Chapter 18

11. The temple is raised on a platform exceptionally low--only a few feet above the level of the plain; the entire height, including the platform, was 156 feet in a perpendicular line. The stages--of which the four upper were lower than the first three--receded equally on three sides, but doubly as much on the fourth, probably in order to present a more imposing front from the plain, and an easier ascent. "The ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly by means of color. The seven Stages represented the Seven Spheres, in which moved, according to ancient Chaldean astronomy, the seven planets. To each planet fancy, partly grounding itself upon fact, had from of old assigned a peculiar tint or hue. The Sun (Shamash) was golden; the Moon (Sin or Nannar), silver; the distant Saturn (Adar), almost beyond the region of light, was black; Jupiter (Marduk) was orange; the fiery Mars (Nergal) was red; Venus (Ishtar) was a pale yellow; Mercury (Nebo or Nabu, whose shrine stood on the top stage), a deep blue. The seven stages of the tower gave a visible embodiment to these fancies. The basement stage, assigned to Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the face of the masonry; the second stage, assigned to Jupiter, obtained the appropriate orange color by means of a facing of burnt bricks of that hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by the use of half-burnt bricks formed of a bright-red clay; the fourth stage, assigned to the Sun, appears to have been actually covered with thin plates of gold; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale yellow tint from the employment of bricks of that hue; the sixth, the sphere of Mercury, was given an azure tint by vitrifaction, the whole stage having been subjected to an intense heat after it was erected, whereby the bricks composing it were converted into a mass of blue slag; the seventh stage, that of the moon, was probably, like the fourth, coated with actual plates of metal. Thus the building rose up in stripes of varied color, arranged almost as nature's cunning hand arranges hues in the rainbow, tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of yellow, the yellow being followed by blue. Above this the glowing silvery summit melted into the bright sheen of the sky.... The Tower is to be regarded as fronting the north-east, the coolest side, and that least exposed to the sun's rays from the time that they become oppressive in Babylonia. On this side was the ascent, which consisted probably of a broad staircase extending along the whole front of the building. The side platforms, at any rate of the first and second stages, probably of all, were occupied by a series of chambers.... In these were doubtless lodged the priests and other attendants upon the temple service...."

12. The interest attaching to this temple, wonderful as it is in itself, is greatly enhanced by the circumstance that its ruins have through many centuries been considered as those of the identical Tower of Babel of the Bible. Jewish literary men who travelled over the country in the Middle Ages started this idea, which quickly spread to the West. It is conjectured that it was suggested by the vitrified fragments of the outer coating of the sixth, blue, stage, (that of Mercury or Nebo), the condition of which was attributed to lightning having struck the building.

13. That the Ziggurats of Chaldea should have been used not only as pedestals to uphold shrines, but as observatories by the priestly astronomers and astrologers, was quite in accordance with the strong mixture of star-worship grafted on the older religion, and with the power ascribed to the heavenly bodies over the acts and destinies of men. These constructions, therefore, were fitted for astronomical uses by being very carefully placed with their corners pointing exactly to the four cardinal points--North, South, East and West. Only two exceptions have been found to this rule, one in Babylon, and the Assyrian Ziggurat at Kalah, (Nimrud) explored by Layard, of which the sides, not the corners, face the cardinal points. For the Assyrians, who carried their entire culture and religion northward from their ancient home, also retained this consecrated form of architecture, with the difference that with them the Ziggurats were not temple and observatory in one, but only observatories attached to the temples, which were built on more independent principles and a larger scale, often covering as much ground as a palace.

14. The singular orientation of the Chaldean Ziggurats (subsequently retained by the Assyrians),--i.e., the manner in which they are placed, turned to the cardinal points with their angles, and not with their faces, as are the Egyptian pyramids, with only one exception,--has long been a puzzle which no astronomical considerations were sufficient to solve. But quite lately, in 1883, Mr. Pinches, Geo. Smith's successor in the British Museum, found a small tablet, giving lists of signs, eclipses, etc., affecting the various countries, and containing the following short geographical notice, in illustration of the position assigned to the cardinal points: "The South is Elam, the North is Accad, the East is Suedin and Gutium, the West is Phoenicia. On the right is Accad, on the left is Elam, in front is Phoenicia, behind are Suedin and Gutium." In order to appreciate the bearing of this bit of topography on the question in hand, we must examine an ancient map, when we shall at once perceive that the direction given by the tablet to the _South_ (Elam) answers to our _South-East;_ that given to the _North_ (Accad) answers to our _North-West;_ while _West_ (Phoenicia, i.e., the coast-land of the Mediterranean, down almost to Egypt) stands for our _South-West_, and _East_ (Gutium, the highlands where the Armenian mountains join the Zagros, now Kurdish Mountains,) for our _North-East_. If we turn the map so that the Persian Gulf shall come in a perpendicular line under Babylon, we shall produce the desired effect, and then it will strike us that the Ziggurats _did_ face the cardinal points, according to Chaldean geography, _with their sides_, and that the discovery of the small tablet, as was remarked on the production of it, "settles the difficult question of the difference in orientation between the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments." It was further suggested that "the two systems of cardinal points originated no doubt from two different races, and their determination was due probably _to the geographical position of the primitive home of each race._" Now the South-West is called "the front," "and the migrations of the people _therefore_ must have been from North-East to South-West."[AZ] This beautifully tallies with the hypothesis, or conjecture, concerning the direction from which the Shumiro-Accads descended into the lowlands by the Gulf (see pp. 146-8), and, moreover, leads us to the question whether the fact of the great Ziggurat of the Seven Spheres at Borsip facing the North-East with its front may not have some connection with the holiness ascribed to that region as the original home of the race and the seat of that sacred mountain so often mentioned as "the Great Mountain of Countries" (see p. 280), doubly sacred, as the meeting-place of the gods and the place of entrance to the "Arallu" or Lower World.[BA]

15. It is to be noted that the conception of the divine grove or garden with its sacred tree of life was sometimes separated from that of the holy primeval mountain and transferred by tradition to a more immediate and accessible neighborhood. That the city and district of Babylon may have been the centre of such a tradition is possibly shown by the most ancient Accadian name of the former--TIN-TIR-KI meaning "the Place of Life," while the latter was called GAN-DUNYASH or KAR-DUNYASH--"the garden of the god Dunyash," (probably one of the names of the god Êa)--an appellation which this district, although situated in the land of Accad or Upper Chaldea, preserved to the latest times as distinctively its own. Another sacred grove is spoken of as situated in Eridhu. This city, altogether the most ancient we have any mention of, was situated at the then mouth of the Euphrates, in the deepest and flattest of lowlands, a sort of borderland between earth and sea, and therefore very appropriately consecrated to the great spirit of both, the god Êa, the amphibious Oannes. It was so much identified with him, that in the Shumirian hymns and conjurings his son Meridug is often simply invoked as "Son of Eridhu." It must have been the oldest seat of that spirit-worship and sorcerer-priesthood which we find crystallized in the earliest Shumiro-Accadian sacred books. This prodigious antiquity carries us to something like 5000 years B.C., which explains the fact that the ruins of the place, near the modern Arab village of Abu-Shahrein, are now so far removed from the sea, being a considerable distance even from the junction of the two rivers where they form the Shat-el-arab. The sacred grove of Eridhu is frequently referred to, and that it was connected with the tradition of the tree of life we see from a fragment of a most ancient hymn, which tells of "a black pine, growing at Eridhu, sprung up in a pure place, with roots of lustrous crystal extending downwards, even into the deep, marking the centre of the earth, in the dark forest into the heart whereof man hath not penetrated." Might not this be the reason why the wood of the pine was so much used in charms and conjuring, as the surest safeguard against evil influences, and its very shadow was held wholesome and sacred? But we return to the legends of the Creation and primeval world.

16. Mummu-Tiamat, the impersonation of chaos, the power of darkness and lawlessness, does not vanish from the scene when Bel puts an end to her reign, destroys, by the sheer force of light and order, her hideous progeny of monsters and frees from her confusion the germs and rudimental forms of life, which, under the new and divine dispensation, are to expand and combine into the beautifully varied, yet harmonious world we live in. Tiamat becomes the sworn enemy of the gods and their creation, the great principle of opposition and destruction. When the missing texts come to light,--if ever they do--it will probably be found that the serpent who tempts the woman in the famous cylinder, is none other than a form of the rebellious and vindictive Tiamat, who is called now a "Dragon," now "the Great Serpent." At last the hostility cannot be ignored, and things come to a deadly issue. It is determined in the council of the gods that one of them must fight the wicked dragon; a complete suit of armor is made and exhibited by Anu himself, of which the sickle-shaped sword and the beautifully bent bow are the principal features. It is Bel who dares the venture and goes forth on a matchless war chariot, armed with the sword, and the bow, and his great weapon, the thunderbolt, sending the lightning before him and scattering arrows around. Tiamat, the Dragon of the Sea, came out to meet him, stretching her immense body along, bearing death and destruction, and attended by her followers. The god rushed on the monster with such violence that he threw her down and was already fastening fetters on her limbs, when she uttered a great shout and started up and attacked the righteous leader of the gods, while banners were raised on both sides as at a pitched battle. Meridug drew his sword and wounded her; at the same time a violent wind struck against her face. She opened her jaws to swallow up Meridug, but before she could close them he bade the wind to enter into her body. It entered and filled her with its violence, shook her heart and tore her entrails and subdued her courage. Then the god bound her, and put an end to her works, while her followers stood amazed, then broke their lines and fled, full of fear, seeing that Tiamat, their leader, was conquered. There she lay, her weapons broken, herself like a sword thrown down on the ground, in the dark and bound, conscious of her bondage and in great grief, her might suddenly broken by fear.

17. The battle of Bel-Marduk and the Dragon was a favorite incident in the cycle of Chaldean tradition, if we judge from the number of representations we have of it on Babylonian cylinders, and even on Assyrian wall-sculptures. The texts which relate to it are, however, in a frightful state of mutilation, and only the last fragment, describing the final combat, can be read and translated with anything like completeness. With it ends the series treating of the Cosmogony or Beginnings of the World. But it may be completed by a few more legends of the same primitive character and preserved on detached tablets, in double text, as usual--Accadian and Assyrian. To these belongs a poem narrating the rebellion, already alluded to, (see p. 182,) of the seven evil spirits, originally the messengers and throne-bearers of the gods, and their war against the moon, the whole being evidently a fanciful rendering of an eclipse. "Those wicked gods, the rebel spirits," of whom one is likened to a leopard, and one to a serpent, and the rest to other animals--suggesting the fanciful shapes of storm-clouds--while one is said to be the raging south wind, began the attack "with evil tempest, baleful wind," and "from the foundations of the heavens like the lightning they darted." The lower region of the sky was reduced to its primeval chaos, and the gods sat in anxious council. The moon-god (Sin), the sun-god (Shamash), and the goddess Ishtar had been appointed to sway in close harmony the lower sky and to command the hosts of heaven; but when the moon-god was attacked by the seven spirits of evil, his companions basely forsook him, the sun-god retreating to his place and Ishtar taking refuge in the highest heaven (the heaven of Anu). Nebo is despatched to Êa, who sends his son Meridug with this instruction:--"Go, my son Meridug! The light of the sky, my son, even the moon-god, is grievously darkened in heaven, and in eclipse from heaven is vanishing. Those seven wicked gods, the serpents of death who fear not, are waging unequal war with the laboring moon." Meridug obeys his father's bidding, and overthrows the seven powers of darkness.[BB]

18. There is one more detached legend known from the surviving fragments of Berosus, also supposed to be derived from ancient Accadian texts: it is that of the great tower and the confusion of tongues. One such text has indeed been found by the indefatigable George Smith, but there is just enough left of it to be very tantalizing and very unsatisfactory. The narrative in Berosus amounts to this: that men having grown beyond measure proud and arrogant, so as to deem themselves superior even to the gods, undertook to build an immense tower, to scale the sky; that the gods, offended with this presumption, sent violent winds to overthrow the construction when it had already reached a great height, and at the same time caused men to speak different languages,--probably to sow dissension among them, and prevent their ever again uniting in a common enterprise so daring and impious. The site was identified with that of Babylon itself, and so strong was the belief attaching to the legend that the Jews later on adopted it unchanged, and centuries afterwards, as we saw above, fixed on the ruins of the hugest of all Ziggurats, that of Borsip, as those of the great Tower of the Confusion of Tongues. Certain it is, that the tradition, under all its fanciful apparel, contains a very evident vein of historical fact, since it was indeed from the plains of Chaldea that many of the principal nations of the ancient East, various in race and speech, dispersed to the north, the west, and the south, after having dwelt there for centuries as in a common cradle, side by side, and indeed to a great extent as one people.

FOOTNOTES:

[AW] See Fr. Lenormant, "Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldäer," p. 377.

[AX] François Lenormant, "Origines de l'Histoire," Vol. II., p. 130.

[AY] "Five Monarchies," Vol. III., pp. 380-387.

[AZ] See "Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology," Feb., 1883, pp. 74-76, and "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," Vol. XVI., 1884, p. 302.

[BA] The one exception to the above rule of orientation among the Ziggurats of Chaldea is that of the temple of Bel, in Babylon, (E-SAGGILA in the old language,) which is oriented in the usual way--its sides facing the _real_ North, South, East and West.

[BB] See A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 35.

VII.

MYTHS.--HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS.

1. The stories by which a nation attempts to account for the mysteries of creation, to explain the Origin of the World, are called, in scientific language, COSMOGONIC MYTHS. The word Myth is constantly used in conversation, but so loosely and incorrectly, that it is most important once for all to define its proper meaning. It means simply _a phenomenon of nature presented not as the result of a law but as the act of divine or at least superhuman persons, good or evil powers_--(for instance, the eclipse of the Moon described as the war against the gods of the seven rebellious spirits). Further reading and practice will show that there are many kinds of myths, of various origins; but there is none, which, if properly taken to pieces, thoroughly traced and cornered, will not be covered by this definition. A Myth has also been defined as a legend connected more or less closely with some religious belief, and, in its main outlines, handed down from prehistoric times. There are only two things which can prevent the contemplation of nature and speculation on its mysteries from running into mythology: a knowledge of the physical laws of nature, as supplied by modern experimental science, and a strict, unswerving belief in the unity of God, absolute and undivided, as affirmed and defined by the Hebrews in so many places of their sacred books: "The Lord he is God, there is none else beside him." "The Lord he is God, in Heaven above and upon the earth beneath there is none else." "I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me." "I am God and there is none else." But experimental science is a very modern thing indeed, scarcely a few hundred years old, and Monotheism, until the propagation of Christianity, was professed by only one small nation, the Jews, though the chosen thinkers of other nations have risen to the same conception in many lands and many ages. The great mass of mankind has always believed in the personal individuality of all the forces of nature, i.e., in many gods; everything that went on in the world was to them the manifestation of the feelings, the will, the acts of these gods--hence the myths. The earlier the times, the more unquestioning the belief and, as a necessary consequence, the more exuberant the creation of myths.

2. But gods and spirits are not the only actors in myths. Side by side with its sacred traditions on the Origin of things, every nation treasures fond but vague memories of its own beginnings--vague, both from their remoteness and from their not being fixed in writing, and being therefore liable to the alterations and enlargements which a story invariably undergoes when told many times to and by different people, i.e., when it is transmitted from generation to generation by oral tradition. These memories generally centre around a few great names, the names of the oldest national heroes, of the first rulers, lawgivers and conquerors of the nation, the men who by their genius _made_ it a nation out of a loose collection of tribes or large families, who gave it social order and useful arts, and safety from its neighbors, or, perhaps, freed it from foreign oppressors. In their grateful admiration for these heroes, whose doings naturally became more and more marvellous with each generation that told of them, men could not believe that they should have been mere imperfect mortals like themselves, but insisted on considering them as directly inspired by the deity in some one of the thousand shapes they invested it with, or as half-divine of their own nature. The consciousness of the imperfection inherent to ordinary humanity, and the limited powers awarded to it, has always prompted this explanation of the achievements of extraordinarily gifted individuals, in whatever line of action their exceptional gifts displayed themselves. Besides, if there is something repugnant to human vanity in having to submit to the dictates of superior reason and the rule of superior power as embodied in mere men of flesh and blood, there is on the contrary something very flattering and soothing to that same vanity in the idea of having been specially singled out as the object of the protection and solicitude of the divine powers; this idea at all events takes the galling sting from the constraint of obedience. Hence every nation has very jealously insisted on and devoutly believed in the divine origin of its rulers and the divine institution of its laws and customs. Once it was implicitly admitted that the world teemed with spirits and gods, who, not content with attending to their particular spheres and departments, came and went at their pleasure, had walked the earth and directly interfered with human affairs, there was no reason to disbelieve _any_ occurrence, however marvellous--provided it had happened very, very long ago. (See p. 197.)