The Ancient Mythology: Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman Myths. Lewis Spence
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father and a mother who have begotten children. This is not so strange when we come to consider the nature of these hymns, many of which come perilously near the border-line of pure magic—that is, they closely resemble spells. We find, too, that those which invoke the older deities such as Gibi the fire-god, are more magical in their trend than those addressed to the later gods when a higher sense of religious feeling had probably been evolved. Indeed, it does not seem too much to say that some of these early hymns may have served the purpose of later incantations. Most of those 'magical' hymns appear to have emanated from that extremely ancient seat of religion, Eridu, and are probably relics of the time when as yet magic and religion were scarcely differentiated in the priestly or the popular mind.
Hymn to Adar
A fine hymn to Adar describes the rumbling of the storm in the abyss, the 'voice' of the god:
The terror of the splendour of Anu in the midst of heaven.
The gods, it is said, urge Adar on, he descends like the deluge, the champion of the gods swoops down upon the hostile land. Nusku, the messenger of Mul-lil, receives Adar in the temple and addresses words of praise to him:
Thy chariot is as a voice of thunder.
To the lifting of thy hands is the shadow turned.
The spirits of the earth, the great gods, return to the winds.
Many of the hymns assist us to a better understanding of the precise nature of the gods, defining as they do their duties and offices and even occasionally describing their appearance. Thus in a hymn to Nebo we note that he is alluded to as "the supreme messenger who binds all things together," "the scribe of all that has a name," "the lifter up of the stylus supreme," "director of the world," "possessor of the reed of augury," "traverser of strange lands," "opener of wells," "fructifier of the corn," and "the god without whom the irrigated land and the canal are unwatered." It is from such texts that the mythologist is enabled to piece together the true significance of many of the deities of ancient peoples.
A hymn to Nusku in his character of fire-god is also descriptive and picturesque. He is alluded to as "wise prince, the flame of heaven," "he who hurls down terror, whose clothing is splendour," "the forceful fire-god," "the exalter of the mountain peaks," and "the uplifter of the torch, the enlightener of darkness."
Such descriptive hymns are the most valuable assets possible in the hands of the judicious student of myth or comparative religion.
1. Vol. iii, p. 167. Second Edition. (By kind permission of Messrs Macmillan and Co.)
2. Ut-Napishtim.
3. This passage has, however, been interpreted by some Biblical scholars to mean that "Nimrod went out of this land into Asshur" (or Assyria) "and built Nineveh." See Bryant, Antient Mythology, vol. vi, pp. 191-2-3.
CHAPTER II:
BABYLONIAN COSMOGONY
The Babylonian Myth of Creation
Few creation myths are more replete with interest than those which have literary sanction. These are few in number, as, for example, the creation story in Genesis, those to be found in Egyptian papyri, and that contained in the Popol Vuh of the Maya of Central America. In such an account we can trace the creation story from the first dim conception of world-shaping to the polished and final effort of a priestly caste to give a theological interpretation to the intentions of the creative deity; and this is perhaps more the case with the creation myth which had its rise among the old Akkadian population of Babylonia than with any other known to mythic science. In the account in Genesis of the framing of the world it has been discovered that two different versions have been fused to form a single story; the creation tale of the Popol Vuh is certainly a composite myth; and similar suspicions may rest upon the analogous myths of Scandinavia and Japan. But in the case of Babylonia we may be convinced that no other influences except those of the races who inhabited Babylonian territory could have been brought to bear upon this ancient story, and that although critical examination has proved it to consist of materials which have been drawn from more than one source, yet these sources are not foreign, and they have not undergone sophistication at the hands of any alien mythographer or interpolator.
The Seven Tablets of Creation.
It would seem that this Babylonian cosmogony was drawn from various sources, but it appears to be contained in its final form in what are known as the Seven Tablets of Creation, brought from the library of Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh and now in the British Museum. These have from time to time been supplemented by later finds, but we may take it that in this record we have the final official development of Babylonian belief, due to the priests of Babylon, after that city had become the metropolis of the empire. The primary object of the Seven Tablets was to record a terrific fight between Bel and the Dragon, and the account of the creation is inserted by way of introduction. It is undoubtedly the most important find dealing with Babylonian religion that has as yet come to light. Before we advance any critical speculations respecting it, let us set forth the story which it has to tell.
As in so many creation myths we find chaotic darkness brooding over a waste of waters; heaven and earth were not as yet. Naught existed save the primeval ocean, Mommu Tiawath,1 from whose fertile depths came every living thing. Nor were the waters distributed, as in the days of man, into sea, river, or lake, but all were confined together in one vast and bottomless abyss. Neither did god or man exist: their names were unknown and their destinies undetermined. The future was as dark as the gloom which lay over the mighty gulf of chaos. Nothing had been designed or debated concerning it.
The Birth of the Gods
But there came a stirring in the darkness and the great gods arose. First came Lahmu and Lahame; and many epochs later, Ansar and Kisar, component parts of whose names signify 'Host of Heaven' and 'Host of Earth.' These latter names we may perhaps accept as symbolical of the spirits of heaven and of earth respectively. Many days afterward came forth their son Anu, god of the heavens.
At this point it should be explained that the name Tiawath affords a parallel to the expression T'hom or 'deep' of the Old Testament. Practically the same word is used in Assyrian in the form Tamtu, to signify the 'deep sea.'2 The reader will recall that it was upon the face of the deep that the spirit of God brooded, according to the first chapter of Genesis. The word and the idea which it contains are equally Semitic, but strangely enough it has an Akkadian origin. For the conception that the watery abyss was the source of all things originated with the worshippers of the sea-god Ea at Eridu. They termed the deep apsu, or a 'house of knowledge' wherein their tutelar god was supposed to have his dwelling, and this word was of Akkadian descent. This apsu, or 'abyss,' in virtue of the animistic ideas prevailing in early Akkadian times, had become personalized as a female who was regarded as the mother of Ea. She was known by another name as well as that of Apsu, for she was also entitled Zigarun, the 'heaven,' or the 'mother that has begotten heaven and earth'; and indeed she seems to have had a form or variant in which she was an earth-goddess as well. But it was not the existing earth or heaven that she represented in either of her forms, but the primeval abyss, out of which both of these were fashioned.
At this point the narrative exhibits numerous defects, and for a continuation of it we must apply to Damascius, the last of the Neoplatonists,