Myths of Babylonia and Assyria Part 32

As Sammu-rammat was evidently a royal princess of Babylonia, it seems probable that her marriage was arranged with purpose to legitimatize the succession of the a.s.syrian overlords to the Babylonian throne. The principle of "mother right" was ever popular in those countries where the wors.h.i.+p of the Great Mother was perpetuated if not in official at any rate in domestic religion. Not a few Egyptian Pharaohs reigned as husbands or as sons of royal ladies. Succession by the female line was also observed among the Hitt.i.tes. When Hattusil II gave his daughter in marriage to Putakhi, king of the Amorites, he inserted a clause in the treaty of alliance "to the effect that the sovereignty over the Amorite should belong to the son and descendants of his daughter for evermore".[464]

As queen or queen-mother, Sammu-rammat occupied as prominent a position in a.s.syria as did Queen Tiy of Egypt during the lifetime of her husband, Amenhotep III, and the early part of the reign of her son, Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton). The Tell-el-Amarna letters testify to Tiy's influence in the Egyptian "Foreign Office", and we know that at home she was joint ruler with her husband and took part with him in public ceremonials. During their reign a temple was erected to the mother G.o.ddess Mut, and beside it was formed a great lake on which sailed the "barque of Aton" in connection with mysterious religious ceremonials. After Akhenaton's religious revolt was inaugurated, the wors.h.i.+p of Mut was discontinued and Tiy went into retirement. In Akhenaton's time the vulture symbol of the G.o.ddess Mut did not appear above the sculptured figures of royalty.

What connection the G.o.d Aton had with Mut during the period of the Tiy regime remains obscure. There is no evidence that Aton was first exalted as the son of the Great Mother G.o.ddess, although this is not improbable.

Queen Sammu-rammat of a.s.syria, like Tiy of Egypt, is a.s.sociated with social and religious innovations. She was the first, and, indeed, the only a.s.syrian royal lady, to be referred to on equal terms with her royal husband in official inscriptions. In a dedication to the G.o.d Nebo, that deity is reputed to be the protector of "the life of Adad-nirari, king of the land of Ashur, his lord, and the life of Sammu-rammat, she of the palace, his lady".[465]

During the reign of Adad-nirari IV the a.s.syrian Court radiated Babylonian culture and traditions. The king not only recorded his descent from the first Shalmaneser, but also claimed to be a descendant of Bel-kap-kapu, an earlier, but, to us, unknown, Babylonian monarch than "Sulili", i.e. Sumu-la-ilu, the great-great-grandfather of Hammurabi. Bel-kap-kapu was reputed to have been an overlord of a.s.syria.

Apparently Adad-nirari desired to be regarded as the legitimate heir to the thrones of a.s.syria and Babylonia. His claim upon the latter country must have had a substantial basis. It is not too much to a.s.sume that he was a son of a princess of its ancient royal family.

Sammurammat may therefore have been his mother. She could have been called his "wife" in the mythological sense, the king having become "husband of his mother". If such was the case, the royal pair probably posed as the high priest and high priestess of the ancient G.o.ddess cult--the incarnations of the Great Mother and the son who displaced his sire.

The wors.h.i.+p of the Great Mother was the popular religion of the indigenous peoples of western Asia, including parts of Asia Minor, Egypt, and southern and western Europe. It appears to have been closely a.s.sociated with agricultural rites practised among representative communities of the Mediterranean race. In Babylonia and a.s.syria the peoples of the G.o.ddess cult fused with the peoples of the G.o.d cult, but the prominence maintained by Ishtar, who absorbed many of the old mother deities, testifies to the persistence of immemorial habits of thought and antique religious ceremonials among the descendants of the earliest settlers in the Tigro-Euphrates valley.

Merodach's spouse Zerpanitu? was not a shadowy deity but a G.o.ddess who exercised as much influence as her divine husband. As Aruru she took part with him in the creation of mankind. In Asia Minor the mother G.o.ddess was overshadowed by the father G.o.d during the period of Hatti predominance, but her wors.h.i.+p was revived after the early people along the coast and in the agricultural valleys were freed from the yoke of the father-G.o.d wors.h.i.+ppers.

It must be recognized, in this connection, that an official religion was not always a full reflection of popular beliefs. In all the great civilizations of antiquity it was invariably a compromise between the beliefs of the military aristocracy and the ma.s.ses of mingled peoples over whom they held sway. Temple wors.h.i.+p had therefore a political aspect; it was intended, among other things, to strengthen the position of the ruling cla.s.ses. But ancient deities could still be wors.h.i.+pped, and were wors.h.i.+pped, in homes and fields, in groves and on mountain tops, as the case might be. Jeremiah has testified to the persistence of the folk practices in connection with the wors.h.i.+p of the mother G.o.ddess among the inhabitants of Palestine. Sacrificial fires were lit and cakes were baked and offered to the "Queen of Heaven" in the streets of Jerusalem and other cities. In Babylonia and Egypt domestic religious practices were never completely supplanted by temple ceremonies in which rulers took a prominent part. It was always possible, therefore, for usurpers to make popular appeal by reviving ancient and persistent forms of wors.h.i.+p. As we have seen, Jehu of Israel, after stamping out Phoenician Baal wors.h.i.+p, secured a strong following by giving official recognition to the cult of the golden calf.

It is not possible to set forth in detail, or with intimate knowledge, the various innovations which Sammu-rammat introduced, or with which she was credited, during the reigns of Adad-nirari IV (810-782 B.C.) and his father. No discovery has been made of doc.u.ments like the Tell-el-Amarna "letters", which would shed light on the social and political life of this interesting period. But evidence is not awanting that a.s.syria was being suffused with Babylonian culture.

Royal inscriptions record the triumphs of the army, but suppress the details of barbarities such as those which sully the annals of Ashur-natsir-pal, who had boys and girls burned on pyres and the heroes of small nations flayed alive. An ethical tendency becomes apparent in the exaltation of the Babylonian Shamash as an abstract deity who loved law and order, inspired the king with wisdom and ordained the destinies of mankind. He is invoked on equal terms with Ashur.

The prominence given to Nebo, the G.o.d of Borsippa, during the reign of Adad-nirari IV is highly significant. He appears in his later character as a G.o.d of culture and wisdom, the patron of scribes and artists, and the wise counsellor of the deities. He symbolized the intellectual life of the southern kingdom, which was more closely a.s.sociated with religious ethics than that of war-loving a.s.syria.

A great temple was erected to Nebo at Kalkhi, and four statues of him were placed within it, two of which are now in the British Museum. On one of these was cut the inscription, from which we have quoted, lauding the exalted and wise deity and invoking him to protect Adad-nirari and the lady of the palace, Sammu-rammat, and closing with the exhortation, "Whoso cometh in after time, let him trust in Nebo and trust in no other G.o.d".

The priests of Ashur in the city of a.s.shur must have been as deeply stirred by this religious revolt at Kalkhi as were the priests of Amon when Akhenaton turned his back on Thebes and the national G.o.d to wors.h.i.+p Aton in his new capital at Tell-el-Amarna.

It would appear that this sudden stream of Babylonian culture had begun to flow into a.s.syria as early as the reign of Shalmaneser III, and it may be that it was on account of that monarch's pro-Babylonian tendencies that his n.o.bles and priests revolted against him.

Shalmaneser established at Kalkhi a royal library which was stocked with the literature of the southern kingdom. During the reign of Adad-nirari IV this collection was greatly increased, and subsequent additions were made to it by his successors, and especially Ashur-nirari IV, the last monarch of the Middle Empire. The inscriptions of Shams.h.i.+-Adad, son of Shalmaneser III, have literary qualities which distinguish them from those of his predecessors, and may be accounted for by the influence exercised by Babylonian scholars who migrated northward.

To the reign of Adad-nirari belongs also that important compilation the "Synchronistic History of a.s.syria and Babylonia", which deals with the relations of the two kingdoms and refers to contemporary events and rulers.

The legends of Semiramis indicate that Sammu-rammat was a.s.sociated like Queen Tiy with the revival of mother wors.h.i.+p. As we have said, she went down to tradition as the daughter of the fish G.o.ddess, Derceto. Pliny identified that deity with Atargatis of Hierapolis.[466]

In Babylonia the fish G.o.ddess was Nina, a developed form of Damkina, spouse of Ea of Eridu. In the inscription on the Nebo statue, that G.o.d is referred to as the "son of Nudimmud" (Ea). Nina was the G.o.ddess who gave her name to Nineveh, and it is possible that Nebo may have been regarded as her son during the Semiramis period.

The story of Semiramis's birth is evidently of great antiquity. It seems to survive throughout Europe in the nursery tale of the "Babes in the Wood". A striking Indian parallel is afforded by the legend of Shakuntala, which may be first referred to for the purpose of comparative study. Shakuntala was the daughter of the ris.h.i.+, Viswamitra, and Menaka, the Apsara (celestial fairy). Menaka gave birth to her child beside the sacred river Malini. "And she cast the new-born infant on the bank of that river and went away. And beholding the newborn infant lying in that forest dest.i.tute of human beings but abounding with lions and tigers, a number of vultures sat around to protect it from harm." A sage discovered the child and adopted her.

"Because", he said, "she was surrounded by _Shakuntas_ (birds), therefore hath she been named by me _Shakuntala_ (bird protected)."[467]

Semiramis was similarly deserted at birth by her Celestial mother. She was protected by doves, and her a.s.syrian name, Sammu-rammat, is believed to be derived from "Summat"--"dove", and to signify "the dove G.o.ddess loveth her". Simmas, the chief of royal shepherds, found the child and adopted her. She was of great beauty like Shakuntala, the maiden of "perfect symmetry", "sweet smiles", and "faultless features", with whom King Dushyanta fell in love and married in Gandharva fas.h.i.+on.[468]

Semiramis became the wife of Onnes, governor of Nineveh, and one of the generals of its alleged founder, King Ninus. She accompanied her husband to Bactria on a military campaign, and is said to have instructed the king how that city should be taken. Ninus fell in love with Semiramis, and Onnes, who refused to give her up, went and hanged himself. The fair courtesan then became the wife of the king.

The story proceeds that Semiramis exercised so great an influence over the impressionable King Ninus, that she persuaded him to proclaim her Queen of a.s.syria for five days. She then ascended the throne decked in royal robes. On the first day she gave a great banquet, and on the second thrust Ninus into prison, or had him put to death. In this manner she secured the empire for herself. She reigned for over forty years.

Professor Frazer inclines to the view that the legend is a reminiscence of the custom of appointing a mock king and queen to whom the kingdom was yielded up for five days. Semiramis played the part of the mother G.o.ddess, and the priestly king died a violent death in the character of her divine lover. "The mounds of Semiramis which were pointed out all over Western Asia were said to have been the graves of her lovers whom she buried alive.... This tradition is one of the surest indications of the ident.i.ty of the mythical Semiramis with the Babylonian G.o.ddess Ishtar or Astarte."[469] As we have seen, Ishtar and other mother G.o.ddesses had many lovers whom they deserted like La Belle Dame sans Merci (pp. 174-175).

As Queen of a.s.syria, Semiramis was said to have cut roads through mountainous districts and erected many buildings. According to one version of the legend she founded the city of Babylon. Herodotus, however, says in this connection: "Semiramis held the throne for five generations before the later princess (Nitocris).... She raised certain embankments, well worthy of inspection, in the plain near Babylon, to control the river (Euphrates), which, till then, used to overflow and flood the whole country round about."[470] Lucian, who a.s.sociates the famous queen with "mighty works in Asia", states that she was reputed by some to be the builder of the ancient temple of Aphrodite in the Liba.n.u.s, although others credited it to Cinyras, or Deukalion.[471] Several Median places bear her name, and according to ancient Armenian tradition she was the founder of Van, which was formerly called "Shamiramagerd". Strabo tells that unidentified mountains in Western Asia were named after Semiramis.[472] Indeed, many of the great works in the Tigro-Euphrates valley, not excepting the famous inscription of Darius, were credited to the legendary queen of Babylonia and a.s.syria.[473] She was the rival in tradition of the famous Sesostris of Egypt as a ruler, builder, and conqueror.

All the military expeditions of Semiramis were attended with success, except her invasion of India. She was supposed to have been defeated in the Punjab. After suffering this disaster she died, or abdicated the throne in favour of her son Ninyas. The most archaic form of the legend appears to be that she was turned into a dove and took flight to heaven in that form. After her death she was wors.h.i.+pped as a dove G.o.ddess like "Our Lady of Trees and Doves" in Cyprus, whose shrine at old Paphos was founded, Herodotus says, by Phoenician colonists from Askalon.[474] Fish and doves were sacred to Derceto (Attar),[475] who had a mermaid form. "I have beheld", says Lucian, "the image of Derceto in Phoenicia. A marvellous spectacle it is. One half is a woman, but the part which extends from thighs to feet terminates with the tail of a fish."[476]

Derceto was supposed to have been a woman who threw herself in despair into a lake. After death she was adored as a G.o.ddess and her wors.h.i.+ppers abstained from eating fish, except sacrificially. A golden image of a fish was suspended in her temple. Atargatis, who was identical with Derceto, was reputed in another form of the legend to have been born of an egg which the sacred fishes found in the Euphrates and thrust ash.o.r.e (p. 28). The Greek Aphrodite was born of the froth of the sea and floated in a sea-sh.e.l.l. According to Hesiod,

The wafting waves First bore her to Cythera the divine: To wave-encircled Cyprus came she then, And forth emerged, a G.o.ddess, in the charms Of awful beauty. Where her delicate feet Had pressed the sands, green herbage flowering sprang.

Her Aphrodite G.o.ds and mortals name, The foam-born G.o.ddess; and her name is known As Cytherea with the blooming wreath, For that she touched Cythera's flowery coast; And Cypris, for that on the Cyprian sh.o.r.e She rose, amid the mult.i.tude of waves. _Elton's translation_.

The animals sacred to Aphrodite included the sparrow, the dove, the swan, the swallow, and the wryneck.[477] She presided over the month of April, and the myrtle, rose, poppy, and apple were sacred to her.

Some writers connect Semiramis, in her character as a dove G.o.ddess, with Media and the old Persian mother G.o.ddess Anaitis, and regard as arbitrary her identification with the fish G.o.ddess Derceto or Atargatis. The dove was certainly not a popular bird in the religious art of Babylonia and a.s.syria, but in one of the hymns translated by Professor Pinches Ishtar says, "Like a lonely dove I rest". In another the wors.h.i.+pper tries to touch Ishtar's heart by crying, "Like the dove I moan". A Sumerian psalmist makes a G.o.ddess (Gula, who presided over Larak, a part of Isin) lament over the city after it was captured by the enemy:

My temple E-aste, temple of Larak, Larak the city which Bel Enlil gave, Beneath are turned to strangeness, above are turned to strangeness, With wailings on the lyre my dwelling-place is surrendered to the stranger, _The dove cots they wickedly seized, the doves they entrapped_....

The ravens he (Enlil) caused to fly.[478]

Apparently there were temple and household doves in Babylonia. The Egyptians had their household dovecots in ancient as in modern times.

Lane makes reference to the large pigeon houses in many villages. They are of archaic pattern, "with the walls slightly inclining inwards (like many of the ancient Egyptian buildings)", and are "constructed upon the roofs of the huts with crude brick, pottery, and mud.... Each pair of pigeons occupies a separate (earthen) pot."[479] It may be that the dove bulked more prominently in domestic than in official religion, and had a special seasonal significance. Ishtar appears to have had a dove form. In the Gilgamesh epic she is said to have loved the "brilliant Allalu bird" (the "bright-coloured wood pigeon", according to Sayce), and to have afterwards wounded it by breaking its wings.[480] She also loved the lion and the horse, and must therefore have a.s.sumed the forms of these animals. The G.o.ddess Bau, "she whose city is destroyed", laments in a Sumerian psalm:

Like a dove to its dwelling-place, how long to my dwelling-place will they pursue me, To my sanctuary ... the sacred place they pursue me....

My resting place, the brick walls of my city Isin, thou art destroyed; My sanctuary, shrine of my temple Galmah, thou art destroyed.

_Langdon's translation._

Here the G.o.ddess appears to be identified with the doves which rest on the walls and make their nests in the shrine. The Sumerian poets did not adorn their poems with meaningless picturesque imagery; their images were stern facts; they had a magical or religious significance like the imagery of magical incantations; the wors.h.i.+pper invoked the deity by naming his or her various attributes, forms, &c.

Of special interest are the references in Sumerian psalms to the ravens as well as the doves of G.o.ddesses. Throughout Asia and Europe ravens are birds of ill omen. In Scotland there still linger curious folk beliefs regarding the appearance of ravens and doves after death.

Michael Scott, the great magician, when on his deathbed told his friends to place his body on a hillock. "Three ravens and three doves would be seen flying towards it. If the ravens were first the body was to be burned, but if the doves were first it was to receive Christian burial. The ravens were foremost, but in their hurry flew beyond their mark. So the devil, who had long been preparing a bed for Michael, was disappointed."[481]

In Indian mythology Purusha, the chaos giant, first divided himself.

"Hence were husband and wife produced." This couple then a.s.sumed various animal forms and thus "created every living pair whatsoever down to the ants".[482] G.o.ddesses and fairies in the folk tales of many countries sometimes a.s.sume bird forms. The "Fates" appear to Damayanti in the Nala story as swans which carry love messages.[483]

According to Aryo-Indian belief, birds were "blessed with fecundity".

The Babylonian Etana eagle and the Egyptian vulture, as has been indicated, were deities of fertility. Throughout Europe birds, which were "Fates", mated, according to popular belief, on St. Valentine's Day in February, when lots were drawn for wives by rural folks.

Another form of the old custom is referred to by the poet Gay:--

Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind Their paramours with mutual chirpings find, I early rose....

Thee first I spied, and the first swain we see, In spite of fortune, shall our true love be.

The dove appears to have been a sacred bird in various areas occupied by tribes of the Mediterranean race. Models of a shrine found in two royal graves at Mycenae are surmounted by a pair of doves, suggesting twin G.o.ddesses like Isis and Nepthys of Egypt and Ishtar and Belitsheri of Babylonia. Doves and snakes were a.s.sociated with the mother G.o.ddess of Crete, "typifying", according to one view, "her connection with air and earth. Although her character was distinctly beneficent and pacific, yet as Lady of the Wild Creatures she had a more fearful aspect, one that was often depicted on carved gems, where lions are her companions."[484] Discussing the attributes and symbols of this mother G.o.ddess, Professor Burrows says: "As the serpent, coming from the crevices of the earth, shows the possession of the tree or pillar from the underworld, so the dove, with which this G.o.ddess is also a.s.sociated, shows its possession from the world of the sky".[485] Professor Robertson Smith has demonstrated that the dove was of great sanct.i.ty among the Semites.[486] It figures in Hitt.i.te sculptures and was probably connected with the G.o.ddess cult in Asia Minor. Although Egypt had no dove G.o.ddess, the bird was addressed by lovers--

I hear thy voice, O turtle dove-- The dawn is all aglow-- Weary am I with love, with love, Oh, whither shall I go?[487]

Pigeons, as indicated, are in Egypt still regarded as sacred birds, and a few years ago British soldiers created a riot by shooting them.

Doves were connected with the ancient Greek oracle at Dodona. In many countries the dove is closely a.s.sociated with love, and also symbolizes innocence, gentleness, and holiness.

The pigeon was anciently, it would appear, a sacred bird in these islands, and Brand has recorded curious folk beliefs connected with it. In some districts the idea prevailed that no person could die on a bed which contained pigeon feathers: "If anybody be sick and lye a dying, if they lye upon pigeon feathers they will be languis.h.i.+ng and never die, but be in pain and torment," wrote a correspondent. A similar superst.i.tion about the feathers of different varieties of wild fowl[488] obtained in other districts. Brand traced this interesting traditional belief in Yorks.h.i.+re, Lancas.h.i.+re, Derbys.h.i.+re, and some of the Welsh and Irish counties.[489] It still lingers in parts of the Scottish Highlands. In the old ballad of "The b.l.o.o.d.y Gardener" the white dove appears to a young man as the soul of his lady love who was murdered by his mother. He first saw the bird perched on his breast and then "sitting on a myrtle tree".[490]

The dove was not only a symbol of Semiramis, but also of her mother Derceto, the Phoenician fish G.o.ddess. The connection between bird and fish may have been given an astral significance. In "Poor Robin's Almanack" for 1757 a St. Valentine rhyme begins:--

This month bright Phoebus enters Pisces, The maids will have good store of kisses, For always when the sun comes there, Valentine's day is drawing near, And both the men and maids incline To choose them each a Valentine.

As we have seen, the example was set by the mating birds. The "Almanack" poet no doubt versified an old astrological belief: when the spring sun entered the sign of the Fishes, the love G.o.ddess in bird form returned to earth.