But it is not so much with the episode of the Deluge as with the whole story of Gilgames and his adventures that Greek mythology claims connection. The desire of finding the biblical Nimrod in the cuneiform tablets long seduced Assyriologists into the impossible attempt to identify him with Gilgames; it is not, however, to the Biblical Nimrod, but to the Greek Hêraklês, that the Babylonian hero is related. The curious parallelism between the twelve labours of Hêraklês and the twelve adventures of Gilgames may be an accident; but it is no accident that Gilgames and Hêraklês should alike be heroes who are not kings, and that both alike should be tormented with a deadly distemper which destroyed the flesh. Khumbaba is the tyrant Geryon, the bull slain by Gilgames is the Kretan bull slain by Hêraklês, and the Nemæan lion reappears in the lion which Gilgames is so often represented on the seals as strangling to death. As Hêra persecuted Hêraklês, so Istar persecuted Gilgames; the journey of the Greek hero into Hades is paralleled by the journey of Gilgames beyond the waters of death; and the tree which he found on the shores of the sea with its fruit of precious stones is the magical tree of the Hesperides with its golden apples which grew in the midst of the western ocean.
It is true that there are many elements in the legend of Hêraklês which are not derived from Babylonia. But it is also true that, like the cosmogonies of Hesiod or the cosmological philosophy of Thales, there are also elements in it for which we must claim a Babylonian [pg 447] origin. Probably they made their way to Greek lands at the same time as the Cyprian cult of Aphroditê or the myth of Adônis, whose name indicates the road along which the culture of Babylonia had travelled. Recent archæological discoveries have revealed the fact that in the days when Canaan was a Babylonian province, a civilisation already existed in the Ægean, and that an active intercourse was carried on between Egypt and Asia on the one hand, and the islands and shores of the Mediterranean on the other, in which Krete took a leading share. Light is only just dawning on what until lately was the “prehistoric” past of the European peoples; before long a new world will doubtless be disclosed to us, such as that which the decipherment of the cuneiform texts has brought to light.
It is not only in the mythology of primitive Greece that we can trace the influence of the legends embodied in the Epic of Gilgames. The adventures of Gilgames in search of immortality form part of the story of that mythical Alexander who grew up in literature by the side of the Alexander of history. He too had to make his way through a land of thick darkness, and he too finally failed in his endeavour to secure the “waters of life.”[342] Man is and must remain mortal; this is alike the teaching of the old poet of Chaldæa and of the romance which the contact of Eastern and Western thought called into existence in classical days.
Lecture IX. The Ritual Of The Temple.
The temple of the god was the centre and glory of every great Babylonian city. The Babylonian States had been at the outset essentially theocratic; their ruler had been a high priest before he became a king, and up to the last he remained the vicegerent and adopted son of the god. It was round the temple that the city had grown and its population clustered. The artisans worked for it, and the agricultural labourers tilled its fields. The art of Babylonia originated within the temple precincts; it was for its adornment that the enamelled tiles were first made, and wood or stone or metal carved into artistic shapes, while the endowments which thus fostered the craftsman's art were derived from landed property or from the tithes paid to the priests upon the produce of the soil. The culture of Babylonia was with good reason traced back to the god Ea.
The place occupied in Assyria by the army was filled in Babylonia by the priesthood. The priests could make and unmake their kings. The last monarch of Babylonia, Nabonidos, was a nominee of the priests of Babylon; it was from them, and not from the rights of heritage, that he had derived his title to the throne. The great sanctuaries of the country influenced its destinies to the last. The influence of Nippur and Eridu, in fact, was wholly religious; we know of no royal dynasties that sprang from them. Even Nabonidos, with all his [pg 449] centralising zeal on behalf of Merodach of Babylon, was constrained to lavish gifts and honours on the sun-god of Sippara, at all events in the early part of his reign.
We must therefore look upon the temple as the oldest unit in the civilisation of Babylonia. Babylonian culture begins with the temple, with the worship of a deity or a spirit, and with the ministers attached to the cult. Centuries before En-lil of Nippur had developed into a Semitic Bel, an earthly dwelling-house had been provided for him which became in time the temple of a god. Its first name, Ê-kur, “the house of the earth” or “mountain,” continued always to cling to it, even though the original meaning of the name was forgotten, and it had come to signify a temple in the later sense of the word.
The temple was the sign and token of the reclamation of the primitive Babylonian swamp. Before it could be erected, it was needful to construct a platform of solid earth and brickwork, which should rise above the pestiferous marsh, and serve as a foundation for the building. The Sumerians called the platform the ki-gal or “great place”; it was the first place of human or divine habitation wrested from the waters of the swamp, and it marked the triumph of civilised man over nature. Emphatically, therefore, it was a “great place,” a solid resting-place in a world of water and slime.