Part 9 (1/2)

She was compelled, however, to obey the high G.o.ds, and addressed Namtar, saying:

Unto Ishtar give the waters of life and bring her before me.

Thereafter the Queen of Heaven was conducted through the various gates, and at each she received her robe and the ornaments which were taken from her on entering. Namtar says:

Since thou hast not paid a ransom for thy deliverance to her (Allatu), so to her again turn back, For Tammuz the husband of thy youth.

The glistening waters (of life) pour over him...

In splendid clothing dress him, with a ring of crystal adorn him.

Ishtar mourns for ”the wound of Tammuz”, smiting her breast, and she did not ask for ”the precious eye-stones, her amulets”, which were apparently to ransom Tammuz. The poem concludes with Ishtar's wail:

O my only brother (Tammuz) thou dost not lament for me.

In the day that Tammuz adorned me, with a ring of crystal, With a bracelet of emeralds, together with himself, he adorned me,[123]

With himself he adorned me; may men mourners and women mourners On a bier place him, and a.s.semble the wake.[124]

A Sumerian hymn to Tammuz throws light on this narrative. It sets forth that Ishtar descended to Hades to entreat him to be glad and to resume care of his flocks, but Tammuz refused or was unable to return.

His spouse unto her abode he sent back.

She then inst.i.tuted the wailing ceremony:

The amorous Queen of Heaven sits as one in darkness.[125]

Mr. Langdon also translates a hymn (Tammuz III) which appears to contain the narrative on which the a.s.syrian version was founded. The G.o.ddess who descends to Hades, however, is not Ishtar, but the ”sister”, Belit-sheri. She is accompanied by various demons--the ”gallu-demon”, the ”slayer”, &c.--and holds a conversation with Tammuz which, however, is ”unintelligible and badly broken”. Apparently, however, he promises to return to earth.

... I will go up, as for me I will depart with thee ...

... I will return, unto my mother let us go back.

Probably two G.o.ddesses originally lamented for Tammuz, as the Egyptian sisters, Isis and Nepthys, lamented for Osiris, their brother. Ishtar is referred to as ”my mother”. Isis figures alternately in the Egyptian chants as mother, wife, sister, and daughter of Osiris. She cries, ”Come thou to thy wife in peace; her heart fluttereth for thy love”, ... ”I am thy wife, made as thou art, the elder sister, soul of her brother”.... ”Come thou to us as a babe”.... ”Lo, thou art as the Bull of the two G.o.ddesses--come thou, child growing in peace, our lord!”... ”Lo! the Bull, begotten of the two cows, Isis and Nepthys”.... ”Come thou to the two widowed G.o.ddesses”.... ”Oh child, lord, first maker of the body”.... ”Father Osiris.”[126]

As Ishtar and Belit-sheri weep for Tammuz, so do Isis and Nepthys weep for Osiris.

Calling upon thee with weeping--yet thou art prostrate upon thy bed!

G.o.ds and men ... are weeping for thee at the same time, when they behold me (Isis).

Lo! I invoke thee with wailing that reacheth high as heaven.

Isis is also identified with Hathor (Ishtar) the Cow.... ”The cow weepeth for thee with her voice.”[127]

There is another phase, however, to the character of the mother G.o.ddess which explains the references to the desertion and slaying of Tammuz by Ishtar. ”She is”, says Jastrow, ”the G.o.ddess of the human instinct, or pa.s.sion which accompanies human love. Gilgamesh ...

reproaches her with abandoning the objects of her pa.s.sion after a brief period of union.” At Ishtar's temple ”public maidens accepted temporary partners, a.s.signed to them by Ishtar”.[128] The wors.h.i.+p of all mother G.o.ddesses in ancient times was accompanied by revolting unmoral rites which are referred to in condemnatory terms in various pa.s.sages in the Old Testament, especially in connection with the wors.h.i.+p of Ashtoreth, who was identical with Ishtar and the Egyptian Hathor.

Ishtar in the process of time overshadowed all the other female deities of Babylonia, as did Isis in Egypt. Her name, indeed, which is Semitic, became in the plural, Ishtarate, a designation for G.o.ddesses in general. But although she was referred to as the daughter of the sky, Anu, or the daughter of the moon, Sin or Nannar, she still retained traces of her ancient character. Originally she was a great mother G.o.ddess, who was wors.h.i.+pped by those who believed that life and the universe had a female origin in contrast to those who believed in the theory of male origin. Ishtar is identical with Nina, the fish G.o.ddess, a creature who gave her name to the Sumerian city of Nina and the a.s.syrian city of Nineveh. Other forms of the Creatrix included Mama, or Mami, or Ama, ”mother”, Aruru, Bau, Gula, and Zerpanitu?.

These were all ”Preservers” and healers. At the same time they were ”Destroyers”, like Nin-sun and the Queen of Hades, Eresh-ki-gal or Allatu. They were accompanied by shadowy male forms ere they became wives of strongly individualized G.o.ds, or by child G.o.ds, their sons, who might be regarded as ”brothers” or ”husbands of their mothers”, to use the paradoxical Egyptian term. Similarly Great Father deities had vaguely defined wives. The ”Semitic” Baal, ”the lord”, was accompanied by a female reflection of himself--Beltu, ”the lady”. Shamash, the sun G.o.d, had for wife the shadowy Aa.

As has been shown, Ishtar is referred to in a Tammuz hymn as the mother of the child G.o.d of fertility. In an Egyptian hymn the sky G.o.ddess Nut, ”the mother” of Osiris, is stated to have ”built up life from her own body”.[129] Sri or Lakshmi, the Indian G.o.ddess, who became the wife of Vishnu, as the mother G.o.ddess Saraswati, a tribal deity, became the wife of Brahma, was, according to a Purana commentator, ”the mother of the world ... eternal and undecaying”.[130]

The G.o.ds, on the other hand, might die annually: the G.o.ddesses alone were immortal. Indra was supposed to perish of old age, but his wife, Indrani, remained ever young. There were fourteen Indras in every ”day of Brahma”, a reference apparently to the ancient conception of Indra among the Great-Mother-wors.h.i.+pping sections of the Aryo-Indians.[131]

In the _Mahabharata_ the G.o.d s.h.i.+va, as Mahadeva, commands Indra on ”one of the peaks of Himavat”, where they met, to lift up a stone and join the Indras who had been before him. ”And Indra on removing that stone beheld a cave on the breast of that king of mountains in which were four others resembling himself.” Indra exclaimed in his grief, ”Shall I be even like these?” These five Indras, like the ”Seven Sleepers”, awaited the time when they would be called forth. They were ultimately reborn as the five Pandava warriors.[132]