Demonology and Devil-lore

by Moncure Daniel Conway

War in Heaven.

The ‘Other’—Tiamat, Bohu, ‘the Deep’—Ra and Apophis—Hathors—Bel’s combat—Revolt in Heaven—Lilith—Myth of the Devil at the creation of Light.

In none of the ancient scriptures do we get back to any theory or explanation of the origin of evil or of the enemies of the gods. In a Persian text at Persepolis, of Darius I., Ahriman is called with simplicity ‘the Other’ (Aniya), and ‘the Hater’ (Duvaisañt, Zend thaīsat), and that is about as much as we are really told about the devils of any race. Their existence is taken for granted. The legends of rebellion in heaven and of angels cast down and transformed to devils may supply an easy explanation to our modern theologians, but when we trace them to their origin we discover that to the ancients they had no such significance. The angels were cast down to Pits prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and before it, and when they fell it was into the hands of already existing enemies eager to torment them. Nevertheless these accounts of rebellious spirits in heaven are of great importance and merit our careful consideration.

It is remarkable that the Bible opens with an intimation of the existence of this ‘Other.’ Its second verse speaks of a certain ‘darkness upon the face of the deep.’ The word used here is Bohu, which is identified as the Assyrian Bahu, the Queen of Hades. In the inscription of Shalmaneser the word is used for ‘abyss of chaos.’[1] Bahu is otherwise Gula, a form of Ishtar or Allat, ‘Lady of the House of Death,’ and an epithet of the same female demon is Nin-cigal, ‘Lady of the Mighty Earth.’ The story of the Descent of Ishtar into Hades, the realm of Nin-cigal, has already been told (p. 77); in that version Ishtar is the same as Astarte, the Assyrian Venus. But like the moon with which she was associated she waned and declined, and the beautiful legend of her descent (like Persephone) into Hades seems to have found a variant in the myth of Bel and the Dragon. There she is a sea-monster and is called Tiamat (Thalatth of Berosus),—that is, ‘the Deep,’ over which rests the darkness described in Genesis i. 2. The process by which the moon would share the evil repute of Tiamat is obvious. In the Babylonian belief the dry land rested upon the abyss of watery chaos from which it was drawn. This underworld ocean was shut in by gates. They were opened when the moon was created to rule the night—therefore Prince of Darkness. The formation by Anu of this Moon-god (Uru) from Tiamat, might even have been suggested by the rising of the tides under his sway. The Babylonians represent the Moon as having been created before the Sun, and he emerged from ‘a boiling’ in the abyss. ‘At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, his horns are breaking through to shine on heaven.’[2] In the one Babylonian design, a seal in the British Museum,[3] which seems referable to the legend of the Fall of Man, the male figure has horns. It may have been that this male Moon (Uru) was supposed to have been corrupted by some female emanation of Tiamat, and to have fallen from a ‘ruler of the night’ to an ally of the night. This female corrupter, who would correspond to Eve, might in this way have become mistress of the Moon, and ultimately identified with it.

Although the cause of the original conflict between the Abyss beneath and the Heaven above is left by ancient inscriptions and scriptures to imagination, it is not a very strained hypothesis that ancient Chaos regarded the upper gods as aggressors on her domain in the work of creation. ‘When above,’ runs the Babylonian legend, ‘were not raised the heavens, and below on the earth a plant had not grown ... the chaos (or water) Tiamat was the producing mother of the whole of them.’ ‘The gods had not sprung up, any one of them.’[4] Indeed in the legend of the conflict between Bel and the Dragon, on the Babylonian cylinders, it appears that the god Sar addressed her as wife, and said, ‘The tribute to thy maternity shall be forced upon them by thy weapons.’[5] The Sun and Moon would naturally be drawn into any contest between Overworld (with Light) and Underworld (with Darkness).

Though Tiamat is called a Dragon, she was pictured by the Babylonians only as a monstrous Griffin. In the Assyrian account of the fight it will be seen that she is called a ‘Serpent.’ The link between the two—Griffin and Serpent—will be found, I suspect, in Typhonic influence on the fable. In a hymn to Amen-Ra (the Sun), copied about fourteenth century b.c. from an earlier composition, as its translator, Mr. Goodwin, supposes, we have the following:—

The gods rejoice in his goodness who exalts those who are lowly:

Lord of the boat and barge,

They conduct thee through the firmament in peace.

Thy servants rejoice: