Part 3 (1/2)

Skilful engineers had solved the problem of water distribution by irrigating sun-parched areas and preventing the excessive flooding of those districts which are now rendered impa.s.sable swamps when the rivers overflow. A network of ca.n.a.ls was constructed throughout the country, which restricted the destructive tendencies of the Tigris and Euphrates and developed to a high degree their potentialities as fertilizing agencies. The greatest of these ca.n.a.ls appear to have been anciently river beds. One, which is called Shatt en Nil to the north, and Shatt el Kar to the south, curved eastward from Babylon, and sweeping past Nippur, flowed like the letter S towards Larsa and then rejoined the river. It is believed to mark the course followed in the early Sumerian period by the Euphrates river, which has moved steadily westward many miles beyond the sites of ancient cities that were erected on its banks. Another important ca.n.a.l, the Shatt el Hai, crossed the plain from the Tigris to its sister river, which lies lower at this point, and does not run so fast. Where the artificial ca.n.a.ls were constructed on higher levels than the streams which fed them, the water was raised by contrivances known as ”shaddufs”; the buckets or skin bags were roped to a weighted beam, with the aid of which they were swung up by workmen and emptied into the ca.n.a.ls. It is possible that this toilsome mode of irrigation was subst.i.tuted in favourable parts by the primitive water wheels which are used in our own day by the inhabitants of the country who cultivate strips of land along the river banks.

In Babylonia there are two seasons--the rainy and the dry. Rain falls from November till March, and the plain is carpeted in spring by patches of vivid green verdure and brilliant wild flowers. Then the period of drought ensues; the sun rapidly burns up all vegetation, and everywhere the eye is wearied by long stretches of brown and yellow desert. Occasional sandstorms darken the heavens, sweeping over sterile wastes and piling up the shapeless mounds which mark the sites of ancient cities. Meanwhile the rivers are increasing in volume, being fed by the melting snows at their mountain sources far to the north. The swift Tigris, which is 1146 miles long, begins to rise early in March and reaches its highest level in May; before the end of June it again subsides. More sluggish in movement, the Euphrates, which is 1780 miles long, shows signs of rising a fortnight later than the Tigris, and is in flood for a more extended period; it does not shrink to its lowest level until early in September. By controlling the flow of these mighty rivers, preventing disastrous floods, and storing and distributing surplus water, the ancient Babylonians developed to the full the natural resources of their country, and made it--what it may once again become--one of the fairest and most habitable areas in the world. Nature conferred upon them bountiful rewards for their labour; trade and industries flourished, and the cities increased in splendour and strength. Then as now the heat was great during the long summer, but remarkably dry and unvarying, while the air was ever wonderfully transparent under cloudless skies of vivid blue. The nights were cool and of great beauty, whether in brilliant moonlight or when ponds and ca.n.a.ls were jewelled by the l.u.s.trous displays of clear and numerous stars which glorified that homeland of the earliest astronomers.

Babylonia is a treeless country, and timber had to be imported from the earliest times. The date palm was probably introduced by man, as were certainly the vine and the fig tree, which were widely cultivated, especially in the north. Stone, suitable for building, was very scarce, and limestone, alabaster, marble, and basalt had to be taken from northern Mesopotamia, where the mountains also yield copper and lead and iron. Except Eridu, where ancient workers quarried sandstone from its sea-shaped ridge, all the cities were built of brick, an excellent clay being found in abundance. When brick walls were cemented with bitumen they were given great stability. This resinous substance is found in the north and south. It bubbles up through crevices of rocks on river banks and forms small ponds. Two famous springs at modern Hit, on the Euphrates, have been drawn upon from time immemorial. ”From one”, writes a traveller, ”flows hot water black with bitumen, while the other discharges intermittently bitumen, or, after a rainstorm, bitumen and cold water.... Where rocks crop out in the plain above Hit, they are full of seams of bitumen.”[30]

Present-day Arabs call it ”kiyara”, and export it for coating boats and roofs; they also use it as an antiseptic, and apply it to cure the skin diseases from which camels suffer.

Sumeria had many surplus products, including corn and figs, pottery, fine wool and woven garments, to offer in exchange for what it most required from other countries. It must, therefore, have had a brisk and flouris.h.i.+ng foreign trade at an exceedingly remote period. No doubt numerous alien merchants were attracted to its cities, and it may be that they induced or encouraged Semitic and other raiders to overthrow governments and form military aristocracies, so that they themselves might obtain necessary concessions and achieve a degree of political ascendancy. It does not follow, however, that the peasant cla.s.s was greatly affected by periodic revolutions of this kind, which brought little more to them than a change of rulers. The needs of the country necessitated the continuance of agricultural methods and the rigid observance of existing land laws; indeed, these const.i.tuted the basis of Sumerian prosperity. Conquerors have ever sought reward not merely in spoil, but also the services of the conquered. In northern Babylonia the invaders apparently found it necessary to conciliate and secure the continued allegiance of the tillers of the soil. Law and religion being closely a.s.sociated, they had to adapt their G.o.ds to suit the requirements of existing social and political organizations.

A deity of pastoral nomads had to receive attributes which would give him an agricultural significance; one of rural character had to be changed to respond to the various calls of city life. Besides, local G.o.ds could not be ignored on account of their popularity. As a result, imported beliefs and religious customs must have been fused and absorbed according to their bearing on modes of life in various localities. It is probable that the complex character of certain deities was due to the process of adjustment to which they were subjected in new environments.

The petty kingdoms of Sumeria appear to have been tribal in origin.

Each city was presided over by a deity who was the nominal owner of the surrounding arable land, farms were rented or purchased from the priesthood, and pasture was held in common. As in Egypt, where we find, for instance, the artisan G.o.d Ptah supreme at Memphis, the sun G.o.d Ra at Heliopolis, and the cat G.o.ddess Bast at Bubastis, the various local Sumerian and Akkadian deities had distinctive characteristics, and similarly showed a tendency to absorb the attributes of their rivals. The chief deity of a state was the central figure in a pantheon, which had its political aspect and influenced the growth of local theology. Cities, however, did not, as a rule, bear the names of deities, which suggests that several were founded when Sumerian religion was in its early animistic stages, and G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses were not sharply defined from the various spirit groups.

A distinctive and characteristic Sumerian G.o.d was Ea, who was supreme at the ancient sea-deserted port of Eridu. He is identified with the Oannes of Berosus,[31] who referred to the deity as ”a creature endowed with reason, with a body like that of a fish, with feet below like those of a man, with a fish's tail”. This description recalls the familiar figures of Egyptian G.o.ds and priests attired in the skins of the sacred animals from whom their powers were derived, and the fairy lore about swan maids and men, and the seals and other animals who could divest themselves of their ”skin coverings” and appear in human shape. Originally Ea may have been a sacred fish. The Indian creative G.o.ds Brahma and Vishnu had fish forms. In Sanskrit literature Manu, the eponymous ”first man”, is instructed by the fish to build a s.h.i.+p in which to save himself when the world would be purged by the rising waters. Ea befriended in similar manner the Babylonian Noah, called Pir-napishtim, advising him to build a vessel so as to be prepared for the approaching Deluge. Indeed the Indian legend appears to throw light on the original Sumerian conception of Ea. It relates that when the fish was small and in danger of being swallowed by other fish in a stream it appealed to Manu for protection. The sage at once lifted up the fish and placed it in a jar of water. It gradually increased in bulk, and he transferred it next to a tank and then to the river Ganges. In time the fish complained to Manu that the river was too small for it, so he carried it to the sea. For these services the G.o.d in fish form instructed Manu regarding the approaching flood, and afterwards piloted his s.h.i.+p through the weltering waters until it rested on a mountain top.[32]

If this Indian myth is of Babylonian origin, as appears probable, it may be that the spirit of the river Euphrates, ”the soul of the land”, was identified with a migrating fish. The growth of the fish suggests the growth of the river rising in flood. In Celtic folk tales high tides and valley floods are accounted for by the presence of a ”great beast” in sea, loch, or river. In a cla.s.s of legends, ”specially connected with the wors.h.i.+p of Atargatis”, wrote Professor Robertson Smith, ”the divine life of the waters resides in the sacred fish that inhabit them. Atargatis and her son, according to a legend common to Hierapolis and Ascalon, plunged into the waters--in the first case the Euphrates, in the second the sacred pool at the temple near the town--and were changed into fishes”. The idea is that ”where a G.o.d dies, that is, ceases to exist in human form, his life pa.s.ses into the waters where he is buried; and this again is merely a theory to bring the divine water or the divine fish into harmony with anthropomorphic ideas. The same thing was sometimes effected in another way by saying that the anthropomorphic deity was born from the water, as Aphrodite sprang from sea foam, or as Atargatis, in another form of the Euphrates legend, ... was born of an egg which the sacred fishes found in the Euphrates and pushed ash.o.r.e.”[33]

As ”Shar Apsi”, Ea was the ”King of the Watery Deep”. The reference, however, according to Jastrow, ”is not to the salt ocean, but the sweet waters flowing under the earth which feed the streams, and through streams and ca.n.a.ls irrigate the fields”.[34] As Babylonia was fertilized by its rivers, Ea, the fish G.o.d, was a fertilizing deity.

In Egypt the ”Mother of Mendes” is depicted carrying a fish upon her head; she links with Isis and Hathor; her husband is Ba-neb-Tettu, a form of Ptah, Osiris, and Ra, and as a G.o.d of fertility he is symbolized by the ram. Another Egyptian fish deity was the G.o.d Rem, whose name signifies ”to weep”; he wept fertilizing tears, and corn was sown and reaped amidst lamentations. He may be identical with Remi, who was a phase of Sebek, the crocodile G.o.d, a developed attribute of Nu, the vague primitive Egyptian deity who symbolized the primordial deep. The connection between a fish G.o.d and a corn G.o.d is not necessarily remote when we consider that in Babylonia and Egypt the harvest was the gift of the rivers.

The Euphrates, indeed, was hailed as a creator of all that grew on its banks.

O thou River who didst create all things, When the great G.o.ds dug thee out, They set prosperity upon thy banks, Within thee Ea, the King of the Deep, created his dwelling...

Thou judgest the cause of mankind!

O River, thou art mighty! O River, thou art supreme!

O River, thou art righteous![35]

In serving Ea, the embodiment or the water spirit, by leading him, as the Indian Manu led the Creator and ”Preserver” in fish form, from river to water pot, water pot to pond or ca.n.a.l, and then again to river and ocean, the Babylonians became expert engineers and experienced agriculturists, the makers of bricks, the builders of cities, the framers of laws. Indeed, their civilization was a growth of Ea wors.h.i.+p. Ea was their instructor. Berosus states that, as Oannes, he lived in the Persian Gulf, and every day came ash.o.r.e to instruct the inhabitants of Eridu how to make ca.n.a.ls, to grow crops, to work metals, to make pottery and bricks, and to build temples; he was the artisan G.o.d--Nun-ura, ”G.o.d of the potter”; Kuski-banda, ”G.o.d of goldsmiths”, &c.--the divine patron of the arts and crafts. ”Ea knoweth everything”, chanted the hymn maker. He taught the people how to form and use alphabetic signs and instructed them in mathematics: he gave them their code of laws. Like the Egyptian artisan G.o.d Ptah, and the linking deity Khnumu, Ea was the ”potter or moulder of G.o.ds and man”. Ptah moulded the first man on his potter's wheel: he also moulded the sun and moon; he shaped the universe and hammered out the copper sky. Ea built the world ”as an architect builds a house”.[36]

Similarly the Vedic Indra, who wielded a hammer like Ptah, fas.h.i.+oned the universe after the simple manner in which the Aryans made their wooden dwellings.[37]

Like Ptah, Ea also developed from an artisan G.o.d into a sublime Creator in the highest sense, not merely as a producer of crops. His word became the creative force; he named those things he desired to be, and they came into existence. ”Who but Ea creates things”, exclaimed a priestly poet. This change from artisan G.o.d to creator (Nudimmud) may have been due to the tendency of early religious cults to attach to their chief G.o.d the attributes of rivals exalted at other centres.

Ea, whose name is also rendered Aa, was identified with Ya, Ya'u, or Au, the Jah of the Hebrews. ”In Ya-Daganu, 'Jah is Dagon'”, writes Professor Pinches, ”we have the elements reversed, showing a wish to identify Jah with Dagon, rather than Dagon with Jah; whilst another interesting name, Au-Aa, shows an identification of Jah with Aa, two names which have every appearance of being etymologically connected.”

Jah's name ”is one of the words for 'G.o.d' in the a.s.syro-Babylonian language”.[38]

Ea was ”Enki”, ”lord of the world”, or ”lord of what is beneath”; Amma-ana-ki, ”lord of heaven and earth”; Sa-kalama, ”ruler of the land”, as well as Engur, ”G.o.d of the abyss”, Naqbu, ”the deep”, and Lugal-ida, ”king of the river”. As rain fell from ”the waters above the firmament”, the G.o.d of waters was also a sky and earth G.o.d.

The Indian Varuna was similarly a sky as well as an ocean G.o.d before the theorizing and systematizing Brahmanic teachers relegated him to a permanent abode at the bottom of the sea. It may be that Ea-Oannes and Varuna were of common origin.

Another Babylonian deity, named Dagan, is believed to be identical with Ea. His wors.h.i.+p was certainly of great antiquity. ”Hammurabi”, writes Professor Pinches, ”seems to speak of the Euphrates as being 'the boundary of Dagan',” whom he calls his creator. In later inscriptions the form Daguna, which approaches nearer to the West Semitic form (Dagon of the Philistines), is found in a few personal names.[39]

It is possible that the Philistine deity Dagon was a specialized form of ancient Ea, who was either imported from Babylonia or was a sea G.o.d of more than one branch of the Mediterranean race. The authorities are at variance regarding the form and attributes of Dagan. Our knowledge regarding him is derived mainly from the Bible. He was a national rather than a city G.o.d. There are references to a Beth-dagon[40], ”house or city of Dagon”; he had also a temple at Gaza, and Samson destroyed it by pulling down the two middle pillars which were its main support.[41] A third temple was situated in Ashdod. When the captured ark of the Israelites was placed in it the image of Dagon ”fell on his face”, with the result that ”the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left”.[42] A further reference to ”the threshold of Dagon” suggests that the G.o.d had feet like Ea-Oannes. Those who hold that Dagon had a fish form derive his name from the Semitic ”dag = a fish”, and suggest that after the idol fell only the fishy part (dago) was left. On the other hand, it was argued that Dagon was a corn G.o.d, and that the resemblance between the words Dagan and Dagon are accidental. Professor Sayce makes reference in this connection to a crystal seal from Phoenicia in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, bearing an inscription which he reads as Baal-dagon. Near the name is an ear of corn, and other symbols, such as the winged solar disc, a gazelle, and several stars, but there is no fish. It may be, of course, that Baal-dagon represents a fusion of deities. As we have seen in the case of Ea-Oannes and the deities of Mendes, a fish G.o.d may also be a corn G.o.d, a land animal G.o.d and a G.o.d of ocean and the sky. The offering of golden mice representing ”your mice that mar the land”,[43] made by the Philistines, suggests that Dagon was the fertilizing harvest G.o.d, among other things, whose usefulness had been impaired, as they believed, by the mistake committed of placing the ark of Israel in the temple at Ashdod. The Philistines came from Crete, and if their Dagon was imported from that island, he may have had some connection with Poseidon, whose wors.h.i.+p extended throughout Greece. This G.o.d of the sea, who is somewhat like the Roman Neptune, carried a lightning trident and caused earthquakes. He was a brother of Zeus, the sky and atmosphere deity, and had bull and horse forms. As a horse he pursued Demeter, the earth and corn G.o.ddess, and, like Ea, he instructed mankind, but especially in the art of training horses. In his train were the Tritons, half men, half fishes, and the water fairies, the Nereids. Bulls, boars, and rams were offered to this sea G.o.d of fertility. Amphitrite was his spouse.

An obscure G.o.d Shony, the Oannes of the Scottish Hebrides, received oblations from those who depended for their agricultural prosperity on his gifts of fertilizing seaweed. He is referred to in Martin's _Western Isles_, and is not yet forgotten. The Eddic sea G.o.d Njord of Noatun was the father of Frey, the harvest G.o.d. Dagda, the Irish corn G.o.d, had for wife Boann, the G.o.ddess of the river Boyne. Osiris and Isis of Egypt were a.s.sociated with the Nile. The connection between agriculture and the water supply was too obvious to escape the early symbolists, and many other proofs of this than those referred to could be given.

Ea's ”faithful spouse” was the G.o.ddess Damkina, who was also called Nin-ki, ”lady of the earth”. ”May Ea make thee glad”, chanted the priests. ”May Damkina, queen of the deep, illumine thee with her countenance; may Merodach (Marduk), the mighty overseer of the Igigi (heavenly spirits), exalt thy head.” Merodach was their son: in time he became the Bel, or ”Lord”, of the Babylonian pantheon.