The veritable name of the hero on the banks of the Euphrates, sung by Homer, has remained unknown to this day. It is constantly found written in ideographic characters, which, pronounced phonetically, give the three syllables Iz-du-bar; but we know that they were pronounced in quite a different manner by the Assyrio-Chaldæans. We are equally certain, from the testimony of other cuneiform inscriptions, that this Izdubar was one of the gods of Chaldæa. Nevertheless, he figures here as a simple hero, and, according to M. Lenormant, is probably Nemrod, “the mighty hunter,” as he is called in the Book of Genesis, alluding to a popular saying, of which the remembrance is still preserved in Assyria, as well as in Palestine, and also in the Egyptian tradition. The historical inscriptions of Assurbanipal name Resen, one of the cities of Assyria, “the town of the hunter.”[37]
The Izdubar of the Babylonian inscription, like the Nemrod of the Bible, reigns over four cities,[38] three of which, named in Genesis, are certainly identical with those mentioned on the tablet, and which therefore furnish an argument in favor of the supposition. But however that may be, Izdubar, whose name signifies “God of fire,” “God of the body or mass of fire,” is without doubt the ancient Arcadian God of fire whose worship had so great an importance in the primitive epochs; and this idea throws much light on the Babylonian poem, to which it, in some sort, furnishes the key. This poem is divided into twelve cantos, if we may so call them, each forming a distinct episode and inscribed in a separate tablet. Sir Henry Rawlinson has proved that each canto relates to one of the twelve signs of the zodiac, and to one of the twelve months of the year. The god of fire is thus represented as being one with the sun, and the entire epic consists of a poetical history of the annual revolution of that luminary, and its accomplishment in the course of twelve months, around which revolution various incidental episodes have been grouped, amongst others the narrative of the Deluge. The dénouement of the poem is the cure of Izdubar, who, at the instigation of the man saved from the Deluge, plunges into the sea, from whence he issues delivered from a sort of leprosy which had threatened his life. M. Gubernatis remarks that this is identical with the Vedic myth of Indra, and also the Hellenic one of Tithonus. Leprosy is invariably the malady of kingly heroes, and signifies old age, which, according to popular belief, could [pg 140] only be cured either by the waters of youth or by the blood of a child. The old solar hero, the dying sun, sprang forth with renewed youth in the morning, after traversing the sea of night—a symbol which would naturally possess an additional force to the nations who beheld the departing sun-god sink beneath the Western sea. The Chaldæan epic presents us, therefore, with the same mythological groundwork as the other polytheistic religions with regard to the worship of fire and of the sun—a groundwork presenting a point of contact among the Semitic, Aryan, and Egyptian races which it is necessary to bear in mind in tracing the comparative histories of the descendants of the sons of Noe.
The details of the Babylonian poem exhibit a mythology as multitudinous as that of India or of Greece; the adventures also of Izdubar for the most part closely resemble those of the classic heroes. He is a great conqueror, who wins immortality by his splendid exploits and his mighty labors, some of which remind one of those of Hercules. We see him successively capture the winged ox, and put an end to the ravages of a sea monster to which is given the name of Boul—two exploits almost identical with those of Perseus. As in Egypt the sun, under the name of Osiris, is the husband of Isis, the personification of the productive power, and sometimes the moon, so in Chaldæa the sun, Izdubar, espouses Istar, the moon, who is also the Assyrian Venus, and daughter of the god Sin. Istar is, however, at this period, already a widow, having lost her first spouse, whose name signifies “Son of Life.”
In the poem of Erech a great number of other deities appear, together with Istar. Besides her father, Sin, who is god of the months, we have firstly Anou, the Oannes of the Greeks, and the first personage of the supreme triad; then the second member of this triad, Bel, the demiurge; and lastly the third, Ao, Nesroch,[39] or Nouah. Around these great divinities are grouped Adar, the god of the planet Saturn; Samas, god of the sun; Nabo,[40] god of the planet Mercury, and his companion, Sarou; Bin, god of the atmosphere and tempest; Nergal, of the planet Mars; besides a vast army of Annunaki, or secondary genii; of Guzalu, or destroying spirits, and others of inferior race and power. These deities did not agree among themselves any better than did the gods of the Greek Olympus. Their heaven appears to have been anything but an abode of peace or love; and in heaven or hell they quarrelled alike. Istar seems especially to have distinguished herself by her unaccommodating disposition.
It is believed that the account of the journey of Istar into hell (for the story of such a journey in the Odyssey and the Æneid had also its precursor in Chaldæa) formed one of the episodes of the poem of Izdubar, although the tablet containing it has not yet been discovered; but we possess it on another fragment, and one which is of great value, as it furnishes an incontestable proof of the belief of the Assyrio-Chaldæans in the immortality of the soul. The abode of the dead is called the “immutable land,”[41] and corresponds to [pg 141] the Hades of the ancient Greek poets. It is divided into seven circles, after the model of the celestial spheres, and is depicted as follows by the Chaldæan poet: “Towards the unchangeable land; the region [from whence none return]; Istar, the daughter of Sin, her ear—has turned: the daughter of Sin [has turned] her ear,—towards the dwelling of the dead, the throne of the god Ir ...,—towards the abode into which he has entered, and whence he has not come forth,—towards the way of his own descent, by which none return:—towards the dwelling whereinto he has entered, the prison,—the place where [the dead] have naught but dust wherewith [to appease] their hunger; and mud for nourishment:—from whence the light is not seen, and in darkness they dwell where shades (ghosts), like birds, fill the vaulted space,—where, above the uprights and lintel of the portal the earth is upheaped.”[42] Allusion is also made several times to this “unchangeable land” in other poems in the collection of Assurbanipal, as well as to spirits who wander back to earth, and dead who return to torment the living. In a note on the religious belief of the Assyrians Mr. Fox Talbot publishes two prayers composed to ask for eternal life to be granted to the king. The meaning of the first is not perfectly clear, but of the second, which is very explicit, we give the most important passage: “After the gift of the present days, in the festivals of the land of the silver sky, in the shining courts, in the abode of benedictions, in the light of the fields of felicity, may he live an eternal life, sacred in the presence of the gods of Assyria.”[43] Also, in a hymn to the god Marduk, are traces of a belief in the resurrection of the dead. This deity is repeatedly called “the merciful, who restores the dead to life.”
Thus, then, the Semites believed in the immortality of the soul; but monotheism was far from being a privilege of their race, by which it would be possible to explain the origin of the Judaic religion without providential intervention and regulation; and thus we see the Chaldæan poets combat along the whole line the assertions of M. Renan respecting their belief and genius alike. Never did facts with more pitiless emphasis give the lie to the learned; and it seems as if the historian of the Semetic languages had had a secret presentiment of humiliations which would result to him from a more generally extended study of Assyriology, when at its outset, about fifteen years ago, he attacked it with a determination which has not been forgotten.[44]
Another historical fact which may be gathered from the Babylonian epic is the mythological signification of the signs of the zodiac. The cuneiform inscriptions have already shown us that not only was Asia the [pg 142] cradle of the human race, but that it was also the primitive nursery of civilization. It can no longer be doubted that it was from thence, instead of, as has been supposed, from Egypt, that Greece herself received indirectly her first lessons in the arts, as it was also from thence that she received her metals. It is equally in Chaldæa that we find the origin of astronomy and of the zodiacal signs; the nomenclature of the latter, as it remains at the present day, differing in no essential point from that established by the Babylonian astronomers, although its value and signification have hitherto been very obscure. This obscurity has been dissipated by The Poem of Izdubar, which shows that the ancient Assyrian mythology bestowed on the signs their figures and their names. The myths relating to each of the months formed the subjects of the twelve episodes of the poem. Thus, for instance, the second narrated the capture of the winged bull; and the second month is designated as “the month of the propitious bull,” and has Taurus for its sign. Again, the sixth song related the marriage of Istar with Izdubar, and began with the goddess' message to the hero: the sixth month is called “the month of the message of Istar,” and has for its sign the archeress, of which we have made Virgo, the virgin, who, according to the attestation of the prism of Assurbanipal, was the goddess Istar herself. The eleventh tablet is consecrated to the god Bin, “the inundator—he who pours abroad the rain,” and the sign of that month is the shedder of water, or the vase pouring it forth. Thus crumbles away the whole chronological scaffolding raised by the school of Dupuis, according to whom the zodiacal signs were only to be explained as having direct relation to agricultural labors, and the phases of the seasons to be regarded in reference to the productions of the earth—an interpretation which made it necessary to withdraw the origin of man to an enormously distant period of the past, in order to reach a time in which, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the presence of the sun in the sign Taurus should coincide with the season of ploughing. All these calculations were equally fanciful with those founded on the famous zodiac of Denderah, and it is now ascertained beyond all reasonable doubt that the zodiacal signs have a religious or rather mythological, and not an agricultural, origin.
—The above is in great part translated from an article by M. Gregoire in the Revue des Questions Historiques, for April, 1874.