In the Gilgamesh epic the goddess Ishtar, on conferring sovereignty upon Gilgamesh, says: “I will place thee on a chariot of lapis-lazuli and gold, with wheels of gold....” On studying the Nimroud bas-reliefs in the British Museum I noted the fact that the trappings of the horse driven by king Asurnasirpal, who is represented as standing in his two-wheeled chariot, are decorated with crosses. It is impossible not to recognize the affinity of the “wheel of the law” and the “lord of the wheel” of India with the Assyrian symbols of Polaris and of central rulership and to appreciate the naïve ingenuity of the idea of making the driving of the chariot by the king represent his control of the rotating wheels of state and government of the four quarters from a stable centre.[105]
As another example of the Assyrian employment of the cross-symbol, the bas-relief at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, should be mentioned, as it displays a winged bird-headed human figure, whose garments are embroidered with crosses.
King Asurnasirpal, who is alternately figured on his throne or in his chariot, is frequently represented as wearing on his garments and bracelets another familiar and expressive emblem of centralization and unity in diversity, the composite flower or rosette.
The sacred ship or ark of the Babylonian temple remains to be discussed. Diodorus Seculus says that, according to Babylonian notions, “the world is ‘a boat turned upside down’ and resting on the waters. The appearance in outline of this image presented the three divisions of the universe: the heavens=Anu upheld by the serpent body of Tiamat; the earth, the dwelling of Bel-Marduk, the ‘chief of gods;’ and the watery deep or ‘Apsu’ beneath, the dwelling of Ea” (Jastrow). This imagery authorizes the inference that the sacred ship or ark was associated with this conception of the earth as a boat resting on the line dividing the sky from the watery deep. It can readily be seen how a maritime people would be inclined to fancy that the celestial bodies floated in the sky on invisible boats and that a single one among them was apparently resting on a stable rock or mountain around which other [pg 367] stars circled perpetually. That an analogous train of thought should have caused the ultimate consecration of a tabernacle in the form of a ship, to the central deity, entitled “the great mountain,” appears as inevitable as the idea that all life proceeded from this source. Professor Jastrow tells us that the early significance of the custom of carrying the gods in consecrated ships became lost, but that it survived in Babylonia and Egypt and that the ark of the Hebrews appears, similarly, to have been originally a ship of some kind. I am indebted to Dr. Wallis Budge for the interesting information that each day, in the temple of Ptah at Memphis, an image of the god Seker was dragged around the altar by the priests.
Bringing the preceding tentative study of the ancient civilization of Babylonia-Assyria to a close, I venture to affirm that, imperfect as it is, it clearly establishes certain important points connected with the present investigation. It demonstrates that a primitive pole-star worship existed and still exists in the Euphratean valley, accompanied by the employment of the swastika or cross-symbol and by the identical fundamental set of ideas which form the basis not only of other Asiatic, but also of the American civilizations. The Middle is associated with special sanctity, fixity and supremacy of power and rule, extending in rotation over the Above and Below and Four Quarters. This seven-fold division of the universe extended throughout the entire organization of the state and gave rise to certain logical developments of thought and symbolism, analogous to those which have been traced elsewhere.
Postponing further comment, investigation will next be transferred to the valley of the Nile, whose inhabitants, at various periods of their history, came closely into contact with the people of Asia Minor.
EGYPT.
Pausing at the entrance to a much explored domain with a fitting realization of being a novice and an intruder therein, I find myself encouraged to advance by the frank admission recently made by one of the leading authorities in Egyptology. In his “Notes for travellers in Egypt,” Dr. Wallis Budge, the Assistant in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities, of the British Museum, openly states that “the religion of the ancient Egyptians is one of the most difficult problems of Egyptology and though a [pg 368] great deal has been written about it during the last few years and many difficulties have been satisfactorily explained, there still remain unanswered a large number of questions connected with it. In all religious texts the reader is always assumed to have a knowledge of the subject treated of by the writer, and no definite statement is made on the subject concerning which very little, comparatively, is known by students of to-day” (The Nile, London, 1890, p. 71).
After having traced, as I have done, throughout ancient America, China, India and Babylonia-Assyria, one and the same fundamental, artificial scheme of state organization, it was with keenest interest and a new sense of comprehension of the ancient Egyptian civilization that I noted certain facts which I shall now proceed to present.
They will be found to show that ancient Egypt supplies us with the instance of a civilization in which the fundamental set of ideas, developed from primitive pole-star worship, prevailed during thousands of years and had reached a high stage of evolution at a period anterior to about B.C. 4000.