The Assyrio-Chaldean cult had a very solemn ritual; we already have a great number of hymns addressed to the principal divinities; and as every month and every day of the month was under the protection of a particular divinity, one may understand that the Assyrio-Chaldean ritual must have had a considerable development. There were hymns dedicated to Nabu, Sin, Shamash, Anuit, to Fire, and to the Elements. Here is a hymn which can give an idea of the lyric poetry of which the library of Nineveh included numerous fragments:
“Lord Illuminator of darkness who penetrates obscurity. The Good God, who uplifts those who are in abjection, who sustains the feeble. The great gods turn their eyes towards thy light. The spirits of the abyss eagerly contemplate thy face. The language of praise is addressed to thee as a single word. The … of their heads seeks the light of the Southern sun. Like a betrothed thou restest full of joy and graciousness. In thy splendour thou attainest the limits of Heaven. Thou art the Standard of this wide World. O God, the men who live afar off contemplate thee and rejoice.”
Religious ceremonies bore a relation to external worship; they all ended in invocation or sacrifice. The cylinder-engraved scenes give us an idea of these ceremonies; we usually see the priest in an attitude of adoration or prayer, sometimes alone, but often before an altar, on which reposes the object of adoration, or that which is going to be sacrificed. The most usual victim is a ram or a kid. The Assyrian kings never began an important expedition without having invoked the gods and held religious ceremonies; after a victory they offered a sacrifice on the borders of their newly conquered states. These sacrifices generally took place in the open air; nevertheless, temples were numerous in Assyria and Chaldea; their traditional form is that of a step-pyramid (ziggurat); every town had one or two temples of this kind under the patronage of one of the divinities of the Assyrian pantheon.
A tablet from the library gives us a list of these different sanctuaries, where the gifts of the faithful multiplied and accumulated until the time when war came to disperse them.
Cosmogony occupies a large place on the tablets of Asshurbanapal’s library. Amongst all these tablets, those which relate to the creation of the world, particularly to the history of the flood, have acquired notoriety. These ancient traditions form a whole which claims the closest attention. Whatever the philological explanations one may accept, there is one dominating matter which gives an incontestable importance to these remains, and this is their relation to the Mosaic statements. It is certain that the fall of Nineveh antedated the Babylonian captivity, and that the Bible in its present form postdates the return from captivity. It is not without interest, therefore, to compare the biblical accounts with a text, which could not have been altered from the day it was buried under the ruins of an Assyrian palace. This is not all; these ancient Assyrian legends are really the translation of a Sumerian text, which Asshurbanapal had copied and translated from the libraries of lower Chaldea, and we know positively that these texts antedate the reign of the ancient Sargon, and are therefore earlier by several centuries than the time when Abraham must have left Chaldea.
It is doubtless not the place here to give way to a discussion on pure philology; we will simply say this: when we make a mistake in translating a hymn addressed to the god Sin, and apply it to quite another divinity of the Assyrian pantheon, it is a deplorable mistake; but such an error, were it the most gross, would have no influence on our present prejudices. It is otherwise if we refer to a text which can influence our intimate beliefs, be it to fortify them, combat them, or explain their origin. In England and other protestant countries the discoveries of George Smith acquired a tremendous notoriety, and his translations are accepted with an eagerness and confidence which a severe criticism has not justified. In France these discoveries aroused less curiosity from the first, and Assyriologists who study legendary texts have done so with a dispassionateness which is all the more conducive to scientific and correct historic results.
Nevertheless, from these sources and authorities, translations have passed into elementary books, where it has been sought to use them in the support of preconceived ideas, often by altering their true meaning. We cannot set ourselves too strongly against such proceedings. It is surely not a new principle, that disinterested science must with perfect impartiality scrutinise all books, legends, and documents which claim the attention of the human mind.
The history of the creation comprises a collection of several tablets, of which the text was published in 1875, in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology. This text includes six fragments forming part of a series of tablets designated in Assyria under the title of “Enuva” (i.e., Formerly).[b]