Part 10 (1/2)
The obvious deduction seems to be that in ancient times women everywhere played a prominent part in the ceremonial folk wors.h.i.+p of the Great Mother G.o.ddess, while the men took the lesser part of the G.o.d whom she had brought into being and afterwards received as ”husband of his mother”. This may account for the high social status of women among G.o.ddess wors.h.i.+ppers, like the representatives of the Mediterranean race, whose early religion was not confined to temples, but closely a.s.sociated with the acts of everyday life.
CHAPTER VI.
WARS OF THE CITY STATES OF SUMER AND AKKAD
Civilization well advanced--The Patesi--Prominent City States--Surroundings of Babylonia--The Elamites--Biblical References to Susa--The Sumerian Temperament--Fragmentary Records--City States of Kish and Opis--A Shopkeeper who became a Queen--G.o.ddess Wors.h.i.+p--Tammuz as Nin-Girsu--Great Dynasty of Lagash--Ur-Nina and his Descendants--A Napoleonic Conqueror--Golden Age of Sumerian Art--The First Reformer in History--His Rise and Fall--The Dynasty of Erech--Sargon of Akkad--The Royal Gardener--Sargon Myth in India--A Great Empire--The King who Purchased Land--Naram Sin the Conqueror--Disastrous Foreign Raid--Lagash again Prominent--Gudea the Temple Builder--Dynasty of Ur--Dynasty of Isin--Another Gardener becomes King--Rise of Babylon--Humanized Deities--Why Sumerian G.o.ds wore Beards.
When the curtain rises to reveal the drama of Babylonian civilization we find that we have missed the first act and its many fascinating scenes. Sumerians and Akkadians come and go, but it is not always possible to distinguish between them. Although most Semites are recognizable by their flowing beards, prominent noses, and long robes, some have so closely imitated the Sumerians as to suffer almost complete loss of ident.i.ty. It is noticeable that in the north the Akkadians are more Semitic than their contemporaries in the south, but it is difficult at times to say whether a city is controlled by the descendants of the indigenous people or those of later settlers.
Dynasties rise and fall, and, as in Egypt at times, the progress of the fragmentary narrative is interrupted by a sudden change of scene ere we have properly grasped a situation and realized its significance.
What we know for certain is that civilization is well advanced. Both in the north and the south there are many organized and independent city states, and not unfrequently these wage war one against another.
Occasionally ambitious rulers tower among their fellows, conduct vigorous military campaigns, and become overlords of wide districts.
As a rule, a subjugated monarch who has perforce to acknowledge the suzerainty of a powerful king is allowed to remain in a state of semi-independence on condition that he pays a heavy annual tribute of grain. His own laws continue in force, and the city deities remain supreme, although recognition may also be given to the deities of his conqueror. He styles himself a Patesi--a ”priest king”, or more literally, ”servant of the chief deity”. But as an independent monarch may also be a pious Patesi, it does not always follow when a ruler is referred to by that t.i.tle he is necessarily less powerful than his neighbours.
When the historical narrative begins Akkad included the cities of Babylon, Cutha, Kish, Akkad, and Sippar, and north of Babylonia proper is Semitic Opis. Among the cities of Sumer were Eridu, Ur, Lagash, Larsa, Erech, Shuruppak, and probably Nippur, which was situated on the ”border”. On the north a.s.syria was yet ”in the making”, and shrouded in obscurity. A vague but vast area above Hit on the Euphrates, and extending to the Syrian coast, was known as the ”land of the Amorites”. The fish-shaped Babylonian valley lying between the rivers, where walled towns were surrounded by green fields and numerous ca.n.a.ls flashed in the suns.h.i.+ne, was bounded on the west by the bleak wastes of the Arabian desert, where during the dry season ”the rocks branded the body” and occasional sandstorms swept in blinding folds towards the ”plain of s.h.i.+nar” (Sumer) like demon hosts who sought to destroy the world. To the east the skyline was fretted by the Persian Highlands, and amidst the southern mountains dwelt the fierce Elamites, the hereditary enemies of the Sumerians, although a people apparently of the same origin. Like the Nubians and the Libyans, who kept watchful eyes on Egypt, the Elamites seemed ever to be hovering on the eastern frontier of Sumeria, longing for an opportunity to raid and plunder.
The capital of the Elamites was the city of Susa, where excavations have revealed traces of an independent civilization which reaches back to an early period in the Late Stone Age. Susa is referred to in the Old Testament--”The words of Nehemiah.... I was in Shushan the palace”.[144] An a.s.syrian plan of the city shows it occupying a strategic position at a bend of the Shawur river, which afforded protection against Sumerian attacks from the west, while a ca.n.a.l curved round its northern and eastern sides, so that Susa was completely surrounded by water. Fortifications had been erected on the river and ca.n.a.l banks, and between these and the high city walls were thick clumps of trees. That the kings of Elam imitated the splendours of Babylonian courts in the later days of Esther and Haman and Mordecai, is made evident by the Biblical references to the gorgeous palace, which had ”white, green, and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble; the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red, and blue, and white, and black marble ”.[145] Beyond Elam were the plains, plateaus, and gra.s.sy steppes occupied by the Medes and other peoples of Aryan speech. Cultural influences came and went like spring winds between the various ancient communities.
For ten long centuries Sumer and Akkad flourished and prospered ere we meet with the great Hammurabi, whose name has now become almost as familiar as that of Julius Caesar. But our knowledge of the leading historical events of this vast period is exceedingly fragmentary. The Sumerians were not like the later a.s.syrians or their Egyptian contemporaries--a people with a pa.s.sion for history. When inscriptions were composed and cut on stone, or impressed upon clay tablets and bricks, the kings selected as a general rule to record pious deeds rather than to celebrate their victories and conquests. Indeed, the average monarch had a temperament resembling that of Keats, who declared:
The silver flow Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen, Fair Pastorella in the bandits' den, Are things to brood on with more ardency Than the death day of empires.
The Sumerian king was emotionally religious as the great English poet was emotionally poetical. The tears of Ishtar for Tammuz, and the afflictions endured by the G.o.ddess imprisoned in Hades, to which she had descended for love of her slain husband, seemed to have concerned the royal recorder to a greater degree than the memories of political upheavals and the social changes which pa.s.sed over the land, like the seasons which alternately brought greenness and gold, barrenness and flood.
City chronicles, as a rule, are but indices of obscure events, to which meagre references were sometimes also made on mace heads, vases, tablets, stelae, and sculptured monoliths. Consequently, present-day excavators and students have often reason to be grateful that the habit likewise obtained of inscribing on bricks in buildings and the stone sockets of doors the names of kings and others. These records render obscure periods faintly articulate, and are indispensable for comparative purposes. Historical clues are also obtained from lists of year names. Each city king named a year in celebration of a great event--his own succession to the throne, the erection of a new temple or of a city wall, or, mayhap, the defeat of an invading army from a rival state. Sometimes, too, a monarch gave the name of his father in an official inscription, or happily mentioned several ancestors.
Another may be found to have made an illuminating statement regarding a predecessor, who centuries previously erected the particular temple that he himself has piously restored. A reckoning of this kind, however, cannot always be regarded as absolutely correct. It must be compared with and tested by other records, for in these ancient days calculations were not unfrequently based on doubtful inscriptions, or mere oral traditions, perhaps. Nor can implicit trust be placed on every reference to historical events, for the memoried deeds of great rulers were not always una.s.sociated with persistent and c.u.mulative myths. It must be recognized, therefore, that even portions of the data which had of late been sifted and systematized by Oriental scholars in Europe, may yet have to be subjected to revision. Many interesting and important discoveries, which will throw fresh light on this fascinating early period, remain to be made in that ancient and deserted land, which still lies under the curse of the Hebrew prophet, who exclaimed: ”Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when G.o.d overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses and dragons in their pleasant palaces.”[146]
The curtain rises, as has been indicated, after civilization had been well advanced. To begin with, our interests abide with Akkad, and during a period dated approximately between 3000 B.C. and 2800 B.C., when Egypt was already a united kingdom, and the Cretans were at the dawn of the first early Minoan period, and beginning to use bronze. In Kish Sumerian and Akkadian elements had apparently blended, and the city was the centre of a powerful and independent government. After years have fluttered past dimly, and with them the shadow-shapes of vigorous rulers, it is found that Kish came under the sway of the p.r.o.nouncedly Semitic city of Opis, which was situated ”farthest north”
and on the western bank of the river Tigris. A century elapsed ere Kish again threw off the oppressor's yoke and renewed the strength of its youth.
The city of Kish was one of the many ancient centres of G.o.ddess wors.h.i.+p. The Great Mother appears to have been the Sumerian Bau, whose chief seat was at Lagash. If tradition is to be relied upon, Kish owed its existence to that notable lady, Queen Azag-Bau. Although floating legends gathered round her memory as they have often gathered round the memories of famous men, like Sargon of Akkad, Alexander the Great, and Theodoric the Goth, who became Emperor of Rome, it is probable that the queen was a prominent historical personage. She was reputed to have been of humble origin, and to have first achieved popularity and influence as the keeper of a wine shop. Although no reference survives to indicate that she was believed to be of miraculous birth, the Chronicle of Kish gravely credits her with a prolonged and apparently prosperous reign of a hundred years. Her son, who succeeded her, sat on the throne for a quarter of a century. These calculations are certainly remarkable. If the Queen Azag-Bau founded Kish when she was only twenty, and gave birth to the future ruler in her fiftieth year, he must have been an elderly gentleman of seventy when he began to reign. When it is found, further, that the dynasty in which mother and son flourished was supposed to have lasted for 586 years, divided between eight rulers, one of whom reigned for only three years, two for six, and two for eleven, it becomes evident that the historian of Kish cannot be absolutely relied upon in detail. It seems evident that the memory of this lady of forceful character, who flourished about thirteen hundred years before the rise of Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt, has overshadowed the doubtful annals of ancient Kish at a period when Sumerian and Semite were striving in the various states to achieve political ascendancy.
Meanwhile the purely Sumerian city of Lagash had similarly grown powerful and aggressive. For a time it acknowledged the suzerainty of Kish, but ultimately it threw off the oppressor's yoke and a.s.serted its independence. The c.u.mulative efforts of a succession of energetic rulers elevated Lagash to the position of a metropolis in Ancient Babylonia.
The G.o.ddess Bau, ”the mother of Lagash”, was wors.h.i.+pped in conjunction with other deities, including the G.o.d Nin-Girsu, an agricultural deity, and therefore a deity of war, who had solar attributes. One of the t.i.tles of Nin-Girsu was En-Mersi, which, according to a.s.syrian evidence, was another name of Tammuz, the spring G.o.d who slew the storm and winter demons, and made the land fertile so that man might have food. Nin-Girsu was, it would seem, a developed form of Tammuz, like the Scandinavian Frey, G.o.d of harvest, or Heimdal, the celestial warrior. Bau was one of the several G.o.ddesses whose attributes were absorbed by the Semitic Ishtar. She was a ”Great Mother”, a creatrix, the source of all human and b.e.s.t.i.a.l life, and, of course, a harvest G.o.ddess. She was identified with Gula, ”the great one”, who cured diseases and prolonged life. Evidently the religion of Lagash was based on the popular wors.h.i.+p of the ”Queen of Heaven”, and her son, the dying G.o.d who became ”husband of his mother”.
The first great and outstanding ruler of Lagash was Ur-Nina, who appears to have owed his power to the successful military operations of his predecessors. It is uncertain whether or not he himself engaged in any great war. His records are silent in that connection, but, judging from what we know of him, it may be taken for granted that he was able and fully prepared to give a good account of himself in battle. He certainly took steps to make secure his position, for he caused a strong wall to be erected round Lagash. His inscriptions are eloquent of his piety, which took practical shape, for he repaired and built temples, dedicated offerings to deities, and increased the wealth of religious bodies and the prosperity of the State by cutting ca.n.a.ls and developing agriculture. In addition to serving local deities, he also gave practical recognition to Ea at Eridu and Enlil at Nippur. He, however, overlooked Anu at Erech, a fact which suggests that he held sway over Eridu and Nippur, but had to recognize Erech as an independent city state.
Among the deities of Lagash, Ur-Nina favoured most the G.o.ddess Nina, whose name he bore. As she was a water deity, and perhaps identical with Belit-sheri, sister of ”Tammuz of the Abyss” and daughter of Ea, one of the ca.n.a.ls was dedicated to her. She was also honoured with a new temple, in which was probably placed her great statue, constructed by special order of her royal wors.h.i.+pper. Like the Egyptian G.o.ddess, the ”Mother of Mendes”, Nina received offerings of fish, not only as a patroness of fishermen, but also as a corn spirit and a G.o.ddess of maternity. She was in time identified with Ishtar.
A famous limestone plaque, which is preserved in the Louvre, Paris, depicts on its upper half the pious King Ur-Nina engaged in the ceremony of laying the foundations of a temple dedicated either to the G.o.ddess Nina or to the G.o.d Nin-Girsu. His face and scalp are clean shaven, and he has a prominent nose and firm mouth, eloquent of decision. The folds of neck and jaw suggest Bismarckian traits. He is bare to the waist, and wears a pleated kilt, with three flounces, which reaches almost to his ankles. On his long head he has poised deftly a woven basket containing the clay with which he is to make the first brick. In front of him stand five figures. The foremost is honoured by being sculptured larger than the others, except the prominent monarch. Apparently this is a royal princess, for her head is unshaven, and her shoulder dress or long hair drops over one of her arms. Her name is Lida, and the conspicuous part she took in the ceremony suggests that she was the representative of the G.o.ddess Nina.
She is accompanied by her brothers, and at least one official, Anita, the cup-bearer, or high priest. The concluding part of this ceremony, or another ceremonial act, is ill.u.s.trated on the lower part of the plaque. Ur-Nina is seated on his throne, not, as would seem at first sight, raising the wine cup to his lips and toasting to the success of the work, but pouring out a libation upon the ground. The princess is not present; the place of honour next to the king is taken by the crown prince. Possibly in this case it is the G.o.d Nin-Girsu who is being honoured. Three male figures, perhaps royal sons, accompany the prominent crown prince. The cup-bearer is in attendance behind the throne.
The inscription on this plaque, which is pierced in the centre so as to be nailed to a sacred shrine, refers to the temples erected by Ur-Nina, including those of Nina and Nin-Girsu.
After Ur-Nina's prosperous reign came to a close, his son Akurgal ascended the throne. He had trouble with Umma, a powerful city, which lay to the north-west of Lagash, between the Shatt-el-Kai and Shatt-el-Hai ca.n.a.ls. An army of raiders invaded his territory and had to be driven back.