Greece and Babylon

by Lewis Richard Farnell

But even the early premature attempts to solve a problem may contribute something to the ultimate satisfying solution. And often in the middle of our investigations, when new evidence continues to pour in, there comes a moment when it is desirable to look around and take stock, so to speak, to consider whether we can draw some general conclusions with safety, or in what direction the facts appear at this stage to be pointing. In regard to the religions of anterior Asia and South-Eastern Europe, and the question of their relationships, this is now, I feel, a seasonable thing to do—all the more because the Asiatic region has been mainly explored by specialists, who have worked, as was profitable and right, each in his special province, without having the time or perhaps the training to achieve a comparative survey of the whole. We know also by long experience the peculiar dangers to which specialists are prone; in their enthusiastic devotion to their own domain, they are apt to believe that it supplies them with the master-key whereby to unlock many other secret places of human history. This hope, soon to prove an illusion, was regnant when the interpretation of the Sacred Vedic Books was first accomplished. And now certain scholars, who are distinguished specialists in Assyriology, are putting forward a similar claim for Babylon, and are championing the view that the Sumerian-Assyrian religion and culture played a dominating part in the evolution of the Mediterranean civilisation, and that therefore much of the religious beliefs and practices of the early Greeks and other European stocks must be traced back to Mesopotamia as their fountain-head.^[31.1] This will be encouraging to that distinguished writer on Greek religion, Dr. O. Gruppe, who almost a generation ago proclaimed in his Griechische Mythologie the dogma of the emanation of all religion from a single centre, and the dependence of Greece upon the near East.

Now there ought to be no prejudice a priori against such a theory, which stands on a different footing from what I may call the Vedic fallacy: and it is childish to allow to the Aryan, or any other racial bias, any malignant influence in these difficult discussions. Those who have worked for years upon the marvellously rich records of Mesopotamian culture, whether at first hand or, like myself, at second hand, cannot fail to receive the deepest impression of its imperial grandeur and its forceful vitality, and of its intensity of thought and purpose in the sphere of religion. Naturally, they may feel, such spiritual power must have radiated influence far and wide over the adjacent lands; and no one could maintain that South-Eastern Europe was too remote to have been touched, perhaps penetrated, by it. For we know that, under certain conditions, the race-barrier falls down before the march of a conquering and dominating religion. And now, in the new light of a wider historical survey, instead of saying, as once was said, “What is more its own than a people’s gods?” we may rather ask, “What is less its own than a people’s gods?” always, however, remembering that race-tradition, inherited instinctive feeling and thought, is very strong in these matters, and that a people will, often unconsciously, cling to its ancestral modes of religious consciousness and expression, while it will freely borrow alien forms, names, and ritual.

The inquiry indicated by the title of these lectures is naturally twofold; it may be applied either to the earlier or the later periods of the Hellenic and Hellenic-Roman history. The question concerning the later period, though much critical research is needed for its clear solution, is far simpler and more hopeful: for the evidence is immeasurably fuller and more precise, and historical dates and landmarks are there to help. The history of the invasion of the West by Mithraism has been masterfully stated by Cumont; the general influence of the Anatolian religions upon Graeco-Roman society is presented and estimated by the same writer in his Religious Orientales; by Toutain, in his Les Cultes Paiens dans l’Empire Romain; by our own scholar, Samuel Dill, in Roman Society in the last Century of the Western Empire; and more summarily by Salomon Reinach in his Orpheus. Therefore I am not going to pursue the inquiry at this end, although I may have to notice and use some of the later evidence. I am going to raise the question concerning the very origins of the Hellenic religious system, so as to test the recently proclaimed dogma of certain Assyriologists, and to determine, if possible, whether the Orient played any formative part in the organic development of Greek religion. For this is just the question which, I venture to maintain, has never yet been critically explored. From what I have said at the beginning, it is obvious that I cannot promise final and proved results. It will be gain enough if we can dimly discern something behind the veil that shrouds the origins of things, can reach to something that has the air of a reasoned scientific hypothesis, and still more if we can indicate the paths along which one day light may come.

We may then begin at once with stating more clearly what are the necessary conditions for a successful solution of the problem. First, we must accomplish a thorough exploration of the religions of the Anatolian and Mesopotamian lands; secondly, we must explore the Minoan-Mycenaean religion, and estimate the strength of its influence on the later period; thirdly, we must be able to decide what beliefs and practices the Hellenes brought with them from the North; lastly, before we can hope for any precision in our results, we must be able to answer with some degree of accuracy a burning chronological question: What was the date of the arrival through the Balkans from the North of those Aryan-speaking tribes that by mingling with the Southerners formed the Hellenic people of history? For only then shall we be able to test the whole question, by considering the position of the Eastern powers at this momentous epoch. The third of these inquiries, concerning the aboriginal religious ideas of the earliest Aryan Hellenes, is perhaps the most troublesome of all. I may venture upon it at a later occasion, but it is far too difficult and extensive to combine it with the others in a short treatise. Nor can I do more than touch lightly on the Minoan-Mycenaean period; for I wish to devote the greater part of these lectures to the comparative survey of Greece, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, as this task has never yet been critically performed. Something like an attempt was made by Tiele in his Histoire des anciennes Religions, but when that book was written much of the most important evidence had not yet come in.

But before beginning the exploration of any large area, whether for the purposes of Comparative Religion, archaeology, or anthropology, we must possess or acquire certain data of ethnography and secular history. We must, for instance, face the chronological question that I mentioned just above, before we can estimate the formative influences at work in the earliest phases of Hellenic development. Recent archaeological evidence, which I cannot here discuss, renders us valuable aid at this critical point of our inquiry. We can no longer relegate the earliest Hellenic invasion of Greece to a very remote period of Mediterranean history. The arguments from the Minoan culture, combined with the still more striking evidence, of which the value is not yet fully appreciated, obtained by the recent excavations of the British School on the soil of Thessaly,^[34.1] point to the conviction that this, the epoch-making event of the world’s secular and spiritual life, occurred not much earlier than 1500 B.C. On this hypothesis, our quest becomes less vague. We can consider what influences were likely to be radiating from the East upon the opposite shores of the Aegean during those few centuries, in which the Hellenic tribes were passing from barbarism to culture, and the religious beliefs and ritual were developing into that comparatively advanced and complex form of polytheism which is presented about 1000 B.C. in the Homeric poems. By this date we may assert that the Hellenic spirit had evolved certain definite traits and had acquired a certain autonomous power. While continuing always to be quickly responsive to alien influence, it would not henceforth admit the alien product with the submissive and infantine docility of barbarians In fact, when we compare the Homeric religion with that of the fifth century, we feel that in this particular sphere of the social and spiritual life the Hellene in many essentials had already come to his own in the Homeric period. Therefore, in trying to track the earliest streams of influences that moulded his religious consciousness, what was operative before the tenth century is of more primary importance than what was at work upon him afterwards.

Now the most recent researches into Mesopotamian history establish with certainty the conclusion that there was no direct political contact possible between the powers in the valley of the Euphrates and the western shores of the Aegean, in the second millennium B.C. It is true that the first Tiglath-Pileser, near the end of the twelfth century, extended the Assyrian arms to the shores of South-Eastern Asia, to Cilicia and Phoenicia^[35.1]; but there does not seem to have been any permanent Assyrian or Babylonian settlement on this littoral. The city of Sinope in the north, which, as the legend attests and the name that must be derived from the Assyrian god Sin indicates, was originally an Assyrian colony, was probably of later foundation, and geographically too remote to count for the present inquiry. In fact, between the nascent Hellas and the great world of Mesopotamia, there were powerful and possibly independent strata of cultures interposing. We have to reckon first with the great Hittite Kingdom, which included Cappadocia and Northern Syria, and was in close touch with Phrygia and many of the communities of the shore-line of Asia Minor; and which at the period of the Tel-el-Amarna correspondence was in diplomatic relations and on terms of equality with the Assyrian and Egyptian powers. And the tendency of modern students, such as Messerschmidt in his Die Hettiter, is to extend this ethnic name so as to include practically all the Anatolian peoples who were other than the Aryan and Semitic stocks. As far as I can discern, at the present stage of our knowledge this is unscientific; and it is at present safer to regard the pre-Aryan inhabitants of the Troad, Phrygia, Lycia, Caria, and Lydia, possibly Cilicia, as varieties of an ancient Mediterranean stock to which the people of the Minoan-Aegean culture themselves belonged. At any rate, for the purposes of our religious comparison, they are to be counted as a third stratum, through which as through the Hittite the stream of influence from Mesopotamia would be obliged to percolate before it could discharge itself upon the Hellenic world. And these interjacent peoples are races of great mental gifts and force; they were not likely to transmit the Mesopotamian influence pure and unmingled with currents of their own religious life.

Therefore this great problem of old-world religion is no light one; and fallacies here can only be avoided by the most critical intelligence trained on the best method of comparative religious study. We must endeavour to seize and comprehend the most essential and characteristic features of the Babylonian-Assyrian cults and theology; we must discover all that is at present possible, and trust to the future for discovering more, concerning the Hittite religion; and then we must glean all we can of the earliest forms of cult in vogue among the other peoples of the Asia-Minor coast, and in the early world of the Minoan-Mycenaean culture.

And if the phenomena of this area present us with certain general resemblances to the Hellenic, we must not too hastily assume that the West has borrowed from the East. For often in comparing the most remote regions of the world we are struck with strange similarities of myth and cult; and, where the possibility of borrowing is ruled out, we must have recourse to the theory of spontaneous generation working in obedience to similar psychical forces. The hypothesis of borrowing, which is always legitimate where the peoples with whom we are concerned are adjacent, is only raised to proof either when the linguistic evidence is clear, for instance when the divine names or the names of cult-objects are the same in the various districts, or when the points of resemblance in ritual or religious concept are numerous, striking, and fundamental, or peculiar to the communities of a certain area. This is all the more necessary to insist on, because many superficial points of resemblance will be found in all religions that are at the same stage of development.

Now, in beginning this wide comparative survey, one’s first difficulty is to arrange the material in such a way as to enable one to present a comparison that shall be definite and crucial. It would be useless to attempt a mere synoptical outline of the Babylonian-Sumerian religion; those whom that might content will find one in Dr. Pinches’ handbook, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, or Mr. King’s Babylonian Religion, while those who desire a more thorough and detailed presentation of it will doubtless turn to the laborious and critical volumes of Prof. Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens u. Assyriens. But for me to try to present this complex polytheism en bloc would be useless in view of my present object; for two elaborate religious systems cannot effectively be compared en bloc. A more hopeful method for those who have to pass cursorily over a great area, is to select certain salient and essential features separately, and to see how, in regard to each one, the adjacent religious systems agree or differ. And the method I propose to pursue throughout this course is as follows: Ignoring the embryology of the subject, that is to say, all discussions about the genesis of religious forms and ideas that would contribute nothing to our purpose, I will try to define the morphology of the Mesopotamian and Anatolian religions; and will first compare them with the Hellenic in respect of the element of personality in the divine perception, the tendency to, or away from, anthropomorphism, the relation of the deities to the natural world, to the State, and to morality, and I will consider what we can deduce from the study of the famous law-code of Hammurabi. A special question will arise concerning the supremacy of the goddess, a phenomenon which may be of some importance as a clue in our whole inquiry. The comparison will then be applied to the religious psychology of the different peoples; and here it will be useful to analyse and define that element of the religious temper which we call fanaticism, and which sometimes affords one of the crucial distinctions between one religion and another.

We may also obtain evidence from a comparison of the cosmogonic ideas prevalent over this area, so far as the records reveal any, as well as of the eschatological beliefs concerning man’s future destiny and his posthumous existence. Finally, we must compare the various cult-objects and forms of ritual, the significance of the sacrifice; the position and organisation of the priesthood; and here it will be convenient to consider the ritual of magic as well as of the higher service and the part played by magic within the limits of the higher religion. If under each of these heads we have been able to discover certain salient points of divergence or resemblance between the Hellene and the Mesopotamian, we may be able to draw a general deduction of some probability concerning the whole question. In any case we may be encouraged by the assurance that the comparison of two complex and highly developed religions is fruitful and interesting in itself, whether it yields us definite historical conclusions or not.