LITMIR.BIZ

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whereon was recorded the inscription ascribing his victory to Chemosh, his favorite deity. The principal title of Chemosh^[89] was “Judge of heaven and earth,” but he afterward held a less important position in the Chaldaic-Babylonian pantheon, which was adopted by the Assyrians, and was considered inferior to Sin, the moon-god, who was sometimes said to be his father. There are several tablets bearing magical incantations and songs to the sun-god.

      But the hideous idols that occupied the palatial temples of Chemosh at Larsam, in Southern Chaldea, and at Sippara, in the north of Babylonia, became more refined in the poetry of the Vedas, and he appeared in the mythology of the Hindūs as Sūrya, the godthe god of day, who rode across the heavens in a car of flame drawn by milk-white horses.

      INCANTATIONS TO FIRE AND WATER

      There are also Assyrian incantations to fire and water, which represent the imagery of the primitive Babylonians, and these inscriptions also suggest a possible foundation for the hymns of the Ṛig-veda. There is a great similarity of style between the literature of the tablets and the early hymns of the Hindūs. The tablets speak of “An incantation to the waters pure, the waters of the Euphrates—the water in which the abyss firmly is established, the noble mouth of Hea shines upon them.

      Waters they are shining (clear), waters they are bright. The god of the river puts him (the enchanter) to flight,” etc. In the incantation to fire, there are also many eloquent passages: “The Fire-god—the prince which is in the lofty country—the warrior, son of the abyss—the god of fire with thy holy fires—in the house of darkness, light thou art establishing.

      Of Bronze and lead, the mixer of them thou (art). Of silver and gold, the blesser of them thou (art).”^[90] This Fire-god of the Accadians was represented by the Hindū Agni, from whose body issued seven streams of glory, and by Loki, whose burning breath is poured from the throbbing mountains of the Northmen.

      IM.

      In this pantheon of mythology, as defined by the tablets, Im was the god of the sky, sometimes called Rimmon, the god of lightning and storms, of rain and thunder. He is represented among the Hindūs as Indra, who furiously drives his tawny steeds to the battle of the elements. With the Greek and Latins he was personated by Zeus and Jupiter, “the cloud-compelling Jove,” while among the Northmen he wears the form of Thor, whose frown is the gathering of the storm-clouds, and whose angry voice echoes in the thunder-bolt.

      BAAL,

      or Bel (plural Baalim), was also an important character, and indeed, according to Dr. Oppert, all of the Phœnician gods were included under the general name of Baal,^[91] and human sacrifices were often made upon their blood-stained altars. He had a magnificent temple in Tyre, which was founded by Hiram, where he had symbolic pillars, one of gold and one of smaragdus. An inscription^[92] on the sarcophagus of Esmunazar, king of the two Sidons, claims that he, too, built a temple to Ashtaroth, and “placed there the images of Ashtaroth,” and also “the temple of Baal-Sidon, and the temple of Astarte, who bears the name of this Baal;” that is, the temple of Baal and the temple of Astarte, or Ashtaroth, at Sidon.

      The grossest sensuality characterized some forms of the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth. Indeed, it can only be compared to the unmentionable rites which two thousand years later pertained to the worship of Kṛishṇa and Śiva.

      In the inscription of Tiglath Pilesar I, Baal is called “the King of Constellations,” and the fact that he was thus worshipped is a peculiar explanation of the frequent condemnation in the book of Kings of the worship of “the host of Heaven,” which is repeatedly spoken of in connection with the altars of Baal.^[93]

      TAMMUZ.

      This is another form of the sun-god, who is represented as being slain by the boar’s tusk of winter. June is the month of Tammuz, and his festival began with the cutting of the sacred fir tree in which the god had hidden himself. A tablet in the British Museum states that the sacred dark fir tree which grew in the city of Eridu, was the couch of the mother goddess.^[94] The sacred tree having been cut and carried into the idol-temple, there came the search for Tammuz, when the devotees ran wildly about weeping and wailing for the lost one,^[95] and cutting themselves with knives. His wife, Ishtar, descended to the lower world to search for him, and the tablets furnish another poem which seems to celebrate a temple similar to that recorded by Maimonides, in which the Babylonian gods gathered around the image of the sun-god, to lament his death. The statue of Tammuz was placed on a bier and followed by bands of mourners, crying and singing a funeral dirge. He is also called Dūzi, “the son.” Tammuz is the proper Syriac name for Adonis of the Greeks.

      ISHTAR.

      This goddess, who is sometimes called Astarte, was the most important female deity of this early pantheon. The Persian form of the word is Astara. In Phœnician it is Ashtaroth,^[96] and according to Dr. Oppert all the Phœnician goddesses were included under this general name. Another form of the name afterward appeared in Greek mythology as Asteria, and it was applied to the beautiful goddess who fled from the suit of Jove, and, flinging herself down from heaven into the sea, became the island afterward named Delos.

      The farther back we go in the world’s history the nearer we approach to the original idea of monotheism, and originally there was only one goddess, Ishtar or Ashtaroth, personifying both love and war, but two such opposite characteristics could not long remain the leading attributes of the same deity, and hence after a time, there were mentioned three goddesses bearing the same name.

      ISHTAR OF ARBELA

      was the goddess of war, the “Lady of Battles.” She was the daughter of Anū, whose messengers were the seven evil spirits, and the favorite goddess of King Assur-bani-pal, who claims that he received his bow from her, though he declares in his inscriptions that he worshipped also Bel or Baal, and Nebo; he frequently implores the protection of Ishtar.

      “Oh, thou, goddess of goddesses, terrible in battle, goddess in war, queen of the gods! Teūman, king of Elam, he gathered his army and prepared for war; he urges his fighting men to go to Assyria. Oh, thou, archer of the gods, like a weight, in the midst of the battle, throw him down and crush him.”^[97] Ishtar of Arbela afterward became the Bellona of the Latins, and the Enyo of the Greeks. Under the name of Anatis, or Anāhid, she was worshipped in Armenia, and also in Cappadocia, where she had a splendid temple, served by a college of priests, and more than six thousand temple servants. Her image, according to Pliny,^[98] was of solid gold, and her high priest was second only to the king himself. Strabo calls this goddess Enyo, and Berosus considers that she is identical with Venus. The inscriptions of Artaxerxes, discovered at Susa, call her Anāhid, which was the Persian name of the planet Venus. The characteristics of Venus, the queen of beauty, may seem somewhat at variance with Ishtar of Arbela, the goddess of war, but it will be remembered that the Greeks of Cythera, one of the Ionian islands, worshipped an armed Venus, and from this island she took the name of Cythera; the fable that she rose from the sea probably means that her worship was introduced into the island by a maritime people, doubtless the Phœnicians.

      ISHTAR OF ERECH,

      the daughter of Anū and Annatu, is another form of this popular goddess, and one of the Assyrian tablets refers to the dedication of horses at the temple of Bit-ili at Erech, where the king of Elam dedicated white horses with silver saddles to Ishtar, the tutelar divinity of Erech.

      In the sixth tablet of the Izdūbar series, we find an Ishtar whose characteristics are so different from either the goddess of love or the goddess of war, that we are constrained to believe that it must refer to Ishtar of Erech. She here appears as the queen of witchcraft, resembling the Hecate of the Greeks in her funereal abode. Indeed, Hecate was fabled to be the daughter of Asteria, which is merely the Greek form of the name Ishtar, and Pausanius^[99] mentions an Astrateia whose worship was brought to

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