Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio pointed out
by Heuzey-Sarzcc; the original is in the Louvre. The scene
depicted behind Shamash deals with a legend still unknown. A
goddess, pursued by a genius with a double face, has taken
refuge under a tree, which bows down to protect her; while
the monster endeavours to break down the obstacle branch by
branch, a god rises from the stem and hands to the goddess a
stone-headed mace to protect her against her enemy.
In the most ancient times it would appear that even human sacrifices were offered, but this custom was obsolete except on rare occasions, and lambs, oxen, sometimes swine’s flesh, formed the usual elements of the sacrifice. The gods seized as it arose from the altar the unctuous smoke, and fed on it with delight. When they had finished their repast, the supplication of a favour was adroitly added, to which they gave a favourable hearing. Services were frequent in the temples: there was one in the morning and another in the evening on ordinary days, in addition to those which private individuals might require at any hour of the day. The festivals assigned to the local god and his colleagues, together with the acts of praise in which the whole nation joined, such as that of the New Year, required an abundance of extravagant sacrifices, in which the blood of the victims flowed like water. Days of sorrow and mourning alternated with these days of joy, during which the people and the magnates gave themselves up to severe fasting and acts of penitence. The Chaldeans had a lively sense of human frailty, and of the risks entailed upon the sinner by disobedience to the gods. The dread of sinning haunted them during their whole life; they continually subjected the motives of their actions to a strict scrutiny, and once self-examination had revealed to them the shadow of an evil intent, they were accustomed to implore pardon for it in a humble manner. “Lord, my sins are many, great are my misdeeds!—O my god, my sins are many, great my misdeeds!—O my goddess, my sins are many, great my misdeeds!—I have committed faults and I knew them not; I have committed sin and I knew it not; I have fed upon misdeeds and I knew them not; I have walked in omissions and I knew them not.—The lord, in the anger of his heart, he has stricken me,—the god, in the wrath of his heart, has abandoned me,—Ishtar is enraged against me, and has treated me harshly!—I make an effort, and no one offers me a hand,—I weep, and no one comes to me,—I cry aloud, and no one hears me:—I sink under affliction, I am overwhelmed, I can no longer raise up my head,—I turn to my merciful god to call upon him, and I groan!... Lord reject not thy servant,—and if he is hurled into the roaring waters, stretch to him thy hand;—the sins I have committed, have mercy upon them,—the misdeeds I have committed, scatter them to the winds—and my numerous faults, tear them to pieces like a garment.” Sin in the eyes of the Chaldæan was not, as with us, an infirmity of the soul; it assaulted the body like an actual virus, and the fear of physical suffering or death engendered by it, inspired these complaints with a note of sincerity which cannot be mistaken.
Every individual is placed, from the moment of his birth, under the protection of a god and goddess, of whom he is the servant, or rather the son, and whom he never addresses otherwise than as his god and his goddess. These deities accompany him night and day, not so much to protect him from visible dangers, as to guard him from the invisible beings which ceaselessly hover round him, and attack him on every side. If he is devout, piously disposed towards his divine patrons and the deities of his country, if he observes the prescribed rites, recites the prayers, performs the sacrifices—in a word, if he acts rightly—their aid is never lacking; they bestow upon him a numerous posterity, a happy old age, prolonged to the term fixed by fate, when he must resign himself to close his eyes for ever to the light of day. If, on the contrary, he is wicked, violent, one whose word cannot be trusted, “his god cuts him down like a reed,” extirpates his race, shortens his days, delivers him over to demons who possess themselves of his body and afflict it with sicknesses before finally despatching him. Penitence is of avail against the evil of sin, and serves to re-establish a right course of life, but its efficacy is not permanent, and the moment at last arrives in which death, getting the upper hand, carries its victim away. The Chaldæans had not such clear ideas as to what awaited them in the other world as the Egyptians possessed: whilst the tomb, the mummy, the perpetuity of the funeral revenues, and the safety of the double, were the engrossing subjects in Egypt, the Chaldæan texts are almost entirely silent as to the condition of the soul, and the living seem to have had no further concern about the dead than to get rid of them as quickly and as completely as possible. They did not believe that everything was over at the last breath, but they did not on that account think that the fate of that which survived was indissolubly associated with the perishable part, and that the disembodied soul was either annihilated or survived, according as the flesh in which it was sustained was annihilated or survived in the tomb. The soul was doubtless not utterly unconcerned about the fate of the larva it had quitted: its pains were intensified on being despoiled of its earthly case if the latter were mutilated, or left without sepulture, a prey to the fowls, of the air. This feeling, however, was not sufficiently developed to create a desire for escape from corruption entirely, and to cause a resort to the mummifying process of the Egyptians.
The Chaldæans did not subject the body, therefore, to those injections, to those prolonged baths in preserving fluids, to that laborious swaddling which rendered it indestructible; whilst the family wept and lamented, old women who exercised the sad function of mourners washed the dead body, perfumed it, clad it in its best apparel, painted its cheeks, blackened its eyelids, placed a collar on its neck, rings on its fingers, arranged its arms upon its breast, and stretched it on a bed, setting up at its head a little altar for the customary offerings of water, incense, and cakes.
