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THE RELIGION OF
BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
BY
THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D.
Lecturer in Assyrian at University College, London,
Author of "The Old Testament in the Light of the
Records of Assyria and Babylonia"; "The Bronze
Ornaments of the Palace Gates of Balewat" etc. etc.
THE RELIGION OF THE
BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS
CHAPTER I
FOREWORD
Position, and Period.
The religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians was the polytheistic
faith professed by the peoples inhabiting the Tigris and Euphrates
valleys from what may be regarded as the dawn of history until the
Christian era began, or, at least, until the inhabitants were brought
under the influence of Christianity. The chronological period covered
may be roughly estimated at about 5000 years. The belief of the
people, at the end of that time, being Babylonian heathenism leavened
with Judaism, the country was probably ripe for the reception of the
new faith. Christianity, however, by no means replaced the earlier
polytheism, as is evidenced by the fact, that the worship of Nebo and
the gods associated with him continued until the fourth century of the
Christian era.
By whom followed.
It was the faith of two distinct peoples--the Sumero-Akkadians, and
the Assyro-Babylonians. In what country it had its beginnings is
unknown--it comes before us, even at the earliest period, as a faith
already well-developed, and from that fact, as well as from the names
of the numerous deities, it is clear that it began with the former
race--the Sumero-Akkadians--who spoke a non-Semitic language largely
affected by phonetic decay, and in which the grammatical forms had in
certain cases become confused to such an extent that those who study
it ask themselves whether the people who spoke it were able to
understand each other without recourse to devices such as the "tones"
to which the Chinese resort. With few exceptions, the names of the
gods which the inscriptions reveal to us are all derived from this
non-Semitic language, which furnishes us with satisfactory etymologies
for such names as Merodach, Nergal, Sin, and the divinities mentioned
in Berosus and Damascius, as well as those of hundreds of deities
revealed to us by the tablets and slabs of Babylonia and Assyria.
The documents.
Outside the inscriptions of Babylonia and Assyria, there is but little
bearing upon the religion of those countries, the most important
fragment being the extracts from Berosus and Damascius referred to
above. Among the Babylonian and Assyrian remains, however, we have an
extensive and valuable mass of material, dating from the fourth or
fifth millennium before Christ until the disappearance of the
Babylonian system of writing about the beginning of the Christian era.
The earlier inscriptions are mostly of the nature of records, and give
information about the deities and the religion of the people in the
course of descriptions of the building and rebuilding of temples, the
making of offerings, the performance of ceremonies, etc. Purely
religious inscriptions are found near the end of the third millennium
before Christ, and occur in considerable numbers, either in the
original Sumerian text, or in translations, or both, until about the
third century before Christ. Among the more recent inscriptions--those
from the library of the Assyrian king Assur-bani-apli and the later
Babylonian temple archives,--there are many lists of deities, with
numerous identifications with each other and with the heavenly bodies,
and explanations of their natures. It is needless to say that all this
material is of enormous value for the study of the religion of the
Babylonians and Assyrians, and enables us to reconstruct at first hand
their mythological system, and note the changes which took place in
the course of their long national existence. Many interesting and
entertaining legends illustrate and supplement the information given
by the bilingual lists of gods, the bilingual incantations and hymns,
and the references contained in the historical and other documents. A
trilingual list of gods enables us also to recognise, in some cases,
the dialectic forms of their names.
The importance of the subject.
Of equal antiquity with the religion of Egypt, that of Babylonia and
Assyria possesses some marked differences as to its development.
Beginning among the non-Semitic Sumero-Akkadian population, it
maintained for a long time its uninterrupted development, affected
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