The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0079/00798.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 37KB | 568 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00798}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{gods
marduk
ea
babylonia
gilgamesh
god
enlil
city
poem
anu}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of Babylonia And Assyria
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter I

     The Beginnings of Civilisation - The Sumerians and Their Cities - The
Gods - Anu, Enlil, and Ea - The Akkadians - Rise of Babylon - Religion of the
Semitic Babylonians - The Supremacy of Marduk - Myths: Bel and Tiamat;
Gilgamesh; The Deluge - Temples - Priesthood - Worship - Demonology and Magic
- Expiations - Divination - Astrology - Burials - The Nether World - Myth of
the Descent of Ishtar - Assyria - Relations with Babylonia - The National God
Assur - Other Deities - Temples and Worship - The Neobabylonian and Persian
Period - Babylonian Astrology and Divination in the West - Astronomy -
Influence of Babylonian Religion in Other Countries.

     The conditions under which at a very remote time civilisation developed
in Babylonia were in many ways similar to those in Egypt.  The lower course of
the Euphrates and the Tigris, like the valley of the Nile, has an alluvial
soil of inexhaustible fertility, and with its spontaneous products invited
early settlement by the promise of easy living.  As the population multiplied
under the favourable natural conditions, or poured in from the surrounding
regions to share them, it became necessary to regulate the waters, to reclaim
the marshes by building dikes, to dig canals and extend the expanse of
irrigation.  The construction and maintenance of these works demanded the
united and organised labours of the community, and thus conduced to the
establishment and consolidation of political order.

     In other respects Babylonia was very differently situated from Egypt.
While Egypt was by its position protected from the invasion of powerful
neighbours, and even isolated from the great main currents of history, so that
its civilisation was essentially homogeneous and developed its characteristic
type almost unaffected from without, Babylonia was exposed on one side to the
incursions of the desert tribes and on another to the attacks of the Elamites
and other habitants of the mountain country east of the valley, while to the
north it lay open without a natural barrier to invading armies or to the
influx of migrating nations set in motion by the great upheavals of population
in Syria and Asia Minor.  From a very early time two widely different races
disputed with each other the supremacy or peacefully mingled; and when the
older Semitic population of the north got the upper hand, it was to be
submerged in turn by fresh waves of migration or conquest.  But this
situation, which repeatedly subjected Babylonia to alien dominion, early
incited its rulers to enterprises of foreign conquest in the east and the
north.  In the third millennium B.C. Babylonian armies seem to have pushed
their way to the shores of the Mediterranean. Commerce, with its peaceful
penetration, reached even farther than arms and with more durable results.
Thus Babylonian civilisation and religion were both more influenced from
without and exerted a far wider influence in the ancient world than those of
Egypt.

     The inhabitants of southern Babylonia at the earliest time of which we
have any knowledge called their country Sumer, and in consequence we call them
Sumerians.  The ethnographical and linguistic relations of the Sumerians are
still an unsolved problem; they cannot, with our present light, be certainly
connected with any other stock.  There is some reason to think that they had
descended into the river plain from the high lands to the east; among their
gods such names as "ruler of the mountains" are not infrequent, and that for
the worship of Enlil - and eventually of many other gods - an artificial
mountain was erected in the midst of the plain seems to point in the same
direction.  It is probable that the Sumerians were not the only, nor perhaps
the earliest, inhabitants of this country. Semitic nomads from the Arabian
peninsula had doubtless roamed there ages before the beginnings of history,
and the oldest records of the Sumerians themselves seem to show traces of
Semitic mixture.  But there is no reason to doubt that the earliest
civilisation was the creation of the Sumerians. The first centres of culture
were in the south near the head of the Persian Gulf.  Ur and Eridu were near
the ancient mouth of the river; somewhat farther up the river lay Uruk, and
east of it, on another branch of the stream, Larsa; while still farther to the
north, on the main canal of the Euphrates, was Nippur; and approximately in
the latitude of the later Babylon, Kutha.  The northernmost seats of this
ancient civilisation were in the vicinity of the modern Bagdad - Opis, Kish,
Agade, and Sippar.

     In Babylonia, as in Egypt, the city with the territory about it was the
primitive state.  Each had its own god, who was before all things the
protector and patron of the city.  Around him were grouped many other deities
of various character and origin, some of whom had shrines of their own, while
others found a place in the temple of the chief god, constituting his family
or court.  The rulers, as the civil heads of the community, were also its
religious heads, the chief priests of the god, and the commonest title of
these rulers, patesi, is derived from these religious functions.  The French
excavations at Lagash (the modern Tello) give us a glimpse of the pantheon of
one such community in the twenty-fifth century B.C.

     The chief deity of the rulers of Lagash was Ningirsu, "the lord of
Girsu," one of the quarters of the city - perhaps the original settlement. By
his side was the goddess Bau, his consort, and around him a number of gods who
served him in various ways.  One had charge of his flock of goats, another of
the asses which drew his chariot; there is a third to look after the
fish-ponds, and another who is responsible for the irrigation canals and the
grain fields; there is an armourer, in whose keeping are the weapons of the
god; his musical instruments are in the care of another.  A divine vizier
receives the petitions of the people and lays them before Ningirsu; there is a
superintendent of the god's harem, and other gods with other functions, like
the officials of the king's court.  The great goddess Gatumdug also had a
shrine in the principal temple, while the goddesses Nina and Innina presided
each over her own quarter of the city.  Many other gods and temples are named
in the inscriptions, but it would serve no purpose to catalogue them here.

     Wars were frequent among these cities.  One of them subdued its
neighbours and ruled over them till they grew strong enough in turn to throw
off the yoke and establish themselves in power.  In this way the gods of one
city found a place in the pantheon of others; and to such political
vicissitudes the multiplication and distribution of gods is doubtless in part
to be ascribed.  In time the foundation of larger states brought the god of
the ruler to temporary precedence among the gods, but raised none to permanent
sovereignty.  Some of the gods were very early - if not from the beginning -
identified with heavenly bodies: the tutelary deity of Ur (Nannar), for
example, was the moon; Utu, or Babbar, of Larsa, was the sun; the great
goddess of Uruk was the planet Venus; but it does not appear that the religion
of these cities differed in any material way from that of their neighbours,
nor did the fact that the gods were thus visible in the heavenly bodies hinder
their being worshipped in their temples in idols of human form like the
others.

     The gods who stand at the head of the pantheon owe their prominence,
however, neither to the political fortunes of the cities whose patrons they
were nor to their connection with the heavenly bodies, but, so far as we can
judge, to the fact tha