eating or otherwise disposing of the vital part of the fierce
and wise mother dragon, he became endowed with her attributes, and
was able to proceed with the work of creation. Primitive peoples in our
own day, like the Abipones of Paraguay, eat the flesh of fierce and
cunning animals so that their strength, courage, and wisdom may be
increased.
The direct influence exercised by cultural contact, on the other hand,
may be traced when myths with an alien geographical setting are found
among peoples whose experiences could never have given them origin.
In India, where the dragon symbolizes drought and the western river
deities are female, the Manu fish and flood legend resembles closely
the Babylonian, and seems to throw light upon it. Indeed, the Manu
myth appears to have been derived from the lost flood story in which
Ea figured prominently in fish form as the Preserver. The Babylonian
Ea cult and the Indian Varuna cult had apparently much in common, as
is shown.
Throughout this volume special attention has been paid to the various
peoples who were in immediate contact with, and were influenced by,
Mesopotamian civilization. The histories are traced in outline of the
Kingdoms of Elam, Urartu (Ancient Armenia), Mitanni, and the
Hittites, while the story of the rise and decline of the Hebrew
civilization, as narrated in the Bible and referred to in Mesopotamian
inscriptions, is related from the earliest times until the captivity in the
Neo-Babylonian period and the restoration during the age of the
Persian Empire. The struggles waged between the great Powers for the
control of trade routes, and the periodic migrations of pastoral warrior
folks who determined the fate of empires, are also dealt with, so that
light may be thrown on the various processes and influences associated
with the developments of local religions and mythologies. Special
chapters, with comparative notes, are devoted to the Ishtar-Tammuz
myths, the Semiramis legends, Ashur and his symbols, and the origin
and growth of astrology and astronomy.
The ethnic disturbances which occurred at various well-defined periods
in the Tigro-Euphrates valley were not always favourable to the
advancement of knowledge and the growth of culture. The invaders
who absorbed Sumerian civilization may have secured more settled
conditions by welding together political units, but seem to have
exercised a retrogressive influence on the growth of local culture.
"Babylonian religion", writes Dr. Langdon, "appears to have reached its
highest level in the Sumerian period, or at least not later than 2000 B.C.
From that period onward to the first century B.C. popular religion
maintained with great difficulty the sacred standards of the past."
Although it has been customary to characterize Mesopotamian
civilization as Semitic, modern research tends to show that the
indigenous inhabitants, who were non-Semitic, were its originators.
Like the proto-Egyptians, the early Cretans, and the Pelasgians in
southern Europe and Asia Minor, they invariably achieved the
intellectual conquest of their conquerors, as in the earliest times they
had won victories over the antagonistic forces of nature. If the modern
view is accepted that these ancient agriculturists of the goddess cult
were of common racial origin, it is to the most representative
communities of the widespread Mediterranean race that the credit
belongs of laying the foundations of the brilliant civilizations of the
ancient world in southern Europe, and Egypt, and the valley of the
Tigris and Euphrates.
INTRODUCTION
Ancient Babylonia has made stronger appeal to the imagination of
Christendom than even Ancient Egypt, because of its association with
the captivity of the Hebrews, whose sorrows are enshrined in the
familiar psalm:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; Yea, we wept, when we
remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows....
In sacred literature proud Babylon became the city of the anti-Christ,
the symbol of wickedness and cruelty and human vanity. Early
Christians who suffered persecution compared their worldly state to
that of the oppressed and disconsolate Hebrews, and, like them, they
sighed for Jerusalem--the new Jerusalem. When St. John the Divine
had visions of the ultimate triumph of Christianity, he referred to its
enemies--the unbelievers and persecutors--as the citizens of the earthly
Babylon, the doom of which he pronounced in stately and memorable
phrases:
Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, And is become the habitation of
devils, And the hold of every foul spirit, And a cage of every unclean
and hateful bird....
For her sins have reached unto heaven And God hath remembered her
iniquities.... The merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her,
For no man buyeth their merchandise any more.
"At the noise of the taking of Babylon", cried Jeremiah, referring to the
original Babylon, "the earth is moved, and the cry is heard among the
nations.... It shall be no more inhabited forever; neither shall it
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