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 BOOKS ON
EGYPT AND CHALD/EA.
BY E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, M.A., Lirr.D., D.LiT.,
Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in
the British Museum,
AND

L. W. KING, M.A.,
Assistant in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in
the British Museum.

Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net eacJi.

VOL. I. Egyptian Religion Egyptian Ideas : of the

Future Life. By E. A. WALLIS BUDGE.

VOL. II. Egyptian Magic. By E. A. WALLTS BUDGE.

VOL. III. Egyptian Language :

Easy Lessons in

Egyptian Hieroglyphics. By E. A. WALLIS

BUDGE.

VOL. IV. Babylonian Religion :

Babylonian Religion
and Mythology. By L. W. KING.

The above four Volumes are now ready, and will be followed by others.

LONDON :

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LT?

JOHN M. WATKINS, 53, ST. MAKTIN S LANE, W.C.
 Books on BQgpt anfr Cbalfr&a

VOL. IV.

BABYLONIAN RELIGION AND

MYTHOLOGY
 PUBLISHERS NOTE.

Ix the year 1894 Dr. Wallis

Budge prepared for Messrs. Kegan
Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., Ltd., an
elementary work on the
Egyptian language, entitled "First Steps in Egyptian," and two years
later the
companion volume, "An
Egyptian Reading Book," with
transliterations of all the texts and a
printed in vocabulary.
it, full
The success of these works
proved that they had helped to satisfy
a want long felt
by students of the Egyptian language, and as a
similar want existed among students of the
languages written in
the cuneiform W.
character, Mr. L. King, of the British Museum,
prepared, on the same lines as the two books mentioned above,
an elementary work on the
Assyrian and Babylonian languages
("First Steps in Assyrian"), which appeared in 1898. These
works, however, dealt mainly with the philological branch of
Egyptology and
Assyriology, and it was impossible in the space
allowed to explain much that needed
explanation in the other
branches of these subjects that is to
say, matters relating to the
archaeology, history, religion, of the Egyptians,
etc., Assyrians, and
Babylonians.In answer to the numerous
requests which have
been made, a series of
short, popular handbooks, on the most
important branches of Egyptology and Assyriology has been pre
pared, and it is
hoped that these will serve as introductions to the
larger works on these subjects. The
present is the fourth volume
of the series, and the
succeeding volumes will be published at short
intervals, and at moderate prices.
 Booftg on lEewt an&

BABYLONIAN RELIGION
AND

MYTHOLOGY

BY

DfW\ KING, M.A., F.S.A.

ASSISTANT IN
AS THE DEPARTMENT OF EGYPTIAN AND ASSYRIAN ANTIQUITIES,
BRITISH MUSEUM

WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER &
,,-D
CO., LT-

PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD

1899
 POINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.

(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

 PREFACE.

THE object of the present work is to offer to the reader

in a handy form an account of the principal facts

concerning Babylonian religion and mythology. This

account is based upon the cuneiform inscriptions which
have been excavated in Mesopotamia during the last

fifty-five years, and, as far as possible, the Semitic

peoples of the valley of the Tigrisand Euphrates have

been made to reveal their religious beliefs and super
stitions by means of their own writings. Although
so much has been done in recent years to explain their
religious literature, no finality in the matter must be

expected for some time to come, certainly not as long

as any important religious text remains unpublished.

The fragmentary nature of the available material alone
is a great obstacle to the construction of any consecutive
narrative, and to the correct grouping of facts, while
the renderings of rare Sumerian words and
complex
ideograms in some cases offer almost .insuperable
VI PREFACE.

difficulties. Moreover, the variations in the translations

made by English and German scholars proclaim the

difficulty of the subject, and no systematic and final

description of the religion of Babylonia and Assyria

is at present possible. In the preparation of this little

book the works of the most trustworthy writers on the

subject have been diligently consulted, and the trans

lations of cuneiform texts given in the following pages

have been specially prepared for the purpose. Every

endeavour has also been made to incorporate the results
obtained from recently discovered texts, to which in all

important cases references are given.

From the facts here printed it is clear that the

Babylonians and Assyrians believed in a series of

nature gods, and that they had no conception of the
existence of one supreme and almighty God. The
worship of their gods was tinctured with magic, and
many of their prayers and formulse which they recited

during the performance of their religious ceremonies

can be regarded as little else than spells, charms, and
incantations. Although little by little a higher idea

of the majesty of certain gods was developed, and

although the Babylonian s conception of a man s duty
towards them and towards his neighbour eventually
became of a comparatively high moral character, he
never succeeded in freeing himself from a belief in the
 PREFACE. Vll

power of magic, sorcery and witchcraft. He attached

great importance to the performance of burial cere

monies, imagining that his arrival in the next world

depended absolutely upon them; but the life which

he believed the soul would lead after death in the
underworld seems to have been of a peculiarly joyless
character.

Owing to want of space no attempt has been made

to discuss from a comparative point of view the legends

of thecosmogony and the deluge written in cuneiform,

and only the most obvious parallels between parts
of them and certain chapters of Genesis have been
drawn. It was unnecessary to treat the subject ex

haustively, as it is now generally admitted by scholars

that the writers of the Pentateuch drew upon the
traditions of Babylonia for a number of the statements

made in the early chapters of Genesis.

I take this opportunity of expressing my indebt

edness to the works of Delitzsch, Jensen, Gunkel,
Zimmern, Jeremias, Jastrow, and others, and of

thanking Dr. Wallis Budge for his great help in the

preparation of the work.
L. W. KING.
LONDON,
October 1th, 1899.
 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE GODS OF BABYLON ... ... ... 1

II. HEAVEN, EARTH, AND HELL ... ... 27

III. THE LEGENDS OF CREATION ... ... ... 53

IV. THE STORY OF THE DELUGE ... ... 121

V. TALES OF GODS AND HEROES ... ... ... 14G

VI. THE DUTY OF MAN TO HIS GOD AND TO HIS NEIGHBOUR 200
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGB
CHAPTER
I. THE MOON-GOD
19
THE SUN-GOD ... ...

II. THE EASTERN DOOR OF HEAVEN

THE GODS OF THE UNDERWORLD
III. THE FIGHT BETWEEN MARDUK AND TIAMAT 75, 102

SCENE BESIDE A SACRED TREE

IV. A BABYLONIAN SHIP ... ... 131

V. GlLGAMESII AND EA-BANI ... 162

CROSSING THE WATERS OF DEATH ... 170

THE GODDESS ISHTAR

THE SOUTH-WEST WIND
VI. A BABYLONIAN DEMON 203
 BABYLONIAN RELIGION
AND MYTHOLOGY.

CHAPTEE I.

THE GODS OF BABYLON.

IT was at one time the fashion with many scholars to

regard the civilization of the Babylonians as of a purely

Semitic origin and more than one writer on the
;

religion of that country has moulded his work on the

fundamental thesis that the Semitic Babylonians and

they alone were the originators of the complicated

system of religious practise and belief which we know
existed from a very early period upon the banks of the

Euphrates. Kecent excavations in Babylonia, however,

have proved one fact with absolute certainty that
before the Semites ever reached Babylonia a non-
Semitic race occupied the country, tilled the land,
tended herds of cattle, built cities, dug canals, and
advanced to a state of considerable civilization. But
BAB. EEL. B
2 THE ANCIENT SUMERIANS.
1
there are indications that even this race, the Sumerians

as they are called, were not the first possessors of the

land. It is probable that they themselves were settlers

like the Semites of a later time, and that they reached

the fertile valley of the rivers from some mountainous

home in the northern half of Central Asia. Who
occupied the country before the
Sumerians came we
cannot say, for of the aboriginal inhabitants of the land

we know nothing. The first inhabitants of Babylonia

of whom we have definite knowledge are the Sumerians ;

and during recent years our knowledge of them has

been vastly increased. In any treatment of the

religious beliefs of the Semitic Babylonians, the

existence of the Sumerians cannot be ignored, for they

of the Semitic invaders
profoundly influenced the faith
before whose onslaught their empire fell. The religious

beliefs of the Babylonians cannot be rightly under

stood unless at the outset this foreign influence is duly

recognized.
To what date we are to assign the beginning of

Sumerian influence in Babylonia it is quite impossible

thousand years
to say,though such a date as six or seven
before Christ is not an estimate for the foun
extravagant
2
dation of the earliest religious centres in the country.
The decline of the political power of the Sumerians, on

1
The Sumerians take their name from "Shumeru," an ancient
name for Southern Babylonia.
2 etc.
E.g., Nippur, Ur, Shirpurla,
 INFLUENCE OF SUMERIAN BELIEFS. 3

the other hand, may be assigned approximately to the

period which lies between B.C. 2500 and B.C. 2300. At
the latter date Babylon had been raised to a
position
of pre-eminence
among the cities of the land, and the
Semitic population in the country had gained a com
plete ascendancy over their ancient rivals, whomthey
gradually absorbed from this time onwards the city of
;

Babylon maintained her position and never ceased to

be the capital of the country to which in later times
she gave her name. But in spite of the early date to
which we must put back the beginnings of
Babylonian
civilization, it is only among the remains of a very
much later period that we find adequate materials for
the study of the Babylonian It is true that
religion.

during the long course of the history of that country

and of Assyria we get occasional
glimpses of the
religious beliefsand legends, which were current at dif
ferent periods, from the historical and votive
inscrip
tions of kings and governors. But it is only at quite
a late date, that is to say a few years before the fall of
Nineveh, that we gain a comparatively full knowledge
of Babylonian
mythology and belief.
The great religious works of the Babylonians are
known to us from documents which do not date from
an earlier period than the seventh
century B.C. In the
palaces that were unearthed at Kuyunjik, the site of

Nineveh, there were found, scattered through the

mounds of earth, thousands of
clay tablets written in
4 THE SCRIBES OF ASSYRIA.

the Assyrian character, and in many cases with colo

phons bearing the name of Ashur-bani-pal and the state

ment that he had caused them to be included in his
library. This monarch reigned from B.C. 669 to about
B.C. 625, and, though one of the last kings to occupy
the Assyrian throne, he made strenuous efforts to pre
serve the ancient literature of Babyloniaand Assyria.
His scribes visited specially the ancient cities and
temples in the south, and made copies of literary com
positions of all classes which they found there. These

they collected and arranged in his palace at Nineveh,

and from them that the greater part of our know
it is

ledge of Babylonian mythology and religion

is derived.

Though the tablets date from the seventh century

only, it is possible that the texts inscribed upon them
had their origin in a very remote period, and a detailed

study of them proves that such was the case. If, for
instance, two or more copies of a text are found to differ

greatly in detail from one another, we naturally assume

that a considerable period has elapsed for such varia
tions to have crept into the text. Besides this, the im
of the originals from which
perfect condition of many
the scribes made their copies, the notes and colophons

they added to the texts, and the lists and commentaries

they compiled to explain them, prove the antiquity of

the literature they studied. Such evidence is con
clusive that the religious literature the Assyrians

have left us was not of their own production, but was

 THEIR COPIES OF EARLY TEXTS. 5

their inheritance from an earlier time. While the

Babylonians in their religious beliefs were profoundly

influenced by the Sumerians, they in their turn
exercised an even greater influence on the Assyrians.
The latter people, at first but a handful of colonists
from took with them the faith of their
Babylonia,
mother country, and, though they subsequently gained
their independence, and after many centuries of conflict

held the elder branch of their race in subjection, their

system of religion, with but few changes

and modifica

tions, was Babylonian to the core. Hence their

works and writings may be used as material
religious
for the study of the Babylonian religion.
When we examine these Assyrian tablets, and
of the gods
attempt to gain from them a knowledge
of Babylon, we find they present us with a truly

bewildering number The Babylonians and

of deities.

Assyrians were a conservative people,

and the priestly
for our know
class, to whose labours we are indebted

of the religion, faithfully

collected
ledge Babylonian
and chronicled all local traditions and beliefs, no
matter whence they came. Their religion was a still

living thing, and they had

not lost belief in the existence
or the power of the gods, but they studied their national

traditions to some extent from their literary side ;

and

they sought to classify and arrange, into

some system
the numerous and sometimes conflicting traditions
which had arisen and obtained currency at different
 LISTS OF THE GODS.

periods in quite different parts of the country. The

largest tablet that has been recovered from Ashur-

bani-pal s library, for instance, is inscribed with a list

of the names of the gods and their titles. The tablet

when complete must have measured some 11 x 16
inches ;
it was inscribed on each side with six columns
of minute writing, every column containing over
one hundred and fifty lines, and nearly every line

giving the name of a separate deity. 1 This is only one

out of many tablets inscribed with lists of the names
of the gods, and the existence of these documents
serves to show that in the literature of the period we
must expect to find the Babylonian religion in a fully
advanced state of its development.
Were we dependent on such lists and
entirely
catalogues it would be hard to gather a very consistent
or very intelligible notion of what the Babylonian
gods were like but fortunately this is not the case,
;

hers of hymns and prayers have been recovered,

\\.. y the titles and attributes therein ascribed to
the gods, enable us to trace their relationships to one
another and their respective rank and power. Stories
and legends of the gods have also been preserved, and
from these it is possible to construct a fairly complete
sketch of Babylonian mythology. Moreover, the names of
the gods frequently figure in the historical inscriptions

1
The tablet is exhibited in the British Museum, Nineveh Gallery,
Case I., No. 4.
 OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION. 7

of Babylonian and Assyrian kings, not only of this

late period, but also in those of rulers who occupied
the throne during many earlier periods of the s
country
history. The victories gained over
enemies were ascribed
by each ruler to the help vouchsafed him by his own
gods, and from the names of those he mentions we
learn what gods were held in
special reverence during
his reign. The kings of Babylon, too, were great
builders and delighted to construct new temples and
to restore the old ones which had fallen into
decay.
From the records of their building operations, and
from the votive tablets deposited in the
temples, we
gain much information regarding the worship of the
deities in whose honour they were made. Another
source of information,
especially for the early Suinerian
period, are the lists of temple revenues and accounts ;

while the very names of private

persons preserved in
business documents of various dates,
containing as so
*
many of them do the names of gods, serve to i~
roughly the changes which the principal ex .

perienced in the popular estimation. It is of course

to be regretted that we do not possess copies of the
great religious and mythological works of the Baby
lonians during the earlier
periods of their history, from
which it would be possible to trace with absolute cer
tainty the course of their religious development. The
numerous indirect sources of information referred to,
however, enable us to control and classify the religious
8 DESCRIPTION OF THE GODS.

literature of the later Assyrian and Babylonian empires.

By these means it is possible to gain a knowledge
from native sources of Babylonian mythology and
belief,and to supplement the scanty references to the
religion of the country which are found in the Old
Testament and in the works of the classical writers.

The gods of the Babylonians, in the forms under

which they were worshipped during the later historical
periods, were conceived as beings with very definite

and characteristic personalities. All the great gods,

while wielding superhuman powers, were regarded
as endowed with human forms, and, though they
were not visible, except in dreams and visions, to their

worshippers, each was thought to possess a definite

character and have a body and features peculiar
to

to himself. Not only were they like unto men in

body, but in thought and feeling they were also very
human. Like men they were born into the world,
and like men
they loved and fought, and even died.
The Babylonians, in fact, had a very material concep
tion of the higher powers. They had no belief in a

supreme and abstract deity of a different mould and

nature to themselves and though they ascribed all
;

power and might to many of the greater gods they

worshipped, they pictured these beings as swayed by
human passions, and as acting in dependence on each
other. About their gods they
composed strange tales
and legends, in which we read how some of them
 THEIR NATURE AND ORIGIN. 9

and valour, how others dis

performed acts of bravery
and treachery, and how others again
played cunning
exhibited fear and greed. It is true that, unlike men,
wielded magical
their power was unlimited, they
and words of power but
weapons, and uttered spells
;

for all that they were fashioned in

human mould;
the separation between the Babylonian and his god
was not in nature but in degree.
In following the doings of the gods and in noting the
attributes ascribed to them, we are naturally confronted

to what suggested to the Babylonian

by the problem as
his precise differentiation in their characters.
Was it

merely fancy or arbitrary

invention on his part ? We
to
need not appeal to the comparative study of religion
answer the question in the negative, for the characters

of the gods themselves betray their origin. They are

natural forces in other words, the
personifications of ;

the stories told concerning them are

gods and many of

the best explanation the Babylonian could give, after

and changes
many centuries of observation, of the forces
he saw at work around him in the natural world. He
saw the sun daily overhead,
he observed the
pass
moon and the motions of the stars he
phases of the ;

felt wind and feared the tempest but he had no

the ;

notion that these things were the result of natural

laws. In company with other primitive peoples he
like himself.
explained them as the work of beings very
He thought of nature as animated throughout by
10 THE GREATER GODS.

numberless beings, some hostile and some favourable

to mankind, in accordance with the treatment he had
experienced from them. From the greater powers and
forces in nature he deduced the existence of the
greater
gods, and in many of the legends and
myths he told
concerning them we may see his naive explanation of
the working of the universe. He did not speak in
allegory or symbol, but believed his stories literally,
and moulded his life in accordance with their teaching
O
Babylonian
religion, therefore, in its general aspect

may be regarded as a worship of nature, and the

gods
themselves may be classified as the of
personifications
various natural powers. But here at the outset we
meet with a difficulty which has not yet been quite
satisfactorily explained.During its early history the
country was not a corporate whole under one adminis
tration, but the great cities, with the land immediately
adjacent to them, formed a number of independent
states. It was only after many centuries of separate
existence, or of temporary coalition, that a permanent
fusion was brought about between these separate
kingdoms. Back in this dim past we can trace the
existence of many of the great Babylonian gods of
later times, and, as in later times, so still more at this

early period, we find their worship was not equally

prevalent throughout the country, but the cult of each
deity was specialized and centred in separate cities.

Enlil, the god of the earth, for instance, was worshipped

 THEIR LOCAL DISTRIBUTION. II

in the earliest period at Nippur; Ea, the god of the

deep, at Eridu Nannar, the Moon -god, at Ur
; Utu, ;

the Sun-god, at Larsa, and so on. Now taken in the

aggregate, the worship of all these deities presents a

consistent picture of the worship of nature in its

different parts, and for the later periods such a picture

no doubt accurately corresponds to the general char
acter of the national religion. But in the earliest

period the great cities of the land were not parts of a

single kingdom and it is not quite clear how this local
;

distribution of the great natural gods among a number

of originally independent cities can be explained.

In seeking a solution of this problem it is necessary

to realize the fact that the religious system of the

Babylonians was the product of a long period of

gradual development. The consistent scheme of nature

worship practised by the later Babylonians was not

received by them in a complete and finished form from
their remote ancestors and predecessors in the land.
At this remote period we may assume that its state
was a very simple and a very primitive one. The
horizon of these early peoples embraced little more
than the walls of the cities in which they dwelt, and
each city was content to worship and do battle for the
honour of its local god the fortune of the god was
;

bound up with that of the city, and the downfall of the

god followed close on the ruin of the city. With the
gradual amalgamation of these separate cities into
12 GROWTH OF THE CITY-GOD.

larger states,an adjustment between the local gods

was necessary. In any such coalition the god of the
over
predominant city would naturally take precedence
those of the conquered or dependent cities with which
lie became associated. It is conceivable that in this

way the relationships between some of the gods of the

Babylonians arose. Even so, it is difficult to trace the

by which a local city-god became associated
process
with one of the great powers of nature, and to decide
whether his aspect as a god of a special department
of the universe was inherent in his nature from

the beginning, or was due to some subsequent

development. Such questions present number of a

attractive problems, many of which will doubtless be

solved as more material relating to the earliest period

of Babylonian history is published. Meanwhile, in
whatever way we may explain it, the local worship in

different cities of Babylonia of many of the greater

natural gods is one of the most striking characteristics

of the Babylonian system.

In giving a sketch of the principal gods of Babylonia

it will be expedient to confine ourselves in the main

to the periods of to the

Babylonian history subsequent
rise of the city of Babylon to power, which was followed

by the consolidation of the separate portions of the

It would of course be
country into a single state.
possible to push
our enquiry back into the earliest

period when the Sumerian was in possession of the

 SUMERIAN AND SEMITIC DEITIES. 13

country and the influence of the Semite was still

unfelt. Although the study of the Sumerian deities

is still in its infancy, it would be possible to give

their names found in the early inscriptions from

as

Niffer, Mukayyar and Tell Loh, and, with the help of

the later explanatory lists of the Assyrians, to trace

in some measure their adoption and the modification

1
of their names, attributes, etc., by the Babylonians.
But such a plan within the limits of the
to follow

present volume would result in little more than a

catalogue of names and equations, many of which are
still matters of conjecture. It will be better therefore

to treat only of those great Semitic deities who figure

:

so prominently in Babylonian mythology, and to refer

to their Sumerian prototypes only in so far as they
illustrate their later characters.

Even during the Semitic period Babylonian the

company underwent
of the gods considerable changes.
The assimilation of the Sumerian deities was not a
sudden process, and the meeting of the two systems
did not produce uniform results throughout the country.

Moreover, in the later as in the earlier periods, every

city had its own local god, to whose service the whole
city was devoted, and around whose temple local tradi

tions and local myths gathered and flourished. The

prominence which any one such local tradition attained
in the Babylonian system was in proportion to the
1
See the names and attributes of the various deities collected by
Jastrow in his Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 51 ff.
14 ANU, BEL, AND EA.

political position and influence of the city in which

it arose. matter of surprise, therefore, that
It is not a

we come across varying traditions with regard to the

positions and relationships of some of the gods. But
with the gradual unification of the country many
such variant traditions were harmonized and explained

by the priesthood. It is thus possible, while making

full allowance for the influence of local beliefs and of

political changes, to give a brief sketch of the company

of the Babylonian gods which will harmonize with
their position and character in the great religious and

mythological and legendary works of the nation,

At the head of the company of the gods may bo
set the great triad of deitiesANU, BEL and EA, whose
spheres of influence together embraced the entire uni
verse. Ann was the god of heaven, Bel the god of
the earth and of mankind, and Ea the god of the abyss
of water beneath the earth. At a very early period in
Sumerian history we find these three deities mentioned
in close connection with each other under their

Sumerian names of Anna (Anu), Enlil (Bel), and

Enki (Ea). Lugalzaggisi, who caused the inscription
to be written in which their names occur, was one of
the earliest Sumerian rulers of whose reign we have
evidence, and we can thus trace back the existence

of this great triad of gods to the very beginning of

history. During the later periods the connection of

these deities with each other, as the three great gods
H!

o .

IS? s
""l^
"S C-l

IliS

t!ll
^S
 SIN, SHAMASH, AND RAMMAN. I/

of the universe, remained unshaken. Each member

of the triad had his own centre of worship. Thus

Anu, though he had temples in other parts of the

country, was paid peculiar reverence in Uruk, the
Babylonian name of the city of Erech, which is men
tioned as one of the oldest cities of Babylonia in the
table of nations in Genesis.
1
The god Bel, as has been

already stated, was identified by the Semites with

the Sumerian deity Enlil, whose worship in E-kur,
his temple in the city of Nippur, was the oldest local

cult of which we have evidence in the archaic inscrip

tions that have yet been recovered. The worship of

the third member of the triad, Ea, originated in Eridu,

the southernmost of the great cities of Babylonia, the

site of which, now marked by the mound of Abu
Shahren, stands fifty miles from the mouth of the
Shatt el-Arab, but which in the earliest period of

Babylonian history, before the formation of the present

delta, must have stood on the shore of the Persian Gulf.

After these three deities with their world-wide

dominion may be set a second triad, consisting of the
two great gods of light, SIN and SHAMASH, and the

god of the atmosphere, KAMMAN. Sin, the Moon-god,

identified also with NANNAE, had two centres of wor
ship, thetemple E-gish-shir-gal in Ur, and the temple
E-khul-khul in Kharran, of which the former was the
more ancient. In Ur the worship of the Moon-god
1
Genesis x. 10.

BAB. REL. C
1 8 POSITION OF THE SUN-GOD.

was celebrated from remote antiquity, and in influence

and splendour have eclipsed that

his cult appears to

of Shamash, the Sun-god, whose worship was centred

in the cities of Sippar and Larsa, in two great temples
name the bright
"

each of which bore the of E-babbara,

house." According to one tradition Shamash was

of the Moon-god, and this subordi
regarded as the son
nation of Sun-worship to the cult of the Moon is an
At
interesting peculiarity of early Babylonian religion.
a later period, when the system of mythology was more

fully developed,
the Sun-god attained a position of

greater prominence.
He was then regarded as the judge
of heaven and earth, and in the legends it
was his

decision to which appeal was made in cases of wrong

and injustice. The god Kamman, while particularly
associated with thunder and lightning, was
in general

the god of the atmosphere and controlled the clouds,

the mist and the rain. He was held in especial
reverence by the Assyrian kings who loved to compare
the advance of their forces in battle to the onslaught
of the Storm-god.
The most prominent deity in the company of the
as the local god
Babylonian gods was MARDUK, who,
of Babylon, naturally claimed the highest respect
from

the men of his own The extension of his influence

city.

was a result of the rise of Babylon to the position of

the capital city in a united empire, and it is to this

trace his identification with the old

fact we may
 3

II

I! </>

3
 MARDUK AND NABU. 21

Babylonian deity Bel, whose worship had flourished

for so many centuries at Nippur, and the prominent

part which he plays in Babylonian legend and

mythology. From Khammurabi onward
the days of
Marduk never lost this position of supremacy among
the other gods. Traces of his original subordinate
character at the time when Babylon was still unknown
may be seen in the fact that he was never regarded
as the oldest of the gods, nor as endowed from the
beginning with his later attributes ;
he was conceived
as having power aiM supremacy by his own
won his

valour and by the services he rendered both ft) gods and

to mankind. In intimate association with Marduk
may be mentioned NABU, the god of Borsippa, a city
1
which is marked to-day by the mound of Birs Nimrud,
i which, built a little to the south-west o Babylon
on the opposite bank of the Euphrates, was in its later

period little more than a suburb of the capital.

To
this fact we may trace the close connection of Nabu
with Marduk, whose son and minister he was supposed
to have been. E-zida, his temple in Borsippa, was
closely associated with E-sagil, Marduk s great shrine
in Babylon, and these two sanctuaries were the most
famous in the country.
Another prominent deity was NEEGAL, whose temple,
E-shidlam, in the city of Kutu, or Cuthah, was one

1
A
place situated about two hours ride from the modern city of
Hillah.
22 NERGAL, NINIB, AND NUSKU.

of the oldest and largest sanctuaries in Northern

Babylonia. In general character Nergal was the god

of battle, and, no doubt from its destructive nature,
of pestilence also; in still another capacity he was
1
the dead. The connection of
regarded as the god of
Nergal with the city of Cuthah
was never severed
of Babylonian history.
throughout the long period
of the city of Ur,
Dungi, one of the earliest kings
records the building or restoration of his shrine in that

city, and more than two thousand years later, among

the Babylonians whom Sargon sent to colonize Samaria,
we read of certain men of Cuth, or Cuthah, who made
an image of Nergal, to whom they trusted to preserve
2

them from the lions that roamed through the devastated

land. A god who was in later times closely associated

with Nergal is NINIB. The reading of his name is

conjectural, and his original

character is also a matter

of some uncertainty, but under the Assyrian kings his

personality was more clearly
indicated. By them he
was as a
regarded of battle and the chase, and it
god
was to Nergal and Ninib that they
ascribed the gift of

their mighty weapons. The Fire-god, NUSKU, may

also be mentioned among the more important deities,

in view of the prominent position he occupies in the

magical works of the Babylonians.

The Babylonian goddesses, with one exception, are
characters
not very imposing figures, nor are their
2
1
See below, p. 37.
2 Kings xvii. 30.
 BABYLONIAN GODDESSES. 23

very sharply defined or differentiated. Their position

corresponded to some extent with the inferior position
of women in Babylonia. It has already been remarked
that the Babylonian conceived his gods to be very
human in their form and feelings, and it was but

natural that his picture of their wives should have been

drawn after the same model. Their principal functions
in fact were to receive the favours of their lords and
to become the mothers of a younger generation of gods.
In several instances we may trace their position of

dependence in the very names by which they were

known. Thus ANATU, the wife of Anu, and BELIT, the
wife of Bel, in name as well as nature are merely
female counterparts of the male deities with whom

they are associated. DAMKINA, the wife of Ea, was

a slightly more important personage to judge from the
numerous hymns addressed to her in the later period,

a fact that may perhaps be explained as arising from

her position as the mother of Marduk. TSARPANITUM,
Marduk s wife, however, was of account away
little

from her partner, and the same may be said of

TASHMETU the wife of Nabu, NINGAL the wife of the

Moon-god, Ai the wife of the Sun-god, SHALA the wife

of Eamman, GULA the wife of Mnib, and LAZ the wife
of Nergal. In fact, the goddesses of Babylonia exercised
but independent power, and, both in the ritual
little

of worship and in the myths and stories told about the

gods, they play a very unimportant and subordinate part.

24 THE GODDESS ISHTAR.

There one very striking exception to this general

is

rule, namely the goddess ISHTAR. This deity in her

own person appears to have absorbed the power and
influence which were, at times, ascribed to other

goddesses. She was identified with the Sumerian

goddess Ninni, and in the Assyrian inscriptions she
becomes the wife of the national god Ashur she was ;

also referred to as
"

Belit," i.e.,
"

the Lady,"
and in this

character she assumed the titles and prerogatives of the

In course of time the name
"

wife of Bel.
"

Ishtar was

employed as a generic term for goddess. In Babylonia,

moreover, she was known by two different local names,

which represented two quite distinct and separate
characters. Under the title Anunitu she was wor
shipped as the goddess of battle at Agade and also at the
city called Sippar of Anunitu and under this aspect she
;

was regarded as the daughter of Sin the Moon-god and

of Ningal his wife. At the great temple of E-ana at
Freeh, on the other hand, she was worshipped as the
goddess of love and identified with Nana ; and in this
character she was regarded as the daughter of Anu
and Anatu. It was in her gentler character as the
goddess of love that she became connected in legend
with Dumuzi or Tamrnuz, her lover who died in

early youth, and for the sake of whose recovery she

descended to the realm of the dead. She was served
at Erech by numerous priestesses attached to her

worship, and the rites practised at her shrine, a later

 THE GODS IN HEAVEN. 25

1
form of which is described by Herodotus, were
the goddess of love. By
performed in her honour as
the Assyrians she was chiefly revered as the goddess
of battle she had two famous shrines in Assyria, one
;

at Nineveh and one at Arbela, and at both she was

worshipped in her warlike character.

Such are the characteristics of the principal gods of
the Babylonians during the greater part of their history,
and the sketch here given, though drawn from the re
is not inconsistent with
ligious and historical literature,
the attributes assigned to them in the astrological and

astronomical inscriptions. The identification of the

planets with some of the greater gods was probably

neither a very early nor primitive development,
but
one which took place after the Babylonian company of
the gods had been definitely formed. When the worship
of a host of local gods had given place to an organized
worship, and when the growth
of
system of nature
legend and myth necessitated a belief in the constant
intercourse of the gods with one another, it was not
unnatural for the Babylonians to assume that the gods
dwelt together in some special place, that is to say in
heaven. From the earliest times the sun and moon
were regarded as the symbols of the gods Shamash
and Sin respectively, and the movements of the two

great luminaries were believed to be directed by

them. At a later period the movements of the planets

Book I., chap. 199.

26 SPIRITS AND DEMONS.

were also thought to be directed by gods whose symbols

they were, and it is probable that in this way the

identification of Marduk with Jupiter, of Ishtar with

Venus, of Ninib with Saturn, of Nergal with Mars

1
and of Nabu with Mercury took place. The members
of the great triad of deities, who have been referred to

head of the company of the gods, were

as standing at the

not omitted from this process Bel and Ea were trans ;

ferred toheaven and placed side by side with Anu, and

the three henceforth divided the heavens between them.
In the above sketch we have only enumerated the
Hani rdbuti, or great gods of the Babylonians, and it
"
"

must not be forgotten that subordinate to them stood a

host of lesser gods as well as countless demons and spirits

possessing various powers and influences. Of these lesser

spirits the two classes most frequently met with in the

religious inscriptions are the ANUNNAKI and the IGIGI,

"

the
"

Spirits of the Earth and the "

Spirits of Heaven,"

respectively. Each class generally mentioned in is

connection with the other, and they are described as

carrying out the will of the great gods. In the magical

literature the number of demons and ghosts and spirits

which were hostile to mankind isvery numerous, and to

escape their evil influence it was necessary to invoke
the assistance of magic and to employ powerful spells; by
these means the help and protection of the great gods

might be obtained to deliver a man from their baneful

acts.
1
See Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Balylonier, pp. 134 ff.
 CHAPTEE II.

HEAVEN, EARTH, AND HELL.

THE conception formed by the Babylonians with regard

to the shape and nature of the earth on which they lived,
and the ideas they held respecting the structure of the
heavens, and the expectation which they entertained of
one day dwelling in some region beyond the grave, can

only be gathered from various stray references and

allusions scattered throughout the remains of their
literature. We possess no treatise on these subjects
from the pen of a Babylonian priest, and we have
to trace and piece together the beliefs
for ourselves

of the Babylonians on all these questions from pas

sages in their historical and religious writings. That

the ancient Babylonians concerned themselves with
such problems there is ample evidence to show, and,

although they have left behind them no detailed

description of the universe, it is possible by a careful

study of the texts to obtain a fairly complete idea

of the world as they pictured it. To understand
many of the legends and stories told concerning the
Babylonian gods and heroes it is necessary to consider
28 SHAPE OF THE EARTH.
will
heaven, earth, and hell from their standpoint it ;

be well, therefore, to trace their views concerning these

regions before passing to the myths and legends that are

translated or referred to in the following chapters.
With regard to the formation and shape of the earth

we find a very interesting passage in a legend told con

cerning the old Babylonian hero Etana.

The Eagle was
a friend of Etana, and on one occasion this bird offered
to carry him up to heaven. Etana accepted the Eagle s
offer, and, clinging with his hands to the Eagle s pinions,
he was carried up from the earth. As they rose to

told Etana to
gether into the higher regions, the Eagle
look at the earth which grew smaller and smaller as
different points of his
they ascended three times at ;

flight, he told
him to look down, and each time the Eagle
spoke he compared the earth to
some fresh object.
"

After an interval of two hours the Eagle said, Look,

my friend, at the appearance of the earth. Behold,
"

"

the sea, at its side is the House of Wisdom. 1 Look how

the earth resembles a mountain, the sea has turned into
"

"

After carrying Etana up for two

[a pool of] water."

more hours the Eagle said, Look, my friend, at the

"

a girdle round the

appearance of the earth. The sea is
"

earth." After ascending for a further space

"
of two hours

the Eagle exclaimed, "The sea has changed into a

and at a still higher point of their
"
"

gardener s channel ;

1
I.e., the dwelling-place of Ea, the Lord of Wisdom, who dwelt in

the deep.
 POSITION OF THE SEA. 2Q

had shrunk to the size of a flower-bed.

flight the earth
From these passages we see that the writer of the

earth to be like a mountain around

legend imagined the
which flowed the sea. At the first stopping place Etana
a
and the Eagle were so high that the sea looked like
in the middle of which the earth rose.
pool of water,
like a
Later the sea had become so small that it looked
round the earth, and at length it appeared very
girdle
water-channel
"

made
larger than a
"

s
little gardener
for irrigation purposes.

The belief that the earth was hemispherical in shape,

was
resembling a mountain with gently sloping sides,

common among the Babylonians as we know from other

1
the Baby
passages. According to Diodorus Siculus,
lonians said that the earth was "like a boat and
"

hollow."
2 and Euphrates,
The boat used on the Tigris

and representations of which frequently occur on the

3
monuments, had no keel and was circular in shape.
Such a boat turned upside down would give a very
accurate picture of the Babylonian notion of the shape
of the the base of which the sea encircled as a
earth,
1
A Greek historian, born in Sicily, who lived in the first century
before Christ, and wrote a history of the world in forty books.
2
Bk. II., ch. 31, cd. Vogel, vol. i., p. 222.
The Babylonians and Assyrians are also
3
boats used by the
described by Herodotus (Bk. I., chap. 194), who says that they were
circular like a shield, their ribs being formed by willow branches and
covered externally with skins, while no distinction was made between
the head an l the stern. At the present day similar vessels built of

branches and skins, over which bitumen is smeared, are used at

Baghdad. (See Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii, p. 381.)
30 THE DOME OF HEAVEN.

girdle encircles
To a dweller on the plains of
a man.
Mesopotamia the earth might well seem to be a mountain
the centre of which was formed by the high mountain

ranges of Kurdistan ;
while the Persian Gulf and the
Indian Ocean which were on the south-east of Baby
lonia, and the Red Sea and the Mediterranean lying to

the south-west and west respectively, doubtless led to

the belief that the ocean surrounded the world.

At some distance above the earth was stretched out

the heaven, a solid dome or covering in the form of

a hollow hemisphere, very much like the earth in

shape. Both earth and heaven rested upon a great

the Deep. It is not
body of water called APSU, i.e.,

how the solid dome of heaven was sup

quite certain
is not clear whether it was
ported, that is to say, it

supported by the earth, or was held up, independently

of the earth, by the waters. According to one view
the edge of the earth was turned up and formed around
it a solid wall like a steep range of hills upon which
the dome heaven rested; and in the hollow be
of

tween the mountain of the earth and this outer wall

of hills the sea collected in the form of a narrow

stream. This conception coincides with some of the

phrases in the legend of Etana, but against it may

be urged the fact that the sea is frequently identified

with Apsu or the primeval Deep upon which the earth
rested. But the edges of the earth supported the
if

dome of heaven, all communication between the sea

 THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 31

and Apsu would be cut more probable there

off. It is

fore that the earth did not support the heaven, and

that the foundations of the heavens, like those of the

earth, rested In the beginning, before the

on Apsu.
creation of the world, nothing existed except the water

wherein dwelt monsters. According to a version of

the creation story, however, the god Bel or Marduk
formed the heavens and the earth out of the body of
a greatfemale monster that dwelt in the Deep which
he had slain. body into two halves, he
Splitting her
fashioned from one half the dome of heaven, and from
1
the other the earth.
Above the dome of heaven was another mass of

water, a heavenly ocean, which the solid dome of

heaven supported and kept in its place, so that it
might not break through and flood the earth. On the
under side of the dome the stars had their courses
and the Moon-god his path. In the dome, moreover,
were two gates, one in the east and the other in the
west, for the use of Shamash, the Sun-god, who every
day journeyed from one to the other across the world.
Coming from behind the dome of heaven, he passed
through the eastern gate, and, stepping out upon the
Mountain of the Sunrise at the edge of the world,
he began his journey across the sky. In the evening
he came to the Mountain of the Sunset, and, stepping

upon it, he passed through the western gate of heaven

1
See below, p. 55.
 THE PATH OF THE SUN-GOD,

and disappeared from the sight of men. According

he made his daily journey across the
to one tradition

sky in a chariot, which was drawn by two fiery horses.

In representations on cylinder-seals, however, he is

generally shown making his journey on foot. In the

accompanying illustration Shamash is seen appearing

Shamash, the Sun-god, coming forth through the eastern door of heaven. (From
a cylinder-seal in the British Museum, No. 89,110.)

above the horizon of the world, as he enters the sky

through the eastern gate of heaven.

In the following hymn, addressed to the Eising Sun,
a reference is made to Shamash entering the world

through the eastern gate of heaven :

Shamash, on the foundation of heaven thou hast

"

flamed forth.
"

Thou hast unbarred the bright heavens,

"

Thou hast opened the portals of the sky.

Shamash, thou hast raised thy head over the land.
"

Shamash, thou hast covered the lands with the

"

brightness of heaven."
 THE GATES OF HEAVEN. 33

Another hymn, addressed to the Setting Sun, con

tains a reference to the return of Shamash into the
interior of heaven :

Shamash, when thou enterest into the midst of

"

heaven,
"

The gate-bolt of the bright heavens shall give thee

greeting,
"

The doors of heaven shall bless thee.

"The
righteousness of thy beloved servant shall
direct thee.

"Thy sovereignty shall be glorious in E-babbara ;

the seat of thy power,

"

And Ai, thy beloved wife, shall come joyfully into

thy presence,
"

And she shall give rest unto thy heart.

"

A feast for thy godhead shall be spread for thee.

"0 valiant hero, Shamash, [mankind] shall glorify

thee.
"

lord of E-babbara, the course of

thy path shall
be straight.
"

Go forward on the road which is a sure foundation

for thee.

Shamash, thou art the judge of the world, thou

"

directest the decisions thereof."

Each evening when Shamash entered the innermost

part of heaven he was met by Ai, his wife, and he
feasted and rested from his exertions in the abode of
the gods. For, beyond the sky which was visible to
BAB. REL. D
34 THE INNERMOST PART OF HEAVEN.

men, and beyond the heavenly ocean which the dome

was a mysterious realm of tran
of the sky supported,

scendental splendour and beauty, the KIRIB SHAME,

or "Innermost part of where the great. gods
Heaven,"

at times dwelt apart from mankind. As a general

rule the greater number of the gods dwelt upon earth,
each in his own city and shrine, and each was believed
to be intent upon the welfare of his worshippers ;
but
at any moment they could, if they so desired, go up
to heaven. Thus, the goddess Ishtar was wont to

dwell in the ancient city of Erech, but when she

thought that an insult had been offered to her divinity

by the hero Gilgamesh she at once ascended into
heaven and demanded vengeance from her father and
mother, that is to say, Anu the god of heaven, and
Anatu his wife. 1 Again, the deluge sent by Bel upon
the earth, besides destroying mankind, overwhelmed
the shrines and temples of the gods who dwelt in the

land, and they were driven forth and fled in fear to

2
heaven, the realm of Anu. It was, however, only

upon rare occasions that the gods left the earth, and
it is in accordance with this rule that the council-
chamber of the gods, where fate and destiny were
decreed, was not in heaven but upon the earth. The
name of this chamber was UPSHUKKINAKU, and here
the gods gathered together when they were summoned
to a general council. This chamber was supposed to
2
1
See p. 161. See p. 131.
 THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD. 35

be situated in the east, in the Mountain of the Sunrise,

not far from the edge of the world where it was bounded
by the waters of the great Deep.
It has already been stated that the earth was
thought
by the Babylonians to be in the form of a great hemi
sphere, and we must now add that they believed its
hollow interior to be filled with the waters of the
Deep
upon which it also rested. The layer of earth was
not, however, regarded as a thin crust. On the
contrary, though hollow, the crust of solid ground was

throught to be of great thickness. Within this crust,

which formed the mountain of the world," deep down
"

below the surface of the ground, was a

great cavern
called ARALLU, and here was the abode of the dead.

In this region was the

great HOUSE OF THE DEAD
which was surrounded by seven walls; these were
so strongly built,and so carefully watched and guarded
by beings of the underworld, that no one who had once
entered therein could ever to return to
hope again
earth ; indeed another name for Arallu, or the under
world, was mat Id tdri, The land of no
"

The return."

House Dead was dark and gloomy, and in it

of the
the dead dragged out a
weary and miserable existence.
They never beheld the light of the sun, but sat in
unchanging gloom. In
appearance they resembled
birds, for they were clothed in garments of feathers ;

their only food

was dust and mud, and over
everything
thick dust was scattered. The Babylonians had no
36 THE JOYLESS EXISTENCE OF THE DEAD.
did
hope of a joyous beyond the grave, and they
life

not conceive a paradise in which the deceased would

live a life similar to that he lived upon earth. They
made no distinction between the just and the unjust,
and the good and the bad, but believed that all would
share a common fate and would be reduced to the
same level after death. The Babylonians shared this

condition of the dead with

conception of the joyless
the Hebrews, whom Slieol, or Hell, was thought to
by
be a place where the dead led an existence deprived
of all the joys of life. In Isaiah the dead, including
and the kings of the
"
"

the chief ones of the earth

"

"

nations," are pictured as trooping forth to meet the

king of Babylon when he joins their company; and

unto him
"

Art thou also become

they answer and say
:

"

weak as we ? Art thou become like unto us ?

Thy
"

is brought down and the noise of thy

to hell
pomp
"

viols the worm is spread under thee and worms

:

"cover thee."
1
Ezekiel also emphasizes the same
contrast between the condition of the living and the
dead. Those that have caused terror in the land of
when they are slain lie still, and bear their
"

the living,
2
with those that go down to the
"shame pit."
The
Psalmist prays to Jehovah for deliverance, "for in
"

death there is no remembrance of thee : in Sheol who

"
3
shall give thee thanks ?
"

The goddess who presided over this joyless realm

3
1
Isaiah xiv. 10 f.
2
Ezekiel xxxii. 17 if. Psalm vi. 5.
 THE GODS OF THE DEAD. 37

of the dead was named ALLATU, or ERESHKIGAL, and

she was associated in her rule with the god NERGAL
in his character as the god of the dead. The name
of the wife of Nergal was the goddess Laz, but legend
tells how Nergal forced his way into the Lower World

with the purpose of slaying Allatu, and how the

on him to spare
goddess by her entreaties prevailed
her life and marry her. Henceforth Nergal and Allatu
ruled together over the realm of the dead. The chief
minister of Allatu was NAMTAR, the demon of pesti
lence and disease, who acted as her messenger and put

her orders into execution. Allatu s decrees were

the
"

written down by a goddess called BELIT-TSERI,

of the Desert," who possibly took her name

"Lady

from the wild and barren desert that shut in Babylonia

on the west and the chief porter who guarded its
;

entrance was a god named XEDU. The Anunnaki, or

of the Earth," also frequently acted under
"Spirit

the orders of Nergal and Allatu. In addition to these

chief deities Allatu exercised control over a number

of demons, who, like Namtar, spread plague and disease

so brought fresh subjects to the
among mankind, and
realm of their mistress.
The form and appearance of certain of the gods and
demons of the underworld may be gathered from a
number of engraved bronze plates which have come
down to us ; these, it has been suggested, were in
tended to be placed as votive tablets in the graves
38 A BABYLONIAN GRAVE-TABLET.

of the dead. The accompanying illustration has been

taken from the finest known specimen of this class of

object which was purchased in Syria some twenty

years ago it had evidently been brought there from
;

some ancient Babylonian city. On the back of this

tablet is cut in relief the figure of a mythical winged
beast with a lion s head ;
it stands on its hind legs
and raises its head above the edge of the plate, the
top of which it grasps with its fore paws. On the front
of the tablet, which is here reproduced, a funereal
scene is represented. The beast looking over the top
of the tablet is identified by some with the god Nergal,
who was believed to preside over the funeral rites

which are being performed for the deceased.

It will be observed that the scene is divided by

means of thick lines into four registers. The first

register contains the emblems of a number of the

gods. Here we have a group of seven small circles

or stars, and a crescent, and a winged solar disk, and a

circle containing an eight-rayed star, and a cylindrical,

horned head-dress, and other objects. It has been

suggested that these emblems had astrological signifi

1
cance, and if this be the case they may perhaps
represent a particular grouping of the stars of the
heavens and so indicate the date of the death of the
man for whose benefit the tablet was made. The
occurrence of such emblems, however, is frequent, both
1
See Clermont-Gannean, Rev. Archeol, Nouv. 8&., vol. 37, p. 343.
 a deceased
Bronze plate on which are depicted the gods of the dead in attendance upon
person and certain demons and dwellers in
the underworld, (trom HtS
S
Archeologique, ffouv. er., Vol. 37.)
 A FUNEREAL SCENE. 41

on royal monuments (e.g., the stele of Ashur-natsir-pal,

and the stele of Shalmaneser II., and the rock inscrip
tion at Bavian), and on inscribed cylinder seals and ;

on these two classes of objects the emblems do

not appear to have any astrological significance. It

therefore seems more correct to explain their position

at the head of the tablet by assuming that they are

placed there as amulets to secure for the

dead man
the favour of the deities whose emblems they were.
The next three registers into which the rest of the

scene is divided been supposed to represent

have
different stages in the upper and lower world. It is

preferable, however, to suppose that the three groups

of figures in the three registers are parts of one scene,

though they are placed, as is frequently the case in

archaic sculptures, one above the other. The whole
scene represents the deceased lying on his bier,

attended by demons and beings from the underworld.

In the second register we have seven mythical
creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of

beasts. They all are clothed in long tunics which

reach to the and they all
feet, face towards the right,

and the right hand of each is raised. Each being has

the head of a different beast. Beginning on the right
it will be seen that the first one has the head of a

serpent, the second that of a bird, the third that of a

horse, the fourth that of a ram, the fifth that of a bear,
the sixth that of a hound, and the seventh that of a
42 GUARDIANS OF THE DEAD.

lion. Certain other gods or demons occur in the third

register. The first one on the right, who is in the form

of a bearded man, has his right hand raised in the same
manner as the seven beings in the second register, and
next to him stand two lion-headed creatures, clasping
hands. All these gods or demons appear to belong to
the region of the dead, and they seem to be guarding
the bier of the deceased, who is lying upon it with
hands clasped and raised above him. On the left is the
deceased in his grave-clothes; at his head and feet

stand two attendants, with their right hands raised, and

they appear to be performing some mystic ceremony

over the corpse. The dress of these attendants is

remarkable, for they wear garments made in the form

of a fish. Behind the attendant at the head of the bier
is a stand for burning incense.
The most interesting figures on the plate are those
in the fourth register, for they represent two of the
chief deities of the underworld. The female figure in
the centre is the goddess Allatu, the queen of the dead.
She has the head of a lioness and the body of a woman ;

in each hand she grasps a serpent, and a lion hangs

from each breast. She kneels upon a horse in a boat
and is sailing over the "Waters of Death," which

adjoin Apsu, the primeval ocean that rolls beneath

the earth. The hideous, winged demon behind her is

Namtar, the demon of the plague, who waits upon her

and is ever ready to do her bidding. It is not certain
 OTHER GRAVE-TABLETS. 43

what the objects in front of Allatu are, but it is

that they are intended to represent the

probable
offerings which were placed
in the grave with the

deceased. The purpose of the tablet seems to have

been to secure the safe passage of the dead man into

Arallu, or the underworld.

A somewhat similar bronze tablet, but less well

preserved, is Imperial Ottoman Museum at

in the

Constantinople, and is said to have been

found at

Surghul in Southern Babylonia.

1
On the back of this
tablet, beneath the feet of the monster who looks over

the top, a space of four lines has been left blank to

receive an which would either record

inscription
the name and titles of the deceased, or contain an
incantation which was to be recited for his benefit.
On the back of a similar, though somewhat smaller
tablet that was evidently intended to be used for the

same purpose (although it only represented the goddess

Allatu, while the bier and the Plague-demon Namtar and
the other gods or demons found on the larger tablets
were wanting), a longer inscription was found. This
tablet was published by Lajard, but the text is so badly

copied that it cannot be read with certainty.

2
A still

smaller tablet of the same character is preserved in

8
the British Museum.
1
See the plate published by Scheil, Eecuc.il de Travanx, Vol. XX.,
p. 55.
2
See Lajard, Recherches sur le culte . . . de V&ius, pi. XVII., No. 1.
3
No. 86,262.
44 THE IMPORTANCE OF DUE BURIAL.

Perhaps in no matter do the Babylonians afford a

more striking contrast to the Egyptians than in the
treatment of the dead. In the moist, alluvial soil of

Mesopotamia the dead body fell quickly into decay,

and in the absence of ranges of hills such as those
which run on each side of the Nile Valley, the making
of rock-hewn tombs in which the bodies of the dead

might be preserved was impossible. It is to this fact,

probably, that we may trace the ideas of the gloomy

existence which the Babylonians believed they would
lead when they passed beyond the grave. It must not
be imagined, however, that the Babylonians attached no

importance to the rites of burial. On the contrary, the

greatest misfortune that could befall a man was to be

deprived of burial, for, was thought that

in this case, it

his shade could not reach Arallu, and that it would

have to wander disconsolately about the earth, where,

driven by the pangs of hunger, it would be obliged to
eat and drink any offal or leavings which it might
find in the street. It was in order to ensure such a

on his conquest of
fate to his foes that Ashur-bani-pal,

Susa, caused the graves of the kings who had been

dead and buried many years to be disturbed and their
bones to be dragged to Assyria and the same object
;

prompted the mutilation of corpses on the battlefield

and the casting forth of the dead bodies to be devoured
by birds and beasts of prey.
To leave a body unburied, however, was not un-
 WANDERING SHADES. 45

attended with danger to the living, for the shade

of

the dead man, during its wanderings over the earth,

might bewitch any person it

met and cause him

grievous sickness.
The wandering shade of a man was
called
"

ekiminu," i.e., spectre,

and the sorcerer and the
witch claimed to possess the power of casting a spell

whereby an "ekimmu" might be made to harass a

ekimmu would some
"

man. On the other hand an

"

times settle on a man of its own accord, in the hope

that its victim would give it burial in order to free

himself from its clutches. We have in the British

Museum an interesting incantation

which was intended
an ekimmu had
"

man on whom
"

to be recited by a
fastened
1
and from this we learn that a man, who
itself,
in his
had fallen sick in consequence, might cry aloud
pain, saying :

"

Ea, Shamash, Marduk, deliver me,

And mercy let me have relief.
"

through your
Shamash, a horrible spectre for many days
"

"

Hath fastened itself on my back, and will not loose

its hold upon me.
"

The whole day long he persecuteth me, and in the

terror into me.

night season he striketh
"

He sendeth forth he maketh the hair of

pollution,

my head to stand up,

"He taketh the power from my body, he maketh

mine eyes to start out,

1
See King, Babylonian Magic and Sorcery, p. 119 f.
46 LAYING A TROUBLED SPIRIT.

"

He plagueth my back, he poisoneth my flesh,

"

He plagueth my whole body."

The sick man in his despair prays to Shamash to

be delivered from the ekimmu, whoever he may be,

saying :

Whether be the spectre of one of my own

"

it family
and kindred,
"

Or the spectre of one who was murdered,

"

Or whether it be the spectre of any other man that

haunteth me."

In order to ensure the departure of the spectre to

the underworld he next makes the necessary offerings
which will cause the spirit of the unburied man to

depart, and says :

"

A garment to clothe him, and shoes for his feet,

"

And a girdle for his loins, and a skin of water for

him to drink,
"

And ... l
as food for his journey have I given him.
Let him depart into the West,
"

"

To Nedu, the chief Porter of the Underworld, I

consign him.
"Let Nedu, the chief Porter of the Underworld,
guard him securely,
"

And may bolt and bar stand firm (over him)."

It is clear, therefore, that in their own interest, as

well as in that of the deceased, a man s friends and
relations took good care that he was buried with all

1
I cannot translate the signs in the text here.
 MOURNING FOR THE DEAD. 47

due respect, and ensured his safe journey to the lower

world by placing in the grave offerings of meat and

drink to sustain him by the way such offerings were ;

lot
perhaps also intended to alleviate his unhappy
after his arrival in the gloomy abode of the underworld.

Not many details have come down to us with regard

to the ceremonies that were performed at the grave,
but we know that after a man s death his house was
filled with mourners, both male and female, whom his

family hired in order that they might give public

his death. Among
expression to the grief occasioned by
the Assyrian letter-tablets in the British Museum there
is one
l
which refers to the death of the reigning king
and to the regulations for mourning that were to be

observed at the court. "The

king,"
the letter says,

"is dead, and the inhabitants of the city of Ashur

"weep."
The writer of the letter then goes on to

describe the departure of the governor of the city with

his wife from the palace, the offering up of a sacrifice,
and the wearing of mourning raiment by the whole
court and it finally states that arrangements had been
;

made with a director of music to come with his female

musicians and sing dirges in the presence of the court.
The mourning on the death of a private citizen would
of course be carried out on a more modest scale.

After the mourning for the dead man had been

performed, his body, duly prepared for burial, was

1
British Museum, No. 81-2-4, 05.
48 BURIAL RITES.

carried forth to the grave. That the burial of the dead

with accompanying rites and offerings was practised
in Babylonia from a remote period is proved by a
representation on a stele which was set up to record

the victories of Eannadu, an ancient king of the city

of Shirpurla, who reigned in all probability before

B.C. 4000. On a portion of this stele is a representation

of the burial of those of his warriors who had fallen

in battle. The dead are laid in rows, with head to

feet alternately, and above them a mound of earth has

been raised ;
their comrades are represented bearing
baskets containing more earth for the mound, or per

haps funeral offerings for the dead.

1
On the monuments
of later Babylonian and Assyrian kings we do not find

in a broken
any representation of burial ceremonies, but
inscription of one of the later Assyrian kings,
whose
name has unfortunately not been preserved, we have
a brief but very interesting account of the ceremonies
which he performed at his father s burial.
2
He says
Within the grave,
"

"

The secret place,

"

In kingly oil,

I gently laid him.

"

"

The grave-stone
"

Marketh his resting-place.

"With mighty bronze
1
See De Sarzcc, Decouvertes en Chaldee, pi. 3.
2
British Museum, K. 7856; see Meissner, Vienna Oriental Journal,
Vol. XII., pp. 60 ff.
 THE INTERMENT OF A KING. 49

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,

1

"

And unto the gods who inhabit the grave,

I then
"

presented."

From we
learn that the king placed vessels of
this

gold and silver in the grave as dedicatory offerings,

and after sealing up the entrance to the grave he

pronounced a powerful spell to prevent the violation
of the tomb by robbers he also presented offerings to ;

propitiate the demons and dwellers in the underworld.

Another interesting point about this record is the
fact that the dead body is said to have been set
"

in

was
"

kingly oil,"
for the oil clearly, used with the idea
of preserving the body from decay. Salt also seems
to have been used for the purpose of preserving the
dead, for Ashur-bani-pal tells how, when Nabu-bel-
shumati had caused himself to be slain by his
attendant to prevent himself falling alive into the

1
The Anunnaki.
BAB. REL. E
 50 PRESERVATION OF THE DEAD BODY.

hands of Ashur-bani-pal, Ummanaldas had the body

placed in salt and conveyed to Assyria into the
1
presence of the king. Besides salt and oil, honey
seems also to have been used by the Babylonians for

preserving the dead. Herodotus says that the Baby

lonians buried in honey, 2 and that honey possesses
great powers of preserving the dead is proved by the
fact that the Egyptians also used it for this purpose. 3

Moreover, it is recorded that Alexander the Great

when on his death-bed commanded that he should be
buried in honey, and it seems that his orders were
4
obeyed. Tradition also says that one Marcellus having

prepared the body of Saint Peter for burial by means

of large quantities of myrrh, spices, etc., laid it in a
"
5
"

long chest filled with honey.

There is ample evidence, therefore, to show that the
Babylonians cared for their dead and took pains about
their burial, and it is the more surprising on that

account, that during the numerous excavations which

have been carried out in Mesopotamia, comparatively
few graves have been discovered. Of the graves that
have been found, some are built of bricks and are in
the form of small vaulted chambers, while others have
a flat or domed roof supported by a brick substructure;

Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, Vol. V., pi. vii., 11. 38

1
ff.
3
-
Bk. I., chap. 198. See Budge, The Mummy, p. 183.
4
See Budge, The Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great, Vol. II.,

p. 349 f.
5
See Brit. Mus. MS. Oriental 678, fol. 11 a, col. 1.
 BABYLONIAN GRAVES. 51

in addition to these graves a few

clay sarcophagi and
burial jars have been found. With the skeletons in
the graves are usually found a small number of vases
and perhaps some simple objects of the toilet but ;

from the fact that no inscriptions have been found

either over these graves or upon any of the objects
found therein, it is
extremely difficult to assign to
them even an approximate date; in fact, some have
unhesitatingly assigned them to a period which is much
laterthan that of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian

empires. To account for this d earth of graves the

suggestion has been made that the Babylonians burnt
their dead, but not a has been found
single passage
in the cuneiform inscriptions in
support of this view.
It is true that in the winter of 1886 and in the spring
of the following year the Eoyal Prussian Museum sent
out an expedition to Babylonia, which, after
excavating
the mounds of Surghul and El-Hibbah, thought they
had obtained conclusive evidence that the Babylonians
burnt their dead. 1 But it has since been pointed out
that the tombs they excavated belong to a period
subsequent the fall of the Babylonian Empire,
to

while the half-burned appearance of the charred

human remains they discovered seemed to suggest
that the bodies were not cremated but were
accidentally
destroyed by fire. However the comparatively small
number of graves that have been found may be
1
ftee
Koldewey, Zeitschrift fur AssyrWogie, Bd. If., pp. 403 ff.
52 CARE FOR THE DEAD.

accounted for, we may confidently believe that the

Babylonians and Assyrians were in the habit of

burying, and not burning, their dead throughout the

whole course of their history. We are right also in
saying that they imagined that burial, and offerings
made at the toinb, would ameliorate the lot of the
departed, and that they were usually scrupulous in

performing all rites which could possibly benefit the

dead.
 .( 53 )

CHAPTER III.

THE LEGENDS OF CREATION.

THE nations of the ancient world who have left behind

literature
any remains or traces of their possessed
theories as to the manner in which the world came
into being. Such cosmogonies as they are
theories, or
or
termed, are generally told in the form of myths
stories, and, although we only know them in their later

and fully developed forms, their origin may be assumed

to go back to a considerable antiquity. If we may

from the studies and observations that have been

judge
made of undeveloped races at the present day, it may
be concluded that primitive man was essentially a
maker of myths. Believing as he did that every object
and force in nature possessed a personality and will
like his own, he would explain the changes he saw

taking place in the world around him by means of

legends and stories. In these he would ascribe to the

mysterious beings, which seemed to him to animate
the natural world, motives similar to those which
would control his own actions. At a more mature
54 LEGENDS OF CREATION.

stage in his development he began to perceive a con

nection or dependence between the various powers of

nature, such as the alternation of day and night, the

movements of the stars, and the regular recurrence
of the seasons ;
these would tend to suggest that some

plan or system had been followed in the creation of

the world, and in seeking for the reason of things
along the familiar lines of myth, he would in process
of time develop a cosmogony or story of creation. We
have evidence that at least two such stories were
current in Babylonia and Assyria in the later periods
of their history.

The story of the creation of the world as told in

Babylon about the year B.C. 300 we know in brief

outline from the extracts that have come down to us
from the history of Berosus, a Chaldean priest, who
ministered in the temple of Bel at Babylon at the end
of the fourth and the beginning of the third century
before Christ. Berosus wrote a history of Babylonia,

beginning with the creation of the world and extending

down to his own time, and although his work, which

he translated into Greek, has been lost, extracts from

it have been preserved in the books of later writers.
His account of the creation, for instance, was repro
duced by Alexander Polyhistor, from whom Eusebius
1
quotes in the first book of his Chronicon. From this
we learn that the Babylonians pictured to themselves
1
Citron. I., eel. Schoene, col. 14 ff.
 THE VERSION OF BEROSUS. 55

a time when had no existence, a time

the world
before things came into being, when darkness and
water alone existed. The water, however, did not
remain uninhabited for long, for monsters arose in it,

i.e., men with wings, and creatures with four wings

and two human heads, and beings with two heads, one
male and one female. Some creatures had the bodies
of men, but had the feet and horns of goats some had ;

the legs of horses, and others, like hippocentaurs, had

the bodies and legs of horses but the upper parts of
a man. Others, again, were in the form of bulls
with

the heads of or with four bodies ending in

men, dogs
the tail of a fish, or men and horses with the heads of

dogs, and some had the head and body of a horse but
the tail of a fish. In the water also creeping things,
and serpents, and many other monsters of strange and
varied shapes existed. Over these monsters a woman
called Omoroka (or Omorka), in Chaldee
reigned
Thamte,
1
Greek Thalassa,
or in change
"

the Sea." A
in this world of chaos was brought about by the death
of the woman Omorka, who was slain by a god named
Bel. Bel cleft her in twain, and from one half he made
the earth, and from the other he made the heavens;

and he slew monsters of the deep over whom she

also the

ruled. The account then goes on to say that after Bel

had created the earth, he perceived that it was barren
The which probably a corruption of
1
text reads Thalatth, is

Thamte, i.e., tdmtu the Babylonian for

"

sea, ocean." See Robertson

Smith, Zeit schrift fiir Asyriologie, Bd VI., p. 339.
56 DISCOVERY OF THE CREATION TABLETS.

and had no inhabitants; he therefore decided to use

his own blood for creation. He bade one of the gods

to cut off his head and mix the earth with the blood
which flowed from him, and from the mixture he
directed him to fashion men and animals. Although
deprived of his head Bel did not die, for he is said to

have also created the stars, the sun and moon, and the
five planets, after his head was cut off. Such is the

account of the Babylonian cosmogony as narrated by

Berosus, which Eusebius has preserved. But as the
latter writerquoted the story at second hand, it is
more than probable that he accidentally misrepresented
or misunderstood certain portions of it.

Fortunately we have not to depend on Eusebius

alone for our knowledge of the Babylonian stories of

creation, for we now possess far fuller accounts on

Assyrian and Babylonian tablets which have been

published within the last twenty-five years. The credit

of having made known to the world the Babylonian
Creation tablets belongs to the late Mr. George Smith

who, in 1875, published a story very like that told by

Berosus, inscribed upon some of the tablets and

fragments of tablets that had been brought to England

from the site of Ashur-bani-pal s library at Nineveh
several years before. The publication of the text and
1
translations of the Creation tablets by Mr. Smith threw
1
See Trans. Soc. Bill Arch., Vol. IV. (1876) p. 363 f.
(six plates),
aiid The Chaldean Account of Genesis, London, 1876.
 THEIR NUMBER AND CONTENTS. 57

and evoked
great light upon the Babylonian cosmogony,
considerable interest in the subject.
From the date of their first publication the tablets
have been closely studied, and from time to time fresh
identified in the
fragments of the legend have been
British Museum. During this period, moreover, the

of the Assyrian language has greatly

knowledge
increased, so that more accurate rendering of the
a

texts can now be given than was possible at the time

of their discovery.
1
From these inscriptions we gather
that at about the middle of the seventh century before
Christ the Babylonian story of the creation was pre
served at Nineveh, the of Assyria, in the form
capital

poem, divided into a number

of a great of parts or

sections, each of which was inscribed upon a separate

tablet. The tablets were distinguished by numbers,
and the whole series was named ENUMA ELISH,
"

When
in the height," from the opening words of the First

Tablet. The poem is incomplete in passages, and the

very imperfect. We know that the
end is series when
but it is
complete contained at least six tablets,
impossible to say definitely how many tablets it

contained. In spite of the fragmentary

originally
condition of many poem, however, the
parts of the
thread of the narrative can generally be followed.
1
For the principal works dealing with the Creation tablets which
have been published within recent years, see Jensen, Die Kosmologie
der Babylonier, pp. 203 if., Guukel and Zimmern, Schopfung und
Chaos, pp. 401 ff., and Delitzsch, Das babylonische Weltscltdpfuncjsepos ,

pp. 7 ff.
58 SUMMARY OF THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND.
This version of the Babylonian cosmogony is prac

tically identical with that given by Berosus about

three hundred and fifty years later. According to the

version on the Assyrian tablets, chaos in the beginning,

before the world was created, consisted of a watery mass.
Two primeval beings personified chaos, namely APSU,
the
"

Deep,"
and TIAMAT, the universal mother, who
corresponds to the woman named Omorka, or Thamte,

by Berosus. Beside Apsu and Tiamat no other being

existed, and they mingled their waters in confusion. In

the course of time the gods were created ;
the first were
Lakhmu and Lakhamu, Anshar and Kishar came next,
after many ages, and after a further period the other

great gods were born. But Tiamat, the monster of the

Deep, who had taken the form of a huge serpent, and

Apsu, her consort, revolted against the gods, and created

a brood of monsters to destroy them. Anshar, the
leader of the gods, having entrusted in vain the god

Ann, and after him the god Ea, with the task of resist

ing Tiamat, prevailed on Marduk, the son of Ea, to be

the champion of the gods and to do battle with the
monster. The gods were summoned by Anshar to a

council that they might confer supreme power upon

Marduk and arm him for the fight. After completing
his preparations Marduk went out to meet Tiamat and

her host and succeeded in slaying her and in taking

her helpers captive. He then split Tiamat s body in
half and from one half he formed the heaven, fixing
 ITS RESEMBLANCE TO GENESIS. 59

it as a firmament to divide the upper from the lower

waters, and placing bars and sentinels that the waters
Marduk then created the
should not break through.
the seasons,
heavenly bodies that they might regulate
and he appointed the moon to rule the night.
The

poem at this becomes mutilated, but there is

point
evidence to show that Marduk then created the earth,
and the green herb, and cattle, and the beasts of the field,
and creeping things, and man, in the order here given.
From the above summary of the Babylonian story

of creation it will be seen that presents some very

it

remarkable points of resemblance to the narrative

of the creation as preserved in the first chapter of

fact that the wide
Genesis ;
and it is chieiiy to this
in the legend is due. The bare outline
spread interest
given by Berosus
does not suggest a very close parallel
to the Biblical account, but from the
more detailed

narrative as given on the tablets we see that many

features of the story of creation narrated
in Genesis are

also characteristic of the Babylonian cosmogony. Thus

according to each account the existence of a watery
chaos preceded the creation of the present world.
The
1 "

Hebrew word tehom translated the deep in Genesis,

"

the Babylonian Tiamat," the

"

corresponds exactly with

monster of the deep who personified chaos and con
fusion. The creation of light recorded in Genesis is
the equivalent of the statement on the Creation tablets
1
Gen. i. 2.
60 THE BIBLICAL AND BABYLONIAN ACCOUNTS.
that Tiamat was vanquished by Marduk, for he overcame
the monster in his character as a solar god. Then there
follows in each narrative the description of the creation
of a firmament, or solid dome of heaven, to keep
the upper waters in place ;
in each account the narra
tive of the creation of the
heavenly bodies follows
that of the firmament, and in each also they are
appointed to regulate the seasons. It has been suggested
that the seven days of creation in Genesis correspond
to seven definite acts of creation in the Babylonian
account but a careful study of the Babylonian poem
;

has shown that such an arrangement was not contem

plated by the Babylonian scribes, nor is there any

evidence to show that the creation was deliberately
classified in a series of seven acts. A slight perusal of
the legend is, however, prove that the two
sufficient to

accounts present in many ways a very striking resem

blance to each other ;
but in some respects the contrast

they present is no less striking. When we examine the

aims and ideas which underlie and permeate the two
narratives, all resemblance between them ceases. The
monotheism of Genesis finds no echo in the Babylonian
poem, and in the latter no single and pre-existing deity
created the universe from chaos by his word, but the

gods themselves emerged from chaos, and it was only

after one of their number had fought with and slain

the mother of them all that the creation of the world

took place.
 THE CREATION OF THE GODS. 6l

Before we proceed to consider the problem of the

of the creation it will be
relationship of these two stories
well to give a translation of those portions of the Baby
lonian that have been preserved, and to trace
legends
their age and history so far as they can be ascertained.

The beginning of the First Tablet contains a descrip

tion of chaos and of the birth of the oldest gods it ;

reads :

"

When in the height heaven was not named,

l
"

And name
the earth beneath did not yet bear a ;

"

And Apsii the primeval, who begat them,

"

And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both

"

Their waters were mingled together, and

"

No fieldwas formed, no marsh was to be seen ;

"When of the gods none had been called into

being,
"And none bore a name, and no destinies [were
ordained] ;

Then were created the gods, [all of them],

"

"

Lakhnrn and Lakhamu were called into being. . .

Ages increased
"

"

Anshar and Kishar were created

Long were the days
"

Ann, the father

"

"

"

Anshar and Ann

The last line but one evidently refers to the creation

According to Semitic ideas the "name of a thing was regarded as its

1

essence hence to bear a name was equivalent to being in existence.

;
62 REPETITIONS IN THE TEXT.

of the god Ami ;

and from a passage in Damascius,
where Babylonian theogony is reproduced, we may
this 1

infer that the gods Bel and Ea were created along with

him. It is probable that the creation of the other great

gods was then described. Chaos was, in fact, giving

place to order, but the gods were not for long allowed
to remain in peace, for Tiamat, their mother, conceived
a hatred for them, and with Apsu, their father, plotted
their destruction. The First Tablet ends with a descrip

tion of the brood of monsters which Tiamat spawned to

aid her in her fight with the gods.

Of the Second Tablet very little has been preserved,

but, as in the case of the First Tablet, sufficient frag

ments of the text remain to indicate the general course

of the story. The piecing together of the narrative,

however, would be well nigh impossible were it not

for a strange characteristic of Babylonian poetry, that
is to say, the practice of frequent repetition. But for

this practice the description of Tiamat s brood of

monsters, and of her selection of Kingu as their captain

would be lost, for hardly

any of it remains on the frag
ments of the First Tablet. The description, however,
is form of a message to the god Anshar
repeated in the
at the beginning of the Second Tablet; it is also

repeated on the Third Tablet, once by Anshar to his

minister Gaga, and again by Gaga when delivering
Anshar s message to Lakhmu and Lakhamu. Had we
Quaestiones de primis principiis, chap. 125 (ed. Kopp,
1
p. 384).
 ANSHAR S INSTRUCTIONS TO GAGA. 63

the complete text of the First and Second Tablets of

the poem such repetition might be wearisome, but in

their present imperfect condition its advantages for the

restoration of the text are obvious.

On hearing the news of Tiamat s preparations for

battle thegod Anshar was troubled, and he sent his
son Anu to speak with her and to try to appease her

anger. Anu went to her, but when he saw her he

turned back in fear. The god Ea was next sent by
Anshar, but he met with no better success. Anshar
then invited the god Marduk to do battle with Tiamat,
and he consented on condition that the gods would
meet together and solemnly declare him their champion.
The Second Tablet ends with Marduk s speech to
Anshar, and the Third Tablet opens with Anshar s

instructions to his minister Gaga to summon a council

of the gods. Gaga was ordered to carry tidings of

Tiamat s revolt toLakhmu and Lakhamu, and to

direct them to summon the gods who were to appoint
Marduk as their champion. The Third Tablet begins :

Anshar opened his mouth, and

"

[To Gaga] his minister spake the word

"

[Go Gaga, thou minister] that rejoicest my

"

spirit,
(i

[To Lakhmu and La]khamu I will send thee.

"

let the gods, all of them,

them
"

[Make ready for a feast], at a banquet let

sit,
64 THE REVOLT OF TIAMAT.
let them mix wine,
[Let them eat bread],
"

"[That
for Marduk], their [avenger], they may
decree the fate.

before them,
[Go Ga]ga, stand
"

unto them, (and

[And all that I] tell thee, repeat
"

say) :

"

Anshar your son has sent me,

he has made known to
"The purpose of his heart
me.
our mother has conceived a
"He
says that Tiamat
hatred for us,
"

With her force she rages, full of wrath.

all
"

All the gods have turned to her ;

"

With those, whom you created, they go at her side.

"

are banded together, and at the side of Tiamat

They
they advance ;

"

They are furious, they devise mischief without rest

ing night and day.

"

They prepare for battle, fuming and raging ;

forces and are making war.

They have joined their
"

"

Ummu-Khubur, who formed all things,

1

"

Has made in addition weapons invincible, she has

spawned monster-serpents,
of fang
Sharp of tooth, and cruel
"

of blood she has filled their

"With poison instead
bodies.
"

Fierce monster- vipers she has clothed

with terror,

1
Another name of Tiamat.
 HER BROOD OF MONSTERS. 65

"

With splendour she has decked them, and she has

caused them to [mount ?] on high.
"

Whoever beholds them overcome by dread.

is

Their bodies rear up and none can withstand their

"

attack.
"

She has set up the viper, and the dragon, and the
(monster) Lakhamu,
"

And the hurricane, and the raging hound, and the

scorpion-man,
"

And mighty tempests, and the fish-man, and the ram ;

They bear merciless weapons, without fear of the

"

fight.
"

Her commands are mighty, none can resist them ;

"After this fashion, huge of stature, she has made

eleven (monsters).

"Among the gods who are her sons, inasmuch as

he gave her support,
"

She has exalted Kingu in their midst she has

;

raised him to power.

"

To march before the forces, to lead the host,

"

To give the battle-signal, to advance to the attack,

"

To direct the battle, to control the fight,

"To him has she entrusted; in costly raiment she
has made him sit, (saying) :

"

I have uttered thy spell, in the assembly of the

gods I have raised thee to power,

"

The dominion over all the gods have I entrusted

to thee.

BAB. REL. F
66 KINGU AND THE REBEL HOST.
"

Be thou chosen spouse,

exalted, thou my
"Let them magnify thy name over all [the world].
1
"

Then did she give him the Tablets of Destiny, on

his breast she laid them, (saying) :

"

Thy command shall not be without avail, and the

word of thy mouth shall be established.

"Now
Kingu, (thus) exalted, having received the
power of Anu,
"

Decreed the fate for the gods, her sons :

"

Let the opening of your mouth quench the Fire-

god :

"Whoso prides himself on valour, let him display

"

(his) might !

So far Anshar has described the revolt of Tiamat

and the creation of the monsters who were to help
her in the and her selection of Kingu as the
fight,

captain of her host ;

all these things are described in
the First Tablet in exactly the same language. He
next mentions the measures he has taken on hearing
of Tiamat s treachery in the following words :

Anu, but he was unable to go against her

"

I sent ;

"

Nudimmud 2 was afraid and turned back.

"

Marduk has set out, the director of the gods, your

son ;

1
The possession of the "Tablets of Destiny" carried with it

supremacy among the gods with a view of obtaining this supremacy

;

the god Zu stole them from Bel, but Shamash the Sun-god compelled
him to restore them. See pp. 193 f.

2
A title of the god En.
 MARDUK, THE CHAMPION OF THE GODS. 67

"

To set out against Tiamat his heart has prompted

(him).
"

He opened his mouth and spake unto me :

"

If
your avenger,
I,

Conquer Tiamat and give you life,

"

"Appoint
an assembly, make my fate pre-eminent
and proclaim it.

l
"In
Upshukkinnaku seat yourselves joyfully to

gether.
"

With my mouth like you will I decree fate.

"

Whatsoever I do, shall remain unaltered,

The word of my lips shall never be changed nor
"

made of no avail.
"

Hasten therefore and swiftly decree for him the

fate which you bestow,
"

go and fight your strong enemy

That he
"

may !

The narrative continues :

Gaga went, he took his way and

"

"

Humbly before Lakhmu and Lakhamu, the gods,

his fathers,

"He made obeisance, and he kissed the ground at

their feet.
"

He humbled himself ;
then he stood up and spake
unto them."

Gaga then repeats the message which Anshar has

given to him, but, as it corresponds word for word
with the speech of Anshar quoted above, it may here

1
The name of the place where the gods met together.
68 THE ASSEMBLY OF THE GODS.

be omitted. The narrative describes the effect of

Gaga smessage in the following words :

"

Lakhmu and Lakhamu heard and [were afraid],

"

All of the Igigi wailed bitterly, (saying) :

"

What has been changed that they should conceive

?
[this hatred]
"

We do not understand the deed of Tiamat !

"

Then did they collect and go,

"

The great gods, all of them, who decree fate.

entered in before Anshar, they filled [the

"They

chamber] ;

in the assembly
They pressed on one another,
"
. . .

made ready for the feast, at the banquet

"They

they sat ;

They ate bread, they mixed sesame-

"
wine.

The sweet drink, the mead, confused their [senses],

"

"They
became drunk with drinking, their bodies
were filled (with meat and drink).
"

Their limbs were wholly relaxed, and their spirit

was exalted ;

"Then for Marduk, their avenger, did they decree

the fate."

At this the Third Tablet of the series

point
ends.
of the
The Fourth Tablet opens with a description
ceremony of decreeing fate for Marduk thus :

"

They prepared for him a lordly chamber,

Before his fathers as counsellor he took his

"

place."
 THEIR ADDRESS TO MARDUK. 69

When Marduk had taken his seat, the gods addressed

him in the following words :

"

Thou art chiefest among the great gods,

"

Thy fate is unequalled, thy word is Anu !

l

"

Marduk, thou art chiefest among the great gods,

thy word is Anu

"

Thy fate is unequalled, !

"Henceforth not without avail shall be thy com

mand,
"

In thy power shall it be to exalt and to abase.

Established shall be the word of thy mouth, irre
"

sistible shall be thy command ;

"None among the gods shall transgress thy

boundary.
Abundance, the desire of the shrines of the gods,
"

Shall be established in thy sanctuary, even though

"

they lack (offerings).

Marduk, thou art our avenger
"

"

We give thee sovereignty over the whole world.

"Sit thou down in majesty, be exalted in thy
command.
shall never lose its power, it shall
"Thy weapon
crush thy foe.
"

lord, spare the life of him that putteth his trust

in thee,
2
But god who led the rebellion, pour out
"

as for the
"

his life !

the same power as that of

1

Thy word has

"

I.e., Anu."

2
began the
"

evil."
Literally,
70 MARDUK TESTS HIS POWER.

But before Marduk set out to do battle with Tiamat,

the gods wished him to put to the test the power
which they had conferred upon him, and with this
object in view they brought a garment into their
midst, and then addressed their avenger, saying :

" (

May thy fate, lord, be supreme among the

gods,
"

To destroy and to create speak thou the word,;

and (thy command) shall be fulfilled.

"

Command now and let the garment vanish ;

"

And speak the word again and let the garment

reappear !

In obedience to the words of the gods Marduk

with his mouth, and the garment vanished

"

Spake ;

Again he commanded it, and the garment re

appeared.
"

When the gods, his fathers, beheld (the fulfilment

of) his word,

"

They rejoiced, and they did homage (unto him,

saying), Marduk is king !

They bestowed upon him the and the

"

sceptre,

throne, and the ring,

They gave him an invincible weapon, wherewith

"

to overwhelm the foe.

"

Go, (they said), and cut off the life of Tiamat,

"

And let the wind carry her blood into secret places/

(Thus) did the gods, his fathers, decree for the lord
"

his fate ;
 HE PREPARES FOR BATTLE. 71

They caused him to set out on a path of prosperity

"

and success.
"He made ready the bow, he girded his weapon
upon him,
"

He slung a spear upon him and fastened it, ...

"

He raised the club, in his right hand he grasped (it),

"

The bow and the quiver he hung at his side.

"

He set the lightning in front of him,

With burning flame he filled

"

his body.

"He made a net to enclose the inward parts of

Tiamat,
The four winds he set so that nothing of her might
"

escape ;

"The South wind, and the North wind, and the

East wind, and the West wind
"

He brought near to the net which his father

Aim
had given him.
He created the evil wind, and the storm, and the
"

hurricane,
"

The four -fold wind, and the seven fold wind, and
the whirlwind, the wind which was without

equal ;

"

He sent forth the winds which he had created,

seven in all,
"

To destroy the inward parts of Tiamat ;

and they
followed after him.
"Then the lord raised the thunderbolt, his mighty

weapon,
72 THE MEETING OF MARDUK AND TIAMAT.
"

He mounted the chariot, an object

unequalled for
terror,
"

He harnessed four horses and yoked them to it,

"

[All of them] ferocious, and high of courage, and

swift of pace ;

"

[They gnashed with] their teeth, their bodies were

flecked with foam,

They had been

"

[trained to gallop], they had been

taught to trample underfoot."

Thus, standing in his chariot, and followed by the

seven winds he had created, did Marduk set out for
the His advance against Tiamat in the
fight. sight of
all the gods is described in the
following words :

"

Then the lord drew nigh, on Tiamat he gazed,

"

He beheld the scorn (?) of Kingu, her spouse.

"As
(Marduk) gazed, (Kingu) was troubled in his

gait,
"

His will was destroyed and his movements ceased.

"

And the gods, his helpers, who marched by his side,

"

Beheld their leader s

[distress], and their sight was
troubled."

But Tiamat stood firm, with unbent neck, and

taunted Marduk and the gods who were gathered in
safety behind him; to these taunts Marduk replied

by reproaching her with her treachery, and he bade her

prepare for battle in these words :

"

Let thy hosts be equipped, and let thy weapons be

set in order !
 THE DEATH OF TIAMAT. 73
"

Stand ! I and them, let us join battle !

"

When Tiamat heard these words,

"

She was like one possessed, she lost her senses,

"

She uttered loud, angry cries.

"

She trembled and shook to her very foundations.

"

She recited an incantation, she pronounced her

spell,
"And the gods of the battle cried out for their

weapons.
"

Then advanced Tiamat and Marduk, the counsellor

of the gods ;

To the they came on, to the battle they drew

"

fight

nigh.
"

The lord spread out his net to catch her,

"

The evil wind that was behind (him) he let loose in

her face.
"

As Tiamat opened her mouth to its full extent,

"

He drove in the evil wind, while as yet she had

not shut her lips.
"

The terrible winds filled her belly,

"

And her courage was taken from her, and her mouth
she opened wide.
"

He seized the spear and broke through her belly,

"

He severed her inward parts, he pierced her heart.

"

He overcame her and cut off her life ;

"

He cast down her body and stood upon it.

When he had slain Tiamat, the leader,
"

Her might was broken, her force was scattered,

74 CAPTURE OF THE REBEL HOST.
"

And the gods, her helpers, who marched by her

side,

Trembled, and were afraid, and turned back.

"

"

They took to flight to save their lives ;

"

In an enclosure they were caught, they were not

able to escape.
"

He took them captive, he broke their weapons ;

"

In the net they were caught and in the snare they

sat down.

[The whole] world they with

"

filled cries of grief,

"They received punishment from him, they were

held in bondage.
"

And on the eleven creatures whom she had filled

with the power of striking terror,

"

The troop of devils which marched at her bidding (?),

"

He brought affliction, [he destroyed] their power ;

"

Them and their opposition he trampled under his

feet.
"

Moreover Kingu, who had been made leader [over

all of] them,
"

He conquered and like unto the god ... he

counted him.
"

He took from Kingu the Tablets of Destiny that

were not [rightly] his,

"

He sealed them with a seal and on his own breast

he laid them.
"

Now after the valiant Marduk had conquered and

destroyed his enemies,
 THE CREATION OF HEAVEN. 77

"

And had made the arrogant foe even like a broken

reed (?),
"

He fully established Anshar s triumph over the

enemy,
"

And attained the purpose of Nudimmud.

"

Over the gods that were captive he strengthened

his durance.
"

To Tiamat, whom
he had conquered, he returned,
"

And the lord stood upon Tiamat s hinder parts ;

"

With his merciless club he smashed her skull ;

"

He cut the channels of her blood,

"

He made the North wind bear it away into secret

places.
His fathers beheld, they rejoiced and were glad
"

C(
Presents and gifts they brought unto him.
"

Then the lord rested, and gazed on her dead body.

"

He divided the flesh of the body, having devised a

cunning plan.
"

He split her up like a flat fish into two halves.

"One half of her he set in place as a covering for
the heavens.
"

He fixed a bolt, he stationed watchmen,

"

And bade them not to let her waters come forth.

"He
passed through the heavens, he surveyed the
regions (thereof),
"Over
against the Deep he set the dwelling of
Nudimmud.
"

And the lord measured the structure of the Deep,

78 THE MEANING OF E-SHARA.

And he founded E-shara, a mansion like unto it.

"

The mansion E-shara, which he created

"
as heaven,

"He caused Arm, Bel and Ea in their districts to

inhabit."

With these words the Fourth Tablet of the series

ends.
Marduk having conquered Tiamat, thus began the
work of creation. From one half of the monster s body
he fashioned heaven in the form of a solid covering,
which he also furnished with bolts and watchmen to

keep the waters which were above

it in their place.

The dwelling of Nudimmud he fixed in the deep, i.e.,

the abyss of waters beneath the earth, and he also
l
founded E-shara. Some think that E-shara is the earth ;

and according to this view Marduk may be regarded as

having now created and set in place, the heavens, and

the earth, and the waters which were beneath the earth.

Others, however, consider E-shara to

be a name for

heaven, or for a part of it, and the last two

lines of

the Fourth Tablet of the poem certainly favour this

view. The most natural meaning of the passage is

that Marduk made the mansion of E-shara to be

heaven, which he then divided between the three gods

Anu, Bel and Ea. Moreover we know from other sources
that these three gods, in addition to ruling the heaven,
and the earth, and the abyss respectively, in their
characters divided the heaven between
astrological

1
See Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Balylonier, pp. 195 ff.
 CREATION OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 79
l
them ;
and the position of certain stars is noted in

astrological tablets by apportioning them to the various

dominions of these deities. According to the former

view this passage in the poem means that Marduk

created E-shara (the earth) like a heavenly vault," 2
"

i.e., in the form of a hollow hemisphere like the firma

ment overhead but to obtain this sense the ordinary

;

meaning of the words has to be strained considerably.

In the Fifth Tablet of the series Marduk continued
the work of creation. He had already portioned out
the heavens and the abyss, and he now assigned to each
part its separate function, and laid down laws for

the regulation of the whole. The tablet describes the

creation of the heavenly bodies and the regulation of

the seasons, but unfortunately only the beginning part
has been preserved. The text reads :

"

He made the stations for the great gods,

"The stars, their images, (and) the constellations
he fixed ;

"He ordained the year and into sections he

divided it.

"

For the twelve months he fixed three stars.

"

From the day when the year comes forth 3

until

(its) close,
"He founded the station of Nibir 4 to determine
their bounds ;

1
See above, p. 26.
2
See Jensen, op. cit., p. 289. 3
I.e., begins.
4
I.e., Jupiter.
80 THE MOON TO RULE THE NIGHT.
"

That none might err or go astray,

"

He set the stations of Bel and Ea along with him.

"

He opened great gates on both sides (of the firma

ment),
"

He made strong the bolt on the left and on the

right,
"

In the midst thereof he fixed the zenith.

"

The Moon-god he caused to shine forth, the night

he entrusted to him.
"

He appointed him, a being of the night, to deter

mine the days.
"Every
month without ceasing with the crown he
covered (?) him, (saying) :

"

At the beginning of the month, at the shining

of the

"Thou shalt command the horns to determine six

days,
And on
"
"

the seventh day to [divide] the crown.

Here the text becomes too broken to make a con
nected translation, though from what remains it may
be gathered that Marduk continued to address the

Moon-god, and to define his position with regard to

Shamash, the Sun-god, at the different points of his

course. What the actually missing portion of the

text contained we cannot say with certainty, but we
may conjecture that it described further acts of creation.

That there was a Sixth Tablet is proved by the catch-

line at the end of the Fifth Tablet, and the text of this
 CREATION OF BEASTS OF THE FIELD. 81

also must have referred to the same subject. There is

no evidence to show how many tablets were comprised

in the Creation Series, although some have thought
that the number was greater than six. Fragments of
tablets have been found which refer to acts of creation,

and as these cannot be fitted into places in the

tablets already described, it hasbeen suggested they
formed parts of the tablets which seem to be missing.
One such fragment is of especial interest, for it con
tains a reference to the creation of the "

beasts of
"the field, the cattle of the field, and the creeping
"

things of the field." It is improbable that the frag

ment belonged to the Creation Series, inasmuch as the
gods as a body, and not Marduk alone, are credited by
it with the creation of the world, and besides this the

god Ea, Marduk s father, is mentioned as taking a

prominent part in the work. The fragment in fact

reproduces a variant form of the creation legend, but

itsdescription of the creation of the beasts may well be
view that some missing portion
cited in favour of the

of thepoem contained a similar episode. The fragment

which contains the opening lines of the tablet
begins :

"

When all the gods had made [the world],

"

Had created the heavens, had formed [the earth],

"

Had brought living creatures into being . . .

,

"

The cattle of the field, the [beasts] of the field, and

the creeping things [of the field], ..."

BAB. EEL. G
 82 CREATION OF MANKIND.

The rest of the fragment is too broken to admit

of a trustworthy restoration of the text,
though the
reference to Nin-igi-azag, i.e., the lord of clear vision,"
"

a title of the god Ea, seems to connect him with some

further act of creation.

There are also some grounds for believing that in
addition to the creation of animals some portion of the

poem described the creation of mankind. A hymn

has been found inscribed upon a tablet which con
tains a number of remarkable addresses in honour
of the god Marduk, and, as of them refer to his
many
acts of has been thought that the com
creation, it

1
position formed the concluding tablet of the series.
After addressing him as one who shewed mercy to
the gods he had taken captive, and who removed the

yoke from the neck of the gods his enemies, 2 the hymn
refers to his
having created men and declares that his
word shall be established and shall not be forgotten
mouth
"

in the of the black -headed ones (i.e., mankind)

"

whom his hands have created." In view of this

evidence it may be concluded that the description of
the creation of mankind had a place in the tablets that
are missing ;
and it is probable that upon another
3
fragment of a tablet we have a copy of the instructions
which Marduk was believed to have given to man
1
British Museum, K. 8522. See G. Smith, Trans. Soc. Bill. Arch.,
Vol. IV., p. 363, and plates 3 and 4.
2
The allusion here is to the Fourth Tablet; see above, p. 74.
3
British Museum, K. 3364.
 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 83

after his creation. The following extracts from this

fragment reveal a very lofty conception of man s duties

towards his god and towards his neighbour :

Towards thy god shalt thou be pure of heart,

"

"

For thatis the glory of the godhead ;

and supplication and bowing low the

"

Prayer to

earth,

"Early
in the morning shalt thou offer unto
him . . ."

A little further on Marduk continues :

"

The fear of god begets mercy,

"

Offerings increase life,

"

And prayer absolves from sin.

"

He that fears the gods shall not cry aloud [

in

grief],
"He that fears the Anuimaki 1 shall have a long

[life].

Against friend and neighbour thou shalt not speak

"

[evil].

"Speak not of things that are hidden, [practice]

mercy.
"

When thou makest a promise (to give), give and

[hold] not [back]."

In the hymn which has been referred to in the

previous paragraph as having not improbably formed

the concluding tablet of the series, the other gods are

represented as addressing Marduk, their deliverer, by

1
I.e., the Spirits of the Earth.
84 LAST TABLET OF THE POEM.

every conceivable name and title of honour. They

him the god of
"

called
"

the life of all the gods,"

the god of
"

the bringer of
" "

pure life," purification,"

the lord of hearing and

"
"

the favouring breeze," mercy,"

"

the creator of abundance and mercy, who establishes

"

"

plenteousness, and increases all

that is small ;
and it

is also the gods themselves were in sore

said that when
distress they felt his favouring breeze. The text con
tinues in the above strain, referring to his mercy towards
his opponents, his conquest of Tiamat, and his acts of
creation, and Bel and Ea are made to bestow their own
titles upon him. Finally the wise are bidden to ponder
on the story, the father is to teach it to his son, and the
prince or ruler is to listen to its recital. With such an
ode to Marduk as the god of creation the great poem
might fitly conclude.
In addition to the great poem, there is reason to

believe that several different accounts of the creation

were current Babylonian literature. One such
in

account is preserved on a broken tablet from Ashur-

bani-pal s library, which contains a very different
to that
description of the great battle with the dragon
In
given in the Fourth Tablet of the Creation
Series.

this version the does not precede the creation of

fight
the world but takes place after man has been created
and cities built. gods are equally
In fact, men and
terrified at the dragon s appearance, and it is to de

liver the lands from the monster that one of the gods
 ANOTHER DESCRIPTION OF TIAMAT. 85

out and slaysThe text begins with a him.

goes
description of the terror
which came upon creation at
a male
the advent of Tiamat, who has, however, become

monster, and says :

"

The cities sighed, men [groaned aloud],

"Men uttered lamentation, [they wailed grievously].
"

For their lamentation there was none [to help],

"

For their grief there was none to take [them by the

hand].
"

Who was the [great] dragon

?

1
"

Tiamat was the [great] dragon

!

"

Bel in heaven has formed [his image].

kasbu
2
is his length, one lasbu [is
his
"Fifty

breadth],
"

Half a rod (?)

is his mouth, one rod (?) [his
. .
.]."

The next few lines continue the description of the

dragon, and give the

measurements of other parts of
and
"
"

sixty rods
"

his as being
body sixty-five rods,"

and narrate how he wallowed in the water and lashed

his tail. All the gods in heaven were afraid. They
bowed down and grasped the robe of the Moon-god Sin,
and they cried out asking who would go out and slay
the monster, and deliver the broad earth, and so
make
Sukh
himself king. They then appealed to the god
to undertake the task, but he made excuses. Who

1
Here called Tdmtu,
"

the Sea."

2
The 7falm a space that can be covered in
is two hours travelling ;

i.e., about six or seven miles.

86 THE DRAGON S BLOOD.

eventually consented to do battle with the dragon we

do not know, for the text is broken, but it is probable
that in this version also Marduk was the hero. The
end of the composition, in which we find the god,

whoever he may have been, setting out to do battle,

while one of the other gods cries to him in encourage

ment, has fortunately been preserved; it reads :

cloud, storm [and tempest],

"

Stir up
l
Set the seal of thy before thy face
"

life . . .
,

"

And slay the dragon !

"

He stirred up cloud, and storm [and tempest],

"

He set the seal of his life before his face . . .

,

"

And he slew the dragon.

"

For three years and three months, day and [night],

"

The blood of the dragon flowed . . ."

The details as to the size of the dragon and the

amount of his blood are of considerable interest. In

the Creation Series the North wind is said to have

carried the blood away into secret places, and the

prominence given to the dragon s blood in both versions
lends colour to a suggestion that has been made with
regard to one of the details in the account of creation

given by Berosus. In that version Bel is said to have

formed animals and men from earth mixed with his
own blood after one of the gods had, at his com
mand, cut off his head. The account would afford a

much closer parallel to the legend as we find it on

1
I.e., as a protection against the monster.
 OTHER VERSIONS OF THE CREATION STORY. 87

the tablets if we might assume that it was not his

which Bel used for the

own blood, but that of Tiamat,
that either Polyhistor or
purpose. It is possible
the original story.
Eusebius, or both, misunderstood
Wehave described the great story of the creation
which was current in Assyria during the seventh
far as its contents can be
century before Christ, as
ascertained from the fragments that have come down
to us. The and duplicates in
numerous tablets

scribed with the legend, which have been found

in

the ruins of s indicate the

Ashur-bani-pal library,

it held among the religious and

important position
and we are right
mythological works of the period ;

in assuming that this version of the creation was the

one most widely accepted during the reigns of the

the poem in
laterAssyrian kings. But, although
the
the form in which we now have it represents
belief most generally held by the Babylonians and
at this late period with regard
Assyrians comparatively
to the manner in which the world came into being,
it can only have attained this position gradually.

Babylonian literature, in fact, comprises fragments of

other myths and legends which give different accounts
of the way in which creation took place, and, as one

of these is of considerable importance, by reason

of the light it throws upon the age and history of
such legends in Babylonia, it will be convenient to

describe it before considering what connection there

 THE SUMERIAN STORY OF CREATION.

may have been between the Babylonian poem and the

story of creation in the first chapter of Genesis.
After the great Creation Series the longest, and
indeed the only other distinct version of the
story of
the creation in now known
Babylonian literature is
found upon one side of a broken 1
incantation-tablet,
which was inscribed in the Neo-
Baby Ionian period not
earlier than 600 B.C. It was found at Abu-habbah, the
site of the ancient city of
Sippar in Northern Baby
lonia, in 1882.
The inscription is of great interest, for it is written
in the ancient Sumerian language, and to each line is
attached a translation in Semitic
Babylonian. The
account of the creation here
given offers few parallels
to the great Creation Series which has been
described
above. It is true that the
godMarduk is credited with
the creation of the
world, but there is no mention of
the battle which the
god successfully waged against the
powers of chaos before the earth came into In being.
fact the god proceeds to the work of creation without
any previous struggle and entirely of his own free will.
The tablet opens with a description of chaos at a
period
when the ancient cities and
temples of the land had no
existence, when no towns had been built, nor any
vegetation created in short, all lands were sea. In
the account of the creation that follows it is possible

that the order in which the various acts are described

1
British Museum, No. 82-5-22, 1048.
 DESCRIPTION OF CHAOS. 89

is not intended to be chronological, but is dictated by

the structure of the poem. Otherwise we must assume
that the cities of Eridu and Babylon and the temple

E-sagil were the things first created, and that their

creation preceded not only the construction of the cities

of Nippur and Erech and their temples, but even the

creation of mankind, and the beasts of the field, and

vegetation, and the rivers of Babylonia. Marduk s act

of laying a reed, or bank of reeds, upon the waters and
creating dust which he poured out round about it would

appear to be merely a device for forming dry land in

the expanse of waters, and his object in laying in

a dam or embankment at the edge of the waters was

evidently to keep the sea from flooding the land he had

so formed. The text reads as follows :

"The
holy temple, the temple of the gods, in the
holy place had not yet been made ;

"

No reed had sprung up, no tree had been created.

"

No brick had been laid, no building had been set up ;

"

No house had been erected, no city had been built ;

"

No city had been made, no dwelling-place had been

prepared.
"Nippur had not been made, E-kur had not been
built ;

"Erech had not been created, E-ana had not been

built ;

"

The Deep had not been created, Eridu had not been
built;
 THE FORMATION OF DRY LAND.
"

Of the pure temple, the temple of the gods, the

habitation had not been made.

"

All lands were sea.

"

At length there was a movement in the sea,

"

Then was Eridu made, and E-sagil was built,

"E-sagil,
where in the midst of the Deep the god

Lugal-dul-azaga dwells,
"

The city of Babylon \fas built, and E-sagil was

finished.
"

The gods, the Anunnaki, were created at one

time;
"

The holy city, the dwelling of their hearts desire,

they proclaimed supreme.

"

Marduk laid a reed upon the face of the waters,

"

He formed dust and poured it out upon the reed.

"

That he might cause the gods to dwell in the habi

tation of their hearts desire,
"

He formed mankind.
"

The goddess Aruru together with him created the

seed of mankind.
"

He formed the beasts of the field and the cattle of

the field.
"

He created the Tigris, and the Euphrates, and lie

set them in their place,

Their names he declared to be good.

"

"

The ushshu-pl&nt, the dittu-plaxit of the marsh, the

reed and the forest he created,
"The lands, and the marshes, and the swamps;
 THE CREATION OF MEN AND CITIES. 91

"

The wild cow and her young, that is the wild ox ;

the ewe and her young, that is the lamb of the

fold;
"

Plantations and forests ;

"

The he-goat, and the mountain-goat, and the . . .

"

The lord Marduk laid in a clam by the side of the

sea,
as before he had not made,
he brought into existence.
"

. . . . trees he created,
"

[Bricks] he made in their place.

"

brickwork he made ;

[Houses he made], cities he built ;

he prepared.
[Cities he made], dwelling-places
"

[Nippur he made], E-kur he built

"

[Erech he made], E-ana he built."

"

The rest of the legend is broken off, and the reverse

of the tablet does not contain a continuation of the

legend, but a prayer, or incantation, which was to be

recited for the purification of the temple E-zida in

Borsippa. The connection between the legend and the
incantation is not obvious, but the fact that the legend
isfound upon an incantation tablet does not detract
from its value, and does not indicate a late date for its

composition. In fact, as will presently be pointed out,

there are grounds for believing that the legend may go
back to a time when Sumerian was still a living

language, and when it was not merely a dead tongue

92 THE "CUTtLEAN LEGEND OF CREATION."

employed in religious ritual and known only to the

scribes.

In this connection mention must be made of two

tablets, which
frequently are said to contain the
Cuthsean legend of Creation," and have been thought
"

to describe a local account of the creation which was

current in the ancient city of Cuthah. It has been

asserted that this legend gives an account of the creation
of the world by ISTergal, the god of Cuthah, after he had

conquered the brood of monsters which Tiamat had

brought forth. Eecently, however, it has been pointed
l
out that the tablets are not concerned with the creation,
but with the fortunes of an early Babylonian king. In
the reign of this king, whose name is unknown, the land
was invaded by a strange race of monsters who were
descended from the gods, and for three years the king

waged war against this foe unsuccessfully, but at length

he defeated them. In fact, the tablets have nothing
whatever to do with the creation or with the fight
between Tiamat and the gods but, as the two tablets ;

which contain this story have been regarded as frag

ments of a legend of the creation, it will perhaps be
well to give a translation of them. The words of the
text are put in the mouth of the king himself, who
throughout speaks in the first person the beginnings ;

of both the tablets are missing, but where the text

1
See Zimmern, Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, Bd. XII. (1898), pp.
317 ff.
 INVASION OF THE LAND BY MONSTERS. 93

becomes continuous we find a description of the strange

in the following
monsters, which had invaded the land,
words :

"A
people who drink turbid water, and who drink
not pure water,
"

Whose sense is perverted, have taken (men) captive,

have triumphed over them, and have committed

slaughter.
"

On a tablet nought is written, nought is left (to

write).
1
In mine own person
"

I went not forth, I did not give them battle.

"

A people who have the bodies of birds of the hollow,

men who have the faces of ravens,
"

Did the great gods create.

"

In the ground the gods created a dwelling for them,

"

Tiamat gave them suck,

The lady of the gods brought them into the world.
"

"

In the midst of the mountain (of the world), they

became strong, they waxed great, they multiplied

exceedingly.
Seven kings, brethren, fair and comely,
"

"360,000 in number were their warriors,

was king
"

Banini, their father, ;

their mother, Melili,

queen.
"Their eldest brother, their leader, was named
Memangab,
1
I.e., the city was in confusion, and no business was transacted,
and no records kept.
94 DEFEAT OF THE KING S FORCES.
"

Their second brother was named Medudu."

The tablet then gives the names of the other five

brethren, all of which are, however, broken. After the

names a gap occurs in the legend, for the beginning of

the second column of the principal tablet is missing.

Where again connected we find the king
the story is

had enquired of the gods if he should give the enemy

battle. He addressed them through his priests, and
offered up to them offerings of lambs, which he placed
in rows of seven. The answer of the gods was evidently
favourable, for he decided to engage the enemy ;
but
for a space of three years every man he sent against
the foe was destroyed. The text continues :

"

As the first year drew near,

120,000 warriors I sent out, but not one of them

"

returned alive.
"

As the second year drew near,

90,000 warriors I sent out, but not one of them

"

returned alive.
"

As the third year drew near,

60,700 warriors I sent out, but not one returned

"

alive.

Despairing, powerless, perishing, I was full of woe,

"

and I groaned aloud,

"

And said I to my heart By my life : !

"

What have I brought upon my realm !

I am a king, who hath brought no prosperity to

"

his country,
 HIS FINAL VICTORY. 95

"

And a shepherd, who hath brought no prosperity

to his people.
"

But this thing will I do. In mine own person

will I go forth !

"

The pride of the people of the night I will curse

with death and destruction,

"

With fear, terror, and famine,

. . .

"... and with misery of every kind !

The king then foretold the destruction of his enemies

by means, apparently, of a deluge, and before setting

out to meet them he again offered up offerings to the

gods. How he conquered the enemy we do not know,

but the fact that he went forth in his own person to do
battle against them evidently secured for him the favour
and victory over the monstrous creatures
of the gods,

who had so long oppressed his land. In the latter

portion of the legend the king addresses words of
encouragement to any future prince who shall rule over
his kingdom. The king exhorts his successor when in

peril, not to despair, but to take courage from his own

example, in the following words :

"Thou, king, or ruler, or prince, or any one

whatsoever,
"

Whom the god shall call to rule over the kingdom,

"

A tablet concerning these matters have I made for

thee, and a record have I written for thee.
In the city of Cuthah, in the temple E-shidlam,
"

"

In the shrine of Nergal have I deposited it for thee.

96 THE LEGEND OF CUTHAH
"

Behold this record, and

"

To the words thereof hearken,

That mayest not despair, nor be feeble,
"

tliou
"

That thou mayest not fear, nor be affrighted.

"

Stablish thyself firmly,

Sleep in peace beside thy wife,

"

"

Strengthen thy walls,

thy trenches with water,
"

Fill

Bring in thy treasure-chests, and thy corn, and thy

"

and thy goods, and thy possessions,

silver,

[And thy weapons], and thy household stuff."

"

The ruler himself is bidden to take heed unto his

own safety, not to go forth nor to draw near his foe.

The meaning of the exhortation seems to be that as in
days of old the gods helped the king of the land and
turned his mourning into victory, so in the future when
the land is in sore trouble and the foe is at the gate the

king is not to despair but to expect that the gods will

help him also.

This legend has for some years been known as the

"

Cuthsean legend of Creation," but from the above

translation it will be seen that the description is

inaccurate. was thought that the poem was spoken

It

by the god Nergal, who was supposed to be waging war

against the brood of Tiamat, and it was assumed that
Nergal took the place of Marduk in accordance with
local tradition at Cuthah. It is clear, however, that

although the tablet on which the legend was inscribed

 NOT A CREATION LEGEND. 97

was meant to be preserved at Cuthah in the shrine of

Nergal (as stated towards the end of the poem) the

speaker is not the god Nergal but an old Babylonian
king and we have already seen that this king recounts
;

how the gods delivered him and his land from the
hosts of the monsters. It is true that in the descrip

tion of the monsters, some of which had the bodies

of birdsand others the heads of ravens, Tiamat is
mentioned as having suckled them; but this state
ment hardly affords sufficient evidence to justify their

identification with her monster brood which has already

been described in the Creation story. It is more
probable that Tiamat is called their foster-mother in

order to indicate their terrible nature. Moreover, the

speaker in the poem does not perform any acts of

creation, but does battle with the monsters merely to

deliver his land from their assault.
In conclusion it may be mentioned that last year a

fragment of a Babylonian tablet preserved in the

Imperial Ottoman Museum at Constantinople was

1
published, which contains part of a copy of this legend ;

the inscription upon it is a parallel and not a duplicate

text. If, as has been stated, this fragment belongs to
the old Babylonian period, it will afford valuable
evidence of the early existence of these legends in

Babylonia.
The great Babylonian legend of creation has been
1
See Scheil, Recueil de Travaux, Vol. XX., p. 65 f.

BAB. REL. H
98 DATE OF THE CREATION LEGENDS.

examined and its variant forms have been traced, so far

as they can be restored from late Assyrian and Baby
lonian tablets, and from the extract from the history
of Berosus which has come down to us. Not one of

the tablets on which the legends are written belongs

to a period earlier than the seventh century B.C., and
the question naturally arises, Do the legends they
contain also date from the seventh century, or must

they be referred to some earlier period? In other

words, Were they composed by the priestly scribes who

had them written upon the actual tablets which we

possess, or did these scribes simply copy the documents

of
belonging to an older period ? And, if the scribes
the seventh century were mere copyists and not com
posers, we must also ask, To what period must we
assign the origin of the old texts which they copied ?
These questions can, fortunately, be decided by a careful
examination of the available evidence.
The first question is best answered
by considering
the various forms which the Creation legends assume
on different tablets. Were the legends brand-new com
positions of the seventh century we should expect
to

find all the copies which were written at the same time

and preserved in the same library agreeing closely with

each other. It is true that we do find several copies of

the Creation tablets which correspond with each other

word for word, and these were, no doubt, made from
some common archetype. But we also possess another
 INDICATIONS OF THEIR EARLY ORIGIN. 99

tablet from Ashur-bani-pal s library, which gives quite

a different account of the struggle with Tiarnat The
tablet has been already referred to,
1
and we have seen
that on it the fight is described as taking place after
and not before creation, and that Tiamat s body is not
used to form the vault of heaven ; moreover, the dragon
is a male and not a female monster, and the description
of it is quite different from that in the Creation Series ;

and finally another god than Anu is first of all asked

to go forth and slay her. Other events differently
described may have been narrated on the tablet, for

only a fragment of it has been preserved ;

but those that
we have enumerated are sufficient to prove our point.
Such variant forms of the same story cannot have
arisen in one generation. They presuppose many
centuries of tradition, during which the two accounts
were handed down independently. Though the two
stories were derived from a common original, they

were related in different cities in different ways. At

first they were probably identical in form, but in
course of time variations crept in, and two or more
forms of the story were developed along different lines.
The process must have been gradual, and the resultant
forms of the story afford sufficient evidence as to the

great age of their common ancestor. That they were

found together in Ashur-bani-pal s library is to be

explained as the result of that monarch s energy

1
See pp. 84 ff.
IOO EVIDENCE FROM SEPARATE VERSIONS.

in scouring the country for literary and religious

works.
A if we compare the two
similar conclusion follows

separate and distinct versions of the creation which

1
have also been described above. In both of them
Marduk is the creator of the world, but, while the

great Creation Series is chiefly taken up with the revolt

and conquest of Tiamat as a necessary preliminary to the

creation of the world, in the shorter Sumerian version

there is no trace of such a conflict, nor is the dragon
Tiamat even mentioned. In this tablet we have an
instance of quite a different version of the creation which
we may perhaps assume goes back to a period when
the dragon-myth had not become associated with the
creation of the world. The Cuthaaan legend
so-called
"

cannot be cited as a true variant form of

"

of Creation

the legend, for, as we have seen, it is not a creation

legend at all, but a story of an old Babylonian king.

It contains a reference to the dragon Tiamat, however,
and evidently presupposes on the part of the reader

a knowledge of the story concerning the monsters to

which she is said to have given birth. If the frag
mentary duplicate of the inscription which has recently
been found 2 was written in the old Babylonian period,
this reference to Tiamat in the legend is important

evidence for the early date of the dragon-myth. But,

1
I.e., the great Creation Series on pp. 61 ff., and the Sumeriau
version of the Creation on pp. 88 ff.
2
See p. 97.
 EVIDENCE FROM SCULPTURE. 1OI

even if we leave the Cutheean tablet out of account

of the two versions of the
altogether, the existence
Creation story and the variants we have traced in the

accounts of the fight with Tiamat prove conclusively

their early origin.

So far we have considered the internal evidence of

date offered by the legends themselves. Additional
evidence, pointing in the same direction, is afforded by
a study of certain aspects of Babylonian and Assyrian

art. In a temple built by Ashur-natsir-pal at Nimrud,

the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Calah, there
was found a slab sculptured in relief with a represen
1
tation of the fight between Marduk and Tiamat. The
monster, half bird, half lion, turns roaring in anger
towards the god who, in human form and borne upon
four wings, swoops down to give battle. Now Ashur-

natsir-pal reigned from B.C. 884 to B.C. 860, so that

we here have evidence of the existence of the legend
more than two hundred years before the formation of
the library of Ashur-bani-pal, who reigned from B.C. 669
to about B.C. 625. Moreover the battle between
Marduk and Tiamat was a very favourite subject
for engraving upon cylinder-seals. Numbers of these

have been found, and many give quite different repre

sentations of Tiamat. The god Marduk is generally
represented in human form with wings, but the

1
In the British Museum, Nimroud Gallery, Nos. 28 and 29. See
the illustration on p. 75.
102 EVIDENCE FROM CYLINDER-SEALS.

monster assumes many guises. Sometimes she is

pictured as a winged and human -headed lion, at other

times she has the body of a horse or bull, and the

wings and crested head of a bird. On certain cylinder-

seals she figures simply as a beast, while on others

though she has an animal s body she has a woman s

head.
1
On a very interesting cylinder, here published

The god Marduk armed with the thunderbolt and other weapons standing on the
back of Tifnnat and slaying her. (From a cylinder-seal in the British Museum,
No. 89,589.)

for the first time, she is represented as a

huge dragon
on whose back the god Marduk, fully armed, has leapt,
and he and his ministers are in the act of slaying her.
It is true that many of these cylinder-seals belong to
the late Assyrian and Persian periods, i.e., from about
B.C. 700 to B.C. 300; a few, however, are archaic
in style and may be assigned to a somewhat earlier
date. But without laying too much stress on the
possibly early date of some of them, the great variety

1
For reproductions of several cylinder-seals of this class, see the
Collection de Clercq, Plates xxix. if.
 EVIDENCE FROM HISTORICAL INSCRIPTIONS. 103

of treatment of the same subject which they present

variant forms
certainly points to the existence of many
of the legend, and so indirectly bears witness to its

early origin.
A third class of evidence for the early date of the

legends of creation may be found in certain passages

in the historical inscriptions which record the erection
of statues and the making of temple furniture, etc.,
in the earlier periods of Babylonian history. In the

copy of an inscription of Agum, an early Babylonian

later than the seventeenth
king, who flourished not
century before Christ, we have, fortunately, an allusion
to the dragon-myth of Babylonia. Now although we
do not possess an actual inscription of this king s

reign, the copy of one in the British Museum, which,

1
we know, was made for Ashur-bani-pal, is to all

intents and purposes just as good. From this we

learn that Agum brought back to Babylon a statue of
the god Marduk and one of the goddess Tsarpanitum,
which at some previous time had been carried off to

the land of Khanl which lay to the north-west of

Babylonia. The statues were carried to the temple

E-sagil in Babylon, and with much pomp and ceremony

were re-installed in their shrines. Agum recounts

at length the sumptuous temple furniture which he

caused to be made for this occasion, and also the

1
Published in Cuneiform Intcriplions of Western Asia, Vol. V.,
plate 38.
 104 AGUM S TEMPLE-FURNITURE.

apparel and head-dresses for the statues of these gods,

which he caused to be made of fine
gold and inlaid
with precious stones. In the shrine
itself, he tells

us, he also set a dragon, which must have resembled

those made at a later time by Nebuchadnezzar and

1
Neriglissar, and that this dragon was connected with
Tiarnat of the Creation is clear from the
legend fact
that along with her he also set
up figures of monsters,
including vipers, and monsters called lakhmu, and a
ram, and a hurricane, and a raging hound, and a fish-
man, and a goat-fish. The list of the eleven classes
of monsters in the Creation Series
gives us monster-
serpents, and monster-vipers, and a and a
viper,
dragon, and monsters called laJchamu, and a hurricane,
and a raging hound, and a scorpion-man, and tem
pests, and a fish-man, and rams. are not here We
concerned with the astrological character of these
monsters, nor with their connection with the origin
of the signs of the Zodiac ;
but what is evident from
the two
lists is that
already in the time of Agum
the legend of Tiamat and her monster brood had been

accepted and had become absorbed into the ancient

religious traditions of the land.
A further reference to the legend
may be seen in
1
When Nebuchadnezzar I F. set up colossal serpents in the gate
ways of Babylon in the sixth century before Christ, and when Neri-
glissar, his successor, set up eight such serpents which he had made
of bronze and coated with silver, it is
tolerably clear that these figures
were intended to represent the dragon of the Creation story.
 THE "DEEPS" OF BUR-SIN AND UR-NINA. 105

the mention of another object used for ceremonial

purposes which was given by Agum to Marduk s

temple. In Marduk s shrine, beside the great serpent

"
"

he set what he terms a tdmtu, or sea ;

this was,

no doubt, a large basin, or "laver," similar to the

brazen sea of Solomon s temple which stood upon

twelve oxen. 1 Such a vessel, as its name indicates,

was symbolical of the abyss of water personified in the

legend by Apsu and Tiamat, and its mention in the
inscription in such close connection with
the dragon

and the brood of monste/s is peculiarly significant.

Similar vessels, called aps^i.e., "abysses,"
or "deeps,"

as we know from other inscriptions, were placed in the

temples of Babylonia from the earliest periods. Bur-

Sin, a king of Ur who lived about B.C. 2500, erected

for the god Enki, or Ea, a zu-cib Id-ag-ga-ni,

"

an abyss
2
that was dear to
"

him
and in the reign of Ur-Mna,
"

an ancient Sumerian king of Shirpurla, and one of the

earliest rulers of that city whose names have come

down to us, such vessels were already used in religious

ceremonies. The latter monarch caused a limestone
tablet to be inscribed with the list of the temples erected

during his reign, and in the inscription upon it we read

3 "

that he constructed a zu-ab gal, or "great abyss."

1
1 Kings vii. 23 if.

2
The tablet containing this record is published in Gun. Inscr. of
Wet. Asia, Vol. I., plate 3, No. XII. (1).
3
See De Sarzec, Dfcouvertes en Chalckfe, plate II., No. 1, Col. III.,
1. 5f.
106 SUMERIAN INFLUENCE.

The fact that at these early periods Ur-Nina and Bur-

Sin provided their temples with "seas" and "deeps,"

i.e., lavers, does not, of course, prove that the Creation

legends were current among the Sumerians in the forms

in which we find them on Assyrian tablets of the
seventh century before Christ. But the references at

least indicate the source and period to which the legends

may be traced. The Semitic Babylonians learnt from

the Sumerians the art of writing; in their business

transactions they adopted the legal forms and phrases

that were current in the land before they came there,

while as for the gods of the conquered race they either

adopted them or identified them with their own deities.

It is probable, therefore, that from the Sumerians

also they took their ideas of the creation of the world.

We know that at the time of Khammurabi the Semitic

scribes copied out and studied Sumerian religious

texts, and from the ancient libraries of Southern

Babylonia we have recovered religious compositions

bearing a striking resemblance to those which were

employed in the Assyrian temples of the later period ;

but in this early Sumerian literature we have not yet

found any fragment of the story of the creation, or
indeed of any mythological legend. The shorter ver
sion of the creation inscribed upon a Neo-Babylonian
tablet is, however, written in Sumerian and furnished
with a Semitic translation ; and, although the scribes of
that late period, in all probability, frequently attempted
 PROBABLE SOURCE OF THE LEGENDS. IO/

to compose in the Sumerian language, that version of

the Creation story may well have been copied from
an early original Sumerian document. As the study
of the Sumerian language progresses and the mass
of tablets that have been brought to light within the

last few years are examined and published, we may

in time find definite proofs of the existence of such

legends. Meanwhile the evidence available is sufficient

to show that the legends of the creation current in

Assyria and Babylonia during the seventh and succeed
ing centuries before Christ were based upon archetypes
the existence of which may date from Sumerian times.
The actual text of the legends, no doubt, underwent

many processes of editing the division of the great

;

poem into sections, each written on a separate tablet,

may well have been the work of later scribes; but
the legends
O themselves were ancient and had their

origin in the earliest period of

Babylonian history.
We
have now described the contents of the great
Babylonian poem of the creation, we have referred to
the variant traditions that have come down to us con

cerning the several episodes of the story, and we have

also examined a second version of the creation which
bears but small resemblance to the great poem. We
have suggested that the existence of so many variants
is a proof of the great age of the legends, and it has
been seen that this evidence is corroborated by the
traces which the legends have left in Babylonian and
108 BABYLONIAN AND HEBREW NARRATIVES.

Assyrian and by certain indirect references to

art,

them in some early historical inscriptions. The ex

tracts givenfrom the tablets will have conveyed better
than any summary would have done the exact nature
of their contents, and, as the translations have been
made as literal as possible, the reader has been able
to form his own opinion as to the nature of the
resemblance which may be detected between these
ancient Babylonian stories and the account of the

creation in the Book of Genesis. Itnow remains to con

sider what connection there is between the Hebrew and
the Babylonian accounts of the creation of the world.
That there must have been a connection between the
two accounts generally admitted, for it is only
is

necessary to read the tablets to be struck by their

resemblance to the Biblical narrative in many par
ticulars ;
the question now to be decided is, In what
does this connection consistThree possible solutions
?

of the problem suggest themselves (1) The Baby :

lonians may have derived their legends from the

Hebrews ; (2) both Babylonians and Hebrews, as
different branches of the same Semitic race, may have
inherited the legends from a common ancestral stock ;

and Hebrews may have derived their legends

(3) the
from Babylonia. Of these possible solutions the first
may be dismissed at once. During whatever period of
their history the inhabitants of Mesopotamia came in
contact with the peoples of the Mediterranean coast,
 THE REASON OF THEIR RESEMBLANCE. 109

they always came in the character of conquerors, and

we know from their inscriptions that the Babylonians

and Assyrians regarded the other nations of Western

Asia only in the light of payers of tribute. It is in
conceivable, therefore, that they should have borrowed
their sacred traditions from a race they considered
inferior to themselves ; moreover, the existence of the

legends in Babylonia has

been traced to a very early

period, before any contact between the Babylonians and

the Hebrews can have taken place. The second theory
has far more to recommend it, and has met with warm

supporters. It has been urged coming of the

that,

same stock, both Babylonians and Hebrews possessed

the legends of the creation as a common inheritance,

and that each of these nations modified and developed

them independently. to
Against this explanation is

be set the distinctly Babylonian character and colour

ing of the stories, andgenerally regarded as

it is

other than a Babylonian

impossible for them to have
origin. In the account of the Flood given in Genesis,
which will be referred to in the following chapter, the

Babylonian origin is still more apparent. We are,

therefore, reduced to the third solution as being the
most probable of the three. The legends, we may
conclude, are Babylonian in origin and character, and
the resemblances which the account in Genesis bears
to them must, we think, be put down to Babylonian
influence. We may then ask, At what time, and by
1 10 THE HEXATEUCH.

what means, was this influence exerted which has left

its traces on the Hebrew story in Genesis ?

The critical study of the text of Genesis has shown

that this book, like the rest of the Pentateuch, is not
from the pen of a single writer, and that it is made
up of a number of separate works. In the earlier
periods of Hebrew history these works had not been
woven into a continuous narrative, and they were not
in the form in which they are now known to us ;
each
work had a separate existence. The evidence on which
this conclusion rests consists in part of the numerous
repetitions which occur throughout the books, and in
the existence of two separate and sometimes quite
different narratives of the same event, and in diffi

culties in chronology, and the like. A careful study of

the Hebrew text by scholars throughout the present

l
century has further shown that there are three prin

cipal works on which the Pentateuch and the Book of

Joshua are based. These works dealt witli the early
history of the Hebrew race, and, as each of them

frequently goes over the same ground as the others, it

is easy to explain the repetitions which the combined

narrative contains. Each of these books, or histories,

can be recognized with tolerable certainty by their

differences in style and treatment, the use of phrases

peculiar to themselves, the names for God which they

Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism: Biographical,

1
Of.

Descriptive, and Critical Studies (London, 1893).

 ITS COMPOSITE CHARACTER. Ill

employ, etc. One of these works was used to form

the groundwork of the or first six books
"

Hexateuch/
of the Bible, and it was well adapted for the purpose,

inasmuch as it presented an orderly system of chro

nology. It dealt with the laws and customs of the

people, and explained their origin ;

and from the
general nature of its contents it is usually termed
the "Priestly writing,"
or the "Priests code." The
other two books which were incorporated with this
"Priestly writing," dealt with the legends and early

history of the Hebrew race ; they are far more primitive

and picturesque in style than the more formal and
annalistic narrative with which they are combined.
The writers of these two narratives are generally dis

tinguished by the names and

"

Jehovist
" "

Elohist,"

from the fact that in one of them the Divine name

employed is Jahweh or Jehovah, translated as "the
"

Lord in the Authorized Version while in the other ;

Elohim, which
"

it is is translated as God."

It is needless for our purpose to discuss here the

relations which these three works bear to one another,

or enumerate any additional documents of which
to

use was made in the Hexateuch. It will suffice to

state that in the early chapters of Genesis, two only,
of the three writings referred to, have been used
"
x
the and
"

the
"

Priestly writing Jehovistic

1
The "Priestly writing" also makes use of the word Elohim
for "

God."
112 THE BIBLICAL VERSIONS OF CREATION.
1 in
narrative/ Thus the account of the creation

Genesis i. 1 ii. 4 (first half of the verse) is from the

former writing, and contains a complete account of the

history of creation in a series of successive acts. The

story of the garden of Eden, which follows in chapters
ii.4 (second half of the verse) iii. 24, is taken from

the "Jehovistic narrative," and it gives another ac

count of creation which is not marked by the literary

precision and balanced structure of the first chapter.

That account had given a complete description of the

making of the world the second narrative begins at

;

the beginning again, going back to a time when there

were no plants, nor beasts, nor men, and then nar

rates their creation. If we compare these accounts
with the two principal traditions of the creation pre
served in Babylonian literature, and which we have
2
already described, we see that the account in the
first chapter agrees more closely with the longer
Babylonian narrative than with the shorter; on the
other hand the earlier part of the story of the

garden of Eden, both in its structure and in several

of its phrases, is not unlike the shorter Babylonian
version.

To the greater part of the story of the garden of

Eden, no parallel has been found in Babylonian
1
An analysis of the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis
on these lines is given in Prof. Driver s Introduction to the Literature
of the Old Testament, (6th ed.), pp. 14 ft .

2
See above, pp. 61 ff., and 88 ff.
 THE GARDEN OF EDEN.

mythology ;
it has, however, been pointed out that
in the description of Paradise Babylonian sources have
been largely drawn upon. The illustration here given
has been by some supposed to be a Babylonian repre
sentation of the story of the temptation of Eve; but
as no cuneiform text in support of this view has been

forthcoming, the identification of the female figure

C/T-
i i
v
sffi&jft
^f^t^ .

-**<*_;.

mpression of a cylinder-seal representing a male and a female figure

seated near
a sacred tree; behind the woman is a serpent. (British Museum, No. 89,326.)

with Eve must be regarded as somewhat fanciful.

Writers on Babylonian mythology have sought to find

in the Babylonian legends the counterparts of Adam
and Eve, but without success. Eecently Ea-bani, a
1
mythical and savage hero of the Gilgamesh legend,
has been identified with Adam, and the maiden Ukhat,
2
by whom he was tempted, with Eve, but the grounds
on which the identifications are made are not con
vincing.
In consequence of the many points of identity
between the Hebrew and the Babylonian versions of
1
See below, pp. 150 ff.
2
See Jastrow, Amer. Jour. Semit. Lang., Vol. XV., No. 4 (July, 1899).

BAB. REL. I
114 JEWS AND BABYLONIANS.

the creation, some advanced critics hold that the Jews

heard the Babylonian stories for the first time during
their exile in Babylon, and that on their return from

captivity they brought them back with them and

incorporated them in their sacred writings. Against

this assumption it has been urged that it is hardly

likely the captive Jews

would have adopted strange

legends from their conquerors, and raised them to a

their national traditions. But,
place of honour among
apart from this consideration, such an assumption is
not necessary in order to explain the resemblances
indeed it is hardly admissible, for it takes no account of
the striking differences and variations which the narra
tives present. Moreover, in many passages throughout
the Old Testament, we find traces of the Babylonian
that all such
dragon-myth, and it is scarcely possible
references should date from the post-exilic period.
In several passages we find allusions to a dragon
or serpent who is thought to inhabit the deep. Thus
the prophet Amos, describing how none shall escape

God s hands when He comes in judgment, exclaims,

of
"And though they hide themselves in the top
Carmel, I will search and take them out thence
"

"

and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom

"

of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and

1
"he shall bite them." This serpent or dragon is
"

sometimes referred to as "Leviathan" or Kahab,"

1
Amos ix. 3.
 TRACES OF THE DRAGON-MYTH. 1
15

and in several passages allusion is made to a battle

with the dragon of the deep, in which the dragon

was pierced or slain. Awake, awake, put on strength,
"

"

arm of the Lord

awake, as in the days of old, ;

"the
generations of ancient times. Art thou not it
"
1
"

that cut Eahab in pieces, that pierced the dragon ?

Here the allusion to a battle with a dragon, that took

place
"

in days of old," is unmistakable.

"

Thou didst
"

(Heb. break up
"

the sea by thy strength

" "

divide ")
:

thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.

"

"Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces,

"

thou gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting

the wilderness." 2 In this and in the following
"

passage from the Book of Job the connection of the

dragon with the deep is brought out
3
He stirreth :
"

"

up the sea with his power, and by his understanding

he smiteth through Eahab. By his spirit the heavens
"

4
are garnished his hand has pierced the swift serpent."
"

In the last sentence quoted the parallelism between

the garnishing of the heavens and the piercing of the

serpent recalls the Babylonian myth, in which Marduk

formed the heavens from half of the dragon s body.
A phrase in an earlier chapter of Job appears to reflect
another episode of the Babylonian legend ;
in the
course of a description of the power of God in com
parison with man s impotence it is stated :
"

God will

2
1
Isaiah li. 9. Psalm Ixxiv. 13 f.
3
See also Psalm Ixxxix. 9 f.
4
Job xxvi. 12 f.
 Il6 RAHAB AND LEVIATHAN.
"

not withdraw Ms anger ;

the helpers of Eahab do
l
"

stoop under him." The "

helpers of Eahab/ stooping

beneath their conqueror, call to mind "

the gods, her

"

helpers/ who went at the side of Tiamat, and shared

her defeat.
Babylonian form of the name
It is doubtful if the

Eahab has been found in a synonym employed for

2
the dragon on one of the creation fragments, but at
least the conception and description of the monster

may be regarded as based on the Babylonian myth.

3
is sometimes referred to as Eahab, but this
Egypt
of the term does not conflict with its
application
Babylonian origin. The origin of the kindred monster
"

Behemoth" may, on the other hand, be rightly

traced to Egypt, for many of the characteristics assigned

to him in Job xl. 15 ff., are evidently taken from the

hippopotamus while the picture of Leviathan, which

;

immediately follows that of Behemoth, offers a distinct

contrast to it, and would not be inappropriate as a

description of the monster Tiamat.

In the passages
cited above a dragon-myth clearly and unmistakably- is

referred to. The passages are poetical, and the language

is to a great extent figurative and symbolical; the

figuresand symbols employed, however, are drawn

from mythology, and presuppose a knowledge of the
Traces of the myth may perhaps also be seen
legend.

1
Job ix. 13.
2
See Gunkel s ScJwpfung und Chaos, pp. 29 and 418.
3
See Psalm Ixxxvii. 4, and Isaiah xxx. 7.
 PERIOD OF BABYLONIAN INFLUENCE. 1 1/

in certain phrases or expressions, as in Gen. xlix. 25,

"

where the expression the deep that coucheth beneath

"

seems to suggest the picture of a beast about to spring.

But it is very easy to press imagery too far, and to
see mythological references in pictures suggested to
the poet by his own observations of nature. If, how
ever, we select only those passages in the Old Testament,
in which the dragon-myth is definitely referred to,

we have sufficient evidence to show that the myth

must have been familiar to the Hebrews long before
the exile.
It now remains to enquire at what period before the
exile these legends from Babylon could have reached
the Hebrews. The question is one that does not admit
of any certain or definite answer, but it is permissible at

least to search for any evidence on which a conjectural

theory may be based. Such evidence is furnished by
one of the most surprising discoveries of Babylonian
tablets that has been made during recent years. In
1887 at Tell el-Amarna, a village in Upper Egypt on
the east bank of the Nile, the natives unearthed about

three-hundred-and-twenty clay tablets inscribed in the

Babylonian character. The ruins near the village mark
the site of a town that was built by Khu-en-aten, or

Amenophis IV., who was king of Egypt about B.C. 1500.

The finding of these Babylonian tablets on Egyptian
soil was of the greatest historical interest, and has con

siderably modified the notions generally held up to the

Il8 THE TELL EL-AM ARNA TABLETS.

time of their discovery with regard to the early influence

of Babylonia upon the other nations of the nearer East.
An examination of the tablets showed that some were
letters and drafts of letters that passed between the
kings of Egypt, Amenophis III. and IV., and contem
porary kings of countries and districts of Western Asia ;

others proved to be letters and reports addressed by

princes and governors of cities in Palestine, Phoenicia,
and Syria to the King of Egypt. It is not necessary
for our present purpose to give a detailed description of

the contents of these documents, and it will suffice to

point to the evidence which they furnish of the far-

reaching influence of Babylonian culture during the

XVth century That correspondence between kings
B.C.

of Assyria, or Babylon, and Egypt should be conducted

in the Babylonian language is not so very surprising,

but that governors of Egyptian cities and provinces on

the Mediterranean coast should make their reports in the
same tongue shows that a knowledge of Babylonian was
common throughout Western Asia, and that the Baby
lonian language, like French at the present day, was at
this period thelanguage of diplomacy. It is obvious
that the Babylonian literature must have found its way

among the nations that used its language, and that this
was the case there is conclusive evidence among the
Tell el-Amarna tablets themselves. Two of these docu

ments, in fact, are not letters or reports, but relate to

Babylonian legends, one containing a legend concerning

 BABYLON AND WESTERN ASIA. 1 19

the goddess Ereshkigal, the other inscribed with the

1
legend of Adapa. It is clear, therefore, that the legends

of Babylon were known to the Egyptians of this time

and the inference is justified that the tribes of Syria and
the Mediterranean coast must have also been acquainted
with them. We may conclude, therefore, that the Baby
lonian legends of creation had penetrated to Canaan
as
long before the immigration of the Israelites, and,
the Israelites after the conquest of the country had close
intercourse with its previous inhabitants, it is not im
of the
probable that they received from them many
legends and myths, which they in their turn had derived

from Babylon.
It has even been suggested that the Hebrews of a

still during the patriarchal period, may

earlier time,

have acquired the legends by direct contact with Baby

lonia. Tradition held that Terah, the ancestor of the
2
Israelites, had dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees, which
is now generally identified with the city of Ur in South

ern Babylonia, and it is urged that Abraham, Terah s son,

when migrating from Mesopotamia to Canaan may have

carried with him the legends of the land of his nativity.
If this were so, however, we should expect to find more

frequent references to them among the earlier literature

of the Hebrews, and it seems to be more probable that
the acquisition of the legends should be assigned to a
time subsequent to the conquest of Canaan. At some
2
1
See below, pp. 188 ff. Gen. xi. 28.
I2O THE JEWS OF THE CAPTIVITY.

unknown period, then, whether by inheritance from the

Canaanites or by contact with Babylonia itself, we may
assume that the Hebrews acquired the Babylonian
legends which we find incorporated in their national

traditions. In the absence of any positive information

one point, at least, is clear, that is to say, the Jews of
the exile did notcome across Babylonian mythology as
an entirely new and unfamiliar subject, much of which

they adopted and modified on their return to Jerusalem.

It is possible that their sojourn in Babylon during the
captivity may have given an impetus to their study of
the Babylonian elements in their own traditions, but the
wide differences which these present to the forms of
the corresponding legends that have been recovered in
the cuneiform inscriptions forbid the supposition that

they were directly borrowed at this period. In the apoc

ryphal story of the destruction of the great dragon in

Babylon by Daniel we doubtless have a late reproduction
of the Babylonian myth, and the contrast this narrative

presents to the Biblical stories of creation is singularly

instructive. From the absence in the latter of all

grotesque and mythological detail, from the monotheism

which is strictly in accord with the teaching of the
prophets before the exile, we may infer that the stories
had long been familiar in Israel, and that Ezra and the
Jews of the restoration did not compose these narratives
but were compilers of earlier traditions of their race.
 ( 121 )

CHAPTER IV.

THE STORY OF THE DELUGE.

IN the traditions of many races scattered in various

be found a story, under many

parts of the world
is to

different forms and with many variations, of a great

flood or deluge which in former times inundated and

laid waste the land in which they dwelt. The explana
tion that such traditions refer to a universal deluge

which took place in the early ages of the world, is

now generally regarded

as inadmissible, inasmuch as

there is no trace of such a catastrophe in the earth s

formation. Moreover science has shown

geological
that in the present physical condition of the world

such a universal deluge would be impossible. It is

not necessary on the other hand to refer all these
scattered legends to the direct influence of the Biblical

story of the flood. Primitive races, dwelling in low-

lying and well-watered districts, in their conflict with

nature meet with no more destructive foe than inunda

tion, and amongst such races it would be surprising if

 122 THE BABYLONIAN DELUGE STORY

we did not find stories of past floods from which but

few dwellers in the land escaped. It is probable, how
ever, that the story of the flood in Genesis is responsible
for some of the deluge legends, though it is now certain

that the Biblical story itself is not original, but was

derived from a similar legend of the Babylonians.
F"~From the extracts that have been preserved of the
1
li
history of Berosus we obtain a brief summary of the

Babylonian version of the deluge. According to this

account, ten Babylonian kings reigned before the

deluge, which occurred in the reign of a king named

Xisuthros. To this king the god Chronos appeared in
a vision and warned him that a flood would take place
which would destroy mankind. The god therefore bade

him write a history of the world from the beginning,

and place it in Sippar, the city of the sun ;

he was
then to build a ship into which he might bring his
friends and relations, and every kind of bird and beast.

Xisuthros did as the god told him, and the flood came

upon the earth. After the flood had begun to abate,

Xisuthros sent out birds from the vessel to see if the
waters had fallen, but as they found no resting-place

they returned. After some days he again sent them

out, and time they came back with mud upon their
this

feet. The third time he sent them out they did not
return. He therefore came forth from the vessel, with
his wife, his daughter, and the pilot, and upon the side

1
See Eusebius, Chron. I., ed. Schoene, col. 20 ff.
 ACCORDING TO BEROSUS. 123

of the mountain upon which the ship was stranded he

offered a sacrifice, and immediately he and his three
Those who
companions were taken up into heaven.
had remained in the ship then came forth, and as they
could not find Xisuthros they lamented and called on
him by name. He
did not appear to them, however,
that he and
though they heard his voice telling them
his companionswere now living with the gods.
Xisuthros further informed them that the land they
were in was called Armenia, and he told them to return

to Babylonia and to search for and recover the writings

hidden at Those that were left carried out

Sippar.
his instructions, and found the writings and built

cities ;
and thus Babylon was again inhabited.
This legend preserved from the history of Berosus
was long supposed to have taken its colouring from the
account in Genesis, but it is now admitted that Berosus
derived the story from Babylonian sources. On the

tablets from Ashur-bani-pal s library a very complete

form of the legend has been recovered. These tablets
date from the seventh century and the story told
B.C.,

on them appears as part of a great poem concerning an

ancient hero named Gilgamesh. The poem was divided

into twelve sections, each of which was written upon a

separatetablet ; these are described in detail in the

It must here suffice to point out

following chapter.
that many of the stories comprised in the poem have
no organic connection with the original legend of the
 124 TSIT-NAPISHTIM S STORY.

hero. ^Gilgamesh was the most prominent heroic figure

in Babylonian mythology, and, as with
many heroes of
the past, his name has formed a centre around which
stories and legends
quite of distinct origin have
gathered in the course of time. One such legend is the
story deluge which occurs on the Eleventh
of the

Tablet of the series. / The story, of which we

give a
translation, loses nothing by being taken from its
context. It there forms a complete tale related to-

Gilgamesh by Tsit-napishtim, who together with his

family was saved from the deluge. That the legend
had originally no connection with the story of Gilga-
mesh is
sufficiently clear from the artificial manner of
its introduction, but, jf further proof were needed, it

has recently been supplied by the discovery of a broken

Babylonian tablet, which contains a version of the

story as it was told at an early period of Babylonian

history.
The tablet is dated in the reign of Ammizaduga, one
of the last kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and
may therefore be roughly ascribed to about B.C. 2100.
It was found during the excavations that were recently
undertaken by the Turkish Government at Abu-
Habbah, the site of the ancient city of Sippar, and no
doubt it represents the local form of the legend that
was current in that city during this early period. The
tablet is
unfortunately very badly preserved, but from
what remains of it, it is quite certain that it has been
 AN OLD BABYLONIAN VERSION. 125

of the
inscribed with a variant account of the story
Even at this time the story was not a short
deluge.
one, for the text is written in eight columns, four on

each side of the tablet. In the second column of the

tablet a god appears to be giving directions for sending

destruction men, while in the seventh column,

upon
towards the end of the tablet, the god Ea remonstrates
with this deity for sending the deluge and destroying
mankind in the last line but one of the text, more
;

1
name Atrakhasis occurs. So little has been
over, the
that its chief interest
preserved of the tablet, however,
is derived from the note, or colophon, with which it
concludes. From this we learn two very important

facts :
(1) composition of which the
the name of the

tablet forms a part, and (2) the date at which the tablet

was written. With regard to the first of these points

we find that the story is not described as the Eleventh

Tablet of the poem of Gilgamesh, but as the Second

Tablet of quite a different composition. We have thus

direct evidence that it was inserted into the former

at a comparatively late period of its literary

poem
Of still greater interest is the
date of
development.
the writing of the tablet, for it proves conclusively that
an early date must be assigned to the legends which
are known to us from tablets written in the seventh

century for the library of Ashur-bani-pal.

In this

fragmentary version of the deluge story, found upon a

1
See Scheil, Eecueil de Travaux, Vol. XX. (1898), pp. 55 ff.
126 THE NARRATIVE OF BEROSUS COMPARED.

tablet which was written more than 1300 years before

Ashur-bani-pal s time, the internal evidence furnished

by_thelate Assyrian tablets is amly

amj corroborated.

Eeturning to tne account of e deluge preserved in

th<

poem, we there find a form of the legend

which in general resembles the story reproduced from
Berosus. We there read that the gods in the city of

Shurippak decided to send a deluge upon the earth. In

a dream the god Ea revealed their intention to a man
of the city named Tsit-napishtim who, in accordance

with Ea s instructions, saved himself, and his family,

and every kind of beast, by building a ship in which
they escaped from the floodJ The thread of the narra-
tive is identical with that of Berosus, though it differs

from it in details. The hero of the story, for instance,

dwells in Shurippak, not in Sippar, and the god does

not bid him write a history of the world to instruct

posterity after the deluge has destroyed all other

records. The warning of Xisuthros by Chronos, how

ever, corresponds to that of Tsit-napishtim by Ea, and
the name Xisuthros finds its equivalent in Atrakhasis,
or Khasisatra, a name by which Tsit-napishtim is
erred to in the speech of Ea at the end of the storyj
ref<

Both heroes, moreover, are deified after coming forth

from the ship. With regard to the name Tsit-napishtim,
it must be mentioned that the reading of the first part

of the name is still a matter of conjecture, and that

some scholars render it Par-napishtim whichever be ;
 TSIT-NAPISHTIM AND ATRAKHASIS. 12?

name
appears to be the
"

correct the meaning of the

It has already been stated that Ea

offspring of
"

life."

refers to Tslt-napishtim by the name Atrakhasis, which

means "abounding in wisdom"; and a theory has
to account for the occurrence^
recently been put forward
of these two names for the hero of the legend. Accord

ing, to it
l
the story of the deluge in the Gilgamesh epic

is made up of two legends which have been interwoven.

One was a nature myth describing a universal deluge,
and the other a local legend referring to the destruction

of a single city. Atrakhasis is the hero of the nature

myth, and Tslt-napishtim,

"

the man of Shurippak," is

the hero of the local legend ;

while both names are given

to the hero in the story, as told in the poem of Gilga

lacks evidence.^
mesh. The theory is ingenious, but it

Before proceeding to compare the Babylonian story

of the flood with that preserved in Genesis, we give

a translation of the former version, so far as the present

2
state of preservation of the text will allow.
The whole
into the mouth of Tslt-napishtim, who tells
story is put
from beginning
it Gilgamesh, without interruption,
to

to end. He begins by describing how the gods in

council,in the of Shurippak, decided to send a
city

deluge upon the earth, and

how Ea revealed the secret

1
See Jastrow, Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie, Bd. XIII. (1899), pp.
288 if.

Cf. Jeremias, Izdiibar-Nimrod, pp. 32 ff.

2 ; Jensen, Die Kosmologie
der Babylonier, pp. 3G7 ff. and Ziramern in ;
Gunkel s 8ch8j>fung
und
Chaos, pp. 423 ff.
 128 THE GODS AND THE DELUGE.

to Tsit-napishtim, one of the dwellers in the town.

The opening lines of Ea s address to Tsit-napishtim,
which begins, reed-hut, reed-hut
"

wall, wall ! !

"

reed-hut, hear wall, understand

"

! ! has proved
a rather puzzling passage to commentators, for it is not

quite obvious why Ea should address a dwelling in this

manner when he gives his warning to Tsit-napishtim.
The best explanation of the passage seems to be that
Ea, before speaking to Tsit-napishtim, first addresses
the hut in which he is sleeping. We know from the

end of the story that Ea revealed the secret to Tsit-

napishtim in a vision, and, in view of the passage in
Ea s speech, it is not unnatural to suppose that Tsit-

napishtim was sleeping at the time in a hut built of

reeds, a common form of dwelling among the poorer
inhabitants of Babylonia.

Tsit-napishtim begins his story thus :

reveal Gilgamesh, the hidden

"

I will to thee,

word,
"

And the decision of the gods will I declare to thee.

Shurippak, a city which thou knowest,

"

"

Which on the bank of the Euphrates,

lieth
"

That city was old and the gods within it,

;

"Their hearts prompted the great gods to send a

1
deluge.
"

There was their father Anu,

"

And their counsellor the warrior Bel,

1
I.e., upon the city and mankind.
 EA S WARNING TO TSIT-NAPISHTIM 129

"

And their messenger Ninib,

"

And their governor Ennugi.

The lord of wisdom, Ea, sat also with them,

"

"

And he repeated their purpose to the hut of reeds,

(saying) :

reed-hut, reed-hut wall, wall

"

! !

reed-hut, hear wall, understand

"

! !

"Thou man 1
of Shurippak, son of Ubara-Tutu,

Pull down thy house, build a ship,

"

"

Forsake thy possessions, take heed for thy life !

"

Abandon thy goods, save thy life,

into the
"And
bring up living seed of every kind
ship.
"

As for the ship, which thou shalt build,

"

Well planned must be its dimensions,

Its breadth and its length shall bear proportion
"

each to each,
"

And thou shalt launch it in the ocean !

"

I took heed, and spake unto Ea, my lord, (saying) :

my lord, which thou hast given,

"

[The command],
"

I will honour, and will fulfil.

"

But how shall I make answer unto the city, the

people and the elders thereof ?

"

Ea opened his mouth and spake,

"

And he said unto me, his servant,

"

Thus shalt thou answer and say unto them :

"

Bel hath cast me forth, for he hateth me,

1
I.e., Tsit-napislitim.

BAB. EEL. K
130 EA S INSTRUCTIONS.
"

And I canno longer live in your city ;

"

JSTor on Bel s earth can I any longer lay my head.

I will therefore go down to the deep and dwell with

"

"

my lord Ea.

The next few lines, which contain Vthe end of the

answer which Tsit-napishtim is to give., to the people,
are broken, and their meaning is not quite plain.

The drift of the passage seems to be that

general
his departure will bring blessings on the land he
is leaving, for Bel will
shower down upon it multi

tudes of birds and fish, and will grant a plenteous

harvest. They will know when to expect their pros

for Shamash has set an appointed time,when

perity,
the lord of darkness, the god Eamman, will pour down
to this
upon them an abundant rain. According
is ordered to allay any
interpretation Tsit-napishtim
that his fellow citizens may feel by
misgivings
that the signs of the deluge
assuring them beforehand
are marks of coming prosperity, and not of destruction.

Some explain the passage by assuming that Tsit-

secret of the coming deluge,
napishtim is to make no
but to foretell its advent and the destruction of all

including birds and fish. The former

living things
better with the earlier part
rendering seems to agree
of his answer otherwise Ea would have told him
to say
;

that Bel hated, not himself only, but mankind at large.

Quite a different version of Ea s instructions to Tsit-

napishtim and of his answer to the god is given

 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP.

on another tablet, of which only a fragment has

been recovered. According to this version Ea told
him to watch appointed time and then to
for the
enter the ship, wherein he was to bring his corn, and
his property, and his possessions, and his family, and
his household and handicraftsmen, together with certain
cattle and beasts of the field. In his answer to the
god Tslt-napishtim does not ask how he is to explain

his action to his fellow citizens, and only seems to

be troubled by the practical difficulties of his task.
He complains that he has never yet built a ship, and

A Babylonian ship. (From a cylinder-seal in the British Museum, No. 89,349.)

therefore asks the god to trace out a plan of the

vessel upon the ground. At this point the version

breaks off.

After receiving Ea s commands Tslt-napishtim col

lected the wood and the materials necessary for the
construction of the ship for four whole days, and
on the fifth day he laid it clown. He made the hull
in the form of a flat-bottomed barge, 120 cubits in
width. Upon the hull he constructed a sort of house
or cabin, 120 cubits hi This great deck-house
height.
 132 THE EMBARKATION.

he divided into six stories, and each story contained

nine rooms. The outside of the ship he rendered

watertight by pouring six measures of bitumen over

it, and the inside he smeared with pitch. He then
caused be brought and he slaughtered oxen;
oil to

and, after filling jars with sesame-wine, and oil, and

grape-wine, he held a feast

"

like that of New Year s

"

Day."
On the seventh day the ship was ready, and

Tslt-napishtim then hastened to carry out Ea s instruc-

\ tions, and to fill it with all that he possessed.! The

J3
narrative continues :

"

With all that I had I filled it.

"With all the silver I had, I filled it,

"

With all the gold I had, I filled it,

"

With all living seed of every kind that I possessed,

I filled it.

into the my family and

"

I brought up ship all

household,
"

The cattle of the field, and the beasts of the field,

the handicraftsmen all of them I brought in.

"

A fixed time Shamash had appointed, (saying) :

"

The lord of darkness will at eventide send a heavy

rain ;

"

Then go into the ship, and shut thy door.

"

The appointed season arrived, and

"

The ruler of the darkness sent at eventide a heavy

rain.

"Of the storm I saw the beginning ;

 THE COMING OF THE FLOOD. 133

"

To look upon the storm I was afraid ;

I entered into the ship and shut the door.

"

"

To the pilot of the ship,

to Puzur-Bel the sailor,
1
"

I committed the great building, and the contents

thereof.
"

When the early dawn appeared,

"

There came up from the horizon a black cloud.

"

Bamman in the midst thereof thundered,

"

And Nabu and Marduk went before,

"

They passed like messengers over mountain and

country.
Uragal parted the anchor-cable.
"

"

There went Ninib, and he made the storm to

burst.
"

The Anunnaki carried flaming torches,

"

And with the brightness thereof they lit up the

earth.

"The whirlwind of Kamman mounted up into the

heavens, and
All light was turned into darkness."
"

The tempest raged for a whole clay. The waters

rose, and all was confusion; men by reason
of the

darkness could see nothing, and they perished miserably.

The text continues :

"

No man beheld his fellow,

"

No longer could men know each other. In

heaven
1
I.e., the ship.
134 ISHTAR S LAMENTATION.
"

The gods were afraid of the deluge,

They retreated, they went up into the heaven Ann.

"

of
"

The gods crouched down like hounds,

"

In the enclosure (of heaven) they sat cowering.

"

Then Ishtar cried aloud like a woman in travail,

"

The Lady of the gods lamented with a loud voice,

(saying) :

"

The old race of man hath been turned back into

clay,
Because I assented to an evil thing in the council
"

of the gods !

"

Alas I I have assented to an evil thing in the

council of the gods,
"

And agreed to a storm which hath destroyed my

people !

"

That which I brought forth where is it ?

Like the spawn of fish it filleth the sea
"

"

The gods of the Anunnaki wept with her,

"

The gods were bowed down, they sat down weeping,

Their lips were pressed together
"

. . .

"

For six days and six nights

"

The wind blew, and the deluge and the tempest

overwhelmed the land.
"

When the seventh day drew nigh, then ceased the

tempest and the deluge, and the storm,

"

Which had fought like a host.

"

Then the sea became quiet and it went down ;

and
the hurricane and the deluge ceased.
 THE STRANDING OF THE SHIP. 1.35

I looked upon the sea and cried aloud,

"

"

For all mankind was turned back into clay.

In place of the fields a swamp lay before me.

"

"

I opened the window and the light fell upon my

cheek ;

bowed myself down, I sat down, I wept

"

I ;

"

Over my cheek flowed my tears.

"

I looked upon the world, and behold all was sea.

After twelve (days ?) the land appeared,

"

"

To the land Nitsir the ship took its course.

"

The mountain of the land of Nitsir held the ship

fast and did not let it slip.
"

The first day, the second day, the

mountain Nitsir
held the ship fast.

"

The third day, the fourth day, the mountain Nitsir

held the ship fast.
"

The fifth day, the sixth day, the mountain Nitsir

held the ship fast.

"When the seventh day drew nigh, I sent out a

dove, and let her go forth.

"

The dove flew hither and thither,

"

But there was no resting-place (for her) and she

returned.
"

Then I sent out a swallow, and let her go forth.

"

The swallow flew hither and thither,

"But there was no resting-place (for her) and she

returned.
"

Then I sent out a raven and let her go forth.

136 THE SACRIFICE.

"

The raven flew away and beheld the abatement of

the waters,
"

And she came near, wading and croaking, but did

not return.
"

Then I brought (all) out unto the four winds, I

offered an offering,
"

I made a libation on the peak of the mountain.

"

By sevens I set out the vessels,

Under them heaped up reed, and cedar-wood, and
"

incense.
"

The gods smelt the savour,

"

The gods smelt the sweet savour,

"

The gods gathered like flies about him that offered

up the sacrifice.
"

Then the Lady of the gods drew nigh,

"

And she lifted up the great jewels, which Anu had

made according to her wish, (and said) :

"

What gods these are !

By the jewels of lapis
lazuli which are upon my neck, I will not

forget !

"

These days I have set in my memory, never will I

forget them !

"

Let the gods come to the offering,

"

But Bel shall not come to the offering,

Since he refused to ask counsel and sent the deluge,

"

"

And handed over my people unto destruction.

"

Now when Bel drew nigh,

"

He saw the ship, and he was very wroth ;

 EA S PROTEST. 137

"

He was filled with anger against the gods, the Igigi,

(saying) :

"

Who then hath escaped with his life ?

"

No man shall live after the destruction !

"

Then Ninib opened his mouth and spake,

"

And said to the warrior Bel,

"

Who but Ea could have done this thing ?

"

For Ea knoweth every matter !

"

Then Ea opened his mouth and spake,

"

And said to the warrior Bel,

"

Thou art the governor of the gods, warrior,

"

But thou wouldst not take counsel and thou hast

sent the deluge !

"

On the sinner visit his sin, and

"

On the transgressor visit his transgression ;

"

But hold thy hand, that all be not destroyed !

"

And forbear (?), that all be not [confounded] !

"

Instead of sending a deluge,

"

Let a lion come and minish mankind !

Instead of sending a deluge,

"

"

Let a leopard come and minish mankind I

"

Instead of sending a deluge,

"

Let a famine come and [waste] the land !

Instead of sending a deluge,

"

"

Let the Plague-god come and [slay] mankind !

"

I did not reveal the purpose of the great gods.

I caused Atrakhasis to see a dream, and (thus) he

"

heard the purpose of the gods.

138 DEIFICATION OF TSIT-NAPISHTIM.

Thereupon Bel arrived at a decision,

"

"

And lie went up into the ship.

"

He took my hand and brought me forth,

"He
brought my wife forth, he made her to kneel

at my side,
"

He turned towards us, he stood between us, he

blessed us, (saying) :

Hitherto hath Tsit-napishtim been of mankind,

"

"

But now let Tsit-napishtim be like unto the gods,

even us,
"

And let Tsit-napishtim dwell afar off at the mouth

of the river !

"

Then they took me, and afar off, at the mouth of

the rivers, they made rne to dwell."

The reader will now have gained a notion of the
form of the deluge story current in Assyria during
the seventh century B.C., but, before comparing it with
the Biblical account, it will be necessary to consider the

following facts. The Biblical story is contained in

QeiL vi. 9 ix. 17, and, like the ,stoiias.~of the creation

given in the firstand second chapters of that book,

from two separate writings the
"

is___taken Priastly
de
"
"

waiting and the "

J^li{mst~-^mtiv," brief
1
scriptions of which have already been given. In the
case of the accounts of the creation we have seen that
the two stories were not interwoven one with the other,
and that one was first given and then the other. In
1
See above, pp. 110 f.
 THE BIBLICAL STORY OF THE FLOOD. 139

the case of the deluge on the other hand, the two

accounts are not given separately, but have been
united so as to form a single narrative. The compiler,
however, has made very little alteration in his two

sources of information, and has scrupulously preserved

the texts upon which he has drawn. Even where the
two versions from each other in points of detail
differ

he has not attempted to harmonize them, but without

change has given each as he found it ;

thanks to this
fact it is possible to disentangle the two accounts with
absolute certainty.
As the text reads at present we find considerable

differences in certain passages with regard to two

important details of the story, viz., the length of the
duration of the deluge, and the number of the animals

which were preserved. According to Gen. vii. 10, the

flood took place seven days after Noah was told to

build the ark ;

in Gen. vii. 12 and viii. 6, the waters
are said to have prevailed for forty days ;
and accord
ing to Gen. viii. 6-12, the waters subsided after three
periods of seven days each. These passages give the
total duration of the deluge, including the seven days
of preparation, as sixty-eight days. On the other

hand, in Gen. vii. 11, the flood is said to have begun

"in the hundredth year of Noah s life, in the

six

second month, on the seventeenth day of the month

"
"

in Gen. the waters prevailed

"

vii. 24, it is stated that

and
"

upon the earth an hundred and

"

fifty days ;
140 TWO VERSIONS IN GENESIS.

according to Gen. viii. 13 and 14, the waters finally

disappeared, and the earth became dry in the "six

hundred and
"

in the second
" "

first year of Noah,

"month, on the seven and twentieth day of the

Thus, according
"month."
passages, the to these
total duration of the deluge was more than a year

a statement that is not compatible with the pre

viously cited passages which give the length of its

duration as sixty-eight days. The second most striking

instance of divergence occurs in the numbers of the
animals to be preserved in the ark ; according to
Gen. vi. 19, Noah is told to preserve two of every sort,

while in Gen. vii. 2, Noah is to preserve seven of every

clean beast, and two of every beast that is not clean.
These are perhaps the two most striking instances of

divergence in the narrative, for they cannot be recon

ciled except on the they are the
supposition that
accounts of two different writers which have been
interwoven with each other.
Other evidence, such as the occurrence of double
accounts of the same episode, each written in a style
of its own, points in the same direction; and it is

possible on the basis of such evidence to separate

the two threads of the narrative. These two threads
are so distinct that any one may trace them for him
self in the Authorized Version of the English Bible.
This will be apparent if we mark with a line at the

side of the column the following passages of the

 SEPARATION OF THE NARRATIVES. 141

narrative: Gen. vi. 9-22; vii. 6, 11, 13-16 (down to

"

as God commanded him") ;

vii. 18-21 and 24 viii. 1 ;

and 2 to "were viii. 3 (from

(down stopped");

"and after the end") -5; viii. 13 (down to "from

off the earth");

viii. 14-19; and ix. 1-17. When
this has been done and these passages read consecu

tively, it will be seen that we have a perfectly complete

and consistent account of the deluge. If the passages

unmarked are next read, it will

which have been left

be seen that, although one fragment of a verse has been

the second half of verse 16),
transposed (chapter vii.,
we have here another complete and consistent account
1
of the deluge.

This will be apparent from the following summaries;

1 we will
the
summarize the marked passages first, which together contain
to the "?ricstly writing Because
Yaccount of the deluge according ",:

I the earth was corrupt God decided to send a deluge.

He therefore
warned Noah to build an ark, giving him precise directions with
when it was
regard to its size and to the mode
of its construction ;

finished he was told to bring his own family into the ark,
and two of
every kind of living creature,
male and female, as well as food for
himself and for them Noah did as he was commanded (vi. 9-22).
;

Noah was hundred years old when the flood began (vii. G) in the
six ;

six hundredth year of his life the flood was caused by the breaking up
of the fountains of the great deep arid by the opening of the windows
of heaven (vii. the self-same day Noah and his family entered
ll).i/On
the ark, and he brought in the animals in pairs (vii. 13-1 G). And
the

waters increased and covered the high mountains, and the depth
of

the flood was fifteen cubits, and every living creature perished (vii.
18-21). And the waters prevailed for an hundred and fifty days,
when God sent a wind to assuage the waters and the fountains of ;

the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped (vii. 24-viii. 2).
After the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters decreased and
in the seventh month the ark rested the mountains of Ararat.
upon
And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month, when
142 SUMMARY OF THE ACCOUNTS.
The reader will see that each account repeats phrases

characteristic to itself, and each, when separated from

the other, contains a consistent and uncontradictory

the tops of the mountains were seen (viii. 3-5). And on the first day
of the six hundred and first year the waters were dried up from the
earth (viii. 13), and by the seven and twentieth day of the second
month the earth was quite dry (viii. 14). And Noah came forth from
the ark 15-19), and God blessed Noah and his sons, and He ma ie
(viii.
a covenant that He would not again send a flood to destroy the earth,
and as a token of the covenant He set His rainbow in the clouds (ix.
1-17). Such is the story, complete and consistent with itself, which
isgiven by the marked passages.
The unmarked passages represent the Jehovistic narrative." In "

the marked passages the reader will have noticed that the Divine
name used is
"

God," which corresponds to the Hebrew word "

E15-
"hiiu"; in the unmarked passages he will notice that the word
generally used is
"

the Lord," representing the Hebrew word

"Jahveh" or Jehovah. The
is not quite "Jehovistic narrative"

a complete account, for its beginning, which contained the command

to build the ark, is omitted, doubtless because the Priestly writing"
"

gives so full an account of it. From what remains of the Jehovistic "

narrative we gain the following picture of the flood Since Noah

" "

had been righteous in his generation, the Lord bade him and all his
house go up into the ark. Noah was also told to bring into the ark
with him seven of every kind of clean beast and two of every unclean
beast, the greater number of clean beasts no doubt being taken to
serve as food during the time Noah and his household should be shut
up in the ark. Noah was warned that in seven days time the Lord
would cause it to rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights,
and every living thing the Lord had made would be destroyed (vii.
1-5). Noah therefore did as he was commanded he took the clean ;

and unclean beasts into the ark wuh him (vii. 7-9) and the Lord shut
him in (vii. 16). As had been foretold, after seven days the flood
came upon the earth (vii. 10), and the rain was upon the earth forty
days and forty nights (vii. 12). And the flood was forty days upon
the earth, and the waters increased and bore up the ark (vii. 17) and ;

every living thing was destroyed, except Noah and they that were
with him in the ark (vii. 22 and 23). Then the rain from heaven was
restrained and the waters returned from off the earth continually
(viii. 2 and 3), and at the end of forty days Noah opened the window
 POINTS OF CONTRAST. 143

narrative of the event. The "Priestly writing,"

in

accordance with its annalistic character, gives exact

details concerning the size and structure of the ark,
records the depth of the flood in cubits, gives precise

dates, by day and month and when the year, as to

flood began, when upon Ararat, when
the ark rested

the tops of the mountains were seen, when the waters

were dried up, and also when the earth was quite dry.
Episodes peculiar to it are the breaking up of the
fountains of the deep as a cause of the flood, the

resting of the ark on the mountains of Ararat, and

the making of the covenant with the rainbow as its
more pictu
"

token. The "

Jehovistic narrative is far

resque ;
the Lord shuts Noah into the ark, He smells
the sweet savour of Noah s sacrifice, and He says in
His heart He will not again send a deluge. The
episodes peculiar to this account are the distinction

made between clean and unclean animals, the bringing

of the ark and sent forth a raven, which flew to and fro and did not
return then a dove, which, finding no rest for the sole of her foot,
;

returned to him. He waited another seven days and again he sent

forth the dove, which this time brought in her mouth an olive leaf
plucked off so Noah knew the waters were abated. He waited yet
;

another seven days and then again sent forth the dove, which this
time did not return (viii. 6-12). So Noah removed the covering of the
ark and beheld that the face of the ground was dried (viii. 13). And
Noah built an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast and
of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the
Lord smelled the sweet savour, and said in His heart He would not
again curse the ground nor smite every living thing while the earth ;

remained, the natural order of the universe should not be changed

(viii. 20-22).
 144 COMPARISON WITH THE BABYLONIAN POEM.

on of the deluge by a heavy rain only and not by

the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep,
the sending forth of the raven and the dove, the

building of the altar and the sacrifice to Jehovah.

\
The chief points of divergence between the two
narratives, that is to say, the statements as to the

length of the flood s duration, have been referred

to already.

When we
compare the Babylonian account of the
deluge with these two versions in the book of Genesis,
we see that it contains many of the peculiarities of

both. The with regard to the form and struc

details

ture of the ship are very similar to those of the ark

in the "Priestly writing," both accounts stating that

the vessel was built in stories, and that pitch was

used for making it watertight in both narratives the
;

ark is said to have rested upon a mountain and Ea s ;

protest against the sending of a deluge in the future

isperhaps the equivalent of God s covenant with Noah
that mankind should not again be so destroyed. On
the other hand, many of the features peculiar to the
"

Jehovistic narrative" also appear in the Babylonian

version. Stich are the seven days which elapsed
between the warning and the coming of the deluge,
the cause of the deluge ascribed to heavy rain, the

sending forth of birds to test the condition of the

waters, the burning of a sacrifice from which a sweet
savour rose, etc.
 ORIGIN OF THE HEBREW VERSIONS. 145

We have therefore in Genesis beyond doubt two

independent versions of the deluge story, both originally
derived from Babylonian sources, but neither directly

copied from the Babylonian version as we know it on

the tablets from Ashur-bani-pal s library. In the case
of the legends of the creation we have already noted
indications that they were derived from Babylon at
some period prior to the exile, and the arguments there
brought forward apply with equal force to the story
of the deluge. It is a striking fact, however, that the

latter narrative has not left so strong a mark upon

the earlier Hebrew writings as did the Babylonian
dragon-myth. In the second half of the book of

Isaiah the wrath of Jehovah in sending the Jews into

l
captivity is compared to
"

the waters of Noah," and

2
in Ezekiel also there is an interesting reference to
Noah, which presupposes a knowledge of the Biblical
but traces of the story in the other
story of the flood ;

books of the Old Testament are not very numerous.

Moreover the resemblance between the Hebrew and
the Babylonian versions of the deluge very much is

closer than that between the corresponding accounts

of the creation. These facts indicate a later date for

the adoption of the deluge story by the Hebrews, but

a date which may have been centuries before the
taking of Jerusalem.
1 2
Isaiah liv. 9. Ezekiel xiv. 12-20.

BAB. BEL. L
 ( 146 )

OHAPTEll V.

TALES OF GODS AND HEROES.

IN the two preceding chapters we have described the

legendsof the Babylonians which have left their mark

upon Hebrew Of such legends those which

literature.

dealt with the creation of the world formed in them

these we
selves a body of traditions, and
complete
have treated as such in Chapter III. The story of the
deluge, on the other hand,
which formed the subject of

Chapter IV,, has not come

down to us as a separate
legend, but
occurs in the course of a long poem which
hero
describes the adventures of a great Babylonian
named Gilgamesh. As the account of the deluge there
narrated forms a complete story, we took it from its

order to treat it in connection with the

context, in

legends of creation.
We will now describe the re

of the Babylonians,
maining portions of this great poem
which deals with the exploits of Gilgamesh, the greatest
race.
mythical hero of their
The name of the hero was, for many years, read
"

Izdubar," or
"

Gishdubar," but we now know that the

 THE POEM OF GILGAMESH. 147

Babylonians pronounced the ideogram which formed

l
the name, It has been suggested that
"

Gilgamesh."

Gilgamesh is to be identified with the hero Nimrod,-

who was mighty hunter before the Lord/ and
"a

the beginning of whose kingdom was "Babel, and

Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of

"

2
beyond the fact that both Nimrod
"

Shinar
"

; but,
and Gilgamesh were great Babylonian heroes of
antiquity, there are no other grounds for assuming
their identity. Of Nimrod we know little besides
what is told
passage us rein the in Genesis
ferred to,but the deeds of Gilgamesh are recounted
in the longest Babylonian poem that has come down
to us. It is written upon a series of twelve tablets,

which, like those of the Creation series, are distin

guished by numbers. The late Sir Henry C. Eaw-

linson made the suggestion that the poem was a solar
myth, the twelve tablets corresponding to the twelve

months of the year, but the contents of the majority

of the tablets do not fit in with this view of their

origin. In fact, it is probable that the division of the

poem twelve sections was a comparatively late
into

arrangement, the work of the scribes who collected

and edited the ancient legends. We know that stories
and legends of the hero Gilgamesh go back into

mentions an ancient king Gilgamos, a name lie evidently

took from the hero of this poem.
2
Gen. x. 8 -10.
148 INTRODUCTION TO THE POEM.

remote antiquity, for cylinder-seals, made during the

Sumerian period, 1 have been found, on which are
engraved the deeds of valour performed by him. The
actual poem, however, in which we read these stories,

like most of the other legends of the Babylonians,

is known to us from Assyrian tablets which were
written in the seventh century before Christ. Several

copies of the work were made for Ashur-bani-pal s

library, and, from the numerous fragments of them

that are in the British Museum, it is possible to piece

together the story, and to give several of the episodes

of the narrative in detail. 2 The story clings to the
ancient city of Erech, the chief seat of the worship
of the goddess Ishtar, and, although in the course
of adventures, Gilgamesh travelled into distant
his

lands, he always returned to the city of Erech.

The First Tablet of the series is much broken. A
fragment has been found which not improbably con
tained the opening words of the poem, for it seems to
describe the benefits that will accrue to a man who
will study the poem and make himself acquainted

with the hero s history. After these prefatory remarks,

the text introduces the name of Erech, and describes
the misfortunes that have fallen upon this ancient

city in consequence of a siege that has taken place.

All living things that are in the city, gods, and men,

1
I.e., from aboutB.C. 4000 to B.C. 2300.
2
Cf. Jeremias, Iziubar-Nimrod, Leipzig, 1891.
 THE SIEGE OF ERECH. 149

and beasts, are confused and terrified ;

the text reads

as follows :

"

She asses [tread down] their young,

"

Cows [turn upon] their

calves.
"

Men cry aloud like beasts,

"

And maidens mourn like doves.

"

The gods of strong- walled Erech

"

Are changed to flies, and buzz about the streets.

"

The spirits of strong-walled Erech

"

Are changed to serpents, and glide into holes (?).

"

For three years the enemy besieged Erech,

"And the doors were barred, and the bolts were

shot,
"

And Ishtar did not raise her head against the foe."

We have no mention of Gilgamesh upon these frag

ments of the First Tablet, but, as on the Second Tablet

we find the inhabitants of Erech groaning under his
rule, it is not improbable that the foe mentioned as

besieging Erech was led by Gilgamesh, and that they

succeeded in capturing the city. Another view is that
from her
Gilgamesh came forward and delivered Erech
enemies, and in return for his services was elected
ruler of the city. By whichever of these means he
obtained his throne in Erech, there is no doubt that
his rule soon became unpopular, for he forced all the
and carried
young men of the city into his service

off the maidens to his court. The elders complained,

saying :
 150 THE TYRANNY OF GILGAMESH.
"

Gilgamesh hath not left the son to his father,

"Nor the maid to the hero, nor the wife to her

husband."

They therefore cried to the goddess Arum against the

tyranny of Gilgamesh, complaining that he acted in this

despotic manner because he had no rival to keep him
in check. Day and night the people raised their com
plaint, and the gods of heaven heard them and had
compassion upon them. And the gods also cried aloud
toArum, bidding her create a being, equal to Gilga
mesh in strength, who might fight with him and limit
his power. They urged that as she had created Gilga
1
mesh, so she must now create his rival. Aruru listened

to theirwords and proceeded to plan and to create a

being who should be capable of opposing Gilgamesh.

The passage referring to the creation of this being, who
was named Ea-bani, reads as follows :

Upon hearing these words (i.e., the words of the gods)

"

"

Arum conceived a man of Anu 2 in her mind.

"Aruru washed her hands,

"She broke off a piece of clay, she cast it on the
ground.
Thus she created Ea-bani, the hero."
"

Ea-bani, however, was not wholly human in form.

1
It will be remembered that according to one version of the Crea
tion story, the goddess Arum, in company with Marduk, is credited
with the creation of mankind; see above, p. 90.
2
I.e., a divine man, a demi-god. In this phrase "

Aim "

is used as
a general name for
"

god."
 THE CREATION OF EA-BANI. !$!

From upon cylinder-seals we know that he

his picture

had the head, and body, and arms of a man, but his
legs were those of a beast.
The following description
of Ea-bani is given in the poem :

The whole body was [covered] with hair,

of his
"

"

He was clothed with long hair like a woman.

"

The quality of his hair was luxuriant, like that of

the Corn-god.
"

He knew [not] the land and the inhabitants thereof,

"

He was clothed with garments as the god of the

field.
"

With the gazelles he ate herbs,

"

With the beasts he slaked his thirst,

"With the creatures of the water his heart rejoiced."

A new personage now comes on the scene and, from

the abruptness with which he is introduced, it is
evident that he has already been described in some

previous portion of the poem that is wanting. This

new personage is Tsaidu, "the hunter," who appears
to have been sent into the mountains by Gilgamesh
in order to capture Ea-bani. The gods no doubt in
due time would have brought Ea-bani to Erech to do
battle with Gilgamesh, and the object of Gilgamesh

in sending Tsaidu to capture Ea-bani was clearly to

"

forestall their intention.

"

The hunter accordingly

went out into the mountains and lay in wait for

Ea-bani. For three days Tsaidu watched Ea-bani as

he went down to the stream to drink, but he thought
152 TSAIDU, THE HUNTER.

he was too strong to overcome in single combat. He

therefore returned to Erech and told Gilgamesh of the
monster s strength; he described his own terror at

beholding him, and added that he destroyed all the

traps which had been set for him, saying :

"

He rangeth over [all] the mountains,

Eegularly with the beasts [he feedeth],
"

Eegularly his feet [are set] towards the drinking-

"

place.
"

But I was afraid, I could not approach him.

"

He hath filled up the pit which I digged,

"

He hath destroyed the nets which I [spread],

"He hath caused the cattle and the beasts of the
field to escape from my hands,
"

And he doth not let me make war (upon them)."

Gilgamesh was not discouraged by Tsaidu s want of

success, and he revealed to him a device by which he

might capture Ea-bani, who had proved too cunning for

the ordinary snares of the hunter, saying :

Go, my Tsaidu, and take Ukhat with thee.

"

"

And when the beasts come down to the drinking-

place,
"

Then let her tear off her clothing and disclose her
nakedness.

(Ea-bani) shall see her, and he shall draw nigh

"

unto her,
"

And the cattle, which grew up on his field, shall

forsake him."
 THE PLOT TO CAPTURE EA-BANI. 153

Ukhat, whom Tsaidu was told to take with him, was

one of the sacred women who were in the service of

Ishtar and were attached to the ancient temple of

that goddess in the city of Erech. The narrative

continues :

"Tsaidu departed, and took

with him the woman
Ukhat.

They took the straight road,

"

"

And on the third day they reached the appointed

place.
in
"

Then Tsaidu and the woman placed themselves

hiding.
"For one day, for two days, they lurked by the

drinking-place.
"

With the beasts (Ea-bani) slaked his thirst,

"

With the creatures of the waters his heart rejoiced.

"

Then Ea-bani (approached) . . .

,

"

With the gazelles he ate herbs,

"

With the beasts he slaked his thirst,

"

With the creatures of the water his heart rejoiced."

As Ea-bani came near, Ukhat caught sight of him,

and Tsaidu exclaimed :

"

That is he, Ukhat, loosen thy girdle,

"Uncover thy nakedness that he may receive thy
favours,
"

Be not faint-hearted, lay hold upon his soul.

"

He shall see thee, and shall draw nigh unto thee.

shall lie in thine arms.

Open thy garment, and he
"
154 EA-BANI TEMPTED BY UKHAT.
"

Give him pleasure after the manner of women.

"

His cattle, which grew up in his field, shall forsake

him,
"

While he holdeth thee in the embraces of love."

Ukhat did as Tsaidu bade her, and the plot was

attended with success, as we may see from the following
lines :

"

Ukhat loosened her garment, she uncovered her

nakedness,
"

She was not faint-hearted, and she laid hold upon

his soul.
"

She opened her garment, and he lay in her arms.

"

She gave him pleasure after the manner of women,

"

And he held her in the embraces of love.

"

For six days and six nights Ea-bani drew nigh and
tarried with Ukhat.

After he had satisfied himself with her abundance,

"

"

He turned his attention to his cattle.

"

His gazelles lay, and looked at Ea-bani,

"

The beasts of the field turned away from him.

"

Ea-bani was terrified, his body grew stiff,

"

His knees stood still, as his cattle departed."

Ea-bani, however, did not attempt to pursue them or

to induce them to return to him.
Eecovering from his
dismay he turned once more to the companion at his

side and
"

He returned to love, he sat at the feet of the

woman,
 HIS LOVE FOR THE WOMAN. 155

"

And he gazed up into her face,

"

And as the woman spake he listened.

"

And the woman said unto Ea-bani :

Thou art of great stature, Ea-bani, and art like

"

unto a god.
"

Why then dost thou lie with the beasts of the field ?
"

Come, let me bring thee to strong- walled Erech,

"

To the bright house, the dwelling of Ann and

Ishtar,
"To the palace of Gilgamesh, who is perfect in

strength,
"

And who, like a mountain-bull, wieldeth power

over men.
"

She spake unto him and he hearkened unto her

word,
"

In the wisdom of his heart he wished for a friend.

"

Ea-bani spake unto the woman :

Come Ukhat, lead me away,

"

then,
"

To the bright and holy dwelling of Ann and Ishtar,

"

To the palace of Gilgamesh, who is perfect in

strength,
"And who like [a mountain-bull wieldeth power]
men/
"

over
The text of the poem which follows is broken, and it

isonly with difficulty that the thread of the narrative

can be made out. Ea-bani had heard so much of the

might of Gilgamesh from Ukhat that he desired to win

his friendship but, it appears, he first wished to test
;
156 GILGAMESH AND EA-BANI.

the hero s strength, and to join with him in battle. It

was with this object that he set out with Ukhat for the

city of Erech, and they happened to arrive there during

the celebration of a festival. Ea-bani, however, had a

dream in which he was warned to refrain from

attempting todo battle with Gilgamesh. He was told

that Gilgamesh was more powerful than he, and that,
as by day and by night he did not rest, he could not
hope to take him unawares. He was also told in his
dream that Gilgamesh was beloved of Shamash, the
Sun-god, and that the three great gods, Anu, Bel, and
Ea, had given wisdom unto him.
Meanwhile Gilgamesh also had a dream, and he was
troubled because he could not interpret it. He there

fore went to his mother Aruru and enquired of her

the meaning of his vision. He told her that in his

vision the stars of heaven seemed to fallupon him, and

his mother seems to have interpreted the dream as fore
telling the coming of Ea-bani, and also to have advised
him to make friends with Ea-bani.

Gilgamesh and Ea-bani did not enter into combat,

and the Third Tablet of the series tells how they
became friends. From the fragments of the text which

remain, it appears that Ea-bani did not at first give

heed to the warning vouchsafed him in his dream,
and it was only after the personal intervention of the
Sun-god that he gave up the desire to do battle with
Gilgamesh, and consented to treat him henceforth as
 EXPEDITION AGAINST KHUMBABA. 157

his comrade. In order to induce Ea-bani to remain

at Erech, Shamash conferred on him royal rank, and
he promised him that he should recline on a great
couch while the princes of the earth kissed his feet,
and that the people of Erech should proclaim their
submission unto him. Ea-bani listened to the Sun-

god, and consented to remain in Erech as the friend

of Gilgamesh.
The next section of the poem is also incomplete,

but enough of the text remains to enable us to make

out the story, which concerns an expedition under
1
taken by both heroes against an Elamite despot
named Khumbaba. The preparations for the expedi
tion and the battle with Khumbaba are described upon
the Fourth and Fifth Tablets of the series. Before

Khumbaba, Ea-bani prayed

setting out for the castle of
to the Sun-god,and Gilgamesh recounted to his friend
a favourable dream which had been sent to him, in
which he beheld the dead body of Khumbaba. In
due time the two heroes came to a wood of cedar
trees, in the middle of which Khumbaba s castle was
built. Khumbaba was feared by all who dwelt near

him, for his roaring was like the storm, and any man,
who was rash enough to enter into his cedar wood,

perished. The two heroes, however, undismayed by

the reports of their enemy s power, pressed forward
1
The people of Elatn, which was situated to the east of Mesopo
tamia, were, from an early period, in constant conflict with Babylonia.
 158 THE SLAYING OF KHUMBABA.
on their journey. They entered the wood, but were
amazed at the great size of the trees that
grew therein,
and in the words of the poem
"

They stood still, and marvelled at the wood,

"

They gazed at the height of the cedars,

"

They gazed at the entrance of the wood,

"The
place where Khumbaba was wont to walk
and set his foot.
"

The road had been laid out, and the path was well
made.",

After describing the beauty of the greatest of the

cedars, which possessed a pleasant and delightful shade

and a sweet smell, the tablet breaks off. How the
heroes penetrated to the castle, and in what manner

they succeeded in slaying Khumbaba, we do not know ;

but that they were successful in the

fight is clear from
the last line of the tablet. Half this line is preserved
and reads "the head of Khumbaba," from which we
may perhaps infer that Gilgamesh and Ea-bani, after
slaying the tyrant, cut off his head from his body.
Hitherto the heroes had only met with success.

Enjoying the favour of the Sun-god, they had suc

ceeded in slaying a powerful
enemy of their city, and
they now returned to Erech elated with their victory.
From this time forward, however, their lot was not

so happy, and the Sixth Tablet gives the reason of

their misfortunes, for it narrates how Gilgamesh in
curred the wrath of the powerful The
goddess Ishtar.
 ISHTAR S PASSION FOR GILGAMESII. 159

tablet opens with an account of Low, on his return

from Erech, Gilgamesh removed the stains of battle,
and clothed himself in his royal robes, in the following
words :

"

[He cleansed] his weapons, he polished his weapons,

armour from upon him,
"

[He removed] his

[He took off] his him

"

soiled garments, he^ clothed

self in clean raiment.

"He donned [his robes of] honour, he bound on

his diadem,

Gilgamesh wore bound

"

his crown, he on his

diadem."

The sight of the hero thus arrayed on his return

from battle kindled with love for him the heart of
the goddess Ishtar. The poem tells how she beheld
the comeliness of Gilgamesh, and addressed him in
these words :

Come, Gilgamesh, be thou

"

my spouse.
"

Bestow thy strength upon me as a gift,

"And thou shalt be my husband, and I will be
thy wife.
"

I will set thee in a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold,

"With wheels made of gold and horns made of
diamonds,
"

And mighty . . . steeds shalt thou yoke to it.

"Thou shalt enter our house with the sweet scent

of cedars.
"

When thou enterest our house,

160 GILGAMESH REPULSES ISHTAR.

[The great and] the mighty shall kiss thy feet.

"

"Kings,
and rulers, and princes shall bow down
before thee,
"And from mountain and plain shall they bring
gifts unto thee as tribute."
The goddess promised in addition that his flocks
should bear twins, that the horses of his chariot should
be swift, and that his be unrivalled.
cattl$||should
But Gilgamesh refused her proiflred love, remembering
the fate of those who had already enjoyed it, and thus

upbraided her with her treachery :

"

On Tammuz, the spouse of thy youth,

"

Thou didst lay affliction every year.

"

Thou didst love the brilliant Allalu-bird,

"

But thou didst smite him and break his wing ;

"

He stands in the woods, and cries, my wing.

"

Thou didst also love a lion, perfect in strength,

"

Seven by seven didst thou dig snares for him.

"

Thou didst also love a horse, pre-eminent in battle

"

Bridle, spur, and whip didst thou lay upon him,

"

Thou didst make him to gallop for seven kasbu,

"

Trouble and sweating didst thou force him to bear,

"

And on his mother Silili thou didst lay affliction.

"

Thou didst also love a shepherd of the flock,

"

Who continually poured out for thee the libation (?),

"

And daily slaughtered kids for thee ;

"But thou didst smite him, and didst change him

into a leopard,
 THE BULL FROM HEAVEN. l6l

So that his own sheep-boy hunted him,

"

"

And his own hounds tore him to pieces."

Gilgamesh also recounted the sad fate of a gardener

in the service of Aim, Ishtar s father, whom she had

loved. Every day he brought her costly gifts and made

bright the dish from which she ate but when she grew ;

tired of him she changed him into a cripple, so that

henceforth he could not rise from his bed. Gilgamesh

ended his taunts with the words, "As for me, thou
"wouldst love me, and like unto them thou wouldst
"

[afflict me]."

When Ishtar heard this she was enraged and she went

up where she sought out her father Ami,

into heaven,
and her mother Anatu, and complained that Gilgamesh
had scorned her. Anu
attempted to soothe her, but she
demanded vengeance upon Gilgamesh, and asked Anu
to create a monstrous bull, named Alu, which should

destroy the hero. Anu yielded to his imperious

daughter and created the bull in accordance with her
wish. The account of the battle between the bull and
the two heroes Ea-bani and Gilgamesh, is very in
complete, but the struggle seems to have been long and
fierce, and towards the end of the account we read that

Ea-bani seized the bull by the tail so that Gilgamesh

was no doubt enabled to slay the monster with his
sword. In the accompanying illustration, we see Gil

gamesh and Ea-bani each engaged in conflict with a

bull. The picture may possibly be based upon some
BAB. EEL. M
162 THE FIGHT WITH THE BULL.

variant form of the legend, according to which Ami sent

two divine bulls against Gilgamesh and his friend.

Perhaps it is simpler, however, to regard it as a picture

of the two heroes on a hunting expedition, for on

other cylinder-seals they are frequently represented as

struggling with several bulls and lions at the same time.

It will be noticed that in the centre of the picture is a

fir tree growing upon what appears to be a pile of stones.

Ea-bani and Gilgamesh in conflict with two bulls. (From a cylinder-seal in the
British Museum, No. 89,308.)

The small half circles, however, which look like stones,

are conventional representations of mountains ;
the

engraver intended to convey the impression that the

fight with the bulls took place in a well- wooded and
mountainous country.
The poem next describes the wrath of Ishtar at the

death of the bull as follows :

"

Then Ishtar went up on to the wall of strong-walled

Erech ;

"

She mounted to the top and she uttered a curse,

(saying),
 EA-BANI TAUNTS ISHTAR. 163
(
Cursed be Gilgamesh, who has provoked me
"

to

anger,
"

And has slain the bull from heaven/

"

When Ea-bani heard these words of Ishtar,

"

He tore out the entrails (?) of the bull,

"And he cast them before her, (crying),
"

As for thee, I will conquer thee,

"And I will do to thee even as I have done to
"

him.
Thus Ea-bani drew down upon himself the wrath of
Ishtar.

Then Ishtar assembled the three grades of priestesses

attached to her service and they made lamentation over
the death of the bull.
The horns of the bull were of great value, for
they
were exceedingly large and each of them held six
measures of oil. Gilgamesh, therefore, in gratitude for
his victory, dedicated them to the Sun-god, who is

described in this passage of the poem under the local

name of Lugal-Marada, that is "

King of Marad," Marad

being a city in Babylonia. After dedicating the horns
with much ceremony at the altar of the god, Gilgamesh
and his attendants washed their hands in the Euphrates
and then set out for Erech. On their arrival they rode
through the streets of the and the people gathered
city,

together to gaze upon them as they passed. The

princesses of the cifcy also came out to meet Gilgamesh,
and he cried out unto them, saying-
1 64 EA-BANI S DEATH.
"

Who is glorious among heroes ?

"

Who is mighty among men ?

"

G-ilgamesh is glorious among heroes,

"

Gilgamesh is mighty among men."

In this manner he passed through Erech and entered
into his palace. There he prepared a banquet at which
he entertained his friends in honour of his victory over
the great bull. After the banquet the guests reclined

upon their couches and During Ea-bani s sleep

slept.
he saw a vision, and when he awoke in the morning he
drew nigh to Gilgamesh and began to tell him of the

things which he had seen.

The Seventh Tablet begins with Ea-bani s account
of his dream, but so few fragments of the text of this

and the following tablet have been preserved that it

is not possible to follow the course of the narrative at

this point. All we know for certain is that Ea-bani s

death occurs at the .end of the Eighth Tablet. He

seems to have received a wound in battle, but in
what manner and at the hands of what foe, we cannot
say. All that we can
gather from the mutilated text
is that he was laid low upon his bed with the sickness

which resulted from Eor twelve days he

his wound.
lay sick, and having summoned Gilgamesh to his bed
side, and having told him the manner in which he

had received his wound, he died. We may reasonably

conjecture that his death was brought about
by
Ishtar, whose anger he had aroused. Gilgamesh himself
 THE GRIEF OF GILGAMESH. 165

we he had been smitten

escaped from death, but
find

with a sore sickness, which no doubt was also due to

the anger of the great goddess whose love he had
scorned.

The Ninth Tablet opens with the lament of Gilga-

mesh for the death of his friend, and with his resolve
to seek out his ancestor, Tslt-napishtim, who might
The tablet
perhaps help him to escape a similar fate.

begins as follows :

"

For his friend Ea-bani

stretched out
Gilgamesh wept bitterly and he lay
"

upon the ground.

"

(He cried) : Let me not die like Ea-bani !

Grief hath entered into my body, and

"

"

I fear death, and I lie stretched out upon the

ground.
"

To (test) the power

of Tslt-napishtim, son of Ubara-

Tutu,
"

"

I will set out, and I will not tarry by the way/

thus
Gilgamesh describes his journey
:

To a mountain gorge I came by night,

"

"Lions I beheld, and I was terrified.

"

I raised my head and I prayed to the Moon-god,

And gods came my cry,
to the [chief] of the
"

showed favour unto me."

[And he hearkened and]
"

From what remains of the text it appears that Gil

shewed
gamesh had a dream in which the Moon-god
him the way by which he might safely pass over the
 166 THE MOUNTAIN OF THE SUNSET,

mountains. Gilgamesh succeeded in crossing the first

mountain range which barred his path, and he next
came to a still greater mountain named Mashu, that
is to say, the Mountain of the Sunset. The poem
continues as follows :

"

Then he came to the Mountain of Mashu,

The
"

portals of which are guarded daily [by

monsters] ;

"

Their backs mount up to the

rampart of heaven,
"

And their fore parts reach down beneath Arallu.

Scorpion- men guard the gate (of
"

Mashu) ;

"They strike terror [into

men], and it is death to
behold them.
"Their
splendour is great, for it overwhelms the
mountains ;

"

From sunrise to sunset they guard the Sun.

"

Gilgamesh beheld them,

"

And his face grew dark with fear and terror,

"And the wildness of their aspect robbed him of
his senses."

One of the Scorpion-men then

caught sight of Gil
gamesh, and, turning to his wife, told her that the
body of the man they saw approaching resembled that
of a god. His wife replied that Gilgamesh was partly
divine and partly human. The Scorpion-man then
told her how Gilgamesh had
out on his long set

journey in accordance with the will of the gods, and

he described the steep mountains which he had
already
 THE REGION OF THICK DARKNESS. 167

crossed. Gilgamesh, seeing that the monster regarded

him with friendly eyes, recovered from his fright, and
told him of the purpose of his journey, namely, to go
to Tslt-napishtim. his ancestor, who stood in the

assembly of the gods, and had the power over life and
death. The Scorpion-man replied by describing the
difficulties and dangers which he would encounter if
he persisted in his purpose of traversing the Mountain
of Mashu, adding that for twelve kasbu, that is, for a

space of twenty-four hours, he would have to pass

through thick darkness. But Gilgamesh was not dis
couraged. The Scorpion-man, therefore, yielded to his

request, and opened the gate of the mountain and let

him through.
For twenty-four hours Gilgamesh marched onwards,
"

and the darkness was thick and there was no light."

But at the and dreadful journey he
end of this long

came out once more into the light of the sun, and the
first thing he beheld was a beautiful and wonderful
tree. The poem describes the tree in the following

words :

"

Precious stones it bore as fruit,

"Branches hung from it which were beautiful to

behold.
"

The top of the tree was lapis lazuli,

"

And it was laden with fruit which dazzled the eye

of him that beheld."

This tree grew in a great park or orchard beside

 1 68 THE PRINCESS SABITU.

other trees which were also laden with

precious stones ;

but Gilgamesh did not tarry

among the trees nor stop
to gather their fruit. The shore of the sea was not
far off and he wished to lose no time in reaching it,

for he knew that he must cross the sea to reach

Tsit-napishtim his ancestor.

The text of the Tenth Tablet reveals to us
Gilga
mesh involved in further troubles. The sea- coast, to
which he had now come, was ruled over by a princess
named Sabitu, who dwelt in a palace by the shore.
She beheld Gilgamesh from afar, and, as he drew
near, she went into her palace and shut the door.
Without her Gilgamesh could not
assistance, however,
cross the sea, so he
went up to her door and demanded
why she had shut it, and threatened that if she did
not open it he would break it down. A gap in the
text prevents us from answer to
knowing Sabitu s this
threat. When the text is again continuous we find

Gilgamesh telling Sabitu the reason of his journey,

namely, that he may learn how to escape the fate of

his friend Ea-bani ;
he ended by asking her the way to
the abode of Tsit-napishtim,
saying
"

[Tell me] Sabitu, which is the way to Tslt-na-

pishtim ?

If
"

it is
possible, I will cross the sea.
"

But if it is not possible, I will lie me down upon

the ground in despair."
Sabitu replied, saying
 ARAD-EA, THE SAILOR. 169

Gilgamesh, there hath never been a ferry (here),

"

Neither hath any one ever crossed the sea.

"

"

The hero Shamash hath crossed the sea, but, besides

Shamash, who can cross it ?

"

The crossing is difficult, the way is very hard,

"

The Waters of Death are shut in (?), they are closed

up as with a bolt.

Gilgamesh, how canst thou cross the sea ?

"

"

And if thou shouldst come to the Waters of Death,

what wouldst thou do ?
"

Sabitu, however, told Gilgamesh that there was one

who might perhaps help him, namely, Arad-Ea, the
sailor who served Tsit-napishtim. To him she sent him

and told him to ask Arad-Ea to take him across. If he

refused,Gilgamesh would have to turn back.
Gilgamesh sought out Arad-Ea an.d told him of his

grief, and of the reason of his journey ;

he then made
the request that he would show him the way to Tsit-
napishtim, and ended his demand with the words he
had already used to Sabitu, saying
"

If it is possible, I will cross the sea,

"

But if it is not possible, I will lie me down upon

the ground in despair."

Arad-Ea consented make the journey, and told

to

Gilgamesh go into the wood and cut down a tree

to

out of which he might make a large rudder for the ship,

since they would need special tackle for the voyage.
The poem then describes how they made their pre

parations and set out on their journey, as follows

170 THE WATERS OF DEATH.
"

Gilgamesh on hearing this (i.e., Arad-Ea s instruc

tions)
"

Took his axe in his hand ....

"

And he went into the wood and [cut] a rudder, five

measures in length,
"

And he smeared it all over with pitch.

Gilgamesh and Arad-Ea then went up into [the
"

ship].
"

The ship was thrust out into the waves, and they
began their voyage.

Gilgamesh and Arad-Ea crossing the ocean and the Waters of

"

Death." On the left

of the picture is a representation of Gilgamesh and Ea-bani in conflict with a lion.
(From a cylinder-seal in the British Museum, No. 89,588.)

"

A course of one month and five days within three

days [did they accomplish],
"

And thus Arad-Ea arrived at the Waters of Death."

To pass over the Waters of Death was a task attended

with difficulty and danger, and Arad-Ea needed all the

help that Gilgamesh could give him to steer the ship in

safety. After they had made the passage, Gilgamesh
loosened his girdle and rested from his exertions.

Then they drew nigh the shore of the land where

 THE MEETING WITH TSIT-NAPISHTIM. I? I

Tslt-napishtim and his wife dwelt apart from mankind.

Tsit-napishtirn beheld Gilgamesh afar off and marvelled
to see a living man cross the Waters of Death. Gilga
mesh then approached the shore and, while still sitting in

the ship, he explained to Tslt-napishtim the reason he

had sought him out. He told him of his adventures with
Ea-bani, and he described the sad death of his friend
and his own grief at his loss. He recounted how he
had from Tsit-napishtim, and how
set out to seek help

on his journey he had passed over steep mountains and

crossed dangerous seas. He ended his long recital by
asking his ancestor how he might escape the sad fate of
death that had overtaken Ea-bani his friend.

Tslt-napishtim was grieved at the words of Gilgamesh,

but told him he could do nothing to help him to escape
from death. He told him that death comes to all, and
that no man could escape from it,
"

As long as houses are built, . . .

"

And as long as brethren quarrel,

"

And as long as there is hatred in the land,

"

And as long as the river beareth its waters [to the

sea]."

He added that the gods whose lot it is to decree

death pass sentence when they will, and that no man

could tell when his own time might come. And he
said
"

The Anunnaki, the great gods, decree fate,

"

And with them Mammetum, the maker of destiny,

i/2 TSIT-NAPISHTIM S STORY.
"

And they determine death and life,

But the days of death are not known."

"

With these words the Tenth Tablet of the poem

ends.

On the Eleventh Tablet Gilgamesh asked Tsit-

napishtim the reason of his own escape from death.
He gazed upon him, and, seeing that his appearance
was like that of a living man, said
I behold thee,
"

Tsit-napishtim,
"

But thy appearance is not changed. As I am, so

art thou also.
"

Yea, thou art not changed. As I am, so art thou

also."

He then asked him the reason, saying,

[Tell me], How didst thou obtain the life which thou
"

"

dost enjoy in the assembly of the gods ?

In reply to this question, Tsit-napishtim told Gilga

mesh the story of the deluge, which has been already
described in Chapter IV.

During the telling of the story, Gilgamesh sat listen

ing at a little distance from the shore in the ship, for,

sore-smitten as he was with sickness, he was not able

to go up from the ship. When Tsit-napishtim had
finished the tale of his own adventures he turned to

the hero and promised to restore him to health, for that

at least though he could not show him a way

he could do,

to escape from death when his time should come. As a

first step towards the recovery Tsit-napishtim bade him

 THE HEALING OF GILGAMESH. 173

sleep. For six days and six nights Gilgamesh con

tinued to sit in the ship, and at the end of that time

sleep came upon him suddenly "like a storm." While

Gilgamesh slept, Tsit-napishtim told his wife to prepare
some magic food, which she administered unto him
while he slept. On awaking from his sleep Gilgamesh
felt that he was enchanted, and asked what had been
done to him, and they told him of the magical food
which had been prepared and which he had eaten. To
complete his cure Tsit-napishtim caused Arad-Ea to
carry Gilgamesh to a certain fountain where he washed
his sores in the healing waters, and he was cleansed
from his terrible disease. When he was about to

depart on his homeward journey, the wife of Tsit-na

pishtim asked her husband what they could give him to
ensure his safe return to his own land. Although
Tsit-napishtim had already told Gilgamesh that no man
could escape from death, yet now, as the latter was pre

paring to take his leave, he disclosed to him the exist

ence of a magic plant which had the power of prolonging
life. Gilgamesh then set sail in company with Arad-Ea
to go and search for the plant. They succeeded in find
ing and Gilgamesh joyfully cried that he would carry
it,

it Erech with him, and that by eating it he would

to

regain his youth. Gilgamesh and Arad-Ea then turned

back carrying the plant with them. And when they
had journeyed thirty kasbu, they came to a brook
wherein flowed cool and refreshing water. And when
1/4 GILGAMESH MOURNS FOR EA-BANT.

Gilgamesh went down to the brook to drink, a demon

in the form of a serpent darted out and carried away the

plant. Gilgamesh bitterly lamented the loss of the

plant, but could do nothing to recover it. He therefore

continued his journey and in due time returned to
Erech. With this incident the Eleventh Tablet
closes.

The Twelfth Tablet of the poem relates how Gilga

mesh, after his return from his long journey, continued
to lament for Ea-bani. He called to mind the common
acts of daily life, which his friend could no longer

perform, now that he was imprisoned in the under

world, and addressing Ea-bani he said

"Thou canst no longer stretch thy bow upon the
earth ;

"

And those who were slain with the bow are round

about thee.
"

Thou canst no longer bear a sceptre in thy hand ;

"

And the spirits of the dead have taken thee captive.

"

Thou canst no longer wear shoes upon thy feet ;

"

Thou canst no longer raise thy war-cry on the

earth.
"

No more dost thou kiss thy wife whom thou didst

love;
"

No more dost thou smite thy wife whom thou didst

hate.

"No more dost thou kiss thy daughter whom thou

didst love ;
 EA-BANI S RETURN FROM THE DEAD. 1/5

"

No more dost thou smite thy daughter whom thou

didst hate.

"The sorrow of the Underworld hath taken hold

upon thee."

Gilgamesh then appealed to the gods to help him in

his sorrow and to enable him to again behold his friend.
With this object he went alone into the temple of the
god Bel, and, addressing him as his father/ told him
"

of his trouble but Bel could not help him. He next

;

told his sorrow to Sin, the Moon-god, but he too could

do nothing for him and Ea, to whom he next appealed, ;

could do naught to help him. Last of all he besought

Nergal, the god of the dead, to use his power and to

restore Ea-bani to him. On hearing the prayer of
Gilgamesh, Nergal granted his request. He opened
the ground, and caused the spirit of Ea-bani to come
"

"

forth from the earth like a wind."

Gilgamesh thereupon asked Ea-bani to describe to

him the underworld, crying,
"

Tell me, my friend, tell

"

me ;
tell me the appearance of the land which thou
"

hast seen." But Ea-bani replied,

"

I cannot tell thee,

friend, I cannot tell This refusal to speak

"

my thee."

of the abode of the dead was not due to any command

laid upon Ea-bani not to reveal such matters to the
living, but was prompted by his grief at the dreariness
of the region from which he had just been released.
After bidding Gilgamesh sit down and weep, he pro
ceeded to describe the underworld as an abode of
176 THE CONDITION OF THE DEAD.

misery, where was the worm which devoured, and

where all was cloaked in dust. The text is here im
perfect, but the closing lines of the tablet which contain
the end of Ea-bani s description of the condition of the
dead are preserved. In this passage Ea-bani contrasts
the lot of the warrior, who has received due burial,

with that of the man whose corpse is left uncared for

on the field, in the following words :

"

On a couch he lieth

And drinketh pure water,

"

"

The man who was slain in battle thou and I have

oft seen such an one.
"

His father and his mother [support] his head,

"

And his wife [kneeleth] at his side.

"

But the man whose corpse is cast upon the field

Thou and I have oft seen such an one

"

"

His spirit resteth not in the earth.

The man whose spirit has none to care for it

"

Thou and I have oft seen such an one

"

The dregs of the vessel, the leavings of the feast,

And that which is cast out upon the street, are
"

his food."

With these words the poem comes to an end.

We have followed the exploits of the hero Gilgamesh
as they are told on the tablets from Ashur-bani-pal s

library, and from their varied nature it is clear that

they have been drawn from many different sources.

What historical foundation may underlie the tales told

 COMPOSITION OF THE POEM. 177

of this early king of Erech we cannot say, but it is

legitimate to suppose that some early ruler did perform

acts of valour in the past, and that his name has formed
a centre around which stories and legends gathered in
the course of centuries. To separate the different

narratives which have been combined to form the poem

as we know it would scarcely repay the trouble of
analysis, but a bare enumeration of the principal
sections of the story will suffice to show its composite
nature. The rule of Gilgamesh in Erech, the story of

Ukhat and Ea-bani, the expedition against Khumbaba,

the love of the goddess Ishtar for Gilgamesh, the slay

ing of the monstrous bull, the journey of Gilgamesh to

the Mountain of the Sunset, the passage of the Waters
of Death, Tsit-napishtim s story of the Deluge, the
search for the Plant of Life, and the recall of Ea-bani s

spirit from the underworld such are the chief sections

into which the poem falls. Of these the account of the

deluge is the section most loosely connected with the

story of Gilgamesh, but other sections of the poem,

which have been more skilfully interwoven, were
doubtless at one time entirely independent of the
narrative.

We may assume that many of these tales go back

to hoary antiquity, and that in the course of time they

became associated with the name of Gilgamesh, having

previously been associated with the names of other

heroes. It is interesting to note that as Gilgamesh

BAB. REL. N
178 GILGAMESH AND ALEXANDER.

was thus credited with adventures that were not

his by right, so at a later time some of his exploits

were borrowed to add lustre to the fame of another

popular hero, Alexander the Great. As Gilgamesh set

out to learn the secret of immortality, and in the course

of his journey came to the Mountain of Mashu, and

passed through a region of thick darkness, and crossed
the Waters of Death, so Alexander is said to have

journeyed in search of the Waters of Life, and to have

come to a mountain called Musas or Masls, and to

have passed through the land of darkness, and to have

1
crossed the foetid sea. This journey of Gilgamesh,

moreover, in consequence of being ascribed to Alex

its

ander in the text of Pseudo-Callisthenes, has found an

2
echo in the Koran.
Of the various sections of the Babylonian
great

poem describing the deeds of Gilgamesh the most

the end
interesting portions are perhaps those towards
in which Ea-bani talks with Gilgamesh after the release

of the former from the underworld; for from these

passages we gain some information with regard

to the

a future life.
conceptions formed by the Babylonians of
Another of the principal legends of the Babylonians
recounts how the goddess Ishtar once left the earth

and descended into the underworld, and the poem in

1
See Budge, The History of Alexander the Great, pp. 148, 171 ff.,

aiid Tlte Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great, Vol. I., pp. xl. f.

Meissner, Alexander und Gilgamos, pp. 4 ff.

2
Sura, xviii.
 ISHTAR S DESCENT INTO THE UNDERWORLD. 179

which legend has been preserved enables us to

this

augment the fragments of Ea-bani s description of the

dead that have come down to us. 1 The
poem describing
the descent of the goddess as follows
begins :

"To the land whence none return, the

place of
darkness,
"

Ishtar the daughter of Sin inclined her ear. 2

"

The daughter of Sin inclined her ear

"To the house of darkness, the seat of the

god
Irkalla,
"To the house from which none who enter come
forth again,
"

To the road whose course returns not,

"To the house wherein he who enters is excluded
from the light,
"To 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.

"

When Ishtar drew near the gate of the land whence

none return,
"

She spake to the porter at the gate :

"

Ho ! Porter !
Open thy gate !

"

Open thy gate that I may enter in.

1
Cf. Jeremias, Die
bdbylonisch-assyrischen Vorstellungen vom Lebcn
nach dem Tode, pp. 10 if.
2
I.e., turned her attention.
180 THE GATES OF THE UNDERWORLD.

"If thou openest not thy gate, so that I may not

enter,
"

I will smite the door, I will shatter the bolt,

"

I will smite the threshold and tear down the doors,

"

I will raise up the dead, that they may devour the

living,
"

And the dead shall outnumber those that live.

"

The porter opened his mouth,

"

And addressed the mighty Ishtar :

"

Stay, Lady, do not throw it down.

"

Let me go and declare thy name to the queen

"

Allatu.

The porter then went to Allatu, the queen of the

underworld, and told her of Ishtar s coming but ;

Allatu was angered at the news and wept for Ishtar s

victims, and she bade the porter admit her, saying

Go, porter, open thy gate for her,

"

"

And take possession of her according to the ancient

laws."

The poem then describes how Ishtar was admitted,

and how she was gradually stripped of her clothing,
in the following words :

*
v

"The
porter went and opened his gate for her,

(saying),
1
"

Enter, Lady, let Cuthah be glad at [thee].

In Cuthah was E-shidlam, the great temple of Xergal the god

1

of the dead the name of the city is here used as a synonym for the
;

underworld.
 ALLATU S CRUELTY. l8l

"Let the palace of the land whence none return

rejoice before thee.

"

The First Gate he made her enter, . . . and he took

the great crown from off her head.
"

porter, didst thou

take the great crown
Why,
from off my head ?
"

Lady, for thus are the laws of Allatu.

"

Enter,
In this manner was Ishtar made to pass through
each of the seven gates of the underworld. At every
her apparel was removed, and to her
gate an article of
remonstrances the porter always made the same reply,
for such were the
bidding her pass through the gate,
laws of Allatu. Thus, naked and powerless, she was
The queen of the
brought into Allatu s presence.
underworld did not receive her with favour, and

commanded Namtar, the demon of the plague, to

strike her with disease in all the members of her body.

But Ishtar was not left for ever in the clutches of

Allatu. The absence of the goddess of love from the

earth soon brought disaster upon men and beasts, for

the desires of the body, and all

they no longer felt
creatures ceased to perform their natural functions.
News of this calamity was carried to Shamash the
minister of the gods, and
Sun-god by Pap-sukal, the
Shamash hastened to Sin and to Ea to consult with
them as to what measures should be taken to remedy
this state of things. Ea thereupon created a being

named Uddushu-namir, whom he sent down to the

 1 82 ISHTAR S RETURN TO EARTH.
underworld to procure the release of Ishtar.
Following
Ea s Uddushu-na mir obtained admittance
instructions
to the underworld and appeared before Allatu. He
conjured her by the power of the great gods to grant
him the Waters of Life, by means of which he intended
to restore Ishtar to
Allatu was enraged at the
life.

request, and, although she could not resist the power

he had invoked on behalf of Ishtar, she wreaked her

Representation upon a Babylonian cylinder-seal of the goddess Ishtar and other deities
In the centre is Shamash, the sun-god, rising on the horizon. On his
right by the
side of a sacred tree, stands the goddess
Ishtar, with outstretched wings. On her
right is a god holding a bow and a lion, and on her left are a river-god and another
deity. The name of the owner of the seal, written to the left of the picture is
Adda, the scribe." (British Museum, No. 89,115.)
"

vengeance upon him and cursed him with a terrible

curse. She then turned to Namtar and told him to
bring Ishtar fortli and sprinkle over her the Waters of
Life. When this had been done Ishtar was led out
through the seven gates of the underworld, and at
each of the gates the article of her
apparel that had
previously been taken from her was restored. Thus
was she brought back again to earth.
 TAMMUZ AND ISHTAR. 183

In the actual text of the legend we are not told

Ishtar s motive in descending into the underworld,

but we may perhaps see a reference to it in the last

few lines of the poem. Considerable doubt exists with

of these lines, but it seems
regard to the interpretation
clear that they are not a continuation of the narrative

and that they were intended to be addressed to the

who may be supposed have heard the poem

to
persons
certain mourners for the dead. In
recited perhaps to
this exhortation the reciter refers to Tammuz, the

youth, and he bids

his hearers pour
spouse of Ishtar s
out pure water in his honour and offer him goodly oil.

A is made to the day of

"

little further on a reference

Tammuz
"

when
"

male and female mourners

as a time

made lamentation and when incense was burnt. It may

be conjectured therefore that the motive of the goddess
in descending to the underworld was to bring back
her

youthful husband
from the dead, and the poem in the
form in which we have it would in that case contain
This story of the
only a part of the original legend.
Ishtar was possibly recited at the annual
goddess
festival held in commemoration of the death of Tammuz,
when women mourned for the dead god in Babylonia,
as they mourned for him at Jerusalem in the time
of
1
the prophet Ezekiel.
We
have seen that a portion of the poem of Gilga-

contained
mesh, and the legend of the goddess Ishtar,
\Ezek. viii. 14.
 ETANA AND THE EAGLE.

descriptions and stories of the

underworld; for the
underworld was a mysterious abode about which
legends would naturally gather. Heaven was also a
place of mystery, and it is not surprising that stories
of heroes who had
journeyed thither should also find a
place in Babylonian mythology. One such story is told
of an old named Etana, who, with
Babylonian hero the
help of his friend the Eagle, succeeded in
penetrating
into heaven. A
series of tablets existed in Ashur-bani-

pal library, which recounted the deeds of Etana, 1 and

s

on most of the fragments that remain the

Eagle appears
as Etana s friend and comrade. On one when occasion,
the wife of Etana was about to bear him a son, but
could not bring the child to the
birth, the Eagle
helped Etana to procure the Plant of Birth which
"
"

would ensure a safe delivery. On another occasion

the Eagle carried Etana up to heaven. The hero
clung to the Eagle s wings, and they mounted together
till they could see the
gates of heaven. As they drew
near to the Gate of Anu, and Ea and to the
Bel,
Gate of Shamash, Kamman, and Ishtar, they
Sin,
beheld a throne of great
splendour, and Etana was
afraid and cast himself down at the foot of the
throne.
But the Eagle encouraged Etana to mount with him
still
higher and they again set out. After every two

1
The legends of Etana Lave been edited by E. T. Harper,
Beitrdge
zur Assyriologie, Bd. II., pp. 391 ff., and Morris
Jastrow, op. tit,
Bd. III., pp. 363 ff.
 ETANA S JOURNEY TO HEAVEN. 185

hours the Eagle pointed to the earth

of his flight,

below them, which grew smaller and smaller as they

ascended, and at length they reached the Gate of
Ann, Bel, and Ea. After resting for a while the

Eagle proposed to Etana that he should carry

him
up still higher to the dwelling of the goddess Ishtar.
Again they set out, but when they had flown for six
hours Etana cried to the Eagle to stop. What mis
fortune then overtook the pair we do not know, for

the text of the legend is broken ;

what still remains,

however, recounts that they fell headlong through the

air and were dashed upon the ground. 1
1
Another portion of the story of Etana refers to the subsequent
fate of the Eagle and it may here be described as it illustrates a
;

class of Babylonian myths in which beasts and birds are represented

as talking like men, and nppealing to the gods for help and advice.
The story tells how the Eagle incurred the hatred of the Serpent, and
how the latter, with the help of the Sun-god, took his revenge. The
story begins with the following lines :

His heart prompted the Eagle

"

. . .
,

He considered, and his heart [prompted him

"

.]
. .

"

To eat the young of his companion . . .

"

The Eagle opened his mouth and spake unto his young, saying,
"

The young of the Serpent will I eat ...

"

I will ascend and [mount up] into heaven ;

I will swoop down upon the top of a tree and I will eat (the
"

Serpent s) brood.
"

One of the young birds who was endowed with much wisdom,
addressed the Eagle, his father :

"

Do not eat, my father, (for) the net of Shamash is laid.

The snare and the ban of Shamash will fall upon thee and will
"

catch thee.
"

Whoso transgresseth the law of Shamash, will Shamash terribly

[requite].
"

But he did not hearken to them, and gave no heed to the word of
his young one.
 1 86 THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT.

From the portion of the legend quoted in the note

we learn the Eagle s fate, but we are not told what
became of his friend, the hero Etana. Etana must

He swooped down and ate

"

the young of the Serpent."

The Serpent then repaired
to Shamash the Sun god, who as judge
of heaven and earth could not allow such a wrong to go
unpunished,
and he told him his story and appealed to him for justice. He de>

scribed how his nest was set in a treeand how the Eagle espied it ,

and devoured his young, saying :

"

He swooped down and ate [my young ones] !

"

[Behold], he hath done me.

Shamash, the evil

Help, O Shamash Thy net is like unto the broad earth

"

!
;

Thy snare is like unto the distant heaven

"

"

Who hath ever escaped from thy net ?

Even Zu, the worker of evil, who raised the head of evil, [did not
"

escape] !

The story of Zu which is here referred to by the Serpent has been

partly recovered from other tablets from Ashur-bani-pal s library, and
is described later on in this chapter. there read of Zii s treachery, We
and how he Tablets of Destiny from Ann, and how he escaped
stole the
with them to his mountain home. From the Serpent s reference to
his fate we gather that the Sun-god succeeded in catching and

punishing him. In the story of the Serpent and the Eagle, Shamash
does not himself punish the Eagle, but explains to the Serpent a
device by which he may obtain vengeance. The narrative con
tinues :

["
When he had listened to] the prayer of the Serpent,
"

Shamash opened his mouth and to [the Serpent spake] :

"

Take the road and go [into the mountain],

"

And hide thyself in a wild [ox that is dead].

"

Open its bowels, [tear open its belly],

"

And take up thy dwelling [in its belly].

"

[All] the birds of heaven [shall swoop down],

"And
"

The Eagle [shall come] with them,

"

And not knowing [thy plot (?)],

"

He will seek a piece of the flesh, moving swiftly,

"

And making for the hidden parts.

"When he hath entered into the midst, do thou seize him by his
wing,
 THE EAGLE S FATE. 187

have incurred the anger of the gods by attempting

to mount to their abode, and it is possible that he

was dashed to pieces when he fell with the Eagle

to the ground from the height of heaven.
"

Tear off Ms wings, bis pinions, and his claws,

"

Pull him in pieces and cast him into a pit, . . .

"

That he may die a death from hunger and thirst.

k
At the word of Shamash,the hero, the Serpent departed and wont
into the mountain.
"

And the Serpent came upon a wild ox,

"

And he opened its bowels, he tore open its belly,

"

And he took up his dwelling in its belly.

"

All the birds of heaven swooped down and ate of the flesh.
"

But the Eagle (at first) suspected his evil purpose,

"

And with the flock of birds did not eat of the flesh.
"

Then the Eagle opened his mouth and spake unto his young :

Come ! let us swoop down, and let us also eat of the flesh of this
wild ox !

"

One of the young birds, who was endowed with much wisdom,
"

To turn aside [his] father spake . . . :

[" my Father], the Serpent lurks in [the flesh of] this wild ox !

"But he did not hearken to them, and gave no heed to the word of
his young one.
"

He
swooped down and stood upon the wild ox.
"The Eagle examined the flesh, lie looked about carefully
. . .

before and behind him.

"He again examined the flesh, he looked about carefully before

and behind him.

Then, moving swiftly, he made for the hidden parts.
"

"When he had entered into the midst, the serpent seized him by
his wing."

So far everything had fallen out as the Sun-god had foretold. The
Eagle, now that he sees he is in his enemy s power, begs for mercy,
and tries to bribe the Serpent. But the latter reminds him that an
appeal to Shamash is irrevocable, and that if he did not carry out the
Sun-god s bidding, he would himself share in the punishment which
he now inflicts.
"

The Eagle opened [his mouth} and spake to the Serpent :

1 88 ADAPA AND THE SOUTH WIND.

A legend is told of another ancient hero, named

Adapa, who also journeyed to heaven, but in this case

the hero did not seek to get there by his own devices,
but was summoned
by Anu, the god of heaven. thither
The legend is preserved on one of the tablets that was
found at Tell el-Amarna, 1 and, in the form in which
we have it, dates from the first half of the fifteenth

century before Christ.

The story narrates that Adapa, the son of Ea, was
one day out on the sea in a boat, engaged in catching
fish for his father s house. Suddenly Shutu, the South
wind, blew and upset his boat and threw him into the
water. Adapa was furious at this outrage, so he
caught the South wind by her wings and broke them.
In this passage the South wind is pictured as a winged
female monster, and it is possible that in other respects
also she was thought to resemble a bird. have "VVe

no representation of her, but it may be inferred that

she was a creature of unprepossessing appearance,
for the South wind was dreaded by the Babylonians
"

Have mercy upon me, and I will present thee with a gift
according to thy pleasure.
"

The
(Serpent opened his mouth and spake to the Eagle :

If I release thee, Shamash will

"

against us, . . .

"And thy punishment will be transferred to me,

"

Which now, as a punishment, I execute on thee.

"

So he tore off his wings, his pinions, and his talons,

"

He pulled him in pieces and cast him into a pit, . . .

"

And he died a death from hunger and thirst."

1
See above, p. 118 f . ; cf. Harper, Beitrage zur Assyrioloyie, Bd. II.,

pp. 418 ff.

Head of the demon of the South-west wind. (British Museum, No. 22,459.)
 ADAPA IS SUMMONED TO HEAVEN. TQI

inasmuch as it caused destructive floods in the low-

The accompany
lying regions of the Euphrates valley.
ing illustration of a kindred spirit,
the demon of the
South-west wind, is taken from a marble head in
the British Museum, and it well represents the hideous
of the monster
conception formed by the Babylonians
who caused destructive storms and tempests.
When Adapa had broken Shutu s wings, the South
wind was no longer able to blow over the earth.
After seven days had passed, Anu, the god of heaven,
asked his minister Ilabrat why the South wind had
ceased to blow, and he told him that Adapa had
broken her wings. Ann thereupon summoned Adapa
to heaven to answer the charge. Before he set out

Adapa received instructions from his father Ea,

who
told him how, by putting on garments of mourning,

he would propitiate Tammuz and Gishzida, the two

gods who stood at the gate of heaven, and who, if

approached with due deference, would secure for him

a favourable reception before Anu. Ea also warned
him that after he entered Ann s presence they would
"

offer him "

Meat of Death
"

and "

Water of Death ;

neither of these was he to touch. They would then

bring him a garment and oil, and these he need not
avoid ;
the garment he might put on and with the oil

he might anoint himself.

On arriving at the gate of heaven Adapa duly
secured the favour of Tammuz and Gishzida and was
 192 ADAPA S PARDON.
led into Aim s presence. Anu asked him why he
had broken the wings of the South wind, and Adapa
relatedhow the South wind had upset his boat while
he was fishing on the sea. Tammuz and Gishzida
then interposed on Adapa s behalf, and at their words
Anu s anger against Adapa was turned away. Then
Anu, having pardoned Adapa for his offence, decided

that, as he had seen the interior

of heaven, he must
be added to the company of the gods. He therefore
commanded that they should bring Adapa "Meat of
"

that he might eat. But Adapa would not eat

"

Life

the
"

Meat of Life
"

;
neither would he drink the
""Water of Life" which was next placed before him.
But when they brought him a garment he put it on,
and when they offered him oil he anointed himself
therewith. And Anu, when he saw that Adapa had
not partaken of the "

Meat of Life
"

and the "

Water
asked him, saying,
"

of Life," Come, Adapa, why

"

dost thou neither For now thou

"

eat nor drink ?

"

canst not live." And Adapa answered that he had

refused to eat and drink, because Ea his lord had so
commanded him. The reason which prompted Ea to

lay these injunctions upon his son seems to have been

that he feared the gods would seek to slay Adapa.
Anu, on hancl^ decided to make Adapa
the other

immortal, and did not offer him deadly food as Ea had

predicted. Thus Adapa, through his father s suspicions,
missed the privilege of enjoying immortality.
 THE TABLETS OF DESTINY. 193

In the legends of Etana and Adapa we have stories

of mortals who by presumptuous acts brought them

selves with the gods. Among the gods
into conflict

themselves, however, ambition was not absent, and

in the legend of Zu we read how one of the lesser

deities aimed at obtaining the control of the whole

1
company of the gods. It will be remembered that
Marduk was identified in course of time with the
2
older god Bel, or Enlil, and in the great legend of
the creation we are told that he captured the Tablets

of Destiny from Kingu, the captain of the host of

Tiamat. In the following legend we read how at a

later time Zu stole them from Bel and carried them
off to his mountain. The legend runs as follows :

"

His eyes beheld the symbols of Bel s dominion,

"

The crown of his sovereignty, and the robe of his

godhead.
"

Zu gazed at his divine Tablets of Destiny,

"

And he gazed at the father of the gods, the god of

Duranki,
"

And a longing for Bel s dominion was held fast in

his heart.
"

I will take the Tablets of the gods,

"

And I will direct the oracles of all the gods.

"

I will establish my throne and dispense my

commands.
"

I will rule all the Spirits of Heaven.

2
1
See Harper, op. cit., pp. 408 ff. See above, pp. 18 ff.

BAB. KEL. O
194 ZU S THEFT.
"

And his heart meditated battle

"

At the entrance of the hall, where he beheld as he

waited the dawn of the day.
"

Now when Bel was pouring out the clear water,

"

And his diadem was taken off and lay upon the
throne,
"

(Zu) seized the Tablets of Destiny,

"

He took Bel s dominion, the power of giving

commands.
"

Then Zu fled away and hid himself in his

mountain."

The gods were dismayed at the theft, and Bel strode

through the hall in rage. Then Anu, the god of

heaven, addressed the gods, his sons, and called for

a champion, who should recover the Tablets. There

upon the gods called upon Eamman to be their

champion, and Anu promised him honour and power
should he succeed. But Eamman refused the offer, as
when asked. Who eventually
did also two other deities

conquered Zu and recovered the Tablets is not quite

certain, for the end of the legend is missing. From

a passage in the legend of Etana, however, it may
be conjectured that the Sun-god undertook the task,
and vanquished Zu by catching him in his net.
Such are the principal legends and stories, as far

as we know them,
that were told in Babylonia con

cerning the gods and the heroes of olden time. That

they were not idle tales, but had a religious significance
 RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE LEGENDS. 195

for the people

among whom we find them, is what
might be inferred from a comparison of them with
the mythologies of other nations. have, moreover, We
evidence to this effect in some of the
poems that have
been already described. In the poem which recounts
the descent of Ishtar into the we saw
underworld,
reason to believe that it was recited in connection
with the yearly festival held in commemoration of
the death of Tammuz. The introduction to the long
poem which records the history of Gilgamesh stated
that a knowledge of the hero s achievements would

bring prosperity to the man who made himself ac

quainted with them, and it is
probable that this state
ment was not regarded as a mere conventional
preface,
but was implicitly believed. It is true that in the

legend we are not told that

Gilgamesh was raised to
the of the
company gods, but he was undoubtedly
regarded as a god in popular belief. There is a
prayer in the British Museum l
in which a sick man
beseeches Gilgamesh to cure him of his
sickness, and
he addresses him as the "

perfect king, the judge of

"the
Anunnaki, the great arbiter among men who
"orders the four quarters of heaven, the governor
the world, and the lord of the
regions of the
"of

"

earth ; the sick man also

"

exclaims, Thou art a "

"judge, and like unto a god thou givest decisions."

It is clear therefore that to
Gilgamesh was ascribed
1
!Sm. 1371 + Sm. 1877.
196 LEGENDS AS AMULETS.

no small authority and power. The estimation in

which both he and the hero Etana were held is also
"

fact that the determinative for

"

attested by the god

is always placed before their names.
A further piece of evidence that these mythological
compositions were put to very practical uses is afforded
by certain tablets which have been found inscribed
with legends concerning the chief Plague-god of the

Babylonians, describing the destruction which he and

1

his attendant deity Ishum spread upon the earth.

Both gods are therein pictured as warriors who held
bloody sway in the cities of Babylonia, and undertook
military expeditions into distant lands. These legends
are inscribed on several tablets, and the last one of
the series recounts how the anger of the Plague-god
was at length appeased, and ends with a speech of
the Plague-god, in which he promises protection and

prosperity to all those who make known his wondrous

deeds. He continues,
"

Should I be angry, and should

"the seven-fold god cause destruction; the dagger of

pestilence shall not approach the house wherein this

"

"tablet is set, and it shall remain unharmed." This

last section of the poem, including the passage just

quoted, has been found on two interesting tablets

in
2
the British Museum. At the top of each tablet is a
small projection in which a hole has been bored, and
1
The name of this god is generally read as Dibbarra, though Urn
and Girra are also possible readings.
2
See Zeitschrift fur Assyriologle, Bd. xi. pp. 50 ff.
 NATURE-MYTHS.

through was passed a cord by which it might be

it

suspended. There is no doubt that these tablets were

hung up in the entrance of a house, and that they

served as amulets for keeping off the plague. Thus
there are many indications that the myths and legends
of the gods played an important part in the practical

religion and worship of the Babylonians.

To decide in what manner these various legends of
the gods arose, and to trace the changes which they
underwent in the long course of Babylonian history,
would result in an interesting, but certainly a very
speculative, enquiry. Conjecture, based mainly on the
by the myths themselves
internal evidence furnished
in the forms in which they have come clown to us,

naturally cannot lead to very definite results; but

one broad conclusion may be drawn from a study of
the tablets with at least some probability of its

being correct. It can hardly be disputed that changes

in the aspect of nature suggested many of the legends

about the gods. Perhaps the clearest instance of this

explanation of natural processes by legend is presented

in the legends of the Plague-god; the campaigns he

undertook, and the bloody battles he waged, were

doubtless suggested by the ravages of disease which
were regarded as his handiwork. The descent of

Ishtar into the underworld and the languishing of

all nature in consequence, which was followed by her

restoration to earth and the renewal of the powers

IQ8 HISTORY AND LEGEND.

of men and beasts, was

clearly intended to explain
the decay of nature in the autumn, and the
quicken
ing of the earth in the spring. Zu s treacherous usur
pation of Bel s
sovereignty may perhaps be based on
the sudden overwhelming of the sun
by storm and
clouds.

There is another element in many of these legends

which must not be lost sight of, and that is the sub
stratum of historical fact which underlies the
story,
and was the nucleus around which it gathered. Echoes
from the history of the remote past may perhaps be
traced in such episodes as the expedition of Gilgamesh
and Ea-bani against Khumbaba king of Elam, as well
ns in some of the conflicts described in the
Plague-god
legends. The growth of legends around the figures
of prominent heroes is common in every race that has
a history, and this was particularly the case in Baby
lonia. A number of legends, for instance, have come
down to us concerning certain ancient Babylonian
kings, of whose historical existence we have abundant
proof from other sources. Sargon I. was an actual
king, who ruled in the city ofAgade about B.C. 3800,
and many of whose inscriptions have
recently been
found at Nippur. Yet we possess a legend concerning
this monarch, in which he tells how his mother set

him floating on the Euphrates in a basket made of

rushes, how Akki the gardener rescued him and brought
him up as his own son, and how while he was still
 LEGENDS OF EARLY KINGS.

a gardener the goddess Ishtar loved him and eventually

set him over the kingdom which he ruled. The text
of the legend of Sargon was a long one, but little more
than this story of his youth has been preserved. It

will at least suffice to show how myth and legend

gathered around the figures of famous kings and heroes

of old time. The legend of Sargon is not a solitary

this The so-called

"

Cuthsean
example of process.
describes a legend of an early king
"

legend of Creation
"

of Cuthah,and fragments of similar myths have been

1

found in Ashur-bani- pal s library which recount the

the son of Sargon, who
legendary deeds of IsTaram-Sin,
lived about B.C. 3750, and of Dungi, king of Ur, about

B.C. 2500, and of Khammurabi, king of Babylon,

about

B.C. 2200, and of Nebuchadnezzar I., king of Babylon

about B.C. 1120. The tablets which contain these

but they illustrate the
legends are very fragmentary,
historical personages in course of
process by which
time became demi-gods and legendary heroes.
1
See above, pp. 92 if.
 ( 200 )

CHAPTER VI.

THE DUTY OF MAN TO HIS GOD AND TO HIS

NEIGHBOUR.

IN the three preceding chapters the

principal legends
and myths that have been found in
Babylonian litera
ture have been described, and the extracts which have
been quoted from them will have enabled the reader to
form a conception of what the more powerful
Baby
We have seen
lonian gods were believed to be like.
Anu administering the powers of heaven, we have seen
Bel upon the earth destroying mankind in his
anger
and directing the oracles of all the gods, and Ea in the
Deep regulating the affairs of his own household and
revealing secrets by his hidden wisdom. Shamash, the
Sun -god, has been seen in his character as the just
judge of the whole earth, hearing the appeals of such as
had suffered wrong, and giving help and advice to those
who needed it. The great goddess Ishtar lias been
revealed in two characters. She has appeared as a
cruel and wanton lover,
persecuting those who yielded
to her passion and seeking revenge upon those who
 A MAN S SPIRITUAL FOES. 2OI

refused her love ;

she has also been seen in her gentler

character as a devoted wife, descending to the under

world to seek her husband. Other deities have also

been described in the exercise of their own peculiar

functions, especially Marduk, the city-god of Babylon,

who appears as the leader and the champion of the

gods when they are in distress.

In addition to these greater gods many other deities,

of lesspower and importance, have been incidentally

mentioned in the course of the legends. These, how
ever, scarcely givean adequate idea of the number of

supernatural beings who were believed

to exist in the

heavens and upon the earth, and beneath the earth.

The legends that have been described are chiefly con
cerned with the doings of the more powerful gods and
the great heroes of antiquity, and they naturally do not
deal with the sprites, and goblins, and spectres, which
were believed to haunt and harass a man in his daily

life and in the performance of his ordinary duties.

For the ancient Babylonian moved in a world peopled

by demons .and spirits, whom he could not see, but

whose influence at any moment might cause him mis
fortune, sickness, or death. Many of these spirits were
actively hostile to man and waged an incessant warfare

against him. Others, though less actively hostile, were

to be no less feared, for at any time a man might un
wittingly incur their wrath by some act which trenched

upon their jealously guarded rights. An ill-omened

202 BABYLONIAN DEMONS.

word, or the eating or drinking of an impure thing,

was sufficient to rouse the wrath of some one of
these beings; and, although the victim might have
committed no intentional act of disobedience, he had
to endure their persecution, sometimes without even

a knowledge of its cause. These beings were conceived

to be of hideous and repulsive appearance, often uniting
in strange combinations the bodies and limbs of various
birds and beasts. The accompanying illustration is a

specimen of an
Babylonian demon, taken from a clay
evil

figure in the British Museum. The head of the monster

was no doubt partly suggested by that of a lion, and
its ferocious aspect betokens ill to the man who might
have the misfortune to place himself within its
power.
In order to realize the great number and variety of
such beings it would be
necessary to turn to the spells
and incantations and magical formulae which occupy
so large a place in the religious literature of the
Baby
lonians. To ignore this lower aspect of the belief of
the Babylonians would be to give a one-sided and

incomplete picture of their religion, but Babylonian

magic does not fall within the limits of the present
volume. We are here concerned with the higher side
of the Babylonian religion, and, having already described

the general character of the greater gods, it now remains

to enquire in what relation man stood to_. these
great
deities, and also to what extent his religious beliefs

affected his duty to his fellow man.

A Babylonian demon. (British Museum, No. 22,458.)
 THE CONCEPTION OF GOD. 2O5

has already been stated that, so far as we can

It

see from their religious literature, the Babylonians had

no conception of a single supreme and all-powerful

God. In this matter they did not resemble the ancient

Egyptians, who believed that such a being

existed

above the company of the gods and on a different

plane from them. The Egyptian held that this all-

powerful God could manifest his might in the persons
of the gods of various departments of nature, but at

the same time they believed that he was the ultimate

cause of the entire universe and was the creator and
1
director of gods and men.
both The Babylonians
knew no such supreme deity, but it should be added

that some few passages in their inscriptions perhaps

indicate a glimmering belief in that direction.
The Babylonian word for is ilu, and the
"god"

ideograph for the word is always placed as a determi

native particle before the names of deities. One of
its most common uses is in the plural, in the phrase

Hani rabuti, "the

great gods,"
an expression which
denotes the company of the great gods as distinguished

from the host of lesser deities and spirits. When ilu

occurs in the singular it is usually in the course of

the description of some particular deity, as in the
phrases ilu rabu, great god," and ilu ali-ia, "god
"a

my the god Marduk. In other

"

of city," applied -to

passages it takes a pronominal suffix, as in the phrases

1
See Budge, Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life, chap. I.
 206 THE WORD "

ILU."

" "

my
"

ili-ia, god," ili-7ca, thy god ;

or it is
coupled
with the substantive ishtar, "goddess"; and in both
these cases it is clear that the reference is made to
some particular deity. There are, however, a few
pas
sages in which ilu stands entirely by itself, and where
it is possible that it should be translated as
"god"

without any qualifying phrase. Such a

passage occurs
towards the end of the poem of the ancient
king of
Cuthah, which has been described in Chapter III. 1
Here the king, after narrating his own history, pro
ceeds to offer advice to any future ruler, and he
addresses his words to any or ruler, or
"king, prince,
"

or any one whatsoever, whom the god shall call to rule

"

over the kingdom." No particular god is mentioned,

and ilu occurs entirely by itself; it is possible, how
ever, to refer the phrase to Nergal, the god of Cuthah,
in whose temple the legend is preserved. In any case,
this use of ilu is of rare occurrence, and it would be
rash to rely on this evidence alone for
proving that
the Babylonians conceived an abstract and
supreme
deity apart from the separate and distinct gods of the
various divisions of the natural world.
Perhaps the
Assyrians approached nearer to such a conception than
the Babylonians, for their god Ashur was the
symbol
of their own
national existence, and,
although they
retained the worship of the other gods from the
Baby
lonians, they assigned to Ashur a position of supremacy
1
See above p. 95.
 MARDUK THE INTERCESSOR. 2O/

among them and ascribed to him many of the attributes

which belonged properly to the older gods.

Among the Babylonians the god Marduk in the

course of time acquired a position of peculiar interest.
As the god of Babylon he was naturally from the first
of easy access to the inhabitants of his own city, and
this intimacy with his own people was gradually
extended until we find him appearing before his father
Ea in the character of mediator and intercessor on
behalf of men. We have already seen how Marduk
was regarded as the creator of the world and of man

kind, and it is in accordance with this tradition that

he should have been thought to use his influence on

behalf of the creatures whom he had made. Marduk s
character as intercessor is well illustrated by the follow

ing extract from a religious text, the recital of which

would procure relief for a sick man and remove
the evil spell by which he was troubled. The text

reads
"

An evil curse like a demon has beset the man,

"

Sorrow and trouble have fallen upon him,

"

Evil sorrow has fallen upon him,

"An evil curse, a spell, a sickness.
"

The evil curse has slain that man like a lamb.

"

His god has departed from his body,

"

His guardian goddess has left his side.

"

He is covered by sorrow and trouble as with a

garment, and he is overwhelmed ;

 2O8 MARDUK THE FRIEND OF MAN.
"

Then Marduk beheld him,

"

And he entered into the house of his father Ea and

he said unto him :

"

my father, an evil curse like a demon has beset

the man.
"

Twice he spake unto him, (and he added) :

I know not what that man has

"

done, nor whereby

he may be cured.
"

And Ea made answer to his son,

Marduk, (saying) :

what dost thou not know ? what can I

"

my son,
tell thee more ?

Marduk, what dost thou not know

"

? what can I

tell thee more ?

"What I know, thou also knowest.

"

Go, my son, Marduk,

"

Take him to the house of purification,

"

Dissolve the spell from upon him, remove the spell

from upon him.
"

The prominent position of Marduk in thecompany

of the gods is amply attested in the numerous hymns
and prayers that have been found addressed to him.
Prayers and hymns, however, of a very similar nature
were addressed to the other great gods, and these were
believed to detract in no way from the deference due
to Marduk or to any other deity. It seems to be clear
that each god, when worshipped in his own temple, was
regarded with profound reverence and could even be
credited with sovereign power over the other gods
 A MAN S OWN GOD AND GODDESS. 2OQ

without exciting their jealousy, and without laying his

worshippers open to rebuke.

In the description of the sick man s evil plight, quoted
above, two lines occur in which it
"

is stated that his

god has departed from his body, his guardian goddess

"

has left his side." The explanation of these two lines

"

brings us to what is perhaps the most interesting, and

at the same time the most characteristic, feature of the

relationship which existed between the ancient Baby

lonian and his god. We have seen that Marduk
appears in general as the protector and the friend of
mankind, but every Babylonian had in addition two
divine protectors, with whom his fortunes were most

intimately connected. Each man had his own patron

god and goddess, who made his welfare their peculiar
charge, and to whose service he was specially devoted.
In any trouble or affliction he would first turn to these
two deities and implore them to exert their influence
on his behalf. The mere fact that he had fallen into

adversity, however, was often proof that his god and

goddess were temporarily estranged, and, should this
be the case, it was necessary for him first to pacify their
wrath and then to secure their assistance. What prin
ciples actuated the Babylonians in their choice of patron
deities are not clearly indicated in their religious litera

ture. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a child s

parents dedicated it at its birth to the care of some god

and goddess, and that the choice was left entirely to

BAB. EEL. P
2IO BELIEF IN GUARDIAN DEITIES.

them. We may be sure that whatever deities were

selected they were among those who had temples or
shrines in the city in which the parents lived, and who
would therefore be in a position to effectually protect
their offspring. The belief in guardian deities is
intimately connected with the magical side of Baby
lonian religion, and the pacification of a man s angry

god and goddess was one of the commonest objects to

which spells and incantations were applied. It may be
inferred therefore that the belief in these protecting

gods goes back to a remote period in Babylonian history.

In his combat with the invisible demons and spirits in
the midst of which a man was believed to live it would
have gone hard with him if he had been left to his own
unaided efforts. His natural protectors were his own

patron god and goddess, and he was sure of their con

stant care and protection, if he did nothing to offend
them or estrange them from him.
When misfortune or sickness fell upon a man and he
perceived that his patron deities were offended with him,
his first act was to hasten to the temple of his god and
goddess and secure the services of a priest who might
aid him The design most
in regaining their favour.

frequently engraved upon Babylonian and Assyrian

cylinder-seals is a representation of the owner of the
seal being led by a priest into the presence of his god ;

and it is clear that the priest s mediation was necessary

in order that the offended deity might be duly appeased.
 PRIESTLY MEDIATION. 211

Frequently upon the seals an attendant is represented

into
walking behind the owner and bearing offerings
the temple, and, when these had been handed over to

the priest, the penitent was ready to be led into the

took him by the hand
god s presence. The priest then
and both and penitent raised their other hands as
priest
a symbol of worship and supplication. In this order

the man was led into the presence of his offended god.
If he was sore afflicted with disease, or oppressed by his

sense of guilt, he would upon the ground, and

sit or lie

with bitter sighs and groans would declare his sin and

pray for absolution. Among the religious works of the

a number of tablets have
Babylonians and Assyrians
been found which served as service-books for the use of

priest and penitent when they had entered the presence

1
of the offended deity. In these service-books the priest
sometimes addresses the god and describes the sad con
dition of the man who wishes to make his confession ;

at other times the penitent himself takes up the prayer.

The following is an extract from one of these composi

tions :

2
The priest :
"

In sorrow there he sits ;

With cries

"

of affliction, in trouble of heart. With bitter tears

"

in bitter sorrow, Like the doves he moans grievously,

"

night and day. Unto his merciful god, like a wild cow,

Zimmern, Babylonische Busspsalmen, Leipzig, 1885.

1
Cf.
In this and the following extracts the capital letter marks the
2

beginning of a new line in the text.

212 CONFESSION OF SIN.

he cries, He makes a grievous sighing. Before his god

"

"

he casts down his face in supplication, He weeps,

that he may approach, that nothing may hold him
"

"back."

The penitent :
"

My deed will I declare, my

deed which cannot be declared.
"

My words will I
my words which cannot be repeated.
"

repeat, my
my deed will I declare, my deed which cannot be
"

god,
"

declared."

In another prayer a penitent addresses his god and

goddess together, and prays to be purified from his sin
in the following words :

my god, who my prayer.

"

art angry, accept my

"

goddess, who art angry, receive my supplication.

Eeceive my supplication and let thy spirit be at
"

rest.
"

my goddess, look with pity on me and accept my

"

supplication. Let my sins be forgiven, let my trans-

"

gressions be blotted out. Let the ban be torn away,

"

let the bonds be loosened. Let the seven winds carry

my I will rend
"

away sighs. away my wickedness,

"

let the bird bear it to the heavens. Let the fish carry
my misery, let the river sweep
"

off it away. Let the

"

beast of the field take it from me. Let the flowino-

o
"

waters of the river wash me clean."

Sometimes the god or goddess to whom the prayer is

addressed is mentioned by name, as in the following

extract, in which the penitent submits himself entirely

to the will of the goddess Ishtar and seeks to arouse her
 MISERY OF THE PENITENT. 213

pity by a reference to his condition of abject misery.

He makes his appeal to the goddess as follows :

mother of the gods, who

"

fulfils their commands,

"

lady of mankind, who makes the green herb to

"spring up, Who created all things, who guides the

whole of creation, mother Ishtar, whose side no
"

"god
can approach, exalted lady, whose command
"

is
mighty, A prayer will I utter. That which appears
"good
unto her, may she do unto me! my lady,
"

from the days of my youth I have been much yoked

Food have
"

to misfortune. not eaten, weeping was

I

"my nourishment. Water have I not drunk, tears

"

were my drink. My heart never rejoices, my spirit

"

is never glad."

A man s appeal to his god and goddess was not

always successful, for his sin may have been so great
that his petitions for forgiveness were not sufficient in
themselves to appease their wrath. In such a case,
when the penitent found that his appeals remained
unanswered, he had recourse to some more powerful
god or goddess by whose assistance he sought to bring
about his reconciliation with his patron deities. The
following is an extract from a service-book which was
intended for the use of priest and penitent upon such
an occasion :

The penitent "

I, thy servant, full of sighs, cry unto

:

"thee. Whosoever has sinned, thou acceptest his

The man on whom thou lookest in
"

fervent prayer.
BAB. EEL. p 3
 214 THE ANGER OF PATRON DEITIES.

"pity,
that man lives, ruler of all things, lady of
"

mankind, merciful one, whose turning is propitious,

"

who acceptest supplication."

The priest :
"

Since his god and his goddess are

"angry with him, he cries unto thee. Turn to him

thy countenance and take his
"

hand."

The penitent :
"

Beside thee there is no deity who

"guides aright. In justice look on me with pity
"

and accept my supplication. Declare my forgiveness

"

and let thy spirit be appeased. When, O my

lady,
moan
"

will thy countenance be turned ? I like the

"

doves, I satiate myself with sighs."

The priest :
"

With pain and grief his spirit is

"

oppressed. He sheds tears, he utters cries of woe."

It happened sometimes that a man through his

transgressions offended some powerful deity, while he

still retained the help and
sympathy of his own god
and goddess. In such a case he made his appeal at
the shrine of the deity he had offended, and he believed
that his own god and goddess made intercession for
him at his side. The following extract is taken from
a prayer to be delivered by a man who had offended
Shamash the Sun-god and his wife Ai, and who
sought to appease their wrath, while his own god and
goddess added their voice to his appeal. The priest
first described the man s
humility and grief; the ex
tract reads as follows :

The priest: "By

his face, which through tears he
 THEIR HELP IN TROUBLE. 21 5

"does not raise, he makes lamentation to tliee. By

"

his feet, on which fetters are set, he makes lamentation

"

to thee. By his hand, which is spent through weari-

"

ness, he makes lamentation to thee. By his breast,

"

which utters cries as of a flute, he makes lamentation

"

to thee."

The Penitent :
"

lady, through bitterness of heart

I cry to thee in sorrow Declare my
"

:
forgiveness.
"

lady, say to thy servant, It is enough. Let thy heart

"

be appeased. Bestow mercy on thy servant who is

"in affliction. Turn thy countenance towards him,
"

accept his supplication. Turn in mercy towards thy

"

servant, with whom thou wast angry. lady, my

hands are bound, myself before thee.
"

I prostrate (?)
"

Intercede for me before the mighty hero, Shamash,

thy beloved spouse, That a of many

"

for life days

"I
may walk before thee. My god has prayed to
"

thee, that thy heart may be at rest ; My goddess has

"

made supplication to thee, that thy spirit may be

"

appeased."

A penitent usually trusted to his condition of grief

and misery to move the pity of an angry god or goddess.

Sometimes, however, the priest would make a reference

which the penitent would make, when

to the offerings

he was pardoned and restored to health and prosperity.

Such an inducement to pardon a penitent is urged
by a priest upon an angry god in the following
extract :
 216 CONCEPTION OF SIN.

"

Open his bonds, remove his fetters. Make bright

"his
countenance, commend him to his god, his creator.
"

Give thy servant life, that he may praise thy power,

"

That he may bow down before thy greatness in all

"

dwellings. Receive his gift, accept his purchase-

money, That he may walk before thee in a land of
"

"peace, That with overflowing abundance he may fill

"

thy shrine, That in thy temple his offerings may be

"set,
That with oil as with water ho may anoint thy
"

bolts, And that with oil in abundance he may make

"

thy threshold overflow."

No
doubt in the early periods of their
religious
development, the offences which the Babylonian com
mitted were of a formal and ceremonial character.
Their sufferings might be due to the infringement
of a religious ordinance, or to the
eating or drinking
of an impure thing, or to an ill- omened word or action.

There no doubt, however, that in the course of

is

time moral considerations tinged their earlier beliefs.

Misfortune was still believed to be the result of sin
and transgression, but the character of the sin was
gradually changed. Injustice and evil-doing were
believed to anger a man s god as much as offences
against his own peculiar rites, and in this way a
man duty towards his god led to a conception of the
s

duty he owed towards his fellow man. The belief

that oppression and injustice were followed by
material misfortune is well attested in a document from
 GROWTH OF MORALITY. 21 J

Ashur-bani-pal s library, which contains a number of

warnings to a king against injustice, and which unequivo

states that any act of that description would
cally
1
recoil upon himself or upon his land. The beginning
of this tablet reads as follows :

"

If the king does not give heed to justice, his people

"

shall be overthrown and his land shall be brought to

"

confusion.
"

If he gives no heed to the law of his land, Ea, the

"

king of destinies, shall change his destiny,

and shall
"

visit him with misfortune.

If he gives no heed to his nobles, his days shall
"

(not) be long.
"

"

If he gives no heed to the wise-men, his land shall

revolt against him.
"

"

If he gives heed to wisdom (?), the king shall behold

"

the strengthening of the land.

he gives heed to the commands of Ea, the great
"If

"

gods shall endow him with true knowledge

and dis-
"

cernment.
"

If he treats a man of Sippar with injustice and

of heaven
gives a harsh decision, Shamash, the judge
"

"

and earth, shall give a harsh decision in his land,

"

and shall appoint a just prince and a just judge in

place of injustice.
"

"

If the men of Nippur come to him for judgment

1
The text is published in Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia,
Vol. IV., pi. 48.
218 A MAN S DUTIES TO HIS NEIGHBOUR.
"

and he accepts gifts and treats them with injustice,

"

Bel, the lord of the world, shall bring a foreign foe

"against
him and shall overthrow his army, and his
"prince and his leader they shall hunt as outcasts (?)
"

through the streets.

"

If the men Babylon take money with them and

of

"give bribes, and he favours the cause of (these)

"Babylonians and turns to (their) entreaty, Marduk,
"the lord of heaven and earth, shall bring his foe
against him, and shall give his goods and
"

his posses-

enemy. And the men of Nippur, Sippar,

"

sions to his

"or
Babylon who do these things shall be cast into
"

prison."

In this tablet it is clearly stated that the gods would

punish oppression and injustice with misfortune, and
there is evidence of this belief in other Babylonian
documents of a religious nature. From a series of

magical incantations wrong committed we learn that a

by a man against his neighbour carried with it a

punishment no less severe than that which accom
1
panied any offence against a ceremonial code. The
various sins which a man might commit are enume
rated in the form of questions, and the following
extract will serve to indicate their general character :

"

Has he estranged the father from his son ? Has

"he
estranged the son from his father? Has he
"

estranged the mother from her daughter ? Has he

1
Cf. Zimmern, Die Be&cliworungstafeln tichurpu, pp. 3 if.
 LIST OF OFFENCES. 2 19

"estranged the daughter from her mother? Has

"he
estranged the mother-in-law from her daughter-
"

in-law ? Has he estranged the daughter-in-law

"

from her mother-in-law Has he estranged the

?

brother from his brother ? Has he estranged the

"

"

friend from his friend ? Has he estranged the com-

panion from his companion ? Has he refused to set
"

"a
captive free, or has he refused to loose one who
"

was bound ? Has he shut out a prisoner from the

"

light ? Has he said of a captive Hold him fast,

or of one who was bound has he said, Strengthen
"

"

his bonds ? Has he committed a sin against a god,

"

or has he committed a sin against a goddess ? Has

"

he offended a god, or has he held a goddess in light

"

esteem ? Is his sin against his own god, or is his

sin against his own goddess ? Has he done violence
"

"to one older than himself, or has he conceived

"

hatred against an elder brother ? Has he held his

"

father and mother in contempt, or has he insulted his

"

elder sister Has he been generous in small things,

?

but avaricious in great matters ? Has he said yea

"

"

for nay ? Has he said nay for yea ? Has he

spoken of unclean things, or [has he counselled] dis-
"

"

obedience ? Has he uttered wickedness ? Has . . .

"

he used false scales ? . Has he accepted a wrong

. .

has he refused a rightful sum ? Has

"

account, or
"

he disinherited a legitimate son, or has he recognized

"

an illegitimate son ? Has he set up a false landmark,

220 A HIGH MORAL CODE.

or has he refused to setup a true landmark ? Has

"

"

he removed bound, border, or landmark ? Has he

"

broken into his neighbour s house ? Has he drawn

"

near his neighbour s wife ? Has he shed his neigh-

"

hour s blood ? Has he stolen his neighbour s gar-

ment
"
"

Here we have enumerated a comprehensive series of

sins and offences, the commission of any one of which

was considered sufficient to bring down upon a man
the wrath of his god. Taken together they prove that
in the seventh century before Christ, if not earlier,

the Babylonians and Assyrians possessed a system of

morality which in many respects resembled that of the

descendants of Abraham.

THE END.

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