The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia

by A. H. Sayce

By the side of the “Book of Incantations”—whether it ever existed or not—there was another sacred book containing hymns to the gods. Here, again, it is more than doubtful whether the various collections of hymns compiled for use in the great sanctuaries of the country were ever combined together and incorporated into a single volume. The tendency to religious centralisation and unification in Babylonia was arrested before it could produce in religion what the seventy-two books of the “Illumination of Bel” were for astronomy and astrology, a compilation in which the observations of the past were collected and brought together.[321] Babylon, despite its political predominance, never succeeded in absorbing the religious cults of the more venerable sanctuaries of the country; the historical conservatism of the people was too strong, and even Nabonidos was forced to lavish gifts on the shrine of the sun-god at Sippara as well as upon [pg 412] that of Merodach at Babylon. The priesthood of Babylon were content to be chief among their peers; there was no monotheistic zeal to sweep away the rival temples, and the intensely localised character of Babylonian religion prevented the rise of monotheism. And without religious centralisation a common service-book and canon are not very probable. Perhaps, moreover, the hymns to the gods were too long in detaching themselves from the magical ritual, and too late in acquiring a sacred character of their own, to attain the same degree of divine authority as the incantations. Many of them are not only in Semitic Assyrian, but were composed as late as the reigns of the last Assyrian kings, while even those which are bilingual seem to have been in many cases the work of Semitic poets, the Sumerian text being a translation from the Semitic into the sacred language of theology.

At the same time, Lenormant was not far wrong in comparing the religious hymns of Chaldæa with those of the Rig-Veda. Like the latter, they belong to different periods of time, and comprise poems as unlike one another as war-songs and incantations and philosophic addresses to the gods. Moreover, as in the case of the incantations, there were collections of hymns addressed to the god or gods of the sanctuary in whose service they were used. Thus many of them belong to a collection that must have been made for the temple of the sun-god at Sippara or Larsa; all alike are addressed to the sun-god, the supreme judge of mankind; and the language that is used of him is the same in each. Other hymns celebrate the moon-god of Ur, while others belong to Nippur or to the sanctuary of Merodach at Babylon. The hymn to the god was as much a necessary portion of divine service as the incantation or the ceremonial rite.

The ritual texts tell us how and when it was employed. Thus on the festival of the New Year the service in the [pg 413] temple of Bel-Merodach was opened by a hymn in honour of his ark; and on the second of Nisan the priest was ordered to go down to the Euphrates at the beginning of the first hour of the night, and then, after putting on the prescribed vestment, and taking the waters of the river in his hand, to “enter into the presence of Bel,” and there recite a long hymn in praise of the god. The hymn closed with a prayer—

“Show mercy to thy city of Babylon;

to Ê-Saggil thy temple incline thy face;

grant the prayers of thy people the sons of Babylon!”

But there is yet another proof of the sacred character that attached itself to the hymns. Many of them were employed as incantations. Not only were they introduced into the magical texts, like the verses of the Bible when used as charms, but the magical element was inserted in the hymn itself. The address to the deity was combined with spells and incantations, producing a confused medley of spiritual expressions and grovelling superstition that is at once repellent and grotesque to our modern notions. The hymn, moreover, is prefaced by the word ên or “incantation,” which makes its words as authoritative and unalterable as the rest of the magical ritual. The same sacredness that invests the latter invests also the hymn. The hymn, in short, is as much verbally inspired as the incantation or spell; indeed, between the hymn and the incantation no clear line of demarcation was drawn by the Babylonian, and it is questionable whether he would have recognised that there was any such line at all.

It was in the use that was made of them, and not in their essential nature, that the hymn to the god and the incantation differed from one another. And as animism preceded the official religion of Babylonia, and the belief [pg 414] in spirits preceded the worship of the gods, so too did the incantation precede the hymn. The sacredness that was acquired by the hymn was originally reflected from the incantation; it was not the contents of the hymn, but the actual words of which it was composed, that gave it its sacred and authoritative character, and consecrated its employment by the priestly caste.

It is accordingly with good reason that I have described the hymns, like the incantations proper, as verbally inspired. The inspiration lay in the words more than in the sense they conveyed; an error of pronunciation was more fatal than a misunderstanding of their meaning. As long as the words were recited correctly, it mattered little whether either priest or people understood precisely what they meant.

I have already in an earlier lecture quoted some lines from the hymn to the moon-god which was probably composed for the services in the great temple of Ur. The hymns in honour of the sun-god are much more numerous, and formed part of a collection which seems to have been made by the priests of Bit-Uri, the temple of the sun-god at Sippara. The sun-god they celebrate is the incorruptible “judge of mankind,” the rewarder of the innocent and the punisher of the guilty, who sees all that is done on earth, and acts towards those who call upon him with justice and mercy.