The gods and legends of Chaldæa had penetrated to the countries of Amauru and Canaan, together with the language of the conquerors and their system of writing: the stories of Adapa’s struggles against the south-west wind, or of the incidents which forced Irishkigal, queen of the dead, to wed Nergal, were accustomed to be read at the courts of Syrian princes. Chaldæan theology, therefore, must have exercised influence on individual Syrians and on their belief; but although we are forced to allow the existence of such influence, we cannot define precisely the effects produced by it. Only on the coast and in the Phoenician cities do the local religions seem to have become formulated at a fairly early date, and crystallised under pressure of this influence into cosmogonie theories. The Baalim and Astartês reigned there as on the banks of the Jordan or Orontes, and in each town Baal was “the most high,” master of heaven and eternity, creator of everything which exists, though the character of his creating acts was variously defined according to time and place. Some regarded him as the personification of Justice, Sydyk, who established the universe with the help of eight indefatigable Cabiri. Others held the whole world to be the work of a divine family, whose successive generations gave birth to the various elements. The storm-wind, Colpias, wedded to Chaos, had begotten two mortals, Ulom (Time) and Kadmôn (the First-Born), and these in their turn engendered Qên and Qênath, who dwelt in Phoenicia: then came a drought, and they lifted up their heads to the Sun, imploring him, as Lord of the Heavens (Baalsamîn), to put an end to their woes. At Tyre it was thought that Chaos existed at the beginning, but chaos of a dark and troubled nature, over which a Breath (rûakh) floated without affecting it; “and this Chaos had no ending, and it was thus for centuries and centuries.—Then the Breath became enamoured of its own principles, and brought about a change in itself, and this change was called Desire:—now Desire was the principle which created all things, and the Breath knew not its own creation.—The Breath and Chaos, therefore, became united, and Mot the Clay was born, and from this clay sprang all the seed of creation, and Mot was the father of all things; now Mot was like an egg in shape.—And the Sun, the Moon, the stars, the great planets, shone forth.* There were living beings devoid of intelligence, and from these living beings came intelligent beings, who were called Zophesamîn, or ‘watchers of the heavens.‘Now the thunder-claps in the war of separating elements awoke these intelligent beings as it were from a sleep, and then the males and the females began to stir themselves and to seek one another on the land and in the sea.”
* Mot, the clay formed by the corruption of earth and water,
is probably a Phoenician form of a word which means water in the Semitic languages. Cf. the Egyptian theory, according
to which the clay, heated by the sun, was supposed to have
given birth to animated beings; this same clay modelled by
Khnûmû into the form of an egg was supposed to have produced
the heavens and the earth.
A scholar of the Roman epoch, Philo of Byblos, using as a basis some old documents hidden away in the sanctuaries, which had apparently been classified by Sanchoniathon, a priest long before his time, has handed these theories of the cosmogony down to us: after he has explained how the world was brought out of Chaos, he gives a brief summary of the dawn of civilization in Phoenicia and the legendary period in its history. No doubt he interprets the writings from which he compiled his work in accordance with the spirit of his time: he has none the less preserved their substance more or less faithfully. Beneath the veneer of abstraction with which the Greek tongue and mind have overlaid the fragment thus quoted, we discern that groundwork of barbaric ideas which is to be met with in most Oriental theologies, whether Egyptian or Babylonian. At first we have a black mysterious Chaos, stagnating in eternal waters, the primordial Nû or Apsû; then the slime which precipitates in this chaos and clots into the form of an egg, like the mud of the Nile under the hand? of Khnûmû; then the hatching forth of living organisms and indolent generations of barely conscious creatures, such as the Lakhmû, the Anshar, and the Illinu of Chaldæan speculation; finally the abrupt appearance of intelligent beings.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the original in the
Cabinet des Médailles.