It was otherwise with the musicians. They formed a class to themselves, though whether as a trade or [pg 166] as a profession it is difficult to say. We must, however, distinguish between the composer and the performer. The latter was frequently a slave or captive, and occupied but an humble place in society. He is frequently depicted in the Assyrian bas-reliefs, and in one instance is represented as wearing a cap of great height and shaped like a fish. Musical instruments were numerous and various. We find among them drums and tambourines, trumpets and horns, lyres and guitars, harps and zithers, pipes and cymbals. Even the speaking-trumpet was employed. In a sculpture which represents the transport of a colossal bull from the quarries of Balad to the palace of Sennacherib, an overseer is made to stand on the body of the bull and issue orders through a trumpet to the workmen.
Besides single musicians, there were bands of performers, and at times the music was accompanied by dancing or by clapping the hands. The bands were under the conduct of leaders, who kept time with a double rod. In one instance the Assyrian artist has represented three captives playing on a lyre, an interesting illustration of the complaint of the Jewish exiles in Babylonia that their conquerors required from them “a song.”
The artist fared no better than the musical performer. The painter of the figures and scenes on the walls of the chamber, the sculptor of the bas-reliefs which adorned an Assyrian palace, or of the statues which stood in the temples of Babylonia, the engraver of the gems and seals, some of which show such high artistic talent, were all alike skilled artisans and nothing more. [pg 167] We have already seen what wages they received, and what consequently must have been the social admiration in which they were held. Behind the workman, however, stood the original artist, who conceived and drew the first designs, and to whom the artistic inspiration was primarily due. Of him we still know nothing. Probably he belonged in general to the class of priests or scribes, and would have disdained to receive remuneration for his art. As yet the texts have thrown no light upon him, and it may be that they never will do so. The Babylonians were a practical and not an artistic people, and the skilled artisan gave them all that they demanded in the matter of art.
Chapter VIII. The Government And The Army
The conception of the state in Babylonia was intensely theocratic. The kings had been preceded by high-priests, and up to the last they performed priestly functions, and represented the religious as well as the civil power. At Babylon the real sovereign was Bel Merodach, the true “lord” of the city, and it was only when the King had been adopted by the god as his son that he possessed any right to rule. Before he had “taken the hands” of Bel, and thereby become the adopted son of the deity, he had no legitimate title to the throne. He was, in fact, the vicegerent and representative of Bel upon earth; it was Bel who gave him his authority and watched over him as a father over a son.
The Babylonian sovereign was thus quite as much a pontiff as he was a king. The fact was acknowledged in the titles he bore, as well as in the ceremony which legitimized his accession to the throne. Two views prevailed, however, as to his relation to the god. According to one of these, sonship conferred upon him actual divinity; he was not merely the representative of a god, but a god himself. This was the view which prevailed in the earlier days of Semitic supremacy. [pg 169] Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-Sin are entitled “gods;” temples and priests were dedicated to them during their lifetime, and festivals were observed in their honor. Their successors claimed and received the same attributes of divinity. Under the third dynasty of Ur even the local prince, Gudea, the high-priest of Tello, was similarly deified. It was not until Babylonia had been conquered by the foreign Kassite dynasty from the mountains of Elam that a new conception of the King was introduced. He ceased to be a god himself, and became, instead, the delegate and representative of the god of whom he was the adopted son. His relation to the god was that of a son during the lifetime of his father, who can act for his father, but cannot actually take the father's place so long as the latter is alive.
Some of the earlier Chaldean monarchs call themselves sons of the goddesses who were worshipped in the cities over which they held sway. They thus claimed to be of divine descent, not by adoption, but by actual birth. The divinity that was in them was inherited; it was not merely communicated by a later and artificial process. The “divine right,” by grace of which they ruled, was the right of divine birth.
At the outset, therefore, the Babylonian King was a pontiff because he was also a god. In him the deities of heaven were incarnated on earth. He shared their essence and their secrets; he knew how their favor could be gained or their enmity averted, and so mediated between god and man. This deification of the King, however, cannot be traced beyond the period when Semitic rule was firmly established in [pg 170] Chaldea. It is true that Sumerian princes, like Gudea of Lagas, were also deified; but this was long after the rise of Semitic supremacy, and the age of Sargon of Akkad, and when Sumerian culture was deeply interpenetrated by Semitic ideas. So far as we know at present the apotheosis of the King was of Semitic origin.