc.

[277.4] _Op. cit._, p. 44.

[278.1] I pointed out this objection in an article in the _Archiv. f.
Relig. Wissensch._, 1904, p. 81; Mr. S. Hartland has also,
independently, developed it (_op. cit._, p. 191).

[278.2] Vol. ii. p. 446.

[278.3] _Origin of Civilisation_, pp. 535-537.

[279.1] _Vide_ Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, p. 76.

[279.2] Mr. Hartland objects (_loc. cit._, p. 200) to this explanation
on the ground that the stranger would dislike the danger as much as
any one else; but the rite may have arisen among a Semitic tribe who
were peculiarly sensitive to that feeling of peril, while they found
that the usual stranger was sceptical and more venturesome: when once
the rule was established, it could become a stereotyped convention.
His own suggestion (p. 201) that a stranger was alone privileged, lest
the solemn act should become a mere love-affair with a native lover,
does not seem to me so reasonable; to prevent that, the act might as
well have been performed by a priest. Dr. Frazer in his new edition of
_Adonis_, etc. (pp. 50-54), criticises my explanation, which I first
put forth--but with insufficient clearness--in the _Archiv. für
Religionswissenschaft_ (1904, p. 88), mainly 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 defloration of virgins before marriage. Dr.
Frazer also argues that the account of Herodotus does not show that
the Babylonian rite was limited to virgins. Explicitly it does not,
but implicitly it does; for Herodotus declares that it was an isolated
act, and therefore to be distinguished from temple-prostitution of
indefinite duration; and he adds that the same rite was performed in
Cyprus, which, as the other record clearly attests, was the
defloration of virgins by strangers. Sozomenos and Sokrates attest the
same of the Baalbec rite, and Eusebius’s vague words are not
sufficient to contradict them. One rite might easily pass into the
other; but our theories as to the original meaning of different rites
should observe the difference.

[280.1] But _vide_ Gennep, _Les Rites de passage_, p. 100.

[280.2] Cf. Arnob. _Adv. Gent._, 5, 19, with Firmic. Matern. _De
Error._, 10, and Clemens, _Protrept._, c. 2, p. 12, Pott.

[281.1] 1, 199.

[281.2] The lady who there boasts of her prostitute-ancestresses
describes them also as “of unwashed feet”; and this is a point of
asceticism and holiness.

[282.1] _Op. cit._, p. 199.

[282.2] _K.A.T._3, p. 423.

[283.1] _Vide supra_, p. 163. The writer of the late apocryphal
document, “The Epistle of Jeremy,” makes it a reproach to the
Babylonian cult that “women set meat before the gods” (v. 30), and
“the menstruous woman and the woman in child-bed touch their
sacrifices” (v. 29), meaning, perhaps, that there was nothing to
prevent the Babylonian priestess being in that condition. But we
cannot trust him for exact knowledge of these matters. Being a Jew, he
objects to the ministration of women. The Babylonian and Hellene were
wiser, and admitted them to the higher functions of religion.

[283.2] Vide _Cults_, iv. p. 301.

[283.3] _Vide_ Inscription of Sippar in British Museum, concerning the
re-establishment of cult of Shamash by King Nabupaladdin, 884-860 B.C.
(Jeremias, _Die Cultus-Tafel von Sippar_).

[284.1] _Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms_, p. 75.

[284.2] _Vide_ Langdon in _Transactions of Congress for the History of
Religions_ (1908), vol. i. p. 250.

[284.3] Vide _Zeitung für Assyriologie_, 1910, p. 157.

[284.4] Formula for driving out the demon of sickness, “Bread at his
head place, rain-water at his feet place” (Langdon, _ib._ p. 252).

[284.5] Delitsch, _Wörterbuch_, i. 79-80.

[284.6] _Zeit. für Assyr._, 1910, p. 157.

[284.7] _Vide_ Hippocrates (_Littré_), vi. 362; Stengel,
_Griechischer Kultusaltertümer_ (Iwan Müller’s Handbuch, p. 110).

[285.1] Referred to in the comedy of Eupolis called the “Baptai.”

[285.2] Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 500.

[285.3] _Op. cit._, p. 297, 487; the priest-exorciser, the Ashipu,
uses a brazier in the expulsion of demons.

[285.4] _Vide_ Golther, _Handbuch der Germanischen Mythologie_, p.
580; cf. my _Cults_, v. p. 196.

[285.5] _Cults_, vol. v. pp. 383-384; cf. iv. p. 301.

[286.1] _Cults_, v. p. 356; cf. p. 363 (the purifying animal carried
round the hearth).

[286.2] Eur. _Herc. Fur._, 928.

[286.3] Dio Chrys. _Or._, 48 (Dind., vol. ii. p. 144), περικαθήραντες
τὴν πόλιν μὴ σκίλλῃ μηδὲ δαδί, πολὺ δὲ καθαρωτέρῳ χρήματι τῷ λόγῳ (cf.
Lucian, _Menipp._, c. 7, use of squills and torches in “katharsis,”
(?) Babylonian or Hellenic); Serv. _ad Aen._, 6, 741, “in sacris
omnibus tres sunt istae purgationes, nam aut taeda purgant aut
sulphure aut aqua abluunt aut aere ventilant.”

[286.4] “To take fire and swear by God” is a formula that occurs in
the third tablet of Surpu; _vide_ Zimmern, _Beiträge zur Kenntniss
Babyl. Relig._, p. 13; cf. Soph. _Antig._, 264.

[286.5] Salt used as a means of exorcism in Babylonia as early as the
third millennium (_vide_ Langdon, _Transactions of Congress Hist.
Relig._, 1908, vol. i. p. 251); the fell “of the great ox” used to
purify the palace of the king (_vide_ Zimmern, _Beiträge_, p. 123;
compare the Διὸς κῴδιον in Greek ritual).

[287.1] _Vide_ Thureau-Dangin, _Cylindres de Goudéa_, pp. 29, 93.

[287.2] Vide _Evolution of Religion_, pp. 113, 114, 117; _Cults_, v.
p. 322 (Schol. Demosth., 22, p. 68).

[287.3] 5, 13, 6.

[287.4] Vide _Cults_, iii. pp. 303-304; _Evolution of Religion_, p.
121.

[288.1] _Vide supra_, p. 146.

[288.2] Vide _Cults_, iii. p. 167.

[288.3] Published in Zimmern’s _Beiträge_, p. 123; cf. Weber,
_Dämonenbeschwörung_, pp. 17-19.

[289.1] _Il._, xvi. 228.

[289.2] _Od._, ii. 261.

[289.3] _Il._, i. 313.

[290.1] _Od._, xxii. 481: In the passage referred to above, Achilles
uses sulphur to purify the cups.

[290.2] _Od._, xiii. 256-281: This is rightly pointed out by Stengel
in his _Griechische Kultusaltertümer_, p. 107.

[290.3] _Evolution of Religion_, pp. 139-152; _Cults_, iv. pp.
295-306.

[291.1] Vide _Cults_, iv. pp. 144-147, 300: To suppose that Hellas
learnt its cathartic rites from Lydia, because Herodotus (i. 35) tells
us that in his time the Lydians had the Hellenic system of
purification from homicide, is less natural. Lydia may well have
learnt it from Delphi in the time of Alyattes or Croesus. Or it may
have survived in Lydia as a tradition of the early “Minoan” period;
and, similarly, it may have survived in Crete.

[291.2] _Vide supra_, pp. 176-178.

[292.1] Vide _Cults_, iv. pp. 268-284.

[292.2] For similar practices, vide _Cults_, pp. 415-417.

[292.3] Clem. Alex. _Strom._, p. 755, Pott.

[293.1] Paus., 9, 33, 4.

[293.2] For the facts _vide_ Zimmern, _K.A.T._3, p. 592.

[294.1] _Works and Days_, l. 824.

[294.2] _Ib._, l. 804.

[294.3] _Expositor_, 1909, p. 156.

[294.4] _Vide_ Photius and Hesych., _s.v._ Μιαραὶ ἡμέραι.

[295.1] _Hell._, 1, 4, 12.

[295.2] Vide _Cults_, v. pp. 215-216.

[295.3] _Cults_, iv. p. 259.

[295.4] _Vide supra_, pp. 176-177.

[296.1] _Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms_, p. 196.

[296.2] King, _Babylonian Religion_, p. 196.

[296.3] _Vide_ Fossey, _La Magie Assyrienne_, p. 96.

[297.1] Knudtzon, _Assyrische Gebete an den Sonnengott_, p. 78 (texts
belonging to period of Asarhaddon, _circ._ 681).

[297.2] Zimmern, _Beiträge_, etc., p. 161.

[298.1] Zimmern, _Beiträge_, etc., p. 163.

[298.2] Fossey, _op. cit._, p. 399.

[298.3] iv. _R._ 56, 12; Fossey, _op. cit._, p. 401.

[298.4] _Expositor_, 1909, p. 150, giving text from iv. _R._ 40.

[299.1] Fossey, _op. cit._, p. 209.

[299.2] Zimmern, _Beiträge_, p. 173.

[299.3] _Supra_, p. 176.

[299.4] Zimmern, _op. cit._, p. 169.

[300.1] Zimmern, _Beiträge_, pp. 30-31; he mentions also the similar
practice of tying up a sheepskin or a fillet of wool and throwing it
into the fire.

[300.2] Zimmern, _op. cit._, p. 33: note magic use of knots in
general, _vide_ Frazer, _G.B._2, vol. i. pp. 392-403; _Archiv. für
Religionsw._, 1908, pp. 128, 383, 405. The superstition may have
prevailed in Minoan Crete (see A. Evans, _Annual British School_,
1902-1903, pp. 7-9) and was in vogue in ancient Greece.

[300.3] W. Warde Fowler, _The Religious Experiences of the Roman
People_, Gifford Lectures, p. 49.

[301.1] _Vide supra_, pp. 248-249; _Cults_, iv. p. 191.

[301.2] For the main facts relating to the Babylonian system and the
“baru”-priests, _vide_ Zimmern, _Beiträge_, etc., pp. 82-92; for the
Hellenic, vide _Cults_, iv. 190-192, 224-231; also vol. iii. 9-12.

[301.3] The documentary evidence, from a very early period, is given
by Zimmern, _Beiträge_, etc., pp. 85-97.

[301.4] L. 322: Clytemnestra speaks of pouring oil and vinegar into
the same vessel and reproaching them for their unsociable behaviour.

[302.1] We have also one example of an oracle of Ishtar (in plain
prose), _Keil. Bibl._, ii. p. 179.

[303.1] Zimmern, _op. cit._, p. 89.

[303.2] _Cults_, iii. p. 297.

[303.3] Lucian, _De Dea Syr._, 43.

[303.4] _Cults_, iii. p. 297.

[303.5] Vide _Cults_, iv. pp. 191-192; iii. p. 11.



 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

Page numbers are given in {curly} brackets.

Plain text version only: endnote markers are given in [square]
brackets.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ coexist/co-exist,
temple-ritual/temple ritual, etc.) have been preserved.

Add title, subtitle, and author’s name to cover image.

Alterations to the text:

Convert footnotes to endnotes, relabel note markers (append the
original note number to the page number), and add a corresponding
entry to the TOC.

[Title page]

Add commas to author’s bibliography.

[Chapter I]

Change “from the tyranny of a morbid _ascetism_” to _asceticism_.

[Chapter III]

“In his _Historie des anciennes Religions_, Tiele classifies” to
_Histoire_.

“and their aboriginal god was _Possidon_” to _Poseidon_.

[Chapter IV]

“and _expecially_ the powers of the lower world” to _especially_.

“Even _Allat_, the goddess of Hell, she who” to _Allatu_.

“the great Assyrian god _Ahshur_ is quaintly expressed” to _Asshur_.

“the idea that _Istar_ is the compeer in power” to _Ishtar_.

“between the Hittites and the _Assyrian Babylonian_ kingdom” to
_Assyrian-Babylonian_.

“no clear trace of _theriomophism_ either in the” to _theriomorphism_.

“how far the _Minaon_ religion was purely anthropomorphic” to
_Minoan_.

[Chapter V]

“I formerly developed in the second volume of my cults” capitalize
and italicize _cults_.

[Chapter VI]

“Still less is _Allalu_, the monstrous and grim Queen” to _Allatu_.

[Chapter VII]

(Alalkomenai, “the places of Athena Alalkomene; Nemea, “the…) add
right double quotation mark after _Alalkomene_.

[Chapter VII]

“about whom he is _particulurly_ thoughtful” to _particularly_.

[Chapter IX]

“and regards this _Hititte_ goddess as the ancestress” to _Hittite_.

[Chapter XIII]

“modern savagery and the history of _ascetism_” to _asceticism_.

(and bewail her”: “If you regard her as a deity, do) delete right
double quotation mark.

[Index]

“Hell, Babylonian conception of, 205-206” add period at end of line.

[Endnotes]

(Page 17, note 1) “_Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft_, 1904.” to
_für_.

(Page 42, note 1) “that the _idiogram_ of Enlil, the god of” to
_ideogram_.

(Page 84, note 3) “last of the Babylonian kings, _Nabuna ’id_, who
prays” to _Nabuna’id_.

(Page 124, note 1) “Die Phoenizischen Imschriften,” to _Phönizischen
Inschriften_.

(Page 148, note 1) “Weber, _Dämonenbeschworung bei den Babyloniern_…”
to _Dämonenbeschwörung_.

(Page 183, note 3) “pp. 502 503, n. 2” add comma after _502_.

(Page 232, note 2) “Lagranges, _Études sur les religions sémitiques_”
to _Lagrange_.

(Page 246, note 1) “Stengel, _Die griechischen Kultusalterthümer_, p.
89” to _Kultusaltertümer_.

(Page 286, note 5) “_vide_ Zimmern, _Beitrage_, p. 123;” to _Beiträge_.

[End of text]





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