Hence it was that the same festival might commemorate either the beginning or the end of the agricultural year. But in either case it was a period of rejoicing and rest from labour, of thanking the gods for their benefits, and offering them the first-fruits of the field. In the old days of Gudea of Lagas the year commenced with the festival of the goddess Bau in the middle of October; in the later Babylon of Khammurabi the feast was transferred to the spring, and the first month of the year began in March. But the older calendar of Babylonia had been already carried to the West, and there preserved in a country to whose climatic and agricultural conditions it was really inapplicable. The ancient Canaanitish year began in the autumn in what the later calendar reckoned the seventh month. It was not, however, till after the final unification of the country under Khammurabi that a fixed and uniform calendar was imposed upon all the sanctuaries of Babylonia. At an earlier epoch the great sanctuaries had each its own calendar; the months were variously named, and the deities to whom the festivals were dedicated were not always the same.[377] At Lagas it was Bau to whom the festival of the New Year was sacred; at Babylon it was Merodach.
Besides the festivals of the spring and autumn, there was yet a third festival belonging to the agricultural year. This was the feast of the summer solstice, which fell in the month of June. It marked the drying up of the soil and the disappearance of the crops and vegetation of the spring. In some of the early States of Babylonia it was consecrated to a god Bil-'si;[378] in the calendar of Assyria, Tammuz took the place of the older god. Tammuz had perished by an untimely death, and it was fitting that the death of the god should be celebrated when nature also seemed to die. There was a time, however, when the festival of Tammuz had been observed, at all events in some parts of Babylonia, in October rather than in June. The same month that had witnessed the feast of the New Year witnessed also that of Tammuz risen again from the dead.
The three great feasts of the Babylonian agriculturist are found again in Canaan. But it is noticeable that the third of them—the feast of Weeks, as it was called by the Hebrews—was there the correspondent of the spring festival in Babylonia. It was, in fact, a repetition of the festival of spring. And the latter accordingly becomes a prelude and anticipation of it. On the 16th of Nisan the Levitical Law ordered a sheaf of the first-fruits of the harvest to be presented (Lev. xxiii. 10-14), and the unleavened bread eaten at the festival itself [pg 475] symbolised the ingathering of the corn which was thus dedicated to God in the form of consecrated cakes.
The three great agricultural festivals were supplemented by others. Many of these occurred at fixed times of the year, and commemorated the divinities worshipped in one or other of the sanctuaries of Babylonia. Some of them were observed throughout the country; others only in a particular city and district. With the deification of a new king came a new festival in his honour; and if his cult lasted, the festival continued also by the side of the established festivals of the older gods. But new festivals might further be instituted for other reasons. The building or restoration of a sanctuary, or even the dedication of a statue, was a quite sufficient pretext. When Gudea consecrated the temple of Inguriṡa at Lagas, he tells us how he had “remitted penalties and given presents. During seven days no service was exacted. The female slave was made the equal of her mistress; the male slave was made the equal of his master; the chief and his subject have been made equal in my city. All that is evil I removed from this temple.”[379]
The temporary freedom thus granted to the slave seems to have been a characteristic of the Babylonian festival. Berossos stated that in the month of Lôos or July, the feast of Sakæa was celebrated at Babylon for five days, when it was “the custom that the masters should obey their domestics, one of whom is led round the house clothed in a royal garment.”[380] The custom has often been compared with that which prevailed at the Roman Saturnalia, and a baseless theory has recently been put forward connecting with it the Hebrew feast of [pg 476] Purim.[381] But the custom was really the exaggeration in the Greek age of Babylonian history of the old doctrine which underlay the Babylonian conception of a holy day. A holy day was essentially a holiday, a day when the whole people rested from work, and when, accordingly, even the slave recovered for awhile his freedom. The summer feast of Sakæa, at least in its original form, or the festival ordained by Gudea at the consecration of the temple of Ê-Ninnu, was thus a parallel to the Hebrew year of Jubilee. In the year of Jubilee we have the western reflection of beliefs and usages that were familiar to the ancestors of Abraham.
The Sabbath-rest was essentially of Babylonian origin. The word Sabbath itself was borrowed from Babylonia, where it had the form Sabattu, and was derived by the native lexicographers from the Sumerian sa, “heart,” and “bat, to cease,” and so explained as “a day of rest for the heart.”[382] The derivation is, of course, absurd, but it indicates the antiquity of the term. There was yet another name, sulum, or “quiet day,” which was more especially used as a translation of the Sumerian udu [pg 477] khul-gal, “dies nefastus,” on which it was unlawful or unlucky to perform certain kinds of work.[383] Thus, in a list of what we should call the Saints' days in the month of the Second Elul, we read that the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the month were all alike days of quiet and rest. “The 7th day,” we are told, “is a day dedicated to Merodach and Zarpanit. It is a lucky day and a quiet day. The shepherd of mighty nations (i.e. the king) must not eat flesh cooked at the fire or in the smoke. His clothes he must not change. White garments he must not put on. He must not offer sacrifice. The king must not drive a chariot. He must not issue royal decrees. In a secret place the seer must not prophesy. Medicine for the sickness of his body he must not apply. For making a spell it is not fitting.”[384] Here the Sabbath recurs, as among the Hebrews, every seven days; and Professor Jensen has pointed out that the 19th of the month, on which there was also a Sabbath, was forty-nine days or seven weeks from the beginning of the previous month. There was therefore not only a week of seven days, but a week of seven-day weeks as well. In fact, the chief difference between the Babylonian and the Hebrew institution lay in the subordination of the Sabbath to the festival of the “new moon” among the Babylonians. There was no Sabbath on the first day of the month; its place was taken by freewill offerings to the moon.
The Sabbath, it will be noticed, was not a fast-day. Fasts, however, were not infrequent in Babylonia and Assyria, and in times of danger and distress might be [pg 478] specially ordained. When Esar-haddon was hard pressed by his northern enemies, he ordered prayers to be made and ceremonies to be performed to the sun-god, lasting for one hundred days and nights. It was a long period of public humiliation, and the god was asked to grant favourable visions to the “seers” who implored his help. In the penitential psalms, fasting is alluded to more than once. “Instead of food,” says the penitent, “I eat bitter tears; instead of palm-wine, I drink the waters of misery.” Or, again: “Food I have not eaten, weeping is my nourishment; water I have not drunk, tears are my drink.”[385]
The fast and the feast alternated as they did in Israel. As we come to know more of the ritual of Babylonia, the resemblance it bears to that of the Hebrews becomes at once more striking and extensive. They both start from the same principles, and agree in many of their details. Between them, indeed, lies that deep gulf of difference which separates the religions of Israel and Babylonia as a whole; the one is monotheistic, the other polytheistic. But, apart from this profound distinction, the cult and ritual have more than a family relationship. Customs and rites which have lost their primitive meaning in the Levitical Law, find their explanation in Babylonia; even the ecclesiastical calendar of the Pentateuch looks back to the Babylonia of the age of Khammurabi. It cannot be an accident that the Khammurabi or Ammurapi of the cuneiform inscriptions is the Amraphel of Genesis, the contemporary of Abram the Hebrew, who was born in “Ur of the Chaldees.” The Mosaic Law must have drawn its first inspiration from the Abrahamic age, modified and developed though it may have been in the later centuries of Israelitish history.