But such general traits of resemblance in two developed polytheisms deceive no trained inquirer; and it would be childish to base a theory of borrowing on them. What is far more important are the marked differences in the nature-side of the Greek polytheism, as compared with the Sumerian-Babylonian. In the latter, the solar-element was very strong, though perhaps not so omnipresent as some Assyriologists assure us. On the contrary, in the proto-Hellenic system it was strikingly weak, so far as we can interpret the evidence. The earliest Hellenes certainly regarded the Sun as a personal animate being, though the word Helios did not necessarily connote for them an anthropomorphic god. But the insignificance of his figure in the Homeric poems agrees well with the facts of actual cult. As I have pointed out in the last volume of my Cults,[111.1] it was only at Rhodes that Helios was a great personal god, appealing to the faith and affections of the people, revered as their ancestor and the author of their civilisation, and descending, we may believe, from the period of the Minoan culture[111.2] with which Rhodes was closely associated in legend. And it appears from the evidence of legend and Minoan art that sun-worship was of some power in the pre-Hellenic Aegean civilisation. In the Mycenaean epoch he may have had power in Corinth, but his cult faded there in the historic age before that of Athena and Poseidon. The developed Hellene preferred the more personal deity, whose name did not so obviously suggest a special phenomenon of nature. And if he inherited or adopted certain solar personages, as some think he adopted a sun-god Ares from Thrace, he seems to have transformed them by some mental process so as to obliterate the traces of the original nature-perception.
Even more significant for our purpose is the comparison of the two regions from the point of view of lunar-cult. We have sufficiently noted already the prominence of the moon-god Sin in the Babylonian pantheon, an august figure of a great religion: and among all the Semitic peoples the moon was a male personality, as it appears to have been for the Vedic Indians and other Aryan peoples. The Hellenic imagination here presents to us this salient difference, that the personal moon is feminine, and she seems to have enjoyed the scantiest cult of all the great powers of Nature. Not that anywhere in Greece she was wholly without worship.[112.1] She is mentioned in a vague record as one of the divinities to whom νηφάλια, “wineless offerings,” were consecrated in Athens: she had an ancient place in the aboriginal religion of Arcadia; of her worship in other places the records are usually late and insignificant. The great Minoan goddess may have attracted to herself some lunar significance, but this aspect of her was not pronounced.
Here, then, is another point at which the theory of early Babylonian influence in nascent Hellenic religion seriously breaks down. And in this comparison of Nature-cults it breaks down markedly at two others. The pantheon of Mesopotamia had early taken on an astral-character. The primitive Hellenes doubtless had, like other peoples, their star-myths; and their superstitions were aroused and superstitious practices evoked by celestial “teratology,” by striking phenomena, such as eclipses, comets, falling stars.[113.1] But there is no record suggesting that they paid direct worship to the stars, or that their deities were astral personations, or were in the early period associated with the stars: such association, where it arose, is merely a sign of that wave of Oriental influence that moved westward in the later centuries. The only clear evidences of star-cult in Hellenic communities that I have been able to find do not disturb this induction: Lykophron and a late Byzantine author indicate a cult of Zeus Ἀστέριος in Crete, which cannot, even if real, be interpreted as direct star-worship:[113.2] at Sinope, a city of Assyrian origin, named after the Babylonian moon-god, a stone with a late inscription suggests a cult of Seirios and the constellations;[113.3] and an Attic inscription of the Roman Imperial epoch, mentions a priest of the φωσφόροι, whom we must interpret as stellar beings.[113.4] What, then, must we say about the Dioskouroi, whom we are generally taught to regard as the personal forms of the morning- and the evening-star? Certainly, if the astral character of the great Twin-Brethren of the Hellenes were provedly their original one, the general statement just put forth would have to be seriously modified. But a careful study of their cult does not justify the conventional view; and the theory that Wide has insisted on[113.5] appears to me the only reasonable account of them, namely, that originally they were heroic “chthonian” figures, to whom a celestial character came later to be attached: it is significant that the astral aspect of them is only presented in comparatively late documents and monuments, not in Homer or the Homeric hymn, and that their most ancient ritual includes a “lectisternium,” which properly belonged to heroes and personages of the lower world.
Lastly, the nature-worship of the Hellenes was pre-eminently concerned with Mother-earth—with Ge-meter, and this divine power in its varied personal forms was perhaps of all others the nearest and dearest to the popular heart: so much of their ritual was concerned directly with her. And some scholars have supposed, erroneously, I think, but not unnaturally, that all the leading Hellenic goddesses arose from this aboriginal animistic idea. We may at least believe this of Demeter and Kore, the most winning personalities of the higher Hellenic religion. And even Athena and Artemis, whatever, if any, was their original nature-significance, show in many of their aspects and much of their ritual a close affinity to the earth-goddess. But, as I have indicated above, it is impossible to find in the early Mesopotamian religion a parallel figure to Ge: though Ishtar was naturally possessed of vegetative functions—so that, when she disappears below the world, all vegetation languishes—yet it would be hazardous to say that she was a personal form of earth: we may rather suspect that by the time the Semites brought her to Mesopotamia from the West, she had lost all direct nature-significance, and was wholly a personal individual.
Finally, the cleavage between the two groups of peoples in their attitude towards the powers of nature is still further marked in the evolution of certain moral and eschatologic ideas. The concept of a Ge-Themis, of Earth as the source of righteousness, and of Mother-earth as the kindly welcomer of the souls of the dead, appears to have been alien to Mesopotamian imagination, for which, Allatu, the Queen of the lower world, is a figure wholly terrible.
CHAPTER VII.
The Deities as Social-Powers.
The next important section of our survey is the comparison of the social and ethical aspects of the religions in the eastern and western areas. Here again the former warning may be repeated, not to draw rash conclusions from the observance of mere general points of similarity, such as occur in the religious systems of all the more advanced societies of which we have any explicit record.
The idea that religion is merely a concern of the private individual conscience is one of the latest phenomena in all religious history. Both for the primitive and the more cultured communities of ancient history, religion was by a law of its nature a social phenomenon, a force penetrating all the institutions of the political life, law and morality. But its precise contribution to the evolution of certain social products in the various communities is still a question inviting and repaying much research. It will be interesting to compare what may be gleaned from Assyriology and the study of Hellenism bearing on this inquiry, although it may not help us much towards the solution of our main question.
We may assume of the Mesopotamian as of other peoples, that its “social origins” were partly religious; only in the valley of the Euphrates, society had already so far advanced in the fifth millennium B.C. that the study of its origins will be always problematic. The deities are already national, having developed far beyond the narrow tribal limits before we begin to discern them clearly; we have not to deal with the divinities of clans, phratries, or septs, but of complex aggregates, such as cities and kingdoms. And the great cities are already there before our knowledge begins.
In the Sumerian myth of creation, it is the high god himself who, after settling the order of heaven and earth, immediately constructs cities such as Borsippa; a passage in Berosus speaks of Oannes, that is to say, Ea as the founder of cities and temples;[117.1] and the myths may enshrine the truth that the origin of the Mesopotamian city was often religious, that the temple was its nucleus. I cannot discover that this is indicated by the names of any other of the great cities, Babylon, Borsippa, Sippar, Kutha; but it is shown by the name of Nineveh and its connection with the Sumerian goddess Nin or Nina, possibly a form of Ishtar.[117.2] And in the inscription of Sargon giving the names of the eight doors of his palace, all named after deities, Ninib is described as the god “who lays the ground-stone of the city for eternity”;[117.3] also we find designations of particular cities, as the city of such-and-such a deity.[117.4] Finally, it may be worth noting in this direction that Nusku the fire-god, who lights the sacrifices, is called “the City-Founder, the Restorer of Temples.”[117.5]