Myths of Babylon

This is a FLAME TREE Book

Publisher & Creative Director: Nick Wells

Contributors, authors, editors and sources for this series include:

Loren Auerbach, Norman Bancroft-Hunt, E.M. Berens, Katharine Berry Judson, Laura Bulbeck, Jeremiah Curtin, O.B. Duane, Dr Ray Dunning, W.W. Gibbings, H. A. Guerber, Jake Jackson, Joseph Jacobs, Judith John, J.W. Mackail, Donald Mackenzie, Chris McNab, Professor James Riordan, Sara Robson, Rachel Storm, K.E. Sullivan, Epiphanius Wilson, E.T.C. Werner.

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First published 2018

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Contents

Series Foreword

Introduction to Ancient Babylonian Culture

History, Religion & Myth

The Akkadians

The Semite Conquerors

Sargon, A Babylonian Conqueror

The High-Priest Gudea

Hammurabi the Great

A Court Murder

Tiglath-Pileser

Semiramis the Great

The Second Assyrian Empire

Assur-bani-pal: Sardanapalus the Splendid?

The First Great Library

The Last Kings of Assyria

Nebuchadnezzar

The Last of the Babylonian Kings

The History of Berossus

Berossus’ Account of the Deluge

The Tower of Babel

Nimrod, the Mighty Hunter

The ‘Babylonica’ and the Tale of Sinonis and Rhodanes

The Sacred Literature of Babylonia

Babylonian Myths of Creation

The Birth of the Gods

Merodach Battles Tiawath

The Writings of Oannes

Early Babylonian Gods

Spirits and Gods

Totemism in Babylonian Religion

The Great Gods

Bel

Bel and the Dragon

Beltis

Nergal

The Tale of Dibarra the Destroyer

Shamash

Ea

The Story of Adapa and the South Wind

Anu

Ishtar

The Descent of Ishtar into Hades

Nin-Girsu

Bau

Nannar

Nannar in Decay

Of the Underworld: Aralu, or Eres-ki-Gal

Dagon

Nirig, or Enu-Restu

The Gilgamesh Epic

The Birth of Gilgamesh

An Epic in Frgaments

Gilgamesh as Tyrant

The Beguiling of Eabani

Gilgamesh meets Eabani

The Monster Khumbaba

Ishtar’s Love for Gilgamesh

The Bull of Anu

The Death of Eabani

The Quest of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh and Ut-Napishtim

The Deluge Myth

The Quest Continues

Later Babylonian Gods

Nebo (Nabu)

Tashmit

Shamash and Innana

Hadad

Ea in Later Times

Zu

Bel

Dawkina

Anu as Individual

The Great God Merodach And His Cult

Assyrian Gods

Asshur

Ishtar

Ninib – the Assyrian Nin-Girsu

Dagan

An

Ramman

Shamash

Sin

Nusku of the Brilliant Sceptre

Bel-Merodach

The Assyrian Bel and Belit

Nabu and Merodach

Ea

Dibarra

Lesser Gods

Babylonian Star-Worship

Legend of the Origin of Star-Worship and Idolatry

Planets identified with Gods

Magic, Demonology and Superstition

Priestly Magicians, Wizards and Witches

A Toothache Myth

The Word of Power

Babylonian Vampires

Gods Once Demons

Purification

The Chamber of the Priest-Magician

The Magic Circle

Babylonian Demons

Taboo

Popular Superstitions

Omens and The Practice of Liver-reading

Mythological Monsters and Animals

Winged Bulls

The Dog in Babylonia

Gazelle and Goat Gods

The Invasion of the Monsters

The Eagle

Tales of Kings

Tiglath-pileser II

The Autobiography of Assur-bani-pal

Esar-haddon, A ‘Likeable’ Monarch

Assur-Dan III and the Fatal Eclipse

Shalmaneser I

A Babylon-Inspired Fairy Tale:

The Princess of Babylon

Chapter 1:

Royal Contest for the Hand of Formosanta

Chapter 2:

The King of Babylon Convenes His Council

Chapter 3:

Royal Festival Given in Honour of The

Kingly Visitors

Chapter 4:

The Beautiful Bird is Killed by The King of Egypt

Chapter 5:

Formosanta Visits China and Scythia in

Search of Amazan

Chapter 6:

The Princess Continues Her Journey

Chapter 7:

Amazan Visits Albion

Chapter 8:

Amazan Leaves Albion to Visit the Land of Saturn

Chapter 9:

Amazan Visits Rome

Chapter 10:

An Unfortunate Adventure in Gaul

Chapter 11:

Amazan and Formosanta Become Reconciled

Series Foreword

Stretching back to the oral traditions of thousands of years ago, tales of heroes and disaster, creation and conquest have been told by many different civilizations in many different ways. Their impact sits deep within our culture even though the detail in the tales themselves are a loose mix of historical record, transformed narrative and the distortions of hundreds of storytellers.

Today the language of mythology lives with us: our mood is jovial, our countenance is saturnine, we are narcissistic and our modern life is hermetically sealed from others. The nuances of myths and legends form part of our daily routines and help us navigate the world around us, with its half truths and biased reported facts.

The nature of a myth is that its story is already known by most of those who hear it, or read it. Every generation brings a new emphasis, but the fundamentals remain the same: a desire to understand and describe the events and relationships of the world. Many of the great stories are archetypes that help us find our own place, equipping us with tools for self-understanding, both individually and as part of a broader culture.

For Western societies it is Greek mythology that speaks to us most clearly. It greatly influenced the mythological heritage of the ancient Roman civilization and is the lens through which we still see the Celts, the Norse and many of the other great peoples and religions. The Greeks themselves learned much from their neighbours, the Egyptians, an older culture that became weak with age and incestuous leadership.

It is important to understand that what we perceive now as mythology had its own origins in perceptions of the divine and the rituals of the sacred. The earliest civilizations, in the crucible of the Middle East, in the Sumer of the third millennium

bc

, are the source to which many of the mythic archetypes can be traced. As humankind collected together in cities for the first time, developed writing and industrial scale agriculture, started to irrigate the rivers and attempted to control rather than be at the mercy of its environment, humanity began to write down its tentative explanations of natural events, of floods and plagues, of disease.

Early stories tell of Gods (or god-like animals in the case of tribal societies such as African, Native American or Aboriginal cultures) who are crafty and use their wits to survive, and it is reasonable to suggest that these were the first rulers of the gathering peoples of the earth, later elevated to god-like status with the distance of time. Such tales became more political as cities vied with each other for supremacy, creating new Gods, new hierarchies for their pantheons. The older Gods took on primordial roles and became the preserve of creation and destruction, leaving the new gods to deal with more current, everyday affairs. Empires rose and fell, with Babylon assuming the mantle from Sumeria in the 1800s

bc

, then in turn to be swept away by the Assyrians of the 1200s

bc

; then the Assyrians and the Egyptians were subjugated by the Greeks, the Greeks by the Romans and so on, leading to the spread and assimilation of common themes, ideas and stories throughout the world.

The survival of history is dependent on the telling of good tales, but each one must have the ‘feeling’ of truth, otherwise it will be ignored. Around the firesides, or embedded in a book or a computer, the myths and legends of the past are still the living materials of retold myth, not restricted to an exploration of origins. Now we have devices and global communications that give us unparalleled access to a diversity of traditions. We can find out about Native American, Indian, Chinese and tribal African mythology in a way that was denied to our ancestors, we can find connections, match the archaeology, religion and the mythologies of the world to build a comprehensive image of the human experience that is endlessly fascinating.

The stories in this book provide an introduction to the themes and concerns of the myths and legends of their respective cultures, with a short introduction to provide a linguistic, geographic and political context. This is where the myths have arrived today, but undoubtedly over the next millennia, they will transform again whilst retaining their essential truths and signs.

Jake Jackson

General Editor

Introduction to Ancient Babylonian Culture

The myths of Babylonia – and previously Sumer, and by extension Assyria, with which it is inextricably linked – contain themes from the cosmologies of different epochs and reflect the competing interests of the various cities of Mesopotamia, each with its own patron divinity, comprising the world’s oldest urban civilization. This civilization reached its apogee in the great city of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar (605–562

bc

).

Through most of its history until the Babylonian ascendancy during 1795–1750

bc

under Hammurabi, Mesopotamia, a land of 25,900 square kilometres (10,000 square miles) between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, was a scene of rivalry between a cluster of city states, among them Ur, Eridu, Lagash and Kish. The Sumerians arrived in southern Mesopotamia about 3300

bc

and spoke a tongue related to the Turkic group of South-Central Asia. Its literature, written in the wedge-shaped or cuneiform script invented by the temple priests, includes myths, epic tales and numerous hymns.

In about 1890

bc

Semitic invaders from the north gained control of the country from their capital, Babylon. Later the country fell under the domination of Assyria (c. 1225

bc

), before the new Babylonian empire was established by Nebuchadnezzar in 605

bc

. In 539

bc

Babylonia was conquered by the Persian emperor, Cyrus.

Cross-pollination

With the initial unification of the region under Babylon, conscious attempts were made by the priesthood to consolidate the mythical traditions associated with the various city-states into a coherent cosmology; and yet there are still differences between the gods as worshipped in early and later Babylonian times, and these gods are strikingly similar to those of the Assyrians, the war-like people who controlled Babylonia for much of its history and yet who revered and absorbed its gods, learning and culture.

In the first chapter of this book we will provide some historical background on the kings, conquests and literature of the Babylonian-Assyrian region (and often the histories meld with myth) to provide context to the beliefs, gods, myths and tales of the peoples of these lands, before going on to discuss specific gods, myths, superstitions, monsters and kings. There is no intention thus to follow minutely the events in the history of Babylonia and Assyria. The purpose is to depict and describe the circumstances, deeds, and times of its most outstanding figures, its most typical and characteristic rulers.

History, Religion & Myth

For a long time Babylon was no more than a mighty name – a gigantic skeleton whose ribs protruded here and there from the sands of Syria in colossal ruin of tower and temple. But through the labours of a band of scholars and explorers whose lives and work must be classed as among the most romantic passages in the history of human effort we have been enabled to view the wondrous panorama of human civilization as it evolved in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates.

We are dealing with a race austere and stern, a race of rigorous religious devotees and conquerors, the Romans of the East – but not an unimaginative race, for the Babylonians and Assyrians came of that stock which gave to the world its greatest religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a race not without the sense of mystery and science, for Babylon was the mother of astrology and magic, and established the beginnings of the study of the stars; and, lastly, of commerce, for the first true financial operations and the first houses of exchange were founded in the shadows of her temples and palaces.

The Akkadians

The boundaries of the land where the races of Babylonia and Assyria evolved one of the most remarkable and original civilizations in the world’s history are the two mighty rivers of Western Asia, the Tigris and Euphrates, Assyria being identical with the more northerly and mountainous portion, and Babylonia with the southerly part, which inclined to be flat and marshy. Both tracts of country were inhabited by people of the same race, save that the Assyrians had acquired the characteristics of a population dwelling in a hilly country and had become to some extent intermingled with Hittite and Amorite elements. But both were branches of an ancient Semitic stock, the epoch of whose entrance into the land it is impossible to fix. In the oldest inscriptions discovered we find those Semitic immigrants at strife with the indigenous people of the country, the Akkadians, with whom they were subsequently to mingle and whose beliefs and magical and occult conceptions especially they were afterward to incorporate with their own.

Who, then, were the Akkadians whom the Babylonian Semites came to displace but with whom they finally mingled? Great and bitter has been the controversy which has raged around the racial affinities of this people. Some have held that they were themselves of Semitic stock, others that they were of a race more nearly approaching the Mongol, the Lapp, and the Basque. In such a book as this, the object of which is to present an account of the Babylonian mythology, it is unnecessary to follow the protagonists of either theory into the dark recesses where the conflict has led them. But the probability is that the Akkadians, who are usually represented upon their monuments as a beardless people with oblique eyes, were connected with that great Mongolian family which has thrown out tentacles from its original home in central Asia to the frozen regions of the Arctic, the north of Europe, the Turkish Empire, aye, and perhaps to America itself! Akkadian in its linguistic features and especially in its grammatical structure shows a resemblance to the Ural-Altaic group of languages which embraces Turkish and Finnish, and this is in itself good evidence that the people who spoke it belonged to that ethnic division. But the question is a thorny one, and pages, nay, volumes might be occupied in presenting the arguments for and against such a belief.

It was from the Akkadians, however, that the Babylonian Semites received the germs of their culture; indeed it may be avowed that this aboriginal people carried them well on the way toward civilization. Not only did they instruct the Semitic new-comers in the arts of writing and reading, but they strongly biased their religious beliefs, and so inspired them with the idea of the sanctity of their own faith that the later Babylonian priesthood preserved the old Akkadian tongue among them as a sacred language, just as the Roman priesthood has retained the use of the dead Latin speech. Indeed, the proper pronunciation of Akkadian was an absolute necessity to the successful performance of religious ritual, and it is passing strange to observe that the Babylonian priests composed new religious texts in a species of dog-Akkadian, just as the monks of the Middle Ages composed their writings in dog-Latin! – with such zeal have the religious in all ages clung to the cult of the ancient, the mystic and half-forgotten thing unknown to the vulgar.

When we first encounter Babylonian civilization we find it grouped round about two nuclei, Nippur in the North and Eridu in the South. The first had grown up around a sanctuary of the god En-lil, who held sway over the ghostly animistic spirits which at his bidding might pose as the friends or enemies of men. A more ‘civilized’ deity held sway at Eridu, which was the home of Ea, or Oannes, the god of light and wisdom, who exercised his knowledge of the healing art for the benefit of his votaries. From the waters of the Persian Gulf, whence he rose each morning, he brought knowledge of all manner of crafts and trades, arts and industries, for the behoof of his infant city, even the mystic and difficult art of impressing written characters on clay. It is a beautiful picture which we have from the old legend of this sea-born wisdom daily enlightening the life of the little white city near the waters. The Semites possessed a deep and almost instinctive love of wisdom. In the writings attributed to Solomon and in the rich and wondrous Psalms of David – those deep mines of song and sagacity – we find the glories of wisdom again and again extolled. Even yet there are few peoples among whom the love of scholarship, erudition, and religious wisdom is more cultivated for its own sake than with the Jews.

These rather different cultures of the North and South, working toward a common centre, met and fused at a period prior to the commencement of history, and we even find the city of Ur, whence Abram came, a near neighbour of Eridu, colonized by Nippur! The culture of Eridu prevailed nevertheless, and its mightiest offshoot was the ultimate centre of Euphratean civilization – Babylon itself. The first founders of the city were undoubtedly of Sumerian stock – the expression ‘Sumerian’ being that in vogue among modern scholars for the older ‘Akkadian’, and therefore interchangeable with it.

The Semite Conquerors

It was probably about the time of the juncture of the civilizations of Eridu and Nippur that the Semites entered the country.

There are indications which lead to the belief that, as in the case of the Semitic immigrants in Egypt, they came originally from Arabia. The Semite readily accepted the Sumerian civilization which he found flourishing in the valley of the Euphrates, and adapted the Sumerian system of writing to his own language, in what manner will be indicated later. But the Sumerians themselves were not above borrowing from the rich Semitic tongue, and many of the earliest Sumerian texts we encounter are strongly Semitized. But although the Semites appear to have filtered into Sumerian territory by way of Eridu and Ur, the first definite notices we have of their presence within it are in the monuments of the more northern portion of that territory, in what is known as Akkad, in the neighbourhood of Bagdad, where they founded a small kingdom in much the same manner as the Jutes founded the kingdom of Kent. The earliest monuments, however, come from Lagash, the modern Tel-lo, some thirty miles north of Ur, and recount the dealings of the high-priest of that place with other neighbouring dignitaries. The priests of Lagash became kings, and their conquests extended beyond the confines of Babylonia to Elam on the east, and southward to the Persian Gulf.

Sargon, A Babylonian Conqueror

But the first great Semitic empire in Babylonia was that founded by the famous Sargon of Akkad. As is the case with many popular heroes and monarchs whose deeds are remembered in song and story – for example, Perseus, OEdipus, Cyrus, Romulus, and our own King Arthur – the early years of Sargon were passed in obscurity.

Sargon is, in fact, one of the ‘fatal children’. He was, legend stated, born in concealment and sent adrift, like Moses, in an ark of bulrushes on the waters of the Euphrates, whence he was rescued and brought up by one Akki, a husbandman. But the time of his recognition at length arrived, and he received the crown of Babylonia. His foreign conquests were extensive. On four successive occasions he invaded Syria and Palestine, which he succeeded in welding into a single empire with Babylonia. Pressing his victories to the margin of the Mediterranean, he erected upon its shores statues of himself as an earnest of his conquests. He also overcame Elam and northern Mesopotamia and quelled a rebellion of some magnitude in his own dominions. His son, Naram-Sin, claimed for himself the title of ‘King of the Four Zones’, and enlarged the empire left him by his father, penetrating even into Arabia. A monument unearthed by J. de Morgan at Susa depicts him triumphing over the conquered Elamites. He is seen passing his spear through the prostrate body of a warrior whose hands are upraised as if pleading for quarter. His head-dress is ornamented with the horns emblematic of divinity, for the early Babylonian kings were the direct vicegerents of the gods on earth.

Even at this comparatively early time (c. 3800

bc

) the resources of the country had been well exploited by its Semitic conquerors, and their absorption of the Sumerian civilization had permitted them to make very considerable progress in the enlightened arts. Some of their work in bas-relief, and even in the lesser if equally difficult craft of gem-cutting, is among the finest efforts of Babylonian art. Nor were they deficient in more utilitarian fields. They constructed roads through the most important portions of the empire, along which a service of posts carried messages at stated intervals, the letters conveyed by these being stamped or franked by clay seals, bearing the name of Sargon.

The First Library in Babylonia

Sargon is also famous as the first founder of a Babylonian library. This library appears to have contained works of a most surprising nature, having regard to the period at which it was instituted. One of these was entitled The Observations of Bel, and consisted of no less than seventy-two books dealing with astronomical matters of considerable complexity; it registered and described the appearances of comets, conjunctions of the sun and moon, and the phases of the planet Venus, besides recording many eclipses. This wonderful book was long afterward translated into Greek by the Babylonian historian Berossus, and it demonstrates the great antiquity of Babylonian astronomical science even at this very early epoch. Another famous work contained in the library of Sargon dealt with omens, the manner of casting them, and their interpretation – a very important side-issue of Babylonian magico-religious practice.

Among the conquests of this great monarch, whose splendour shines through the shadows of antiquity like the distant flash of arms on a misty day, was the fair island of Cyprus. Even imagination reels at the well-authenticated assertion that five thousand seven hundred years ago the keels of a Babylonian conqueror cut the waves of the Mediterranean and landed upon the shores of flowery Cyprus stern Semitic warriors, who, loading themselves with loot, erected statues of their royal leader and returned with their booty. In a Cyprian temple Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832–1904), the soldier, diplomat and amateur archaeologist, discovered, down in the lowest vaults, a haematite cylinder which described its owner as a servant of Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon, so that a certain degree of communication must have been kept up between Babylonia and the distant island, just as early Egypt and Crete were bound to each other by ties of culture and commerce.

The High-Priest Gudea

But the empire which Sargon had founded was doomed to precipitate ruin. The seat of power was diverted southward to Ur. In the reign of Dungi, one of the monarchs who ruled from this southern sphere, a great vassal of the throne, Gudea, stands out as one of the most remarkable characters in early Babylonian antiquity.

This Gudea (c. 2700

bc

) was high-priest of Lagash, a city perhaps thirty miles north of Ur, and was famous as a patron of the architectural and allied arts. He ransacked western Asia for building materials. Arabia supplied him with copper for ornamentation, the Amames mountains with cedar-wood, the quarries of Lebanon with stone, while the deserts adjacent to Palestine furnished him with rich stones of all kinds for use in decorative work, and districts on the shores of the Persian Gulf with timber for ordinary building purposes. His architectural ability is vouched for by a plan of his palace, measured to scale, which is carved upon the lap of one of his statues in the Louvre.

Hammurabi the Great

Like that which preceded it, the dynasty of Ur fell, and Arabian or Canaanite invaders usurped the royal power in much the same manner as the Shepherd Kings seized the sovereignty of Egypt. A subsequent foreign yoke, that of Elam, was thrown off by Hammurabi (also known as ‘Khammurabi’), perhaps the most celebrated and most popularly famous name in Babylonian history.

This brilliant, wise, and politic monarch did not content himself with merely expelling the hated Elamites, but advanced to further conquest with such success that in the thirty-second year of his reign (2338

bc

) he had formed Babylonia into a single monarchy with the capital at Babylon itself. Under the fostering care of Hammurabi, Babylonian art and literature unfolded and blossomed with a luxuriance surprising to contemplate at this distance of time. It is astonishing, too, to note how completely he succeeded in welding into one homogeneous whole the various elements of the empire he carved out for himself. So surely did he unify his conquests that the Babylonian power as he left it survived undivided for nearly fifteen hundred years. The welfare of his subjects of all races was constantly his care. No one satisfied of the justice of his cause feared to approach him. The legal code which he formulated and which remains as his greatest claim to the applause of posterity is a monument of wisdom and equity. If Sargon is to be regarded as the Arthur of Babylonian history surely Hammurabi is its Alfred. The circumstances of the lives of the two monarchs present a decidedly similar picture. Both had in their early years to free their country from a foreign yoke, both instituted a legal code, were patrons of letters and assiduous in their attention to the wants of their subjects.

If a great people has frequently evolved a legal code of sterling merit there are cases on record where such an institution has served to make a people great, and it is probably no injustice to the Semites of Babylonia to say of them that the code of Hammurabi made them what they were. A copy of this world-famous code was found at Susa by J. de Morgan, and is now in the Louvre.

A Court Murder

What the Babylonian chronologists called ‘the First Dynasty of Babylon’ fell in its turn, and it is claimed that a Sumerian line of eleven kings took its place. Their sway lasted for 368 years – a statement which is obviously open to question. These were themselves overthrown and a Kassite dynasty from the mountains of Elam was founded by Kandis (c. 1780

bc

) which lasted for nearly six centuries. These alien monarchs failed to retain their hold on much of the Asiatic and Syrian territory which had paid tribute to Babylon and the suzerainty of Palestine was likewise lost to them. It was at this epoch, too, that the high-priests of Asshur in the north took the title of king, but they appear to have been subservient to Babylon in some degree. Assyria grew gradually in power. Its people were hardier and more warlike than the art-loving and religious folk of Babylon, and little by little they encroached upon the weakness