A History of Babylon, from the Foundation of the Monarchy to the Persian Conquest

by L. W. King

FIG. 66. FIG. 67. FIG. 68.

THE WEATHER-GOD AND TWO GODDESSES FROM AN ASSYRIAN BAS-RELIEF.

The goddesses wear the homed headdresses of Babylonian deities, and, as they are represented being carried by soldiers, they had probably been taken from a captured Babylonian town.

(After Layard.)

FIG. 69.

FIGURE OF DEITY IN SHRINE.

(After Layard.)

A tribal or city-god, in his earliest stage of development, was doubtless wholly identified with his cult-image. No more than one image of each was worshipped, and the idea of a god's existence apart from this visible form must have been of gradual growth.[14] The misfortunes of the material image, especially if unaccompanied by national disaster, would have fostered a belief in the god's existence apart from his visible body of wood or stone. And such a belief eventually developed into the Babylonian conception of a heavenly division of the universe, in which the great gods had their dwelling, making their presence manifest to men in the stars and planets that moved across the sky. But this development marked a great advance upon pure image-worship, and undoubtedly followed the growth of a pantheon out of a collection of separate and detached city-gods. We have no means of dating the association of some of the greater gods with natural forces. It would seem that, in the earlier Sumerian period, religious centres in the country were already associated with lunar and solar cults and with other divisions of nature-worship. But it is quite certain that, during all subsequent stages of Babylonian history, the divine image never degenerated into a mere symbol of divinity. Without consciously postulating a theory in explanation of his belief, the Babylonian found no difficulty in reconciling a localization of the divine person with his presence at other cult centres and ultimately with a separate life in the heavenly sphere.

That this was actually the case is proved by a number of historical examples. With the rise of Babylon we may note the important part which the actual image of Marduk played in each coronation ceremony and in the renewal of the king's oath at every subsequent Feast of the New Year; the hands of no other image than that in E-sagila would serve for the king to grasp. In Hammurabi's reign we see the Babylonian's conception of his visible gods reflected in his treatment of foreign images.[15] The international exchange of deities in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries has already been referred to,[16] and the recovery of captured images was always recorded with enthusiasm.[17] For the images themselves constituted a nation's chief weapon of offence, and there was always the chance that, if properly treated by their captors, they might transfer their influence to the other side. This close connexion between the god and his image survived into the Neo-Babylonian period, and Nabonidus' offence in the eyes of the priesthood was simply that he ignored the feeling. Historical evidence thus suggests that the astral aspect of divinity in Babylonia was not an original feature of its religious system, and that it was never adopted to the exclusion of more primitive ideas.