Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs

by A. H. Sayce

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 [pg 256] 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 [pg 258] 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 [pg 259] 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.”