We know still less what is reserved for us in the graffiti scattered in the intermediate region between Hedjaz and Yemen; the graphic chain cannot have been interrupted in this latitude, which from great antiquity formed the entrance to the highly civilised kingdom of Sheba, and which, owing to its production of aromatic essences, had commercial relations with the peoples of the Mediterranean.
Yemen was composed of four kingdoms, of which that of Sheba seems to have been the most ancient and most powerful; the other three are Catabania, Hadramaut, Mahrah or Tafat. Of the latter we have no indigenous information prior to Islamism, and there is reason to believe that it formed a vassal state of Hadramaut. The latter is pre-eminently the spice-producing region, and Catabania may be considered as an ancient colony of Hadramaut, which was founded on the northern route for a commercial purpose, and later gained its independence.
In its turn Catabania founded, again, on the northern route, another colony, which, on gaining its freedom, called itself the Minyæan people, after the principal city, Ma’in. The Minyæi left traces of their activity at Egra on the frontier of Nabatia, and in central Egypt at Oxyrhyncus, where they had a settlement at the time of the first Ptolemies; but their presence in Egypt in the Persian period is proved by a votive inscription, thanking their gods for having saved their caravan from the danger by which it had been threatened during the war between the Egyptians and the Medes, i.e., the Persians. From Egypt they sent their caravans to Gaza in Phœnicia and into all Syria.
Prior to this the trade in incense and spices seems to have been in the hands of the Sabæans. Solomon (about the year 1000 B.C.) sought to make a treaty with this people, whose queen had made him an official visit at Jerusalem. It is to be presumed that the Sabæans also sent caravans directly to Nineveh and Babylon by way of the oases of Negran, Wady Dawassir, and Gebel-Sammar. Owing to these almost uninterrupted visits, the peoples of southern Arabia were in a position to learn and practise customs and rites peculiar to the eastern Semites; for example, the employment of aromatic fumigation as a means of purification after sexual intercourse. The Sabæan pantheon contained El (the Assyrio-Babylonian Ilu) under the guise of a divine personage, and not simply as an abstract term for “god.” The Babylonian Ishtar, daughter of Sin, is transformed into a male divinity, Athtar, son of Sin. The manifold diversification of the Babylonian goddess appears also in the Sabæan Athtar; the great religious centres of Sheba each possess their own Athtar. Nabu, the Babylonian god of writing and prophecy, was also worshipped by the Catabanians under the somewhat disguised form of Anbai. From the point of view of art, the technique of sculpture and decoration often recalls the Babylonian style. Finally, we meet in the kingdom of Sheba the Assyrian institution of the limmi, or annual archons, an institution that existed also at Carthage, but nowhere else on the Asiatic continent, least of all in a monarchical state.
We know very little of the religion of the Agazi or Semites of Abyssinia; a pre-Christian inscription asserts, however, that the cult of El and of Astar (Astarte) flourished among them. Their pantheon included also a god of war called Mahram, the equivalent of the Ninib or Adar of the Semites of the north.
On the opposite side, at the extreme east of the Arabian peninsula, along the Persian gulf, the most important agglomeration formed the kingdom of Gerrha. The Gerrhæans maintained commercial relations with both Egypt and Chaldea. One of their cities bore the name of Bilbana, “Bil (Bel) has built,” a certain indication that it had adopted the cult of the most popular Babylonian god. Facing this coast is the Bahrein group of islands, the largest of which contains a number of tombs in which cuneiform inscriptions in the Babylonian language have been found.
We have now made the round of the whole Semitic region, and everywhere we have been able to show striking Babylonian influences in spite of the enormous distance in time and space that separates the converging rays from their point of radiation. But before concluding, we must halt upon a particular territory, a territory that forms but an imperceptible point in this vast region, but which in spite of its material diminutiveness brought forth a nation that was destined to assume the glorious rôle of being the legitimate heir of the great Babylonian ancestor, and of directing the conscience not only of the Semitic race, but of the most civilised portion of the human race in general.
This nation, which chance seems to have thrown into the world without defence, in the midst of hostile elements that were furious for its destruction, and whose name, Israel, exactly symbolises the unremitting struggle against the terribly destructive powers that surround it, this nation, I say, had the strength to transform the splendid polytheistic heritage that had fallen to it from Babylon into a monotheistic theory of an astounding originality. The transformation of the antique legacy took place only after centuries of struggle between the best part of the nation, the party of the prophets, and the conservatism of the mass of the people, who were everywhere attached to the ancient traditions.
The writings of this monotheistic minority, which finally imposed itself upon the entire nation, enable us to appreciate the importance of the ancient elements, the dross of which was rejected in the refining process of the prophets. Genesis has preserved two great and very characteristic Babylonian epics,—the Creation, and the Deluge,—but how different in spirit, in spite of the close similarity in outline and external form.
In the Babylonian cosmogony, chaos, incarnate in the female dragon Tiamat, the primordial ocean, brings forth at the same time the gods and the most horrible, malevolent monsters. Having learned that the gods wish to build themselves a more commodious residence in her domain, she gathers her forces, furiously attacks the clan of gods, and puts them to flight. They unite again and choose as their champion Marduk, the son of Yan, who succeeds in vanquishing the terrible ancestress. Marduk cuts the body of Tiamat into two pieces, and of them he constructs heaven and earth. Then he proceeds to make the heavenly bodies, and arranges them in an immutable order; he stocks the earth with plants and animals, and has man made by the goddess Arura, who fashions him out of the dust of the earth.