Before returning to the Euphratean valley let us note some facts concerning the ancient religion of
PERSIA.
The swastika is found in Persia as well as a sacred mountain, the Elburl. The supreme divinity was the invisible Ahuramazda, the “creator of heaven and earth,” who was associated with “eternal light” and appears to be identical with the ancient Aryan god of light, Mithra, the watcher and ruler of the world, who was worshipped under the form of fire.
Mithra and Ahuramazda alike are associated with six spirits named the Amesha-zpenta, who are said, in the first case, to be personifications of the sun, moon, fire, earth, water and air, and in the second, of certain qualities of the supreme power, namely, law, power, goodness, piety, health and immortality, abstract conceptions which evidently pertain to a more advanced intellectual stage. The septarchy thus formed by Mithra and his Amesha appears to assign the Middle to him and to associate the sun with the day, heaven, light and the Above, the moon with the night and darkness and the Below, and the elements with the Four Quarters. It is suggestive of four-fold rule and power to find, on a bas-relief found at the ancient holy city Pasargada, the Persian king Cyrus represented with four wings and a diadem with two uræus serpents like that of Egyptian kings.
The most ancient Persian monarch is said to have been Haha-manis or Akhamanis, who was termed “the king of Anshan.” Subsequent kings bore the title of Hakhamanisija, as for instance, Cyrus and Darius I (520-486 B.C.). At the present day, the title Charkan is that employed to designate the Shah, whereas goda or khoda signifies lord, master, prince or ruler.
In a bas-relief published by Spamer, whose work of reference will be referred to again later on, Darius is represented as standing under the image of Ahuramazda, the supreme deity, who, like the Assyrian god Assur, is figured as a king wearing the royal cap, and issuing from the centre of a winged ring or circlet. In Persia the god holds another ring in his hand (fig. [71], 1). It seems impossible to emphasize more strongly or express more clearly the idea that Ahuramazda was the lord of the circle and of the Above, the wings being emblematic of air or heaven and of motion.
The signification of the symbolical representation of the supreme power and the adoption of fire by the founders of the ancient Parsee religion as the most appropriate image of their highest god, become clear when interpreted as the outcome of pole-star worship. Resisting the temptation to prolong the study of ancient Persia, let us now hasten to the reputed cradle of the civilization of Western Asia.
BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.
“The Babylonians were from the first a nation of star gazers.... The cuneiform character which denotes a god is the picture of a star” (Sayce op. cit.). “The Babylonian and Assyrian-name for Ursa Minor was Kakkabu; the Hebrew, Kokhâbh; and the Euphratean, Kochab, which means, ‘the star present,’ a title which reminds us of its former supreme importance as the pole-star.... In various Babylonian tablets we meet a star-god called Imina-bi=the seven-fold one.”[91] Although Mr. Brown has reached no definite conclusion as to the identity of this star-god, I venture to maintain that the original “seven-fold one” could have been no other than Ursa Major and that this and “the ever-present star” are identical with what the Chinese termed “the Imperial Ruler of Heaven” and the “Seven Regulators.” The following passages furnish ample evidence of the suggestive [pg 327] influence that “the seven-fold one” exerted upon the minds of the ancient Babylonian star-gazers.
“The institution of the sabbath went back to the Sumerian days of Chaldea—the name itself is Babylonian” (Sayce, op. cit.). “The seventh month (=Sept.-Oct.) in Akkadian is named Tul-ku=the holy altar.... The seventh month of Tasritutisri was also connected with the building of the tower of Babel, said to have been the special work of the ‘King of the Holy Mound,’ Sar-tuli-elli, and its erection placed in the seventh month at the autumnal equinox. It was a zikkurâtú with seven steps, a circumstance connected with planetary [? stellar] symbolism. This style of building is reduplicated in the oldest Egyptian pyramids, e. g. the pyramid of Sakkârah, which had seven steps like the Babylonian towers. This circumstance, one amongst many such, supplies a most interesting illustration of the fact that the Egyptian civilization was mainly Euphratean in origin” (Robert Brown, op. cit.).