III. Fable of the Horse and Ox.

The next fable, that of the horse and the ox, is a single tablet with only two columns of text. The date of the tablet is in the reign of Assur-bani-pal, and there is no statement that it is copied from an earlier text. There are altogether four portions of the text, but only one is perfect enough to be worth translating. This largest fragment, K 3456, contains about one-third of the story.

K 3456.

(Several lines are lost at the commencement.)

Here the ox describes the state of the country during the drought of summer, and makes a league with the horse, apparently for the purpose of sharing with him the same pastures. Most of the speeches, however, made by the two animals are lost or only present in small fragments, and the story recommences on the reverse with the end of a speech from the horse.

It appears from these fragments that the story described a time when the animals associated together, and the ox and horse fell into a friendly conversation. The ox, commencing the discussion, praised himself; the answer of the horse is lost, but where the story recommences it appears that the ox objects to the horse drawing the chariot from which he himself is hunted, and the horse ultimately offers to tell the ox a story, the ox choosing the story called “Behold Istar,” probably some story of the same character as that of Istar’s descent into Hades.

It is uncertain if any other tablet followed this; it is, however, probable that there was one containing the story told by the horse. Although there is no indication to show the date of this fable, the fact that it is not stated to have been copied from an older document seems to show that it is not earlier than the time of Assur-bani-pal. The loss of the tablet containing the story of Istar, told by the horse to the ox, is unfortunate. The last fable is a mere fragment similar to the others, containing a story in which the calf speaks. There is not enough of it to make it worth translation.

Chapter X.
FRAGMENTS OF MISCELLANEOUS TEXTS.

Atarpi.—Punishment of world.—Riddle of wise man.—Nature and universal presence of air.—Sinuri.—Divining by fracture of reed.—The foundling.—Tower of Babel.—Obscurity of legend.—Not noticed by Berosus.—Fragmentary tablet.—Destruction of Tower.—Dispersion.—Site of the Tower.—Meaning of Babel.—Chedor-laomer.—The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

A number of stories of a similar character to those of Genesis, though not directly connected with the latter, have been included in this chapter, together with two fragments which probably relate, the one to the Tower of Babel, the other to the destruction of the cities of the Plain. The first and principal text is the story of Atarpi, or Atarpi nisu, “Atarpi the man.” This story is on a tablet in six columns, and there is only one copy of it. It is terribly mutilated, very little being preserved except Column III., but there are numerous repetitions throughout the text. The inscription has originally been a long one, probably extending to about 400 lines of writing, and the text differs from the generality of these inscriptions, being very obscure and difficult. In consequence of this and other reasons, only an outline of most of the story is given here.

We are first told of a quarrel between a mother named Zibanit and her daughter, and that the mother shuts the door of the house, and turns her daughter adrift, the words of the original being “the mother to the daughter opens not her door.” The doings of a man named Zamu have some connection with the affair, his “descending into the street on getting” something being mentioned immediately before the expulsion of the daughter; and at the close we are told of Atarpi, sometimes called Atarpi-nisu, or Atarpi the “man” who had his couch beside the river of the north, and was pious to the gods, but took no notice of these things. When the story next opens, we find the god Bel calling together an assembly of the gods his sons, and relating to them that he is angry at the sin of the world, stating also that he will bring down upon it disease, tempest, distress, madness, burning and sickness. This is followed by the statement that these things came to pass, and Atarpi then invoked his god Hea to remove these evils. For a whole year, it would seem, he interceded for the people, and at last Hea answered, and announced his resolve to destroy the people. After this the story reads:

This will serve to show the style of the tablet. The instrument of punishment was apparently famine from want of rain.

Here the story is again lost, and where it recommences Hea is making a speech, directing another person to cut something into portions, and place seven on each side, and then to build brickwork round them. After this comes a single fragment, the connection of which with the former part is obscure.

At present no satisfactory story can be made out of the detached fragments of this tablet, but it evidently belongs to the mythical portion of Babylonian history, and it is impossible not to compare the unsuccessful intercession of the righteous man Atarpi with the pleadings of Abraham on behalf of the cities of the plain.

The next text is a single fragment, K 2407, belonging to a curious story of a wise man who puts a riddle to the gods.

K 2407.

(Many lines lost.)

After this there is a mutilated passage containing the names, titles, and actions of the gods who consider the riddle. It is evident that it is air or wind which the wise man means in his riddle, for this is everywhere, and in its sounds imitates the cries of animals.

Next we have another single fragment about a person named Sinuri, who uses a divining rod to ascertain the meaning of a dream.

There are some more obscure and broken lines, but no indication as to the story to which it belongs.

A specimen of early Babylonian folklore may fitly be added here. It is a bilingual fragment which treats of a foundling who was picked up in the streets and finally became a great scholar. Unfortunately both the beginning and the end of the story are wanting.

One of the most obscure incidents in the Book of Genesis is undoubtedly the building of the Tower of Babel. So far as we can judge from the fragments of his copyists, there was no reference to it in the work of Berosus, and early writers had to quote from writers of more than doubtful authority in order to confirm it.

Men engaged in Building Columns; from Babylonian Cylinder.

There is also no representation on any of the Babylonian gems which can with any certainty be described as belonging to this story. Mr. Smith, however, picked out three from a series of these carvings which he thought might be distorted representations of the event. In these and some others of the same character, figures have their hands on tall piles, as if erecting them; and there is a god always represented near in much the same attitude. There is no proper proportion between the supposed structure and the men, and no stress can consequently be laid on the representations. The Babylonian origin of the story is, however, self-evident. According to Genesis, mankind after the flood travelled from the east, that is from Kharsak-kurra, “the mountain of the East,” now Elwend, where the Accadians believed the ark to have rested, to the plain of Shinar or Sumir. Both Alexander Polyhistor and Abydenus state that the building of the Tower of Babel was known to Babylonian history, Babel, in fact, being the native form of the name which the Greeks changed into Babylon. The legend of Etana given in the last chapter seems to imply that the Tower was supposed to have been built under the superintendence of this mythical hero. However that may be, a fragment of the native story of its construction was discovered by Mr. Smith, and though shockingly mutilated, is sufficient to show what the Babylonians themselves believed on the matter.

It is evident from the wording of the fragment that it was preceded by at least one tablet, describing the sin of the people in building the tower. The fragment preserved belongs to a tablet containing from four to six columns of writing, of which portions of four remain. The principal part is the beginning of Column I.

Column I.

There is a small fragment of Column II., but the connection with Column I. is not apparent.

Column II.

There is a third portion on the same tablet belonging to a column on the other side, either the third or the fifth.

Reverse Column III. or V.

These fragments are so remarkable that it is most unfortunate we have not the remainder of the tablet.

In the first part we have the anger of Bel, the father of the gods, at the sin of those who were building the walls of Babylon and the mound of tower or palace. This mound is termed “the illustrious,” and the god Anu who destroyed the builders is accordingly called Sar-tuli-elli, “the king of the illustrious mound.” Since the Accadian name of the month Tisri, our October, was “the month of the illustrious mound,” it would appear that the construction of it was believed to have taken place at the time of the autumnal equinox. The builders were punished by the deity, and the walls that had been set up in the day were destroyed at night. Prof. Delitzsch has drawn attention to a possible reference to this legend in an Accadian hymn in which the poet says to Merodach, “found during the day, destroy during the night.” It is plain from the first lines that the whole attempt was directed against the gods; in fact, that like the giants and Titans in Greek mythology, whose assault on Zeus is probably but an echo of the old Babylonian tale, conveyed to Greece through the hands of the Phœnicians, the builders of the Tower of Babylon intended to scale the sky. They were, however, confounded on the mound, as well as their speech (tammasle). It is interesting to find the very same word signifying “to confound” used in the Babylonian as in the Hebrew account, namely bâlal, or rather bâlâh. We may also notice that the Hebrew writer once (Gen. xi. 7.) adopts the polytheistic language of the Accadian scribe; the Lord being made to say “Let us go down, and there confound their language.”

View of the Birs Nimrud, the supposed site of the Tower of Babel.

The last column shows that the winds finally destroyed the impious work of the Babylonians. This fully accords with the legend reported by Alexander Polyhistor. For a time Babylon was given over to the god of lawlessness; but at last the gods repented of the evil they had done, and order was once more restored. The shrine mentioned in the sixteenth line of the first column may receive some light from the fact that the Accadian name of Nisan or March was “the month of the upright altar,” or “of the altar of Bel,” and that Nisan corresponded with the vernal equinox just as Tisri did with the autumnal equinox.

View of the Babil Mound at Babylon, the site of the Temple of Bel.

The etymology of the name of Babel from balbel, “to confound,” suggested in Genesis is one of those “popular etymologies” or plays on words of which the Old Testament writers are so fond. Thus, for instance, the name of Joseph is connected first with ’âsaph “to take away,” and then with yâsaph “to add” (Gen. xxx. 23, 24.), and the name of the Moabite city Dibon is changed into Dimon by Isaiah (xv. 9) to indicate that its “waters shall be full of blood,” Hebrew dâm. Babel is the Assyrian Bab-ili “the gate of God” (or, as it is occasionally written in the plural, Bab-ili “Gate of the gods”), which was the Semitic translation of the old Accadian name of the town Ca-dimirra with the same meaning. This is not the only instance in which the original Accadian names of Babylonian cities were literally translated into Semitic Babylonian after the Semitic conquest of the country. It is possible that the name had some reference to the building of the Tower. Babylon was first made a capital by Khammuragas, the leader of the Cossæan dynasty, a position which it never afterwards lost; but the first antediluvian king of Chaldea, Alorus, according to Barosus, was a native of the place.

Tower in Stages, from an Assyrian Bas-relief.

The actual site of the Tower of Babel, beyond the mere fact that it was somewhere in Babylon, has not yet been settled. It is generally considered to be represented by the great pile of Birs Nimrud, which stood in Borsippa, the suburb of Babylon, and was dedicated to Nebo and called “the Temple of the Seven Lights” or planets. This ruin has been examined by Sir Henry Rawlinson; details of his operations here are given in the “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,” vol. xviii., and Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” p. 544. Sir Henry discovered by excavation that the tower consisted of seven stages of brickwork on an earthen platform, each stage being of a different colour. This is explained by the fact that it was devoted to the seven planets. The height of the earthen platform was not ascertained, but the first stage, which was an exact square, was 272 feet each way, and 26 feet high, the bricks being blackened with bitumen; this stage is supposed to have been dedicated to the planet Saturn. The second stage was a square of 230 feet, 26 feet high, faced with orange-coloured bricks; supposed to have been dedicated to Jupiter. The third stage, 188 feet square, and 26 feet high, faced with red bricks, was probably dedicated to Mars. The fourth stage, 146 feet square, and 15 feet high, was probably dedicated to the Sun, and is thought by Sir H. Rawlinson to have been originally plated with gold. The fifth stage is supposed to have been 104, the sixth 62, and the seventh 20 feet square, but the top was too ruinous to decide these measurements. These stages were probably dedicated to Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. Each stage of the building was not set in the centre of the stage on which it rested, but was placed 30 feet from the front, and 12 feet from the back. The ruin at present rises 154 feet above the level of the plain, and is the most imposing pile in the whole country. According to Nebuchadnezzar it had been built to the height of 42 cubits by “a former king,” who however had not completed its summit, and it had long been in a ruinous condition when Nebuchadnezzar undertook to restore and finish it. Prof. Schrader imagines that the long period during which it had remained an unfinished ruin caused the growth of the legend which saw in it a monument of the overthrow of human presumption, the diversity of languages in Babylonia being sufficient to account for the localization of the confusion of tongues in the country.

Sir Henry Rawlinson now proposes to place the Tower or tul ellu at the ruins now called Amrán, within the city of Babylon itself. Here he thinks were the temple of Anu, on the site of the ruined Tower, a chapel dedicated to Nebo, an altar of Merodach, the royal palace (now represented by the mound of the Kasr), and the hanging gardens, all enclosed by a common wall. The quarter of Babylon thus enclosed he would identify with the Calneh of the Bible, principally on the ground that the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah x. 9 is, “Have I not taken the region above Babylon and Chalanne where the tower was built?”

A third site has been claimed for the Tower on the Babil or Mujellibeh mound on the north side of Babylon. This represents the famous temple of Belus or Bel, whose great festival marked the beginning of the year and the vernal equinox. But there is no evidence to support this third opinion.

In the Babylonian and Assyrian sculptures there are occasionally representations of towers similar in style to the supposed Tower of Babel; one of these is given on the stone of Merodach Baladan I., opposite p. 236 of Mr. Smith’s “Assyrian Discoveries;” another occurs on the sculptures at Nineveh, representing the city of Babylon; this tower, however, cannot represent the Borsippa pile, since it consists of only five stages.

Besides the Tower of Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven may also have been known to the Accadians. We learn from Genesis xiv. that the cities of the plain were among the conquests of Chedor-laomer and his allies, and there is some reason for thinking that the history of Chedor-laomer’s campaign may have been derived from the Babylonian state archives. At all events Amraphel or Amarpel, the king of Sumir, is mentioned first, although Chedor-laomer was the paramount sovereign and the leader of the expedition. The expedition must have taken place during the period when, as we learn from the inscriptions, Babylonia was subject to the monarchs of Elam, though subordinate princes were ruling over the states into which it was divided at the time. Though the name of Chedor-laomer has not been found, Laomer or Lagamar appears as an Elamite god, and several of the Elamite kings bore names compounded with Kudur “a servant,” as Kudur-Nankhunte, “the servant of the god Nankhunte,” Kudur-Mabug, “the servant of Mabug,” and the like. Arioch, king of Ellasar, which probably stands for al Larsa, “the city of Larsa,” has the same name as Eri-Acu (“the servant of the moon-god”), the son of the Elamite monarch Kudur-Mabug, who reigned over Larsa during his father’s lifetime, and was eventually overthrown by the Cossæan conqueror Khammuragas.

The text which perhaps relates to the destruction of the guilty cities is a bilingual one, much mutilated, and runs as follows:—

Here the fragment breaks off. It is possible that the person referred to in line 17 was the pious man who like Lot escaped the destruction that befell his neighbours.

Izdubar strangling a Lion. From Khorsabad Sculpture.

Chapter XI.
THE IZDUBAR LEGENDS.

Izdubar.—Meaning of the name.—A solar hero.—Prototype of Herakles.—Age of Legends.—Babylonian cylinders.—Notices of Izdubar.—Surippak.—Ark City.—Twelve tablets.—Extent of Legends.—Description.—Introduction.—Meeting of Hea-bani and Izdubar.—Destruction of tyrant Khumbaba.—Adventures of Istar.—Illness and wanderings of Izdubar.—Description of Deluge and conclusion.—First Tablet.—Kingdom of Nimrod.—Traditions.—Identifications.—Translation.—Elamite conquest—Dates.

We now come to the great Epic of early Chaldea, first discovered by Mr. Smith in 1872. The hero of this Epic is provisionally called Izdubar, though this is certainly not the right reading of his name. The first and last characters which compose it together form a compound ideograph signifying “fire,” and pronounced gibil in Accadian, isatu in Assyrian, while the middle character, dhu or dhun, meant “a mass” or “a going.” “A mass of fire” would have been by no means an inappropriate name for a hero, who, as we shall see, was originally the Accadian fire-god, and then a personified form of the sun-god. The two last characters of the name, however, when used as a compound ideograph, denoted “the under-lip,” and the first character symbolizes “wood.”

Mr. Smith believed that Izdubar was the Biblical Nimrod, and was almost inclined to think that this was the way in which the name ought to be phonetically rendered. One passage, however, in which the last syllable is followed by the syllable ra seems to imply that the final letter was r.

The originally solar character of the hero was still remembered at the time when the great Epic of the Accadians was put together. As was pointed out by Sir Henry Rawlinson shortly after Mr. Smith’s first discovery of it, it is arranged upon an astronomical principle, its twelve books or tablets corresponding with the twelve signs of the Zodiac, through which the sun passes in his yearly course. Thus the eleventh tablet, which contains the episode of the Deluge, answers to Aquarius the eleventh sign of the Zodiac, and the eleventh month of the Accadian year called “the rainy;” and the sixth tablet, describing his courtship by Istar, answers to Virgo the sixth sign of the Zodiac, and the sixth Accadian month called that “of the errand of Istar.” It is in the second month, that of “the directing bull,” and under the sign of Taurus, that Hea-bani, half-man, half-bull, is brought to Izdubar in the second tablet; the lion is slain by Izdubar under the Zodiacal Leo, and the lamentation he makes over the corpse of his friend and seer Hea-bani is made in “the dark month” of Adar, as it was termed, at the end of the year. Like the autumnal sun, too, Izdubar sickens in the eighth book corresponding with the month of October, and only recovers his health and brilliance after bathing in the waters of the eastern ocean at the beginning of the new year.

If anything were needed to confirm the solar character of Izdubar and his history, it would be afforded by a comparison with the legends of the Greek solar hero, Herakles. Like much else of Greek mythology, the twelve adventures of Herakles were brought to Greece from Babylonia through the hands of the Phœnicians, and it has long been recognized that Herakles is but a form of Baal Melkarth, the sun-god of Tyre. Hea-bani reappears in Cheiron, the centaur, the friend and instructor of Herakles, and just as Hea-bani was created by Hea, Cheiron was said to be the son of Kronos, who is identified by Berosus with Hea in the account of the Deluge. The lion slain by Izdubar is the lion of Nemea slain by Herakles; the winged bull made by Anu is the famous bull of Krete; the tyrant Khumbaba is the tyrant Geryon; the gems borne by the trees of the forest beyond the gateway of the sun are the apples of the Hesperides; and the deadly sickness of Izdubar himself is but the fever of Herakles, caused by the poisoned tunic of Nessus.

A very slight inspection of the Epic is sufficient to show that it has been pieced together out of a number of previously existing and independent materials. Thus the history of the Deluge, which is itself but an episode somewhat violently foisted into the legend of Izdubar in order to preserve the astronomical arrangement of the Epic, may be shown to have consisted of at least two older poems on the subject; and a careful examination of other portions of the Epic brings the same fact to light elsewhere.

As, however, there is clear proof that the Epic was originally composed in Accadian, our present text being merely the Semitic translation of the Accadian original, it must have existed in the form in which we now have it before the age of Sargon and the extinction of the Accadian language in Chaldea. We shall not be far wrong, therefore, in ascribing its composition to about B.C. 2000, or a little earlier. The older lays or poems out of which it was formed must therefore date before this period. There seems to have been a considerable number of them, each incident in the cycle of ancient Accadian mythology having been the subject of various poems. Many of these originated in different parts of the country, so that a long period of time must be allowed for their growth and subsequent reduction to a literary form. But as the legends they celebrated were traditions in the country before they were embodied in poems and committed to writing, we must go back to quite a remote epoch for their first starting-point.

The earliest evidence we have of them is in the carvings on early Babylonian cylindrical seals. Among the earliest known devices on these seals we have scenes from the legends of Izdubar, and from the story of the Creation. The seals mostly belong to the age of the kings of Ur, and some of them are a good deal older than B.C. 2000. The principal incidents represented on them are the struggles of Izdubar and his companion Hea-bani with the lion and the bull, the journey of Izdubar in search of Xisuthrus, Noah or Xisuthrus in his ark, and the war between Tiamtu the sea-dragon and the god Merodach. There is a fragment of a document in the British Museum which claims to be copied from an omen tablet belonging to the time of Izdubar himself, but it is probably not earlier than B.C. 1600, when many similar tablets were written.

There is an incidental notice of the ship or ark of “the god Izdubar” in a tablet printed in “Cuneiform Inscriptions,” vol. ii. p. 46. He is here called “the king who bears the sceptre.” This tablet, which contains lists of wooden objects, was written in the time of Assur-bani-pal, but is copied from an original, which must have been written at least eighteen hundred years before the Christian era. The geographical notices on this tablet suit the period before the rise of Babylon. Surippak is called in it the ship or ark city, this name forming another reference to the Flood legends. Izdubar is also mentioned in a series of tablets relating to witchcraft, and on a tablet containing prayers to him as a god; this last showing that he was deified, which, however, was an honour also given to several Babylonian kings.

As already stated, the legends of Izdubar are inscribed on twelve tablets, of which there are remains of at least four editions. All the tablets are in fragments, and none of them are complete; but it is a fortunate circumstance that the most perfect tablet is the eleventh, which describes the Deluge, this being the most important of the series. In the first chapter the successive steps in the discovery of these legends have been already described, and we may now therefore pass on to the description and translation of the various fragments. All the fragments of our present copies belong to the reign of Assur-bani-pal, king of Assyria, in the seventh century B.C. From the mutilated condition of many of them it is impossible at present to gain an accurate idea of the whole scope of the legends, and many parts which are lost have to be supplied by conjecture; the order even of some of the tablets cannot be determined, and it is uncertain if we have fragments of the whole twelve in what follows. Mr. Smith has, however, conjecturally divided the fragments into groups corresponding roughly with the subjects of the tablets. Each tablet when complete contained six columns of writing, and each column had generally from forty to fifty lines of writing, there being in all about 3,000 lines of cuneiform text. The divisions adopted by Mr. Smith will be seen by the following summary, which exhibits our present knowledge of the fragments.

Part I.—Introduction.

Tablet I.—Number of lines uncertain, probably about 240. First column initial line preserved, second column lost, third column twenty-six lines preserved, fourth column doubtful fragment inserted, fifth and sixth columns lost.

Probable subjects: conquest of Babylonia by the Elamites, birth and parentage of Izdubar.

Part II.—Meeting of Hea-bani and Izdubar.

Tablet II.—Number of lines uncertain, probably about 240. First and second columns lost, third and fourth columns about half-preserved, fifth and sixth columns lost.

Tablet III.—Number of lines about 270. First column fourteen lines preserved, second, third, fourth, and fifth columns nearly perfect, sixth column a fragment.

Probable subjects: dream of Izdubar, Hea-bani invited comes to Erech, and explains the dream.

Part III.—Destruction of the tyrant Khumbaba.

Tablet IV.—Number of lines probably about 260. About one-third of first, second, and third columns, doubtful fragments of fourth, fifth, and sixth columns.

Tablet V.—Number of lines about 260. Most of first column, and part of second column preserved, third, fourth, and fifth columns lost, fragment of sixth column.

Probable subjects: contests with wild animals, Izdubar and Hea-bani slay the tyrant Khumbaba.

Part IV.—Adventures of Istar.

Tablet VI.—Number of lines about 210. Most of first column preserved, second column nearly perfect, third and fourth columns partly preserved, fifth and sixth columns nearly perfect.

Tablet VII.—Number of lines probably about 240. First line of first column preserved, second column lost, third and fourth column partly preserved, fifth and sixth columns conjecturally restored from tablet of descent of Istar into Hades.

Probable subjects: Istar loves Izdubar, her amours, her ascent to heaven, destruction of her bull, her descent to Hades.

Part V.—Illness and wanderings of Izdubar.

Tablet VIII.—Number of lines probably about 270. Conjectured fragments of first, second, and third columns, fourth and fifth columns lost, conjectured fragments of sixth column.

Tablet IX.—Number of lines about 190. Portions of all six columns preserved.

Tablet X.—Number of lines about 270. Portions of all six columns preserved.

Probable subjects: discourse to trees, dreams, illness of Izdubar, death of Hea-bani, wanderings of Izdubar in search of the hero of the Deluge.

Part VI.—Description of Deluge, and conclusion.

Tablet XI.—Number of lines 294. All six columns nearly perfect.

Tablet XII.—Number of lines about 200. Portions of first four columns preserved, two lines of fifth column, sixth column perfect.

Probable subjects: description of Deluge, cure of Izdubar, his lamentation over Hea-bani.