The Religion of Ancient Palestine in the Second Millenium B.C.

by Stanley Arthur Cook

CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT—CONCLUSION

Miscellaneous Ideas.—Although the native literature of our period consists almost entirely of the begging-letters and reports in the Amarna Tablets, yet even from the language addressed to the human representative of the Sun-God, we may gain some idea of the intellectual environment, some hints, it may be, suggestive of the religious thought of the age.[[1]] The Egyptian monarch is addressed not only as king of lands, king of battle but as a god (pp. [63], [78]). His commands are as powerful as the Sun (Shamash) in Heaven; he is like the Sun which rises over the lands every day, and, as for the rising of the Sun in Heaven, so the writers await the words which come from his mouth. They keep the king's command day and night and acknowledge that the king will curse the man who does not serve him. He who hearkens not to the word of the king, his lord, his city and house go to ruin, and his name will not be in the land for ever; but (says the writer, the king of Tyre) the servant who hearkens to his lord, his city and house flourish, and his name is unto eternity, 'for thou art the Sun which rises over me and the wall of bronze which is lifted up for me.'

[[1]] It need hardly be remarked that the paragraphs classifying the more interesting ideas in the letters from Palestine and Syria have been made as literal as possible.

The vassals do obeisance seven and seven times; they prostrate themselves upon breast and back. (Both attitudes are illustrated in the rather later tomb of Harmheb.) They call themselves the throne on which the king sits, his footstool, the dust of his feet and of the soles of his sandals. They are the ground upon which he treads, the dirt over which he walks; his yoke is upon their neck and they bear it. 'Whether we mount up to heaven or descend to earth, our head is still in your hand,' writes one, and he makes the following striking acknowledgement: 'I look here and I look there and there is no light, but I look to my lord the king and there is light; and though a brick move away from under its coping, I will not move away from under the feet of my lord.' These phrases, which were evidently popular, are used by two other writers. A vassal thus declares his fidelity: 'I have not sinned in aught against the king my lord, I have not sinned; may the lord my king know his evil-doers.' Another seeks the way to his lord, and from his lord deserts not. A confident vassal prays the king not to take anything to heart; let not thy heart be pained, he writes. One writer asks if he is a dog that he should not obey the royal commands, and a second emphasises his remarks by a repetition of the oath 'as the king, my lord, liveth.'

The king of Byblos, who calls his city the king's faithful handmaid, complains of a deed against his city which had not been done since eternity; the dogs (i.e. his adversaries) act after their hearts and cause the king's cities to go up in smoke. The fields are like a wife without a husband through lack of sustenance. He himself is caught like a bird in a cage. Again, he is old and stricken with disease; the gods of Byblos are enraged, and the illness is very severe, but, he continues, 'I have opened (confessed) my sins to the gods.' He declares that since the day he received favour from the king his heart had not changed, his face is (fixed) to serve him; if the king's heart is for his city (or, elsewhere, if it is on his heart) let him send help.

The vassals write that they stretch out their hand to the king's feet, or pray that the king may extend his hand unto them. The citizens of Tunip assert: 'thy city weeps and its tears flow; there is no seizing of the hand (help) for us.' The ruler of Beirut trusts that the royal troops may shatter the heads of the king's enemies, while his servant's eyes gaze (i.e. with pleasure) upon the king's life. The elders of a city entreat: 'May the king our lord hearken to the words of his true servants, and give a present to his servants, while our enemies look on and eat the dust; let not the king's breath depart from us.' The king is the breath of his vassals' lives; they rejoice when it reaches them, for without it they cannot live. The thought was a common one, and in an Egyptian text the defeated Hittites are represented as saying to Ramses II. 'in praising the Good God (i.e. the king) "Give to us the breath that thou givest, lo, we are under thy sandals."' Equally interesting are the words of the prince of Sidon on the receipt of tidings from the king, 'my heart rejoiced, my head was uplifted and my eyes shone.'

Finally, the king of Jerusalem in his letters to his god, his Sun, protests that one has slandered him (lit. eaten the pieces). While other writers disclaim guilt or sin (khitu), i.e. rebellion, he asserts that he has been loyal (saduk) in his dealings. He acknowledges that neither his father nor his mother appointed him in his place, the king's strong arm has set him up in his father's house, he has 'put his name upon Jerusalem for ever,' therefore he cannot abandon its territory. Indeed, his recognition of Pharaoh's supremacy is unique, and in one of his communications to the king his Sun, after the usual obeisance ('at the feet of my lord, seven times and seven times I fall'), he declares that his lord 'has put his name upon the East and upon the West.'

The Underlying Identity of Thought throughout the old Oriental world shows itself alike in Egyptian texts and in Hittite tablets from Boghaz-keui. The literature of Babylonia, Assyria, and often, too, of Egypt so frequently has analogies and parallels in the Old Testament, that we may assume that similar points of contact would be found, had we some of the religious writings of the Palestine of our period. Though we do not know how the Palestinian addressed his gods, the evidence whether direct or indirect partially enables us to fill the gap. Even the simplicity and poverty of Oriental pastoral life have never been accompanied by a corresponding inferiority of expression or dearth of religious reflection. An unbiased examination of the external religious literature shows the position which the deities held in the thoughts of their groups of worshippers. Religion was quite part of life, and the same fundamental conceptions underlay the manifold social-religious systems whether tribal or monarchical. To their head each group looked for all the gifts of nature and also for protection and succour; him they were loyally prepared to sustain, and they expected a corresponding loyalty on his part.

A topical example of the identity of thought is furnished by a hymn of the monotheist Ikhnaton in honour of Aton. The deities are largely what circumstances make them; the extension of Egypt's empire extended the supremacy of the national-god, the situation encouraged the conception of a world-god. Now, this domesticated and somewhat weak monarch, holding himself aloof from politics, endeavoured to found a cult of the sun-disc which was characteristically devoid of the usual association of the sun with the destructive aspect of the storm- or weather-god. Like other individual faiths, it was stamped with a profound spirit of humanity. Ikhnaton's deity was the sole god, beside whom there was no other; the beginning of life, the creator of 'the countries of Syria, Nubia, the land of Egypt'; the maker of all mankind diverse in speech, and of all that is upon the earth and on high. It was a despotic and ill-timed monotheism. It introduced a cult which was too far from ordinary worship, one which threatened to overthrow the old-established deities. What was probably more important was the fact that the deity had not the forceful and dominating attributes of the old sun-god. He was not a god of war, and, from the current standpoint, would be of no avail in the political storms which were beating upon the Egyptian empire in Asia. But this remarkable attempt at a reform claims attention especially because the cult was as little upon traditional and specifically Egyptian lines as was the idea of the beneficent life-giving sun whose rays were not confined to Egypt alone. As Professor Breasted has observed, the hymn is especially interesting for its similarity in thought and sequence with the late Psalm civ. There is no evidence, however, that any effort was made to spread Ikhnaton's cult over the Egyptian dominions in Western Asia, and the possibility of Asiatic influence upon the shaping of the cult cannot be altogether excluded. We quote a few lines from Professor Breasted's translation to illustrate Ikhnaton's conceptions of the sun-god, whose worship was one of the most popular in Babylonia and Assyria, who, indeed, was regarded there not merely as an illuminator but as a supreme and righteous judge, the god of truth and justice.