The civilization of Babylonia and Assyria

Its remains, language, history, religion, commerce, law, art, and literature

by Morris Jastrow | 1915 | 168,585 words

This work attempts to present a study of the unprecedented civilizations that flourished in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley many thousands of years ago. Spreading northward into present-day Turkey and Iran, the land known by the Greeks as Mesopotamia flourished until just before the Christian era....

THE hybrid character of the Babylonian-Assyrian civilization, the result, as we have seen, of the commingling of a non-Semitic or Sumerian element with the Semitic or Akkadian contingent, is reflected in the religion which in the formation of the pantheon, in the doctrines and in the cult is the outcome of the combination of these same two factors. To be sure, the mixture of the two factors is so complete that it is no longer possible to specify the features contributed by each, except along very general lines.

This is particularly the case in the conceptions formed of the gods, for both those of Sumerian origin and those that may with more or less probability be regarded as Semitic in character take on the color demanded by the unfolding of social and political life. We know, for example, that a prominent deity in the earliest period, known as Enlil, and who indeed remained for a long time the head of the pantheon, was brought to the Euphrates Valley by the Sumerians.

All indications point to his having been conceived by the Sumerians as a grim power who manifests himself in the storm and whose voice is heard in the thunder. As such his seat was placed on the top of the mountains, whence the storms sweep down. Such a deity belongs to a people whose rugged character would be formed by the mountainous region in which they dwelled.

The Sumerians became agriculturists as the Akkadians had been, and they also engaged in the more peaceful pursuits incident to growing commercial activity. Corresponding to this transformation, Enlil became also an agricultural deity, who was appealed to as the power able to bring about the fertility of the fields and the success of the crops. Now, agricultural deities are either conceived as personifications of the power residing in the sun as the chief factor involved in vegetation, or as the personification of the earth pictured as the female element in whose womb the seed ripens and in time brings forth fruit.

Enlil, therefore, while not losing the fierce traits belonging to him as a mountain god whose element is the storm, absorbs the attributes of a solar deity, while his consort, Ninlil, [1] becomes the mother goddess who nurtures the seed and spreads blessings among mankind. Attempts have been made by various scholars to distinguish in the case of religious doctrines between Sumerian and Akkadian nuances, but without much success.

Naturally, if we were in a position to trace the development of religious thought and practice in Babylonia and Assyria, we could differentiate more sharply between the Sumerian and the Akkadian elements. The material, however, at our disposal, though ample for obtaining a knowledge of details regarding the pantheon, the beliefs and the chief cults, is quite insufficient for tracing the history of the religion itself, except in general outlines.

We can distinctly see the Sumerian conquerors imposing the names of their deities on the country, just as they imposed their language and script. As the superior cultural element, Sumerian beliefs predominate in the earliest periods, and the cult is similarly in its chief aspects to be regarded as Sumerian, while the earliest religious literature, including the form given to the popular myths, is entirely in Sumerian.

And yet we must not be misled by these external features to set aside entirely the participation of the Akkadians in the unfolding of religious belief and practice. There are traces of Semitic influences in the oldest votive inscriptions of Sumerian rulers. Semitic words make their way into the Sumerian language.

PLATE XXVII

Terra-Cotta votive images of the God Enlil ad of His consort Ninlil (Nippur)

Corresponding to these early Semitic influences, we find the Sumerians representing their gods generally with beards, after the fashion of the Semites, while they portray themselves as clean-shaven a further indication that the Sumerians identified the deities whose worship they brought with them, with such as already formed the object of a cult marked by crude images of the deities to whom appeals were directed. Similarly, the characteristic Sumerian plain or flounced skirt, falling from the waist, gives way to a kind of plaid draped around the body from the left shoulder down, with or without a slit in the front, which appears to have been the Akkadian form of dress. [2]

We are therefore justified in concluding that the Sumerians, thus assimilating even in external traits their gods with those which they already found in the country, also incorporated religious practices of the Akkadians into their cult ; they would naturally do this in order to ensure the good will and favor of the indigenous gods whom they identified with their own.

In this way we can account for the striking fact that in the long course of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion, running parallel to the history that extends over several millenniums, there is no sudden break, but, on the contrary, a continuous line of development. The gods worshipped in the latest period of Babylonian history are practically the same as those found in the earlier stages.

The relationship of these deities to one another changes with the vicissitudes of political transformations that the country undergoes. These vicissitudes also carry in their wake the absorption on the part of certain deities of attributes belonging to others. Semitic designations replace in some cases, though by no means in all, the Sumerian forms, but the chief personages of the Babylonian pantheon in the latest period can all be traced back to the old Babylonian epoch.

The change of political control from the Sumerians to the Akkadians, of such fundamental significance in the history of Babylonia, leaves the religion practically unchanged, except for the rise of the local god of Babylon, Marduk, to the head of the pantheon by virtue of the pre-eminent position acquired by Babylon as the political centre of the government, while the subsequent rise of Assyria to supremacy similarly carries with it no momentous changes in the pantheon or in the cult, beyond the rise of the god Ashur, originally a solar deity and the local patron of the city of Ashur, the early capital of Assyria, to the headship of the pantheon as finally constituted in the north.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Nin designating "lady", as En is "lord".

[2]:

See on this whole subject Eduard Meyer's important monograph, Sumerier und Semiten in Babylonien (Berlin, 1906), whose general conclusions seem to me to be definitely established, though in matters of detail there is room for differences of opinion. So, e.g., the two kinds of plaids found on early monuments are not so distinct as to justify us in regarding one variety as Sumerian and the other as Akkadian. Both represent, as I believe, the "Semitic" fashion of the country, as against the plain or flounced skirt.

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