But though this idea is common to the Mesopotamian and Hellenic communities, they differ widely in respect of the evidence they afford, of the prevalence of human sacrifice. As regards ancient Greece, the evidence is indubitable, though much that has been brought by modern scholars is due to false interpretation of ritual, such as the scourging of the Spartan boys; later, the human sacrifice became repugnant to the advancing ethical thought of the nation, but according to one authority did not wholly die out till the age of Hadrian. On the other hand, no literary text nor any monument has yet been found that proves the existence of such a ritual in Babylonia. In one of his biographical inscriptions Assurbanipal proclaims that he “sacrificed” prisoners of war to avenge his murdered father on the spot where his father was slain.[244.2] He boasts of worse things than this; and we can well believe that he murdered them in cold blood. But the words by no means suggest a ceremonious tomb-ritual with human sacrifice.
Slightly more important is a passage in a legal document, to which Mr. Johns[245.1] calls attention; whence it appears that a forfeit for reopening an already adjudicated cause was the consecration of one’s eldest child by fire to a god or goddess; and, as incense and cedar-wood are mentioned in the same context as concomitants of the threatened ceremony, the conclusion seems natural that this was once at least a real threat of human sacrifice inflicted as a legal punishment. This legal clause gives us the right to conclude that in the earliest period the Semites and Sumerians of Mesopotamia occasionally resorted to this rite. They would be indeed a peculiar people and a favoured nation if they had always been innocent of it. It is sufficiently attested by direct evidence, either of record or excavation, or by the suggestion of legend, of the Arabs, Syrians, the early Canaanites,[245.2] the Israelites, the Phoenicians; also of the Phrygians and other non-Semitic peoples of Anatolia. Yet it must be put to the credit of the Babylonian culture of the second millennium, that the Mesopotamians had either completely or almost abandoned it. At this time it was doubtless in full vogue in Greece; and certainly Babylon could not have been their evil teacher in this matter. But they needed no teachers in what was an ancient tradition of their northern ancestors, and of the people with whom they mingled. Yet only twenty years ago a distinguished writer on Greek ritual could say, “It is certain that the Hellenes borrowed the practice of human sacrifice from the Orientals.”[246.1]
As we discover no trace of the idea of communion in the ordinary Babylonian sacrifice, we are the less surprised that scarcely any hint is given by the sacred literature or monuments of any mystic application of the blood of the victim, which was used for so many purposes of communion-ritual by the early Hellenes and Hebrews. I can find no other evidence for this in Mesopotamia except one passage quoted by Zimmern,[246.2] in which the sacrificer is ordered to sprinkle some part of the door with the blood of the lamb. It is not probable that the Babylonians were incapable of the notion that by physical contact with certain sacred objects a temporary communion could be established between the mortal and the divinity: it appears, for instance, in one of the formulae of the purification-ritual—“May the torch of the Fire-god cleanse me”[246.3]—in the yearly practice of the king grasping the hands of the idol of the god, perhaps in the custom of attaching the worshipper to the deity with a cord,[246.4] and in the diviner’s habit of grasping the cedar-staff, which is called “the beloved of the gods.”[246.5] But it may be that they never applied this notion to the sacrifice, so as to evolve the institution of the communion-meal; or they may have evolved it in early times, and through long ages of power the priests may have become strong enough to suppress it and to substitute for it the gift-ritual, which would be more profitable for themselves. It accords with this absence of any mystic significance in the sacrifice that we do not find in the Babylonian service any mystic use of the sacrificial skins, of which some evidence can be gathered from various details of Greek ritual.[247.1]
Again, the Babylonian records have so far failed to reveal any evidence for any such public ceremony as the sending forth of the scapegoat, whether human or animal, charged with the sins of the community. This ritual was common to the Hellenes, Egyptians, and Hebrews, and probably to other Semitic communities.[247.2] The idea of sin-transference on which it rests was familiar enough to the ancient Babylonian; but he seems only to have built upon this a private system of exorcism and purgation of sin and disease for the individual. As far as we know, it did not occur to him to effect by this method a solemn annual expulsion of all the sins of the nation.
On the other hand, there is another type of sacrifice common to Babylonia and Greece, by which an oath or an engagement might be cemented: the animal is slaughtered with an imprecation that the same fate may befall him who breaks his oath or violates the compact. Zimmern quotes a good example of this, relating to the compact made between the Assyrian king Assurnirari and Mati’ilu, prince of Arpad:[248.1] a sheep is sacrificed and the formula pronounced: “This head is not the head of a sheep, it is the head of Mati’ilu, of his sons, of his great ones, of the people of his land. If Mati’ilu breaks this oath, the head of Mati’ilu will be cut off, like the head of this sheep.” The same idea underlies the oath-sacrifice in the Iliad,[248.2] though it is not expressed with such naïve make-believe or such logic in the detail; but as the beast is slaughtered or wine poured, a curse is uttered invoking on the perjured a similar fate, or with a prayer that “his brains may be poured out like this wine.” The original idea is magical: the symbolic explanation is later. Another parallel is the Latin oath over the stone.[248.3]
Such resemblance in special forms by no means weakens the impression that we receive from the striking differences discernible in the Babylonian and Hellenic significance of sacrifice. To those already noted we may add yet another, which concerns the association of sacrifice with divination. It is Professor Jastrow’s opinion[248.4] that the chief motive of the Babylonian sacrifice was the inspection of the liver of the victim, from the markings of which the skilled expert could interpret the future by a conventional system revealed to us in certain ancient Babylonian documents. This superstition is so elaborate and artificial that if we find it in adjacent countries, it is more reasonable to suppose that one borrowed it from the other, than that it was developed independently in each. We find it in later Greece, Etruria, and Rome; but the evidence of the Homeric poems suggests that it was unknown to the Hellenes of the earlier period. They are very likely to have borrowed it from Babylonian sources in post-Homeric times; and we note here, as in other cases where the influence of Babylon upon Greece can be reasonably posited, it reaches the western shores of the Aegean at a post-Homeric rather than a pre-Homeric epoch.
The comparative study of Mesopotamian and Hellenic sacrifice confronts us finally with another problem belonging to the history of religions, and one of the greatest, the dogma of the death of the divinity and the origin and significance of that belief. For where the mystic type of communion-sacrifice is found, where the animal that is slain for the sacrament is regarded as the incarnation of the deity, the divinity may be supposed himself to die temporarily, doubtless to rise again to life, either immediately or at some subsequent festival. This momentous conclusion need not always have been drawn, for religious logic is not often persistently thorough, nor does the evolution of the idea belong necessarily to the sphere of totemism, as Robertson Smith supposed, and M. Reinach is still inclined to maintain. It is not my concern here to discuss the totemistic hypothesis, but I may point out that in the rare examples where the totem-animal is slain, it is not clear that it is slain as a divinity.
Again, the belief in the periodic death of a deity might arise independently of the sacrifice, namely, from the essential idea of the godhead itself, when the divine life is identified with the annual life of vegetation: the phenomena of nature in autumn and spring may suggest to the worshipper the annual death and resurrection of the god or goddess. It is important to note that in this, as in the other source of the belief, the conclusion need not always have been drawn, for the vegetation-deity might be supposed not to die in autumn or winter, but merely to disappear, and the story of his or her disappearance need not carry the same religious consequences as the story of the divine death.
The immolation of the divine victim in a communion-service, wherein the worshippers partake symbolically or realistically of the divine flesh and blood, though suggested by a thought that we must call savage, may be pregnant with consequences momentous for higher religion, as the history of Christian dogma attests. And even the annual death of the nature-god may be raised to a higher significance than its mere nature-meaning, and may be linked with the promise of human immortality.
We may note, finally, that a religion which expresses in its ritual the idea of the deity’s death and resurrection is likely to be charged with a stronger emotional force than one that lacks it; for the two events will excite an ecstasy of sorrow and of joy in the believer.