Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs

In front of the shrine was an altar cased in gold, and another altar stood in the outer court. Here also was the great bason of bronze for purificatory purposes, which was called “the deep,” and corresponded with the “sea” of Solomon's temple. Like the latter, it sometimes stood on the heads of twelve bronze oxen, as we learn from a hymn in which the construction of one of these basons is described. They were supposed to represent the primeval “deep” out of which the world has arisen and on which it still floats.

The chapel found by Mr. Hormund Rassam at Balawât, near Nineveh, gives us some idea of what the inner shrine of a temple was like. At its north-west end was an altar approached by steps, while in front of the latter, and near the entrance, was a coffer or ark in which two small slabs of marble were deposited, twelve and one-half inches long by eight wide, on which the Assyrian King Assur-nazir-pal in a duplicate text records his erection of the sanctuary. It is not surprising that when the Nestorian workmen found the tablets, they believed that they had discovered the two tables of the Mosaic Law.

The temple sometimes enclosed a Bit-ili or Beth-el. This was originally an upright stone, consecrated by oil and believed to be animated by the divine spirit. The “Black Stone” in the kaaba of the temple of Mecca is a still surviving example of the veneration paid by the Semitic nations to sacred stones. Whether, however, the Beth-els of later Babylonian days were like the “Black Stone” of Mecca, really the consecrated stones which had once served as temples, we do not know; in any case they were anchored within the walls of the temples which had taken their place as the seats of the worship of the gods. Offerings were still made to them in the age of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors; thus we hear of 765 “measures” of grain which were paid as “dues to the Beth-el” by the serfs of one of the Babylonian temples. The “measure,” it may be stated, was an old measure of capacity, retained among the peasantry, and only approximately exact. It was calculated to contain from 41 to 43 qas.

The offerings to the gods were divided into sacrifices and meal-offerings. The ox, sheep, lamb, kid, and dove were offered in sacrifice—fruit, vegetables, bread, wine, oil, and spices where no blood was required to be shed. There were also sin-offerings and heave-offerings, when the offering was first “lifted up” before the gods. A contract dated in the thirty-second year of Nebuchadnezzar tells something about the parts of the animals which were sacrificed, though unfortunately the meaning of many of the technical words used in it is still unknown: “Izkur-Merodach, the son of Imbriya, the son of Ilei-Merodach, of his own free will has given for the future to Nebo-balasu-iqbi, the son of Kuddinu, the son of Ilei-Merodach, the slaughterers of the oxen and sheep for the sacrifices of the king, the prescribed offerings, the peace-offerings (?) of the whole year—viz., the caul round the heart, the chine, the covering of the ribs, the …, the mouth of the stomach, and the …, as well as during the year 7,000 sin-offerings and 100 sheep before Iskhara, who dwells in the temple of Sa-turra in Babylon (not excepting the soft parts of the flesh, the trotters (?), the juicy meat, and the salted (?) flesh), and also the slaughterers of the oxen, sheep, birds, and lambs due on the 8th day of Nisan, (and) the heave-offering of an ox and a sheep before Pap-sukal of Bit-Kiduz-Kani, the temple of Nin-ip and the temple of Anu on the further bank of the New Town in Babylon.” The 8th of Nisan, or March, was the first day of the festival of the New Year.

The hierarchy of priests was large. At its head was the patesi, or high-priest, who in the early days of Babylonian history was a civil as well as an ecclesiastical ruler. He lost his temporal power with the rise of the kings. But at first the King was also a patesi, and it is probable that in many cases at least it was the high-priest who made himself a king by subjecting to his authority the patesis or priestly rulers of other states. In Assyria the change of the high-priest into a king was accompanied by revolt from the supremacy of Babylonia.

With the establishment of a monarchy the high-priest lost more and more his old power and attributes, and tended to disappear altogether, or to become merely the vicegerent or representative of the King. The King himself, mindful of his sacerdotal origin, still claimed semi-priestly powers. But he now called himself a sangu or “chief priest” rather than a patesi; in fact, the latter name was retained only from antiquarian motives. The individual high-priest passed away, and was succeeded by the class of “chief priests.” Under them were several subordinate classes of temple servants. There were, for instance, the enû, or “elders,” and the pasisû, or “anointers,” whose duty it was to anoint the images of the gods and the sacred vessels of the temple with oil, and who are sometimes included among the ramkû, or “offerers of libations,” as well. By the side of them stood asipu, or “prophet,” who interpreted the will of heaven, and even accompanied the army on its march, deciding when it might attack the enemy with success, or when the gods refused to grant it victory. Next to the prophet came the makhkhû or interpreter of dreams, as well as the barû, or “seer.”

A very important class of temple-servants were the kalî, or “eunuch-priests,” the galli of the religions of Asia Minor. They were under a “chief kalû,” and were sometimes entitled “the servants of Istar.” It was indeed to her worship that they were specially consecrated, like the ukhâtu and kharimâtu, or female hierodules. Erech, with its sanctuary of Anu and Istar, was the place where these latter were chiefly to be found; here they performed their dances in honor of the goddess and mourned over the death of Tammuz.

Closely connected with the kalî was a sort of monastic institution, which seems to have been attached to some of the Babylonian temples. The Zikari, who belonged to it, were forbidden to marry, and it is possible that they were eunuchs like the kalî. They, too, were under a chief or president, and their main duty was to attend to the daily sacrifice and to minister to the higher order of priests. In this respect they resembled the Levites at Jerusalem; indeed they are frequently termed “servants” in the inscriptions, though they were neither serfs nor slaves. They could be dedicated to the service of the Sun-god from childhood. A parallel to the dedication of Samuel is to be found in a deed dated at Sippara on the 21st of Nisan, in the fifth year of Cambyses, in which “Ummu-dhabat, the daughter of Nebo-bel-uzur,” whose father-in-law was the priest of the Sun-god, is stated to have brought her three sons to him, and to have made the following declaration before another priest of the same deity: “My sons have not yet entered the House of the Males (Zikari); I have hitherto lived with them; I have grown old with them since they were little, until they have been counted among men.” Then she took them into the “House of the Males” and “gave” them to the service of the god. We learn from this and other documents that the Zikari lived together in a monastery or college within the walls of the temple, and that monthly rations of food were allotted to them from the temple revenues.

The ordinary priests were married, though the wife of a priest was not herself a priestess. There were priestesses, however, as well as female recluses, who, like the Zikari, were not allowed to marry and were devoted to the service of the Sun-god. They lived in the temple, but were able to hold property of their own, and even to carry on business with it. A portion of the profits, nevertheless, went to the treasury of the temple, out of whose revenues they were themselves supplied with food. From contracts of the time of Khammurabi we gather that many of them not only belonged to the leading families of Babylonia, but that they might be relations of the King.

Wholly distinct from these devotees of the Sun-god were the female hierodules or prostitutes of Istar, to whom reference has already been made. Distinct from them, again, were the prophetesses of Istar, who prophesied the future and interpreted the oracles of the goddess. One of their chief seats was the temple of Istar at Arbela, and a collection of the oracles delivered by them and their brother prophets to Esar-haddon has been preserved. It is thus that he is addressed in one of them: “Fear not, O Esar-haddon; the breath of inspiration which speaks to thee is spoken by me, and I conceal it not. Thine enemies shall melt away from before thy feet like the floods in Sivan. I am the mighty mistress, Istar of Arbela, who have put thine enemies to flight before thy feet. Where are the words which I speak unto thee, that thou hast not believed them? I am Istar of Arbela; thine enemies, the Ukkians, do I give unto thee. I am Istar of Arbela; in front of thee and at thy side do I march. Fear not, thou art in the midst of those that can heal thee; I am in the midst of thy host. I advance and I stand still!” It is probable that these prophetesses were not ordained to their office, but that it depended on their possession of the “spirit of inspiration.” At all events, we find men as well as women acting as the mouth-pieces of Istar, and in one instance the woman describes herself as a native of a neighboring village “in the mountains.”

The revenues of the temples and priesthood were derived partly from endowments, partly from compulsory or voluntary offerings. Among the compulsory offerings were the esrâ, or “tithes.” These had to be paid by all classes of the population from the King downward, either in grain or in its equivalent in money. The “tithe” of Nabonidos, immediately after his accession, to the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara was as much as 5 manehs of gold, or £840. We may infer from this that it was paid on the amount of cash which he had found in the treasury of the palace and which was regarded as the private property of the King. Nine years later Belshazzar, the heir-apparent, offered two oxen and thirty-two sheep as a voluntary gift to the same temple, and at the beginning of the following year we find him paying a shekel and a quarter for a boat to convey three oxen and twenty-four sheep to the same sanctuary. Even at the moment when Cyrus was successfully invading the dominions of his father and Babylon had already been occupied for three weeks by the Persian army, Belshazzar was careful to pay the tithe due from his sister, and amounting to 47 shekels of silver, into the treasury of the Sun-god. As Sippara was in the hands of the enemy, and the Babylonian forces which Belshazzar commanded had been defeated and dispersed, the fact is very significant, and proves how thoroughly both invaders and invaded must have recognized the rights of the priesthood.

Tithe was also indirectly paid by the temple-serfs. Thus in the first year of Nergal-sharezer, out of 3,100 measures of grain, delivered by “the serfs of the Sun-god” to his temple at Sippara, 250 were exacted as “tithe.” These serfs must be distinguished from the temple-slaves. They were attached to the soil, and could not be separated from it. When, therefore, a piece of land came into the possession of a temple by gift and endowment, they went along with it, but their actual persons could not be sold. The slave, on the other hand, was as much a chattel as the furniture of the temple, which could be bought and sold; he was usually a captive taken in war, more rarely a native who had been sold for debt. All the menial work of the temple was performed by him; the cultivation of the temple-lands, on the contrary, was left to the serfs.

It is doubtful whether the “butchers,” or slaughterers of the animals required for sacrifice, or the “bakers” of the sacred cakes, were slaves or freemen. The expression used in regard to them in the contract of Izkur-Merodach quoted above is open to two interpretations, but it would naturally signify that they were regarded as slaves. We know, at all events, that many of the artisans employed in weaving curtains for the temples and clothing for the images of the gods belonged to the servile class, and the gorgeousness of the clothing and the frequency with which it was changed must have necessitated a large number of workmen. Many of the documents which have been bequeathed to us by the archives of the temple of the Sun-god at Sippara relate to the robes and head-dresses and other portions of the clothing of the images which stood there.

A considerable part of the property of a temple was in land. Sometimes this was managed by the priests themselves; sometimes its revenues were farmed, usually by a member of the priestly corporation; at other times it was let to wealthy “tenants.” One of these, Nebo-sum-yukin by name, who was an official in the temple of Nebo at Borsippa, married his daughter Gigîtum to Nergal-sharezer in the first year of the latter's reign.

The state religion of Assyria was a copy of that of Babylonia, with one important exception. The supreme god was the deified state. Assur was not a Baal any more than Yahveh was in Israel or Chemosh in Moab.

He was, consequently, no father of a family, with a wife and a son; he stood alone in jealous isolation, wifeless and childless. It is true that some learned scribe, steeped in Babylonian learning, now and then tried to find a Babylonian goddess with whom to mate him; but the attempt was merely a piece of theological pedantry which made no impression on the rulers and people of Nineveh. Assur was supreme over all other gods, as his representative, the Assyrian King, was supreme over the other kings of the earth, and he would brook no rival at his side. The tolerance of Babylonian religion was unknown in Assyria. It was “through trust in Assur” that the Assyrian armies went forth to conquer, and through his help that they gained their victories. The enemies of Assyria were his enemies, and it was to combat and overcome them that the Assyrian monarchs declare that they marched to war. Cyrus tells us that Bel-Merodach was wrathful because the images of other deities had been removed by Nabonidos from their ancient shrines in order to be gathered together in his temple of Ê-Saggil at Babylon, but Assur bade his servants go forth to subdue the gods of other lands, and to compel their worshippers to transfer their allegiance to the god of Assyria. Those who believed not in him were his enemies, to be extirpated or punished.

It is true that the leading Babylonian divinities were acknowledged in Assyria by the side of Assur. But they were subordinate to him, and it is difficult to resist the impression that their recognition was mainly confined to the literary classes. Apart from the worship of Istar and the use of the names of certain gods in time-honored formulæ, it is doubtful whether even a knowledge of the Babylonian deities went much beyond the educated members of the Assyrian community. Nebo and Merodach and Anu were the gods of literature rather than of the popular cult.

But even in Babylonia the majority of the gods of the state religion was probably but little remembered by the mass of the people. Doubtless the local divinity was well known to the inhabitants of the place over which he presided and where his temple had stood from immemorial times. Every native of Ur was doubtless a devoted adorer of Sin, the Moon-god, and for the inhabitants of Babylon Bel-Merodach was the highest object of worship. But the real religion of the bulk of the population consisted in charms and magic. The Babylonian was intensely superstitious, the cultivated classes as much so as the lowest. Sorcery and divination were not only tolerated by the priests, they formed part of the religious system of the state. Prophets and diviners and interpreters of dreams served in the temples, and one of the sacred books of the priesthood was a collection of incantations and magical rites. Among the people generally the old Shamanistic faith had never been eradicated; it was but partially overlaid with the religious conceptions of the Semite, and sorcery and witchcraft flourished down to the latest days of Babylonian history.

The gods and goddesses were believed to utter oracles and predictions through the lips of inspired men and women. Figures of winged bulls and serpents were placed at the entrance of a building to prevent the demons of evil from passing through it. Before the gates of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar “set up mighty bulls of bronze and serpents which stood erect,” and when Nabonidos restored the temple of the Moon-god at Harran two images of the primeval god, Lakhum, were similarly erected on either side of its eastern gate to “drive back” his “foes.” These protecting genii were known as sêdi and kurubi, the shédim and cherubim of the Old Testament. Sédi, however, was a generic term, including evil as well as beneficent genii, and the latter was more properly classed as the lamassi, or “colossal forms.” The whole world was imagined to be filled with malevolent spirits ever on the watch to attack and torment mankind. The water that was drunk, the food that was eaten, might contain a demon, whom it would be necessary to exorcise. The diseases that afflict our bodies, the maladies that prey upon our spirits, were all due to the spirits of evil, and could be removed only by the proper 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!…O lord, my sins are many, my transgressions are great!…The sin that I sinned I knew not,The transgression I committed I knew not.…The lord in the wrath of his heart has regarded me,God in the fierceness of his heart has revealed himself to me.…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.…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!…First-born, omnipotent, whose heart is immensity, and there is none who may fathom it!…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.”