VIII
There is still another aspect of the subject of Babylonian-Assyrian Birth-omens to which attention should be directed, and which will further illustrate the cultural significance of the views that gave rise to this extensive subdivision of Babylonian-Assyrian divination. We have in the course of our investigations noted the tendency in the collections of the bârû-priests to allow a free scope to the reins of fancy, which led to the amplification of entries of actual occurrences by adding entries of abnormalities that do not occur. In order to be prepared for all contingencies, the priests, as we saw, extended the scope of birth-omens in all directions, through entries for an ascending scale of multiple births which went far beyond the remotest possibility, through equally extravagant entries of the number of excess organs or of excess parts of the body, and through the most fanciful combinations of the features, aspects and parts of various animals in the case of new-born infants and the young of animals. The omission of the preposition ‘like’[203] in the case of these entries obscured the starting-point for such comparisons, and it was natural for the idea of an ewe actually giving birth to a lion, or for a woman to some animal or the other—a lion, dog, fox, etc.—to take root[204]. Strange as this may seem to us, yet if we bear in mind the ignorance of people in the ancient world as to the origin and course of pregnancy and the general lack of knowledge of the laws of nature, the dividing line between the possible and the impossible would be correspondingly faint. At all events, the transition from the abnormal to the belief in monstrosities that were quite out of the question and that represent the outcome of pure fancy would be more readily made. Indeed, through a combination of all the features involved in the entries of the bârû-priests, we obtain a reasonable basis for the belief, widespread throughout the ancient Orient as well as in the Greek and Roman world and existing up to the threshhold of modern science, in all kinds of monstrous beings which find their reflex in the fabulous creatures of mythology, legend and folklore. In other words, the Babylonian-Assyrian birth-omens form the first chapter in the history of monsters. The very term monstrum, as already suggested, reflects the Babylonian-Assyrian point of view, as a being which is sent as a sign—‘pointing’ (monstrare) to some coming event. A monstrum is in fact a demonstration of the will or intent of a deity, which becomes definite through the interpretation put upon it. Perhaps this point will become a little clearer, if we consider some of the possibilities included in the Babylonian-Assyrian birth-omens. An ewe giving birth to a lamb with two or even more heads, or to a creature with some of the organs and parts of the body doubled and with some single is certainly a monstrosity; and it is only a small step from such monstrosities which fall within the category of the abnormally possible to supposed combinations of the parts or features of various animals in one being. We actually read in one of these texts[205] of an isbu or a young lamb having the head of a lion and the tail of a fox, or the head of a dog and the mouth of a lion, or the head of a mountain goat and the mouth of a lion; or in another text[206] of colts with heads or manes of lions, or with the claws of lions or feet of dogs or with the heads of dogs. It is only necessary to carry this fanciful combination a little further to reach the conception that led to picturing the Egyptian sphinxes or the Babylonian šedu or lamassu[207]—the protecting spirits or demons guarding the entrances to palaces and temples, as having the head of a man, the body of a lion or bull; and in the case of the Assyrian sphinxes also the wings of an eagle. Similarly, in the case of infants we find actual monstrosities recorded as a child with a double face, four hands and four feet[208], or with the ear of a lion and the mouth of a bird. Here again the step is a small one to the assumption of hybrid beings as hippocentaurs—half man and half horse—or tritons and mermaids—half human, half fish—or satyrs and fawns or monsters like Cerberus with several heads.
It has commonly been held that the conception of such fabulous hybrid beings rested on a popular belief in a kind of primitive theory of evolution, according to which in an early stage creatures were produced in a mixed form and that gradually order was brought out of this chaotic stage of creation. Berosus[209] in his account of creation according to Babylonian traditions voices this theory, and gives a description of the ‘mixed’ creatures that marked this earliest period of time, “men with double wings, some with four wings and two faces, some with one body but two heads and having both male and female organs, others with goat’s legs and horns, with horses feet, the hind parts of the body like a horse, in front like a man, (i. e., hippocentaurs). There were also bulls with human heads, dogs with four bodies and fish tails, horses with the head of dogs, men and other creatures with heads and bodies of horses but tails of fishes, and various other creatures with the forms of all kinds of animals ... all kinds of marvellous hybrid beings”. The description, which is confirmed in part by the Marduk Epic or the ‘Babylon’ version of creation where we encounter ‘scorpion men’, ‘fish-men’, ‘goat-fish’, dragons and other monstrous beings[210] as the brood of Tiamat the symbol of primaeval chaos, reads like an extract from the birth-omens in the Babylonian-Assyrian handbooks of divination. As a matter of fact, many of the hybrid beings described by Berosus can be parallelled in those parts of the collections that have been published[211].
My thesis, therefore, is that the birth-omens gave rise to the belief in all kinds of monstrous and fabulous beings. The resemblances between men and animals, as well as between an animal of one species with that of another, led to the supposition that all manner of hybrid beings could be produced in nature. The fanciful combinations in the collections of the bârû-priests, in part reflecting popular fancies, in part ‘academical’ exercises of the fancies of the priests, formed the basis and starting-point for the theory that at the beginning of time, pictured as a condition of chaos and confusion, such hybrid beings represented the norm, while with the substitution of law and order for chaos and confusion, their occurrence was exceptional and portended some approaching deviation from the normal state of affairs. It is not unusual in the history of religious and of popular beliefs to find fancy and fanciful resemblances leading to the belief in the reality. Once the thought suggested by the manifold abnormalities occurring in the young of domestic animals and among infants firmly rooted, there was no limit to the course of unbridled fancy in this direction. Adding to this the practical importance attached to birth-omens, what would be more natural than that with the development and spread of systems of divination devised to interpret the strange phenomena observed at birth, the belief in all kinds of monsters and monstrosities should likewise have been developed and should have spread with the extending influence of Babylonian-Assyrian divination.
Babylonian literature furnishes many examples of the persistency of such beliefs. It is sufficient to refer (a) to the gigantic scorpion-men who keep guard at the gate of the sun in the mountain Mašu and who are described in the Gilgamesh epic[212] as ‘terrible’, whose very aspect is death, (b) to Engidu, the companion of Gilgamesh, who is pictured as a man with the body of a bull, and the horns of a bison[213], (c) to the monster Tiamat in the creation tale pictured in art with the mouth and foreclaws of a lion, wings and hind-feet of an eagle[214], or as a monstrous dragon with the head of a serpent, fore feet of a panther, hind talons of an eagle, or again described as a serpent of seven heads[215], and (d) to the ‘mixed’ creatures—man, bull or lion and eagle combined—above referred to and that appear in such various forms in Babylonian and Assyrian art[216], and reappear as sphinxes in Hittite[217] and Egyptian art. The Hippocentaur in various forms also appears in the Babylonian art of the Cassite period[218].
If we are correct in tracing the spread of Babylonian-Assyrian birth-omens to the peoples of Asia Minor and thence to the Greeks and Romans, and in associating the belief in all kinds of monstrous and fabulous beings with these birth-omens and as a direct outcome of the fanciful combinations embodied in the collections of the bârû-priests, the spread of this belief would accompany the extension of the sphere of influence of Babylonian-Assyrian divination and of Euphratean culture in general. The thesis here proposed would, therefore, carry with it the assumption that the fabulous creatures of Greek and Roman mythology, as well as the wide spread belief in monstrosities of all kinds found in Greek and Roman writers, and which belief through the influence of Greek and Roman ideas was carried down to the middle ages and up to our own days, reverts in the last instance to the Babylonian-Assyrian birth-omens.