egypt—book of the dead—its morality—metaphysical character—origins of religions—ghosts—animism—astronomy and astrology—morality—pantheism and polytheism—egyptian ideas of future life and judgment—egyptian genesis—divine emanations—plurality of gods and animal worship—sun worship and solar myths—knowledge of astronomy—orientation of pyramids—theory of future life—the ka—the soul—confession of faith before osiris.
chald?an religion—oldest form accadian—shamanism—growth of philosophical religion—astronomy and astrology—accadian trinities—anu, mull-il, ea—twelve great gods—bel-ishtar—merodach—assur—pantheism—wordsworth—magic and omens—penitential psalms—conclusions from.
the religious ideas of a nation afford a pretty good test of the antiquity of its civilization. thus, if 5000 years hence all traces of england being lost except a copy of the athanasian creed, it would be a legitimate inference that the race who retained such a creed as part of their ritual, had long passed the primitive period of fetichism or animism, had schools of priests and philosophers, and that their religion had developed into a stage of subtle and profound metaphysical speculations. if this would be true in the hypothetical case of england, it is equally true in the actual case of egypt. in its sacred book, the todtenbuch, or book of the dead, which we meet with at the earliest periods of egyptian history, 106 we find conceptions of the great first cause of the universe, which are in many respects identical with those of athanasius. in fact, with some slight alterations of expression, his creed might be a chapter of the todtenbuch, and it is clear that in his controversy with arius he got his inspiration from his native alexandria, and from the old egyptian religion stripped of its polytheistic and idolatrous elements, and adapted to the modern ideas of the neo-platonic philosophy and of christianity.
the egyptian religion, as disclosed to us in the earliest records, is one which of itself proves its great antiquity. there is an extensive literature of a religious character; the book of the dead, which contains many of the principal prayers and hymns, and descriptions of the last judgment, is already a sacred book. portions of it are certainly older than the time of menes, and it had already acquired such an authority in the times of pepi, teta, and unas, of the sixth dynasty, about 3800 b.c., that the inner walls of their pyramids are covered with hieroglyphics of chapters taken from it. from this time forward, almost every tomb and mummy-case contains quotations from it, just as passages of the bible are quoted on our own gravestones. the book of isis, and hymns to various gods, are of the same nature and early date; and in addition to these, there are ethical treatises, ascribed to kings of the oldest dynasties, as well as works on medicine, geometry, mensuration, and arithmetic. education was very general, as is proved by the fact that the workmen at the mines of wady magarah could scrawl hieroglyphic inscriptions on the walls of their tunnels, and on their blocks of dressed stone. birch, in his ancient history of egypt from 107 the monuments, which i prefer to quote from as, being published by the society for promoting christian knowledge, it cannot be suspected of any bias to discredit orthodoxy, says that, "in their moral law the egyptians followed the same precepts as the decalogue (ascribed to moses 2500 years later), and enumerated treason, murder, adultery, theft, and the practice of magic as crimes of the deepest dye." the position of women is one of the surest tests of an advanced civilization; for in rude times, and among savage races, force reigns supreme, and the weaker sex is always the slave or drudge of the stronger one. it is only when intellectual and moral considerations are firmly established that the claims of women to an equality begin to be recognized. now in the earliest records of domestic and political life in egypt, we find this equality more fully recognized than it is perhaps among ourselves in the nineteenth century. quoting again from birch, "the egyptian woman appears always as the equal and companion of her father, brethren, and husband. she was never secluded in a harem, sat at meals with them, had equal rights before the law, served in the priesthood, and even mounted the throne."
in fact the state of civilization in egypt 6000 years ago appears to have been higher in all essential respects than it has ever been since, or is now, in any asiatic and in many european countries. and it has every appearance of being indigenous, and having grown up on the soil. there are no traces in the oldest traditions of any foreign importation, such as we find in the early traditions of other countries. there is no fish-man who comes up out of the persian gulf and teaches the chald?ans the first elements of civilization; no cadmus 108 who teaches the greeks their first letters; no manco-capac who lands on the shore of peru. on the contrary, all the egyptian traditions are of egyptian gods, like osiris and thoth, who reigned in the valley of the nile, and invented hieroglyphics and other arts.
these are lost in a fabulous antiquity, and the only trace of a link to connect the historical egyptians with the neolithic races whose remains are found in abundance in the form of flint knives and arrows, and are brought up by borings through thick deposits of nile mud, or the still older pal?olithic savages, whose rude implements were found by general pitt-rivers and other explorers in quaternary gravels near thebes of geological antiquity, is furnished by the use of a stone knife to make the first incision on the corpse in turning it into a mummy, and by the animal worship, which may have been a relic of primitive fetichism and totemism.
the highly metaphysical nature of the egyptian creed is another conclusive proof of the antiquity of the religion. among existing races we find similar religions corresponding to similar stages of civilization. with the very rudest races, religion consists mainly of ghost worship and animism. herbert spencer has shown how dreams lead to the belief that man consists of two elements, a body and a spirit, or shadowy self, which wanders forth in sleep, meets with strange adventures, and returns when the body awakes. in the longer sleep of death, this shadowy self becomes a ghost which haunts its old abodes and former associates, mostly with an evil intent, and which has to be deceived or propitiated, to prevent it from doing mischief. hence the sacrifices and offerings, and the many devices for cheating the ghost by carrying the dead body by 109 devious paths to some safe locality. hence also the superstitious dread of evil spirits, and the interment with the corpse of food and implements to induce the ghost to remain tranquilly in the grave, or to set out comfortably on its journey to another world.
animism is another tap-root of savage superstition. as the child sees life in the doll, so the savage sees life in every object, animate or inanimate, which comes in contact with him, and affects his existence. animals, and even stocks and stones, are supposed to have souls, and who knows that these may not be the souls of departed ancestors, and have some mysterious power of helping or of hurting him? in any case the safer plan is to propitiate them by worship and sacrifice.
from these rude beginnings we see nations as they advance in civilization rising to higher conceptions, developing their ghosts into gods, and confining their operations to the greater phenomena of nature, such as the sky, the earth, the sea, the sun, the stars, storms, seasons, thunder, and the like. and by degrees the unity of nature begins to be felt by the higher minds; priestly castes are established who have leisure for meditation; ideas are transmitted from generation to generation; and the vague and primitive nature worship passes into the phase of philosophical and scientific religion. the popular rites and superstitions linger on with the mass of the population, but an inner circle of hereditary priests refines and elevates them, and begins to ask for a solution of the great problems of the universe; what it means, and how it was created; the mystery of good and evil; man's origin, future life and destiny; and all the questions which, down to the 110 present day, are asked though never answered by the higher minds of the higher races of civilized man. in this stage of religious development metaphysical speculations occupy a foremost place. priests of heliopolis, magi of eridhu and of ur, reasoned like christian fathers and milton's devils of
"fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,"
and like them
"found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
theories of theism and pantheism, of creations and incarnations, of trinities and atonements, of polarities between good and evil, free-will and necessity, were argued and answered, now in one direction and now in another. science contributed its share, sometimes in the form of crude cosmogonies and first attempts at ethnology, but principally through the medium of astronomy. an important function of the priests was to form a calendar, predict the seasons, and regulate the holding of religious rites at the proper times. hence the course of the heavens was carefully watched, the stars were mapped out into constellations, through which the progress of the sun and planets was recorded; and myths sprang into existence based on the sun's daily rising and setting, and its annual journey through the seasons and the signs of the zodiac. mixed up with astronomy was astrology, which, watching the sun, moon, and five planets, inferred life from motion, and recognized gods exerting a divine influence on human events. the sacred character of the priests was confirmed by the popular conviction that they were at the same time prophets and magicians, and that they alone 111 were able to interpret the will of personified powers of nature, and influence them for good or evil.
the element of morality is one of the latest to appear. it is only after a long progress in civilization that ideas of personal sin and righteousness, of an overruling justice and goodness, of future rewards and punishments, are developed from the cruder conceptions and superstitious observances of earlier times. it was a long road from the jealous and savage local god of the hebrew tribes, who smelt the sweet savour of burnt sacrifices and was pleased, and who commanded the extermination of enemies, and the slaughter of women and children, to the supreme jehovah, who loved justice and mercy better than the blood of bulls and rams. it is one great merit of the bible, intelligently read, that it records so clearly the growth and evolution of moral ideas, from a plane almost identical with that of the red indians, to the supreme height of the sermon on the mount and st. paul's definition of charity.
there is one phenomenon which appears very commonly in these ancient religions, that of degeneration. after having risen to a certain height of pure and lofty conception they cease to advance, branch out into fanciful fables accompanied by cruel and immoral rites, and finally decay and perish. this is an inevitable consequence of the law of birth, growth, maturity, decay and death, which underlies all existence.
"the old order changes, giving place to new."
environment changes, and religions, laws, and social institutions change with it. empires rise and fall, old civilizations disappear, old creeds become incredible, and often, for a time, the course of humanity seems to be 112 retrograde. but as the flowing tide rises, though the successive waves on the shore advance and recede, evolution, or the law of progress, in the long run prevails, and amidst the many oscillations of temporary conditions, carries the human race ever upwards towards higher things.
in the case of ancient religions it is easy to see how this process of degeneration is carried out. priests who were the pioneers of progress, and leaders of advanced thought, became first conservatives, and then obscurantists. pantheistic conceptions, and personifications of divine attributes, lead to polytheism. as religions become popular, and pass from the learned few to the ignorant many, they become vulgarized, and the real meaning of myths and symbols is either lost or confined to a select inner circle.
but for my present purpose, which is mainly chronological, these vicissitudes in religious beliefs are not important. if, at the earliest date to which authentic history extends, we find a national religion which has already passed from the primitive into the metaphysical stage, and which embodies abstract ideas, astronomical observations, and a high and pure code of morals, it is a legitimate inference that it is the outcome of a long antecedent era of civilization. this is eminently the case with regard to the ancient religions of egypt and chald?a.
the ancient egyptians were the most religious people ever known. their thoughts were so fixed on a future life that, as herodotus says, they looked upon their houses as mere temporary inns, and their tombs as their true permanent homes. the idea of an immediate day of judgment for each individual soul after death 113 was so fixed in their minds that it exercised a constant practical influence on their life and conduct. piety to the gods, loyalty to the throne, obedience to superiors, justice and mercy to inferiors, and observance of all the principal moral laws, and especially that of truthfulness, were enforced by the conviction that no sooner had the breath departed from the body, and it had been deposited as a mummy, with its ka or second shadowy self, in the tomb, than the soul would have to appear before the supreme judge osiris, and the forty-two heavenly jurors, where it would have to confess the naked truth, and be tried and rewarded or punished according to its merits. it is very interesting, therefore, to learn what the religion was which had taken such a firm hold of the minds of an entire nation, and which maintained that hold for the best part of 5000 years.
judgment of the soul by osiris.—weighing good and bad deeds. (from champollion's egypt.)
our authority for the nature of this religion is derived mainly from the todtenbuch or book of the dead, which was the egyptian bible. this sacred book was of immense antiquity, and much of it was certainly 114 in existence before the time of menes. we know it from the multiplied copies which were frequently deposited in tombs, and from the innumerable extracts and quotations which appear on almost every mummy-case and sarcophagus, as well as from the many manuscripts of works on religious subjects which have been preserved in papyri.
the fundamental idea was that of a primitive ocean, or, if you like to call it chaos, of nebulous matter without form and void, and of a one infinite and eternal god who evolved himself and the universe from his own essence. he is called in the todtenbuch "the one only being, the sole creator, unchangeable in his infinite perfection, present in all time, past and future, everywhere and yet nowhere." but although one in essence, god is not one in person. he exists as father, but reproduces himself under another aspect as mother, and under a third as son. this trinity is three and yet one, and has all the attributes of the one—infinity, eternity, and omnipotence. thus far the athanasian creed might be a chapter of the todtenbuch, and it is very evident where the alexandrian saint got those subtle metaphysical ideas, which are so opposed to the rigid monotheistic creeds of judaism and mahometanism.
but the egyptian religion was more logical, and carried these ideas much further than an original trinity. it is evident that if we admit the two fundamental ideas, 1st, that god is the only real existence, author of and identical with the universe; 2nd, that this incomprehensible essence or first cause can be made more comprehensible by personifying his various qualities and manifestations, there is no reason why we should stop at three. if we admit a trinity of father, 115 mother, and son, why not admit a daughter and other descendants; or if you personify the power to make a universe, the knowledge how to make it, and the will to do it, as father, son, and holy ghost, why not the benevolence to do it well, the malevolence to do it badly, and a hundred other attributes which metaphysical ingenuity can devise to account for the complication of the known, and the mysteries of the unknown facts of existence?
the egyptian priests accepted this view, and admitted a whole pantheon of secondary gods who were either personifications of different attributes of the supreme god, or separate portions of the one divine essence. thus ammon was god considered in his attribute of the first generative power; pthah the supreme artist who fashioned all things wisely; osiris the good and benevolent aspect of the deity; set or typhon his opposite or the author of evil, and so on. and once personified, these attributes soon came to be considered as separate beings; to have a female principle or wives added to them, and to be worshipped as the patron gods of separate temples and provinces. finally, the pantheistic idea became so prevalent, and that of separate personifications of the deity was carried so far, that portions of the divine essence were supposed to be incarnated in the sun and heavenly bodies, in the pharaoh and his family, and even in bulls, cats, and other sacred animals. in the latter case it may be a question whether we do not see a survival of the old superstitious fetiches and totems of semi-savage times, adopted by the priests into their theology, as so many pagan superstitions were by the early christian missionaries. at any rate such was the result, a mixture of the 116 most childish and absurd forms of popular superstition, with a highly philosophical and moral creed, held by the educated classes and stamped upon the mass of the nation by the firmly established belief in a future life and day of judgment.
among the more philosophical articles of this creed, astronomy assumed a prominent place from a very early date. the sun, it is true, was described in the original cosmogony as having been called into existence by the word of the supreme god, but it came to be taken as his visible representative, and finally worshipped as a god itself. its different phases were studied and received different names, as horus when on the horizon rising or setting, ra in its midday splendour, osiris during its journey in the night through the underground world of darkness. of these ra naturally had the pre-eminence; the title of pharaoh, or pi-ra, was that given to kings, who were assumed to be semi-divine beings descended from the sun. the osiris myth which was the basis of the national belief in a future life and day of judgment was clearly solar. egyptian astronomy, like that of the chaldees and all early nations, assumed that the sky was a crystal dome or firmament which separated the waters of the upper world from the earth and waters below, and corresponded with a similar nether world of darkness below the earth. the sun was born or rose into the upper world every morning, waxed in strength and glory as his bark navigated the upper waters until noon, then declined and finally sank into the nether world or died, slain by an envious typhon, but to be born again next morning after traversing the perils and encountering the demons of the realm of darkness. the same idea was repeated by the annual course of the 117 sun through spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and it translated itself as applied to man into the ideas of birth, growth, manhood, decline, and death, to be followed by a sojourn in hades, a day of judgment, and a resurrection.
the egyptian religion, however, seems never to have been so largely astronomical as that of chald?a, and to have concentrated itself mainly on the sun. the planets and signs of the zodiac did not, as with the chaldees, afford a principal element of their sacred books and mythologies. the egyptian priests had doubtless long studied astronomy; they had watched the stars, traced the annual course of the sun, divided the year into months and the circle into 360°, and constructed calendars for bringing the civil into correspondence with the sidereal year. they not only had intercalated the five supplemental days, bringing the duration of the year from 360 to 365, but they had invented a sothic cycle for the odd quarter of a day, by which at the end of every 1460 years a year was added, and the sun brought back to rise on the first day of the first month of thoth in the same place in the heavens, determined by the heliacal risings of the brightest of the stars, sothis or sirius.
but they applied this knowledge, which must have been gathered from long observations, mainly to practical purposes, such as the reform of the calendar and the orientation of the pyramids, temples, and tombs, rather than to mythology. the idea of a future life, which took such a firm hold of all classes of ancient egypt, is that to which we are indebted for the preservation of these wonderful records of the remote past. the theory was that man consisted of three parts; the body 118 or ordinary living man; the ka or double, which was a sort of shadowy self which came out of the body and returned to it as in dreams; and the soul, a still more subtle essence, which at death went to the gods, was judged, and either rewarded for its merits by living with them in heaven, or punished for its sins by being sent to the nether world of torment. but this soul still retained such a connection with its former body as to come down from time to time to visit it; while the ka or double retained the old connection so closely as to live habitually in it, only coming out to eat, drink, and repeat the acts of its former life, but incapable of existing without a physical basis in the old body or some likeness of it. the same doctrine of the double was applied to all animated and even to inanimate objects, so that the shadowy man could come out of his mummy, live in his own shadowy house, feed on shadowy food, be surrounded by shadowy geese, oxen, and other objects of his former possessions. hence arose the extraordinary care in providing a fitting tomb and preserving the mummy, or, failing the mummy, which in course of time might decay, providing a portrait-statue or painted likeness, which might give a point d'appui for the ka, and a receptacle for the occasional visits of the soul. while these were preserved, conscious personal life was continued beyond the grave, and the good man who went to heaven was immortal. but if these were destroyed and the physical basis perished, the ka and soul were left without a home, and either perished also, or were left to flit like gibbering ghosts through the world of shadows without a local habitation or a name. the origin of this theory as regards the ka is easily explained. it is, as herbert spencer has conclusively 119 shown, a natural inference from dreams, and is found everywhere, from interments of the stone period down to the crude beliefs of existing savages. it even survives among many civilized races in the belief in ghosts, and the precautions taken to prevent the ka's of dead men from returning to haunt their former homes and annoy their posterity. the origin of the third element or soul is not so clear. it may either be a relic of the animism, which among savage races attributes life to every object in nature, or a philosophical deduction of more advanced periods, which sees an universal spirit underlying all creation, and recognizing in man a spark of this spirit which is indestructible, and either migrates into fresh forms, or into fresh spheres of celestial or infernal regions, and is finally absorbed in the great ocean from which it sprang.
it is singular that we find almost the precise form of this egyptian belief among many existing savage or semi-civilized men separated by wide distances in different quarters of the world. the negroes of the gold coast believe in the same three entities, and they call the soul which exists independently of the man, before his birth and after his death, the kra, a name which is almost identical with the egyptian ka. the navajos and other tribes of red indians have precisely the same belief. it seems probable that as we find it in the earliest egyptian records, it was a development, evolved through ages of growing civilization by a succession of learned priests, from the primitive fetichism and fear of ghosts of rude ancestors; and in the animal worship and other superstitions of later times we find traces of these primitive beliefs still surviving among the mass of the population. be this as it may, 120 this theory of a future life was firmly rooted at the dawn of egyptian history, and we are indebted to it, and to the dryness of the climate, for the marvellous preservation of records which give us such an intimate acquaintance with the history, the religion, the literature, and the details of a domestic and social life which is distant from our own by an interval of more than 6000 years.
no other nation ever attained to such a vivid and practical belief in a future existence as these ancient egyptians. taking merely the material test of money, what an enormous capital must have been expended in pyramids, tombs, and mummies; what a large proportion of his income must every egyptian of the upper classes have spent in the preparations for a future life; how shadowy and dim does the idea of immortality appear in comparison among the foremost races of the present day!
the elevated moral code of the todtenbuch is another proof of the great antiquity of egyptian civilization. morality is a plant of slow growth which has hardly an existence among rude and primitive tribes, and is only slowly evolved either by contact with superior races or by long ages of settled social order. how many centuries did it take before the crude and ferocious ideas of the hebrew tribes wandering in the desert or warring with the canaanites, were transformed into the lofty and humane conceptions of the later prophets, of hillel and of jesus! and yet we find all the best maxims of this later morality already existing 5000 years before the sermon on the mount, in the sacred book of ancient egypt. the prayer of the soul pleading in the day of judgment before osiris and the celestial jury, which 121 embodies the idea of moral perfection entertained by the contemporaries of menes, contains the following articles—
"i have told no lies; committed no frauds; been good to widows; not overtasked servants; not lazy or negligent; done nothing hateful to the gods; been kind to slaves; promoted no strife; caused no one to weep; committed no murder; stolen no offerings to the dead; made no fraudulent gains; seized no lands wrongfully; not tampered with weights and measures; not taken the milk from sucklings; not molested sacred beasts or birds; not cut off or monopolized watercourses; have sown joy and not sorrow; have given food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, and clothed the naked:
"i am pure, i am pure."
it is evident that such an ideal of life, not imported from foreign sources, but the growth of an internal civilization, must be removed by an enormous time from the cannibal feasts and human sacrifices of the first glimpses of ideas of a future life in the stone ages.
it is to be observed also that the religion of ancient egypt seems to be of native growth. no trace is to be found, either in record or tradition, of any importation from a foreign source, such as may be seen in the chald?an legend of oannes and other religions of antiquity. on the contrary, all the egyptian myths and traditions ascribe the invention of religion, arts, and literature, to thoth, osiris, horus, and other native egyptian gods.
the invention of the art of writing by hieroglyphics affords strong confirmation of this view. it is evidently a development on egyptian soil, in prehistoric times, of 122 the picture-writing of a primitive period. the symbols are taken from egypt and not from foreign objects, and are essentially different from those of the chald?an cuneiform, which is the only other form of writing which might possibly compare in point of antiquity with the egyptian hieroglyphics and hieratic. these were certainly known prior to the time of menes, and they are the parents of the ph?nician, hebrew, greek, and all more modern alphabets.
in all other ancient systems of writing, such as chald?an and chinese, we see the development from the original picture-writing into conventional signs, syllabaries, and finally into ideographs and phonetics; but in the case of egyptian, when we first get sight of it in the earliest dynasties, it is already fully formed, and undergoes no essential changes during the next 5000 years. even the hieratic, or cursive hieroglyphic for ordinary purposes, was current in the old empire, as is proved by the celebrated prisse papyrus.
the chald?an religion is not so easily described as that of egypt, for it started from a lower level, and went through more changes in the course of its evolution. in the case of egypt, the earliest records show us a highly intellectual and moral religion, with only a few traces remaining of primitive barbarism in the form of animal worship, and this religion remained substantially unchanged until the conversion of the country to christianity. the influences of semitic and other foreign conquests and intercourse left few traces, and the only serious attempt at a radical religious revolution by the heretic king who endeavoured to dethrone the old egyptian gods, and substitute a system more nearly monotheistic under the emblem of the winged solar-disc, 123 produced no permanent effect, and disappeared in one or two generations. but in chald?a, semitic influences prevailed from a very early period, and when we reach the historical periods of the great babylonian and assyrian empires, the kings, priests, and nobles were semite, and the accadian had become a dead language, which could only be read as we read latin or hebrew, by the aid of translations and of grammars and dictionaries. still its records remained, as the hebrew bible does to us, and the sacred books of the old religion and its fundamental ideas were only developed and not changed.
in the background of this accadian religion we seem to see a much nearer approach than we do in that of egypt to the primitive superstitions peculiar to the turanian race. to this day the religion of the semi-barbarous races of that stock is essentially what is called "shamanism"; a fear of ghosts and goblins, a belief that the universe swarms with myriads of spirits, mostly evil, and that the only escape from them is by the aid of conjuror-priests, who know magical rites and formulas which can baffle their malevolent designs. these incantations, and the interpretation of omens and auguries, occupy a great part of the oldest sacred books, and more than 100 tablets have been already recovered from the great work on astronomy and astrology, compiled from them by the priests of agade, for the royal library of sargon i. they are for the most part of the most absurd and puerile character; as, for instance, "if a sheep give birth to a lion there will be war "; "if a mare give birth to a dog there will be disaster and famine"; "if a white dog enter a temple its foundation will subsist; if a gray dog, the temple will lose its 124 possessions," and so on. this character of magicians and soothsayers clung to the chald?an priests even down to a later period, and under the roman empire chald?an rites were identified with sorcery and divination.
but out of this jungle of silly superstitions the elements of an enlightened and philosophical religion had evolved themselves in early accadian times, and were continually developed as semitic influences gradually fused themselves with accadian, and formed the composite races and religions which came to be known in later times as babylonian and assyrian. the fundamental principle of this religion was the same as that of egypt, and of most of the great religions of the east, viz. pantheism. the great underlying first cause, or spirit of the universe, was considered as identical with his manifestations. the subtle metaphysical conceptions which still survive in the creed of st. athanasius, were invoked to make the incomprehensible comprehensible, by emanations, incarnations, and personified attributes. these again were attached to the striking phenomena of the universe, the sun, moon, and planets, the earth and sky, the winds, rains, and thunder. and ever as more phenomena were observed more gods were invented, who were thought to be symbols, or partial personifications, of the one great spirit, and not more inconsistent with his unity than the "and yet there are not three gods, but one god" of athanasius.
but the chald?an, like the egyptian priests, did not stop at one trinity, but invented a whole hierarchy of trinities, rising one above the other to form the twelve great gods, while below them were an indefinite number of minor gods and goddesses personifying different aspects of natural phenomena, and taken for 125 the most part from astronomical myths of the sun, moon, planets, and seasons. for the religion of the chaldees was, even more than that of the egyptians, based on astronomy and astrology, as may be seen in their national epic of izdubar, which is simply a solar myth of the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac, the last chapter but one being a representation of the passage through the sign of aquarius, in the fable of a universal deluge.
the first accadian triad was composed of anu, mull-il, and ea. anu, or ana, is the word for heaven, and the god is described as the "lord of the starry heavens," and "the first-born, the oldest, the father of the gods." it is the same idea in fact as that expressed by the sanscrit varuna, the greek ouranus. mull-il, the next member of this triad, is the god of the abyss and nether world, while ea is the god of the earth, seas, and rivers, "the lord of the deep," and personifies the wise and beneficent side of the divine intelligence, the maintainer of order and harmony, the friend of man. very early with the introduction of semitic influences mull-il dropped out of his place in the trinity, and was superseded by bel, who was conceived as being the son of ea, the personification of the active and combative energy which carries out the wise designs of ea by reducing the chaos to order, creating the sun and heavenly bodies, and directing them in their courses, subduing evil spirits and slaying monsters. his name simply signifies "the lord," and is applied to other inferior deities as a title of honour, as bel-marduk, the lord marduk or merodach, the patron god of babylon. in this capacity bel is clearly associated with the midday sun, as the emblem of a terrible yet 126 beneficent power, the enemy of evil spirits and dragons of darkness.
the next triad is more distinctly astronomical. it consists of uruk the moon, ud the sun, and mermer the god of the air, of rain and tempest. these are the old accadian names, but they are better known by the semitic translations of sin, shamash, and raman. the next group of gods is purely astronomical, consisting of the five planets, mars, mercury, jupiter, venus, and saturn, personified as nergal, nebo, marduk, ishtar, and nindar. the number of gods was further increased by introducing the primary polarity of sex, and assigning a wife to each male deity. thus belit, or "the lady," was the wife of bel, he representing the masculine element of nature, strength and courage; she the feminine principle of tenderness and maternity. so also nana the earth was the wife of anu, the god of the strong heavens; annunit the moon the wife of shamash the sun; and ishtar (astarte, astoreth, or aphrodite), the planet venus, the goddess of love and beauty, though a great goddess in her own right, was fabled to have had tammuz or thammuz, one of the names of the sun, as a husband, whence in later times came the myth of nature mourning for the sun-god, slain by the envious boar, winter.
but of these only belit and istar were admitted into the circle of the twelve great gods, consisting of the two triads and the planets, who held the foremost place in the chald?an and assyrian mythology. of the minor gods, meri-dug or marduk, the merodach of the bible, is the most remarkable, for he represents the idea which, some 5000 years later, became the fundamental one of the christian religion; that of a son of 127 god, "being of one substance with the father," who acts the part of mediator and friend of man. he is the son of ea and damkina, i.e. of heaven and earth, and an emanation from the supreme spirit considered in its attribute of benevolence. the tablets are full of inscriptions on which he is represented as applying to his father ea for aid and advice to assist suffering humanity, most commonly by teaching the spells which will drive away the demons who are supposed to be the cause of all misfortunes and illness. it is not surprising, therefore, to find that he and istar, the lovely goddess, were the favourite deities, and occupied much the same position as jesus and the virgin mary do in the catholic religion of the present day, while the other deities were local gods attached to separate cities where their temples stood, and where they occupied a position not unlike that of the patron saints and holy relics of which almost every considerable town and cathedral boasted in medi?val christianity. thus they rose and fell in rank with the ascendancy or decline of their respective cities, just as pthah and ammon did in egypt according as the seat of empire was at memphis or thebes. in one instance only in later times, in assyria, which had become exclusively semitic, do we find the idea of one supreme god, who was national and not local, and who overshadowed all other gods, as jahve in the later days of the jewish monarchy, and in the conception of the hebrew prophets, did the gods of the surrounding nations. assur, the local god of the city of assur, the first capital of assyria, became, with the growth of the assyrian empire, the one supreme god, in whose name wars were undertaken, cities destroyed, and captives massacred or mutilated. in fact the resemblance is 128 very close between assur and the ferocious and vindictive jahve of the israelites during the rude times of the judges. they are both jealous gods, delighting in the massacre and torture of prisoners, women and children, and enjoining the extermination of nations who insult their dignity by worshipping other gods. we almost seem to see, when we read the records of tiglath-pileser and sennacherib and the books of judges and of samuel, the origin of religious wars, and the spirit of cold-blooded cruelty inspired by a gloomy fanaticism, which is so characteristic of the semitic nature, and which in later times led to the propagation of mahometanism by the sword. with the hebrews this conception of a cruel and vindictive jahve was beaten out of them by persecutions and sufferings, and that of a one merciful god evolved from it, but assyria went through no such schooling and retained its arrogant prosperity down to the era of its disappearance from history with the fall of nineveh; but it is easy to see that the course of events might have been different, and monotheism might have been evolved from the conception of assur. these, however, are speculations relating to a much later period than the primitive religion with which we are principally concerned.
it is remarkable how many of our modern religious conceptions find an almost exact counterpart in those of this immensely remote period. incarnations, emanations, atonements, personifications of divine attributes, are all there, and also the subtle metaphysical theories by which the human intellect, striving to penetrate the mysteries of the unknowable, endeavours to account for the existence of good and evil, and to reconcile multiplicity 129 of manifestation with unity of essence. if wordsworth sings of a
"sense sublime
of something far more deeply interposed,
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
and the round ocean and the living air,
and the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
a motion and a spirit that impels
all thinking things, all objects of all thought,
and rolls through all things,"
he conveys the fundamental idea which was at the bottom of these earliest religions, and which has been perpetuated in the east through their successors, brahmanism and buddhism—the idea of pantheism, or of an universe which is one with its first cause, and not a mechanical work called into existence from without by a personal creator.
an ancient priest of egypt or chald?a might have written these verses of the philosophic poet of the nineteenth century, only he would have written horus or bel for the "setting sun"; ea for the "round ocean"; anur for the "sky," and so on. side by side with these intellectual and philosophical conceptions of these ancient religions, we find the element of personal piety occupying a place which contrasts wonderfully with the childish and superstitious idea of evil spirits, magical spells, and omens. we read in the same collections of tablets, of mares bringing forth dogs and women lions; and psalms, which in their elevation of moral tone and intensity of personal devotion might readily be mistaken for the hebrew psalms attributed to david. there is a large collection of what are known as "the penitential psalms," in which the chald?an penitent confesses his sins, pleads ignorance, 130 and sues for mercy, almost in the identical words of the sweet singer of israel. in one of these, headed "the complaints of the repentant heart," we find such verses as these—
"i eat the food of wrath, and drink the waters of anguish."
"oh, my god, my transgressions are very great, very great my sins.
"the lord in his wrath has overwhelmed me with confusion."
"i lie on the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. i am silent and in tears, and none takes me by the hand. i cry out, and there is none who hears me."
"my god, who knowest the unknown,[4] be merciful to me. my goddess, who knowest the unknown, be merciful."
"god, who knowest the unknown, in the midst of the stormy waters take me by the hand; my sins are seven times seven, forgive my sins!"
another hymn is remarkable for its artistic construction. it is in regular strophes, the penitent speaking in each five double lines, to which the priest adds two, supporting his prayer. the whole is in precisely the same style as the similar penitential psalms of the hebrew bible, as will appear from the following quotation of one of the strophes from the translation of zimmern.
131 penitent. "i, thy servant, full of sighs call to thee. whoso is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou acceptest. if thou lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth. ruler of all, mistress of mankind, merciful one to whom it is good to turn, who dost receive sighs."
priest. "while his god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls on thee. thy countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand."
these hymns are remarkable, both as showing that the sentiments of personal piety and contrition for sin as a thing hateful to the supreme being, might be as intense in a polytheistic as in a monotheistic religion; and as illustrating the immense interval of time which must have elapsed before such sentiments could have grown up from the rude beginnings of savage or semi-civilized superstitions. the two oldest religions of the world, those of egypt and chald?a, tell the same story; that of the immense interval which must have elapsed prior to the historical date of 5000 b.c. when written records begin, to allow of such ideas and such a civilization having grown up from such a state of things as we find prevailing during the neolithic period, and still prevailing among the inferior races of the world, who have remained isolated and unchanged in the hunting or nomad condition.
i have dwelt at some length on the ancient religions, for nothing tends more to open the mind, and break down the narrow barriers of sectarian prejudice, than to see how the ideas which we have believed to be the peculiar possession of our own religion, are in fact the inevitable products of the evolution of the human race from barbarism to civilization, and have appeared 132 in substantially the same forms in so many ages and countries. and surely, in these days, when faith in direct inspiration has been so rudely shaken, it must be consoling to many enlightened christians to find that the fundamental articles of their creed, trinities, emanations, incarnations, atonements, a future life and day of judgment, are not the isolated conceptions of a minority of the human race in recent times, but have been held from a remote antiquity by all the nations which have taken a leading part in civilization.
to all enlightened minds also, whatever may be their theological creeds, it must be a cheering reflection that the fundamental axioms of morality do not depend on the evidence that the decalogue was written on a stone by god's own finger, or that the sermon on the mount is correctly reported, but on the evolution of the natural instincts of the human mind. all advanced and civilized communities have had their decalogues and sermons on the mount, and it is impossible for any dispassionate observer to read them without feeling that in substance they are all identical, whether contained in the egyptian todtenbuch, the babylonian hymns, the zoroastrian zendavesta, the sacred books of brahmanism and buddhism, the maxims of confucius, the doctrines of plato and the stoics, or the christian bible.
none are absolutely perfect and complete, and of some it may be said that they contain precepts of the highest practical importance which are either omitted or contradicted in the christian formulas. for instance, the virtue of diligence, and the injunction not to be idle, in the egyptian and zoroastrian creeds contrast favourably with the "take no thought for the morrow," and "trust to be fed like the sparrows," of the sermon on the 133 mount. but in this, and in all these summaries of moral axioms, apparent differences arise not from fundamental oppositions, but from truth having two sides, and passing over readily into
"the falsehood of extremes."
even the injunction to "take no thought for the morrow," is only an extreme way of stating that the active side of human life, strenuous effort, self-denial, and foresight, must not be pushed so far as to stifle all higher aspirations. probably if the same concrete case of conduct had been submitted to an egyptian, a babylonian or zoroastrian priest, and to the late bishop of peterborough, their verdicts would not have been different. such a wide extension does the maxim take, "one touch of nature makes the world akin," when we educate ourselves up to the culture which gives some general idea of how civilized man has everywhere felt and believed since the dawn of history very much as we ourselves do at the close of the nineteenth century.
