The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia

by A. H. Sayce

Had the city taken its name from the god, it would be difficult to find a satisfactory etymology for it. The spelling of the name is against our connecting it with the word asiru, “he who blesses” or “consecrates,” from which the Assyrian asirtu, “sanctuary,” is derived, like the name of the Canaanitish goddess Ashêrah.[289] On the other hand, the native Assyrian etymology is as inadmissible as the endeavours of our eighteenth century lexicographers to find Greek or Latin derivations for Anglo-Saxon words. The Assyrian scribes saw in Assur merely the old elemental deity Ansar, “the firmament,” who was himself nothing more than the Sumerian spirit of the “heavenly host.” It is wisest not to imitate them, but, as in the case of Merodach and Istar, to leave the origin of the name Assur unexplained.

The kings of Assyria were originally high priests of Assur. In other parts of the Semitic world the high priest similarly preceded the king. The father-in-law of Moses was high priest of Midian, and the high priests of Saba in Southern Arabia developed into kings.[290] There were high priests also in Babylonia, who took their titles not only from the gods they served, but also from the cities over which they ruled. The peculiarity in the case of Assyria, however, was that there the god and the city [pg 368] were one and the same. When, therefore, the high priest of Assur assumed the title of king, he still retained his priestly functions under another title. He was priest, but no longer high priest. Assyria was a monarchy, not a theocracy; it was founded on military force, not on priestly influence. The king accordingly was not a representative and vicegerent of the god, like a Babylonian prince; he represented the god Assur only because he represented the city of Assur. It was through the city of Assur that the god manifested himself as it were to men.

One of the consequences of this fact was that Assur was a national as opposed to a merely local god. Wherever the power of the city extended, there the power of the god necessarily extended as well. When Assur became the capital of a kingdom, the whole land which owned its authority received its name and accepted the supremacy of its god. The local cults made way for the national cults; it was not only in Assur itself that the god had his temple; wherever a city called itself Assyrian, the worship of Assur held the first place. There were no old sanctuaries and cults to displace, as in Babylonia; the deities who were adored in the cities of Assyria were of Babylonian origin, like Ninâ and Istar; and when once Assyria had achieved its independence, and realised that it had a national life of its own, they were unable to maintain themselves against the national god.

This national god had given his people their freedom and right to rule. He it was who had led their armies to victory, and had vanquished the hostile deities of Babylonia. He was thus identified with the army to which Assyria owed its existence, and with the king who was its leader in war. Wherever the army went or the king established himself, Assur went also. He lost, therefore, [pg 369] the last relics of his association with a particular locality, and became the god of the whole people. From every point of view he was national and not local.

Freed from the limitations of locality, he was consequently freed from the limitations of form. Bel-Merodach was necessarily human in form, with all the limitations of humanity; it was only where his image was that he could be present in visible shape. But Assur was not confined to the human image that represented him. He could also be represented by a symbol, and where the symbol was he was too. The symbol was a standard, on which an archer was depicted rising from a winged sun. It was carried with the armies of Assyria from place to place, like the ark in which the Israelites of the age of Samuel saw a symbol of the presence of their national God. The winged sun refers us to Egypt; so too does the standard on which the emblem of Assur was borne. The Asiatic conquests of the Eighteenth Dynasty had brought Egypt and Assyria into contact; the Assyrian king paid tribute to the Pharaoh, and doubtless depended on him for support against Babylonia. It was the period when Assyria was first feeling itself an independent nation; the authority of Babylonia had been shaken off, and the god of Babylon had been supplanted by Assur. We need not be surprised, therefore, if Assur consented to borrow from Egypt the symbol which henceforth distinguished him from the Babylonian gods, and with the symbol went the theological ideas of which it was the expression.

These theological ideas were already deeply tinctured by the theories of the solar cult. The winged solar disc is evidence that Assur was assimilated to Amon-Ra of Egypt. But the assimilation stopped there. The Assyrians were too purely Semitic even to comprehend the nebulous pantheism of the Egyptian solar school; [pg 370] Assur remained an anthropomorphic god, with very definite attributes and sharply-cut features. The archer who rises above the disc of the sun significantly indicates the contrast between the theology of Egypt and Assyria. Above the sun-god is the human warrior, the lord of hosts, the god of battles, the divine leader of the armies of Assur. There was no room in the practical Assyrian mind for a formless divinity, with its infinite transformations and elusive shape. The Assyrian needed a soldier's god, at once human and clearly defined.

Nevertheless this human god was recognised as one with the sun-god. Or rather, perhaps, the sun was regarded as his visible manifestation, the mark or symbol under which he displayed himself. Assur was thus essentially a Semitic Baal, but a warlike Baal, who was the god of a nation and not of a particular place.

Where the nation and its army were, accordingly, their god was as well. And when Assyria claimed to rule the whole civilised world, the power and authority of its god became world-wide. It was in his name that the Assyrian troops went forth to fight, and it was “through trust in” him that they gained their victories. Those who resisted them were his enemies, those who submitted were incorporated into his empire, and became his subjects and worshippers. All other gods had to yield to him; he was not only paramount over them, but to worship them instead of him was an act of impiety. The sacrifice might continue to be made to them and the prayer offered, but it was on condition that the first-fruits of both sacrifice and prayer were given to Assur.

This, however, was not all. Assur was not only jealous of other gods, there was no goddess who could share with him his power. In the eyes of the Assyrian people he was wifeless, like Yahveh of Israel or Chemosh of Moab. It is true that some Assyriologists, with more [pg 371] zeal than knowledge, have found for him a wife, but they are not agreed as to who she was. Sometimes we have been told it was Serua, sometimes Istar, sometimes Belit. The very fact that such a difference of opinion exists is sufficient to condemn the whole supposition. It is based on the pedantry of certain of the Assyrian scribes, who, educated in the literature and religion of Babylonia, were naturally anxious to fit their national god into the Babylonian system of theology. The gods of Babylonia had each his wife; they were each the head of a divine family, and consequently the chief god of Assyria must be the same. But it was difficult to find for him a female consort. Once or twice the help of the grammar is invoked, and the feminine Assurit is made to take her place by the side of Assur. But she was too evidently an artificial creation, and accordingly Belit was borrowed from Bel-Merodach, or Nin-lil from Bel of Nippur, and boldly claimed as the wife of Assur. But this too was acceptable neither to Babylonians nor to Assyrians, and, as a last resource, Istar, the virgin goddess, was transformed into a married wife. It might have been thought that the idea, once started, would have met with ready acceptance; for Istar was the goddess of Nineveh, as Assur was of the older capital which was superseded by Nineveh in the later days of the Assyrian empire. That it did not do so is a proof how firmly rooted was the wifelessness of Assur in the Assyrian mind; he was no Babylonian Bel who needed a helpmeet, but a warrior's god, who entered the battle wifeless and alone.

I can but repeat again of him what I said years ago in my Hibbert Lectures: “Assur consequently differs from the Babylonian gods, not only in the less narrowly local character that belongs to him, but also in his solitary nature. He is ‘king of all the gods’ in a sense [pg 372] in which none of the deities of Babylonia were. He is like the king of Assyria himself, brooking no rival, allowing neither wife nor son to share in the honours which he claims for himself alone. He is essentially a jealous god, and as such sends forth his Assyrian adorers to destroy his unbelieving foes. Wifeless, childless, he is mightier than the Babylonian Baalim; less kindly, perhaps, less near to his worshippers than they were, but more awe-inspiring and more powerful. We can, in fact, trace in him all the lineaments upon which, under other conditions, there might have been built up as pure a faith as that of the God of Israel.” That none such was ever built, may be accepted as a sign and token that between the Semites of Assyria and those of Israel there lay a difference which no theories of evolution are able to explain.