In this rapid analysis of the beliefs held by the dwellers on the Tigris and Euphrates, we have made no attempt to discriminate between Chaldæa and Assyria. To one who looks rather to similarities than to differences, the two peoples, brothers in blood and language, had, in fact, but one religion between them. We possess several lists of the Assyrian gods and goddesses, and when we compare them we find that they differ one from the other both in the names and numbers of the deities inscribed upon them; but, with the exception of Assur, they contain no name which does not also belong to Chaldæa. Nothing could be more natural. Chaldæa was the mother-country of the Assyrians, and the intimate relations between the two never ceased for a day. Even when their enmity was most embittered they could not dispense the one with the other. Babylon was always a kind of holy city for the kings of Assyria; those among them who chastised the rebellious Chaldæans with the greatest severity, made it a point of honour to sacrifice to their gods and to keep their temples in repair. It was in Babylon, at Borsippa, and in the old cities near the coast, that the priests chiefly dwelt by whom the early myths had been preserved and the doctrines elaborated to which the inhabitants of Mesopotamia owed the superiority of their civilization. The Assyrians invented nothing. Assur himself seems only to have been a secondary form of some Chaldæan divinity, a parvenu carried to the highest place by the energy and good fortune of the warlike people whose patron he was, and maintained there until the final destruction of their capital city. When Nineveh fell, Assur fell with her, while those gods who were worshipped in common by the people of the north and those of the south long preserved their names, their fame, and the sanctity of their altars.
The religion of Nineveh differed from that of Babylon, however, in minor particulars, to which attention has already been called.[115] A single system of theology is differently understood by men whose manner and intellectual bent are distinct. Rites seem to have been more voluptuous and sensual at Babylon than at Nineveh; it was at the former city that Herodotus saw those religious prostitutions that astonished him by their immorality.[116] The Assyrian tendency to monotheism provoked a kind of fanaticism of which no trace is to be found in Chaldæa. The Ninevite conquerors set themselves to extend the worship of their great national god; they sacrificed by hecatombs the presumptuous enemies who blasphemed the name of Assur. The sacrifice of chastity was in favour at Babylon, that of life seemed to the Assyrians a more effectual offering. A soldier people, they were hardened by the strife of centuries, by the perpetual hardships of the battlefield, by the never-ending conflicts in which they took delight. Their religious conceptions were, therefore, narrower and more stern, their rites more cruel than those of their southern neighbours. The civilization of Babylon was more refined, men gave themselves more leisure for thought and enjoyment; their manners were less rude, their ideas less rigid and conservative; they were more inclined towards intellectual analysis and speculation. So that when we find traces of the beliefs and useful arts of Mesopotamia on the coasts, and even among the isles, of the Ægæan, the honour of them must be given to Babylon rather than to Nineveh.
NOTES
[82] The History of the Assyrians and Medes, which Eusebius (Préparation évangélique, 1, 12, and 41) attributes to the writer whom he calls Abydenus, dates perhaps from the period when the Roman Empire turned its attention to the basin of the Euphrates and attempted to regain possession of it. The few extant fragments of this author have been collected in Ch. Müller's Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum, vol. iv. p. 279. We know nothing as to when he lived, but he wrote in the Ionian dialect, as did Arrian in his book on India, and it would seem difficult to put him later than the second century. It is probable that his undertaking belonged to that movement towards research which began in the reign of Augustus and was prolonged to the last years of the Antonines.
[83] Δαμασκιου διαδοχου αποριαι και λυσεις περι των πρωτων αρχων (edition published by Kopp, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1826, 8vo), ch. 125. Ch. Émile Ruelle, Le Philosophe Damascius; Étude sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages, suivie de neuf Morceaux inédits, Extraits du Traité des premiers Principes et traduits en Latin (in the Revue archéologique, 1861), fragments i. and ix.
[84] On this subject the reader should consult M. Fr. Lenormant's La Magie chez les Chaldéens et les Origines Accadiennes, Paris: 1874, 8vo. The English translation, dated 1877, or, still better, the German version published at Jena in 1878 (Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldæer, 8vo), will be found more useful than the French original. Both are, in fact, new editions, with fresh information.
[85] Tiele, Manuel de l'Histoire des Religions (Leroux, 1880, 8vo). In our explanation of the Chaldæo-Assyrian religions we shall follow this excellent guide, supplementing it by information taken from another work by the same author, Histoire comparée des anciennes Religions de l'Égypte et des Peuples Sémitiques—both from the Dutch.
[86] A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, vol. i. pp. 47-57.
[87] At Erzeroum Mr. Layard heard of some Kurdish tribes to the south-west of that place who, he was told, "are still idolatrous, worshipping venerable oaks, great trees, huge solitary rocks, and other grand features of nature." Discoveries, p. 9.