Izdubar strangling a Lion. From Khorsabad Sculpture.
Chapter XI.
THE IZDUBAR LEGENDS.
Izdubar.—Meaning of the name.—A solar hero.—Prototype of Herakles.—Age of Legends.—Babylonian cylinders.—Notices of Izdubar.—Surippak.—Ark City.—Twelve tablets.—Extent of Legends.—Description.—Introduction.—Meeting of Hea-bani and Izdubar.—Destruction of tyrant Khumbaba.—Adventures of Istar.—Illness and wanderings of Izdubar.—Description of Deluge and conclusion.—First Tablet.—Kingdom of Nimrod.—Traditions.—Identifications.—Translation.—Elamite conquest—Dates.
We now come to the great Epic of early Chaldea, first discovered by Mr. Smith in 1872. The hero of this Epic is provisionally called Izdubar, though this is certainly not the right reading of his name. The first and last characters which compose it together form a compound ideograph signifying “fire,” and pronounced gibil in Accadian, isatu in Assyrian, while the middle character, dhu or dhun, meant “a mass” or “a going.” “A mass of fire” would have been by no means an inappropriate name for a hero, who, as we shall see, was originally the Accadian fire-god, and then a personified form of the sun-god. The two last characters of the name, however, when used as a compound ideograph, denoted “the under-lip,” and the first character symbolizes “wood.”
Mr. Smith believed that Izdubar was the Biblical Nimrod, and was almost inclined to think that this was the way in which the name ought to be phonetically rendered. One passage, however, in which the last syllable is followed by the syllable ra seems to imply that the final letter was r.
The originally solar character of the hero was still remembered at the time when the great Epic of the Accadians was put together. As was pointed out by Sir Henry Rawlinson shortly after Mr. Smith’s first discovery of it, it is arranged upon an astronomical principle, its twelve books or tablets corresponding with the twelve signs of the Zodiac, through which the sun passes in his yearly course. Thus the eleventh tablet, which contains the episode of the Deluge, answers to Aquarius the eleventh sign of the Zodiac, and the eleventh month of the Accadian year called “the rainy;” and the sixth tablet, describing his courtship by Istar, answers to Virgo the sixth sign of the Zodiac, and the sixth Accadian month called that “of the errand of Istar.” It is in the second month, that of “the directing bull,” and under the sign of Taurus, that Hea-bani, half-man, half-bull, is brought to Izdubar in the second tablet; the lion is slain by Izdubar under the Zodiacal Leo, and the lamentation he makes over the corpse of his friend and seer Hea-bani is made in “the dark month” of Adar, as it was termed, at the end of the year. Like the autumnal sun, too, Izdubar sickens in the eighth book corresponding with the month of October, and only recovers his health and brilliance after bathing in the waters of the eastern ocean at the beginning of the new year.
If anything were needed to confirm the solar character of Izdubar and his history, it would be afforded by a comparison with the legends of the Greek solar hero, Herakles. Like much else of Greek mythology, the twelve adventures of Herakles were brought to Greece from Babylonia through the hands of the Phœnicians, and it has long been recognized that Herakles is but a form of Baal Melkarth, the sun-god of Tyre. Hea-bani reappears in Cheiron, the centaur, the friend and instructor of Herakles, and just as Hea-bani was created by Hea, Cheiron was said to be the son of Kronos, who is identified by Berosus with Hea in the account of the Deluge. The lion slain by Izdubar is the lion of Nemea slain by Herakles; the winged bull made by Anu is the famous bull of Krete; the tyrant Khumbaba is the tyrant Geryon; the gems borne by the trees of the forest beyond the gateway of the sun are the apples of the Hesperides; and the deadly sickness of Izdubar himself is but the fever of Herakles, caused by the poisoned tunic of Nessus.