These deities were further identified with the stars. The fact that the sun and moon, as well as the evening and morning stars, were already worshipped as divinities doubtless led the way to this system of astro-theology. But it seems never to have spread beyond the learned classes and to have remained to the last an artificial system. The mass of the people worshipped the stars as a whole, but it was only as a whole and not individually. Their identification with the gods of the state religion might be taught in the schools and universities, but it had no meaning for the nation at large.
From the beginning of the Babylonian's life we now pass to the end. Unlike the Egyptian he had no desert close at hand in which to bury his dead, no limestone cliffs, as in Palestine, wherein a tomb might be excavated. It was necessary that the burial should be in the plain of Babylonia, the same plain as that in which he lived, and with which the overflow of the rivers was constantly infiltrating. The consequences were twofold. On the one hand, the tomb had to be constructed of brick, for stone was not procurable; on the other hand, sanitary reasons made cremation imperative. The Babylonian corpse was burned as well as buried, and the brick sepulchre that was raised above it adjoined the cities of the living.
The corpse was carried to the grave on a bier, accompanied by the mourners. Among these the wailing women were prominent, who tore their hair and threw dust upon their heads. The cemetery to which the dead was carried was a city in itself, to which the Sumerians had given the name of Ki-makh or vast place. It was laid out in streets, the tombs on either side answering to the houses of a town. Not infrequently gardens were planted before them, while rivulets of living water flowed through the streets and were at times conducted into the tomb. The water symbolized the life that the pious Babylonian hoped to enjoy in the world to come. It relieved the thirst of the spirit in the underground world of Hades, where an old myth had declared that dust only was its food, and it was at the same time an emblem of those waters of life which were believed to bubble up beneath the throne of the goddess of the dead.
When the corpse reached the cemetery it was laid upon the ground wrapped in mats of reed and covered with asphalt. It was still dressed in the clothes and ornaments that had been worn during life. The man had his seal and his weapons of bronze or stone; the woman her spindle-wheel and thread; the child his necklace of shells. In earlier times all was then thickly coated with clay, above which branches of palm, terebinth, and other trees were placed, and the whole was set on fire. At a more recent period ovens of brick were constructed in which the corpse was put in its coffin of clay and reeds, but withdrawn before cremation was complete. The skeletons of the dead are consequently often found in a fair state of preservation, as well as the objects which were buried with them.
While the body was being burned offerings were made, partly to the gods, partly to the dead man himself. They consisted of dates, calves and sheep, birds and fish, which were consumed along with the corpse. Certain words were recited at the same time, derived for the most part from the sacred books of ancient Sumer.
After the ceremony was over a portion of the ashes was collected and deposited in an urn, if the cremation had been complete. In the later days, when this was not the case, the half-burnt body was allowed to remain on the spot where it had been laid, and an aperture was made in the shell of clay with which it was covered. The aperture was intended to allow a free passage to the spirit of the dead, so that it might leave its burial-place to enjoy the food and water that were brought to it. Over the whole a tomb was built of bricks, similar to that in which the urn was deposited when the body was completely burned.
A. H. Sayce
Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs
Editor's Preface
Semitic studies, both linguistically and archæologically, have advanced by rapid strides during the last two decades. Fresh light has fallen upon the literary, scientific, theological, mercantile, and other achievements of this great branch of the human family. What these peoples thought and achieved has a very direct bearing upon some of the problems that lie nearest to the hearts of a large portion of the intelligent peoples of Christendom to-day. Classical studies no longer enjoy a monopoly of attention in the curricula of our colleges and universities. It is, in fact, more and more plainly perceived by scholars that among the early peoples who have contributed to the ideas inwrought into our present civilization there is none to whom we owe a greater debt than we do to the Semitic family. Apart from the genetic relation which the thought of these peoples bears to the Christianity of the past and present, a study of their achievements in general has become a matter of general human interest. It is here that we find the earliest beginnings of civilization historically known to ushere that early religious ideas, social customs and manners, political organizations, the beginnings of art and architecture, the rise and growth of mythological ideas that have endured and spread to western nations, can be seen in their earliest stages, and here alone the information is supplied which enables us to follow them most successfully in their development.
The object of this series is to present, in brief and compact form, a knowledge of the more important facts in the history of this family in a way that will be serviceable to students in colleges, universities, and theological seminaries, to the clergy, and to intelligent lay readers.
It has been the good fortune of the Editor and Publishers to secure the interest and co-operation of scholars who are fitted by their special knowledge of the subjects entrusted to them. Works written on Semitic subjects by those whose knowledge is gained from other than the original sources are sure to be defective in many ways. It is only the specialist whose knowledge enables him to take a comprehensive view of the entire field in which he labors who is able to gain the perspective necessary for the production of a general work which will set forth prominently, and in their proper relations, the salient and most interesting facts.
Each contributor to the Series presents his contribution subject to no change by the Editor. In cases where it may be deemed of sufficient importance to notice a divergent view this will be done in a foot-note. The authors, however, will aim to make their several contributions consistent with the latest discoveries.
James Alexander Craig.University of Michigan,
September, 1899.
Chapter I. Babylonia And Its Inhabitants
Babylonia was the gathering-place of the nations. Berossus, the Chaldean historian, tells us that after the creation it was peopled by a mixture of races, and we read in the book of Genesis that Babel, or Babylon, was the first home of the manifold languages of mankind. The country for the most part had been won from the sea; it was the gift of the two great rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, which once flowed separately into the Persian Gulf. Its first settlers must have established themselves on the desert plateau which fringes the Babylonian plain rather than in the plain itself.
The plain is formed of the silt deposited each year by the rivers that flow through it. It is, in fact, as much a delta as Northern Egypt, and is correspondingly fertile. Materials exist for determining approximately the rate at which this delta has been formed. The waters of the Persian Gulf are continually receding from the shore, and Ainsworth1 calculates that about ninety feet of land are added annually to the coast-line. But the rate of deposit seems to have been somewhat more rapid in the past. At all events, Mohammerah, which in 1835 was forty-seven miles distant from the Gulf, stands on the site of Spasinus Charax, which, in the time of Alexander the Great, was not quite a mile from the sea. In 2,160 years, therefore, no less than forty-six miles of land have been formed at the head of the Persian Gulf, or nearly one hundred and fifteen feet each year.
The deposit of soil, however, may not have been so rapid in the flourishing days of Babylonian history, when the canals were carefully attended to and the irrigation of the country kept under control. It is safer, therefore, to assume for the period preceding the rise of the Macedonian Empire a rate of deposit of not more than one hundred feet each year. The seaport of primitive Chaldea was Eridu, not far from Ur, and as the mounds of Abu-Shahrein or Nowâwis, which now mark its site, are nearly one hundred and thirty miles from the present line of coast, we must go back as far as 6500 B.C. for the foundation of the town. Ur of the Chaldees, as it is called in the Book of Genesis, was some thirty miles to the north, and on the same side of the Euphrates; the ruins of its great temple of the Moon-god are now known by the name of Muqayyar or Mugheir. It must have been founded on the sandy plateau of the Arabian desert at a time when the plain enclosed between the Tigris and the Euphrates was still too marshy for human habitation. As the Moon-god of Ur was held to be the son of El-lil of Nippur, Dr. Peters is doubtless right in believing that Ur was a colony of the latter city. Nippur is the modern Niffer or Nuffar in the north of Babylonia, and recent excavations have shown that its temple was the chief sanctuary and religious centre of the civilized eastern world in the earliest epoch to which our records reach. Eridu, Ur, and Nippur seem to have been the three chief cities of primeval Babylonia. As we shall see in a future chapter, Eridu and Nippur were the centres from which the early culture and religion of the country were diffused. But there was an essential difference between them. Ea, the god of Eridu, was a god of light and beneficence, who employed his divine wisdom in healing the sick and restoring the dead to life. He had given man all the elements of civilization; rising each morning out of his palace under the waters of the deep, he taught them the arts and sciences, the industries and manners, of civilized life. El-lil of Nippur, on the contrary, was the lord of the underworld; magical spells and incantations were his gifts to mankind, and his kingdom was over the dead rather than the living. The culture which emanated from Eridu and Nippur was thus of a wholly different kind. Is it possible that the settlers in the two cities were of a different race?
Of this there is no proof. Such evidence as we have tells against it. And the contrast in the character of the cultures of Eridu and Nippur can be explained in another way. Eridu was a seaport; its population was in contact with other races, and its ships traded with the coasts of Arabia. The myth which told how Ea or Oannes had brought the elements of civilization to his people expressly stated that he came from the waters of the Persian Gulf. The culture of Eridu may thus have been due to foreign intercourse; Eridu was a city of merchants and sailors, Nippur of sorcerer-priests.
Eridu and Nippur, however, alike owed their origin to a race which we will term Sumerian. Its members spoke agglutinative dialects, and the primitive civilization of Babylonia was their creation. They were the founders of its great cities and temples, the inventors of the pictorial system of writing out of which the cuneiform characters subsequently developed, the instructors in culture of their Semitic neighbors. How deep and far-reaching was their influence may be gathered from the fact that the earliest civilization of Western Asia finds its expression in the Sumerian language and script. To whatever race the writer might belong he clothed his thoughts in the words and characters of the Sumerian people. The fact makes it often difficult for us to determine whether the princes of primitive Chaldea whose inscriptions have come down to us were Semites or not. Their very names assume Sumerian forms.