504 



The Journal of Heredity 



with that primitive Semitic }j;oddess, 

 who herself symboHzed the creative force 

 of nature. 



We are still dealinjj; with a very remote 

 period of human history, and the rec- 

 ords which have come down to us are 

 fragmentary, but we have enough to 

 j:;et a <^eneral view of the date ])alm as 

 the center of a cult of immense antiq- 

 uitv. Our earliest records show this cult 

 centered in the town of Eridu, only a 

 few miles from that Ur of the Chaldees 

 (Mu}j;hayr of modern maps) whence 

 Abram migrated, and at present about 

 90 miles from the head of the Persian 

 gulf. It was then a seaport, however, 

 and calculations of the rate at which 

 the Tigris and Eu]jhrates have dc- 

 jjosited silt indicate that it must have 

 l:)ecn a sca])ort about 7000 years before 

 Christ. This was long before the im- 

 migration of the Semites, ancestors of 

 the Hebrews and Arabs, who later 

 S])read over Babylonia. Their station 

 was perhaps at Eridu, which owned its 

 renown less to that fact, however, than 

 to its being the home of the oracle-tree, 

 the Tree of Life, whose position in a 

 garden near the town marked the center 

 of the world. This tree was a date palm. 



"The garden and its mystical tree 

 were known to the inhabitants of Chal- 

 dea in i)re-Semitic days," Sayce notes.'' 

 "A fragment has been preserved of 

 an old Accadian-Sumerian h\'mn with 

 a Semitic Baljylonian translation at- 

 tached to it, which tells us something 

 about them. The h\-mn begins as fol- 

 lows : 



In Eridu a jjalm-stalk grt-w overshadowing: 

 in a lioly phivt- did it ht-fomc green; 



its r(K)t was of Viright la])is whieh stretched 

 toward the deep: [hcff>rel the (ifxl Ea was its 

 growth in Eritk:, teeming with fertility: 



its scat was the [central] place of the earth; 

 its foliage (?) was the couch of Zikum, the 

 [primeval] mother. 



Into the heart of the holy house which 

 spread its shade like a forest hath no man 

 entered. 



[There is the Home] of the mighty mother 

 who passes .across the sky. 



[In] the midst of it was the god Tammuz. 



* Sayce, A. H. The Higher Criticism, p. KM). When Sayce wrote, it was still l)clicved that 

 the Semites were late arrivals in Babylonia, and that the original inhabitants were tlie Sumcrians, 

 a race which probal)ly came down the mountains to the norllicast, and has been tliought by some 

 tf) be an Aryan, liy others a Mongol or Turanian, stock. Eduard Meyer in his Sumcrier und 

 Semiten in Habylonien, 1906, proved to the satisfaction of most scholars that the Semites were 

 the original inhabilimts. 



* Barton, (i. A. A Sketch of Semitic Origins. New York, 1<)()2. 



"The sacred tree whose branches 

 reached the heaven while its roots were 

 nourished b\- the ]jrimeval deep was the 

 tree which supi^orted the world. It 

 was emphatically a 'tree of life' and is 

 accordingh' represented time after time 

 on the monuments of Babylonia and 

 Assyria." 



When the Semites from Arabia in- 

 vaded Southern Bab\-lonia, at a date 

 beyond the scope of historical knowl- 

 edge, they must have found the date 

 palm already established there, even if 

 not cultivated; Barton, indeed, suggests* 

 that they established themselves at 

 Eridu as their first station, because they 

 found at that place their old friend, the 

 date palm. If this be the case, it may 

 be assumed that the culture of the i:)alm 

 in some of the valleys of the Arabian 

 shore of the Persian gulf represents the 

 oldest form of agriculture in that ])art 

 of the world. There is reason to believe 

 that in their earlier, Arabian home the 

 Semites had already accorded divine 

 honors to the date palm; and in Baby- 

 lonia the cult seems prom]3tly to ha\-e 

 become widespread and well organized. 

 It spread gradually to the north, finally 

 reaching the Phoenicians and residents 

 of Syria; in all these regions the Tree of 

 Life became a regular factor in decora- 

 tive art, reaching its greatest vogue, 

 l^erhaps, in the kingdom of Assyria 

 abotit the ninth century before the 

 Christian era, when the huge palaces of 

 Nimrud (Ninevah) were constructed, 

 in which the palm tree and the sup- 

 posed palm god figure at every turn. 

 The Tree of Life, sometimes so conven- 

 tionalized as to be almost unrecogniz- 

 able, was also used in the interior dec- 

 oration of temples, on city gates, on 

 royal vestments, seal cylinders, and 

 everywhere else that the artist could 

 bring it in. The exact interpretation 

 of the designs has given rise to much 

 controversy; it is not of great imjjort- 

 ance to us, so long as we know that it 

 is the date ])alm which is rej^resented. 



