The sun of the complete day, the sun in the full possession of his strength, could alone win back the attributes of power which the morning sun had allowed himself to be despoiled of. From that time forth the privilege of delivering immortal decrees to mortals was never taken out of the hands of the gods of light.
Destinies once fixed on the earth became a law—“mamit”—a good or bad fate, from which no one could escape, but of which any one might learn the disposition beforehand if he were capable of interpreting the formulas of it inscribed on the book of the sky. The stars, even those which were most distant from the earth, were not unconcerned in the events which took place upon it. They were so many living beings endowed with various characteristics, and their rays as they passed across the celestial spaces exercised from above an active control on everything they touched. Their influences became modified, increased or weakened according to the intensity with which they shed them, according to the respective places they occupied in the firmament, and according to the hour of the night and the month of the year in which they rose or set. Each division of time, each portion of space, each category of existences—and in each category each individual—was placed under their rule and was subject to their implacable tyranny. The infant was born their slave, and continued in this condition of slavery until his life’s end: the star which was in the ascendent at the instant of his birth became his star, and ruled his destiny. The Chaldæans, like the Egyptians, fancied they discerned in the points of light which illuminate the nightly sky, the outline of a great number of various figures—men, animals, monsters, real and imaginary objects, a lance, a bow, a fish, a scorpion, ears of wheat, a bull, and a lion. The majority of these were spread out above their heads on the surface of the celestial vault; but twelve of these figures, distinguishable by their brilliancy, were arranged along the celestial horizon in the pathway of the sun, and watched over his daily course along the walls of the world. These divided this part of the sky into as many domains or “houses,” in which they exercised absolute authority, and across which the god could not go without having previously obtained their consent, or having brought them into subjection beforehand. This arrangement is a reminiscence of the wars by which Bel-Merodach, the divine bull, the god of Babylon, had succeeded in bringing order out of chaos: he had not only killed Tiâmat, but he had overthrown and subjugated the monsters which led the armies of darkness. He meets afresh, every year and every day, on the confines of heaven and earth, the scorpion-men of his ancient enemy, the fish with heads of men or goats, and many more. The twelve constellations were combined into a zodiac, whose twelve signs, transmitted to the Greeks and modified by them, may still be read on our astronomical charts. The constellations, immovable, or actuated by a slow motion, in longitude only, contain the problems of the future, but they are not sufficient of themselves alone to furnish man with the solution of these problems. The heavenly bodies capable of explaining them, the real interpreters of destiny, were at first the two divinities who rule the empires of night and day—the moon and the sun; afterwards there took part in this work of explanation the five planets which we call Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury, or rather the five gods who actuate them, and who have controlled their course from the moment of creation—Merodach, Ishtar, Ninib, Nergal, and Nebo. The planets seemed to traverse the heavens in every direction, to cross their own and each other’s paths, and to approach the fixed stars or recede from them; and the species of rhythmical dance in which they are carried unceasingly across the celestial spaces revealed to men, if they examined it attentively, the irresistible march of their own destinies, as surely as if they had made themselves master of the fatal tablets of Shamash, and could spell them out line by line.
The Chaldæns were disposed to regard the planets as perverse sheep who had escaped from the fold of the stars to wander wilfully in search of pasture.* At first they were considered to be so many sovereign deities, without other function than that of running through the heavens and furnishing there predictions of the future; afterwards two of them descended to the earth, and received upon it the homage of men* —Ishtar from the inhabitants of the city of Dilbat, and Nebo* from those of Borsippa. Nebo assumed the rôle of a soothsayer and a prophet. He knew and foresaw everything, and was ready to give his advice upon any subject: he was the inventor of the method of making clay tablets, and of writing upon them. Ishtar was a combination of contradictory characteristics.****
* Their generic name, read as “lubat,” in Sumero-Accadian,
“bibbu” in Semitic speech (Fr. Lenormant, Essai de
Commentaire de Bérose, pp. 370, 371), denoted a quadruped,
the species of which Lenormant was not able to define;
Jensen (Die Kosmologie, pp. 95-99) identified it with the
sheep and the ram. At the end of the account of the
creation, Merodach-Jupiter is compared with a shepherd who
feeds the flock of the gods on the pastures of heaven (cf.
p. 15 of the present work).
** The site of Dilbat is unknown: it has been sought in the
neighbourhood of Kishu and Babylon (Delitzsch, Wo lag das
Paradies? p. 219); it is probable that it was in the
suburbs of Sippara. The name given to the goddess was
transcribed AeXckit (Hesychius, sub voce), and signifies
the herald, the messenger of the day.
*** The rôle of Nebo was determined by the early
Assyriologists (Rawlin-son, On the Religion of the
Babylonians and Assyrians, pp. 523-52G; Oppeet, Expédition
en Mésopotamie, vol. ii. p. 257; Lenormant, Essai de
Commentaire de Bérose, pp. 114-116). He owed his functions
partly to his alliance with other gods (Sayce, Religion of
the Ancient Babylonians, pp. 118, 119).
**** See the chapter devoted by Sayce to the consideration
of Ishtar in his Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (IV.
Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 221, et seq.), and the observations
made by Jeremias on the subject in the sequel of his
Izdubar-Nimrod (Ishtar-Astarte im Izdubar-Epos), pp. 56-66.
