Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs - Archibald Henry Sayce (thriller books to read txt) 📗

incantations and charms. Madness and epilepsy were more especially the direct effect of demoniac possession. The magician alone knew how to cure them; and the priest taught that his knowledge had first been communicated to him by the god Ea through his interpreter, Merodach. Books were written containing the needful formulæ and ritual for counteracting the malevolence of the evil spirits and for healing the sick. Pure or "holy" water and the number seven were regarded as endowed with mysterious power in the performance of these magical rites; thus magical threads were ordered to be bound seven times round the limbs of the sick man, with phylacteries attached to them on which were inscribed "sentences from a holy book."

It was at night-time that the spirits of evil were more especially active. It was then that vampires escaped from the bodies of the dead or from the realm of Hades to suck the blood of the living, and that the nightmare lay upon the breast of its victim and sought to strangle him. At the head of these demons of the night was Lilat, the wife of Lil, "the ghost;" from the Babylonians she was borrowed by the Jews, and appears in the book of Isaiah under the name of Lilith.

The demons were served by a priesthood of their own. These were the wizards and witches, and the sorcerers and sorceresses, with whom were associated the public prostitutes, who plied their calling under the shadow of night.

It was then that they lay in ambush for the unwary passenger, for whom they mixed deadly philters which poisoned the blood. They were devotees of Istar, but the Istar they worshipped was a wholly different goddess from the Istar of the official cult. She was a goddess of witchcraft and darkness, of whom it was said that she "seized" on her victim "at night," and was "the slayer of youths." She it was who was dreaded by the people like the witches and "street-walkers," who ministered before her, and against whom exorcisms of all kinds were employed. To guard against her and her agents, small images of Lugal-gira and Allamu, the teraphim of the Babylonians, were made and placed to the right and the left of the door that they might "tear out the hearts of the wicked" and "slay the witch." The Fire-god, moreover, was invoked that he might destroy the ministers of wickedness, and figures of the witch or wizard were moulded in wax and melted in the fire. As the wax dissolved, so, it was prayed, might "the wizard and witch run, melt, and dissolve."

The exorcisms had to be repeated by the victims of witchcraft. This is clear from the words which come at the end of each of them: "I, So-and-so, the son of So-and-so, whose god is So-and-so and goddess So-and-so, I turn to thee, I seek for thee, I kiss thy hands, I bow myself under thee. Consume the wizard and the witch; annihilate the lives of the sorcerer and the sorceress who have bewitched me. Then shall I live and gladden thy heart."

In strange contrast to these utterances of popular superstition are the hymns and prayers that were addressed by the cultivated Babylonian to the gods of the official creed. They were gods of light and healing, who punished, indeed, the sins of the wicked, but were ready to listen to the petitions of the penitent and to forgive them their transgressions. Bel-Merodach was "the merciful one who raises the dead to life," and Ea was ever on the watch to send aid to suffering humanity and foil the demons who warred against man. Here, for example, are some extracts from one of those penitential psalms whose authors seem to have sprung from Eridu and which formed part of the Babylonian Bible long before the age of Abraham:

The heart of my lord is wroth; may it be appeased! May the god whom I know not be appeased! May the goddess whom I know not be appeased! May both the god I know and the god I know not be appeased!{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The sin that I sinned I knew not, The transgression I committed I knew not.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me, God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} I sought for help, and none took my hand; I wept, and none stood at my side; I cried aloud, and there was none that heard me. I am in trouble and hiding; I dare not look up. To my god, the merciful one, I turn myself, I utter my prayer; The feet of my goddess I kiss and water with tears.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} The sins I have sinned turn into a blessing; The transgressions I have committed let the wind carry away! Strip off my manifold wickednesses as a garment! O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins! O my goddess, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins!

To the same early period belongs a hymn to the Moon-god, originally composed for the services in the temple of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, and afterward incorporated in the sacred books of the state religion. It is thus that the poet speaks of his god:

Father, long-suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholdeth the
life of all mankind!{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none who
may fathom it!{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} In heaven who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme! On earth, who is supreme? Thou alone, thou art supreme! As for thee, thy will is made known in heaven, and the angels bow their
faces. As for thee, thy will is made known upon earth, and the spirits below kiss
the ground.

At times the language of the hymn rises to that of monotheism of a pure and exalted character. That a monotheistic school actually existed in one of the literary circles of Babylonia was long ago pointed out by Sir Henry Rawlinson. It arose at Erech, an early seat of Semitic influence, and endeavored to resolve the manifold deities of Chaldea into forms or manifestations of the "one god," Anu. It never made many converts, it is true; but the tendency toward monotheism continued among the educated part of the population, and when Babylon became the capital of the country its god, Merodach, became not only a Bel or "Lord," but the one supreme lord over all the other gods. Though the existence of the other gods was admitted, they fell, as it were, into a background of shadow, and the worshipper of Merodach, in his devotion to the god, almost forgot that they existed at all. The prayers of Nebuchadnezzar are a proof how narrow was the line which divided his faith from that of the monotheist. "To Merodach my lord," he says, "I prayed; I began to him my petition; the word of my heart sought him, and I said: O prince, thou that art from everlasting, lord of all that exists, for the king whom thou lovest, whom thou callest by name, as it seems good unto thee, thou guidest his name aright, thou watchest over him in the path of righteousness! I, the prince who obeys thee, am the work of thy hands; thou hast created me and hast entrusted to me the sovereignty over multitudes of men, according to thy goodness, O lord, which thou hast made to pass over them all. Let me love thy supreme lordship, let the fear of thy divinity exist in my heart, and give what seemeth good unto thee, since thou maintainest my life."

The man who could thus pray was not far from the kingdom of God.


APPENDIX: WEIGHTS AND MEASURES


In the preceding pages the equivalence of the qa in modern English measures has been given in accordance with the calculations of Dr. Oppert. Other scholars, however, would assign to it a different value, identifying it with the Hebrew qab and making it equal to about two litres. This, indeed, seems to have been its value in the age of Abraham, but in the later days of Babylonian history a different system certainly prevailed.

WEIGHTS.

360 se ("grains") 1 shekel
60 shekels 1 maneh ( mana )
60 manehs 1 talent

The silver maneh was equivalent to £9, the shekel being 3s., while the gold maneh was ten times its value. The maneh was originally a weight more than one kind of which was in use: (1) The heavy maneh of 990 grammes; (2) the light maneh of 495 grammes; (3) the gold maneh (for weighing gold) of 410 grammes; and (4) the silver maneh of 546 grammes. At Sippara, however, the heavy maneh weighed 787 grammes; the light maneh, 482 grammes; and the gold maneh, 392 grammes; while the standard maneh fixed by Dungi weighed 980 grammes. The maneh of Carchemis contained 561 grammes.

MEASURES OF CAPACITY.

1 qa (Heb. qab ) 1.66 litres
1 pi or ardeb (Heb. 36 qas
homer)
1 bar (Heb. se'ah) 60 qas
1 homer in Assyria 60 qas
1 gur (Heb. kor) 180 qas

In the Abrahamic age other systems were in use in Babylonia according to which the gur sometimes contained 360 qas and sometimes 300 qas .

The tonnage of ships was reckoned by the gur .

MEASURES OF LENGTH.

1 uban or 16.6 millimetres
finger-breadth (divided
into 180 parts)
30 finger-breadths 1 ammat or cubit (498
mm.)
2 cubits 1 great cubit (996 mm.)
6 great cubits 1 qanu or reed
2 reeds 1 gar
60 gars 1 soss or stade
30 sosses 1 kasbu or parasang (21
kilometres)
2 kasbus 1 great kasbu

SUPERFICIAL MEASURES.

In the Abrahamic age 180 se were probably equivalent to 1 gin , 60 gin to one sar or "garden," 1,800 sar to 1 feddân (