Greece and Babylon

by Lewis Richard Farnell

CHAPTER IV.
Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism in Asia
Minor and the Mediterranean.

A comparison made according to the test we have just applied is not so important as that which arises in the second stage of the inquiry. Assuming that the peoples on the east and west of the Aegean were already on the same religious plane when the first glimmer of what may be called history begins, can we discern certain striking resemblances or differences in their conception and imagination of divinity, sufficient to prove or disprove the theory of borrowing or of a movement across large areas of certain waves of religious influence emanating from a fixed centre?

The comparison now becomes more complex, and can only be summarily attempted. The first leading question concerns the way in which the personal divine being is imagined. In Mesopotamia was the religious perception dominatingly anthropomorphic, not merely in the sense that the higher divine attributes were suggested by the higher moral and spiritual life of humanity, but in the more material sense that the deity was imagined and represented habitually in human form? This question has been summarily treated in the first chapter. The Mesopotamian cults are mainly anthropomorphic; in the earliest hymns and liturgies, as well as in the art-monuments, the divinities appear to have been imagined as glorified human forms. The figure of Shamash on the relief, where he sits enthroned inspiring Hammurabi,^[52.1] the form of Ninni bringing the captives to Annabanini,^[52.2] prove a very early dominance of anthropomorphic art in Mesopotamia. And the rule holds true on the whole of nearly all the great divinities of the Pantheon; the statue of Nebo the scribe-god in the British Museum,^[52.3] and the representation of him on the cylinders, are wholly anthropomorphic. The seven planetary deities on the relief from Maltaija are human-shaped entirely;^[52.4] we may say the same of the procession of deities on the relief from a palace of Nineveh published by Layard,^[52.5] except that Marduk has horns branching from the top of his head; just as on the alabaster relief containing the scene of worship noted above,^[52.6] and on the wall-relief in the British Museum he is represented with wings; but even the rigorous anthropomorphism of Greece tolerated both these adjuncts to the pure human type. The types of Ramman the weather-god,^[52.7] and the representations of a Babylonian goddess, who is occasionally found with a child on her knee, and whom sometimes we may recognise as Ishtar, show nothing that is theriomorphic. On the other hand, we must note exceptions to this general rule. In one of the cuneiform inscriptions that describe certain types of deities, we read the following: “Horn of a bull, clusters of hair falling on his back; human countenance, and strength of a…; wings… and lion’s body.” And this description agrees exactly, as Jeremias has pointed out, with the winged colossal figures, half-lion, half-man, that guarded the gate of the palace of Nineveh. And we must therefore interpret them as gods, not as mere genii; and he gives some reason for regarding them as a type of Nergal, the god of the underworld.^[53.1]

Further, we find in an inscription of Asarhaddon the following prayer: “May the gracious bull-god and lion-god ever dwell in that palace, protecting the path of my royalty.”^[53.2]

There is some doubt in regard to the winged figures with eagles’ heads on the reliefs from Khorsabad, in the British Museum (pl. 38-40): they are represented holding pine-cones and a “cista mystica” on each side of the sacred tree, and might be genii engaged in worship; but on one of the reliefs Assur-nasir-Pal is standing before one of them in attitude of adoration.

But the most clear and definite evidence on this point is afforded by the legend and monuments of the god whom Berosos calls Oannes,^[53.3] but whom modern Assyriology interprets as the ocean-born god Ea or Ae of Eridu, the god of all wisdom and science. According to Berosos, he had entirely a fish body, but a human head had grown under the head of the fish, human feet out of the fish’s tail, and he spoke with human voice: a statue of this type was still existing at Babylon according to this writer in the time of Alexander. Now the exact type is presented in the form that appears on various Babylonian cylinders; there is one that presents the fish-man-god standing before the tree of Life—receiving a ray perhaps from the sun above:^[53.4] and half his form from the girdle downwards is preserved on a bas-relief published by Layard,^[54.1] showing him holding the bread of life in one hand and in the other a vase containing the water of life. Here, then, is theriomorphism struggling with anthropomorphism as we see it strikingly in the religious monuments of Egypt.

But we have no need of the theory, dear to some anthropologists—that the earliest period of Mesopotamian religion was purely theriomorphic, when the deities were imagined and represented merely as animals, and that the human-shaped deities whom we find standing on lions in the Babylonian art had once been divine lions and nothing more, and had at a later period emerged from the animal into divine manhood. Theriomorphism and anthropomorphism can and generally do confusedly co-exist: neither in the lowest savagery or at the highest culture is there found a purely theriomorphic art or theriomorphic religion; on the other hand, severe anthropomorphism among the ancient religions is to be found only in the Hellenic, and we may add in the Judaic, though here with a quite different mode of expression and far more sternly controlled. In Mesopotamia we have nothing that points to a direct worship of animals,^[54.2] but we discern that the anthropomorphism is unstable; the religious artist mainly clung to it, except when he was embodying forms of terror, the destructive demons, and especially the powers of the lower world: for this purpose he selected the most portentous types of bestiality, such as we find on that bronze tablet, which used to be regarded as revealing an interesting glimpse into Babylonian eschatology: at least we may be sure that the lion-headed female above the horse in the canoe, at whose breasts two small lions are sucking, is the goddess of Hell.^[55.1] It was probably through his association with the world of death that Nergal acquired something of the lion’s nature, and even the very human goddess Ishtar might assume a lion’s head when she was unusually wroth, though this rests on a doubtful text. We may say, then, with fair degree of accuracy, that the theriomorphic forms of Babylonian religious art belong to demonology; and in this domain the Babylonian artist has shown the same powerful imagination as the Mycenaean: it is the former to whom we are indebted for the attractively alarming type of the scorpion-man.

The phrase “unstable anthropomorphism” applies also to the religious literature, to the Sumerian-Babylonian hymns. The imagination of the poets in their highest exaltation was certainly anthropomorphic on the whole; the high divinities are conceived and presented with the corporeal, moral, and spiritual traits of glorified humanity. But often in the ecstasy of invocation the religious poets felt the human image too narrow and straightened for their struggling sense of the Infinite. Then the expression becomes mystic, and by virtue of a curious law that I indicated above, it avails itself of theriomorphic imagery.^[55.2] I quoted the hymn to the warrior Marduk that invokes him as “Black Bull of the deep, Lion of the Dark House.” Of still more interest is the invocation of Enlil, the earth-god of Sumer: “Overpowering ox, exalted overpowering ox, at thy word which created the world, O lord of lands, lord of the word of life, O Enlil, Father of Sumer, shepherd of the dark-haired people, thou who hast vision of thyself.”^[56.1] Seven times the words “overpowering ox” are added in this mystic incantation. In another hymn Enlil is “the Bull that overwhelms”; Ea, “the Ram of Eridu.”

But this is mystic symbolism, rather than a clear perception of divine personality; and we may say the same of such vaguely picturesque phrases as “Bel, the great mountain,” “Asur, the great rock,” an expression parallel to our “Rock of Ages.”^[56.2]

It naturally happens in a religion of unstable anthropomorphism that the different personalities are unfixed and may melt away one into the other, or may become conceived as metaphysical emanations, thus losing concrete individuality. As Dr. Langdon remarks of Babylonian religious phraseology, “the god himself becomes mystified, he retires into the hazy conception of an all-pervading spirit, and his word becomes the active agent.”^[56.3] Thus even the strongly personal goddess “Nana” is identified with the word of Enlil; she herself exclaims, “Of the Lord his word am I.” His statement accords with the general impression that the liturgies and monuments of this vast and complex religion make upon the student. One discerns that the religious art, and to some extent the religious poetry, developed and strengthened the anthropomorphic faith and perception of the people, but not so powerfully as to preclude a mysticising tendency towards metaphysical speculation that transcended the limits of a polytheism of concrete personalities. Even Allatu, the goddess of Hell, she who was presented with the dog’s head and the lions at the breast, was half spiritualised by the epithet which is rendered “spirit-wind of the consecrate.”^[57.1]