Under Semiramis, Babylonia was a nation under a single female ruler and this usurpation of power by a woman, accompanied as it was by the predominance of the originally naïve cult which had unconsciously fostered and ministered to perversion and depravity, preceded the decadence, disintegration and ultimate downfall of the empire. Many centuries previous, the instalment of a female sovereign preceded the ruin of another empire in what we may assume to have been precisely the same way.

Professor Sayce informs us that, “about 3800 B.C., in northern Babylonia and in the city of Agadê or Akkad, arose the empire of Sargani-sarali=Sargon, and that Sargon's son, Naram-Sin, succeeded him in 3750 B.C. and continued the conquests of his grandfather.... Naram-Sin's son was Bingam-sar-ali. A queen, Ellat-gula, seems to have sat upon the throne not much later, and with her the dynasty may have come to an end. At any rate the empire of Akkad is heard of no more. But it left behind it a profound impression in western Asia, whose art and culture became Babylonian” (op. cit.).

The process of disintegration, which caused the Babylonian empire to crumble away, was doubtlessly hastened by its division into four regions, each of which in latter times possessed its capital and became the centre of various independent forms of rival cults. During many centuries Babylonia was closely associated with the cult of Marduk-Bel, the “lord of rest;” while Shamash, another form of the central supreme lord, was the deity of Larsa and Sippar.

At one time Ur became the headquarters for the cult of the moon-god Sin or Nannar. As, according to Babylonian notions, the sun does not properly belong to the heavens and plays an insignificant part in the calendrical system in comparison with the moon, sun-worship proper does not seem to have existed in Babylonia. At the same time it would seem as though when the “primitive sun”=Polaris became the hidden, secret god of the priest-astronomers, [pg 348] who determined the seasons by Ursa Major, the populace was taught to regard Bel as the personification of the diurnal sun and of the herald of day, the morning star.

When it is borne in mind how, as the empire spread, new cities were founded on the plan of the metropolis, that each of these must therefore have been, in turn, governed by a pair of minor rulers, and had its own minor zikkurat, we can understand the various indications that exist showing how the ancient sacred capital of the state became the place of reunion for the minor “gods,” who assembled there annually in the main sanctuary, and the fact that each minor chief necessarily required his dwelling place and tribal council-chamber, would account for the “references to zikkurats ... or special sanctuaries of some kind, which were erected within the sacred precinct of the main capital ...” (Jastrow, p. 637).

When it is realized that each zikkurat was an artificial “mountain” the description of Babylon in Revelations xviii becomes clearly intelligible and is seen to apply to the seven-fold organization of the ancient empire which had become the centre of the debasing earth-worship ultimately identified with a female goddess. “And the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth.... I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast ... having seven heads.... The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth ... and there are seven kings”....

Future investigation will doubtlessly furnish us with exact knowledge concerning the original relation of the governors of the “four regions” to the central ruler and of the “seven divisions” of the state to each other. It would be desirable to establish whether each territorial division and tribe bore the name of its tribal ancestor and whether these names agree with those of the seven chief “gods” of the pantheon, each of whom is associated with a celestial body, a day of the seven-day period and, as shown in the bas-relief already cited, with a different animal. I am strongly tempted to see in the latter traces of tribal totems and to connect the days of the week with the seven divisions of the population and some established form of rotation, employed for the government of the state, analogous to that I have found out in Ancient Mexico. With regard to the regulation of the calendar by certain officials, the following facts are important: Professor Sayce tells us that, [pg 349] “in Assyria, the high-priest was the equal of the king and the king himself was a priest and the adopted child of Bel.” Under him were a number of grades of officials and officers. The land was divided into provinces whose “governors were selected from the highest aristocracy and who alone had the privilege of sharing with the king the office of limmu or eponymous archon after whom the year was named.” This office, which finds its analogy in China and Central America, is more clearly explained in the following passage: “The Assyrians were endowed with a keen sense of history and had invented a system of reckoning time by means of certain officers called limmi, who gave their names to the year” (Sayce, op. cit. p. 255).

Venturing to make a general statement, as a suggestion for future investigation, I should say that the ultimate result of the institution of two cults which were bound to grow in opposite directions, was the fall of the Babylonian empire under the degrading growth of perversion and depravity, linked to the cult of earth and night and bi-sexuality, and the rise of the Assyrian empire with a cult in which the ideas of light and darkness, night and day preponderated over those of sex. It may possibly have been as a reaction and protest against the prevailing rites of Babylonia that influenced the Assyrians in their adoption of two male rulers, the high-priest and the king. On the other hand, there are indications showing that possibly, in order to evade the ceremonial obligations of their position as the representative of the principle of fertility, several “goddesses” or female rulers of Babylonia transferred their seat of government, or placed the reins of government into the hands of a king. Thus Hammurabi tells us that he has restored the temple of the “lady” or “great lady” of Hallabi, a town near Sippar and that she had conferred upon him supreme authority over the Babylonian states, then engaged in fighting with each other. It is obvious that, as soon as concealment and mystery increasingly surrounded the cult of the female principle, and warfare became habitual, the power and rôle of the female ruler must have become more and more “shadowy” and finally dwindled to the utterance of sacred oracles in dark concealed places of retirement and safety. Ultimately the cult of Ishtar appears to have become absolutely secret and hidden and shrouded in mystery and darkness. Its priestesses became the most famous oracle-givers of Assyria who imparted “divine knowledge concealed from men.” In the eighth century B.C., Arbela became the centre of the cult of Ishtar and “developed [pg 350] a special school of theology marked by the attempt to accord a superior position to the goddess. In a series of eight oracles addressed to Esarhaddon six are given forth by women” (Jastrow, p. 342).

Inevitable as was the disintegration of the original state and religion, continual efforts appear to have been made even in Babylonia itself, to check the growth of a debasing ritual and the constant increase of the gods and goddesses which were installed as the rulers of each new town that was founded on the plan of the metropolis. Professor Jastrow tells us that “whenever the kings in their inscriptions mention the regular sacrifices, it is in almost all cases with reference to their re-institution of an old custom that had been allowed to fall into neglect (owing to the political disturbances which always affected the temples) and not as an innovation” ... (op. cit. p. 667). The tablet of Sippara, on which the image of Shamash is restored by the king on an ancient model, has already been described and on it appears the four-spoked wheel, the expressive symbol of a “primitive Sun.” The primeval conception of a single, stable, changeless and central celestial power was evidently adhered to in ancient Babylonia by a small but faithful minority, and the constant growth of debasing practices and the manufacture of symbolical images to which reverence was paid and which were ultimately worshipped, awakened its constant disapproval and abhorrence. At a remote period we find the adherents to a stern monotheism establishing the Babylonian province of

CANAAN.