While the Egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area, the Chalaean temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible. The "ziggurats," whose angular profile is a special characteristic of the landscapes of the Euphrates, were composed of several immense cubes, piled up on one another, and diminishing in size up to the small shrine by which they were crowned and wherein the god himself was supposed to dwell. There are two principal types of these ziggurats. In the first, for which the builders of Lower Chaldaea showed a marked preference, the vertical axis, common to all the superimposed stories, did not pass through the centre of the rectangle which served as the base of the whole building; it was carried back and placed near to one of the narrow ends of the base, so that the back elevation of the temple rose abruptly in steep narrow ledges above the plain, while the terraces of the front broadened out into wide platforms. The stories are composed of solid blocks of crude brick; up to the present, at least, no traces of internal chambers have been found.* The chapel on the summit could not contain more than one apartment: an altar stood before the door, and access to it was obtained by a straight external staircase, interrupted at each terrace by a more or less spacious landing.** The second type of temple frequently found in Northern Chaldaea was represented by a building on a square base with seven stories, all of equal height, connected by one or two lateral staircases, having on the summit, the pavilion of the god; this is the "terraced tower" which excited the admiration of the Greeks at Babylon, and of which the temple of Bel was the most remarkable example. The ruins of it still exist, but it has been so frequently and so completely restored in the course of ages, that it is impossible to say how much now remains of the original construction. We know of several examples, however, of the other type of ziggurat—one at Uru, another at Bridu, a third at Uruk, without mentioning those which have not as yet been methodically explored. None of them rises directly from the surface of the ground, but they are all built on a raised platform, which consequently places the foundations of the temple nearly on a level with the roofs of the surrounding houses. The raised platform of the temple of Nannar at Uru still measures 20 feet in height, and its four angles are orientated exactly to the four cardinal points. Its facade was approached by an inclined plane, or by a flight of low steps, and the summit, which was surrounded by a low balustrade, was paved with enormous burnt bricks. On this terrace, processions at solemn festivals would have ample space to perform their evolutions. The lower story of the temple occupies a parallelogram of 198 feet in length by 173 feet in width, and rises about 27 feet in height.

* Perrot-Ohipiez admit that between the first and second story there was a sort of plinth seven feet in height which corresponded to the foundation platform below the first story. It appears to me, as it did to Loftus, that the slope which now separates the two vertical masses of brickwork "is accidental, and owes its existence to the destruction of the upper portion of the second story." Taylor mentions only two stories, and evidently considers the slope in question to be a bank of rubbish.

** Perrot-Chipiez place the staircase leading from the ground-level to the terrace inside the building—"an arrangement which would have the advantage of not interfering with the outline of this immense platform, and would not detract from the strength and solidity of its appearance;" Reber proposes a different combination. At Uru, the whole staircase projects in front of the platform and "loads up to the edge of the basement of the second story," then continues as an inclined plane from the edge of the first story to the terrace of the second, forming one single staircase, perhaps of the same width as this second story, leading from the base to the summit of the building.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The restoration differs from that proposed by Perrot-Chipiez. I have made it by working out the description taken down on the spot by Taylor.

The central mass of crude brick has preserved its casing of red tiles, cemented with bitumen, almost intact up to the top; it is strengthened by buttresses—nine on the longer and six on the shorter sides—projecting about a foot, which relieve its rather bare surface. The second story rises to the height of only 20 feet above, the first, and when intact could not have been more than 26 to 30 feet high.* Many bricks bearing the stamp of Dungi are found among the materials used in the latest restoration, which took place about the VIth century before our era; they have a smooth surface, are broken here and there by air-holes, and their very simplicity seems to bear witness to the fact that Nabonidos confined himself to the task of merely restoring things to the state in which the earlier kings of Uru had left them.**



Facsimile, by Faucher-Gudin, of the drawing published by Taylor.

* At the present time 14 feet high, plus 5 feet of rubbish, 119 feet long, 75 feet wide (Loftus, Travels and Researches in Olialdsea and Susiana, p. 129).

** The cylinders of Nabonidos describing the restoration of the temple were found at the four angles of the second story by Taylor.

Till within the last century, traces of a third story to this temple might have been distinguished; unlike the lower ones, it was not of solid brickwork, but contained at least one chamber: this was the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary of Nannar. The external walls were covered with pale blue enamelled tiles, having a polished surface. The interior was panelled with cedar or cypress—rare woods procured as articles of commerce from the peoples of the North and West; this woodwork was inlaid in parts with thin leaves of gold, alternating with panels of mosaics composed of small pieces of white marble, alabaster, onyx, and agate, cut and polished.



In Its Present State, According To Loftus. Drawn by Bouchier, from Loftus.

Here stood the statue of Nannar, one of those stiff and conventionalized figures in the traditional pose handed down from generation to generation, and which lingered even in the Chaldaean statues of Greek times. The spirit of the god dwelt within it in the same way as the double resided in the Egyptian idols, and from thence he watched over the restless movements of the people below, the noise of whose turmoil scarcely reached him at that elevation. The gods of the Euphrates, like those of the Nile, constituted a countless multitude of visible and invisible beings, distributed into tribes and empires throughout all the regions of the universe. A particular function or occupation formed, so to speak, the principality of each one, in which he worked with an indefatigable zeal, under the orders of his respective prince or king; but, whereas in Egypt they were on the whole friendly to man, or at the best indifferent in regard to him, in Chaldaea they for the most part pursued him with an implacable hatred, and only seemed to exist in order to destroy him. These monsters of alarming aspect, armed with knives and lances, whom the theologians of Heliopolis and Thebes confined within the caverns of Hades in the depths of eternal darkness, were believed by the Chaldaeans to be let loose in broad daylight over the earth,—such were the "gallu" and the "mas-kim," the "alu" and the "utukku," besides a score of other demoniacal tribes bearing curious and mysterious names.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a small terra-cotta figure of the Assyrian period, and now in the Louvre. It was one of the figures buried under the threshold of one of the gates of the town at Khorsabad, to keep off baleful influences.

Some floated in the air and presided over the unhealthy winds. The South-West Wind, the most cruel of them all, stalked over the solitudes of Arabia, whence he suddenly issued during the most oppressive months of the year: he collected round him as he passed the malarial vapours given off by the marshes under the heat of the sun, and he spread them over the country, striking down in his violence not only man and beast, but destroying harvests, pasturage, and even trees.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bronze original now in the Louvre. The latter museum and the British Museum possess several other figures of the same demon.

The genii of fevers and madness crept in silently everywhere, insidious and traitorous as they were. The plague alternately slumbered or made furious onslaughts among crowded populations. Imps haunted the houses, goblins wandered about the water's edge, ghouls lay in wait for travellers in unfrequented places, and the dead quitting their tombs in the night stole stealthily among the living to satiate themselves with their blood. The material shapes attributed to these murderous beings were supposed to convey to the eye their perverse and ferocious characters. They were represented as composite creatures in whom the body of a man would be joined grotesquely to the limbs of animals in the most unexpected combinations. They worked in as best they could, birds' claws, fishes' scales, a bull's tail, several pairs of wings, the head of a lion, vulture, hyaena, or wolf; when they left the creature a human head, they made it as hideous and distorted as possible. The South-West Wind was distinguished from all the rest by the multiplicity of the incongruous elements of which his person was composed. His dog-like body was supported upon two legs terminating in eagle's claws; in addition to his arms, which were furnished with sharp talons, he had four outspread wings, two of which fell behind him, while the other two rose up and surrounded his head; he had a scorpion's tail, a human face with large goggle-eyes, bushy eyebrows, fleshless cheeks, and retreating lips, showing a formidable row of threatening teeth, while from his flattened skull protruded the horns of a goat: the entire combination was so hideous, that it even alarmed the god and put him to flight, when he was unexpectedly confronted with his own portrait. There was no lack of good genii to combat this deformed and vicious band. They too were represented as monsters, but monsters of a fine and noble bearing,—griffins, winged lions, lion-headed men, and more especially those splendid human-headed bulls, those "lamassi" crowned with mitres, whose gigantic statues kept watch before the palace and temple gates. Between these two races hostility was constantly displayed: restrained at one point, it broke out afresh at another, and the evil genii, invariably beaten, as invariably refused to accept their defeat. Man, less securely armed against them than were the gods, was ever meeting with them. "Up there, they are howling, here they lie in wait,—they are great worms let loose by heaven—powerful ones whose clamour rises above the city—who pour water in torrents from heaven, sons who have come out of the bosom of the earth.—They twine around the high rafters, the great rafters, like a crown;—they take their way from house to house,—for the door cannot stop them, nor bar the way, nor repulse them,—for they creep like a serpent under the door—they insinuate themselves like the air between the folding doors,—they separate the bride from the embraces of the bridegroom,—they snatch the child from between the knees of the man,—they entice the unwary from out of his fruitful house,—they are the threatening voice which pursues him from behind." Their malice extended even to animals: "They force the raven to fly away on the wing,—and they make the swallow to escape from its nest;—they cause the bull to flee, they cause the lamb to flee—they, the bad demons who lay snares."

The most audacious among them did not fear at times to attack the gods of light; on one occasion, in the infancy of the world, they had sought to dispossess them and reign in their stead. Without any warning they had climbed the heavens, and fallen upon Sin, the moon-god; they had repulsed Shamash, the Sun, and Eamman, both of whom had come to the rescue; they had driven Ishtar and Anu from their thrones: the whole firmament would have become a prey to them, had not Bel and Nusku, Ea and Merodach, intervened at the eleventh hour, and succeeded in hurling them down to the earth, after a terrible battle. They never completely recovered from this reverse, and the gods raised up as rivals to them a class of friendly genii—the "Igigi," who were governed by five heavenly Anunnas.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio published by Layard.

The earthly Anunnas, the Anunnaki, had as their chiefs seven sons of Bel, with bodies of lions, tigers, and serpents: "the sixth was a tempestuous wind which obeyed neither god nor king,—the seventh, a whirlwind, a desolating storm which destroys everything,"—"Seven, seven,—in the depth of the abyss of waters they are seven,—and destroyers of heaven they are seven.—They have grown up in the depths of the abyss, in the palace;—males they are not, females they are not,—they are storms which pass quickly.—They take no wife, they give birth to no child,—they know neither compassion nor kindness,—they listen to no prayer nor supplication.—As wild horses they are born in the mountains,—they are the enemies of Ba,—they are the agents of the gods;—they are evil, they are evil—and they are seven, they are seven, they are twice seven." Man, if reduced to his own resources, could have no chance of success in struggling against beings who had almost reduced the gods to submission. He invoked in his defence the help of the whole universe, the spirits of heaven and earth, the spirit of Bel and of Belit, that of Ninib and of Nebo, those of Sin, of Ishtar, and of Bamman; but Gibir or Gibil, the Lord of Fire, was the most powerful auxiliary in this incessant warfare. The offspring of night and of dark waters, the Anunnaki had no greater enemy than fire; whether kindled on the household hearth or upon the altars, its appearance put them to flight and dispelled their power.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard.

"Gibil, renowned hero in the land,—valiant, son of the Abyss, exalted in the land,—Gibil, thy clear flame, breaking forth,—when it lightens up the darkness,—assigns to all that bears a name its own destiny. —The copper and tin, it is thou who dost mix them,—gold and silver, it is thou who meltest them,—thou art the companion of the goddess Ninkasi—thou art he who exposes his breast to the nightly enemy!—Cause then the limbs of man, son of his god, to shine,—make him to be bright like the sky,—may he shine like the earth,—may he be bright like the interior of the heavens,—may the evil word be kept far from him," and with it the malignant spirits. The very insistence with which help is claimed against the Anunnaki shows how much their power was dreaded. The Chaldean felt them everywhere about him, and could not move without incurring the danger of coming into contact with them. He did not fear them so much during the day, as the presence of the luminary deities in the heavens reassured him; but the night belonged to them, and he was open to their attacks. If he lingered in the country at dusk, they were there, under the hedges, behind walls and trunks of trees, ready to rush out upon him at every turn. If he ventured after sundown into the streets of his village or town, he again met with them quarrelling with dogs over the offal on a rubbish heap, crouched in the shelter of a doorway, lying hidden in corners where the shadows were darkest. Even when barricaded within his house, under the immediate protection of his domestic idols, these genii still threatened him and left him not a moment's repose.* The number of them was so great that he was unable to protect himself adequately from all of them: when he had disarmed the greater portion of them, there were always several remaining against whom he had forgotten to take necessary precautions. What must have been the total of the subordinate genii, when, towards the IXth century before our era, the official census of the invisible beings stated the number of the great gods in heaven and earth to be sixty-five thousand!**

* The presence of the evil spirits everywhere is shown, among other magical formulas, by the incantation in Rawlinson, Cun, Ins. W. As., vol. ii. pi. 18, where we find enumerated at length the places from which they are to be kept out. The magician closes the house to them, the hedge which surrounds the house, the yoke laid upon the oxen, the tomb, the prison, the well, the furnace, the shade, the vase for libation, the ravines, the valleys, the mountains, the door.

** Assurnazirpal, King of Assyria, speaks in one of his inscriptions of these sixty-five thousand great gods of heaven and earth.

We are often much puzzled to say what these various divinities, whose names we decipher on the monuments, could possibly have represented. The sovereigns of Lagash addressed their prayers to Ningirsu, the valiant champion of Inlil; to Ninursag, the lady of the terrestrial mountain: to Ninsia, the lord of fate; to the King Ninagal; to Inzu, of whose real name no one has an idea; to Inanna, the queen of battles; to Pasag, to Galalim, to Dunshagana, to Ninmar, to Ningishzida. Gudea raised temples to them in all the cities over which his authority extended, and he devoted to these pious foundations a yearly income out of his domain land or from the spoils of his wars. "Gudea, the 'vicegerent' of Lagash, after having built the temple Ininnu for Ningirsu, constructed a treasury; a house decorated with sculptures, such as no 'vicegerent' had ever before constructed for Ningirsu; he constructed it for him, he wrote his name in it, he made in it all that was needful, and he executed faithfully all the words from the mouth of Ningirsu." The dedication of these edifices was accompanied with solemn festivals, in which the whole population took an active part. "During seven years no grain was ground, and the maidservant was the equal of her mistress, the slave walked beside his master, and in my town the weak rested by the side of the strong." Henceforward Gudea watched scrupulously lest anything impure should enter and mar the sanctity of the place.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. The attribution of this figure to Ningirsu is very probable, but not wholly certain.

Those we have enumerated were the ancient Sumerian divinities, but the characteristics of most of them would have been lost to us, had we not learned, by means of other documents, to what gods the Semites assimilated them, gods who are better known and who are represented under a less barbarous aspect. Ningirsu, the lord of the division of Lagash which was called Girsu, was identified with Ninib; Inlil is Bel, Ninursag is Beltis, Inzu is Sin, Inanna is Ishtar, and so on with the rest. The cultus of each, too, was not a local cultus, confined to some obscure corner of the country; they all were rulers over the whole of Chaldaea, in the north as in the south, at Uruk, at Urn, at Larsam, at Nipur, even in Babylon itself. Inlil was the ruler of the earth and of Hades, Babbar was the sun, Inzu the moon, Inanna-Antmit the morning and evening star and the goddess or love, at a time when two distinct religious and two rival groups of gods existed side by side on the banks of the Euphrates. The Sumerian language is for us, at the present day, but a collection of strange names, of whose meaning and pronunciation we are often ignorant. We may well ask what beings and beliefs were originally hidden under these barbaric combinations of syllables which are constantly recurring in the inscriptions of the oldest dynasties, such as Pasag, Dunshagana, Dumuzi-. Zuaba, and a score of others. The priests of subsequent times claimed to define exactly the attributes of each of them, and probably their statements are, in the main, correct. But it is impossible for us to gauge the motives which determined the assimilation of some of these divinities, the fashion in which it was carried out, the mutual concessions which Semite and Sumerian must have made before they could arrive at an understanding, and before the primitive characteristics of each deity were softened down or entirely effaced in the process. Many of these divine personages, such as Ea, Merodach, Ishtar, are so completely transformed, that we may well ask to which of the two peoples they owed their origin. The Semites finally gained the ascendency over their rivals, and the Sumerian gods from thenceforward preserved an independent existence only in connection with magic, divination, and the science of foretelling events, and also in the formulas of exorcists and physicians, to which the harshness of their names lent a greater weight. Elsewhere it was Bel and Sin, Shamash and Eamman, who were universally worshipped, but a Bel, a Sin, a Shamash, who still betrayed traces of their former connection with the Sumerian Inlil and Inzu, with Babbar and Mermer. In whatever language, however, they were addressed, by whatever name they were called upon, they did not fail to hear and grant a favourable reply to the appeals of the faithful.

Whether Sumerian or Semitic, the gods, like those of Egypt, were not abstract personages, guiding in a metaphysical fashion the forces of nature. Each of them contained in himself one of the principal elements of which our universe is composed,—earth, water, sky, sun, moon, and the stars which moved around the terrestrial mountain. The succession of natural phenomena with them was not the result of unalterable laws; it was due entirely to a series of voluntary acts, accomplished by beings of different grades of intelligence and power. Every part of the great whole is represented by a god, a god who is a man, a Chaldaean, who, although of a finer and more lasting nature than other Chaldaeans, possesses nevertheless the same instincts and is swayed by the same passions. He is, as a rule, wanting in that somewhat lithe grace of form, and in that rather easy-going good-nature, which were the primary characteristics of the Egyptian gods: the Chaldaean divinity has the broad shoulders, the thick-set figure and projecting muscles of the people over whom he rules; he has their hasty and violent temperament, their coarse sensuality, their cruel and warlike propensities, their boldness in conceiving undertakings, and their obstinate tenacity in carrying them out. Their goddesses are modelled on the tyra of the Chaldaen women, or, more properly speaking, on that of their queens. The majority of them do not quit the harem, and have no other ambition than to become speedily the mother of a numerous offspring. Those who openly reject the rigid constraints of such a life, and who seek to share the rank of the gods, seem to lose all self-restraint when they put off the veil: like Ishtar, they exchange a life of severe chastity for the lowest debauchery, and they subject their followers to the same irregular life which they themselves have led. "Every woman born in the country must enter once during her lifetime the enclosure of the temple of Aphrodite, must there sit down and unite herself to a stranger. Many who are wealthy are too proud to mix with the rest, and repair thither in closed chariots, followed by a considerable train of slaves. The greater number seat themselves on the sacred pavement, with a cord twisted about their heads,—and there is always a great crowd there, coming and going; the women being divided by ropes into long lanes, down which strangers pass to make their choice. A woman who has once taken her place here cannot return home until a stranger has thrown into her lap a silver coin, and has led her away with him beyond the limits of the sacred enclosure. As he throws the money he pronounces these words: 'May the goddess Mylitta make thee happy! '—Now, among the Assyrians, Aphrodite is called Mylitta. The silver coin may be of any value, but none may refuse it, that is forbidden by the law, for, once thrown, it is sacred. The woman follows the first man who throws her the money, and repels no one. When once she has accompanied him, and has thus satisfied the goddess, she returns to her home, and from thenceforth, however large the sum offered to her, she will yield to no one. The women who are tall or beautiful soon return to their homes, but those who are ugly remain a long time before they are able to comply with the law; some of them are obliged to wait three or four years within the enclosure."* This custom still existed in the Vth century before our era, and the Greeks who visited Babylon about that time found it still in full force.

* Herodotus, i. 199: of. Stabo, xvi. p. 1058, who probably has merely quoted this passage from Herodotus, or some writer who copied from Herodotus. We meet with a direct allusion to this same custom in the Bible, in the Book of Barueh; "The women also, with cords about them, sitting in the ways, burn bran for perfume; but if any of them, drawn by some that passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her fellow, that she was not thought as worthy as herself, nor her cord broken."

The gods, who had begun by being the actual material of the element which was their attribute, became successively the spirit of it, then its ruler.* They continued at first to reside in it, but in the course of time they were separated from it, and each was allowed to enter the domain of another, dwell in it, and even command it, as they could have done in their own, till finally the greater number of them were identified with the firmament.

* Pk. Lbnoemant, La Magie chez les Chaldeens, p. 144, et seq., where the author shows how Anu, after having at first been the Heaven itself, the starry vault stretched above the earth, became successively the Spirit of Heaven (Zi-ana), and finally the supreme ruler of the world: according to Lenormant, it was the Semites in particular who transformed the primitive spirit into an actual god-king.

Bel, the lord of the earth, and Ea, the ruler of the waters, passed info the heavens, which did not belong to them, and took their places beside Ami: the pathways were pointed out which they had made for themselves across the celestial vault, in order to inspect their kingdoms from the exalted heights to which they had been raised; that of Bel was in the Tropic of Cancer, that of Ea in the Tropic of Capricorn. They gathered around them all the divinities who could easily be abstracted from the function or object to which they were united, and they thus constituted a kind of divine aristocracy, comprising all the most powerful beings who guided the fortunes of the world. The number of them was considerable, for they reckoned seven supreme and magnificent gods, fifty great gods of heaven and earth, three hundred celestial spirits, and six hundred terrestrial spirits. Each of them deputed representatives here below, who received the homage of mankind for him, and signified to them his will. The god revealed himself in dreams to his seers and imparted to them the course of coming events,* or, in some cases, inspired them suddenly and spoke by their mouth: their utterances, taken down and commented on by their assistants, were regarded as infallible oracles. But the number of mortal men possessing adequate powers, and gifted with sufficiently acute senses to bear without danger the near presence of a god, was necessarily limited; communications were, therefore, more often established by means of various objects, whose grosser substance lessened for human intelligence and flesh and blood the dangers of direct contact with an immortal. The statues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on the summits of the "ziggurats" became imbued, by virtue of their consecration, with the actual body of the god whom they represented, and whose name was written either on the base or garment of the statue.** The sovereign who dedicated them, summoned them to speak in the days to come, and from thenceforth they spoke: when they were interrogated according to the rite instituted specially for each one, that part of the celestial soul, which by means of the prayers had been attracted to and held captive by the statue, could not refuse to reply.** Were there for this purpose special images, as in Egypt, which were cleverly contrived so as to emit sounds by the pulling of a string by the hidden prophet? Voices resounded at night in the darkness of the sanctuaries, and particularly when a king came there to prostrate himself for the purpose of learning the future: his rank alone, which raised him halfway to heaven, prepared him to receive the word from on high by the mouth of the image.

* A prophetic dream is mentioned upon, one of the statues of Telloh. In the records of Assurbanipal we find mention of several "seers"—shabru—one of whom predicts the general triumph of the king over his enemies, and of whom another announces in the name of Ishtar the victory over the Elamites and encourages the Assyrian army to cross a torrent swollen by rains, while a third sees in a dream the defeat and death of the King of Elam. These "seers" are mentioned in the texts of Gudea with the prophetesses "who tell the message" of the gods.

** In a formula drawn up against evil spirits, for the purpose of making talismanic figures for the protection of houses, it is said of Merodach that he "inhabits the image" —ashibu salam—which has been made of him by the magician.

** This is what Gudea says, when, describing his own statue which he had placed in the temple of Telloh, he adds that "he gave the order to the statue: 'To the statue of my king, speak!'" The statue of the king, inspired by that of the god, would thenceforth speak when interrogated according to the formularies. Cf. what is said of the divine or royal statues dedicated in the temples of Egypt, vol. i. pp. 169, 170. A number of oracles regularly obtained in the time of Asarhaddon and Assurbanabal have been published by Knudtzon.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Chaldaean intaglio reproduced in Heuzey-Sarzec, Decouvertes en Chaldee, pl. 30bis, No. 13b.

More frequently a priest, accustomed from childhood to the office, possessed the privilege of asking the desired questions and of interpreting to the faithful the various signs by means of which the divine will was made known. The spirit of the god inspired, moreover, whatever seemed good to him, and frequently entered into objects where we should least have expected to find it. It animated stones, particularly such as fell from heaven; also trees, as, for example, the tree of Eridu which pronounced oracles; and, besides the battle-mace, with a granite head fixed on a wooden handle, the axe of Ramman, lances made on the model of Gilgames' fairy javelin, which came and went at its master's orders, without needing to be touched. Such objects, when it was once ascertained that they were imbued with the divine spirit, were placed upon the altar and worshipped with as much veneration as were the statues themselves.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the terra-cotta figurine of Assyrian date now in the Louvre.

Animals never became objects of habitual worship as in Egypt: some of them, however, such as the bull and lion, were closely allied to the gods, and birds unconsciously betrayed by their flight or cries the secrets of futurity.* In addition to all these, each family possessed its household gods, to whom its members recited prayers and poured libations night and morning, and whose statues set up over the domestic hearth defended it from the snares of the evil ones.** The State religion, which all the inhabitants of the same city, from the king down to the lowest slave, were solemnly bound to observe, really represented to the Chaldaeans but a tithe of their religious life: it included some dozen gods, no doubt the most important, but it more or less left out of account all the others, whose anger, if aroused by neglect, might become dangerous. The private devotion of individuals supplemented the State religion by furnishing worshippers for most of the neglected divinities, and thus compensated for what was lacking in the official public worship of the community.

* Animal forms are almost always restricted either to the genii, the constellations, or the secondary forms of the greater divinities: Ea, however, is represented by a man with a fish's tail, or as a man clothed with a fish-skin, which would appear to indicate that at the outset he was considered to be an actual fish.

** The images of these gods acted as amulets, and the fact of their presence alone repelled the evil spirits. At Khorsabad they were found buried under the threshold of the city gates. A bilingual tablet in the British Museum has preserved for us the formula of consecration which was supposed to invest these protecting statuettes with divine powers.

If the idea of uniting all these divine beings into a single supreme one, who would combine within himself all their elements and the whole of their powers, ever for a moment crossed the mind of some Chaldaean theologian, it never spread to the people as a whole. Among all the thousands of tablets or inscribed stones on which we find recorded prayers and magical formulas, we have as yet discovered no document treating of the existence of a supreme god, or even containing the faintest allusion to a divine unity. We meet indeed with many passages in which this or that divinity boasts of his power, eloquently depreciating that of his rivals, and ending his discourse with the injunction to worship him alone: "Man who shall come after, trust in Nebo, trust in no other god!" The very expressions which are used, commanding future races to abandon the rest of the immortals in favour of Nebo, prove that even those who prided themselves on being worshippers of one god realized how far they were from believing in the unity of God. They strenuously asserted that the idol of their choice was far superior to many others, but it never occurred to them to proclaim that he had absorbed them all into himself, and that he remained alone in his glory, contemplating the world, his creature. Side by side with those who expressed this belief in Nebo, an inhabitant of Babylon would say as much and more of Merodach, the patron of his birthplace, without, however, ceasing to believe in the actual independence and royalty of Nebo. "When thy power manifests itself, who can withdraw himself from it?—Thy word is a powerful net which thou spreadest in heaven and over the earth:—it falls upon the sea, and the sea retires,—it falls upon the plain, and the fields make great mourning,—it falls upon the upper waters of the Euphrates, and the word of Merodach stirs up the flood in them.—O Lord, thou art sovereign, who can resist thee?—Merodach, among the gods who bear a name, thou art sovereign." Merodach is for his worshippers the king of the gods, he is not the sole god. Each of the chief divinities received in a similar manner the assurance of his omnipotence, but, for all that, his most zealous followers never regarded them as the only God, beside whom there was none other, and whose existence and rule precluded those of any other. The simultaneous elevation of certain divinities to the supreme rank had a reactionary influence on the ideas held with regard to the nature of each. Anu, Bel, and Ea, not to mention others, had enjoyed at the outset but a limited and incomplete personality, confined to a single concept, and were regarded as possessing only such attributes as were indispensable to the exercise of their power within a prescribed sphere, whether in heaven, or on the earth, or in the waters; as each in his turn gained the ascendency over his rivals, he became invested with the qualities which were exercised by the others in their own domain. His personality became enlarged, and instead of remaining merely a god of heaven or earth or of the waters, he became god of all three simultaneously. Anu reigned in the province of Bel or of Ea as he ruled in his own; Bel joined to his own authority that of Anu and Ea; Ea treated Anu and Bel with the same absence of ceremony which they had shown to him, and added their supremacy to his own. The personality of each god was thenceforward composed of many divers elements: each preserved a nucleus of his original being, but superadded to this were the peculiar characteristics of all the gods above whom he had been successively raised. Anu took to himself somewhat of the temperaments of Bel and of Ea, and the latter in exchange borrowed from him many personal traits. The same work of levelling which altered the characteristics of the Egyptian divinities, and transformed them little by little into local variants of Osiris and the Sun, went on as vigorously among the Chaldaean gods: those who were incarnations of the earth, the waters, the stars, or the heavens, became thenceforth so nearly allied to each other that we are tempted to consider them as being doubles of a single god, worshipped under different names in different localities. Their primitive forms can only be clearly distinguished when they are stripped of the uniform in which they are all clothed.

The sky-gods and the earth-gods had been more numerous at the outset than they were subsequently. We recognize as such Anu, the immovable firmament, and the ancient Bel, the lord of men and of the soil on which they live, and into whose bosom they return after, death; but there were others, who in historic times had partially or entirely lost their primitive character,—such as Nergal, Ninib, Dumuzi; or, among the goddesses, Damkina, Esharra, and even Ishtar herself, who, at the beginning of their existence, had represented only the earth, or one of its most striking aspects. For instance, Nergal and Ninib were the patrons of agriculture and protectors of the soil, Dumuzi was the ground in spring whose garment withered at the first approach of summer, Damkina was the leafy mould in union with fertilizing moisture, Esharra was the field whence sprang the crops, Ishtar was the clod which again grew green after the heat of the dog days and the winter frosts. All these beings had been forced to submit in a greater or less degree to the fate which among most primitive races awaits those older earth-gods, whose manifestations are usually too vague and shadowy to admit of their being grasped or represented by any precise imagery without limiting and curtailing their spheres. New deities had arisen of a more definite and tangible kind, and hence more easily understood, and having a real or supposed province which could be more easily realized, such as the sun, the moon, and the fixed or wandering stars. The moon is the measure of time; it determines the months, leads the course of the years, and the entire life of mankind and of great cities depends upon the regularity of its movements: the Chaldaeans, therefore, made it, or rather the spirit which animated it, the father and king of the gods; but its suzerainty was everywhere a conventional rather than an actual superiority, and the sun, which in theory was its vassal, attracted more worshippers than the pale and frigid luminary. Some adored the sun under its ordinary title of Shamash, corresponding to the Egyptian Ra; others designated it as Merodach, Ninib, Nergal, Dumuzi, not to mention other less usual appellations. Nergal in the beginning had nothing in common with Ninib, and Merodach differed alike from Shamash, Ninib, Nergal, and Dumuzi; but the same movement which instigated the fusion of so many Egyptian divinities of diverse nature, led the gods of the Chaldaeans to divest themselves little by little of their individuality and to lose themselves in the sun. Each one at first became a complete sun, and united in himself all the innate virtues of the sun—its brilliancy and its dominion over the world, its gentle and beneficent heat, its fertilizing warmth, its goodness and justice, its emblematic character of truth and peace; besides the incontestable vices which darken certain phases of its being—the fierceness of its rays at midday and in summer, the inexorable strength of its will, its combative temperament, its irresistible harshness and cruelty. By degrees they lost this uniform character, and distributed the various attributes among themselves. If Shamash continued to be the sun in general, Ninib restricted himself, after the example of the Egyptian Harmakhis, to being merely the rising and setting sun, the sun on the two horizons. Nergal became the feverish and destructive summer sun.* Merodach was transformed into the youthful sun of spring and early morning;** Dumuzi, like Merodach, became the sun before the summer. Their moral qualities naturally were affected by the process of restriction which had been applied to their physical being, and the external aspect now assigned to each in accordance with their several functions differed considerably from that formerly attributed to the unique type from which they had sprung. Ninib was represented as valiant, bold, and combative; he was a soldier who dreamed but of battle and great feats of arms. Nergal united a crafty fierceness to his bravery: not content with being lord of battles, he became the pestilence which breaks out unexpectedly in a country, the death which comes like a thief, and carries off his prey before there is time to take up arms against him. Merodach united wisdom with courage and strength: he attacked the wicked, protected the good, and used his power in the cause of order and justice. A very ancient legend, which was subsequently fully developed among the Canaanites, related the story of the unhappy passion of Ishtar for Dumuzi. The goddess broke out yearly into a fresh frenzy, but the tragic death of the hero finally moderated the ardour of her devotion. She wept distractedly for him, went to beg the lords of the infernal regions for his return, and brought him back triumphantly to the earth: every year there was a repetition of the same passionate infatuation, suddenly interrupted by the same mourning. The earth was united to the young sun with every recurring spring, and under the influence of his caresses became covered with verdure; then followed autumn and winter, and the sun, grown old, sank into the tomb, from whence his mistress had to call him up, in order to plunge afresh with him by a common impulse into the joys and sorrows of another year.

* The solar character of Nergal, at least in later times, is admitted, but with restrictions, by all Assyriologists. The evident connection between him and Ninib, of which we have proofs, was the ground of Delitzsch's theory that he was likewise the burning and destructive sun, and also of Jensen's analogous concept of a midday and summer sun.

** Pr. Lenormant seems to have been the first to distinguish in Merodach, besides the god of the planet Jupiter, a solar personage. This notion, which has been generally admitted by most Assyriologists, has been defined with greater exactitude by Jensen, who is inclined to see in Merodach both the morning sun and the spring sun; and this is the opinion held at present.

The differences between the gods were all the more accentuated, for the reason that many who had a common origin were often separated from one another by, relatively speaking, considerable distances. Having divided the earth's surface between them, they formed, as in Egypt, a complete feudal system, whose chiefs severally took up their residence in a particular city. Anu was worshipped in Uruk, Enlil-Bel reigned in Nipur, Eridu belonged to Ea, the lord of the waters. The moon-god, Sin, alone governed two large fiefs, Uru in the extreme south, and Harran towards the extreme north-west; Shamash had Larsam and one of the Sipparas for his dominion, and the other sun-gods were not less well provided for, Nergal possessing Kutha, Zamama having Kish, Ninib side by side with Bel reigning in Nipur, while Merodach ruled at Babylon. Each was absolute master in his own territory, and it is quite exceptional to find two of them co-regnant in one locality, as were Ninib and Bel at Nipur, or Ea and Ishtar in Uruk; not that they raised any opposition on principle to the presence of a stranger divinity in their dominions, but they welcomed them only under the titles of allies or subjects. Each, moreover, had fair play, and Nebo or Shamash, after having filled the role of sovereign at Borsippa or at Larsam, did not consider it derogatory to his dignity to accept a lower rank in Babylon or at Uru. Hence all the feudal gods played a double part, and had, as it were, a double civil portion—that of suzerain in one or two localities, and that of vassals everywhere else—and this dual condition was the surest guarantee not only of their prosperity, but of their existence. Sin would have run great risk of sinking into oblivion if his resources had been confined to the subventions from his domain temples of Harran and Uru. Their impoverishment would in such case have brought about his complete failure: after having enjoyed an existence amid riches and splendour in the beginning of history, he would have ended his life in a condition of misery and obscurity. But the sanctuaries erected to him in the majority of the other cities, the honours which these bestowed upon him, and the offerings which they made to him, compensated him for the poverty and neglect which he experienced in his own domains; and he was thus able to maintain his divine dignity on a suitable footing. All the gods were, therefore, worshipped by the Chaldeans, and the only difference among them in this respect arose from the fact that some exalted one special deity above the others. The gods of the richest and most ancient principalities naturally enjoyed the greatest popularity. The greatness of Uru had been the source of Sin's prestige, and Merodach owed his prosperity to the supremacy which Babylon had acquired over the districts of the north. Merodach was regarded as the son of Ba, as the star which had risen from the abyss to illuminate the world, and to confer upon mankind the decrees of eternal wisdom. He was proclaimed as lord—"bilu"—par excellence, in comparison with whom all other lords sank into insignificance, and this title soon procured for him a second, which was no less widely recognized than the first: he was spoken of everywhere as the Bel of Babylon, Bel-Merodach—before whom Bel of Nipur was gradually thrown into the shade. The relations between these feudal deities were not always pacific: jealousies arose among them like those which disturbed the cities over which they ruled; they conspired against each other, and on occasions broke out into open warfare. Instead of forming a coalition against the evil genii who threatened their rule, and as a consequence tended to bring everything into jeopardy, they sometimes made alliances with these malign powers and mutually betrayed each other. Their history, if we could recover it in its entirety, would be marked by as violent deeds as those which distinguished the princes and kings who worshipped them. Attempts were made, however, and that too from an early date, to establish among them a hierarchy like that which existed among the great ones of the earth. The faithful, who, instead of praying to each one separately, preferred to address them all, invoked them always in the same order: they began with Anu, the heaven, and followed with Bel, Ea, Sin, Shamash, and Bamman. They divided these six into two groups of three, one trio consisting of Anu, Bel, and Ea, the other of Sin, Shamash, and Bamman. All these deities were associated with Southern Chaldoa, and the system which grouped them must have taken its rise in this region, probably at Uruk, whose patron Anu V occupied the first rank among them. The theologians who classified them in this manner seem never to have dreamt of explaining, like the authors of the Heliopolitan Ennead, the successive steps in their creation: these triads were not, moreover, copies of the human family, consisting of a father and mother whose marriage brings into the world a new being. Others had already given an account of the origin of things, and of Merodach's struggles with chaos; these theologians accepted the universe as it was, already made, and contented themselves with summing up its elements by enumerating the gods which actuated them.* They assigned the first place to those elements which make the most forcible impression upon man—beginning with Anu, for the heaven was the god of their city; following with Bel of Nipur, the earth which from all antiquity has been associated with the heaven; and concluding with Ea of Eridu, the terrestrial waters and primordial Ocean whence Anu and Bel, together with all living creatures, had sprung—Ea being a god whom, had they not been guided by local vanity, they would have made sovereign lord of all. Anu owed his supremacy to an historical accident rather than a religious conception: he held his high position, not by his own merits, but because the prevailing theology of an early period had been the work of his priesthood.

* I know of Sayce only who has endeavoured to explain the historical formation of the triads. They are considered by him as of Accadian origin, and probably began in an astronomical triad, composed of the moon-god, the sun-god, and the evening star, Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar; alongside this elementary trinity, "the only authentic one to be found in the religious faith of primitive Chaldaea," the Semites may have placed the cosmogonical trinity of Anu, Bel, and Ea, formed by the reunion of the gods of Uruk, Nipur, and Eridu.

The characters of the three personages who formed the supreme triad can be readily deduced from the nature of the elements which they represent. Anu is the heaven itself—"ana"—the immense vault which spreads itself above our heads, clear during the day when glorified by the sun, obscure and strewn with innumerable star clusters during the night. Afterwards it becomes the spirit which animates the firmament, or the god which rules it: he resides in the north towards the pole, and the ordinary route chosen by him when inspecting his domain is that marked out by our ecliptic. He occupies the high regions of the universe, sheltered from winds and tempests, in an atmosphere always serene, and a light always brilliant. The terrestrial gods and those of middle-space take refuge in this "heaven of Anu," when they are threatened by any great danger, but they dare not penetrate its depths, and stop, shortly after passing its boundary, on the ledge which supports the vault, where they loll and howl like dogs. It is but rarely that it may be entered, and then only by the highly privileged—kings whose destiny marked them out for admittance, and heroes who have fallen valiantly on the field of battle. In his remote position on unapproachable summits Anu seems to participate in the calm and immobility of his dwelling. If he is quick in forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion, he himself never puts into execution the plans which he has matured or the judgments which he has pronounced: he relieves himself of the trouble of acting, by assigning the duty to Bel-Merodach, Ea, or Eamman, and he often employs inferior genii to execute his will. "They are seven, the messengers of Anu their king; it is they who from town to town raise the stormy wind; they are the south wind which drives mightily in the heavens; they are the destroying clouds which overturn the heavens; they are the rapid tempests which bring darkness in the midst of clear day, they roam here and there with the wicked wind and the ill-omened hurricane." Anu sends forth all the gods as he pleases, recalls them again, and then, to make them his pliant instruments, enfeebles their personality, reducing it to nothing by absorbing it into his own. He blends himself with them, and their designations seem to be nothing more than doublets of his own: he is Anu the Lakhmu who appeared on the first days of creation; Ahu Urash or Ninib is the sun-warrior of Nipur; and Anu is also the eagle Alala whom Ishtar enfeebled by her caresses. Anu regarded in this light ceases to be the god par excellence: he becomes the only chief god, and the idea of authority is so closely attached to his name that the latter alone is sufficient in common speech to render the idea of God. Bel would have been entirely thrown into the shade by him, as the earth-gods generally are by the sky-gods, if it had not been that he was confounded with his namesake Bel-Merodach of Babylon: to this alliance he owed to the end the safety of his life, in presence of Anu. Ea was the most active and energetic member of the triad.* As he represented the bottomless abyss, the dark waters which had filled the universe until the day of the creation, there had been attributed to him a complete knowledge of the past, present, and future, whose germs had lain within him, as in a womb. The attribute of supreme wisdom was revered in Ea, the lord of spells and charms, to which gods and men were alike subject: no strength could prevail against his strength, no voice against his voice: when once he opened his mouth to give a decision, his will became law, and no one might gainsay it. If a peril should arise against which the other gods found themselves impotent, they resorted to him immediately for help, which was never refused. He had saved Shamashnapishtirn from the Deluge; every day he freed his votaries from sickness and the thousand demons which were the causes of it. He was a potter, and had modelled men out of the clay of the plains. From him smiths and workers in gold obtained the art of rendering malleable and of fashioning the metals. Weavers and stone-cutters, gardeners, husbandmen, and sailors hailed him as their teacher and patron. From his incomparable knowledge the scribes derived theirs, and physicians and wizards invoked spirits in his name alone by the virtue of prayers which he had condescended to teach them.

* The name of this god was read "Nisrok" by Oppert, "Nouah" by Hincks and Lenormant. The true reading is Ia, Ea, usually translated "house," "water-house"; this is a popular interpretation which appears to have occurred to the Chaldaeans from the values of the signs entering into the name of the god. From the outset H. Rawlinson recognized in Ea, which he read Hea, Hoa, the divinity presiding over the abyss of waters; he compared him with the serpent of Holy Scripture, in its relation to the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, and deduced therefrom his character of lord of wisdom. His position as lord of the primordial waters, from which all things proceeded, clearly denned by Lenormant, is now fully recognized. His name was transcribed Aos by Damascius, a form which is not easily explained; the most probable hypothesis is that of Hommel who considers Aos as a shortened form of Iaos = Ia, Ea.

Subordinate to these limitless and vague beings, the theologians placed their second triad, made up of gods of restricted power and invariable form. They recognized in the unswerving regularity with which the moon waxed and waned, or with which the sun rose and set every day, a proof of their subjection to the control of a superior will, and they signalized this dependence by making them sons of one or other of the three great gods. Sin was the offspring of Bel, Shamash of Sin, Kamman of Anu. Sin was indebted for this primacy among the subordinate divinities to the preponderating influence which Uru exercised over Southern Chaldaea. Mar, where Ramman was the chief deity, never emerged from its obscurity, and Larsam acquired supremacy only many centuries after its neighbour, and did not succeed in maintaining it for any length of time. The god of the suzerain city necessarily took precedence of those of the vassal towns, and when once his superiority was admitted by the people, he was able to maintain his place in spite of all political revolutions. Sin was called in Uru, "Uruki," or "Nannar the glorious," and his priests sometimes succeeded in identifying him with Anu. "Lord, prince of the gods, who alone in heaven and earth is exalted,—father Nannar, lord of the hosts of heaven, prince of the gods,—father Nannar, lord, great Anu, prince of the gods,—father Nannar, lord, moon-god, prince of the gods,—father Nannar, lord of Uni, prince of the gods....—Lord, thy deity fills the far-off heavens, like the vast sea, with reverential fear! Master of the earth, thou who fixest there the boundaries [of the towns] and assignest to them their names,—father, begetter of gods and men, who establishest for them dwellings and institutest for them that which is good, who proclaimest royalty and bestowest the exalted sceptre on those whose destiny was determined from distant times,—chief, mighty, whose heart is great, god whom no one can name, whose limbs are steadfast, whose knees never bend, who preparest the paths of thy brothers the gods....—In heaven, who is supreme? As for thee, it is thou alone who art supreme! As for thee, thy decree is made known in heaven, and the Igigi bow their faces!—As for thee, thy decree is made known upon earth, and the spirits of the abyss kiss the dust!—As for thee, thy decree blows above like the wind, and stall and pasture become fertile!—As for thee, thy decree is accomplished upon earth below, and the grass and green things grow!—As for thee, thy degree is seen in the cattle-folds and in the lairs of the wild beasts, and it multiplies living things!—As for thee, thy decree has called into being equity and justice, and the peoples have promulgated thy law!—As for thee, thy decree, neither in the far-off heaven, nor in the hidden depths of the earth, can any one recognize it!—As for thee, thy decree, who can learn it, who can try conclusions with it?—O Lord, mighty in heaven, sovereign upon earth, among the gods thy brothers, thou hast no rival." Outside Uru and Harran, Sin did not obtain this rank of creator and ruler of things; he was simply the moon-god, and was represented in human form, usually accompanied by a thin crescent, upon which he sometimes stands upright, sometimes appears with the bust only rising out of it, in royal costume and pose.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure by Menant.

His mitre is so closely associated with him that it takes his place on the astrological tablets; the name he bears—"agu"—often indicates the moon regarded simply as a celestial body and without connotation of deity. Babbar-Shamash, "the light of the gods, his fathers," "the illustrious scion of Sin," passed the night in the depths of the north, behind the polished metal walls which shut in the part of the firmament visible to human eyes.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean intaglio of green jasper in the Louvre. The original measures about 1 3/10 inch in height.

As soon as the dawn had opened the gates for him, he rose in the east all aflame, his club in his hand, and he set forth on his headlong course over the chain of mountains which surrounds the world;* six hours later he had attained the limit of his journey towards the south, he then continued his journey to the west, gradually lessening his heat, and at length re-entered his accustomed resting-place by the western gate, there to remain until the succeeding morning. He accomplished his journey round the earth in a chariot conducted by two charioteers, and drawn by two vigorous onagers, "whose legs never grew weary;" the flaming disk which was seen from earth was one of the wheels of his chariot.**

* His course along the embankment which runs round the celestial vault was the origin of the title, Line of Union between Heaven and Earth; he moved, in fact, where the heavens and the earth come into contact, and appeared to weld them into one by the circle of fire which he described. Another expression of this idea occurs in the preamble of Nergal and Ninib, who were called "the separators"; the course of the sun might, in fact, be regarded as separating, as well as uniting, the two parts of the universe.

** The disk has sometimes four, sometimes eight rays inscribed on it, indicating wheels with four or eight spokes respectively. Rawlinson supposed "that these two figures indicate a distinction between the male and female power of the deity, the disk with four rays symbolizing Shamash, the orb with eight rays being the emblem of Ai, Gula, or Anunit."



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Rassam. The busts of the two deities on the front of the roof of the shrine are the two charioteers of the sun; they uphold and guide the rayed disk upon the altar. Cf. in the Assyrian period the winged disk led with cords by two genii.

As soon as he appeared he was hailed with the chanting of hymns: "O Sun, thou appearest on the foundation of the heavens,—thou drawest back the bolts which bar the scintillating heavens, thou openest the gate of the heavens! O Sun, thou raisest thy head above the earth,—Sun, thou extendest over the earth the brilliant vaults of the heavens." The powers of darkness fly at his approach or take refuge in their mysterious caverns, for "he destroys the wicked, he scatters them, the omens and gloomy portents, dreams, and wicked ghouls—he converts evil to good, and he drives to their destruction the countries and men—who devote themselves to black magic." In addition to natural light, he sheds upon the earth truth and justice abundantly; he is the "high judge" before whom everything makes obeisance, his laws never waver, his decrees are never set at naught. "O Sun, when thou goest to rest in the middle of the heavens—may the bars of the bright heaven salute thee in peace, and may the gate of heaven bless thee!—May Misharu, thy well-beloved servant, guide aright thy progress, so that on Rbarra, the seat of thy rule, thy greatness may rise, and that A, thy cherished spouse, may receive thee joyfully! May thy glad heart find in her thy rest!—May the food of thy divinity be brought to thee by her,—warrior, hero, sun, and may she increase thy vigour;—lord of Ebarra, when thou ap-proachest, mayest thou direct thy course aright!—-0 Sun, urge rightly thy way along the fixed road determined for thee,—O Sun, thou who art the judge of the land, and the arbiter of its laws!"

It would appear that the triad had begun by having in the third place a goddess, Ishtar of Dilbat. Ishtar is the evening star which precedes the appearance of the moon, and the morning star which heralds the approach of the sun: the brilliance of its light justifies the choice which made it an associate of the greater heavenly bodies. "In the days of the past.... Ea charged Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar with the ruling of the firmament of heaven; he distributed among them, with Anu, the command of the army of heaven, and among these three gods, his children, he apportioned the day and the night, and compelled them to work ceaselessly."



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio at Rome.

Ishtar was separated from her two companions, when the group of the planets was definitely organized and claimed the adoration of the devout; the theologians then put in her place an individual of a less original aspect, Ramman. Ramman embraced within him the elements of many very ancient genii, all of whom had been set over the atmosphere, and the phenomena which are daily displayed in it—wind, rain, and thunder. These genii occupied an important place in the popular religion which had been cleverly formulated by the theologians of Uruk, and there have come down to us many legends in which their incarnations play a part. They are usually represented as enormous birds flocking on their swift wings from below the horizon, and breathing flame or torrents of water upon the countries over which they hovered. The most terrible of them was Zu, who presided over tempests: he gathered the clouds together, causing them to burst in torrents of rain or hail; he let loose the winds and lightnings, and nothing remained standing where he had passed. He had a numerous family: among them cross-breeds of extraordinary species which would puzzle a modern naturalist, but were matters of course to the ancient priests. His mother Siris, lady of the rain and clouds, was a bird like himself; but Zu had as son a vigorous bull, which, pasturing in the meadows, scattered abundance and fertility around him. The caprices of these strange beings, their malice, and their crafty attacks, often brought upon them vexatious misfortunes. Shutu, the south wind, one day beheld Adapa, one of the numerous offspring of Ea, fishing in order to provide food for his family. In spite of his exalted origin, Adapa was no god; he did not possess the gift of immortality, and he was not at liberty to appear in the presence of Anu in heaven. He enjoyed, nevertheless, certain privileges, thanks to his familiar intercourse with his father Ea, and owing to his birth he was strong enough to repel the assaults of more than one deity. When, therefore, Shutu, falling upon him unexpectedly, had overthrown him, his anger knew no bounds: "'Shutu, thou hast overwhelmed me with thy hatred, great as it is,—I will break thy wings! 'Having thus spoken with his mouth unto Shutu, Adapa broke his wings. For seven days,—Shutu breathed no longer upon the earth." Anu, being disturbed at this quiet, which seemed to him not very consonant with the meddling temperament of the wind, made inquiries as to its cause through his messenger Ilabrat. "His messenger Ilabrat answered him: 'My master,—Adapa, the son of Ea, has broken Shutu's wings.'—Anu, when he heard these words, cried out: 'Help!'" and he sent to Ea Barku, the genius of the lightning, with an order to bring the guilty one before him. Adapa was not quite at his ease, although he had right on his side; but Ea, the cleverest of the immortals, prescribed a line of conduct for him. He was to put on at once a garment of mourning, and to show himself along with the messenger at the gates of heaven. Having arrived there, he would not fail to meet the two divinities who guarded them,—Dumuzi and Gishzida: "'In whose honour this garb, in whose honour, Adapa, this garment of mourning?' 'On our earth two gods have disappeared—it is on this account I am as I am.' Dumuzi and Gishzida will look at each other,* they will begin to lament, they will say a friendly word—to the god Anu for thee, they will render clear the countenance of Anu,—in thy favour. When thou shalt appear before the face of Anu, the food of death, it shall be offered to thee, do not eat it. The drink of death, it shall be offered to thee, drink it not. A garment, it shall be offered to the, put it on. Oil, it shall be offered to thee, anoint thyself with it. The command I have given thee observe it well.'"

* Dumuzi and Gishzida are the two gods whom Adapa indicates without naming them; insinuating that he has put on mourning on their account, Adapa is secure of gaining their sympathy, and of obtaining their intervention with the god Anu in his favour. As to Dumuzi, see pp. 158, 159 of the present work; the part played by Gishzida, as well as the event noted in the text regarding him, is unknown.

Everything takes place as Ea had foreseen. Dumuzi and Gishzida welcome the poor wretch, speak in his favour, and present him: "as he approached, Anu perceived him, and said to him: 'Come, Adapa, why didst thou break the wings of Shutu?' Adapa answered Anu: 'My lord,—for the household of my lord Ea, in the middle of the sea,—-I was fishing, and the sea was all smooth.—Shutu breathed, he, he overthrew me, and I plunged into the abode of fish. Hence the anger of my heart,—that he might not begin again his acts of ill will,—I broke his wings.'" Whilst he pleaded his cause the furious heart of Anu became calm. The presence of a mortal in the halls of heaven was a kind of sacrilege, to be severely punished unless the god should determine its expiation by giving the philtre of immortality to the intruder. Anu decided on the latter course, and addressed Adapa: "'Why, then, did Ea allow an unclean mortal to see—the interior of heaven and earth?' He handed him a cup, he himself reassured him.—'We, what shall we give him? The food of life—take some to him that he may eat.' The food of life, some was taken to him, but he did not eat of it. The water of life, some was taken to him, but he drank not of it. A garment, it was taken to him, and he put it on. Oil, some was taken to him, and he anointed himself with it." Anu looked upon him; he lamented over him: "'Well, Adapa, why hast thou not eaten—why hast thou not drunk? Thou shalt not now have eternal life.' Ea, my lord, has commanded me: thou shalt not eat, thou shalt not drink." Adapa thus lost, by remembering too well the commands of his father, the opportunity which was offered to him of rising to the rank of the immortals; Anu sent him back to his home just as he had come, and Shutu had to put up with his broken wings.

Bamman absorbed one after the other all these genii of tempest and contention, and out of their combined characters his own personality of a hundred diverse aspects was built up.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldaean cylinder in the Museum of New York. Lenormant, in a long article, which he published under the pseudonym of Mansell, fancied he recognized here the encounter between Sabitum and Gilgames on the shores of the Ocean.

He was endowed with the capricious and changing disposition of the element incarnate in him, and passed from tears to laughter, from anger to calm, with a promptitude which made him one of the most disconcerting deities. The tempest was his favourite role. Sometimes he would burst suddenly on the heavens at the head of a troop of savage subordinates, whose chiefs were known as Matu, the squall, and Barku, the lightning; sometimes these were only the various manifestations of his own nature, and it was he himself who was called Matu and Barku. He collected the clouds, sent forth the thunder-bolt, shook the mountains, and "before his rage and violence, his bellowings, his thunder, the gods of heaven arose to the firmament—the gods of the earth sank into the earth" in their terror. The monuments represent him as armed for battle with club, axe, or the two-bladed flaming sword which was usually employed to signify the thunderbolt. As he destroyed everything in his blind rage, the kings of Chaldaea were accustomed to invoke him against their enemies, and to implore him to "hurl the hurricane upon the rebel peoples and the insubordinate nations." When his wrath was appeased, and he had returned to more gentle ways, his kindness knew no limits. From having been the waterspout which overthrew the forests, he became the gentle breeze which caresses and refreshes them: with his warm showers he fertilizes the fields: he lightens the air and tempers the summer heat.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The original, a small stele of terra-cotta, is in the British Museum. The date of this representation is uncertain. Ramman stands upon the mountain which supports the heaven.

He causes the rivers to swell and overflow their banks; he pours out the waters over the fields, he makes channels for them, he directs them to every place where the need of water is felt.

But his fiery temperament is stirred up by the slightest provocation, and then "his flaming sword scatters pestilence over the land: he destroys the harvest, brings the ingathering to nothing, tears up trees, and beats down and roots up the corn."



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard. Properly speaking, this is a Susian deity brought by the soldiers of Assurbanipal into Assyria, but it carries the usual insignia of Ramman.

In a word, the second triad formed a more homogeneous whole when Ishtar still belonged to it, and it is entirely owing to the presence of this goddess in it that we are able to understand its plan and purpose; it was essentially astrological, and it was intended that none should be enrolled in it but the manifest leaders of the constellations. Ramman, on the contrary, had nothing to commend him for a position alongside the moon and sun; he was not a celestial body, he had no definitely shaped form, but resembled an aggregation of gods rather than a single deity. By the addition of Ramman to the triad, the void occasioned by the removal of Ishtar was filled up in a blundering way. We must, however, admit that the theologians must have found it difficult to find any one better fitted for the purpose: when Venus was once set along with the rest of the planets, there was nothing left in the heavens which was sufficiently brilliant to replace her worthily. The priests were compelled to take the most powerful deity they knew after the other five—the lord of the atmosphere and the thunder.*

* Their embarrassment is shown in the way in which they have classed this god. In the original triad, Ishtar, being the smallest of the three heavenly bodies, naturally took the third place. Ramman, on the contrary, had natural affinities with the elemental group, and belonged to Anu, Bel, Ea, rather than to Sin and Shamash. So we find him sometimes in the third place, sometimes in the first of the second triad, and this post of eminence is so natural to him, that Assyriologists have preserved it from the beginning, and describe the triad as composed, not of Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, but of Ramman, Sin, and Shamash, or even of Sin, Ramman, and Shamash.

The gods of the triads were married, but their goddesses for the most part had neither the liberty nor the important functions of the Egyptian goddesses.* They were content, in their modesty, to be eclipsed behind the personages of their husbands, and to spend their lives in the shade, as the women of Asiatic countries still do. It would appear, moreover, that there was no trouble taken about them until it was too late—when it was desired, for instance, to explain the affiliation of the immortals. Anu and Bel were bachelors to start with. When it was determined to assign to them female companions, recourse was had to the procedure adopted by the Egyptians in a similar case: there was added to their names the distinctive suffix of the feminine gender, and in this manner two grammatical goddesses were formed, Anat and Belit, whose dispositions give some indications of this accidental birth. There was always a vague uncertainty about the parts they had to play, and their existence itself was hardly more than a seeming one. Anat sometimes represented a feminine heaven, and differed from Anu only in her sex. At times she was regarded as the antithesis of Anu, i.e. as the earth in contradistinction to the heaven. Belit, as far as we can distinguish her from other persons to whom the title "lady" was attributed, shared with Bel the rule over the earth and the regions of darkness where the dead were confined. The wife of Ea was distinguished by a name which was not derived from that of her husband, but she was not animated by a more intense vitality than Anat or Belit: she was called Damkina, the lady of the soil, and she personified in an almost passive manner the earth united to the water which fertilized it. The goddesses of the second triad were perhaps rather less artificial in their functions. Ningal, doubtless, who ruled along with Sin at Uru, was little more than an incarnate epithet. Her name means "the great lady," "the queen," and her person is the double of that of her husband; as he is the man-moon, she is the woman-moon, his beloved, and the mother of his children Shamash and Ishtar. But A or Sirrida enjoyed an indisputable authority alongside Shamash: she never lost sight of the fact that she had been a sun like Shamash, a disk-god before she was transformed into a goddess. Shamash, moreover, was surrounded by an actual harem, of which Sirrida was the acknowledged queen, as he himself was its king, and among its members Gula, the great, and Anunit, the daughter of Sin, the morning star, found a place. Shala, the compassionate, was also included among them; she was subsequently bestowed upon Ramman. They were all goddesses of ancient lineage, and each had been previously worshipped on her own account when the Sumerian people held sway in Chaldaea: as soon as the Semites gained the upper hand, the powers of these female deities became enfeebled, and they were distributed among the gods. There was but one of them, Nana, the doublet of Ishtar, who had succeeded in preserving her liberty: when her companions had been reduced to comparative insignificance, she was still acknowledged as queen and mistress in her city of Eridu. The others, notwithstanding the enervating influence to which they were usually subject in the harem, experienced at times inclinations to break into rebellion, and more than one of them, shaking off the yoke of her lord, had proclaimed her independence: Anunit, for instance, tearing herself away from the arms of Shamash, had vindicated, as his sister and his equal, her claim to the half of his dominion. Sippara was a double city, or rather there were two neighbouring Sipparas, one distinguished as the city of the Sun, "Sippara sha Shamash," while the other gave lustre to Anunit in assuming the designation of "Sippara sha Anunitum." Rightly interpreted, these family arrangements of the gods had but one reason for their existence—the necessity of explaining without coarseness those parental connections which the theological classification found it needful to establish between the deities constituting the two triads. In Chaldaea as in Egypt there was no inclination to represent the divine families as propagating their species otherwise than by the procedure observed in human families: the union of the goddesses with the gods thus legitimated their offspring.

* The passive and almost impersonal character of the majority of the Babylonian and Assyrian goddesses is well known. The majority must have been independent at the outset, in the Sumerian period, and were married later on, under the influence of Semitic ideas.

The triads were, therefore, nothing more than theological fictions. Each of them was really composed of six members, and it was thus really a council of twelve divinities which the priests of Uruk had instituted to attend to the affairs of the universe; with this qualification, that the feminine half of the assembly rarely asserted itself, and contributed but an insignificant part to the common work. When once the great divisions had been arranged, and the principal functionaries designated, it was still necessary to work out the details, and to select v agents to preserve an order among them. Nothing happens by chance in this world, and the most insignificant events are determined by previsional arrangements, and decisions arrived at a long time previously. The gods assembled every morning in a hall, situated near the gates of the sun in the east, and there deliberated on the events of the day. The sagacious Ea submitted to them the fates which are about to be fulfilled, and caused a record of them to be made in the chamber of destiny on tablets which Shamash or Merodach carried with them to scatter everywhere on his way; but he who should be lucky enough to snatch these tablets from him would make himself master of the world for that day. This misfortune had arisen only once, at the beginning of the ages. Zu, the storm-bird, who lives with his wife and children on Mount Sabu under the protection of Bel, and who from this elevation pounces down upon the country to ravage it, once took it into his head to make himself equal to the supreme gods. He forced his way at an early hour into the chamber of destiny before the sun had risen: he perceived within it the royal insignia of Bel, "the mitre of his power, the garment of his divinity,—the fatal tablets of his divinity, Zu perceived them. He perceived the father of the gods, the god who is the tie between heaven and earth,—and the desire of ruling took possession of his heart;—yea, Zu perceived the father of the gods, the god who is the tie between heaven and earth,—and the desire of ruling took possession of his heart,—'I will take the fatal tablets of the gods, I myself,—and the oracles of all the gods, it is I who will give them forth;—I will install myself on the throne, I will send forth decrees,—I will manage the whole of the Igigi.'—And his heart plotted warfare;—lying in wait on the threshold of the hall, he watched for the dawn.—When Bel had poured out the shining waters,—had installed himself on the throne, and donned the crown, Zu took away the fatal tablets from his hand,—he seized power, and the authority to give forth decrees,—the god Zu, he flew away and concealed himself in the mountains." Bel immediately cried out, he was inflamed with anger, and ravaged the world with the fire of his wrath. "Anu opened his mouth, he spake,—he said to the gods his offspring:—'Who will conquer the god Zu?—He will make his name great in every land.'—Bamman, the supreme, the son of Anu, was called, and Anu himself gave to him his orders;—yea, Bamman, the supreme, the son of Anu, was called, and Anu himself gave to him his orders.—'Go, my son Kamman, the valiant, since nothing resists thy attack;—conquer Zu by thine arm, and thy name shall be great among the great gods,—among the gods, thy brothers, thou shalt have no equal: sanctuaries shall be built to thee, and if thou buildest for thyself thy cities in the "four houses of the world,"* —thy cities shall extend over all the terrestrial mountain! 'Be valiant, then, in the sight of the gods, and may thy name be strong.' Bamman answers, he addresses this bpeech to Anu his father:—'Father, who will go to the inaccessible mountains? Who is the equal of Zu among the gods, thy offspring? He has carried off in his hand the fatal tablets,—he has seized power and authority to give forth decrees,—Zu thereupon flew away and hid himself in his mountain.—Now, the word of his mouth is like that of the god who unites heaven and earth;—-my power is no more than clay,—and all the gods must bow before him.'" Anu sent for the god Bara, the son of Ishtar, to help him, and exhorted him in the same language he had addressed to Ramman: Bara refused to attempt the enterprise. Shamash, called in his turn, at length consented to set out for Mount Sabu: he triumphed over the storm-bird, tore the fatal tablets from him, and brought him before Ea as a prisoner.