The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria | Page 6

form, a picture of an eight-rayed star, it has been assumed
that Assyro-Babylonian mythology is, either wholly or partly, astral in
origin. This, however, is by no means certain, the character for "star" in
the inscriptions being a combination of three such pictures, and not a
single sign. The probability therefore is, that the use of the single star to
indicate the name of a divinity arises merely from the fact that the
character in question stands for /ana/, "heaven." Deities were evidently
thus distinguished by the Babylonians because they regarded them as
inhabitants of the realms above--indeed, the heavens being the place
where the stars are seen, a picture of a star was the only way of
indicating heavenly things. That the gods of the Babylonians were in
many cases identified with the stars and planets is certain, but these
identifications seem to have taken place at a comparatively late date.
An exception has naturally to be made in the case of the sun and moon,
but the god Merodach, if he be, as seems certain, a deified Babylonian
king, must have been identified with the stars which bear his name after
his worshippers began to pay him divine honours as the supreme deity,
and naturally what is true for him may also be so for the other gods
whom they worshipped. The identification of some of the deities with
stars or planets is, moreover, impossible, and if Êa, the god of the deep,
and Anu, the god of the heavens, have their representatives among the
heavenly bodies, this is probably the result of later development.[*]

[*] If there be any historical foundation for the statement that Merodach
arranged the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars, assigning to them
their proper places and duties--a tradition which would make him the
founder of the science of astronomy during his life upon earth--this, too,
would tend to the probability that the origin of the gods of the
Babylonians was not astral, as has been suggested, but that their
identification with the heavenly bodies was introduced during the
period of his reign.
Ancestor and hero-worship. The deification of kings.
Though there is no proof that ancestor-worship in general prevailed at
any time in Babylonia, it would seem that the worship of heroes and
prominent men was common, at least in early times. The tenth chapter
of Genesis tells us of the story of Nimrod, who cannot be any other
than the Merodach of the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions; and other
examples, occurring in semi-mythological times, are /En-we-dur-an-ki/,
the Greek Edoreschos, and /Gilgameš/, the Greek Gilgamos, though
Aelian's story of the latter does not fit in with the account as given by
the inscriptions. In later times, the divine prefix is found before the
names of many a Babylonian ruler--Sargon of Agadé,[*] Dungi of Ur
(about 2500 B.C.), Rim-Sin or Eri-Aku (Arioch of Ellasar, about 2100
B.C.), and others. It was doubtless a kind of flattery to deify and pay
these rulers divine honours during their lifetime, and on account of this,
it is very probable that their godhood was utterly forgotten, in the case
of those who were strictly historical, after their death. The deification
of the kings of Babylonia and Assyria is probably due to the fact, that
they were regarded as the representatives of God upon earth, and being
his chief priests as well as his offspring (the personal names show that
it was a common thing to regard children as the gifts of the gods whom
their father worshipped), the divine fatherhood thus attributed to them
naturally could, in the case of those of royal rank, give them a real
claim to divine birth and honours. An exception is the deification of the
Babylonian Noah, Ut-napištim, who, as the legend of the Flood relates,
was raised and made one of the gods by Aa or Ea, for his faithfulness
after the great catastrophe, when he and his wife were translated to the
"remote place at the mouth of the rivers." The hero Gilgameš, on the

other hand, was half divine by birth, though it is not exactly known
through whom his divinity came.
[*] According to Nabonidus's date 3800 B.C., though many
Assyriologists regard this as being a millennium too early.
The earliest form of the Babylonian religion.
The state of development to which the religious system of the
Babylonians had attained at the earliest period to which the inscriptions
refer naturally precludes the possibility of a trustworthy history of its
origin and early growth. There is no doubt, however, that it may be
regarded as having reached the stage at which we find it in
consequence of there being a number of states in ancient Babylonia
(which was at that time like the Heptarchy in England) each possessing
its own