CHAPTER XXXVI

FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC.

The Sumerian records leave no possibility of doubt as to offerings of fish being made to the deities, not exclusively or specially to a deity of fish. They show Eannatum in early days offering at Telloh certain fish to various gods to secure their aid that the treaty which he had just concluded with the city of Umma might be maintained for all time unbroken.

Similar offerings present themselves all through the history of Assyria. Numerous tablets detailing the nature of the enjoined offerings include fish, and as numerous receipts by the temples acknowledge offerings of fish.[969] In the course of time votive offerings in ivory and bronze, etc., according to King, took the place of actual fish.[970]

The striking resemblance of the institution of the Scape-Goat in Palestine to the ancient _Mashhulduppu_ or Babylonian Scape-Goat, both in object and high ceremonial ritual, is noted in my Jewish chapter.[971] But we cannot for one moment assume that sacrifices and oblations in Assyria evolved from perhaps the earliest primitive, _i.e._ human, sacrifice, or followed the same lines as those of Israel or of Rome. In the first nation human sacrifice probably prevailed in the earlier times to a wide extent, and in the second (as Varro indicates) “Populus pro se ignem animalia mittit,” and even “pisciculum pro animis humanis” became a not unusual and cheaper alternative.[972]

On the other hand, we possess, in historic and prehistoric Assyria, no trustworthy evidence of human sacrifice. Sayce, it is true, in 1875 published two texts, which, as he translated, demonstrated that human sacrifice did prevail. These, refuted by Ball, are not accepted as even a proper translation of the passage, much less a proof of the practice.

Jastrow has recently returned to the charge. He suggests that, “His eldest son shall he burn at the Khamm of Adad,” and other passages, establish that at one time children were offered in sacrifice, very much on the same lines as the later Judæan immolation of their children to Moloch, as when King Ahaz (2 Kings xvi. 3) “made his son to pass through the fire” in the Tophet just outside the gates of Jerusalem. But Jastrow finds even less favour now than Sayce did forty years ago.[973]

Campbell Thompson, after remarking that the existence of human sacrifice among either the Babylonian or Assyrian is not easy of satisfactory proof, concludes, “The fact is that human sacrifice goes out in proportion as civilisation comes in, and probably by the time men are ready to commit their religious ritual to writing, human sacrifice has ceased to be a regular and periodic rite: as the Assyrians were the highest civilised of all the Semites before our era, so in all probability fewest traces of this custom exist in their records.”

A semi-religious practice, not dissimilar in object to that of the Scape-Goat, can be discerned, if not as a vehicle for carrying away all the sins of the people, yet as a method of ridding the individual by the agency of some beast or fish of the affliction which lay upon him.

In one of the so-called Penitential Psalms or incantations, which the tablets from the library of Asur-bani-pal bequeath us, the prayerful desire to be free of suffering finds utterance in:—

“Let me cast off my evil that the birds may fly up to Heaven with it, That the fish may carry off my affliction.”

This whole passage ought, however, to be regarded not as a Penitential Psalm so much as “a ceremony for cleansing a man from _tabu_, when he wishes to see something in a dream. It finds close connection with the Levitical charm, originating from sympathetic magic, _e.g._ for cleansing the leper or leprous house,” _i.e._ by the two doves, as in Leviticus xiv. 4.[974]

Langdon asserts that in the Sumero-Babylonian religion each individual in normal conditions was guided by a divine spirit or god (cf. the δαὶμων of Socrates and the _genius_ of the Romans). When a man was possessed by the powers of evil he was estranged from his personal god, because some demon had attacked or driven out the protecting deity from his body. In this ancient period there seems to be no moral element whatever in the case. If a man became _tabu_ (which the eating of fish in other countries than Assyria would involve), or possessed by some dangerous unclean power, which made him unholy and filled him with bodily or mental distress, this state came about solely because at some unguarded moment a demon had expelled the indwelling god.

The demon had to be exorcised by some method of atonement, of which the most important element was in Sumerian magic water, in Hebrew blood. “In view of the great influence which Babylonian magic appears to have exerted upon the Hebrew rituals, it is curious it did not succeed in banishing this gross Semitic practice. Blood of animals does not occur as a cleansing element in Babylonia,” an omission due apparently to the culture of the Sumerians “not permitting such crude ideas, and to their teaching those Semites with whom they came in contact a cleaner form of magic.”[975]

In addition to the demons or spirits described above we find others, which could and, unless the proper rites were paid to the dead, did affect the living. The greatest misfortune which could befall a man was to be deprived of proper burial.[976] His shade, ran the common belief, could not reach Arallū, but wandered disconsolately about the earth. When driven by pangs of hunger it perforce ate the offal or leavings of the street. As the Egyptians, to ensure the continued existence of the dead and his _ka_, provided sepulchral offerings (the depictments of which included fish[977]), so did the Babylonians, not only for a similar but also for the additional purpose of preserving themselves from torments.

To leave a body unburied was not unattended with danger to the living. The shade of the dead man might bewitch any person it met and cause him grievous sickness. The wandering shade of a man was called _ekimmu_, _i.e._ spectre. Only sorcerers possessed the power of casting a spell whereby the _ekimmu_ might be made to harass a man. On the other hand, the spectre sometimes settled on a man of its own accord, in the hope that its victim would be driven to give it burial to free himself from its clutches.[978]

The Babylonian conception of the condition of the dead was an utterly joyless one. Arallū, or the House of the Dead, was dark and gloomy. Its dwellers never beheld the light of the sun, but sat in unchanging gloom. The Babylonians possessed no hope of a joyous life beyond the grave, nor did they imagine a paradise in which the deceased would live a life similar to that on earth.

The nature of the under-world can be gathered from the description given to Gilgamesh by the spirit of Enkidu risen from the grave (sometimes cited as an instance of necromancy), “the place where was the worm that devoured, and where all was cloaked in dust.”[979] The Hymn of the Descent of Ishtar into Hell goes farther:

“To the land whence none return, the place of darkness, To the house wherein he who enters is excluded from the light, To the place where dust is their bread and mud their food.”[980]

The very curious bronze of the Le Clerq collection in Paris, in which ichthyic garments and gods of the under-world, Arallū, occur, must be my excuse for this too lengthy and almost fishless digression on the Babylonian dead. It shows several figures, two clad in garments of the form of a fish, with their scales very visible.

Two explanations of the bronze have been offered. The first, hitherto generally accepted, suggests that the figures are representations of the gods of the under-world, or of the dead waiting on a sick person, together with some demons of the under-world and two priests wearing fishlike raiment.[981]

My friend Professor Langdon has furnished me with another explanation, more detailed and more interesting.

This so-called representation of a scene in the lower world from a bronze talisman has been misunderstood. The obverse has three registers. In the upper register are depicted the seven devils, all with animal heads, in attitude of ferocious attack upon a human soul. The middle register represents a sick man who is supposed to be possessed by the seven devils. He lies upon a bed. At his head and feet stand two priests each arrayed to appear like fish: these are symbolic of Ea, god of the sea and patron of all magic. They clothed themselves in a fishlike robe to signify that they derived their divinations and incantations from the sacred water, of which Ea was the god.

In the lower register are drawings of cult utensils, such as holy water bowls, censers, etc., and of the fever demon Labartu, who has been driven from the body of the man and is in flight by boat. The reverse of this bronze has in deep relief one of the seven devils who is in the act of peering over the upper edge of the bronze, and gazing upon the scene of atonement and magical healing below.

The cuneiform texts prescribe that fumigation, either for cleansing a person or exorcising a demon, may be performed by the wizard, with or without a censer, a bowl, or lighted torch.[982]

Apart from its permeation of Israel in legislation as indicated in connection with Hammurabi’s Code, the influence of Assyria stands out in other ways clearly. The semi-similarity of treatment of the Deluge has already been noticed, while the rendering in the stories of Sargon and Moses of a widespread legend[983] differs only in such points of detail as the substitution of the Nile or (according to Arabic tradition) of a fish-pond for the Euphrates, and of the irrigator Akki as the discoverer of the chest of reeds for Pharaoh’s daughter.[984]

“My lowly mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth: She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she closed my door: She cast me into the river, which rose not over me: The river bore me up, unto Akki the irrigator it carried me.

* * * * *

And for ... four years I ruled the kingdom.”

The assertion that the Old Testament is fairly saturated with Babylonian culture and folklore, and that even in the days of the New Testament we have not passed beyond the sphere of its impression hardly overshoots the mark, when the similarity of these and other instances is borne in mind.

The earliest point of contact between Babylon and Palestine is recorded in Genesis xiv. 1, which makes Abraham the contemporary of “Amraphel King of Shinar,” who most probably can now be identified with Hammurabi in the light of the recent discoveries of Kugler.[985]

The first connection of Israel with Assyria proper occurs in the reign of Shalmaneser II., in whose Monolith Inscription figures, as one of the allies of Benhadad I. of Damascus, the name of Ahâbbu Sir’lai, generally identified with Ahab, King of Israel.

Fish are discovered playing a part in auguries and divinations very similar to their _rôle_ in Rome. Augury in both nations was regarded with deep veneration. It reached in Assyria a very high plane. It was practised as a recognised science by a large and organised body of the priesthood under the direct control and patronage of the King.

All strange occurrences in heaven or earth were referred to the seers. Almost every event of common life was believed by the pious Babylonian to require prophetic decision whether it boded well or ill.

Among the reforms undertaken by Urukagina was that of the college of the diviners, for he tells us that “he, who hitherto received one shekel for his work, took money no more.”

In the letters of Hammurabi these diviners were recognised as a regular Guild. Knowledge of the tablets of recorded answers, which, suiting the individual circumstances of each interrogator, had for generations been stored in the library, enabled them to render an interpretation of practically all events. Their forecasts had resort not only to astrology, but to other means, such as the observations of the movements of fish, of the flight of birds, and of the entrails and livers of sheep and other sacrificial animals, all of which were the subject of minute inspection.

The Babylonians in seeking to determine the future watched carefully the movements, etc., of fish. Although the greater part of the known divination tablets regarding fish omens are in a sad state of preservation, the following will serve as an example: “If fish in a river keep in a school and steadily face up stream, in that place will be peaceful habitation,” a deliverance hardly fraught with comfort at times of flood or drought!

Then again the passage (in Ezekiel xxi. 21-22), “The King of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver,” etc., is of great interest, as evidence that the Babylonians employed both Belomancy or divination by arrows, and Hepatoscopy or inspection of the liver.

Belomancy was practised by other nations,[986] notably in Arabia (as witness Mohammed’s command against the use of arrows, “an abomination of Satan’s work!”)[987] more frequently than in Babylonia. There it attained but secondary importance. The general method required the shaking or shuffling before the image or the sacred place of the deity of a set of arrows. In the temple of Mecca the three important arrows were named, _The Commanding_, _The Forbidding_, _The Waiting_.

Hepatoscopy: the liver among the Assyrians, the Jews,[988] the Greeks, and the Etruscans,[989] contested with the heart the honour of being the central organ of life. Its convulsive movements, when taken from the sacrificed victim, gave warnings of the future. So sacred was the liver held in Israel, that eating it was forbidden: it had to be returned to the Giver of Life.[990]

Fish were early utilised for the calendar of the year. The signs of the Zodiac showing Pisces, possibly derived from connection with the god of water, and Scorpio, possibly representing one of the Crustacea, date back to _c._ 3000 B.C.[991]

FOOTNOTES:

[969] See Nikolski, _Documents de la plus ancienne époque chaldéenne_, Nos. 265 and 269; this last tablet (_c._ 2900 B.C.) records the delivery of large numbers of fish of various kinds by fishermen for two great festivals.

[970] Cf. _antea_, p. 217, as regards Rome.

[971] _Postea_, p. 427.

[972] See Greek-Roman section, Chapter XVI.

[973] _Op. cit._, p. 358.

[974] _Semitic Magic_ (London, 1908), pp. 181, 186.

[975] _Babylonian Magic_ (Bologna, 1914), pp. 237-8.

[976] “In Israel not to be buried was a terrible disgrace which one could hardly wish for one’s enemy: the spirits of the unburied wandered restlessly about. Burial alone so bound the spirit to the body that it had rest and could harm no one.” Cheyne’s assertion in _Encyl. Bibl._ (_op. cit._), p. 1041, seems to me hardly warranted, at any rate by the O.T. passages which he adduces in support of this statement, in attributing to Israel the idea of the unburied dead being condemned to miserable wandering. For the Greek conception see _inter alia_ the _Antigone_ of Sophocles.

[977] See Egyptian _Book of the Dead_ (London, 1910), ch. LIII., with reference to the deceased being obliged, from lack of proper food in the under-world, to eat filth—“Let me not be obliged to eat thereof in place of the sepulchral offerings.” To provide food for the dead, asphodel was planted near tombs (_Odyssey_, XI. 539 and 573) by the Greeks. From Hesiod (_Op._ 41) we learn that the _roots_ of the asphodel were eaten as a common vegetable, as was the mallow. Merry states that in the Greek islands, where customs linger longer than on the mainland, this “kind of squill is still planted on graves.” If the Homeric ‘mead of asphodel’ turns out, as some editors maintain, to have had a strictly utilitarian significance, how many poets and poetasters have mistaken ‘greens’ for ‘greenery!’

[978] King, _Babylonian Religion_ (_op. cit._), p. 45, and _Babylonian Magic and Sorcery_ (London, 1896), pp. 119 ff., where the incantation appropriate for exorcising demons is set out.

[979] Gilgamesh here learns how infinitely better is the condition of those to whom the rites of burial have been paid, compared with that of those who have been unburied. R. F. Harper, _Assyrian and Babylonian Literature_ (New York, 1901), 363 ff.

[980] The Hebrew conception of Sheol coincides in regarding it as “a land whence none return,” Job vii. 9-10; as “a place of darkness,” Job x. 21-22; as a place of “dust,” Psalm xxx. 9, and Job xvii. 16.

[981] Priests dressed as fish or with some fish-like raiments often attend the Sacred Tree (see Ward, _op. cit._, Nos. 687, 688, 689). These are held by some to be genii of the deep. In Ward, No. 690, two fish-men are guarding the Tree of Life.

[982] Compare the exorcism by Tobias of Sara’s demon in Tobit. Langdon, _Babylonian Magic and Sorcery_ (_op. cit._), p. 223, commenting on the difficulty, which Semitic philology does not clear up, as to whether a wizard is one who cuts himself (as Robertson Smith and most scholars suppose), or whether he is one who casts his spell by whispering or ventriloquy, holds that “from the Sumerian word and the Sumerian ideogram of the word _uhdugga_ which means one who whispers as he casts saliva, we can settle at once the most primitive method of sorcery known to us.”

[983] Cf. with those of Moses and Sargon the stories of Gilgamesh King of Babylon (Ælian, XII. 22), of Semiramis Queen of Assyria (Diodorus Siculus, ii. 4), and of Karna in the Indian Epic of Mahabharata (Cheyne’s _Traditions and Beliefs of Ancient Israel_ London, 1907), p. 519. “It has been conjectured,” writes Frazer (_op. cit._), II. p. 454 ff, “that in stories like that of the exposure of Moses in the water (in this case, unlike most others, all supernatural elements are absent) we have a reminiscence of the old custom as practised by the Celtæ on the Rhine, and according to Speke by some Central African tribes in the last century, of testing the legitimacy of children by throwing them into the water to sink or swim; the infants which sank were rejected as bastards. In the light of this conjecture it may be significant that in several of these stories the birth of the child is represented as supernatural, which in this connection cynics are apt to regard as a delicate synonym for illegitimate.” On p. 454 he touches on the question whether Moses, the son of Amram by his (Amram’s) paternal _aunt_, was thus the offspring of an incestuous marriage, and therefore exposed on the Nile.

[984] See Rogers, _Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament_ (London, 1912), pp. 135 ff.

[985] From Astronomy many Assyrian dates have been ascertained. Kugler by stellar researches has settled the vexed question of the date of Hammurabi, and probably that of Abram, at about 2120 B.C., which unites within one year the latest conclusions of King, Jastrow, and Rogers, and so establishes an important degree of accord among Assyriologists on events subsequent to 2200 B.C. as regards which they have hitherto been wide apart. Then again modern astronomers have worked out that there was a total eclipse of the sun at Nineveh on June 15, 763 B.C. The importance of the fixing of this date can as regards Assyrian chronology hardly be exaggerated. The Assyrians, rejecting the Babylonian system of counting time, invented a system of their own, by naming the year after certain officers or terms of office, not unlike the system of the Archonates at Athens, and the Consulates at Rome. These were termed _limus_: a list of these functionaries during four centuries has come down to us. In the time of one of them, Pur Sagali, there is a mention of the eclipse of the sun. As this eclipse has now been fixed for the year 763 B.C., we possess an automatic date for every year after of the _limus_.

[986] Apollo to the Greeks was at once archer-god and god of divination. The word ἀγεῖλε, “he gave as his oracular response,” means literally “he picked up” (the arrows). Indeed the curious fact that λέγω in Greek denotes “I say” and in Latin “I read” is best explained by O. Schrader, who points out that it meant originally “I pick up” or “collect” (the arrows of divination) and so both read and declare the will of heaven. See O. Schrader, _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_, trans. F. B. Jevons (London, 1890), p. 279.

[987] Koran, _Sur._ v. 92.

[988] Proverbs, vii. 23.

[989] See, _e.g._ C. Thulin, _Die Götter des Martianus Capella und der Bronzeleber von Piacenza_, Gieszen, 1906.

[990] _Ency. Bibl._, p. 1118.

[991] According to Langdon, _Tammuz and Ishtar_ (_op. cit._), p. 47, “Ninâ, a water deity, was identified at an early date with the constellation, Scorpio; for this reason her brother Ningirsu, also a water deity, was identified with one of the stars of Scorpio.”