INTRODUCTION

Ancient Babylonia has made stronger appeal to the imagination of Christendom
than even Ancient Egypt, because of its association with the captivity of the
Hebrews, whose sorrows are enshrined in the familiar psalm:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down;
Yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows. . . .

In sacred literature proud Babylon became the city of the anti-Christ, the
symbol of wickedness and cruelty and human vanity. Early Christians who suffered
persecution compared their worldly state to that of the oppressed and disconsolate
Hebrews, and, like them, they sighed for Jerusalem–the new Jerusalem. When
St. John the Divine had visions of the ultimate triumph of Christianity, he
referred to its enemies–the unbelievers and persecutors–as the citizens of
the earthly Babylon, the doom of which he pronounced in stately and memorable
phrases:
Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen,
And is become the habitation of devils,
And the hold of every foul spirit,
And a cage of every unclean and hateful bird . . .
For her sins have reached unto heaven
And God hath remembered her iniquities . . .
The merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her,
For no man buyeth their merchandise any more.

“At the noise of the taking of Babylon”, cried Jeremiah, referring to the
original Babylon, “the earth is moved, and the cry is heard among the nations.
. . . It shall be no more inhabited forever; neither shall it be dwelt in from
generation to generation.” The Christian Saint rendered more profound the brooding
silence of the desolated city of his vision by voicing memories of its beauty
and gaiety and bustling trade:
The voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers and
trumpeters shall be heard no more at all in thee;
And no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee;
And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee;
And the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all
in thee:
For thy merchants were the great men of the earth;
For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.
And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints,
And of all that were slain upon the earth. 1

So for nearly two thousand years has the haunting memory of the once-powerful
city pervaded Christian literature, while its broken walls and ruined temples
and palaces lay buried deep in desert sand. The history of the ancient land
of which it was the capital survived in but meagre and fragmentary form, mingled
with accumulated myths and legends. A slim volume contained all that could be
derived from references in the Old Testament and the compilations of classical
writers.

It is only within the past half-century that the wonderful story of early
Eastern civilization has been gradually pieced together by excavators and linguists,
who have thrust open the door of the past and probed the hidden secrets of long
ages. We now know more about “the land of Babel” than did not only the Greeks
and Romans, but even the Hebrew writers who foretold its destruction. Glimpses
are being afforded us of its life and manners and customs for some thirty centuries
before the captives of Judah uttered lamentations on the banks of its reedy
canals. The sites of some of the ancient cities of Babylonia and Assyria were
identified by European officials and travellers in the East early in the nineteenth
century, and a few relics found their way to Europe. But before Sir A. H. Layard
set to work as an excavator in the “forties”, “a case scarcely three feet square”,
as he himself wrote, “enclosed all that remained not only of the great city
of Nineveh, but of Babylon itself”. 1

Layard, the distinguished pioneer Assyriologist, was an Englishman of Huguenot
descent, who was born in Paris. Through his mother he inherited a strain of
Spanish blood. During his early boyhood he resided in Italy, and his education,
which began there, was continued in schools in France, Switzerland, and England.
He was a man of scholarly habits and fearless and independent character, a charming
writer, and an accomplished fine-art critic; withal he was a great traveller,
a strenuous politician, and an able diplomatist. In 1845, while sojourning in
the East, he undertook the exploration of ancient Assyrian cities. He first
set to work at Kalkhi, the Biblical Calah. Three years previously M. P. C. Botta,
the French consul at Mosul, had begun to investigate the Nineveh mounds; but
these he abandoned for a mound near Khorsabad which proved to be the site of
the city erected by “Sargon the Later”, who is referred to by Isaiah. The relics
discovered by Botta and his successor, Victor Place, are preserved in the Louvre.

At Kalkhi and Nineveh Layard uncovered the palaces of some of the most famous
Assyrian Emperors, including the Biblical Shalmaneser and Esarhaddon, and obtained
the colossi, bas reliefs, and other treasures of antiquity which formed the
nucleus of the British Museum’s unrivalled Assyrian collection. He also conducted
diggings at Babylon and Niffer (Nippur). His work was continued by his assistant,
Hormuzd Rassam, a native Christian of Mosul, near Nineveh. Rassam studied for
a time at Oxford.

The discoveries made by Layard and Botta stimulated others to follow their
example. In the “fifties” Mr. W. K. Loftus engaged in excavations at Larsa and
Erech, where important discoveries were made of ancient buildings, ornaments,
tablets, sarcophagus graves, and pot burials, while Mr. J. E. Taylor operated
at Ur, the seat of the moon cult and the birthplace of Abraham, and at Eridu,
which is generally regarded as the cradle of early Babylonian (Sumerian) civilization.

In 1854 Sir Henry Rawlinson superintended diggings at Birs Nimrud (Borsippa,
near Babylon), and excavated relics of the Biblical Nebuchadrezzar. This notable
archlogist began his career in the East as an officer in the Bombay army.
He distinguished himself as a political agent and diplomatist. While resident
at Baghdad, he devoted his leisure time to cuneiform studies. One of his remarkable
feats was the copying of the famous trilingual rock inscription of Darius the
Great on a mountain cliff at Behistun, in Persian Kurdistan. This work was carried
out at great personal risk, for the cliff is 1700 feet high and the sculptures
and inscriptions are situated about 300 feet from the ground.

Darius was the first monarch of his line to make use of the Persian cuneiform
script, which in this case he utilized in conjunction with the older and more
complicated Assyro-Babylonian alphabetic and syllabic characters to record a
portion of the history of his reign. Rawlinson’s translation of the famous inscription
was an important contribution towards the decipherment of the cuneiform writings
of Assyria and Babylonia.

Twelve years of brilliant Mesopotamian discovery concluded in 1854, and further
excavations had to be suspended until the “seventies” on account of the unsettled
political conditions of the ancient land and the difficulties experienced in
dealing with Turkish officials. During the interval, however, archlogists
and philologists were kept fully engaged studying the large amount of material
which had been accumulated. Sir Henry Rawlinson began the issue of his monumental
work The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asiaon behalf of the British
Museum.

Goodspeed refers to the early archlogical work as the “Heroic Period” of
research, and says that the “Modern Scientific Period” began with Mr. George
Smith’s expedition to Nineveh in 1873.

George Smith, like Henry Schliemann, the pioneer investigator of pre-Hellenic
culture, was a self-educated man of humble origin. He was born at Chelsea in
1840. At fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver. He was a youth of studious
habits and great originality, and interested himself intensely in the discoveries
which had been made by Layard and other explorers. At the British Museum, which
he visited regularly to pore over the Assyrian inscriptions, he attracted the
attention of Sir Henry Rawlinson. So greatly impressed was Sir Henry by the
young man’s enthusiasm and remarkable intelligence that he allowed him the use
of his private room and provided casts and squeezes of inscriptions to assist
him in his studies. Smith made rapid progress. His earliest discovery was the
date of the payment of tribute by Jehu, King of Israel, to the Assyrian Emperor
Shalmaneser. Sir Henry availed himself of the young investigator’s assistance
in producing the third volume of The Cuneiform Inscriptions.

In 1867 Smith received an appointment in the Assyriology Department of the
British Museum, and a few years later became famous throughout Christendom as
the translator of fragments of the Babylonian Deluge Legend from tablets sent
to London by Rassam. Sir Edwin Arnold, the poet and Orientalist, was at the
time editor of the Daily Telegraph, and performed a memorable service
to modern scholarship by dispatching Smith, on behalf of his paper, to Nineveh
to search for other fragments of the Ancient Babylonian epic. Rassam had obtained
the tablets from the great library of the cultured Emperor Ashur-bani-pal, “the
great and noble Asnapper” of the Bible, 1 who took delight, as he himself recorded, in
The wisdom of Ea, 2 the art of song, the treasures of science.

This royal patron of learning included in his library collection, copies
and translations of tablets from Babylonia. Some of these were then over 2000
years old. The Babylonian literary relics were, indeed, of as great antiquity
to Ashur-bani-pal as that monarch’s relics are to us.

The Emperor invoked Nebo, god of wisdom and learning, to bless his “books”,
praying:

Forever, O Nebo, King of all heaven and earth,
Look gladly upon this Library
Of Ashur-bani-pal, his (thy) shepherd, reverencer of thy divinity. 1

Mr. George Smith’s expedition to Nineveh in 1873 was exceedingly fruitful
of results. More tablets were discovered and translated. In the following year
he returned to the ancient Assyrian city on behalf of the British Museum, and
added further by his scholarly achievements to his own reputation and the world’s
knowledge of antiquity. His last expedition was made early in 1876; on his homeward
journey he was stricken down with fever, and on 19th August he died at Aleppo
in his thirty-sixth year. So was a brilliant career brought to an untimely end.

Rassam was engaged to continue Smith’s great work, and between 1877 and 1882
made many notable discoveries in Assyria and Babylonia, including the bronze
doors of a Shalmaneser temple, the sun temple at Sippar; the palace of the Biblical
Nebuchadrezzar, which was famous for its “hanging gardens”; a cylinder of Nabonidus,
King of Babylon; and about fifty thousand tablets.

M. de Sarzec, the French consul at Bassorah, began in 1877 excavations at
the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash (Shirpula), and continued them until 1900.
He found thousands of tablets, many bas reliefs, votive statuettes, which worshippers
apparently pinned on sacred shrines, the famous silver vase of King Entemena,
statues of King Gudea, and various other treasures which are now in the Louvre.

The pioneer work achieved by British and French excavators stimulated interest
all over the world. An expedition was sent out from the United States by the
University of Pennsylvania, and began to operate at Nippur in 18 88. The Germans,
who have displayed great activity in the domain of philological research, are
at present represented by an exploring party which is conducting the systematic
exploration of the ruins of Babylon. Even the Turkish Government has encouraged
research work, and its excavators have accumulated a fine collection of antiquities
at Constantinople. Among the archlogists and linguists of various nationalities
who are devoting themselves to the study of ancient Assyrian and Babylonian
records and literature, and gradually unfolding the story of ancient Eastern
civilization, those of our own country occupy a prominent position. One of the
most interesting discoveries of recent years has been new fragments of the Creation
Legend by L. W. King of the British Museum, whose scholarly work, The Seven
Tablets of Creation, is the standard work on the subject.

The archlogical work conducted in Persia, Asia Minor, Palestine, Cyprus,
Crete, the ean, and Egypt has thrown, and is throwing, much light on the relations
between the various civilizations of antiquity. In addition to the Hittite discoveries,
with which the name of Professor Sayce will ever be associated as a pioneer,
we now hear much of the hitherto unknown civilizations of Mitanni and Urartu
(ancient Armenia), which contributed to the shaping of ancient history. The
Biblical narratives of the rise and decline of the Hebrew kingdoms have also
been greatly elucidated.

In this volume, which deals mainly with the intellectual life of the Mesopotamian
peoples, a historical narrative has been provided as an appropriate setting
for the myths and legends. In this connection the reader must be reminded that
the chronology of the early period is still uncertain. The approximate dates
which are given, however, are those now generally adopted by most European and
American authorities. Early Babylonian history of the Sumerian period begins
some time prior to 3000 B.C.; Sargon of Akkad flourished about 2650 B.C., and
Hammurabi not long before or after 2000 B.C. The inflated system of dating which
places Mena of Egypt as far back as 5500 B.C. and Sargon at about 3800 B.C.
has been abandoned by the majority of prominent archlogists, the exceptions
including Professor Flinders Petrie. Recent discoveries appear to support the
new chronological system. “There is a growing conviction”, writes Mr. Hawes,
“that Cretan evidence, especially in the eastern part of the island, favours
the minimum (Berlin) system of Egyptian chronology, according to which the Sixth
(Egyptian) Dynasty began at c. 2540 B.C. and the Twelfth at c.
2000 B.C. 1 Petrie dates the beginning
of the Twelfth Dynasty at c. 3400 B.C.

To students of comparative folklore and mythology the myths and legends of
Babylonia present many features of engrossing interest. They are of great antiquity,
yet not a few seem curiously familiar. We must not conclude, however, that because
a European legend may bear resemblances to one translated from a cuneiform tablet
it is necessarily of Babylonian origin. Certain beliefs, and the myths which
were based upon them, are older than even the civilization of the Tigro-Euphrates
valley. They belong, it would appear, to a stock of common inheritance from
an uncertain cultural centre of immense antiquity. The problem involved has
been referred to by Professor Frazer in the Golden Bough. Commenting on the
similarities presented by certain ancient festivals in various countries, he
suggests that they may be due to “a remarkable homogeneity of civilization throughout
Southern Europe and Western Asia in prehistoric times. How far”, he adds, “such
homogeneity of civilization may be taken as evidence of homogeneity of race
is a question for the ethnologist.” 1

In Chapter I the reader is introduced to the
ethnological problem, and it is shown that the results of modern research tend
to establish a remote racial connection between the Sumerians of Babylonia,
the prehistoric Egyptians, and the Neolithic (Late Stone Age) inhabitants of
Europe, as well as the southern Persians and the “Aryans” of India.

Comparative notes are provided in dealing with the customs, religious beliefs,
and myths and legends of the Mesopotamian peoples to assist the student towards
the elucidation and partial restoration of certain literary fragments from the
cuneiform tablets. Of special interest in this connection are the resemblances
between some of the Indian and Babylonian myths. The writer has drawn upon that
“great storehouse” of ancient legends, the voluminous Indian epic, the Mahhata,
and it is shown that there are undoubted links between the Garuda eagle myths
and those of the Sumerian Zu bird and the Etana eagle, while similar stories
remain attached to the memories of “Sargon of Akkad” and the Indian hero Karna,
and of Semiramis (who was Queen Sammu-ramat of Assyria) and Shakuntala. The
Indian god Varuna and the Sumerian Ea are also found to have much in common,
and it seems undoubted that the Manu fish and flood myth is a direct Babylonian
inheritance, like the Yuga (Ages of the Universe) doctrine and the system of
calculation associated with it. It is of interest to note, too, that a portion
of the Gilgamesh epic survives in theRyastory of the monkey god
Hanuman’s search for the lost princess Sita; other relics of similar character
suggest that both the Gilgamesh and Hanuman narratives are derived in part from
a very ancient myth. Gilgamesh also figures in Indian mythology as Yama, the
first man, who explored the way to the Paradise called “The Land of Ancestors”,
and over which he subsequently presided as a god. Other Babylonian myths link
with those found in Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia, Iceland, and the British Isles
and Ireland. The Sargon myth, for instance, resembles closely the myth of Scyld
(Sceaf), the patriarch, in the Beowulfepic, and both appear to be variations
of the Tammuz-Adonis story. Tammuz also resembles in one of his phases the Celtic
hero Diarmid, who was slain by the “green boar” of the Earth Mother, as was
Adonis by the boar form of Ares, the Greek war god.

In approaching the study of these linking myths it would be as rash to conclude
that all resemblances are due to homogeneity of race as to assume that folklore
and mythology are devoid of ethnological elements. Due consideration must be
given to the widespread influence exercised by cultural contact. We must recognize
also that the human mind has ever shown a tendency to arrive quite independently
at similar conclusions, when confronted by similar problems, in various parts
of the world.

But while many remarkable resemblances may be detected between the beliefs
and myths and customs of widely separated peoples, it cannot be overlooked that
pronounced and striking differences remain to be accounted for. Human experiences
varied in localities because all sections of humanity were not confronted in
ancient times by the same problems in their everyday lives. Some peoples, for
instance, experienced no great difficulties regarding the food supply, which
might be provided for them by nature in lavish abundance; others were compelled
to wage a fierce and constant conflict against hostile forces in inhospitable
environments with purpose to secure adequate sustenance and their meed of enjoyment.
Various habits of life had to be adopted in various parts of the world, and
these produced various habits of thought. Consequently, we find that behind
all systems of primitive religion lies the formative background of natural phenomena.
A mythology reflects the geography, the fauna and flora, and the climatic conditions
of the area in which it took definite and permanent shape.

In Babylonia, as elsewhere, we expect, therefore, to find a mythology which
has strictly local characteristics–one which mirrors river and valley scenery,
the habits of life of the people, and also the various stages of progress in
the civilization from its earliest beginnings. Traces of primitive thought–survivals
from remotest antiquity–should also remain in evidence. As a matter of fact
Babylonian mythology fulfils our expectations in this regard to the highest
degree.

Herodotus said that Egypt was the gift of the Nile: similarly Babylonia may
be regarded as the gift of the Tigris and Euphrates–those great shifting and
flooding rivers which for long ages had been carrying down from the Armenian
Highlands vast quantities of mud to thrust back the waters of the Persian Gulf
and form a country capable of being utilized for human habitation. The most
typical Babylonian deity was Ea, the god of the fertilizing and creative waters.

He was depicted clad in the skin of a fish, as gods in other geographical
areas were depicted wearing the skins of animals which were regarded as ancestors,
or hostile demons that had to be propitiated. Originally Ea appears to have
been a fish–the incarnation of the spirit of; or life principle in, the Euphrates
River. His centre of worship was at Eridu, an ancient seaport, where apparently
the prehistoric Babylonians (the Sumerians) first began to utilize the dried-up
beds of shifting streams to irrigate the soil. One of the several creation myths
is reminiscent of those early experiences which produced early local beliefs:
O thou River, who didst create all things,
When the great gods dug thee out,
They set prosperity upon thy banks,
Within thee Ea, the king of the Deep, created his dwelling. 1

The Sumerians observed that the land was brought into existence by means
of the obstructing reeds, which caused mud to accumulate. When their minds began
to be exercised regarding the origin of life, they conceived that the first
human beings were created by a similar process:
Marduk (son of Ea) laid a reed upon the face of the waters,
He formed dust and poured it out beside the reed . . .
He formed mankind. 2

Ea acquired in time, as the divine artisan, various attributes which reflected
the gradual growth of civilization: he was reputed to have taught the people
how to form canals, control the rivers, cultivate the fields, build their houses,
and so on.

But although Ea became a beneficent deity, as a result of the growth of civilization,
he had also a demoniac form, and had to be propitiated. The worshippers of the
fish god retained ancient modes of thought and perpetuated ancient superstitious
practices.

The earliest settlers in the Tigro-Euphrates valley were agriculturists,
like their congeners, the proto-Egyptians and the Neolithic Europeans. Before
they broke away from the its area of characterization they had acquired the
elements of culture, and adopted habits of thought which were based on the agricultural
mode of life. Like other agricultural communities they were worshippers of the
“World Mother”, the Creatrix, who was the giver of all good things, the “Preserver”
and also the “Destroyer”–the goddess whose moods were reflected by natural
phenomena, and whose lovers were the spirits of the seasons.

In the alluvial valley which they rendered fit for habitation the Sumerians
came into contact with peoples of different habits of life and different habits
of thought. These were the nomadic pastoralists from the northern steppe lands,
who had developed in isolation theories regarding the origin of the Universe
which reflected their particular experiences and the natural phenomena of their
area of characterization. The most representative people of this class were
the “Hatti” of Asia Minor, who were of Alpine or Armenoid stock. In early times
the nomads were broken up into small tribal units, like Abraham and his followers,
and depended for their food supply on the prowess of the males. Their chief
deity was the sky and mountain god, who was the “World Father”, the creator,
and the wielder of the thunder hammer, who waged war against the demons of storm
or drought, and ensured the food supply of his worshippers.

The fusion in Babylonia of the peoples of the god and goddess cults was in
progress before the dawn of history, as was the case in Egypt and also in southern
Europe. In consequence independent Pantheons came into existence in the various
city States in the Tigro-Euphrates valley. These were mainly a reflection of
city politics: the deities of each influential section had to receive recognition.
But among the great masses of the people ancient customs associated with agriculture
continued in practice, and, as Babylonia depended for its prosperity on its
harvests, the force of public opinion tended, it would appear, to perpetuate
the religious beliefs of the earliest settlers, despite the efforts made by
conquerors to exalt the deities they introduced.

Babylonian religion was of twofold character. It embraced temple worship
and private worship. The religion of the temple was the religion of the ruling
class, and especially of the king, who was the guardian of the people. Domestic
religion was conducted in homes, in reed huts, or in public places, and conserved
the crudest superstitions surviving from the earliest times. The great “burnings”
and the human sacrifices in Babylonia, referred to in the Bible, were, no doubt,
connected with agricultural religion of the private order, as was also the ceremony
of baking and offering cakes to the Queen of Heaven, condemned by Jeremiah,
which obtained in the streets of Jerusalem and other cities. Domestic religion
required no temples. There were no temples in Crete: the world was the “house”
of the deity, who had seasonal haunts on hilltops, in groves, in caves, &c.
In Egypt Herodotus witnessed festivals and processions which are not referred
to in official inscriptions, although they were evidently practised from the
earliest times.

Agricultural religion in Egypt was concentrated in the cult of Osiris and
Isis, and influenced all local theologies. In Babylonia these deities were represented
by Tammuz and Ishtar. Ishtar, like Isis, absorbed many other local goddesses.

According to the beliefs of the ancient agriculturists the goddess was eternal
and undecaying. She was the Great Mother of the Universe and the source of the
food supply. Her son, the corn god, became, as the Egyptians put it, “Husband
of his Mother”. Each year he was born anew and rapidly attained to manhood;
then he was slain by a fierce rival who symbolized the season of pestilence-bringing
and parching sun heat, or the rainy season, or wild beasts of prey. Or it might
be that he was slain by his son, as Cronos was by Zeus and Dyaus by Indra. The
new year slew the old year.

The social customs of the people, which had a religious basis, were formed
in accordance with the doings of the deities; they sorrowed or made glad in
sympathy with the spirits of nature. Worshippers also suggested by their ceremonies
how the deities should act at various seasons, and thus exercised, as they believed,
a magical control over them.

In Babylonia the agricultural myth regarding the Mother goddess and the young
god had many variations. In one form Tammuz, like Adonis, was loved by two goddesses–the
twin phases of nature–the Queen of Heaven and the Queen of Hades. It was decreed
that Tammuz should spend part of the year with one goddess and part of the year
with the other. Tammuz was also a Patriarch, who reigned for a long period over
the land and had human offspring. After death his spirit appeared at certain
times and seasons as a planet, star, or constellation. He was the ghost of the
elder god, and he was also the younger god who was born each year.

In the Gilgamesh epic we appear to have a form of the patriarch legend–the
story of the “culture hero” and teacher who discovered the path which led to
the land of ancestral spirits. The heroic Patriarch in Egypt was Apuatu, “the
opener of the ways”, the earliest form of Osiris; in India he was Yama, the
first man, “who searched and found out the path for many”.

The King as Patriarch was regarded during life as an incarnation of the culture
god: after death he merged in the god. “Sargon of Akkad” posed as an incarnation
of the ancient agricultural Patriarch: he professed to be a man of miraculous
birth who was loved by the goddess Ishtar, and was supposed to have inaugurated
a New Age of the Universe.

The myth regarding the father who was superseded by his son may account for
the existence in Babylonian city pantheons of elder and younger gods who symbolized
the passive and active forces of nature.

Considering the persistent and cumulative influence exercised by agricultural
religion it is not surprising to find, as has been indicated, that most of the
Babylonian gods had Tammuz traits, as most of the Egyptian gods had Osirian
traits. Although local or imported deities were developed and conventionalized
in rival Babylonian cities, they still retained traces of primitive conceptions.
They existed in all their forms–as the younger god who displaced the elder
god and became the elder god, and as the elder god who conciliated the younger
god and made him his active agent; and as the god who was identified at various
seasons with different heavenly bodies and natural phenomena. Merodach, the
god of Babylon, who was exalted as chief of the National pantheon in the Hammurabi
Age, was, like Tammuz, a son, and therefore a form of Ea, a demon slayer, a
war god, a god of fertility, a corn spirit, a Patriarch, and world ruler and
guardian, and, like Tammuz, he had solar, lunar, astral, and atmospheric attributes.
The complex characters of Merodach and Tammuz were not due solely to the monotheistic
tendency: the oldest deities were of mystical character, they represented the
“Self Power” of Naturalism as well as the spirit groups of Animism.

The theorizing priests, who speculated regarding the 1 mysteries of life
and death and the origin of all things, had to address the people through the
medium of popular beliefs. They utilized floating myths for this purpose. As
there were in early times various centres of culture which had rival pantheons,
the adapted myths varied greatly. In the different forms in which they survive
to us they reflect, not only aspects of local beliefs, but also grades of culture
at different periods. We must not expect, however, to find that the latest form
of a myth was the highest and most profound. The history of Babylonian religion
is divided into periods of growth and periods of decadence. The influence of
domestic religion was invariably opposed to the new and high doctrines which
emanated from the priesthood, and in times of political upheaval tended to submerge
them in the debris of immemorial beliefs and customs. The retrogressive tendencies
of the masses were invariably reinforced by the periodic invasions of aliens
who had no respect for official deities and temple creeds.

We must avoid insisting too strongly on the application of the evolution
theory to the religious phenomena of a country like Babylonia.

The epochs in the intellectual life of an ancient people are not comparable
to geological epochs, for instance, because the forces at work were directed
by human wills, whether in the interests of progress or otherwise. The battle
of creeds has ever been a battle of minds. It should be recognized, therefore,
that the human element bulks as prominently in the drama of Babylon’s religious
history as does the prince of Denmark in the play of Hamlet. We are not
concerned with the plot alone. The characters must also receive attention. Their
aspirations and triumphs, their prejudices and blunders, were the billowy forces
which shaped the shoreland of the story and made history.

Various aspects of Babylonian life and culture are dealt with throughout
this volume, and it is shown that the growth of science and art was stimulated
by unwholesome and crude superstitions. Many rank weeds flourished beside the
brightest blossoms of the human intellect that wooed the sun in that fertile
valley of rivers. As in Egypt, civilization made progress when wealth was accumulated
in sufficient abundance to permit of a leisured class devoting time to study
and research. The endowed priests, who performed temple ceremonies, were the
teachers of the people and the patrons of culture. We may think little of their
religious beliefs, regarding which after all we have only a superficial knowledge,
for we have yet discovered little more than the fragments of the shell which
held the pearl, the faded petals that were once a rose, but we must recognize
that they provided inspiration for the artists and sculptors whose achievements
compel our wonder and admiration, moved statesmen to inaugurate and administer
humanitarian laws, and exalted Right above Might.

These civilizations of the old world, among which the Mesopotamian and the
Nilotic were the earliest, were built on no unsound foundations. They made possible
“the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome”, and it is only within
recent years that we have begun to realize how incalculable is the debt which
the modern world owes to them.

Footnotes

xxii:1 Revelation,
xviii. The Babylon of the Apocalypse is generally believed to symbolize or be
a mystic designation of Rome.
xxiii:1 Nineveh and Its
Remains, vol. i, p. 17.
xxvi:1 Ezra, iv, 10.
xxvi:2 The culture god.
xxvii:1 Langdon’s Sumerian
and Babylonian Psalms, p. 179.
xxix:1 Crete the Forerunner
of Greece, p. 18.
xxx:1 The Scapegoat vol.,
p. 409 (3rd edition).
xxxiii:1 The Seven Tablets
of Creation, L. W. King, p. 129.
xxxiii:2 Ibid. pp.
133-4.

Next: Chapter I. The Races and Early Civilization
of Babylonia