BiDikal ana 
 Oriental Series 
 
 RELIGK)US AND 
 MORAL IDEAS IN 
 BABYLONIA AND 
 ASSYRIA 
 
 MERCER 
 
MAR -2S 1920 
 
 BR 45 .B52 v. 2 i 
 
 Mercer, Samuel A. B. b. | 
 
 1880. 
 Religious and moral ideas in 
 Babylonia and Assyria | 
 
Biblical and Oriental >rie$ 
 
 SAMUEL A. B. MERCER, General Edit> 
 
 RELIGIOUS AND MORAL IDEAS IN 
 BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 
 
i 
 
 iblical and Oriental Series 
 
 SAMUEL A. B. MERCER, General Editor 
 
 The object of this Series on the Bible and 
 Oriental Civilization is to make the results of 
 expert investigation accessible to laymen. Some- 
 times these results will be presented in the form 
 of daily readings, and sometimes in that of con- 
 tinuous discussion. Specialists in every case will 
 be employed, who will endeavor to present their 
 subjects in the most effective and profitable way. 
 
 The Book of Genesis for Bible Classes and 
 Private Study 
 By Samuel A. B. Mercer (non> read^). 
 
 The Growth of Religious and Moral Ideas 
 IN Egypt 
 
 By Samuel A. B. Mercer (non> ready). 
 
 The Book of Isaiah for Bible Classes and 
 Private Study 
 
 By D. Roy Matthews (in preparation). 
 
 Religious and Moral Ideas in Babylonia and 
 Assyria 
 By Samuel A. B. Mercer (noiv ready). 
 
 Morehouse Publishing Company 
 
RELIGIOUS AND MORAL IDEAS 
 
 IN 
 
 BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 
 
 SAMUEL A. B. MERCER, Ph.D., D.i3r ' 
 
 Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament in the Western Theological 
 
 Seminary, Chicago; Rector of the Society of Oriental 
 
 Research, and Editor of its Journal; Editor 
 
 of the Anglican Theological Review 
 
 MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 
 MILWAUKEE, WIS. 
 
 A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. 
 LONDON 
 
COPYRIGHT BY 
 
 MOREHOUSE PUBLISHING CO. 
 1919 
 
TO 
 THE MEMORY OF 
 
 SIR HENRY RAWLINSON 
 
 PIONEER ASSYRIOLOGIST 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The names of mighty Babylon and proud Assyria 
 will never be forgotten, and their memory will never 
 cease among men. So long as modern civilization 
 lasts ; so long as Christianity sways men's hearts ; and 
 so long as the Bible is read. Babylonia and Assyria, 
 Nineveh and Babylon will be names to conjure with. 
 The excavations begun in the mounds of the Tigris- 
 Euphrates valley not more than a century ago have 
 revealed many things about these ancient peoples. 
 Much more remains to be done. There are still 
 many problems to be solved, many gaps to be filled, 
 and many phenomena to be interpreted. 
 
 This little book, by a student and lover of these 
 ancient peoples, can give only a glimpse of one of the 
 most fascinating problems of Semitic culture. The 
 religious and moral ideas in Babylonia and Assyria, 
 not only because of their close and unique relation to 
 the Old Testament, and through it to the New Testa- 
 ment and to Christianity, but also because of them- 
 selves, are second to none in human interest. 
 
 The author has assumed a certain ls:nowledge of 
 the history of Babylonia and Assyria on the part of 
 the reader, but he has endeavoured to make what he 
 has to say as readable for the layman as possible. 
 In order to assist the reader in fonning an historical 
 background for his study, the author has prefixed a 
 
 vii 
 
viii Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 chronological outline ; and, to avoid overcrowding the 
 pages with references and footnotes, he has appended 
 a selected bibliography. But be it noted, in order to 
 inspire due confidence in our study, that no assertion 
 has been made, and no conclusion has been drawn, 
 which cannot be thoroughly substantiated by reference 
 to the original texts. So that our study, while aiming 
 at a modern presentation of Babylonian and Assyrian 
 religious and moral ideas, has never once consciously 
 departed from facts deducible from the monuments. 
 
 On account of the limitations of our plan, much 
 detail has had to be omitted. No discussion of the 
 astrological theories of Winckler and Jeremias has 
 been offered, nor have the relations between Baby- 
 lonian and Assyrian religious thought and that of the 
 Old Testament been discussed. These subjects be- 
 long to fuller treatments. But this plan, it is hoped, 
 has permitted a clearer and more connected exposi- 
 tion of the ideas of God and Man, of Mediation and 
 the Future, and of Morality, in Babylonia and 
 Assyria, than could have been gained in a more 
 detailed study. 
 
 It only remains to be said that the author hopes 
 that this little essay, with all its imperfections, will 
 add to the growing interest in the past, and especially 
 in those great culture lands, which are the cradle of 
 the world's best thought and noblest ideals. 
 
 Samuel A. B. Mercer. 
 Hibbard Egyptian Library 
 Western Theological Seminary, Chicago 
 April 4, 1919 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. — Chronological Outline of Baby- 
 lonian AND Assyrian History . xi 
 
 11. — Introduction 1 
 
 III. — The Idea of God in Babylonia and 
 
 Assyria 6 
 
 IV. — The Idea of Man in Babylonia and 
 
 Assyria 34 
 
 V. — The Idea of Mediation in Baby- 
 lonia AND Assyria 61 
 
 VI. — The Idea of the Future in Baby- 
 lonia AND Assyria 90 
 
 VII. — The Idea of Morality in Babylonia 
 
 AND Assyria 96 
 
 VIII. — A Selected Bibliography . . . 125 
 IX.— Index 127 
 
 IX 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLINE OF 
 BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY 
 
 PERIOD OF SUMERIAN SUPREMACY, 3400*-2225 B. C. 
 
 3400-2225 B. C. Southern and Northern Babylonia, that is, 
 Sumer and Akkad, were divided among 
 many city-states. This gave rise to various 
 dynasties, the chief of which are: Dynasty 
 of Kish, 2750-2650; Dynasty of Akkad, 
 2650-2600; Dynasty of Lagash, 2650-2300; 
 Dynasty of Ur, 2450-2300; Dynasty of 
 Nisin, 2300-2115; Dynasty of Larsa, 2335- 
 2069. 
 
 3400-2750 " During this period, before the rise of the 
 Dynasties of Kish, Akkad, and Lagash, 
 there were many kings in Kish, Opis, Akkad, 
 Lagash, Umma, Uruk, and Ur, the chief of 
 which were Utug, the first king of Kish, 
 about 3400 B. C; Mesilim of Kish, shortly 
 after Utug; Lugalshag-engur, in Lagash, a 
 contemporary of Mesilim; and Lugal-zag- 
 gisi, king of Erech and Sumer, about 2800, 
 the first great empire-builder of Babylonia. 
 From about 2950-2800 a line of important 
 kings, beginning with Eannatum, reigned 
 in Lagash. 
 
 2750-2650 " Sharru-Gi founded the Dynasty of Kish. 
 
 ♦ These early dates are approximate. 
 
 xi 
 
xii Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 2650-2600 B. C. During this short period two of the most 
 famous kings of Babylonia ruled, namely, 
 Sargon and his son Naram-Sin. They 
 formed the dynasty of Akkad. 
 
 2650-2300 " Dynasty of Lagash. This dynasty num- 
 bered many great rulers, among them being 
 Ur-Bau and Gudea. 
 
 2450-2300 " Dynasty of Ur, whose first king was Ur- 
 Engur, who was immediately succeeded by 
 the famous rulers, Dungi, Bur-Sin, Gimil- 
 Sin, and Ibi-Sin. 
 
 2300-2115 " Dynasty of Nisin, which ran down into the 
 period contemporaneous with the First 
 Babylonian Dynasty. 
 
 2335-2069 " Dynasty of Larsa, contemporaneous with 
 the Dynasty of Nisin. Its greatest kings 
 were Warad-Sin, Rim-Sin, Hammurapi, and 
 Samsu-iluna, the last two of whom reigned 
 in Babylon also. 
 
 During this period great centres of wor- 
 ship had developed in both north and 
 south, and the cult had assumed a form 
 which changed very little in later times. 
 Due, however, to the different centres of 
 political power, and the consequent lack of 
 national unity, no progress was made in 
 the way of religious centralization. 
 
 PERIOD OF BABYLONIAN SUPREMACY, 2225-732 B. C. 
 
 2225-1926 B. C. First Babylonian, or Hammurapi, Dynasty. 
 Babylon's great antagonists were Nisin and 
 Larsa. Nisin was captured in 2115, and 
 Hammurapi defeated Rim-Sin, and sub 
 dued Larsa in 2092. Henceforth, there was 
 no question about the supremacy of Baby- 
 lon. With the defeat of Rim-Sin Babylon 
 became the centre, and its god, Marduk, be- 
 came head of the pantheon. There arose 
 
Chronological Outline xiii 
 
 a tendency to supplant all the great gods 
 of former times by Marduk. Poems that 
 were written in honour of other gods were 
 now accommodated to Marduk. Imperialism 
 was afoot in both religion and state. More 
 organization in religion was done in this 
 period than at any other time in the history 
 of Babylonia and Assyria. And not only 
 in religion, but also in all spheres of human 
 activity, Hammurapi was the great or- 
 ganizing genius. He built stately temples, 
 overthrew mighty kings, and drew up a 
 Code of Laws, such as the world had never 
 seen before. Nor were the priests idle. 
 They found leisure to make a profound 
 study of the heavenly bodies, and system- 
 atized an astrological theory of religion 
 which remained down to the very end of 
 Babylonian and Assyrian religious life, and 
 then it converted itself into a scientific 
 astronomy which was inherited and further 
 developed by the Greeks. 
 1926-732 B. C. Second to Ninth Babylonian Dynasties. 
 The eight Dynasties of Babylon which suc- 
 ceeded the Hammurapi Dynasty never du- 
 plicated what that first golden era had 
 accomplished. Babylon and Babylonia re- 
 mained strong in the power of its unity 
 and centralization till the period of Assyr- 
 ian domination. 
 
 PERIOD OF ASSYRIAN OVERLORDSHIP, 732-606 B. C. 
 
 732-606 B. C. Assyria arose about 2100 B. C, and soon 
 became the rival of Babylonia. But she did 
 not accomplish much in the way of usurping 
 power over Babylonia till 732, when Baby- 
 lonia, under her weak kings, fell an easy 
 prey to her more virile northern neighbour. 
 
xiv Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 During Assyria's supremacy, the great god 
 of Ashur, namely, Ashur, became supreme 
 in Assyria, though Marduk retained his 
 grandeur in Babylon. Assyria always 
 looked upon Babylonia as the great mother- 
 land, and home of culture, and was proud 
 of her association with her. But religious 
 ideas and customs during this period did 
 not escape the militaristic colouring of the 
 warlike country of Assyria. 
 
 One of the most important Assyrian 
 kings was Ashurbanipal, 668-625, who built 
 one of the world's great libraries. It is 
 from the ruins of this library that thou- 
 sands of our finest inscriptions have been 
 excavated. Ashurbanipal caused copies to 
 be made of the most important literature 
 of Sumeria and Babylonia. 
 
 NEO-BABYLONIAN PERIOD, 625-538 B. C. 
 
 625-538 B. C. Neo-Babylonian Empire. According as 
 Assyria weakened, during the last fifty 
 years of her existence. Babylonia became 
 strong, until, in 625, Nabopolassar pro- 
 claimed his independence. He was followed 
 by the great Nebuchadrezzar, and it seemed 
 for a time as if the old glory of Babylon 
 was about to be restored. He, however, 
 was followed by a series of weak kings, 
 until the weakest of them all, from a mil- 
 itary point of view, was easily dethroned 
 by the forces of the virile Persian king, 
 Cyrus. Thus ended the Babylonian empire. 
 Persian kings ruled in Babylon till the 
 capture of that city by Alexander in 331 
 B. C. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 In the great temple of the world's religious 
 thought, Babylonia and Assyria form one of the most 
 important and interesting pillars. How clear and 
 sharp that temple stands out in the history of the 
 world's culture ! There is the great, bright, solemn 
 temple, where men worship the gods. Its doors are 
 open; its windows tempt the sky. There are many 
 things there that have to do with such a temple. 
 The winds come wandering through its high arches. 
 The children roam across its threshold, and play for 
 a few minutes on its shining floor. Banners and 
 draperies bedeck its walls. Poor men and women, 
 with their burdens and distress, come in and say a 
 moment's prayer, and hurry on. Stately processions 
 pass up the nave, making a brief disturbance in its 
 quiet air. Generation after generation comes and 
 goes and is forgotten, each giving its place up to 
 another; while still the temple stands, receiving and 
 dismissing them in turn, and outliving them all. All 
 these are transitory. All these come into the temple 
 and then go out again. But the day comes when 
 
 I 
 
2 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 the great temple needs enlargement. The plan which 
 it embodies must be made more perfect. It is to grow 
 to a completer self. And then they bring up to the 
 doors a column of cut stone, hewn in the quarry for 
 this very place, fitted and fit for this place and for no 
 other; and bringing it in with toil, they set it solidly 
 down as part of the growing structure, part of the 
 expanding plan. It blends with all the other stones. 
 It loses while it keeps its individuality. It is useless 
 except there where it is; and yet there, where it is, 
 it has a use which is peculiarly its own, and different 
 from every other stone's. The walls are built around 
 it. It shares the building's changes. The lights of 
 sacred festivals shine on its face. It glows in the 
 morning sunlight, and grows dim and solemn as the 
 dusk gathers through the great expanse. Generations 
 pass before it in their worship. They come and go, 
 and the new generations follow them, and still the 
 pillar stands. The day when it was hewn and set 
 there is forgotten; as children never think when an 
 old patriarch, whom they see standing among them, 
 was bom. It is part of the temple where the men so 
 long dead set it so long ago. 
 
 Such is the story of the pillar — the Babylonian 
 and Assyrian religion — in the great temple of the 
 world's religious thought. Long, long ago, in times 
 now forgotten, a mountain people moved westward 
 into the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates. 
 They settled there and worshipped their gods, some 
 of whom had come with them, and others of whom 
 had revealed themselves to their worshippers in their 
 
Introduction 3 
 
 new home. A new pillar in the great universal temple 
 of divine worship was brought in, to go "no more 
 out''. Later another wave of migration entered these 
 fertile plains. This came from the western home 
 of the Semites, and brought its gods and religious 
 customs with it, adding beauty and form to the 
 great pillar already established. A great state was 
 set up at Kish, which later became an empire under 
 the first Sargon, taking the name of the Empire of 
 Akkad. Other centres were formed at Ur, ITnik, 
 Lagash, etc. For many years independent dynasties 
 arose here and there, from north to south, till finally, 
 sometime before 2000 B. C, Babylon arose as a 
 great centre and her kings, especially Hammurapi, 
 swayed the whole valley. About the same time, in 
 the north, a seed was sowm, which was destined to 
 become a mighty empire, whose unity was unique in 
 the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Its centre was at the 
 city of Ashur, and the country was called Assyria. 
 This country was founded by immigrants from Nina, 
 a part of the city of Lagash, in the south. They 
 brought their goddess Nina, who was later called 
 Tslitar, and she became the consort of the proper 
 god of the land, Ashur. Thus new embellishments 
 were added to the stately pillar of Babylonian and 
 Assyrian religion. But Assyria remained compara- 
 tively weak till the time of Tiglath-pileser I, about 
 1117 B. C. Meanwhile Babylon had fallen before 
 the Hittites, and into the hands of the Kassites who 
 ruled till about 1200 B. C, after w^hich a series of 
 weak kings occupied the throne. Assyria had grown 
 
4 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 great, and in the reign of Tiglath-pileser I the once 
 proud and mighty city of Babylon fell into the hands 
 of the Assyrian kings. However, although the dynas- 
 ties in Babylonia and Assyria were different, and 
 their policies divergent, their religion was the same, 
 and they worshipped the same gods. The pillar in 
 the great temple was the same, only further polished 
 and decorated. And so when the Assyrian kings 
 marched into the city of Babylon they did not 
 destroy it; rather they came as if to pay their 
 respect to Marduk, the great city-god, and to "take 
 his hand", in recognition of his supreme authority in 
 all things Babylonian. Assyrian religion, as well 
 as her general culture, her art and architecture, her 
 science and commerce, her literature and laws, were 
 borrowed from Babylonia. Assyria fell in 606 B. C, 
 when all life and religion centred in Babylon, and 
 the N'eo-Babylonian empire inherited what was com- 
 mon and peculiar to both Babylonia and Assyria. 
 
 Small and great religions as well as small and great 
 men must all stand before the standard, or test, or 
 source, of religious or individual judgment. In the 
 temple of the world's religion, the pillar representing 
 the religion of Babylonia and Assyria stands. Though 
 the mighty empires of Babylonia and Assyria have 
 long passed on into oblivion, their religious as well 
 as their cultural influence still lives, yea, is immortal. 
 But this influence is judged in the light of a universal 
 religious standard. The pillar is strong or weak, fine 
 or inferior, in accordance with its comparative worth 
 and importance in the whole structure. When the 
 
Introduction 5 
 
 mighty gods called to Babylonia and Assyria their 
 challenge did not always receive the highest response. 
 Shallow often responded to deep, instead of deep to 
 the call of deep. In spite of their mighty accomplish- 
 ments; in spite of the vision of god which Babylonia 
 and Assyria saw and gave to the world; in spite of 
 their contributions to human knowledge and science; 
 and in spite of their deep, keen, penetration into the 
 realities of moral law; their failure to relate time to 
 eternity, to translate this world with its sufferings 
 and distress into terms of universal realities, has 
 marred the perfection of their pillar in God's temple. 
 But, excepting this serious blemish, the contribution of 
 Babylonia and Assyria to the bulk of the world's best 
 treasures is one of the grandest which any race can 
 claim. 
 
II 
 
 THE IDEA OF GOD IN BABYLONIA 
 AND ASSYRIA 
 
 The world has always been man's greatest problem. 
 We not only love its landscape with all the power of 
 our bodily senses ; but we also store up its associations 
 with us, its joys and its delights, and we love it with 
 all our heart. Nor do we stop there, for we not only 
 respond to that in the world which appeals to our 
 reverence and gratefulness, and so love the world 
 with all our soul; or to that which appeals to our 
 power of working, and so love it with all our strength ; 
 but we also respond to that desire, common to all 
 humanity, to solve the great problems which start 
 out from the earth and from the sky to tempt us. 
 Scenes in nature cry out to us to come and admire 
 them, to come and work on them, or to come and 
 study them. And immediately a series of questions 
 arises to the baffled but determined mind. What 
 hangs the stars in their places and swings them on 
 their way ? How does the earth build the stately tree 
 out of the petty seed? How does the river feed the 
 fields? What built the mountains, and spread out 
 the plains? These and many other similar ques- 
 
 6 
 
Idea of Cod 7 
 
 tions, some simpler, some more profound, have always 
 been asked by man. They leap out from nature, and, 
 pressing in past our senses and emotions and prac- 
 tical powers, never rest till they have found out our 
 intelligence. They appeal to the mind, and the mind 
 responds to them — not coldly, as if it had nothing to 
 do but just to find and register their answers, but 
 enthusiastically, loving the nature out of which they 
 spring. And so we love the world in which we live 
 with all our mind. 
 
 This has always been the experience of man. In 
 this respect the early Babylonian and Assyrian were 
 no exceptions. But the greatest of all problems that 
 presented itself to early man, including the Babylo- 
 nians, was the question of motion, which he inter- 
 preted as a sign of life. What caused the rivers to 
 flow and the leaves to grow, the wind to blow and the 
 storms to rage? Why did the sun, the moon, and 
 the stars cross and recross the heavens? In short, 
 what is that which seems to be the cause of all the 
 sounds, and signs, and motions, which are continually 
 in evidence ? What else but life, the power of causing 
 motion and noise ? Man himself was free to move, to 
 make signs, and to utter sounds, and his power to do 
 so consisted in his being alive. It was his life which 
 was the all pervading force in his actions. It was an 
 easy step for the primitive man to make, when he 
 transferred this same power, life, to every object — to 
 all objects — for every object was capable of manifest- 
 ing power. Thus the early Babylonians endowed every 
 object with a zi, life or spirit. 
 
8 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 The world was full of spirits. There were river- 
 spirits and stream-spirits, rock-spirits and mountain- 
 spirits, vegetation-spirits and storm-spirits, and many 
 others. The ways of some spirits were understood 
 more thoroughly than those of others. But none of 
 them were understood completely. They were always 
 more or less undefined, and so the various spirits were 
 always more or less mysterious. Those spirits who 
 were considered powerful and friendly were gods, and 
 those who were unfriendly and less powerful were 
 demons and indifferent spirits. 
 
 The early Babylonians lived in small groups — 
 families or small clans — separated from one another. 
 Each such group recognized various gods, represent- 
 ing the different living objects in its neighbourhood. 
 But that one living object which impressed itself upon 
 the attention of the group with most intensity became 
 the manifesting medium of that spirit, which became 
 the god of the group. Thus a social group living in 
 the neighbourhood of a large body of water would 
 have a water-god, just as the community at Eridu, on 
 the Persian Gulf, worshipped Ea, a water-god. But 
 it would recognize the existence of many other gods. 
 The number of possible gods was almost limitless. A 
 nomadic group would develope a very large pantheon ; 
 and would change its gods from time to time, its chief 
 god being the specific god of the location where it was 
 temporarily settled. In fact, such moving groups were 
 apt to interpret its deity as a goddess, in keeping with 
 the necessarily matriarchal character of its constitu- 
 tion. In moving groups the mother is the permanent 
 
Idea of Cod 9 
 
 element in family life, a fact which often gave rise to 
 a belief in a goddess as head of a group of gods. This 
 consideration will probably explain the power and in- 
 fluence of Ishtar among the early Semitic Babylonians, 
 who were a nomadic people. It will also account for 
 the fact that Ningirsu, "lady of Girsu", god of Lagash, 
 was originally a goddess. In settled and agricultural 
 groups a male deity was the centre of divine life, with 
 whom was associated a female consort. Thus Ea's 
 consort was Damkina, the "faithful spouse", and 
 Enlil's was Ninlil, "lady of the storm". 
 
 Primitive people ask of their gods that they be as 
 familiar as possible, that they have to do with daily 
 life, that they seem to issue from the heart of common 
 things and clothe those things with light which 
 makes them radiant. They dread mystery. They 
 hate to be bidden to lift up their eyes and look far 
 away. They desire their gods to be near, and they find 
 them in all affairs of life, domestic and public, social 
 and political. Consequently, when a group grew and 
 became powerful, the god of the group likewise grew 
 and became powerful. If the group added to itself 
 other groups or absorbed them, the god of the group 
 added to himself the gods of the added groups or 
 absorbed them. In this way groups of gods or pan- 
 theons arose. 
 
 In Babylonia the earliest centres of such enlarged 
 groups — towms which added to themselves and ab- 
 sorbed all villages and towns in their vicinity — 
 were Eridu, Ur, Uruk, Nippur, Kutha, Opis, Kish, 
 Agade, and Sippar. There were others, such as La- 
 
1 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 gash, Babylon, Ashur. The god of such a centre 
 became the chief deity and around him were assem- 
 bled, among others, the gods and goddesses of the 
 united and absorbed communities. Thus at the 
 dawn of history we find Enlil of Nippur, Ea or Enki 
 of Eridu, and Anu and Ishtar or Nana of Erech 
 worshipped as heads of great groups of peoples. In 
 fact, there is reason to believe that each of these 
 great centres held sway over a large portion of the 
 country at different times; Enlil of Nippur, for 
 instance, receiving homage from gods of distant cen- 
 tres, which were themselves centres of great groups 
 of people. That is, the more powerful a great city 
 or state became, the more extended the sway of its 
 chief god was. This was also true of Ningirsu of 
 Lagash, Nana and Anu of Uruk, Sin of Ur, and 
 Shama?h of Larsa, and of Sippar. 
 
 It sometimes happened also that the god of an 
 absorbed town became the chief god of the absorbing 
 city. This is true of Ningirsu of Lagash, who was 
 originally lord, or lady, of Girsu, a town which 
 undoubtedly became amalgamated into Lagash. Then 
 around Ningirsu of Lagash gathered a whole pantheon 
 of deities. The chief of these was Bau, his consort, 
 besides deities of irrigation, of weapons, of musical 
 instruments, of flocks and herds, of fishes, and of 
 streams, of household duties, and of cattle. And 
 deitie= of surrounding towns were granted a place in 
 the central temple, or a quarter in the city, of Lagash. 
 Such were the goddesses Gatuiiidug. Nina, and 
 Innina. In later times Marduk of Babylon and his 
 
Idea of God 1 1 
 
 consort Sarpanit grouped around thomselves such 
 powerful deities as Ea and Damkina of Eridu, Nabu 
 and Tashmit of Borsippa, Nergal and Allatu of 
 Kutha, Shamash and Ai of Sippar, and Sin and 
 Ningal of Ur. This was due to the extraordinary 
 greatness of Marduk's city, Babylon. Nor did the 
 tendency end there, for the characteristics and 
 achievements of the absorbed and associated gods were 
 very often assumed by the absorbing god. Thus Mar- 
 duk replaced Enlil in the creation story in the same 
 way that he himself was absorbed by Yahweh, in later 
 times, in the Hebrew references to creation. 
 
 In the very earliest times divine manifestations 
 were seen in the commonest phenomena, in the 
 streams and rivers, rocks and mountains, vegetation, 
 and forces of nature. But according as men began to 
 be more interested in the vast cosmic forces, so their 
 attention became centred in such phenomena as the 
 sky, the earth, and the ocean. 
 
 The sky was personified as Anu. The Semitic word 
 anu is derived from the Sumerian ana, which means 
 "heaven". The deity Anu was supposed to be 
 enthroned in the heavens, and as such was the highest 
 of all gods, and king of the gods. Why the centre 
 of the worship of Anu was Uruk is not known. It 
 seems that the inhabitants of that city happened to be 
 the first to give prominence to the sky-god. In Assyr- 
 ian times the god had a home at Ashur. Ann's 
 worship can be traced back to the very beginning of 
 history in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. He was the 
 supreme dispenser of all events, especially of those 
 
12 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 which related to the earth, and his consort was Anatu, 
 who was sometimes regarded as an earth goddess. 
 
 Enlil (or Ellil) was the "lord of lands", and the 
 personification of the earth. At a very early time 
 he gained great eminence in Babylonia, for such 
 great gods as Sin of Ur and Ningirsu of Lagash 
 were called his sons. He is thought to have been 
 the chief god of the Sumerian people, and as Nippur 
 may have been the first settlement of the Sumerians 
 in southern Babylonia, an explanation of Nippur as 
 the seat of this god would be thus explained. He is 
 sometimes called the "great mountain", an epithet 
 which would point to his origin among the Sumerians 
 before they migrated west from their original moun- 
 tain home. This would account for the name of his 
 temple in Nippur, which was E-Kur, "mountain- 
 house", a sanctuary built probably on an artificial 
 mound to represent the original home of the god. 
 
 Enlil has been called the older Bel. His consort 
 was Ninlil, called also Belit-matate or Belit-ile, "lady 
 of the lands" and "lady of the god", respectively. 
 Being a mountain-god, he also associated with storms, 
 in the same way that the Hebrew god, Yahweh, was 
 associated with Sinai, and was known as a storm-god. 
 
 The deity which personified the great waters of the 
 world was Ea, whose seat was at Eridu on the Persian 
 Gulf, an appropriate place for a water-deity. He is 
 comparable with Osiris of Egypt. Being the water- 
 deity, and water being associated with exorcism, Ea be- 
 came, at a very early date, the chief deity of exorcism, 
 and, as father of Marduk, he retained that distinc- 
 
Idea of Cod 13 
 
 tion until the latest times in Babylonia and Assyria. 
 He was consequently the god of wisdom also, and as 
 such the adviser and helper of mankind. His consort 
 was Damkina, a shadowy counter-part, who, like most 
 Babylonian goddesses, never played any important 
 role in any form of human and divine relationships. 
 
 The most attractive natural phenomena, and the 
 most mysterious, have always been the sun and the 
 moon. They have been deified by all ancient races. In 
 Babylonia the moon was deified primarily by those who 
 lived near the desert, and whose experiences asso- 
 ciated them with desert life. Nomadic tribes, who 
 roam the desert, live continually in fear of conflict 
 with other tribes. Their time of greatest activity is 
 during the night when light is not too intense, and 
 when they can elude the pursuit of a possible enemy. 
 But the moon's light on such an occasion is a veritable 
 blessing. It furnishes just enough light to make 
 movement easy, but not enough to make detection 
 probable. Hence the deification of the moon among 
 races who are or were nomads. In Babylonia the 
 moon was worshipped by those who lived in western 
 parts, just on the border of the desert. 
 
 To those peoples who lived a settled, agricultural 
 life, who appreciated the part which the sun plays 
 in the growth of the necessities of life, and who 
 enjoyed its warmth, although sometimes dreading its 
 intense heat, the sun has always appeared as a god. 
 The sun is the great mysterious being which sails 
 across the heavens every day, returning each night 
 to the beginning of its course. 
 
14 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 The sun was personified as Shamash by the Semites, 
 but as Ud, "light", or Babbar by the Sumerians. His 
 chief centre of worship was at Sippar, though he was 
 also closely identified with Larsa, the latter being 
 the oldest residence of Shamash. His sanctuary was 
 called E-Babbar, "shining house", and his chief char- 
 acteristics were Justice and righteousness, of which 
 he was the source and dispenser. 
 
 Besides Shamash, the sun was thought to be mani- 
 fested in the form of other deities. The sky-god Anu 
 was, in the minds of his worshippers of Uruk, a 
 solar deity, as also were Ninib at Nippur, and later 
 Marduk at Babylon and Ashur at Ashur in Assyria. 
 In short there grew up a regular cycle of solar deities. 
 At Lagash, Ningirsu was a solar deity, as were also 
 Nergal of Kutha and Zamama of Kish, as well as 
 the fire-god Nusku. At a later time priestly attempts 
 were made to differentiate these sun-gods. Ningirsu 
 and Ninib were called sun-gods of the springtime or 
 of the morning, while Nergal was assigned to the 
 midsummer or high noon. 
 
 Shamash, the supreme judge and giver of oracles, 
 was not only celebrated as the brother of Ishtar and 
 the consort of Ai, but he was also the father of Kettu, 
 "justice", and Mesharu, "rectitude". With the mys- 
 tery of Shamash, the god of light, were bound up 
 the cleverness and fairness of justice and righteous- 
 ness. The sun was full of mystery to the early Baby- 
 lonians and Assyrians. The nearer they approached 
 him the more mysterious he became. But just as 
 he had the power lo penetrate into all corners and 
 
Idea of Cod 15 
 
 crevices of daily life, so his word had the power of 
 detecting unfair dealings among men. The Baby- 
 lonians, who had a genius for business, soon developed 
 that sense of right proportion in human relationships, 
 which was the result of deep insight into business 
 principles, and which they associated with that divine 
 being whose character it was to bring everything to 
 the test of the light of day. 
 
 On the other hand, the sun was sometimes con- 
 sidered an agent of destruction. His rays could warm 
 and comfort, but they could scorch and burn also. 
 And the seasons of intensest heat were also those of 
 destruction, of lightning and thunderstorms. There 
 came, therefore, to be associated with Shamash and 
 other solar-deities, gods of destructive storms. Thus, 
 with Shamash was associated Adad, who was likewise 
 associated with Anu. But the benificent character 
 of the solar-deities was that which primarily appealed 
 to the Babylonians and Assyrians. 
 
 Just as the sun was the favourite heavenly body 
 among agricultural peoples, so the moon always ap- 
 pealed to the nomad. On the western border of Bab- 
 ylonia, in the neighbourhood of the great desert, the 
 moon was personified as Sin at two great centres, Ur 
 in the south and Harran in the north. At Ur, his 
 temple was called E-Kishshirgal, ^Tiouse of light", and 
 his own Sumerian name was En-Zu, "lord of knowl- 
 edge"; among the Semites he was also known as 
 Nannar, "illumination". As lord of knowledge, Sin 
 was the god of oracles, and the well-disposed father 
 of mankind. He was considered a most powerful god 
 
1 6 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 from the beginning of his career, for Shamash was 
 called his son and Ishtar was his daughter. His 
 consort was Ningal, "the great lady", "the queen". 
 
 Powerful as Sin was he never gathered around 
 him a cycle of di\^ne beings as did Shamash. He 
 was inclined to keep his own councils and jealously 
 to watch for the allegiance of his own worshippers. 
 He is primarily interesting to modern students be- 
 cause of his chief cities Ur and Harran, both of 
 which are associated with the name of the Hebrew 
 patriarch, Abraham, and especially because of the 
 effect which his cult had upon the Hebrew god, 
 Yahweh, who was associated with Sinai, the mountain 
 of Sin, and whose relationship with the followers of 
 Sin has left its lasting mark not only upon Judaism 
 but upon Christianity as well. Our custom of divid- 
 ing time into weeks of seven days each is eloquent 
 testimony to the power and influence of the ancient 
 Babylonian god Sin. And not only in this particular 
 matter but in many other ways our modern culture 
 bears not a few marks of Babylonian moon-worship. 
 
 Because of Ishtar's identification with the star 
 Venus, the goddess should be discussed here, although 
 she was probably at first a personification of fertility 
 in human, animal, and plant life. As such she be- 
 came the great mother-goddess. She always main- 
 tained an independent existence. Her oldest seat was 
 Uruk, though she was associated with many other 
 places during her career, such as Akkad, Nineveh, Ar- 
 bela, and Kidmurru. As Nana she is called the 
 daughter of Anu, but she is also known as the daugh- 
 
Idea of Cod 1 7 
 
 ter of Sin. This would lead to the conclusion that in 
 her character were absorbed other deities, and this is 
 precisely what happened. In fact, she absorbed all 
 other goddesses in the pantheon, becoming the goddess 
 par excellence. In Assyria she became the consort of 
 Ashur. 
 
 Having absorbed many other goddesses, Ishtar was 
 possessed of many attributes. She was associated with 
 Gilgamesh, a solar deity, and her lover was Tammuz, 
 a personification of the sun of springtime. As the 
 great mother-goddess, she was associated with the fer- 
 tility of nature and of man, and became the goddess of 
 love, and of sexual impulse. In her character of love- 
 goddess her fame and worship spread to the land of the 
 Hittites, as well as to Phoenicia, where she was known 
 as Ashtart, to Canaan, where she was called Ash- 
 toreth, and to far-off Greece and Eome, where she 
 was worshipped under the familiar name of the Mater 
 Magna. 
 
 In Assyria, especially, she became the patron of 
 battles, as was her Assyrian consort Ashur. And as 
 the war-like Ishtar her symbol was the lion. She was 
 also symbolized by the dove, but this was in her 
 character as goddess of justice and righteousness, the 
 goddess "judging the cause of man with justice and 
 righteousness". In this role she was associated with 
 all that is ethically true, being commemorated in 
 hymns and psalms with considerable ethical content. 
 Thus she is addressed by a penitent who says : 
 
 "I, thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee; 
 The fervent prayer of him who has sinned do thou accept. 
 
1 8 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 If thou lookest upon a man, that man lives. 
 
 O all-powerful mistress of mankind, 
 
 Merciful one, to whom it is good to turn, who hears sighs ! " 
 
 The most powerful Bab^donian god was Marduk, 
 the city-god of Babylon. He was originally a clan- 
 god, but when his people developed Babylon to the 
 supreme place in Babylonia, Marduk, from being a 
 comparatively obscure deity, became the head of the 
 pantheon. Consequently, there arose a tendency to 
 group all gods around him, and to ascribe to him the 
 attributes of such great gods as Enlil, Ea, Shamash, 
 Nergal, Adad, and Sin. His power became so supreme 
 that the ceremony of "taking the hand of Marduk" 
 was essential to a candidate for the throne of Baby- 
 lonia. 
 
 Marduk was a solar deity, and son of Ea of Eridu. 
 His temple in Babylon was E-sagila, "lofty house", 
 and his wife was Sarpanit. The neighbouring god of 
 Borsippa, Nabu, though himself very powerful, be- 
 came Marduk's son. According as Marduk became 
 more and more powerful and influential, so he usurped 
 the place of other deities and subordinated them 
 and their rights to himself. From Nabu he took over 
 the attribute of "arbiter of destiny"; he became the 
 "healer" of mankind instead of Ea; he assumed the 
 role of creator god instead of Enlil ; and prayers and 
 hymns were interpolated and glossed in order to give 
 him the greater glory. He became the lord, Bel, pa?- 
 excellence, his consort being named Belit, and the 
 great New Year feast became his, making him the 
 
Idea of God 19 
 
 lord and giver of life, the sun, from whom and in 
 whom all things exist. 
 
 Nabu was the neighbour of Marduk, the god of 
 Borsippa, and was much more powerful and influ- 
 ential before than after the rise of Babylon. His 
 temple was E-zida, "house of wisdom", and his eon- 
 sort was Tashmit, though Nana and Nisaba were also 
 associated with him in that capacity. 
 
 Although a god of vegetation, his chief attribute 
 was that of arbiter of destinies. He was the god of 
 wisdom, of writing, and of prophecy, and it is prob- 
 able that he was so closely associated with wisdom, 
 as an element in prophecy, that his name penetrated 
 into western Semitic lands and became the title of 
 those men in Israel who were, previous to the time of 
 Samuel, called seers. The Hebrew word for prophet, 
 nabi, is most likely to be traced to the name of this 
 god. 
 
 Ninib, or as his name is probably now to be read, 
 Ninurasa, was the god of Nippur, the first-born of 
 Enlil, the great physician and god of healing, and the 
 god of the chase. His consort was Gula. He was 
 especially connected with war, as the "mighty hero", 
 and personified the spirit of battle and conquest. 
 
 Nergal was the god of Kutha. His temple was E- 
 shitlam, and his consort was Ereshkigal. Originally a 
 vegetation god, he became the benevolent protector 
 of the fields. But he is famous as a god of plague and 
 fever, similar to the pestilence-god Ira, and especially 
 as a war-god. When he married Ereshkigal, queen 
 of the underworld, he became god of the dead and 
 
20 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 of their realm. As a result of this, his city, Kutha, 
 became a poetic designation of the great gathering- 
 place of the dead, and his s}Tiibol was the fierce lion, 
 greedy for human victims. 
 
 ISTusku was a god of light, and was usually asso- 
 ciated with Enlil of Nippur, though he was also 
 knowTi as son of Sin at Harran. As light or heat 
 god he was the destroyer of all evil, and the promo- 
 ter of all good. His counterpart was Gibil (or 
 Girru), a personification of fire, and god of the smith- 
 craft and of holy sacrificial fire. His province was 
 to destroy e%dl by means of purifying fire. Both gods, 
 because of their association with purifying and de- 
 stroying fire, were ethical in character. 
 
 Tammuz holds an unique position among the great 
 Babylonian gods. His Sumerian name is Dumuzi, 
 "real child", but an older name made him Dumuzi- 
 zuab, "real child of the watery deep". As such he 
 was associated with Ea of Eridu, and became identi- 
 fied with all green plant-growth and with spring, the 
 season of beginning of vegetation. In fact, he became 
 the god who revives in spring and dies in summer, 
 like the Egyptian Osiris. With him were asso- 
 ciated festivals of mourning and festivals of joy, for 
 his death and resurrection. He was never intimately 
 associated with any one centre, for he became pop- 
 ular and democratic, even, in a sense, an universal 
 god in Babylonia. With him was associated Ishtar 
 the great mother-goddess, who personified fertilization. 
 He was her husband and lover both, and with them 
 was connected his sister Geshtinanna, who plays a 
 
Idea of Cod 21 
 
 similar part to that taken by Nephthys in Egypt. 
 His cult became most popular and extended to Israel, 
 where it was very prominent at the time of Ezekiel. 
 His worship might have become very powerful and 
 enduring if there had been similar conditions to those 
 in Egypt, which would have served as soil in which 
 the seed could have grown. But the Babylonians were 
 a sterner people than the Eg^^ptians, to whom the joy- 
 ful note in the character of Tammuz could not make a 
 lasting appeal; and they had never developed a con- 
 ception of the future which was capable of rendering 
 the Tammuz-resurrection idea influential, necessary, 
 and attractive. 
 
 There were many other Babylonian gods, each of 
 whom was connected with some place or person. They 
 were so nmnerous that two general terms were applied 
 to them, namely, the Igigi, or earth-deities, and the 
 Anunnaki, or heaven-gods. It is felt by some students 
 of Babylonian and Hebrew^ religion that even the god 
 of Israel, Yahweh, was for some time at least asso- 
 ciated with the Babylonian pantheon, his name being 
 found in such combinations as Ya-u-um-ilu of the 
 Hammurapi period and Ya-u-bani of the Kassite pe- 
 riod ; the former being equivalent in constmction and 
 meaning to the name Elijah, "Yahweh is my god"; 
 and the latter to the name Asahiah, "whom Yahweh 
 created". 
 
 Assyria inherited the religion of Babylonia, although 
 she breathed into it her national warlike character, 
 and her pantheon coincided with that of Baby- 
 lonia, except in the case of Ashur and Adad. Ashur 
 
22 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 was a solar deity, and patron-god of the city of Ashur, 
 where his cult can be traced to a very primitive 
 time. The antiquity of Ashur's settlement in Ashur 
 is indicated by the fact that when x\nu was recognized 
 there with Ashur, he was god of Uruk. In fact, a 
 common etymology connected Ashur with Anu, by 
 deriving the name Ashur from An-shar. From the 
 first, Ashur became head of the Assyrian pantheon, 
 around whom, as around Marduk in Babylon, all the 
 gods were grouped. All roles of the great Babylonian 
 gods were ascribed to him and a creation myth arose, 
 a trace of which still survives, in which Ashur is the 
 creator. The two great gods Ashur and Marduk were 
 supreme in their own political and religious spheres, 
 and became rivals only when Babylonia gave the 
 Assyrians trouble. Then the statue of Marduk was 
 carried off to Assyria, by Sennacherib, who besieged 
 and destroyed Babylon in 689 B. C. But when Ash- 
 urbanipal came to the throne he returned the statue 
 from Nineveh to Babylon and "took the hand of 
 Bel". 
 
 The Assyrians were a warlike people, and Ashur 
 their god became primarily a war-god. He was sjm- 
 bolized by a winged-disk, with a man with a bow and 
 arrow within the disk. His solar character is indicated 
 by the disk ; and it is interesting to note that his cult 
 was devoid of statues, although there is no evidence 
 that it was more spiritual than that of Baby- 
 lonian gods. His supreme aloneness in Assyria is 
 due to the great unity of the country, geographically 
 and politically, where he had no rival, and to the fact 
 
Idea of Cod 23 
 
 that the Assyrians were almost always absorbed in 
 war and conquest, and Ashur was their great leader. 
 
 But other deities were recognized and worshipped, 
 chiefly Sin, Shamash, Adad, Marduk, Nabu, Ishtar, 
 Ninib, Nergal, Nusku, as well as the three great gods 
 Anu, Enlil, and Ea. 
 
 The other great Assyrian god was Adad or Eam- 
 man, a god of storms and rains. He gave rains in 
 time of drought, and was, accordingly a beneficent 
 deity; but he also withheld rain and brought on 
 drought and famine, and was, therefore, a god of 
 destruction also. He had no special place of worship 
 in Assyria, being a foreign god, who came from the 
 west lands, although he shared a sanctuary with Anu 
 at Ashur, called the Anu-Adad temple. He was sym- 
 bolized by the thunderbolt and by an ox, types of his 
 strength and character as a weather-god; he was in 
 many ways the counterpart of Enlil; and his wife 
 was Shala. 
 
 The goddess Ishtar retained her power and popu- 
 larity in Assyria. She was closely associated with 
 Ashur, as war-goddess, and was differentiated in a 
 threefold way as Ishtar of Nineveh, of Arbela, and 
 of Kidmurru. This threefold differentiation w^as 
 probably due to the fact that the name Ishtar had 
 become a generic term for goddess, and was con- 
 sequently ascribed to different deities. This would 
 be all the more probable when we consider the fact 
 that Babylonian and Assyrian goddesses were never 
 more than shadowy counterparts of the gods, with 
 the exception of just the same goddess, whose name 
 
24 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 became a designation of all goddesses. That is^, when- 
 ever a goddess, such as those of Nineveh, Arbela, 
 and IvidniTirru, became powerful, they adopted the 
 name Ishtar, as symbol of independence and power. 
 
 The other goddesses of Babylonia and Assyria 
 remained from first to last mere reflections of their 
 consorts. Such were, for example, Ninlil, Ningal, 
 Damkina, Shala, Sarpanit, Tashit, Antum, Gula, and 
 Ereshkigal, consorts of Enlil, Sin, Ea, Adad, Marduk, 
 Nabu, Anu, Xinib, and Nergal, respectively. 
 
 The Neo-Babylonian empire possessed a national 
 unity and character that was altogether unknown 
 in early Babylonia. As a result, everything centred 
 around the national god Marduk, although there were 
 other gods. It was a period of national consciousness, 
 and the ideal was the greatness of the past. This 
 resulted in a great religious revival, and an attempt 
 to imitate the past in art and culture. It was not un- 
 like the Saite age in Egypt, and resulted in the same 
 political impotency. Because Nabonidus was more 
 interested in archaeology and the past, Babylon fell 
 an easy prey to the more modern and alert Cyrus. 
 
 When Jacob said, "If God will keep me in the way 
 that I go and will give me bread to eat and raiment to 
 put on, so that I come again to my father's house in 
 peace, then shall Yahweh be my God," he was merely 
 being true to the early Semitic ideal. Each man re- 
 served the right to approach his god on any and all oc- 
 casions. The gods were to be worshipped and appealed 
 to, nor did any undue fear or dread hold the Babylo- 
 nians and Assyrians back from the exercise of these 
 
Idea of Cod 25 
 
 rights. In fact each man had a personal god, and 
 called himself the "son of his god", duniu dingir-ra-ni, 
 or mar ili-su. Sometimes a god would desert his cli- 
 ent, and then demons would come and attack the man. 
 And so the earnest desire of each person was to keep 
 on good terms, especially with his patron-deity, in 
 order to insure his continual protection. 
 
 In the early Sumerian period, between about 3200 
 and 2800 B. C, there was no national religion. The 
 national unit was the city-state, and each city-state 
 had its own chief god, with, sometimes, other divine 
 adherents. There was, however, a tendency to recog- 
 nize any god who became very powerful; thus, be- 
 cause of the greatness and power of Nippur, its god, 
 Enlil, became very prominent, and was widely rec- 
 ognized and worshipped. Nevertheless, Enlil never 
 became a national god. Each centre of organized 
 government had its own great god — Enki (Ea) at 
 Eridu, Nannar (Sin) at Ur, Anu and Nana (Ishtar) 
 at Uruk, Enlil at Nippur, Nergal at Kutha, and 
 Zamama at Kish. 
 
 During the first Akkadian or Semitic period, from 
 about 2800 to 2400 B. C, there arose a tendency 
 to systematize theological thinking. The Sumerians 
 never seemed inclined to systematization. They were 
 content to live in small isolated groups, and to think 
 in an isolated theological way. But the Semites were 
 different. They had the genius of democratic amal- 
 gamation. The theological result was an attempt to 
 relate the gods one to another. This took shape in 
 the formulation of divine triads, the first probably 
 
26 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 being Anu, Enlil, and Enki (Ea), but with further 
 organization a double triad was created; namely, one 
 centring in Uruk and Nippur, resulting in Anu, 
 Ninib, Enlil (later Ea, Enlil, Ninib), and the second 
 centring in Eridu, resulting in Ea, Nabu, Marduk 
 (later, Ea, Marduk, Nabu). In very ancient times 
 there may have been a duad, such as Anshar and 
 Kishar, god of the upper and god of the lower region, 
 but this is doubtful, and may be later speculation. 
 
 With the increase of Sumerian power during the 
 dynasties of Ur and Nisin, from about 2400 to 2100 
 B. C, theological speculation and organization again 
 became dormant, but with the rise of the First Dy- 
 nasty of Babylon, about 2100 B. C, a Semitic race 
 of rulers, theological organization again came into its 
 own. Other triads were now constructed, the chief 
 being, Ea, Marduk, Nabu ; Ea being the father, Mar- 
 duk the son, and Nabu the grandson. Under the 
 influence of the same impulse, triads sprang up all 
 over the land. Thus, at Haran, Sin became the head 
 of a divine family. Sin, Ningal, Ishtar, the third 
 member being sometimes Nusku. This triad became 
 popular in the reign of Hammurapi, as Sin, Shamash, 
 Ishtar, due to astrological speculation. 
 
 It was during the First Babylonian Dynasty that 
 the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars, were closely 
 studied, and there arose a school of priestly astrologers 
 or astronomers. The sun was Shamash, the moon Sin, 
 and the star Venus was Ishtar. This resulted in the 
 triad, Shamash, Sin, and Ishtar. The priests thought 
 they had discovered a close link between the move- 
 
Idea of Cod 27 
 
 ments going on in the heavens and occurrences on 
 earth. This led to an identification of the chief deities 
 with the heavenly bodies, and to assignment of the 
 seats of all the divine beings to heaven. Besides the 
 identification of Shamash, Sin, and Ishtar, with the 
 sun, moon, and Venus, Marduk was identified with 
 Jupiter, Nergal with Mars, Nabu with Mercury, and 
 Ninib with Saturn. The old triad Anu, Enlil, Enki 
 (Ea) took on new life as Anu, Bel, Ea, the power- 
 ful heaven-god, the earth-god, and the water-god, 
 respectively. 
 
 The priests proceeded to further elaboration, using 
 popular belief in the dependence of earthly circum- 
 stances upon heavenly phenomena, and developed a 
 regular system of astrology, and an elaborate method 
 of divining the future. Even liver divination, which 
 will be described in another place, the oldest form of 
 divination, was brought into connection with this as- 
 trological system. Ea and his son Marduk became the 
 great lords of divination and incantation, and all signs 
 in the heavens as well as on the earth were referred to 
 them. 
 
 This whole priestly system of astrology is thus com- 
 paratively late. There is no evidence at all that 
 Marduk, Nabu, Ninib, and Nergal were originally 
 connected with the stars, nor is there any convincing 
 evidence that the astral idea reached back as far as 
 Sumerian times. Astrology grew gradually but stead- 
 ily, but became to a large extent official, for there 
 is no proof that the fortunes of individuals were fore- 
 told from the study of the stars till Greek times. 
 
28 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 N'or did astrology pass from a purely religious dis- 
 cipline to a scientific study till the Neo-Babylonian 
 and Persian periods. 
 
 The favourite triad of the Kassite period, lasting 
 till 1750 B. C, was Sin, Shamash, Ishtar. The 
 Assyrians did not lay any emphasis upon the formu- 
 lation of triads, for they were sufficiently confident 
 in their god Ashur. In them, as Semites, we see the 
 power of concentration at its highest, except in later 
 days in Israel. Ashur was not the only god, but he 
 was all about whom it was necessary to worry. Other 
 gods were his assistants. He was the lord and mas- 
 ter, the protector, and leader of his people. But the 
 Neo-Babylonians retained their triad which usually 
 took the form of Sin, Shamash, Adad ; Sin, Shamash, 
 Ishtar; or Nergal, Adad, Ishtar. Their pantheon, 
 however, remained very large, the chief deities being 
 Marduk, Nabu, Ishtar, Shamash, and Sin. 
 
 The ideal at all times has been to make things 
 according to the pattern in the mount. The perfect 
 workman needs a perfect pattern. All things, before 
 they are brought into being, exist in the mind of the 
 gods. The perfect workman translates them into 
 material realities. But the converse has always been 
 true with the seekers after God. The pattern of God 
 has been found in the idealism of man. Gods have 
 ever been created in the image and likeness of men. 
 The gods were thus enlarged human beings, to whom 
 were ascribed human actions, except that there was 
 always a tendency to ascribe the best to them. They 
 were ordinarily considered invisible and more mighty 
 
Idea of Cod 29 
 
 ^ than mankind, otherwise they were not sharply differ- 
 
 entiated in attributes and characteristics from men. 
 They had wives, sons, and daughters, and were born 
 and died just like mortals. In short the gods were 
 thoroughly anthropomorphic, and the product of 
 human imagination. 
 
 But the Babylonians and Assyrians ascribed the 
 best they knew to the gods. Thus the gods were holy, 
 righteous, pure, faithful, just, truthful, piteous, and 
 merciful, according to the highest current conceptions 
 of these ideas. Their abodes were places of holiness ; 
 they were the authors of law ; they directed mankind, 
 and determined its destiny; they loved peace; and 
 they cursed and destroyed the wicked. They were 
 not, however, even in those times, considered abso- 
 lutely perfect. The doing of wrong and evil was 
 ascribed to them, and they were considered subject 
 to repentance. 
 
 The people felt themselves directly dependent upon 
 the gods, and divine worship played an important 
 role. Temples were built and offerings were con- 
 stantly made. 
 
 It is probable that the holiness ascribed to the gods 
 may have been partly ritual and partly ceremonial; 
 yet as far as the people understood true moral holi- 
 ness, so they ascribed it to their gods. The oath, 
 for example, was sacred. It was a guarantee of truth, 
 and as such was taken in the name of the gods. 
 
 The gods could always be counted upon to be pro- 
 pitious to their suppliants. They were the hearers of 
 prayers ; they gave "waters of freedom" ; and bestowed 
 
30 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 care upon pious deeds; they were the source of 
 righteousness ; and they loved to bless their own. 
 
 Above everything else the Babylonians and Assyr- 
 ians loved to think of their gods as righteous and 
 true. From the time of Sargon to that of Ashurbani- 
 pal, kings delighted in the title shar misharim, king 
 of righteousness, and took pleasure in ascribing that 
 attribute to all the gods, and especially to Shamash 
 and Adad. They themselves gave directions to "hate 
 evil and love right", and ascribe the same desire to 
 the gods. Of course, the Babylonian and Assyrian 
 words may not always have the same content as our 
 words "righteousness" and "truth", but the words 
 kittu and misharu, which we render by "righteousness" 
 and "truth", are derived from kanu, "to be firm", and 
 esliem, "to be straight", respectively; and, judging 
 from what was considered "right" and "true", or Icittu 
 and misharu, there is no reason for doubting that 
 the standard was very high. This we shall show in 
 the chapter on Morals. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians were polytheists, 
 or at most henotheists. They believed in the existence 
 of innumerable gods and goddesses, all of whom pos- 
 sessed superhuman power and knowledge, but none of 
 whom were omniscient or omnipotent. Each social 
 group believed its own chief deity to be the greatest. 
 This is what is called henotheism. But monotheism, 
 the belief in one universal god, was never reached by 
 the Babylonians and Assyrians, much less ethical 
 monotheism, the belief in one universal, righteous, 
 and holy god. 
 
Idea of Cod 31 
 
 There is a composition preserved in a Neo-Babylo- 
 nian copy of an older text, which reads as follows : 
 
 "Ea is the Marduk of canals; 
 Ninib is the Marduk of strength; 
 Nergal is the Marduk of war; 
 Zamama is the Marduk of battle; 
 Enlil is the Marduk of sovereignty and control; 
 Nabu is the Marduk of possession; 
 Sin is the Marduk of illumination of the night; 
 Shamash is the Marduk of judgments; 
 Adad is the Marduk of rain; 
 Tishpak is the Marduk of the host; 
 Gal is the Marduk of strength; 
 Shukamunu is the Marduk of the harvest." 
 
 This text has been taken as a proof that Marduk 
 was considered by the Babylonians as the only god, all 
 other deities being merely manifestations of him. 
 This might be granted if we knew nothing more 
 about the background of culture and religion out of 
 which this composition arose. But, at the same time 
 that men were reading it, the Babylonians were offer- 
 ing prayers and sacrificing to innumerable deities, all 
 distinct, independent, and often rivals of Marduk. 
 The text does nothing more than reflect the political 
 supremacy of Marduk, and remind us that Marduk 
 was the greatest of all Babylonian gods from the time 
 of Hammurapi on. It may even be said to indicate a 
 tendency toward that which resulted in a conception 
 of true monotheism, but the tendency did not go very 
 far. 
 
 There is probably to be found in Assyria a pro- 
 founder understanding of the idea of monopoly in the 
 god-head than in Babjdonia. Ashur did not stand 
 
32 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 alone. There were other deities. But Ashur towered 
 so far above the others; his sway was so much more 
 coterminous with his own country, at least; his cult 
 was so much more independent of external and mate- 
 rial representations than that of other deities ; and he 
 became so much more transcendentalized, at least in 
 the minds of his people, than was the case with other 
 deities ; that if monotheism had been at all developed 
 in Babylonia and Assyria, the chances are that it 
 would have occurred in the latter country. But Baby- 
 lonians and Assyrians, from the first to the last, were 
 far too nationalistic, far too narrow, far too religiously 
 undeveloped, and far too morally limited, to arrive 
 at any adequate idea of the oneness, perfection, 
 omniscience, and omnipotence of God. 
 
 Eeviewing the idea of God as we have found it 
 among the Babylonians and Assyrians, it may be said 
 that they continually lifted up their eyes unto the 
 hills from whence their help came; they were not 
 content with peering into the valleys, nor even with 
 appealing to their fellow-men, to nature, or to pleas- 
 ure; but they felt the necessity of seeking help from 
 the highest source of which they were conscious. 
 They wanted help only from the best and noblest. 
 They believed that the spirits which permeated all 
 natural phenomena held in their power the destinies 
 of men ; they believed them to be gods, to be endowed 
 with the highest qualities of which they themselves 
 were conscious. They pinned their faith to them and 
 propitiated them in every possible manner. They loved 
 to think and dream about them, about their character 
 
Idea of Cod 33 
 
 and manner of living. They ascribed the best they 
 knew to them. But just as the world in which these 
 Babylonians and Assyrians lived consisted of various 
 and diverse national groups, so there were various and 
 diverse gods. They had never arrived at an idea of 
 the world, sufficiently unified to lead them to any idea 
 of the unification in the being of the gods. They de- 
 veloped a remarkable material civilization; their art 
 and architecture, their language and literature, are 
 unsurpassed, in many ways, by those of any ancient, 
 and many modem peoples ; and their commercial and 
 legal ideas and institutions have become the common 
 heritage of modern civilization. A higher conception 
 of legal justice has never been developed anywhere. 
 The Code of Hammurapi, the innumerable contracts, 
 and the supremely just commercial transactions which 
 have been preserved to us from Babylonian and Assyr- 
 ian civilization would put many of our modern Wes- 
 tern institutions to shame. But, contrary to Eenan's 
 famous dictum, they were not monotheists, nor were 
 they physically constructed, geographically placed, 
 mentally equipped, morally endowed, or spiritually in- 
 spired to arrive at such a conception. Culturally they 
 were highly talented, commercially and legally they 
 were unsurpassed in the ancient world, but their moral 
 and religious horizon was considerably limited. The 
 gift of monotheism to humanity came from another 
 source — a politically insignificant, but religiously in- 
 spired people — but the world's art and architecture, 
 commerce and law are deeply indebted to the genius 
 of the Babylonians and Assyrians. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE IDEA OF MAN IN BABYLONIA 
 AND ASSYRIA 
 
 When Balak wanted Balaam to curse the Israelites 
 who were approaching the domain of Moab, he tried 
 to cheat himself into thinking that if Balaam did 
 not see the whole of the forces of Israel he would be 
 induced to venture a malediction. And so Balak said 
 to Balaam, "Come, I pray thee, with me unto another 
 place, from whence thou mayest see them. Thou 
 shalt see but the utmost part of them, and shalt not 
 see them all ; and curse me them from thence." But it 
 was a vain expedient. The blessing came still pour- 
 ing forth more richly than before. The first thing 
 which strikes one in this story is the narrowness of 
 Balak's vision and its lack of absoluteness. There is 
 an absolute truth about everything, something which 
 is certainly the fact about that thing, entirely inde- 
 pendent of what people may think about it. No man 
 on earth may know that fact correctly — but the fact 
 exists. It lies behind all blunders and all partial 
 knowledge, a calm, sure, unfound certainty, like the 
 
 34 
 
Idea of Man 35 
 
 great sea beneath the waves, like the quiet sky behind 
 its clouds. The infinite God knows it. It, and the 
 possession of it, makes the eternal difference between 
 perfect and partial knowledge. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians were Balaks, not 
 intentionally, but on account of conditions and cir- 
 cumstances over which they had no control. In like 
 manner, all primitive peoples are Balaks. The truth 
 of man and the world in which he lives exists, but 
 primitive man's understanding of it is exceedingly 
 limited. Nevertheless, human nature insists upon 
 knowledge even though it be limited and imperfect. 
 The point where the Babylonians and Assyrians stood 
 gave but a partial view of the world and man. But 
 they rightly insisted upon the view, and upon an 
 expression of it. 
 
 Our knowledge of what the Babylonians and As- 
 syrians believed about the universe and the beginnings 
 of the race is derived chiefly from a poem of about 
 a thousand lines, called, in the Babylonian language, 
 Enuma Elish, and, by modern students. The Epic of 
 Creation; and partly from the Greek writings of a 
 late Babylonian priest, called Berossus. 
 
 According to them we learn that the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians believed that in the beginning there 
 existed a great primitive watery chaos. It consisted 
 of three elements, which were personified as Apsu, 
 Tiamat, and Mummu, namely, father, mother, and 
 son. This chaos gave rise to Anshar and Kishar, 
 heaven and earth, the ancestors of the gods Anu, Enlil, 
 and Ea. Tiamat quarrelled with the gods. Open 
 
36 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 warfare ensued. Accordingly, Tiamat created eleven 
 monsters of chaos, headed by Kingu, whom she made 
 her husband, and to whom she entrusted the Tablets 
 of Destiny. Ea and Anu succeeded in disposing of 
 Apsu and Mummu, but were unable to seize Tiamat. 
 Marduk of Babylon then intervenes and offers his 
 services against Tiamat, on the condition that if 
 he is victorious he be made chief of the gods. This 
 was agreed upon, and Marduk entered the list against 
 Tiamat, whom he soon vanquished. According to 
 the later form of the story, Marduk cut the corpse 
 of Tiamat in two, out of which he made heaven and 
 earth. Then follow the several acts of creation, the 
 last of which being the creation of man. The Su- 
 merian version makes Aruru, the earth-goddess, the 
 creator of man. She took the blood of Tiamat and 
 mixed it with earth, the result being man. Another 
 account makes Ishtar the creator, and still another 
 makes the Word of Marduk the creative agent. The 
 Epic of Creation, as we have it, closes with a hymn 
 to Marduk as the creator-god. This account evidently 
 arose after the establishment of the supremacy of 
 Babylon and its god, Marduk. A shorter account, 
 and perhaps the earlier, knows nothing of a battle 
 between Marduk and Tiamat, but represents the world 
 as rising out of the ocean without conflict and in a 
 peaceful manner. 
 
 Such were the attempts of the early Babylonians 
 to account for the origin of the world and man. It 
 is imperfect and limited, coming from a point in time 
 and place where only a partial view was possible. 
 
Idea of Man 37 
 
 But it was an earnest attempt, and as such must be 
 respected. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians believed that there 
 existed an order of beings semi-human and semi- 
 divine. The most important and interesting of these 
 was Gilgamesh, whose exploits have been handed down 
 to us in a poem which we call the Gilgamesh Epic. 
 
 Gilgamesh was a semi-divine ruler of Uruk. His 
 people tire of him, and pray to the earth-goddess 
 Arum, who creates Enkidu (Eabani) as a companion 
 for him, who will entice him to leave the city. Enkidu 
 succeeds in his mission, and he and Gilgamesh go on 
 an adventure to the Cedar Mountain in the East. 
 There Ishtar dwells with her servant Humbaba. En- 
 kidu and Gilgamesh look upon Humbaba as unneces- 
 sary to their plans, so they slay him. After being rec- 
 onciled to the death of her bodyguard, Ishtar falls in 
 love with Gilgamesh, and offers her hand in marriage. 
 But Gilgamesh refuses. This enrages the goddess, 
 and she persuades Anu to create an ox to do battle 
 with Gilgamesh; but Gilgamesh with the aid of En- 
 kidu kills the ox. After this, Enkidu makes the 
 mistake of taunting Ishtar about her love affair with 
 Gilgamesh, which results in his death. Gilgamesh, 
 now left alone, bethinks himself of the hero who was 
 rescued from the flood, Utnapishtim, and goes to 
 seek him. He passes over the lofty mountain Mashu, 
 and crosses the great wild steppes, finally reaching 
 the paradise of the gods, situated on the shore of the 
 sea, where he finds the goddess Sabitu sitting on her 
 throne. He makes himself known to her and relates 
 
38 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 to her his desires. She is friendly, and directs her 
 ferryman to row him over the "water of death". 
 Finally, Gilgamesh reaches the abode of Utnapishtim, 
 who tells him all about the Flood. While there, 
 Gilgamesh seeks and discovers the plant of life, but 
 on his way home from Utnapishtim a serpent meets 
 him and snatches the plant away. Gilgamesh reaches 
 Uruk a saddened man, but succeeds in getting into 
 touch with his former companion Enkidu, from whom 
 he learns about the realm of the dead. 
 
 Another king-story may be seen in the Etana Myth. 
 Etana is a primeval hero, and founder of kingship 
 on earth. He desires to set up a king, and applies, 
 on advice of Shamash, to an eagle for help to 
 bring from heaven a medical herb which shall secure 
 safe birth to the expected king. The eagle consents, 
 and Etana is carried to heaven, but on their return 
 both fall to the ground. However, the child is safely 
 bom and becomes king. Another story tells about 
 ten primeval kings between the time of Creation and 
 that of the Flood. 
 
 Thus the Babylonians and Assyrians, as well as 
 other primitive peoples, saw in kingship a link be- 
 tween gods and men. At first, the gods themselves 
 reigned over the men on earth, but they were succeeded 
 by semi-divine rulers, who, in turn, were succeeded 
 by a line of human kings. The same conception may 
 be seen back of the account of the antediluvian an- 
 cestors in the Book of Genesis. 
 
 The essential connection between the life of the gods 
 and the life of man is the gi'eat truth of the world, for 
 
Idea of Man 39 
 
 "the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord". And 
 just as the candle obeys the fire, the docile wax ac- 
 knowledging the subtle flame as its master, so every 
 faithful follower of the gods gives them a chance 
 to utter themselves. There must therefore be a cor- 
 respondency of nature between the two, man must be 
 in cordial obedience to the gods. The gods are the 
 fire of the world, its vital principle, a warm, pervading 
 presence everywhere. And of this fire the spirit of 
 man is the candle. That is, man is of a nature which 
 corresponds to the nature of the gods, and just so far 
 as man is obedient to the gods, their life, which is 
 spread throughout the universe, gathers itself into 
 utterance. When the fire of the gods has found the 
 candle of the gods, the candle burns clearly and 
 steadily, guiding and cheering instead of bewildering 
 and frightening. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians believed as firmly 
 as did the Hebrews that the blood thereof is the life 
 thereof. And when they represented man as created 
 out of the blood of the gods, they meant that he 
 partook of their life. The first man, who was also 
 a king, was semi-divine : he was made of earth mingled 
 with the blood of the gods. The Sumerian word for 
 soul, zid, "rush of the wind", and its Babylonian 
 equivalent napishtu, "breath", both refer to the breath 
 as the seat of the self, even as the Hebrews did, using 
 the same word, nepJiesh, as the Babylonians. But 
 neither the Hebrews nor the Babylonians and Assyr- 
 ians deny the current belief that the life of man was 
 in his blood. 
 
40 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 However, man was created mortal. It was believed 
 to be possible to attain immortality, but only for ex- 
 ceptional persons, such as Utnapishtim and his wife. 
 Adapa received from Ea a high degree of wisdom, 
 but not the gift of immortality. He desired to attain 
 to eternal life, and would have done so had he eaten 
 of the food and water of life that were presented to 
 him by Anu. But, on refusing to do so, he lost that 
 great prize. Immortality was a possession of the gods 
 which they guarded with great jealousy. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians had no theory of 
 the origin of sin. There is nothing to be found in 
 their literature w^hich corresponds to the Paradise 
 story of the Old Testament or the yetzer theory of 
 later Judaism. The interest of these people was prac- 
 tical rather than metaphysical. They recognized and 
 realized the existence of evil, and assumed, without 
 debate, that it came from the world of spirits which 
 surrounded them. They would not accuse their gods 
 of being the origin of sin ; but besides gods there were 
 numerous demons, spiritual and unseen beings from 
 whom came sickness and death, and to whom were 
 ascribed all evil. The "evil eye" was the malevolent 
 glance of a demon. In this respect they were the fore- 
 runners of Persian thought. Gods could not originate 
 evil, man did not, but the demons did. When Moses 
 descended from the mountain and found that his 
 brother Aaron had made a golden calf, which the peo- 
 ple were worshipping, he became very angry with him 
 and took the calf and destroyed it. Aaron, smarting 
 under the severe reprimand of his brother, does his 
 
Idea of Man 41 
 
 * best to shift the blame from himself to something else 
 
 — the fire ; and he said to Moses that, having taken the 
 gold and having cast it into the fire, "there came out 
 this calf. The tendency to shift blame and responsi- 
 bility is a universal one; nor were the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians immune. The blame for the origin 
 of sin was shifted to the shoulders of demons and evil 
 spirits. 
 
 These early peoples were conscious, however, of the 
 fact that sin brought misfortune, and they did all 
 in their power by way of sacrifice, incantation, and 
 magic to remove it. The Flood is an instance of mis- 
 fortune due to sin. The gods behold the sinfulness 
 of mankind, and decide to send a flood. Ea, the lover 
 of man, reveals the decision of the gods to Utnapish- 
 tim, and commands him to build a ship for his safety 
 and the safety of his creatures. Utnapishtim obeys 
 just in time, for the flood breaks forth, the gods them- 
 selves flee to heaven for protection, and the mother of 
 the gods and Ea pray for a cessation of the tempest. 
 On the seventh day the storm ceases, and the waters 
 abate, and the ship rests on Mount Nasir. After seven 
 days more, Utnapishtim sends forth from the ship 
 a dove, and then a swallow. Both return. Then he 
 sends forth a raven, which does not return. Dry land 
 appears, and Utnapishtim disembarks and sacrifices 
 to the gods ; but not to Enlil who brought on the flood, 
 and who wishes utterly to destroy mankind. 
 
 The point to be noted in connection with the Flood 
 story is that it was considered the result of sin, for 
 all suffering resulted in sinfulness. This was an 
 
42 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 accepted Babylonian and Assyrian dogma. The sin 
 was not necessarily what we call "moral", it was some 
 act or deed which resulted in the displeasure of the 
 gods and oppression by demons. Demons sent sin. 
 They also sent punishment. But man was to resist 
 the sin which was sent by the demons. Failure to 
 resist it resulted in punishment. But man had the 
 necessary power of resistance. He possessed free will 
 and self respect. These he never surrendered. He 
 was humble in the presence of his gods, listening to 
 what they had to say. He was willing to prostrate 
 himself before them, and to signify his readiness to 
 receive what they should tell him by the complete 
 disowning of anything like worth or dignity in him- 
 self. But there is another picture with another truth. 
 There comes a time when a man must stand on his 
 feet; not in the attitude of humiliation but in the 
 attitude of self respect; not stripped of all strength, 
 and lying like a dead man waiting for life to be 
 given him, but strong in the intelligent conscious- 
 ness of privilege, and standing alive, ready to coop- 
 erate with the gods who speak to him. 
 
 There is reason to believe that many a Babylonian 
 and Assyrian took this attitude in the presence of his 
 gods, and insisted upon his own dignity. But between 
 him and the demons and evil spirits, the source of all 
 sin and evil, and the bearers of punishment and suf- 
 fering, there was an endless conflict. And the only 
 assurance of final victory was in the help and protec- 
 tion of the gods. 
 
 Individuality was not greatly emphasised in Baby- 
 
Idea of Man 43 
 
 Ionia and Assyria — at any rate, the average indi- 
 vidual did not receive much attention at the hands of 
 the scribe. The mass of extant literature deals with 
 the people as a whole or with certain special individ- 
 uals, such as the king and the prince, the priest and 
 the exorcist. We know that each man had a personal 
 protective deity, and had developed a somewhat keen 
 sense of his relationship to his god, and of his individ- 
 ual right in commercial matters ; but what the details 
 of his rights and privileges, his customs and manners, 
 his ambitions and ideas, were, we are unable to re- 
 construct with certainty. 
 
 It is comparatively easy, however, by the aid of 
 legal and contract literature, to gain a fairly complete 
 view of Babylonian and Assyrian every-day life. Ac- 
 cordingly, we find the family to have been the basis 
 of all social life and activity, and begun with the 
 marriage of two persons. Preparatory to the marriage 
 it was customary to draw up a legal contract; and, 
 before the contract could be entered into, the consent 
 of the parents was required. Without this contract 
 marriage was illegal, for "if a man takes a wife and 
 does not execute contracts for her, that wife is no 
 wife". 
 
 Monogamy seemed to have been the ideal, and to 
 a large extent the standard; but man was permitted 
 to have as many ^dves as he desired. Concubines 
 and slave-wives were very common at all periods. 
 The marriage relationship could be interrupted in 
 various ways, chiefly by divorce. In the earliest 
 periods the right of divorce belonged only to the man. 
 
44 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 but as early as the First Babylonian Dynasty the 
 woman also could bring about a divorce. 
 
 The father was the head of the family, and at 
 all periods in Babylonian and Ass3Tian life held all 
 kinds of extraordinary powers over the members of 
 his family, although they were to some extent re- 
 stricted. He could divorce his wife at will, often 
 by mere repudiation; he could sell his children, boys 
 as well as girls ; and he could disinherit any of them 
 at will. But, on the other hand, he was responsible 
 for the support of his wives and children, and if he 
 divorce the former or disinherit the latter he was 
 liable to full or partial support of them. He could 
 adopt children at will, and name them as his heirs 
 in case of dispute with his own children. But he 
 was generally kind and loving, and assumed the re- 
 sponsibility of family life with earnestness and in 
 good faith. 
 
 The wife, on the other hand, had certain rights 
 which she was not slow in demanding. She could 
 repudiate a worthless husband and take her dowry 
 back to her father's house, and if she was viciously 
 slandered she could exact very severe penalties. 
 
 Children owed definite duties to their parents, and 
 especially in the case of loyalty, for which if they 
 were found wanting they were severely punished. 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians abhorred filial in- 
 gratitude. They were very often responsible for the 
 debts of their parents. But they possessed definite 
 rights of their own. They could claim a patrimony 
 which proceeded from gifts made by the father, and 
 
Idea of Man 45 
 
 of which they could dispose freely. If in any way 
 they felt themselves unjustly treated, they had the 
 legal right to protest and to make claims. Orphans 
 were often well provided for, there being evidence 
 that they sometimes received a pension equal to the 
 mother's allowance while she was living. 
 
 Obligations of superiors to inferiors and of inferiors 
 to superiors were not neglected. The ideal servant 
 was one who was full of respect for his master, and 
 who always did what was becoming. Even the slave 
 had his rights, and it was permissible for him to enter 
 a lawsuit against his master and to assert his rights. 
 On the other hand, as Urukagina's reform shows, 
 there was often the need of a champion of the weak 
 against the strong, and the fact that this ruler was 
 such shows the keen realization of the rights of the 
 inferior as against the exactions of superiors. 
 
 Babylonian and Assyrian society consisted of three 
 classes: the amelu, which included the king, the chief 
 officers of state, and landed proprietors ; the mushkenu, 
 which included the bulk of the subject population; 
 and the ardu or slave. At the head stood the king 
 as representative of the gods. In the case of Ham- 
 murapi we have an example and model of the ideal 
 king. From the Epilogue and Prologue to his Code 
 we are reminded that he is "the perfect King", "a 
 ruler who is like a real father to his people", he was 
 the doer of right, "the king of righteousness", whose 
 "scepter is righteousness", "who made justice prevail 
 and who ruled the race with right", who "made right- 
 eousness to shine forth on the land", who "established 
 
46 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 law and justice in the land and promoted the welfare 
 of the people", whose ideal was a "peaceful country" 
 and "pure judgment", and who "brought about plenty 
 and abundance". In short, the king was considered 
 perfect and as such was honoured with titles which 
 actually related him to the gods. He was, thus, the 
 son of the god, and sometimes, as in the case of Ham- 
 murapi, was supplicated and revered almost like a 
 god. Hammurapi was undoubtedly an exceptional 
 king, who was not only himself a righteous ruler, 
 but who also expressed the wish that his successors 
 would be as righteous and as vigilant in rooting out 
 the wicked and evildoer from the land as he was. 
 
 The king was the fountain of all law, and from him 
 radiated the power which set in motion the machinery 
 of the state. He gave directions for the levying of 
 taxes and tribute and through him the state controlled 
 business and commerce. 
 
 The king was the champion of the oppressed in- 
 dividual, and was ever active in righting any wrong 
 that may have been done to him. He opposed the 
 oppression of the weak by the strong, and he held 
 his officials to the duty of observing the same standard 
 of righteousness. He set his face against official cor- 
 ruption, against greed in business, and against rob- 
 bery and theft. To assist him in the administration 
 of the state he created an army of officials whose 
 benefices were inalienable from the official line. 
 
 The state likewise took an interest in the individual, 
 and ransomed a man if neither he himself nor the 
 temple could do so. The state was in such matters 
 
Idea of Man 47 
 
 an agent of the king, just as the temple was. This 
 interest was a duty to which the individual was fully 
 alive. In fact, the individual in Babylonia and As- 
 syria was as much alive to his personal interests as 
 at any other period of the world's history. 
 
 The individual though strictly classified was never- 
 theless carefully guarded in his rights. Thus if a 
 rich man stole, the deed was punished in the light 
 of his riches, that is, he had to pay more in compen- 
 sation than if a poor man stole. Yet if a poor man 
 had nothing to pay for such an offence he was to be 
 put to death. In like manner, the fine for a quarrel 
 between two nobles was larger than if it had been be- 
 tween two poor men; but it should also be noticed 
 that if a man of noble class made an assault upon a 
 poor man he was taxed less than if the assault had 
 been upon one of his own class. If a member of the 
 middle class made an assault upon a noble the assault 
 was punished by being publicly beaten. 
 
 The individual was treated in every way as thor- 
 oughly responsible. He was free to make gifts, with, 
 of course, the consent of those interested ; he had the 
 right to protest against injustice; and his slanderer 
 was punished with death. On the other hand, the 
 individual was held responsible for his acts. A royal 
 official who secretly hired a substitute when he was 
 sent on an errand was put to death, and the substitute 
 received the office. The law was the great safeguard 
 and ruled that important statements must be made 
 on oath in the presence of witnesses, and if witnesses 
 could not be produced the man was assumed to be a 
 
48 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 liar. Even contracts to guard against falsehood were 
 drawn up. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians were primarily a 
 law-abiding people. The will of the gods was ex- 
 pressed in the law of the land, and the king was its 
 guardian. The law was assumed to be righteous, be- 
 cause it was so bound up with the idea of the right- 
 eousness of the gods. And so it came about that the 
 court was usually the temple where lawsuits were tried 
 and contracts were made. And yet injustice was 
 sometimes known in the very courts of law, although 
 whenever discovered it was punished. The judge 
 rendered judgment according to royal law, but once 
 the judgment was rendered it could not be changed 
 without incurring severe punishment. There were 
 different grades of judges, but the chief distinction 
 was between civil and temple judges. The former 
 could not receive an affidavit; this was due to the re- 
 ligious character of the oath. Bribery was often 
 attempted but it was always punished. But in case 
 a man was not satisfied with the decision rendered 
 against him he had the right to appeal to the king. 
 
 Although the settlement of a dispute may be 
 made out of court, lawsuits before legally constituted 
 judges were the rule. Three witnesses were always 
 necessary, an oath was taken, and rewards and punish- 
 ments directed. Punishments were often exceedingly 
 severe and out of proportion to the offence. Thus, 
 death was the penalty for: perjury in a capital 
 suit, false accusation of killing, theft of things 
 belonging to the temple or the palace of a king, buy- 
 
Idea of Man 49 
 
 ing property of a man without witnesses or contracts, 
 or recei\'ing such property on deposit, failure to pay 
 fines for theft or to make restitution, theft and sale 
 of stolen goods, false accusation of stealing, house- 
 breaking, brigandage, theft, kidnapping a free-born 
 child, negligence if ending in death, allowing a palace 
 slave to escape or sheltering him, detaining an escaped 
 slave, causing a barber to mark a slave wrongfully, 
 procuring a substitute, in the case of a soldier, fraud 
 on the part of a district governor, oppression, failure 
 of a woman who sold wine to capture a criminal, open- 
 ing a wine house by a devotee, accepting a low tariff 
 by a wine woman, infidelity and incest, remarrying 
 on the part of a woman while her husband was absent, 
 repudiation of her husband by a disreputable woman, 
 inability to pay by a tenant farmer, and falsely accus- 
 ing a man of laying a spell upon another. 
 
 Severe mutilation was legally infl.icted. Thus, a 
 boy's tongue was cut out who denied his parents, a 
 son's eye was put out who abandoned his foster par- 
 ents, a nurse who substituted a child for the one who 
 died while in her care lost her breasts, a son who 
 struck his father lost his hand, and a slave who struck 
 a freeman's son lost his ear. 
 
 The lex talionis was very common, especially for 
 injuries inflicted unintentionally. It was appealed to 
 chiefly as a preventative. The ordeal by water was 
 practised. 
 
 Babylonian and Assyrian justice has a commercial 
 aspect in our judgment, e. g., a patrician had to pay 
 three times as much in case of theft as a plebeian, 
 
50 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 but the penalty for injuring a patrician was more 
 than that for injuring a plebeian. Although the fact 
 that a surgeon's fee was greater for a patrician than 
 for a plebeian seems thoroughly modern. 
 
 Much care was taken to fix and define ownership 
 of property. Property rights were possessed by all 
 classes of people and by women and children as well 
 as by men. The law controlled buying and selling, 
 renting and letting, redeeming and sharing, but a 
 royal charter could dispense from various obligations. 
 A sharp distinction was made between real and per- 
 sonal property. 
 
 Trade and business were placed on a firm legal 
 basis. Sales, purchases, endowments, commissions, 
 loans, inheritance, wills, settlements, gifts, and all 
 kinds of contracts, were legal transactions usually 
 made in the presence of witnesses and often accom- 
 panied by an oath. Business companies were legally 
 formed, who commissioned agents and carried on for- 
 eign as well as domestic trade. Exact accounts were 
 kept and profits were strictly shared and distributed, 
 and the power of attorney was recognized. Orders 
 were honoured and legal receipts were given. A debt 
 was legally binding, the lender possessing the right of 
 cancellation, except where the debt was due to storm, 
 flood, or drought, when there was an automatic abate- 
 ment. Goods could be accepted in lieu of money or 
 com for debt. Eates of sale and storage were often 
 settled by law, and neglect to make satisfaction in 
 business matters was promptly punished. 
 
 The bulk of labour in Babylonia and Assyria was 
 
Idea of Mart 51 
 
 done by slaves, although there were freemen, espe- 
 cially freed slaves, who were labourers. Slaves were 
 acquired by gift or inheritance, by capture or by 
 purchase. They were treated as property, sold, hired, 
 loaned, acquired by inheritance or gift, and listed 
 like other property. The wages of a slave were always 
 paid to his master. A female slave (a-ma-at) was ac- 
 quired in the same way as a male slave and could 
 be sold and exchanged and given or taken in marriage. 
 She could become the wife of a freeman, in which 
 case the children were free, and her marriage was a 
 legal one. 
 
 A freeman was responsible for the support of his 
 slave. A slave could be adopted as a son, the cere- 
 mony being a religious one with an elaborate ritual. 
 The names of the real parents of a slave are never 
 given. Slaves were often freed, when they assumed 
 all the rights of a freeman. The freeing of a slave 
 was a religious ceremony. One word translated "to 
 free", u-da-am-mi-ku-si-ma, means purified; another 
 expression is pu-zu u-li-il, '^cleanse his forehead". A 
 captive slave if brought home is freed from his slavery. 
 A freed slave was obliged to support his father during 
 his lifetime, but after that the children of the master 
 had no claim upon the former slave; a freed female 
 slave could enter a convent and be dedicated to a god. 
 
 If a freed slave repudiated his foster father he was 
 punished as a freeman, but if a slave repudiated his 
 master, he lost an ear. If a slave wife repudiated 
 her husband's mother, the mother could brand her and 
 sell her. 
 
52 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 The penalty imposed upon a slave for injuring a 
 freeman was severe, in one instance his ear being 
 cut off, but still more severe was the penalty imposed 
 upon a man who abducted a slave. 
 
 The lot of the slave was hard, but, as we have seen, 
 he had certain well-defined rights, and he could engage 
 in business by agreeing to pay a fair percentage of 
 his profit to his master. 
 
 It has always and everywhere been considered 
 greatly to the advantage of a nation to be at peace 
 with its neighbours, and to this end treaties were often 
 made. At the very dawn of Sumerian history there 
 is evidence of a treaty between the chiefs of neighbour- 
 ing states, and throughout Sumeria's history there are 
 many references to the formation of treaties, one of 
 the most famous being that described on the Stela of 
 the Vultures between Lagash and Umma. The power 
 of treaty making was considered always to belong to 
 the deity. The chiefs made the treaty, but it was 
 always in the name of their gods. 
 
 An essential part of the ritual of a treaty was the 
 oath which was taken in the name of the gods and 
 sometimes in that of the king. The oath was a con- 
 ditional malediction, and violation of a treaty entailed 
 not only a curse, but was also visited with severe pun- 
 ishments. 
 
 Wars were of very frequent occurrence in early 
 Sumeria, because of the many small and independent 
 city-states which were so near to one another that 
 their interests were always clashing. An interesting 
 example of almost continuous conflict between two 
 
Idea of Man 53 
 
 such states is that of Umma and Lagash. The con- 
 queror was very often cruel and gloried in leaving the 
 bones of the enemy to bleach in the open field. 
 
 All wars were religious, for the Sumerians always 
 believed that they fought under the direction and ad- 
 vice of their gods. When one city made war upon an- 
 other it was because their gods were at feud. The 
 destruction of the enemy was often ascribed to the 
 actual agency of their deity, and plundering was car- 
 ried out at the god's command. The foe was consid- 
 ered unconsecrated and ritually unclean, and a foreign 
 land was a wicked one. Yet, they could be merciful, 
 if the dead seen on the Stela of the Vultures be not 
 only their own but also those of the enemy. 
 
 There is practically nothing known about how the 
 Sumerians treated an individual stranger or foreigner, 
 like the gei- among the Hebrews. From the foreigner's 
 point of view, exile was never contemplated with any 
 degree of pleasure, but that would be natural. 
 
 Between Babylonia and surrounding countries there 
 was a good deal of peaceful intercourse. It was 
 the boast of Kudur-Marduk of Elam that he had 
 never done evil {mi-im-ma) to Larsa and to Emutabal 
 but did what pleased Shamash. It was the desire of 
 all Babylon kings to carry on peaceful trade and com- 
 merce with foreign peoples, for they desired nothing 
 more than an opportunity to develope their material 
 resources. On the other hand, warlike relations be- 
 tween nations were the normal state of affairs. Even 
 Hammurapi who was a lover of the peaceful arts 
 was often involved in war, especially with his fa- 
 
54 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 mous contemporary, Eim-Sin of Ur, and each king 
 appealed to his gods for aid against his opponent. 
 
 Levies were made especially upon labourers to carry 
 on foreign wars, and the punishment was death for 
 a person to harbour a slacker. These wars were the 
 source of much plunder, especially of foreigners, who 
 were sold as slaves, and large sums of money were 
 paid by the opposing sides for the redemption of im- 
 portant prisoners. 
 
 Eesident aliens, however, were usually treated with 
 consideration and could become citizens, being under 
 no disabilities. 
 
 In Assyria's warlike literature there is little room 
 for peaceful sentiments, although there is no trace 
 of political disability on the part of foreigners in 
 Assyria, and oaths that bound Assyria to a foreign 
 country in treaty were inviolable. However, Assyria 
 was a great war-like country. She gloried in her 
 armies and conquests. Her great war-gods, Ashur and 
 Ishtar, gave her all victory. All war was religious. 
 It was to enhance the power of the gods, and to ex- 
 tend their boundaries. 
 
 The army was recruited from all ranks, especially 
 from serfs and slaves, the military unit being the 
 bowman and his pikeman and shield-bearer. There 
 is abundant evidence to show that the Assyrian kings 
 and their armies were exceedingly cruel in battle. 
 Corpses of enemies were mutilated, their lands were 
 sowed with salt, heads of the slain were exhibited in 
 piles outside the cities, and gathered to be counted 
 hj royal officials. Although the kings were sometimes 
 
Idea of Man 55 
 
 merciful, they loved to boast of great cruelties and 
 inhumanity. Assyria was militaristic to the core, 
 she exulted in conquest and in all the cruelties which 
 were believed to be capable of striking terror into 
 the hearts of her enemies. 
 
 In Babylonia and Assyria men believed in the ex- 
 istence of numerous gods, some more powerful than 
 others, some good and some bad. The great gods 
 were considered, as a rule, favorable to man, but 
 the Igigi were most hostile. The king was the pro- 
 tege of the gods, being defended by them ; and from 
 them, the source of all Justice, he derived his author- 
 ity. The gods not only created man, but they were the 
 source of all stability. Their mouths were pure and 
 could not "be altered". The gods were the real judges, 
 kings and human judges being their representatives. 
 The greatest of all the divine judges was Shamash, 
 the establisher of right and justice, the judge of 
 heaven and earth, and with him was associated Adad. 
 
 The gods were very anthropomorphically conceived, 
 and were created as well as human beings; they had 
 their jealousies and other limitations and were sub- 
 ject to decay and death. 
 
 Faith in the gods was universal, and men contin- 
 ually appealed to them. There is considerable evi- 
 dence that the individual Babylonian appealed directly 
 to his god or goddess. Such expressions as "thou 
 from whom cometh the life of all people" are not 
 to be taken as evidence of monotheism, but only as 
 examples of the confidence which individuals had in 
 the particular deity to whom they were for the time 
 
56 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 being directing their supplications. Very often in just 
 such expressions, the suppliant shows his conscious- 
 ness of the existence of other gods, e. g., one prays, 
 "0 Sin, as the first-bom of Bel, no equal hast thou." 
 Nor is the expression, "who can comprehend the ways 
 of god", to be taken as monotheistic. The most 
 powerful or most popular god was often addressed as 
 if he were "god" without implying thereby the non- 
 existence of other deities. 
 
 The gods were not only supplicated, they were also 
 adored and praised as the source of all help, comfort, 
 compassion, and strength. 
 
 There was a very close and intimate relation ex- 
 isting between king and gods. In most ancient times, 
 it was believed that the gods really reigned as kings 
 on earth, and so, in later times, they were often 
 addressed as "king". Then the time came when the 
 king was considered the very offspring of the gods, 
 but by the first Babylonian dynasty such a belief was 
 considered fictitious, the king being the servant of the 
 gods. Hammurapi believed that he was called by 
 the gods to enlighten the land and to further the wel- 
 fare of the people, to prevent the strong from oppress- 
 ing the weak, to destroy the wicked and the evil, and 
 to cause justice to prevail in the land. He was the es- 
 pecial protege of Shamash, who endowed him with 
 justice and to whom he was obedient. He, however, 
 was pious and suppliant to all the great gods, being 
 their faithful servant and worshipper, and to whom 
 he ascribed all his might. 
 
 In return for divine favours, the Babylonian and 
 
Idea of Man 57 
 
 Assyrian kings assumed a supreme interest in the 
 temple and its worship. Hammurapi brought abun- 
 dance to Egissirgal and made prosperous the shrines 
 of Malkat. Sometimes the temples were called upon 
 to ransom a man who had been taken captive, and 
 sometimes the king forced loans from the temple, 
 but the latter was considered wrong, and the former 
 was done only because of the great wealth possessed 
 by the temples, in itself a proof of their popularity. 
 The house of the god was the home of justice and 
 the place of prayer, of sacrifice, and of praise. Any 
 violation of the temple's rights was looked upon with 
 displeasure, and theft therefrom was punished with 
 death. This was, however, the punishment for all 
 burglary. 
 
 As the gods were the source of all justice, so in their 
 name were all oaths taken and maledictions uttered. 
 The sinner was in constant dread of the gods who 
 hated sin and punished wrong. 
 
 It is, however, just the ordinary man of whom we 
 should like to know more, for he has his own peculiar 
 interest. He is significant because of his insignifi- 
 cance. He interests us because he presents the type to 
 which we almost all belong. He ought to be interest- 
 ing also because he represents so much the largest ele- 
 ment in universal human life. The average man is by 
 far the most numerous man. The man who goes be- 
 yond the average, the man who falls short of the 
 average, both of them, by their very definition, are ex- 
 ceptions. They are the outskirts and fringes, the capes 
 and promontories of humanity. The great continent 
 
58 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 of hiiman life is made up of the average existences, the 
 mass of two-talented capacity and action. The great 
 multitudes of men are neither very rich nor very 
 poor. The real character and strength of a com- 
 munity lies neither in its millionaires nor in its pau- 
 pers but in the men of middle life, who neither have 
 more money than they know how to spend nor are 
 pressed and embarrassed for the necessities of life. 
 The same is true in the matter of joy and sorrow. 
 The great mass of men during the greater part of their 
 lives are neither exultant and triumphant with de- 
 light, nor are they crushed and broken with grief. 
 They do not go shouting their rapture to the skies, 
 and they do not go wailing their misery to the S3rmpa- 
 thetic winds. They are moderately happy. Or if we 
 consider mental capacity, most men are neither sages 
 nor fools. Or if we think about learning, few men 
 are either scholars or dunces. Or if we consider pop- 
 ularity and fame, those whom the whole world praises 
 and those whom all men despise are both of them ex- 
 ceptional. We can count them easily. The great mul- 
 titude whom we cannot begin to count, who fill the 
 vast middle-ground of the great picture of humanity, 
 is made up of men who are simply well enough liked 
 by their fellow-men. 
 
 And when we come to the profounder and the more 
 personal things, to character and religion, there, too, 
 it is the average man that fills the eye. Where are 
 the heroes? We find them if we look, ^liere are 
 the rascals? We find them too. "WTiere are the 
 saints? They shine where no true man's eye can 
 
Idea of Man 59 
 
 fail to see them. But as to the great host of men, we 
 know how little reason they give us to expect of them 
 either great goodness or great wickedness. 
 
 These are the men of Babylonia and Assyria of 
 whom we should like to know more — men whose lot 
 was not the highest, nor whose misfortune was the 
 greatest, but the rank and file of their day. We can 
 imagine them obedient to their over-lords, kind to 
 their families, and reverent to their gods. Into that 
 busy commercial life so characteristic of Babylonia 
 and Assyria we should like to get a peep. Those men 
 who fought their battles with so much vigour, did their 
 business with so much method, and served their gods 
 with so much elaboration, we should like to study. 
 Perhaps the future has more surprises in store for us. 
 Less than a hundred years ago men could not imagine 
 the vast areas of human endeavour upon which the 
 work of the archaeologist and student of culture and 
 religion have thrown light. Little was known of 
 Babylonia and Assyria then, and far less of Sumeria. 
 Now we can trace their military campaigns, read 
 their poems, study their laws, and contemplate their 
 religious visions. With the passage of Mesopotamia 
 into the hands of a responsible and sympathetic 
 government, and with the careful sifting of the sands 
 of the Babylonian and Assyrian deserts, it is not pos- 
 sible to limit the extent of further information, about 
 these ancient peoples, that may be forthcoming. 
 
 But in spite of our fragmentary information, we 
 know enough to be able to state that the ideal of the 
 early inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates valley was 
 
60 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 a very high one. They considered themselves offspring 
 of the gods, endowed with high mental and spiritual 
 capacities, responsible for the welfare of the race, and 
 possessed of the capacity for endless development. 
 Such was man as he laboured and toiled, sowed and 
 reaped, loved and hated, thought and dreamed in the 
 mighty empires that were once Babylonia and Assyria. 
 
IV 
 
 THE IDEA OF MEDIATION IN BABYLONIA 
 AND ASSYRIA 
 
 The consciousness of wrongdoing is, and has always 
 been, a universal experience among men. The belief 
 that wrongdoing is an offense against the gods is its 
 corollary. In fact, wrongdoing is an offense only 
 because it is displeasing to the gods. When David 
 said, "I have sinned against the Lord", or when the 
 Babylonian penitent enumerated all the wrongdoings 
 he could think of in order to locate the cause of his 
 god's displeasure at him, he testified to the truth of 
 this principle that all sin is an offense against god, yea, 
 even is sin just because it is an offense against god. 
 All this assumes that man believes in the existence of 
 the gods, and in his necessary relationship to him. 
 And with that assumed, the first step in the conscious 
 relationship between man and god is the expression of 
 merit or fault on the part of man in respect to god. 
 The next step is the full acknowledgment of the 
 true moral character of the relationship. And then 
 follows the full acknowledgment that merit or fault 
 is pleasing or offensive to god. 
 
 61 
 
62 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 With the consciousness of a moral relationship with 
 the gods, and of a necessary dependence upon them, 
 and obligation toward them, man immediately be- 
 comes concerned with the problem of mediation, that 
 is, with the question of how he is to be represented 
 in the presence of the gods. Now there are two ele- 
 ments involved in the idea of mediation. They are, 
 gods and man — man conscious of his relationship to 
 and dependence upon the gods, desirous of help ; and 
 the gods, presumably able, ready, and willing to help. 
 Between these two elements comes the mediatorial 
 power, for the ancient never trusted himself to appear 
 directly before his god. He believed in the necessity 
 of a mediator. 
 
 Among the Babylonians and Assyrians the chief 
 mediator between man and god was the king. This 
 was so because the kings were believed to be the off- 
 spring of the gods. In fact, the first earthly king 
 was a veritable god, and represented the great gods 
 upon earth. Such a role was probably played by Ea 
 of Eridu, and by the prophet-god Nabu. The per- 
 sistence of this idea in later times is seen in the 
 insistence of some penitents to appeal to specific gods 
 to intercede for them to other gods. When the gods 
 retired to their heavenly home, they left as their rep- 
 resentatives certain semi-divine beings, who were rul- 
 ers of men, and mediators between men and the gods. 
 Such semi-divine rulers were Gilgamesh of Uruk, 
 two-thirds god and one-third man, who was a great 
 and energetic ruler; Azag-Bau, queen and founder 
 of the city of Kish; Sargon of Agade, whose mother 
 
Idea of Mediation 63 
 
 was a priestess, but whose father was a god; and 
 others, such as Adapa, Etana, and probably Tammuz. 
 
 The rule of these semi-divine kings was followed 
 by human dynasties. But all the characteristics, privi- 
 leges, and obligations of these rulers were transferred 
 to their successors. The fundamental duty of a semi- 
 divine ruler was mediation, and that became the first 
 obligation of his human successor. The Babylonian 
 and Assyrian monarch was primarily a representative 
 of the gods upon earth ; he often took the title dingir, 
 or ilu, god ; he was the "son of god" ; he was at first 
 the only offerer of gifts, of sacrifices, to the gods; 
 and he was the sole priest and only mediator. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians had never developed 
 a belief in angels and demons, as mediators. They 
 believed in good and evil spirits. There were good 
 and evil spirits. There were good spirits, or minor 
 protective deities, called ilu amelu, personal god, ilu 
 hiti, house god, and ilu ali, city god, and every house 
 had its sliedu and lamassu, protective spirits. All 
 these acted as protectors against the spirits of evil. 
 Demons were sometimes inferior gods, the spirits of 
 the unburied dead, disembodied ghosts, or semi-divine 
 creatures or goblins. They were often represented 
 in groups of seven. But neither demons nor good 
 spirits ever acted as mediators between gods and men. 
 The evil spirits were the source of all suffering and 
 sickness, and the office of the good spirits was to 
 counteract them. A man may be possessed by a good 
 spirit, when health and happiness and prophetic 
 power results; but he was also subject to possession 
 
64 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 by a demon, in which case, sickness and suffering re- 
 sulted. In fact, sickness was thought of in terms of 
 demoniacal possession, and there was a demon for 
 almost every phase of sickness, just as in modern days 
 there is a germ for every type of disease. 
 
 Nor did the tendency in Babylonia to personify 
 the word of the gods, as creative power, result in a 
 mediator. The only line of mediatorial power was 
 through divine beings, semi-divine beings, and the 
 king as "son of god", and as priest and representative 
 of the people. But with the creation of larger groups 
 of people into national life, and the multiplication of 
 kingly duties, the king's office as priest had to be 
 delegated to representatives. This resulted in the 
 establishment of priests and of a priesthood. But 
 still the king remained priest par excellence. This 
 statement is borne out by many facts as well as by 
 the title which designated the king, namely patesi, 
 or "priest prince". The king was primarily a priest 
 {patesi is the Sumerian equivalent of the Semitic 
 word islisliakhu, from which the word shangu, priest, 
 is derived) and representative of the gods to mankind. 
 The representatives of the priest-prince were priests. 
 
 The light of the body is the eye, and the eye of 
 the human soul is that which enables man to see god. 
 The one appointed channel through which man and 
 the gods, the two halves of the universe, came into 
 contact was the priesthood. The priesthood, as a 
 power of mediation between man and god, was the 
 eye of the soul. Without the physical eye the world 
 might still be real ; but it will be forever unknowable 
 
Idea of Mediation 65 
 
 to the man sitting in his prison of sightlessness, where 
 all the glory cannot reach him. But let the window 
 of his eye be opened and it all comes pouring in; 
 runs through his frame and finds out his intelligence ; 
 says to his brain, "Here I am, know me !" ; says to 
 his heart, "Here I am, love me!" To such a man 
 the whole bright world has sprung to life; and the 
 window of his prison, the gateway of the entering 
 glory, the light of the body, is the eye. 
 
 So with the unseen, invisible, spiritual world. That 
 world, too, must and can testify itself, report itself to 
 the human intelligence through its appropriate chan- 
 nel of communication and mediation, just as the world 
 of visible nature manifests and reports itself through 
 the organ of the eye. Now it is just the existence 
 of that spiritual world, and the possibility of man's 
 being in communication with it, intelligently know- 
 ing it, intelligently loving it — that it is about which 
 man's profoundest hopes and fears have always clus- 
 tered, about which they are clustering to-day, perhaps 
 more anxiously than ever. It is a world which has 
 always been conceivable. All man's mental history 
 bears witness that he can picture to himself a world 
 in which the gods dwell. The bridge, then, which was 
 thought capable of connecting the world of gods with 
 the world of men, the eye through which man could 
 see god, was the mediatorial power of the priesthood. 
 
 The development of kingship, the title of the early 
 Babylonian kings, and the regalia of the king, espe- 
 cially his tall tiara or mitre with long, flowing cords, 
 all point to the priestly office and character of the 
 
66 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 king. But with the development of commiimty life 
 it was physically impossible for the king to perform 
 all the required priestly rites. He consequently del- 
 egated his priestly power, without surrendering any 
 of his own priestly rights, to a class of men, who w^ere 
 given the title of the same meaning and content as 
 that which he himself bore, namely shangu, "'^priest". 
 
 With the passage of time this class of men waxed 
 numerous and powerful, and were divided into many 
 orders with many titles. \ATien a strong king sat on 
 the throne, the power and influence of the priesthood 
 were held in check, but w^ak kings were often the mere 
 puppets of the priests, who gained more and more 
 power, and established more and more priestly prece- 
 dents. At last they became hereditary, the office 
 descending from father to son ; they were highly edu- 
 cated; they usurped political power; and sometimes 
 became very corrupt, politically, insomuch that Uru- 
 kagina, for example, was forced to bring about a 
 sweeping reform of the priesthood. 
 
 At the head of any local priesthood stood the high 
 priest, sJiangu rahu, shangu dannu, or shangu maliJiu, 
 He was called ^^ord", and was invested by the king 
 himself. In subordination to him were many orders, 
 chief of which were: the MasJiu or Masliashu, whose 
 duties were primarily connected with ritual and cere- 
 monies, a kind of master of ceremonies, and the Uru- 
 galhi, a master of ceremonies for evening services; 
 the Pashishu, or anointers, with a minor order called 
 the Kisallah; the Nam, the musician priest par excel- 
 lence, a kind of canon-precentor, and the 8urru, a 
 
Idea of Mediation 67 
 
 chief canon-precentor; the Bai'u, or seer, with his 
 assistant, the Aharakku; the Ashipu, the incantation 
 priest, an order which became very powerful, who held 
 the sacred books of incantation lore, and who derived 
 their wisdom from Ea, the god of wisdom; and their 
 assistant, the Asu priest who specialized in water in- 
 cantations ; the Kalu priest, who directed lamentations 
 and prepared astrological reports; the Shailu, or in- 
 terpreter of dreams; and the Sukkallu, messenger or 
 deacon. Then there w^as the Galldbu, or priestly ton- 
 sure cutter ; and there were other minor orders. There 
 were also priestesses — as many as twenty orders, two- 
 thirds as many orders as that of the priesthood — and 
 in addition, there were many classes of persons devo- 
 ted to and engaged in the service of the gods. There 
 were vestal virgins; there were teachers; there were 
 priestly judges ; there were astrologers and physicians ; 
 and there were priestly scribes. In short, there was 
 no profession of influence and importance which had 
 not at some period or other come under the sway of 
 the priesthood. 
 
 Many of these orders demanded that a candidate 
 for the priesthood must be of noble birth, of priestly 
 blood, perfect in bodily growth, and learned in all 
 branches of science. Before ordination, the candidate 
 was clean shaven, as a part of the rite, the king some- 
 times performing this important act; and was pre- 
 sented with a tiara, the symbol of his priestly office. 
 After ordination, the priest was obliged to wear a 
 distinct dress — a fringed cloak, reaching to the feet, 
 with right arm uncovered — ^he was to go barefooted. 
 
68 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 and to assume the tonsure. A special tithe was in- 
 stituted for the priesthood, and fees were demanded 
 for all important services. 
 
 Man rarely appears before his god empty-handed. 
 He generally desires something, and in order to be 
 sure of the good will of his god he presents a gift. 
 The gift usually took the form of an animal — some- 
 times, on very serious occasions, a human being — 
 which was killed, and either completely consumed by 
 fire, or roasted and eaten, the gods receiving a share. 
 This was called a sacrifice. Thus the regular accom- 
 paniment, or means of mediation, became a sacrifice. 
 And, when the office was delegated to the priesthood, 
 sacrifice was the means of operation. 
 
 The earliest idea of a sacrifice was that of com- 
 munion. Men and their god joined together in a 
 sacred meal, and partook of a sacred animal, in whose 
 veins had run the blood common to gods and man, 
 that is, the life of gods and man. The object of the 
 sacred meal was to strengthen that bond of relation- 
 ship between man and the gods by partaking of the 
 common life. It was only later that the idea of sac- 
 rifice as a gift to the gods arose, and still later the 
 idea of a gift was translated into terms of a temple 
 due. 
 
 The chief materials used in sacrifice were: oxen, 
 sheep, domestic-animals, fowl, fish, wild-animals, 
 bread, wine, water, mead, honey, butter, milk, oil, 
 grain, fruit, flour, cane, myrtle, and cedar and cypress 
 wood. 
 
 Many elaborate sacrificial services were developed. 
 
Idea of Mediation 69 
 
 and liturgies to correspond with them. One of the 
 most important forms of sacrifice was the sin-offering, 
 which was considered very efficacious. The special 
 gods to whom this offering was made were almost 
 always Ea, Shamash, and Marduk. The ceremony 
 was later connected with the Shiptu, or incantation 
 ceremony. The rite was very elaborate, the chief 
 feature being cleansing. An altar was erected in 
 the open air, a lamb was sacrificed, with dates, meal, 
 honey, butter, and wine, and incense was freely used. 
 Manual acts w^re numerous, including bowings and 
 prostrations. The so-called sacrifice to the dead was 
 the Kispu, from the verb kasapu, "to leave remains 
 of food for the dead". This rite was a gift-offering 
 to the spirits of the dead, and not a sacrifice in the 
 strict sense of the term. The dead were not wor- 
 shipped, the purpose being merely to furnish them 
 with food. Associated with this last rite were services 
 of lamentation and mourning for the dead, which were 
 purely ritual exercises without any element of worship. 
 The great central act of worship was the sacrifice, 
 and the bond, which was renewed, was that life 
 common to man and to the gods. This was no mere 
 symbolism, at least to the earliest Babylonians and 
 Assyrians. There was no doubt in their minds about 
 the reality of the divine relationship between men, 
 animals, and the gods. The same blood ran through 
 the veins of all of them. In the blood was life, and 
 the partaking thereof, and of that in which the blood 
 existed, the flesh, constituted a partaking of the 
 common life, and a strengthening of that common 
 
70 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 bond. To the Babylonian and Assyrian mind a sac- 
 rifice was a great and solemn reality. Even the meal- 
 sacrifice was interpreted in the same way, but was not 
 considered as worthy. The reason for Yahweh's dis- 
 crimination between Cain and Abel was that Abel 
 offered an animal sacrifice, while Cain's was a meal- 
 sacrifice. But the sacrifice was the central act of 
 worship, and the normal mode of mediation between 
 gods and men. 
 
 Nor were these sacrifices offered in a gloomy silence, 
 as if the people were doing a hard duty which they 
 would not do if they could help it; but with a burst 
 of jubilant joy and with songs of gladness which 
 rang down through the crowded courts of the temple, 
 the host of the Babylonians and Assyrians claimed 
 for themselves anew their place in the obedience of 
 their gods. The act of sacrifice was done amid a 
 chorus of delight. 
 
 To us such a sacrifice, beautiful and inspiring as 
 it may be, would be only a symbol, because the things 
 which the childhood of the race values are the symbols 
 or types of the things which the manhood of the race 
 learns to value. The man does not want the boy's 
 sports because he has found in the serious work of 
 life the true field for those emulations and activities 
 which were only practising and trying themselves in 
 the play-ground. The man can do without the boy's 
 perpetual physical activity, because he has come to 
 the pleasures of an active mind which the restlessness 
 of the child's body, in his pleasure in mere move- 
 ment, anticipated and prophesied. It seems as if 
 
Idea of Mediation 71 
 
 the change from boyhood into a true manhood could 
 not be more justly described than as an advance from 
 dealing with symbols to dealing with realities. And 
 if, then, every progress in life is a change from 
 some new boyhood to some yet riper manhood ; if every 
 man is a child to his own possible maturer self ; may it 
 not be truly stated that all the spiritual advances of 
 life are advances from some symbol to its reality, and 
 that the abandoned interests and occupations which 
 strew the path which the world has travelled are the 
 symbols which it has cast away because it had grasped 
 the realities for which they stood ? Even so, although 
 there are now no more smoking altars or bleeding 
 beasts among civilized men, we can nevertheless look 
 back to the childhood of the race, and see how real 
 those things were to them, w^hich we now look upon 
 as mere symbols of the true. They were the school- 
 masters leading mankind to higher things. 
 
 The most naive conceptions of prayer are possible 
 to polytheists, who can have no doubts about the 
 efficacy of prayer, for no such problems arise as those 
 with which monotheists are troubled. Where there 
 are many gods it is reasonable to suppose that one 
 may be able to outwit or over-rule another. But even 
 so, many Babylonian and Assyrian prayers gave ex- 
 pression to a very elevated and noble religious and 
 ethical point of view. Lugalzaggisi, king of Sumer, 
 about 2800 B. C. prayed thus to his god Enlil : ''0 
 Enlil, king of lands, may Anu to his beloved father 
 speak my prayer; to my life may he add life, and 
 cause the lands to dwell in security." Nebuchadrezzar, 
 
72 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 king of Babylon, about 585 B. C. addressed his god 
 Marduk with the following beautiful prayer : 
 
 "0 eternal prince! Lord of all being! 
 The king whom thou lovest, and 
 Whose name thou hast declared 
 To be pleasing to thee — 
 Do thou lead aright his name, 
 Guide him in a straight path. 
 I am thy prince, thy favourite, 
 The work of thy hand; 
 Thou hast created me, and 
 Hast entrusted me 
 With dominion over all people. 
 According to thy favour, Lord, 
 Which thou dost bestow 
 Upon all people, 
 
 Cause me to love thy exalted lordship. 
 And create in my heart 
 The worship of thy divinity. 
 Grant me whatever is pleasing to thee, 
 Because thou hast fashioned my life." 
 
 In this prayer the ideal has surely been reached. 
 The king prays not that his will be done, but that 
 his god might grant him "whatever is pleasing to 
 thee". Sometimes a prayer takes the form of a peni- 
 tential psalm rich in beauty and worship, and deep 
 in ethical thought. Thus a suppliant prays to Ishtar : 
 
 "I, thy servant, full of sighs, call upon thee. 
 The humble prayer of him who has sinned do thou accept. 
 If thou lookest upon a man, that man liveth, 
 O mighty mistress of mankind. 
 Merciful one to whom it is good to turn, who accepts sighs." 
 
 Perhaps the best of these psalms is an anonymous 
 
Idea of Mediation 73 
 
 prayer to be addressed to any deity. It is full of 
 rich religious sentiment and high moral discernment : 
 
 "The anger of the lord, may it be appeased. 
 
 The god that I know not, be appeased. 
 
 The goddess that I know not, be appeased. 
 
 The god, known or unknown, be appeased. 
 
 The heart of my god, be appeased. 
 
 The heart of my goddess, be appeased. 
 
 The anger of the god and of my goddess, be appeased. 
 
 The god, who is angry against me, be appeased. 
 
 A transgression against a god I knew not, I have com- 
 mitted. 
 
 A transgression against a goddess I knew not, I have com- 
 mitted. 
 
 A gracious name, may the god I knew not, name. 
 
 A gracious name, may the goddess I knew not, name. 
 
 A gracious name, may the god known or unknown, name. 
 
 The pure food of my god have I imwittingly eaten. 
 
 The clear water of my goddess I have unwittingly drunken. 
 
 The taboo of my god I have unwittingly eaten. 
 
 To an offense against my goddess I have unwittingly 
 walked. 
 
 lord, my transgressions are many, great are my sins, 
 
 My god, my transgressions are many, great are my sins, 
 
 goddess, known or unknown, my transgressions are 
 
 many, great are my sins, 
 The transgression that I have committed, I know not, 
 The sin that I have wrought, I know not. 
 The taboo, that I have eaten, I know not. 
 The offense, into which I walked, I know not. 
 The lord, in the wrath of his heart, has regarded me. 
 The god, in the anger of his heart, has surrounded me. 
 The goddess, who is angry against me, hath made me like 
 
 a sick man, 
 A god, known or unknown, hath oppressed me, 
 A goddess, known or unknown, has wrought me sorrow. 
 
 1 sought for help, but none took my hand, 
 
74 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 I wept, but none came to my side, 
 
 I cried aloud, and there was none that heard me. 
 
 I am full of trouble, overpowered, and dare not look up. 
 
 To my merciful god I turn, I utter my prayer, 
 
 The feet of my goddess I kiss, I touch them, 
 
 To the god, known or unknown, I turn, I utter my prayer. 
 
 To the goddess, known or unknown, I turn, I utter my 
 
 prayer. 
 lord, turn thy face to me, receive my prayer. 
 goddess, turn graciously to me, receive my prayer. 
 god, known or unknown, turn thy face to me, receive 
 
 my prayer. 
 goddess, known or unknown, turn graciously to me, 
 
 receive my prayer. 
 How long, my god, let thy heart be appeased. 
 How long, my goddess, let thy heart be appeased. 
 god, known or unknown, let thy heart's anger return to 
 
 its place. 
 goddess, known or unknown, let thy hostile heart return 
 
 to its place. 
 Mankind are foolish, and there is none that knoweth. 
 So many are they — who knoweth aught? 
 Whether they do evil or good, no one knoweth. 
 lord, cast not away thy servant. 
 In the waters of mire he lies, seize his hand! 
 The sins, that I have done, turn to a blessing. 
 The transgression, which I have committed, may the wind 
 
 bear away. 
 My manifold transgressions strip off like a garment. 
 my god, my transgressions are seven times seven, forgive 
 
 my transgressions. 
 my goddess, my transgressions are seven times seven, 
 
 forgive my transgressions. 
 god, known or unknown, my transgressions are seven 
 
 times seven, forgive my transgressions. 
 grddess, known or unknown, my transgressions are 
 
 seven times seven, forgive my transgressions. 
 Forgive my transgression, for I humble myself before thee. 
 
Idea of Mediation 75 
 
 Thy heart, like a mother's, may it return to its place, 
 Like a mother that hath borne children, like a father that 
 hath begotten them, may it turn again to its place." 
 
 Prayers were both private and public. In public 
 services prayers became rather liturgical and stereo- 
 typed. They were usually written for the occasion, 
 and were chanted or sung by priests and people. The 
 following is a verse of a typical liturgical prayer: 
 
 "Oh, heart, repent; oh heart, repose, repose. 
 Oh, heart of Anu, repent, repent. 
 Oh, heart of Enlil, repent, repent." 
 
 But individual prayers, sometimes liturgical, but 
 more often private, said on all occasions — for the 
 Babylonians and Assyrians were a very pious people 
 — developed from a primitive form of divine adula- 
 tion, to a high place of noble religious and ethical 
 expression. Although they are surcharged with petty 
 worldly interests, and gross magical conceptions, 
 they very often show a penetration into ethical dis- 
 tinctions and a deep sense of the goodness, justice, 
 and holiness of the gods that is quite remarkable. 
 
 There were also hymns, remarkable for their relig- 
 ious and ethical teaching, although many of them 
 were marred by pure magical formulae. This class 
 of religious composition is very hard to date, though 
 the best hynms are certainly comparatively late. 
 Hymns were addressed to the various gods, usually 
 to one specified deity at a time. The great gods, such 
 as Sin, Shamash, Marduk, and Nabu, are the most 
 frequently supplicated deities in this class of liter- 
 
76 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 ature. Sometimes hymn, prayer, and incantation 
 are blended into one, for example, a hymn to Ishtar, 
 in which beautiful religious thought passes into magic 
 and incantation: 
 
 "I pray unto thee, sovereign of sovereigns, goddess of god- 
 
 Ishtar, queen of all men, directress of mankind. 
 
 Irini, exalted one, mistress of the Igigi, 
 
 Thou art mighty, thou art queen, thy name is exalted. 
 
 Thou art the light of heaven and earth, O valiant daughter 
 of Sin, 
 
 Directing arms, establishing combat, 
 
 Framing all laws, bearing the crown of dominion. 
 
 O lady, thy greatness is majestic, exalted above all the 
 gods. 
 
 Star of lamentation, who makest hostility among brethren 
 at peace. 
 
 Making them abandon friendship 
 
 For a friend. lady of victory, making my desire im- 
 petuous., 
 
 Gushea, who art covered with battle, who art clothed 
 
 with fear, 
 Thou dos-t perfect destiny and decision, the law of earth 
 
 and heaven. 
 Sanctuaries, shrines, divine dwellings, and temples worship 
 
 thee. 
 Where is thy name not heard? Where not thy decree? 
 Where are thy images not made? Where are thy temples 
 
 not founded? 
 Where art thou not great? Where art thou not exalted? 
 Anu, Bel, and Ea have exalted thee, among the gods have 
 
 they increased thy dominion. 
 Thou judgest the cause of men with justice and right. 
 Thou regardest the violent and destructive, thou directest 
 
 them every morning. 
 
 1 invoke thee, I, sorrowful, sighing, suffering, 
 
Idea of Mediation 77 
 
 Look upon me, my lady, and accept my supplication. 
 
 Pity me in truth, and hearken unto my prayer. 
 
 Speak deliverance unto me, let thy heart be appeased. 
 
 How long shall my body lament, full of troubles and dis- 
 orders ? 
 
 How long shall my heart be afflicted, full of sorrow and 
 sigh ing ? 
 
 How long shall my omens be sad, troubled, and confused? 
 
 How long shall my house be troubled, pouring forth com- 
 plaints? 
 
 Put an end to the evil bewitchments of my body, that I 
 may see thy clear light. 
 
 How long, O my lady, shall the ravenous demon pursue me ? 
 
 This shalt thou do .... a green bough shalt thou sprinkle 
 with pure water ; four bricks from the midst of a ruin 
 shalt thou set up; 
 
 A lamb shalt thou take; with carlatu wood shalt thou fill 
 the censer, and thou shalt set fire (thereto) ; sweet 
 scented woods, some upunta plant and some cypress 
 wood, 
 
 Shalt thou keep up; a drink offering shalt thou offer, but 
 thou shalt not bow thyself down. This incantation 
 before the goddess Ishtar 
 
 Three times shalt thou recite .... and thou shalt not 
 look behind thee. 
 
 exalted Ishtar, that givest light unto the four quarters 
 of the world." 
 
 But the greatest of all hymns handed down to us 
 from Babylonian and Assyrian religious literature 
 is an address to Shamash: 
 
 "The mighty mountains are filled with thy glance, 
 Thy holiness fills and overpowers all lands. 
 Thou dost reach the mountains, dost overlook the earth; 
 At the uttermost points of earth, in the midst of heaven, 
 
 thou dost move. 
 The inhabitants of the whole earth thou dost watch over, 
 
78 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 All that Ea, the king, the prince, has created thou dost 
 
 watch over, 
 All created beings thou dost shepherd together. 
 Thou art the shepherd of all above and below, 
 Thou dost march in order over heaven's course, 
 To lighten the earth dost thou come daily. 
 The waters, the sea, the mountains, the earth, the heaven. 
 How .... orderly dost thou come daily. 
 Among all the Igigi there is not that giveth rest, but thee; 
 Among all the gods of the Universe, there is none that 
 
 exceeds thee. 
 At thy rising all the gods of the lands assemble together. 
 Who plans evil — his horn thou dost destroy, 
 Whoever in fixing boundaries annuls rights. 
 The unjust judge thou restrainest with force. 
 Whoever accepts a bribe, who does not judge justly — on him 
 
 thou imposest sin. 
 But he who does not accept a bribe, who has a care for the 
 
 oppressed, 
 To him Shamash is gracious, his life he prolongs. 
 The judge who renders a just decision 
 Shall end in a palace, the place of princes shall be his 
 
 dwelling. 
 The seed of those who act unjustly shall not flourish. 
 What their mouth declares in thy presence 
 Thou shalt burn it up, what they purpose wilt thou annul. 
 Thou knowest their transgressions; the declaration of the 
 
 wicked thou dost cast aside. 
 Every one wherever he may be is in thy care. 
 Thou directest their judgments, the imprisoned dost thou 
 
 liberate. 
 Thou hearest, Shamash, petition, prayer, and appeal. 
 Humility, prostration, petitioning, and reverence. 
 With loud voice the unfortunate one cries to thee. 
 The weak, the exhausted, the oppressed, the lowly, 
 Mother, wife, maid appeal to thee. 
 He who is removed from his family, he that dwelleth far 
 
 from his city." 
 
Idea of Mediation 79 
 
 There are other beautiful hymns extant which show 
 the extent to which the sense of the reality of the 
 gods had penetrated into the thoughts of the people. 
 They do credit to Babylonian and Assyrian piety, 
 and, though they are very sadly outnumbered by 
 magical compositions, they are sufficient evidence of 
 the vitality of religious and moral thinking among 
 these ancient people. 
 
 The most popular Babylonian and Assyrian feast 
 was that of the New Year. It was called the Zagmug, 
 and was celebrated, at first, on the first day of Nisan, 
 at the end of the spring equinox in honour of Tam- 
 muz. Later it was connected with the worship of 
 Marduk, and was celebrated with great pomp. There 
 was a great procession, during which the image of 
 Marduk was borne in a ship-car, accompanied by 
 images of other gods. It then extended from the 
 first to the tenth of Nisan, and on the eighth, Marduk 
 proceeded out of E-Sagilla to celebrate his marriage 
 with Sarpanit. During the great festival there was 
 a solemn conclave of all the gods, in the presence of 
 Marduk to determine the destinies of the New Year. 
 Religious ceremonies, of course, held the chief place, 
 in which hymns were sung, incantations were chanted, 
 and prayers were offered. 
 
 Another great festival was the Shapattum or Sha- 
 batum — a feast of the full-moon, celebrated on the 
 fifteenth day of each month. It was a day of pacifica- 
 tion. It is to be differentiated from a festival which 
 took place on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, 
 twenty-eighth, and nineteenth of each month. This 
 
80 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 latter was called by the Babylonians the TJhnlgallum, 
 and the days on which it was celebrated were evil 
 days, or times of taboo. It has been confused with 
 the Shapattimi, because of the fact that it was 
 connected with the phases of the moon, and was, 
 therefore, a moon-festival; and, secondly, because 
 the Hebrew word Sabbath has been connected 
 with the same days of the month — even with the 
 nineteenth day, since that is seven weeks of days 
 from the first day of the preceding month — and is 
 itself probably related in etymology with the Baby- 
 lonian Shapattum. There were many other feast 
 days, such as : the feast of Tammuz, at the summer 
 solstice, in the month of Tammuz; the Ishtar feast, 
 in the month of Ab, a counterpart of the Tammuz 
 feast; the feast of Nubattu, on the third, seventh, 
 and sixteenth of each month, celebrating the mar- 
 riage of Marduk and Sarpanit; the Abab feast of 
 Nabu, on the fourth, eighth, and seventeenth of each 
 month ; the feast of Sin and Shamash, on the twen- 
 tieth; that of Shamash and Ramman on the twenty- 
 third; of Enegal and Ninegal on the twenty-fourth; 
 of Gur on the twenty-seventh; the Bubbulu feast of 
 Nergal on the twenty-eighth; a special feast of Sha- 
 mash on the seventh of Nisan, and on the fourth of 
 lyyar, the festival of the marriage of Nabu and Tash- 
 mit; the Akitu moon-feast, on the seventeenth of 
 Sivan ; and another Shamash feast, on the fifteenth of 
 Adar. In short, festival days were as numerous as 
 they used to be in imperial Russia, spring and harvest 
 festivals being the most numerous and popular. They 
 
Idea of Mediation 81 
 
 are evidence of the deep religious character of the 
 people, and of their sense of dependence upon the 
 gods, for the feasts were all religious. 
 
 The temples were the holiest spots of all the earth 
 to the Babylonians and Assyrians. They were the 
 home and abode of the presence of the gods. By 
 rite and symbol, by decoration and image, the sign 
 was given everywhere in them that the gods were 
 there. The architecture and decoration, the myste- 
 rious lights and shadows of the holy of holies, were 
 not what made its awfulness. It was that the gods 
 were there. There they shone in all their glory. 
 There they declared their will. There they forgave 
 sins. There they bestowed their blessings. There 
 they gave their commandments. The gods were 
 known there as they were known nowhere else; and 
 it was that supremely manifested presence of the 
 gods there, which made the temples, as no other places 
 on earth could be, sanctuaries and homes of the 
 mighty gods. And these sanctuaries were to be 
 found in all parts of the land. 
 
 In the very earliest times a mere stone or altar, 
 or image, could constitute a temple, or even a room 
 in a tent. But as time passed, a special room or tent 
 or hut was set apart for the worship of the gods, in 
 which was set up an image of the special god wor- 
 shipped. The spot where the image was set up was 
 the ^"holy of holies", to which only kings and priests 
 had access. Connected with the "holy of holies", in 
 later times, was a long hall or court for worshippers, 
 and a second court where business transactions were 
 
82 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 carried on. Grouped around these two courts were 
 scJiools, archive rooms, and priest's apartments. The 
 most conspicuous part of a Babylonian and Assyrian 
 temple of later times was a large brick tower, con- 
 sisting of from two to seven super-imposed stages, 
 about one hundred and fifty feet high. This tower 
 was called a zikkurat, and had a shrine at the top, 
 and a winding ascent leading from bottom to top. 
 
 Temples were numerous. Every city-god had his 
 chief sanctuary, at his special seat of worship. Some- 
 times there were as many as thirteen temples in the 
 same city, as at Lagash, but all stood within the sacred 
 area of the city-god. The temple was the center of 
 commercial, social, and intellectual life. There the 
 gods were worshipped, the law was dispensed, and 
 goods were bought and sold. 
 
 The impression made by these great temples was 
 lasting upon foreigners as well as upon the natives. 
 The particular type of temple which we speak of as 
 Babylonian was Sumerian in origin and arose among 
 a mountain-people. The zihkurat represented the 
 mountain where the god's shrine was located, and the 
 shrine at its top retained the memory of the moun- 
 tain shrines of the early Sumerian people. In this 
 connection it is interesting to note that the temple 
 at Nippur, a Sumerian settlement, was called E-kur, 
 "mountain house". The remembrance of the Baby- 
 lonian ziJvkurats reflected itself in the Hebrew story 
 of the Tower of Babel. Nor did it stop there, for 
 it inspired the Mohammedan minaret, and Christian 
 campanile and tower. 
 
Idea of Mediation 83 
 
 What we have been so far thinking of in connection 
 with the idea of mediation in Babylonian and Assyr- 
 ian religious thought is the official religion, the 
 religion of the kings and priests and rulers. But 
 while the masses of the people were related to the 
 official religion in the closest possible way, yet there 
 were many and various forms of religious expression, 
 which were very popular at all times, and which held 
 a tight grip upon the people. For instance, magic, 
 though finding a place in the official cult, had 
 endeared itself to the masses of the people in their 
 earnest and determined effort to control the demons 
 and to influence the gods. It is manifestly hard to 
 know where religion ends and magic begins, but it 
 may be stated, as a working hypothesis, that magic is 
 an attempt to control the gods, while religion appeals 
 to them. Consequently, magic is to be found wher- 
 ever there is a firm belief in the existence of minor 
 deities or demons, for men rarely presume to control 
 the great gods, while their only dealing with demons 
 is to try to overpower them and to use them. Baby- 
 lonian and Assyrian magic consisted in attempts to 
 control and use unseen demoniac powers, rarely to 
 coerce the great gods. Their conception of sin, as a 
 state of bodily disorder, arising from demoniac pos- 
 session, led them to be deeply concerned with any 
 power that could control the source of sin. 
 
 A^arious were the rites in seeking to control the 
 cause of sin and sickness. In studying these rites 
 we must not mistake the reality for the symbol. A 
 rite is of value either as a symbol of sompthing or as 
 
84 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 a means of something. Laughter is the S3^mbol of 
 joy, but as we laugh our laughter reacts upon the joy 
 and heightens it. A rite is a sjrtnbol of some relig- 
 ious belief, and as we practise it the religious belief 
 becomes more and more intensified. The rites prac- 
 tised in freeing from demoniac possessions were use- 
 ful only as they symbolized the desired relief from 
 unwholesome and sinful conditions. They were 
 worthless in themselves, and merely temporary insti- 
 tutions. No doubt many, perhaps most, Babylonians 
 and Assyrians failed to see beyond the symbol, but 
 we can trust the genius of any religion to be able to 
 distinguish between essentials and non-essentials. 
 The essential was to be free from sickness and sin, 
 the transitory symbol was the rite performed in 
 attaining that end. 
 
 The rite of exorcism was performed in order to 
 deliver from the power of demons. It was a symbolic 
 ritual, in which fire and water played a prominent 
 part. Images of the demons, whose expulsion was 
 sought, were made of clay, or pitch, or wax, and 
 were cast into fire to be destroyed. Or, in the case 
 of the water ritual, the person to be delivered was 
 sprinkled with pure water mingled with aromatic 
 woods, which resulted in the desired deliverance. 
 Usually the two acts, the use of fire and water, were 
 combined. For just as the sun rose from out the 
 primeval watery abyss, so the two elements of fire 
 and water were effective, when used in connection 
 with the power of water and light deities, such as 
 Ea and Marduk, who were the patrons of exorcism 
 
Idea of Mediation 85 
 
 par excellence, Ea the water-god, and Marduk the 
 solar-deit}^ The ceremony was called the ashapu, 
 and was usually held on the bank of a river. Many 
 other minor points of ritual were added to the rite 
 from time to time, such as the use of amulets, the 
 chanting of magic formulae, symbolic gestures, and 
 burning of different objects. 
 
 Exorcism was used not only in case of individual 
 sin and suffering, but also whenever a temple was to 
 be erected or the statue of a god to be dedicated. 
 There developed an extensive incantation literature, 
 consisting of magical poems to be used on all kinds 
 of special occasions. Some of the most important 
 collections of such texts are: the Maqlu ("burning") 
 and the Shurpu ("burning") series, the Labartu 
 (name of a demon) and the Tiu ("headache") texts. 
 
 Magic and exorcism are related, both expressing 
 man's relationship to demons. Magic seeks to con- 
 trol them, and exorcism attempts to expell them. 
 They are man's means of defending himself against 
 demons and evil spirits. 
 
 But man not only desires to strengthen himself 
 against demoniac influence; he also feels the need 
 of learning the will of the gods. This need expressed 
 itself, among the Babylonians and Assyrians, in very 
 definite religious rites, such as divination and sooth- 
 saying, the most elaborate being the former. 
 
 Divination is a desire and attempt to know the 
 future, which can best be accomplished by learning 
 the will of the gods, who hold the destinies in their 
 power. The officer in charge of all acts of divination 
 
86 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 was the priest, and the most common ritual of divina- 
 tion was the inspection of the liver of a sacrificial 
 sheep. As we have already learned, gods, men, and 
 animals were all related. Now the seat of life was 
 the blood, and the bloodiest organ is the liver, which 
 was therefore thought to be the specific seat of the 
 soul. AVhen an animal was sacrificed it became iden- 
 tical with the gods, and its liver the mirror of the 
 gods. The sheep was the typical sacrificial animal, 
 its soul or life was located in its liver, and therein 
 was reflected the soul or life of the gods. 
 
 It was the business of the divining priest, or haru, 
 to inspect the liver, and to make decisions. On the 
 basis of observations as to its shape, size, and other 
 conditions of the different lobes and ducts of the 
 liver, decisions as to the will and intention of the gods 
 were made. The ceremony of "liver inspecting", a 
 phrase which became the regular term for divination, 
 became quite elaborate. The officiating priest was 
 obliged to perform introductory lustrations for him- 
 self and for those assisting, with anointings. Special 
 garments had to be worn, and special prayers were 
 offered to Shamash, or Shamash and Adad ; Shamash 
 being the god of di^dnation par excellence. The sac- 
 rificial sheep had to be without blemish. 
 
 The oldest form of divination, however, consisted 
 in the pouring of oil upon water or water upon oil, 
 and watching its movements; or the observation of 
 the flight of birds; or the interpretation of dreams. 
 But liver divination can be traced back as early as 
 the first Sargon, about 2650 B. C, and it lasted till 
 
Idea of Mediation 87 
 
 the latest times. It was passed on to the Hittites, 
 who in turn handed it on to the Etruscans, from 
 whom the Romans learned it, with variations, using 
 the heart as well. 
 
 Another form of divination consisted in the obser- 
 vation of abnormal phenomena in the life of man, 
 or in that of animals; another in the interpretation 
 of dreams ; and still another in the shooting of arrows. 
 
 But next in importance to divination by liver obser- 
 vation was what has been called astrology, an observa- 
 tion of the heavenly bodies. Priestly scholars had 
 developed a theory that this world is an exact dupli- 
 cate or reflexion of the world of the gods. All phe- 
 nomena and events in this world correspond to 
 heavenly phenomena and events. In heaven the will 
 of the gods is expressed, and if man can read the 
 will of the gods in the heavens he will consequently 
 know what is happening and what will happen in 
 this world. In the heavens the stars play the chief 
 part in the representation of the god's will, and there- 
 fore the study of the stars, and of other heavenly 
 bodies, became the divine science. This has been 
 called astrology. 
 
 The science cannot be traced much earlier than the 
 First Babylonian Dynasty, although the system was 
 perfected about 2000 B. C. Then the heavenly bodies 
 were associated with the great gods of the Babylonian 
 pantheon. Shamash was the sun, Sin was the moon, 
 Ishtar was Venus, Marduk was Jupiter, Ninib was 
 Saturn, Nabu was Mercury, and Nergal was Mars. 
 The chief of these gods was Sin, "the Lord of Wis- 
 
88 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 dom" (En-zu). The &arw-priests observed eclipses, 
 and all other heavenly phenomena, and interpreted 
 them in terms of divine intention. This means of 
 divination became highly developed. Other stars 
 besides the planets were studied and their peculiari- 
 ties noted. Constellations were traced along the eclip- 
 tic, and the twelve signs of the zodiac were marked. 
 The first stars to be identified by the Babylonians 
 were Jupiter and Venus, the former because of its 
 brilliancy, and the latter because of its occurrence as 
 an evening star one part of the year and as a morning 
 star during the other part. It was left to Greek 
 astrologers to map out the heavens to correspond to 
 the lands, mountains, seas, and rivers of the earth, 
 but the Babylonians had begun the study. 
 
 Babylonian astrology had very little to do with the 
 individual. Its interests centred on affairs of state. 
 Individual concerns were served by the simpler forms 
 of divination such as the observation of abnormal 
 animal and human phenomena, or by the observation 
 of phenomena in nature, and by the interpretation 
 of dreams. The decline of astrology set in at the 
 close of the Assyrian period, when it began to 
 pass out of the astrological stage into the stage of 
 astronomy. 
 
 There were other means, public as well as private, 
 which were devised in the attempt to come into rela- 
 tionship with the gods. Oracles were granted by the 
 priests, especially after the seventh century; pilgrim- 
 ages were made to learn the will of certain important 
 deities, as when Ashurbanipal journeyed to Arbela 
 
Idea of Mediation 89 
 
 to consult Ishtar; and individuals claimed the power 
 of prophetic insight into the ways of the gods. But 
 whatever means were adopted the officiating person 
 was a priest. As a representative of the king, at 
 least in early thought, he developed into the standard 
 mediator in all matters that involved the gods and 
 men. The means and modes of his mediation were 
 numerous and varied, but the central idea was that 
 man's happiness and success always depend upon the 
 will of the gods, upon the relationship between gods 
 and men, and upon the success with which mediation 
 was negotiated. This idea is, and has always been, 
 practically universal. It is the heart and core of all 
 religion, and the essence and power of Christianity. 
 
V 
 
 THE IDEA OF THE FUTURE IN 
 BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA 
 
 Every true life has a goal to which it is always 
 looking forward. A life cannot be really considered 
 as having begun to live until that far-off city in 
 which its destiny awaits it, where its work is to be 
 done, where its problem is to be solved, begins to 
 draw the life towards itself, and the life begins to 
 know and to own the summons. Very strange is 
 this quality of human nature which decrees that 
 unless a man feels a future before him he does not 
 live completely in the present. Mankind has groT\m 
 so used to it that he does not realize how strange it 
 is. It seems to be necessary. But the lower natures, 
 the beasts, do not seem to have anything like it. And 
 one can easily picture to one's self a human nature 
 which might have developed in such a way that it 
 never should think about the future, but should get 
 all its inspiration out of the present things. But that 
 is not human nature. Human nature must always 
 
 90 
 
Idea of the Future 91 
 
 look ahead. The thing which it liopes to become is 
 already a power and decides the things it is. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians too had a goal to 
 which they were always looking forward. But it was 
 located primarily in this life. For the next world 
 they cared very little. Nevertheless they did have an 
 idea of an immortal life, though it was very limited, 
 and never developed to any considerable extent. Nor 
 did it exercise any influence upon the manners and 
 ways, the ethics and ideals, of this life. 
 
 This limitation in Babylonian and Assyrian out- 
 look was due primarily to a trait common to all early 
 Semitic peoples. The Semites were exceedingly slow 
 in developing an adequate conception of individual- 
 ity. To them everything centred in the community 
 and in its life. Individual demands and desires were 
 rarely considered. Attention was concentrated on 
 the state. This was also true among the Hebrews. 
 Until the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, no real con- 
 ception of individual consciousness had developed, 
 and consequently no real conception of the future 
 beyond this world. There was thought in plenty 
 about the nation's future, its destiny among the other 
 nations of the world. But there seemed to be no 
 necessity for a consideration of what happened in a 
 world other than this. A nation does not die with 
 the Individual; but new individuals are born that 
 compose the nation of the future. Of course, the 
 individual died, and his death was noted, and there 
 was a general idea as to what happened to him. But 
 very little thought was ever concentrated upon the 
 
92 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 subject. The same was true of the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians. Only, whereas the Hebrews developed 
 beyond that stage of thought, the Babylonians and 
 Assyrians never did. And the failure to do so, in 
 spite of their other accomplishments, contributed 
 largely to their final decay and downfall. 
 
 At death the body and soul separated. The body 
 was committed to the earth — never cremated except 
 in the earliest period — sometimes in a brick vault; 
 more often it was placed upon a slightly raised plat- 
 form of bricks, provided with a reed-mat over which 
 was a large cover. Ordinarily, however, the body was 
 placed in a baked-clay coffin in capsule form, or in 
 a coffin made by fitting together two deep bowls, or in 
 a huge vase, or in a coffin of bath-tub shape, of flask- 
 shape, or slipper-shape. The place of burial was 
 usually the temple court. The departed soul, edimmu, 
 was spoken of as having gone to its fate. It was 
 thought of as a wind or breath, napislitu, and was 
 believed to take a lively interest in the body which 
 it left behind. 
 
 In order to guarantee rest for the soul, the body had 
 to be cared for by being supplied with food and imple- 
 ments. The soul was thus enabled to continue what 
 was really an earthly existence in the next world. 
 Offerings, anag, were made for the repose of the soul. 
 They were either burned or consumed as a family 
 meal, or both, and in later times the custom of pour- 
 ing a libation, in connection with the meal, was 
 common. 
 
 The departed soul continued to live in a conscious 
 
Idea of the Future 93 
 
 or semi-conscious state, in a life inferior to the pres- 
 ent. It was considered a minor deity, gidim, and was 
 often propitiated, but was thought to be deprived of 
 all pleasure. 
 
 The home of the departed was kno^^^l by different 
 names, the chief of which was Arallu. Sometimes 
 it was called Irsii la tari, "land of no return", but 
 it was also called "the mountain house of the dead", 
 the "vast city", the "prison house", and the "house 
 of Tammuz". The Poem of Ishtar's descent into 
 Arallu furnishes us with the most complete account 
 of what the abode of the future was like. It was a 
 large dark cavern under the surface of the earth, full 
 of dust, where souls passed a miserable existence of 
 inactivity and gloom, and subsisted on dust. The 
 approach to it was in the western region of the earth, 
 where seven gates guarded by sentinels gave entrance. 
 
 The ruler of the reahn of the dead was the goddess 
 Ereshkigal, also called Allatu. The god tergal 
 descended into Arallu and married Ereshkigal. Being 
 a god of pestilence and death, identified later with 
 Mars, his cult centre, Kutha, became a designation of 
 Arallu. Ishtar was also associated with Arallu, 
 which she visited in order to restore her lover Tam- 
 muz. Xergal and his consort employed demons as 
 their messengers, the chief being Belit-seri and 
 Namtaru. 
 
 Ishtar's "descent into Arallu" is probably a poetic 
 version of an old vegetation myth, the disappearance 
 of Ishtar being the death of nature, when all growth 
 on earth ceased. But it throw^s interesting light upon 
 
94 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 the popular conception of Arallu. At every one of 
 the seven gates, Ishtar was compelled to part with 
 an article of clothing until she appeared naked before 
 Ereshkigal, who ordered her servant Namtaru to 
 imprison the goddess. Ea interposed on behalf of 
 Ishtar, whereupon Ereshkigal commands Namtaru 
 to sprinkle Ishtar with "water of life" and to release 
 her. Ishtar departs and receives her clothes as she 
 passes each of the seven gates. 
 
 There is also an echo in Babylonian literature of an 
 "Island of the Blest", situated at the confluence of 
 the streams, where Utnapishtim and his wife were 
 led, after the flood, but it seems to have been only for 
 special individuals. There is, however, nothing def- 
 initely known about the future of such heroes. 
 Enkidu (or Eabani) also goes to Arallu, but when 
 he appears to his friend Gilgamesh he has no definite 
 information to impart, other than that Etana and 
 Ereshkigal were there. 
 
 To the Babylonians and Assyrians, death was an 
 unmitigated evil, with which no ethical considera- 
 tions were connected. Once a soul departed to Arallu, 
 his fate was unalterable and permanent. There was 
 no belief in transmigration or resurrection. There is 
 only one instance of a soul rising from Arallu, besides 
 the goddess Ishtar, and that was Enkidu; yet he did 
 not gain deliverance, but, like the shade of Samuel, 
 returned again. 
 
 Such was the future of the Babylonians and Assyr- 
 ians. There was no "Kingdom of God" in the 
 future for them. Their best vision was confined to 
 
Idea of the Future 95 
 
 this world, and that was not very inspiring. The 
 Hebrew dream of a Messianic Kingdom, of a city of 
 God, was "unknown to them. When we think of the 
 dreariness in outlook of the Babylonians and Assyr- 
 ians, of the absence of that power which could have 
 consecrated their nationalism, their patriotism, their 
 wealth, their glory, and their individual sacrifices, 
 it is a real wonder that they ever accomplished any- 
 thing. They had no dream of an ideal spiritual king 
 and an ideal spiritual nation to realize; they were 
 thrown back upon their native, natural will to live, 
 for their inspiration. And when we contemplate the 
 great things they accomplished, their art and archi- 
 tecture, their military grandeur and their mighty 
 empire, their literature and science, their deep sense 
 of piety and their fine moral distinctions, we are sur- 
 prised at any limitations to the dream of more 
 favoured nations, who have had all the stimulus and 
 inspiration of a glorious spiritual future, a moral and 
 religious city and kingdom of God. 
 
VI 
 
 THE IDEA OF MORALITY IN BABYLONIA 
 AND ASSYRIA 
 
 Many hundreds of years ago a Hebrew poet wrote, 
 "In thy light we shall see light". The poet saw men 
 all around him running hither and thither seeking 
 light. The poet sympathized with them, for he too 
 thought light the most precious thing in the world. 
 But he saw a great fallacy in the search for light of 
 his time. Men appeared to be questioning this thing 
 and that thing, as if the secret of its being, its power 
 to be understood and comprehended, the light with 
 which it ought to shine, were something it carried in 
 itself. He declared this to be wrong. To him every- 
 thing is comprehensible and capable of being under- 
 stood only as it exists within the great enfolding pres- 
 ence of God. To him it is only in their relations to 
 the perfect nature that all other natures can become 
 intelligible. Only within the elements where they 
 belong, only as they are held inside the atmosphere 
 of larger natures to which they bear essential and 
 96 
 
Idea of Morality 97 
 
 sacred relationships, can the finest and truest natures 
 of many things be understood. The beauty of the 
 flower or the majesty of the mountain can only truly 
 be seen in the radiance of the glowing sun. 
 
 When we turn to study Babylonian and Assyrian 
 morals, it must be held inside the atmosphere of 
 Babylonian and Assyrian life and customs. We must 
 learn to judge the Babylonians and Assyrians in the 
 light of their o\\ti time. Their heredity, environment, 
 and social traditions must limit our decisions. We 
 must not forget that they lived many hundreds of 
 years before the rise of Christianity. It is only in 
 the light of their time that we can hope to cast 
 light upon their moral realities and ideals. 
 
 The origin of moral ideas reaches back into prehis- 
 toric times. The earliest historic man habitually 
 differentiates between good and bad. His "good" 
 and "bad" doubtless differed from ours, having been 
 probably more confined and narrower. We say that 
 "good" is that which favours human progress, and 
 "evil" that which impedes it. But the Babylonians 
 and x\ssyrians, because of their known piety, would 
 probably have defined "good" as that which is pleas- 
 ing to the gods and "evil" as that which incites the 
 anger of the gods. "Good" and "evil" may originally 
 have been purely ritual and ceremonial, but in his- 
 toric times we shall find that, although ritual right 
 and wrong still prevailed to a certain extent, a posi- 
 tive moral distinction was made. Our o^vn moral 
 distinctions are based upon what we consider to be 
 the will of God and upon what has become customary. 
 
98 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 The same is true of Babylonian and Assyrian morals. 
 What their gods willed was right, what they dis- 
 proved was wrong; what was customary was right, 
 and what was not customary was wrong. 
 
 Of course the gods will what we thinlc they will. 
 We think God wills justice, righteousness, purity, etc. 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians thought he willed the 
 same, though their idea of justice, purity, and right- 
 eousness may have been different from what ours is. 
 They may have conceived sin, for example, in a more 
 ceremonial way than we, and may have considered 
 it and "sickness" to be equivalent. This we must 
 take into consideration in our evaluation of Baby- 
 lonian and Assyrian morals. 
 
 Every human act is done for some end or purpose. 
 The end is always regarded by the agent in the light 
 of something good. If evil be done, it is done as 
 leading to good, or as bound up with good, or as itself 
 being good for the doer under the circumstances. 
 The standard of moral judgment is that which is 
 considered good or bad, wrong or right. But what is 
 considered good or bad, wrong or right, depends upon 
 people and time. To the Babylonians and Assyrians, 
 human acts were right or wrong, good or bad, not 
 according as they were useful or hurtful, nor yet 
 according as their consequences made for or against 
 the end of social happiness, but according as they 
 were pleasing or displeasing to the gods. The Baby- 
 lonians and Assyrians aimed at material blessings, 
 prosperity, success in war and in private undertak- 
 ings; but they also aimed at tranquility of soul; and 
 
Idea of Morality 99 
 
 most of all their greatest concern was to please the 
 gods. 
 
 In examining the subject matter of Babylonian and 
 Assyrian morals, allowance must be made for a wide 
 gap between the ideal and the real. We must be 
 careful not to confuse what were actual practices with 
 what were merely ideals, although the ideals will be 
 valuable as an indication of what the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians knew to be best and of what they tried 
 to attain. 
 
 In this gap between the ideal and the real, man is 
 always standing; between their visions and tasks all 
 men are standing always. For every man has visions, 
 glimpses clearer or duller, now bright and beautiful, 
 now clouded and obscure, of what is absolutely and 
 abstractly true; and every man also has pressing on 
 him the warm, clear lives of fellow men. There is 
 the world of ideals, of truths, on one side, and there 
 is the world of reality, of men, upon the other. 
 Between the two stands man; and these two worlds, 
 if man is what he ought to be, meet through his 
 nature. 
 
 In attempting to gain an idea of the morals of 
 any people or age a standard of judgment must be 
 assumed. The most convenient criterion is the moral 
 standard of our own age. By using this standard of 
 judgment we can compare the moral ideas of any 
 people or age with those of our own age, and decide 
 whether they were higher or lower than ours. We 
 may thus commend or condemn the morals of the 
 people or age under consideration. But this criterion 
 
100 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 cannot be used to commend or condemn the morals 
 of any individual of another people or age than our 
 own. The individual must be commended or con- 
 demned on the basis of the morals of his own times — 
 as to whether he has been true or false to the moral 
 ideals of his own people and time. 
 
 In order to compare the morals of the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians with our own, our first task will be to 
 find what their moral ideas were, and what was the 
 content of their moral ideas. We shall, therefore, try 
 to discover their Moral Ideals, their idea of Moral 
 Evil, their moral determinants, whether they were 
 conscious of a freedom of will or not, and what their 
 Moral Sanctions were. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians always ascribed the 
 best they knew to their gods. If we can learn what 
 that was we shall be in a position to state what their 
 moral ideals were. The chief endeavour of the Baby- 
 lonians and Assyrians was to please their gods, and 
 in order to do that it was necessary that they should 
 know what the will of the gods was. The Babylonians 
 and Assyrians saw the will of the gods in the customs 
 and laws of their time, for the authorship of all law 
 and precedent was ascribed to the gods. To obey 
 the gods, then, was to be obedient to the custom and 
 law of the time. The Law, therefore, was the moral 
 ideal. 
 
 But what did Babylonian and Assyrian law consist 
 in, or by what was it characterized? It consisted 
 in justice, righteousness, truthfulness, etc. But what 
 was the content of justice, righteousness, truthful- 
 
Idea of Moraliiyf 101 
 
 ness, etc.? Their content must necessarily have 
 depended upon the customs and legal decisions of 
 those times. The customs and legal decisions of 
 the times, then, will define the moral ideals of the 
 Babylonians and Assyrians. 
 
 We shall, therefore, examine the customs and legal 
 decisions of the family, social, international, trans- 
 cendental, and personal life of the Babylonians and 
 Assyrians in order to determine what the content of 
 their moral ideals was. And we shall begin by noting 
 what ideals they ascribed to their gods. 
 
 The Babylonian and Assyrian referred to his god as 
 the ^'^sovereign of justice", the "perfect" one, the lord 
 of "righteous" command; with him they associated 
 such qualities as faithfulness, purity, goodness, and 
 uprightness; and he was considered the punisher of 
 the wicked. The deities were particularly associated 
 with law both as originators and as administrators. 
 They possessed law as their own, and there was a 
 tendency to ascribe all law to them. As a rule, what- 
 ever was ascribed to the gods was "perfect", "right- 
 eous", and "just". Therefore, all law was just, 
 because it belonged to and came from the gods. The 
 numerous legal contracts, representing the Babylonian 
 and Assyrian periods, illustrate the important role 
 which law played in the every-day life of these 
 peoples. The law of the gods was, in short, the 
 moral ideal of the people. It was their standard of 
 all "perfection" and "justice". 
 
 Now, the just law of the gods, as the moral ideal, 
 consisted in speaking the truth, which was often 
 
1 02 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 guaranteed by an oath, especially in contracts. The 
 many Babylonian and Assyrian contracts show how 
 great was the dependence npon a promise, which the 
 contracting parties accepted as true. The moral ideal 
 consisted also in what was right, which likewise was 
 guaranteed by an oath, usually in the name of the 
 gods ; e. g., a true servant is he who does what is right 
 or good. It consisted in the recognition of honesty; 
 e. g., the home-transgressor is rewarded for his hon- 
 esty in owning his wrong. It consisted in the love 
 of justice, and the abhorrence of wickedness. 
 
 But did the Babylonians mean the same thing by 
 ka-gi-na, zi, dug, etc., as we mean by "to speak jus- 
 tice", "righteousness", "good", etc. ? Ideally, they did. 
 Gudea tells us that during a religious festival in his 
 time the maid was equal to her mistress, the master 
 and the slave consorted together, the powerful and 
 humble lay down side by side, the rich man did not 
 wrong the orphan, the strong did not oppress the 
 widow, and the sun shone justice and Babbar trod 
 injustice under foot. In general, the ideal required 
 that law be the same for the poor as for the rich. 
 
 The actual laws and customs of the times, however, 
 will teach us how near in practice the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians really approached this ideal. Their 
 actual practice in these matters as compared with our 
 own will determine their moral status as a people. 
 
 It is true that we have evidence in inscriptions that 
 there was a great deal of freedom and real harmony, 
 e. g., in family life, and that the husband showed a 
 real sense of duty even to a divorced wife — which, 
 
Idea of Morality 1 03 
 
 however, may have been more the result of the pres- 
 ence of law — but it is evident that clemency was the 
 father's prerogative. He could divorce his wife at 
 will, and inflict the severest punishments upon the 
 members of his family. In short, the father of a 
 family had rights which no one else possessed. 
 
 To a certain extent the mother shared the father's 
 authority and rights. Children owed obedience to 
 her as well as to the father, and she, as well as the 
 father, had the power of disinheritance. Both parents 
 shared the family responsibilities. They were obliged 
 to care for their children, and care for orphans was 
 always demanded. 
 
 On the other hand, the power of the father always 
 tended to be restricted by legal decisions, which 
 became established law, e. g., marriage was a legal 
 contract; the right of the father to sell wife, son, 
 or daughter was in time restricted to a sale which 
 was valid only for three years; the wife's definite 
 rights increased, e. g., a man could not take a con- 
 cubine without a valid excuse ; a slave wife could not 
 be sold if she bore children; and children had legal 
 property rights. The father's control over servants 
 was even greater than that over his wife and children, 
 yet servants had their rights, and were treated in 
 such a way that in turn they often showed real 
 respect for their master. 
 
 In Babylonia and Assyria, as in all society, efforts 
 were continually made to bring about reforms in 
 family law, but down to the end of Babylonian and 
 Assyrian civilization the head of the family enjoyed 
 
1 04 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 peculiar rights — rights which would be called -unjust 
 when judged by the standard of modern family 
 customs. 
 
 In social life, the king was always revered by his 
 subjects ; he was the righteous shepherd of his people, 
 and regulated all decisions; he was full of wisdom 
 and devotion, and by him, as the standard of justice, 
 as well as by the gods, oaths were sworn. The ideal 
 king was not extortionate, and took care that taxes 
 were as light as possible; and he was merciful in 
 battle. It was a common practice to make votive 
 offerings for a ruler — a practice which showed real 
 devotion to the king. 
 
 The relation between individuals demands good 
 deeds, truthfulness, justice, and mercy. The relation 
 of the individual to established law was that of obe- 
 dience, for the established law was meant to be just, 
 being the gift of the just gods; nor should the just 
 decisions of the gods ever be changed. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians had a keen sense 
 of property rights, and it was here that their sense 
 of legal justice was most highly developed. Agree- 
 ments were made in all property transactions and 
 contracts were duly drawn up in legal form, and 
 sworn to by the name of the gods and that of the king 
 before witnesses in the presence of proper legal offi- 
 cials. E. g., law protected the owner or tenant 
 from any unfair treatment. The Babylonians and 
 Assyrians were very painstaking and exact in all 
 business affairs, and preserved painstaking inven- 
 tories of all details. Receipts were given and always 
 
Idea of Morality 1 05 
 
 acknowledged in a regular legal fashion. The moral 
 ideal in business life, therefore, was strict justice, 
 truthfulness, and honesty. 
 
 Free labourers were hired in a legal way and had 
 their definite rights, and salaries were paid according 
 to a legal scale at set times. Even the king felt 
 keenly his responsibility to the labouring class. Slaves, 
 however, were not treated as freemen, but were con- 
 sidered the property of their master. Slaves were 
 bought and sold just like cattle. Yet they were sup- 
 posed to be morally truthful and were expected to 
 take an oath and to act as witnesses; and they had 
 the right to appear in a lawsuit in their own favour. 
 They also had a certain independence, for they could 
 contract marriage with women in the service of other 
 masters, and could dispose of the property of their 
 masters. The more humane rulers, such as Uruka- 
 gina, from time to time tried to establish as much of 
 liberty to all men as possible, but slavery was always 
 the rule. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians made repeated 
 efforts to better social conditions, as the reforms in 
 the reign of Urukagina show. He restored sacred 
 lands that had been taken by a former king, reduced 
 the number of unnecessary secular officials, deposed 
 officials condemned for bribery, reduced the scale of 
 exorbitant priestly fees, punished theft, and put a 
 stop to forced labor. 
 
 Peace was the international and moral ideal, and 
 many treaties were made to obtain it. They were 
 
106 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 secured by oath in the name of the gods, and hence 
 were established upon justice and truthfulness. The 
 violation of a treaty was to be punished severely. 
 Yet, in spite of treaties, wars were very frequent ; but 
 slaughter was excused as having been commanded by 
 the gods, for wars were holy. Great care was accord- 
 ingly taken to treat the dead in a proper manner. 
 
 The transcendental moral ideal of the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians may be said to have been piety. Their 
 gods were holy, righteous, just, truthful, pure, good, 
 perfect, compassionate, merciful, mighty; and the 
 right attitude towards such beings was one of obe- 
 dience, love, and worship. The state as a whole rec- 
 ognized these obligations, as did also the individual. 
 The gods were not only the protectors of the just, 
 but they were also the punishers of the wicked. The 
 temples and shrines of the gods were always thronged 
 with devout worshippers, and the gods were the 
 source of protection, and by their oracles their wor- 
 shippers were guided. 
 
 The king's relation to the gods was of a special 
 nature, for his distant ancestors were the very sons of 
 the gods, and each king loved to call himself the son 
 of his god or goddess. Moreover, they were the 
 prophets of the gods, the intermediary between them 
 and mankind. They were also the chief priests, and 
 offered sacrifices and gifts for themselves and people 
 to the gods. All the king's power was a gift from 
 the gods, and the gods chose him and crowned him, 
 and in return the king built temples, groves, canals, 
 statues, shrines, etc., and dedicated them to his god. 
 
Idea of Morality 1 07 
 
 The kings were often considered sinless, because of 
 their devotion to the gods and to the welfare of their 
 people. 
 
 The individual's relation to the deity was that of 
 true obedience and pious reverence. His true atti- 
 tude was "to cast down the face" before his god. 
 Although he feared his god, he also had absolute 
 confidence in him, as the many Babylonian and Assyr- 
 ian names, expressive of this sentiment, would show. 
 Each person had his own god to whom he especially 
 prayed and from whom he received blessings, but all 
 the gods were the object of personal love, reverence, 
 and adoration. 
 
 Truth may be said to have been the personal moral 
 ideal of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Its asso- 
 ciation in the mind of these people with justice is 
 apparent, and it may owe its great development to 
 their keen sense of justice. Next to veracity is piety 
 which is so characteristic of the Babylonian and 
 Assyrian individual, and here again the idea is 
 wrapped up with that of justice which belongs in 
 essence to the gods. Finally, obedience to the gods 
 was a universal ideal, and this again is intimately 
 associated with the idea of justice. The Babylonian 
 and Assyrian, indeed, was most decidedly a law-abid- 
 ing individual. The righteous man is always he 
 who is true, pious, and obedient; he also was brave, 
 but that was not an essential. The evil man was 
 always despised and subject to malediction and 
 punishment. 
 
 Nor is the moral ideal an external one, as might 
 
1 08 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 be expected from an ancient people. The Babylonians 
 and Assyrians, perhaps, laid a great deal of stress 
 upon external requirements in religious matters, but 
 their moral ideal is decidedly an internal and high 
 one. The law must be obeyed not merely (although, 
 perhaps, primarily) because the gods gave it, but in 
 order that the heart may feel satisfaction. The word 
 azag, meaning "clean", though often used in a way 
 which would appear to indicate an external or ritual 
 idea of "cleanness", is nevertheless often used in an 
 internal and moral way. The Babylonians and Assyr- 
 ians developed a keen sense of truth and obedience, 
 and their piety sprang out of a true love of the gods 
 and of things pertaining to them. They loved to fre- 
 quent the temple of the gods, not because they were 
 forced to do it, but because of their real inward piety. 
 
 The moral ideals of the Babylonians and Assyrians, 
 then, may be said to have been expressed in terms of 
 the just law of the gods, and of obedience to it. The 
 moral attitude necessary to the realization of the ideal 
 was obedience to the gods. The moral ideal in family 
 life consisted in truth, justice, and righteousness; in 
 political or social life it consisted in justice, honesty, 
 righteousness, truth, and mercy ; in international life 
 it consisted in peace; in transcendental life in piety, 
 obedience, love, and worship; and in personal life in 
 truth, piety, and obedience. 
 
 Thus the moral ideals of the Babylonians and 
 Assyrians consisted in doing the will of their gods. 
 They were their gods' battlements and not their own. 
 Their own battlements were their own desires. 
 
Idea oi Moralliy 109 
 
 These had to be taken away and annihilated, but the 
 will of the gods was irrevocable. 
 
 On the other hand, human battlements gave proof 
 of neglect of the gods. Moral evil was disobedience 
 to the gods, and lack of faith in them. Man's life 
 should have abundant supply for all its needs, should 
 be rich enough, safe enough, strong enough; and yet 
 all this abundance is not to come by or in itself, but 
 is to be man's portion, because he is himself part and 
 parcel of the divine life, held closely and constantly 
 upon the bosom of the life of the gods. Man does 
 not carry his sufficiency in himself ; it is to be found 
 in the gods. The opposite of all this is impiety, 
 lack of faith, disobedience of the law of the gods, 
 moral sin. 
 
 Moral evil was primarily regarded as consisting in 
 the transgression of the law of the gods. The law 
 of the gods was seen in the customs of the times as 
 well as in actual codified law. Babylonian and 
 Assyrian family custom or law was very severe upon 
 sexual impurity; in adultery, both participants were 
 thrown into the river ; the punishment for fornication 
 with a betrothed girl was the death of the man; even 
 abduction was punished with death; incest of all 
 forms was hated; and the harlot was considered 
 unholy. 
 
 Truthfulness was at a premium, as the many oaths 
 in the name of the gods show. The Babylonians and 
 Assyrians were so exacting in this matter that often 
 the veracity of the witnesses in a lawsuit was ques- 
 tioned and a new process was undertaken to get at 
 
1 1 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 the truth. A lie was not permitted to go unnoticed ; 
 and the slanderer was severely dealt with, often by 
 being branded. 
 
 Moral sin was believed to offend the gods because 
 it was against their commands, and it was natural 
 that the sinner should ask his gods for their forgive- 
 ness. The gods took cognizance of sin, and expected 
 their clients to acknowledge it. One man prayed thus : 
 "My queen knoweth what I have done, oh, conceive 
 compassion; forgive my sins, lift up my counte- 
 nance"; another says: "Of him who hath sin thou 
 dost receive the petition." The gods were full of 
 mercy. 
 
 Social moral evil consisted in oppression and 
 cruelty. Cruelty was undoubtedly common, especially 
 towards enemies, the king being sometimes depicted 
 in the act of driving an arrow into the neck of a 
 captive pleading for mercy, and oppression was com- 
 mon in the reign of unscrupulous kings who levied 
 unjust revenues and heavy tribute. Personal rela- 
 tionship frowned upon stealing, robbery, falsehood, 
 and slander, all of which were severely punished. 
 The suppression of justice and bribery was common, 
 but always condemned. Deceit in business was 
 severely handled. Urukagina's reforms give us a fair 
 idea of the unfavorable condition which sometimes 
 prevailed in Babylonia and Assyria, and also of what 
 a king like Urukagina considered socially wrong. 
 He tells us that before his time in Lagash, excessive 
 taxes were levied, and the taxgatherers billeted them- 
 selves on the people; that the patesi used to appro- 
 
Idea of Morality 1 1 1 
 
 priate the property of the temple for himself and 
 that the sacred oxen were used to plough the land 
 of the patesij that the priests grew rich at the expense 
 of the temple and plundered the people; that they 
 entered the garden of the people and cut trees and 
 carried off the fruit for themselves ; that they used to 
 keep on good terms with the palace by dividing the 
 spoil; that they oppressed the people by confiscating 
 their property; and that they used forced labor and 
 misused the laborers by means of force. These condi- 
 tions prevailed, but they were reformed by Urukagina, 
 who felt their great injustice. Yet it was certainly 
 thought that sin was not confined to ceremonial, 
 ritual, or external wrong ; but was morally conceived ; 
 for sin resulted in disgrace. 
 
 International moral evil has always been cruelty 
 and it is not surprising to find evidence of such in 
 Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions, though there is 
 not a great deal of it. 
 
 The moral evil in Babylonian and Assyrian trans- 
 cendental life is that which arouses the anger of the 
 gods. It is not clear what that was, but disobedience 
 or irreverence may be assumed. When the deity is 
 vexed, devastation, murder, etc., prevail. Prayer for 
 forgiveness and compassion was then in order. 
 
 Personal moral evil consisted in disobedience to the 
 customs and laws of the time. 
 
 As already seen, punishments were often very se- 
 vere, especially in the case of sexual sins. This may 
 indicate a rather external, material, or ritual idea of 
 the conception of sin. For example, a man was put 
 
1 1 2 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 to death for committing fornication with a betrothed 
 girl. This may be because such an act would cause a 
 depreciation in the value of the girl in the eyes of her 
 father, who expected to receive the bride price from 
 her future husband. Even adultery is not punished 
 with any such severity. But this is another instance 
 of the relation of the father to the family, and the law 
 was made or the custom arose with his interests in 
 view. The same is probably the explanation of the 
 severe punishment of an abductor. 
 
 The Babylonians and Assyrians believed that suf- 
 fering always brought its owtl reward. One suffers 
 what he deserves, and the gods see to it that the sinner 
 is punished by being cursed. Suffering was considered 
 a mental as well as a material thing. 
 
 There is no doubt, on the other hand, that sin was 
 not always morally considered. The breaking of a 
 ritual or ceremonial law was often considered quite as 
 blamable as an offence against a moral law. The con- 
 secrated woman was punished with death if she ever 
 took part in secular business, because of her ritual 
 holiness, and she evidently was never permitted to 
 bear children to a man who became her husband, for 
 the same reason. The many references to the uncon- 
 secrated, and to unclean hands, likewise point to a 
 ritual idea of sin. 
 
 As to a theory of the origin of moral evil, there is 
 nothing to be found in Sumerian inscriptions which 
 is equivalent to the Paradise story of the Old Testa- 
 ment or the yetzer theory of later Judaism. The in- 
 terest of the Babylonians and Assyrians was practical 
 
Idea of Morality 1 1 3 
 
 rather than metaphysical. They realized the existence 
 of evil, and assumed, without debate, that it came 
 from the world of spirits which surrounded them. 
 They would not accuse their gods of being the origin 
 of sin ; but besides gods there were numerous demons, 
 spiritual and unseen, beings from whom came sick- 
 ness and death and to whom were ascribed all evil. 
 The "evil eye" was the malevolent glance of the 
 demon. 
 
 Moral evil in Babylonia and Assyria consisted pri- 
 marily in a violation of the customs and laws of the 
 gods and was expressed in sexual sin in family life; 
 in oppression and cruelty, falsehood and injustice, in 
 social life; in cruelty in international life; and per- 
 haps in disobedience and irreverence in transcendental 
 and personal life. 
 
 With the idea of a sense of moral evil must go a 
 feeling of free will. Evil cannot be considered blam- 
 able unless there is a certain freedom of the will. If 
 a man has no choice but to do evil, he cannot be held 
 accountable for the evil which he has no power to 
 avoid. The Babylonians and Assyrians had a sense 
 of moral evil as distinguished from ritual and cere- 
 monial "wrong" or incorrectness. They differentiated 
 moral right from moral wrong. They felt themselves 
 morally responsible. This their numerous contracts 
 are sujBBcient to show. "The house-usurper was cog- 
 nizant" that what he had done was wrong ; and that he 
 had consciously and wilfully done an evil deed. 
 
 On the other hand, as in the Old Testament and 
 later Jewish literature, there is evidence in inscrip- 
 
1 1 4 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 tions to show that the Babylonians and Assyrians 
 believed to a certain extent in predestination. They 
 spoke of the "tablets of fate of the gods", and of one 
 being inscribed into the book of life. In the word 
 nam-tar-tar-ri-e-ne, the use of the plural e-ne shows 
 that the Sumerians, and following them, the Baby- 
 lonians and Assyrians, considered the fates to be 
 deities. The gods were believed to have the power of 
 directing the world and each man's destiny was in a 
 broad and general way prescribed by them. This did 
 not, however, prevent them from believing at the same 
 time that each man had the personal power, with the 
 help of the gods, of directing his immediate acts. 
 Nor did they feel any incongruity in these two seem- 
 ingly opposite ideas. The belief in prayer to the gods 
 assumed a belief in freedom from predetermined 
 destiny. 
 
 Moral determinants may be enumerated as, heredity, 
 environment, social tradition, and personal initiative. 
 These forces always condition a people's morals. 
 
 Let us, then, examine Babylonian and Assyrian cus- 
 toms in the light of these forces. The family was, we 
 know, patriarchal, at least in historical times. The 
 father was head and owner of the family. He owned 
 wife and child just as he did sheep or oxen, and had 
 the legal right to dispose of them. Patriarchal rights 
 were handed on from generation to generation, and 
 though from time to time decisions were made limit- 
 ing that right, and these decisions gradually became 
 law, yet the patriarchal rights among the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians were to a great extent hereditaiy. The 
 
Idea of Moralit}} 1 1 5 
 
 environment of society was such that it tended to 
 accentuate the right of the pater familias. The gov- 
 ernment was monarchical, each city at first having its 
 own prince or king. The family was a government 
 in miniature, and the necessity of the preservation of 
 family integrity demanded a leader and head in which 
 all family life and forces could centre. That leader 
 was necessarily the strong one of the family; as a 
 rule, the father. 
 
 Every society is conditioned ah extra by an envi- 
 ronment or atmosphere which we call social tradition, 
 and in the case of the Babylonians and Assyrians this 
 further tended to emphasize the established nature 
 of the family as a group of individuals looking to the 
 father as head. 
 
 There were, however, always those stronger persons 
 who possessed sufficient force of character to disregard 
 by personal initiative certain social customs, and this 
 is how we account for certain definite progressive 
 strides in ancient civilization. It likewise explains 
 how that in Babylonian and Assyrian society the 
 father of the family was often forced to recognize the 
 rights of inferior members of the family. But he- 
 redity, environment, and social tradition were so 
 strong in the family life that to the end the father 
 remained virtually dictator of family affairs, and 
 personal initiative never played much of a role. 
 
 The same may be said of the effects of heredity, 
 environment, social tradition, and personal initiative 
 in social, international, transcendental, and personal 
 life. The actions of a king, or state, or individual. 
 
1 1 6 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 were conditioned by heredity, even as they were by 
 environment and tradition, and yet there was always 
 a place for personal initiative. These circumstances 
 must always be taken into consideration in the deter- 
 mination of the nature of the morals of any people 
 or age. 
 
 There is all through the best and most earnest 
 thought and life of men the vision of a great attain- 
 ment. That man, the individual man and the uni- 
 versal man, is what he is only in preparation for 
 something far vaster and more perfect than he is — 
 this is the practical doctrine of all earnest and re- 
 ligious men. It appears in all religions — this doctrine 
 of the great attainment, the belief in the lofty some- 
 thing which it is possible for man to become, although 
 no man, purely man, has become it yet. 
 
 But though the Babylonians and Assyrians shared 
 with all mankind this lofty ideal, its power as a moral 
 sanction was greatly limited, because of their inability 
 to allow its extension into the idealism of a life be- 
 yond the grave. Their moral sanctions, consequently, 
 lacked that driving power, which otherwise would 
 have been realized had they not been foreshortened 
 by the limitations of mere mortal existence. 
 
 Moral sanctions or considerations which give force 
 and authority to moral laws may be either external 
 or internal. They may refer to rewards and punish- 
 ments imposed from without, or to consequences of 
 conduct which arise spontaneously from within. The 
 Babylonians' and Assyrians' respect for the just law 
 of the gods is the nearest approach we find to an in- 
 
Idea of Morality 1 1 7 
 
 ternal moral sanction in their religion. It is true, 
 disobedience to the law called forth punishment, and 
 in that respect, was an external moral sanction, 
 but obedience to the law had become hereditary and 
 traditional and the virtue of keeping the law was 
 perhaps its own reward. The moral ideal was per- 
 fection or sinlessness, and that state could be arrived 
 at only through obedience to the law. 
 
 The most potent Babylonian and Assyrian moral 
 sanction, however, consisted in rewards and punish- 
 ments imposed from without by an external author- 
 ity in the present, that authority being either divine 
 or a constituted legal authority. The gods became 
 angry with the sinful and punished them ; and estab- 
 lished law provided punishment for the offender. 
 
 Unlike the Hebrews there was no appeal to future 
 rewards and punishments in Sumerian thought. The 
 Babylonians and Assyrians believed in the survival of 
 the soul (edinifnu) in the future, in Arallu, the land 
 of the dead ; but Arallu was a "place of desolation". 
 Offerings were made for the dead, but primarily for 
 the purpose of keeping them from harming the living. 
 In the Babylonian and Assyrian conception of life 
 after death, the moral factor was entirely absent. Nor 
 did the gods ever concern themselves with the dead, 
 who lived in a gloomy and silent habitation. What 
 happiness a man may desire must be secured in this 
 life, and hence moral standards were completely adap- 
 ted to the present needs, without any reference to 
 the future. The future, therefore, did not hold any 
 moral sanction for the Babylonians and the Assyrians 
 
1 1 8 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 as it did for the Hebrews. It was in this life that 
 moral sanctions were to be found, and they were 
 found chiefly in the fact that the gods demanded 
 obedience to just laws — adherence to moral standards. 
 
 In conclusion it may be well to enumerate the 
 main features of Babylonian and Assyrian morals, 
 and to make an estimate of them. In making this 
 estimate we must be careful to distinguish between 
 national and individual morals, for while the morals 
 of a nation may be commended or condemned in 
 comparison with the morals of our own time, indi- 
 vidual morals must be judged in the light of the 
 customs of the age of the particular individual under 
 consideration. 
 
 Our study of the morals of the Babylonians and 
 of the Assyrians as a nation has revealed certain 
 defects. Their idea of the deity was far inferior to 
 ours, for while they considered the gods to be the 
 source of all justice, truth, righteousness, etc., yet 
 their justice, truth, and righteousness were national 
 and not international. Moreover their gods were con- 
 ceived in a very anthropomorphic way, and were sub- 
 ject to the need of change and repentance just as 
 men are. In short their moral conception of their 
 gods was a limited one, but very high within these 
 limitations. Again, their idea of the rights and priv- 
 ileges of the head of the family was inferior when 
 considered in the light of the twentieth century, but 
 its limitations were due to the customs and traditions 
 of the time. "Convention is king over all," says Pin- 
 dar, and according as convention changed, so the 
 
Idea of Morality \ 1 9 
 
 rights of the father were more and more limited. 
 Another defect was noted in connection with the sub- 
 ject of punishment. Many of the punishments reg- 
 ulated by the law were far too harsh in our judgment, 
 but they again were regulated by custom and tradition, 
 for certain punishments which are considered just in 
 the twentieth century may be considered equally harsh 
 in the thirtieth century. The lex talionis and capi- 
 tal punishment serve not only to show how compara- 
 tively cruel the Babylonians and Assyrians were, but 
 they may also be taken as an indication of the great 
 abhorrence felt by them for certain types of sin. 
 Slavery was another national defect, but that again 
 was in order among all ancient peoples. That the 
 slaves enjoyed certain very definite rights was a step 
 in that direction which finally led to the banishment of 
 slavery; but not till many thousands of years had 
 passed. There were other defects, if we judge these 
 people by our twentieth century standards; e. g., the 
 people apparently had very little share in the govern- 
 ment ; magic controlled much of the religious life, and 
 sin was likely to be very physically conceived. But 
 here again we must keep in mind the moral determi- 
 nants of the age, e. g., heredity, environment, and 
 social tradition. 
 
 On the other hand, our study has revealed to us 
 much evidence of real moral strength in the character 
 of the Babylonians and Assyrians. We have seen 
 that their moral ideals were very high, and that their 
 practice often very nearly approximated their ideals. 
 The moral ideal in family life, we have seen, was 
 
1 20 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 truth, justice, and righteousness; in political or social 
 life it was justice and righteousness, truth and mercy ; 
 in business life it was justice, truthfulness, and hon- 
 esty; in international life it was peace, established 
 upon justice and truth; in transcendental life it was 
 piety, consisting in obedience, love, and worship ; and 
 in personal life it was truth. In short, justice and 
 truth were the great fundamental moral ideals of the 
 Babylonians and Assyrians. Nor was the moral ideal 
 merely external, consisting in a materialistic mo- 
 rality; it was certainly also internal, being persisted 
 in out of a desire for real heartfelt satisfaction. 
 
 Their idea of moral evil was a very discriminating 
 one. Moral evil generally consisted in a transgression 
 of the laws of the gods. In family life it consisted 
 chiefly in injustice and immorality ; in social and po- 
 litical life, in oppression and cruelty ; in international 
 life, in cruelty ; in transcendental life, in irreverence ; 
 and in personal life, in disobedience. These moral 
 evils were strongly detested and severely punished. In 
 short, moral evil consisted in the violation of the laws 
 and customs of the times, or in other words in the 
 violation of the will of the gods. Sin was often 
 considered ceremonially, but it was certainly also 
 considered from a purely moral point of view. 
 
 Moral sanctions have also been considered, and we 
 found that here also there was not lacking a real in- 
 ternal sanction, though the predominating one was 
 external. 
 
 The individual Babylonian and Assyrian cannot be 
 judged in the light of the twentieth century. He 
 must be commended or condemned according as he 
 
Idea of Moraliiyf 1 2 1 
 
 obeyed or disobeyed the laws of his time. He was, 
 as is every individual of every age, controlled by cer- 
 tain moral determinants, such as heredity, environ- 
 ment, and social tradition. All these must be taken 
 in^o consideration in our estimation of his morals. 
 We have, accordingly, found that the Babylonian and 
 Assyrian was a truthful, just, and pious individual; 
 he was conscious of a certain amount of free will; 
 he was accustomed to weigh motives and intentions; 
 and yet he felt that his life and destiny were in a 
 way controlled by the gods. 
 
 In short, our study of Babylonian and Assyrian 
 morals has led us to believe that as a people they may 
 be said to have been especially characterized by their 
 devotion to justice and truthfulness; and in spite of 
 the presence of much materialism in their social life, 
 and of much regard for ceremonial in their religious 
 life, their moral ideals were singularly high. Judged 
 by a twentieth century standard they were as a nation 
 on a much lower level, generally, than the nations of 
 the Western world. On the other hand, there is noth- 
 ing to show that the individual Babylonian and Assyr- 
 ian, judged as he must be by the moral standards of 
 his own time, was anything else than a truthful, just, 
 law-abiding, and pious subject of his king and gods. 
 
 As we look back over our study of the religious and 
 moral ideas of the Bab3donians and Assyrians, and re- 
 call their exalted piety and reverence for their gods, 
 the consciousness of their continual dependence upon 
 them, and the ideals which they ascribed to them ; as 
 we recall their doctrine of man and his relationship to 
 
1 22 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 the gods, his dependence upon them, and his effort 
 to emulate them ; as we think of the system they had 
 developed to preserve intact a continual communi- 
 cation between themselves and the gods ; and especially 
 as we contemplate the height of moral purpose and 
 the depth of moral insight to which they had attained, 
 we can well be puzzled by the barrenness of their 
 faith in the future. Their faith in the gods, in man, 
 in the power of mediation, and in moral goodness, 
 was a great force in their daily life. They seemed 
 to gather living force, wisdom, and faith, out of 
 every experience, and to apply them to this faith in 
 the gods and in man, in mediation, and in morality. 
 But the accumulation of faith stopped short at this 
 point. They were like the peevish and complaining 
 Israelites, who, in spite of Jehovah's care for them in 
 the past, could not believe that he could give bread 
 also, and flesh for his people. 
 
 The S5rmmetry of their religious and moral life 
 was destroyed by their lack of faith in the future. 
 They had developed the height of their mystic relig- 
 ious city. Its reach towards the divine had made 
 excellent progress. They had developed its breadth, 
 its outreach laterally. They understood human na- 
 ture, and had made great strides along the lines of so- 
 cial and national development. They had built up 
 great and reliable institutions of commerce, trade, and 
 law. But the length of their mystic city of religious 
 thought was miserably dwarfed. It practically ended 
 with this life. There was no reaching forward with 
 eagerness to a future life. Their religion remained a 
 
Idea of Moralityf 123 
 
 mundane one; their morals did not reckon with the 
 future. 
 
 This was the limitation which blighted the Baby- 
 lonian and Assyrian religion. The debt which the 
 world owes Babylonia and Assyria in science, com- 
 merce, art, literature, morality, and especially law, 
 is deep and lasting. The science of astronomy was 
 born in the cradle of Assyrian astrology; the tech- 
 nique of commerce was developed and perfected in 
 the shops and market-places of Babylon and Nine- 
 veh, with great merchants, such as the "House of 
 Murashu and Sons"; art, especially of the plastic 
 type, was perfected in Babylonia over two thousand 
 years before Christ; literature had made mighty 
 strides before history in Greece was born; morality 
 seems to have been native in a high form with the 
 earliest Babylonians; and the Code of Hammurapi 
 not only surpassed the laws of Manu and of the 
 Eoman Twelve Tables, but antedated them by many 
 hundreds of years. The institutions of Western civi- 
 lization are permeated through and through with 
 Babylonian and Assyrian culture. We cannot reckon 
 time without doing so in terms of Babylonian math- 
 ematics ; we cannot make out a receipt without signing 
 it in a Babylonian way; we cannot seal a letter with- 
 out using an Assyrian patent ; we cannot think of the 
 creation of the world or of the catastrophies which the 
 glacial period left in its trail without making use of 
 Babylonian and Assyrian cosmological ideas : we can- 
 not draw up a code of ethics without using Assyrian 
 and Babylonian models ; and we cannot draw up a legal 
 
124 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 contract, in legal terms, without the use of Babylonian 
 technical phraseology. 
 
 No race has more profoundly impressed the world's 
 civilization in these matters than the Babylonians 
 and Assyrians. But their primitive conception of 
 the future became so encrusted, so hardened, that no 
 influences from without were ever able to reach it. 
 Nor was the cnist ever broken. That crust finally 
 crippled all religious effort. A religion and morality 
 which had the possibilities of so much within them 
 became diseased at the core mth a malady which 
 caused their death. The Babylonian and Assyrian 
 religion is a sad example of a one-sided religion, 
 whose inevitable outcome is decay. Mighty Babylon 
 and Assyria's grandeur have not left themselves 
 without excellent witnesses of their priceless gifts to 
 human endeavour, but their temple of religious in- 
 sight must always remain a ruin, albeit an interesting, 
 instructive, and grand one. 
 
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Dhorme, p., La Religion Assyro-Bahylonienne, Paris, 1910. 
 Farnell, L. R., Greece and Babylon, Edinburgh, 1911. 
 Habpeb, R. F., Code of Hammurabi, Chicago, 1904. 
 Hopkins, E. W., The History of Religions, chap. XVIII, 
 
 New York, 1918. 
 Jastkow, M., Aspects of Religious Belief and Practice in 
 Babylonia and Assyria, New York, 1911. 
 Cimlization of Babylonia and Assyria, Philadelphia, 
 
 1915. 
 Hebrew and BabylonioM Tradition, New York, 1914. 
 Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens, Giessen, 
 1905-12. 
 Jeremias, a.. Die babylonisch-assyrischen Vorstellungen 
 
 vom Leben nach dem Tode, Leipzig, 1897 
 Johns, C. H. W., An Assyrian Doomsday Book, Leipzig, 
 1901. 
 Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and Let- 
 ters, New York, 1904. 
 King, L. W., A History of Sumer and Akkad, New York 
 (n. d.). 
 A History of Babylon, London, 1915. 
 Annals of the Kings of Assyria, London, 1902. 
 KoHLER, J., AND Ungnad, A., Assyrische Rechtsurkunden, 
 Leipzig, 1913flf. 
 Hammurabi's Gesetz, Bd. I-V, Leipzig, 1904-11. 
 Langdon, S., "Babylonian Eschatology" (in Essays offered 
 to C. A. Briggs, New York, 1911). 
 Babylonian Liturgies, Paris, 1913. 
 Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms, Paris, 1909. 
 
 125 
 
126 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 Mercer, S. A. B., The Oath in Babylonian and Assyrian 
 Literature, Paris, 1912. 
 "Early Babylonian Morals", Journal of the Society 
 
 of Oriental Research, 2, Chicago, 1918. 
 "Sumerian Morals", ih., 1. 
 "Malediction in Cuneiform Inscriptions", Journal of 
 
 the American Oriental Society, 1915, No. 3. 
 "Emperor Worship in Babylonia", ih., 1917, 360-80. 
 "Mediation in Religious Thought", Constructive 
 
 Quarterly, March, 1919. 
 "War and War-Gods", "Water and Water-Gods", 
 Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. 
 Moore, G. F., History of Religions, I, New York, 1913. 
 MoRGENSTERN, J., "The Doctrine of Sin in Babylonian 
 Religion", Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen 
 Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1905. 
 Paffrath, T., Zur Gotterlehre in den althalylonischen 
 
 Konigsinschriften, Paderborn, 1913. 
 Radau, H., Sumerian Hymns and Prayers to Ninih, 
 
 Munchen, 1913. 
 Rogers, R. W., A History of Babylonia and Assyria, I-II, 
 New York, 1915. 
 The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, New York, 
 1908. 
 Streck, M., Assurbanipal, Leipzig, 1916. 
 Thureau-Dangin, F,, Die Sumerischen und Akkadischen 
 
 Konigsinschriften, Leipzig, 1907. 
 Ungnad, a., Bahylonische Briefe aus der Hammurapi- 
 
 Dynastie, Leipzig, 1914. 
 Zimmerx, H., "Babylonians and Assyrians", Encyclopaedia 
 of Religion and Ethics. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adad, 23. 
 Allatu, 93. 
 Anag, 92. 
 Anu, 11. 
 Anunnaki, 21. 
 Arallu, 93. 
 Arum, 36f. 
 Ashapu, 85. 
 Ashtart, 17. 
 Ashtoreth, 17. 
 Ashur, 2 Iff. 
 Assyrian gods, 23. 
 Astrology, 27f., 87f. 
 Astrologers, 26f. 
 
 Ea, 8, 12f. 
 Enlil, 12. 
 Enuma Elish, 35. 
 Ereshkigal, 19, 93f. 
 E-sagila, 18. 
 Etana, 38. 
 Exorcism, 85. 
 
 Father, 44. 
 Feasts, 79f . 
 Flood, 41. 
 Foreigner, 53f. 
 Freewill, 113. 
 
 B 
 
 Baru, 86. 
 Bel, 18. 
 Burial, 92. 
 
 Children, their duties, 44. 
 Communion, 68. 
 Creation, 35ff . 
 
 Divination, 85flF. 
 
 Geshtinanna, 20f . 
 Gibil, 20. 
 Gilgamesh, 37f. 
 Girru, 20. 
 Goddesses, 24. 
 Gods, 53ff. 
 
 H 
 
 Henotheism, 30. 
 High priest, 66. 
 Hittites, 3. 
 
 Hymns, to Ishtar, 76f. 
 to Shamash, 77f. 
 
 127 
 
128 
 
 Religious and Moral Ideas 
 
 I 
 
 Igigi, 21. 
 Immortality, 40. 
 Individual, 47. 
 Ishtar, 16ff., 23f. 
 
 Judge, 48. 
 Justice, 49f . 
 
 N 
 
 Xahi, 19. 
 Nabu, 18f. 
 Nergal, 19f., 93. 
 Nina, 3. 
 Ningirsu, 9, 10. 
 Ninib, 19. 
 Ninursa, 19. 
 Nusku, 20. 
 
 K 
 
 Kassites, 3. 
 King. 46. 
 Kingship, 38f. 
 Kittu, 30. 
 
 Law, 48. 
 
 M 
 
 Magic, 85. 
 Marduk, lOf., 18f. 
 Marriage, 43f. 
 Misharu, 30. 
 Monotheism, 30fr. 
 Moon, 13. 
 
 Moral determinants, 114. 
 Moral evil, origin of, 112f. 
 Moral sanctions, 116f. 
 Moral sin, llOf. 
 Morals, 
 
 family, 102ff. 
 
 international, lOof. 
 
 social, 104f. 
 
 transcendental. 106. 
 
 Oath, 52. 
 Oracles, 88f . 
 
 Peace, 53f. 
 Polytheists, 30. 
 Prayer, 7 Iff. 
 Predestination, 114. 
 Property, 50. 
 Priesthood, 64ff. 
 Punishments, severe, 49. 
 
 Ramman, 23. 
 
 S 
 
 Sacrifice, 68ff. 
 Shamash, 14f. 
 Shangu, 66. 
 Sin, 15f., origin of, 40. 
 Slave, 45. 5 If. 
 Society, 45. 
 Solar deities, 14. 
 Sun, 13f. 
 
Index 
 
 129 
 
 Tammuz, 17, 20f. 
 Temples, 8 If. 
 Trade and business, 50. 
 Treaties, 52. 
 Triads, 25ff. 
 
 U 
 
 Utnapishtim, 37f. 
 
 W 
 
 War, 53ff. 
 
 Wife, her rights, 44. 
 
 Yahweh, 12, 16, 21. 
 
 Z 
 ZiTcJcurat, 82. 
 
I'i'lll I III I ^"11°!',?'.'?,^.' Sem.nary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 01145 3554 
 
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