March 8, 1900] 



NA TURE 



439 



the engraved talisman was a mere question of time and 

 of a certam subtlety of reasoning. From an existent 

 sympathy between words and things a belief in an 

 equivalent interrelation betwixt objects might arise, 

 either from a fancied resemblance of nomenclature or 

 by an analogous train of thought which classed together 

 things which had some real or fancied resemblance, a 

 process of which the mandragora of later legends is an 

 instance. From this system of affinities, bounded only 

 by the i.iiaginalive powers of the sorcerer, the weaving of 

 the most complex web of enchantment was inevitable. 

 In Egypt the system was prolific, and bore as its fruit 

 that crop of magical figures, pictures, spells, and cere- 

 monies, with the attendant beliefs in lucky and unlucky 

 days, dreams, demoniacal possessions, and astrological 

 lore, with which the learned doctor has filled his pages to 

 the delight of the occultist. 



In the study of the Babylonian religion and mythology 

 which is presented to us by Mr. King, we find a less 

 exalted view of divine beings than that reached in Egypt, 

 the beliefs of the Babylonians, in such matters, having 

 received a tincture from their predecessors, the Sume- 

 rians, which was never wholly eradicated. Of the creed 

 thus evolved, documentary evidence older than the seventh 

 century B.C. is wanting, but this source of information is 

 supplemented by the recorded beliefs of the Assyrians 

 uho were themselves colonists from Babylonia. Here 

 the gods were many, a catalogue of 1800 names failing to 

 furnish a complete enumeration, a heterogeneous company 

 essentially human in their attributes, who were born, 

 caroused, loved, fought, and even died. In later his- 

 torical periods the chief deities acquired definite charac- 

 teristic personalities, but they were only in degree 

 superior to their worshippers, who never reached the 

 conception of a Supreme Being essentially different to 

 themselves. The gods, who were personifications of the 

 forces of nature, had their cults curiously relegated to 

 special centres, being localised in different cities, the 

 fortunes of which they followed. The great triad of Anu, 

 Bel and Ea, the respective deities of heaven, earth and 

 the abyss of waters, headed the company of the gods ; 

 with the subsidiary trinity of Sin, the moon-god, his son 

 Shamash the sun-god, and Ramman, god of the atmo- 

 sphere ; but the most prominent deity was Marduk, the 

 tutelary god of Babylon, who, as that city rose into im- 

 portance, became identified with Bel, and was established 

 as the intercessor for mankind. Scant justice was ac- 

 corded the ladies, the goddesses being but faint reflexes 

 of their husbands, with the exception of Ishtar, who 

 occupied a position of commanding importance in her 

 •dual aspects of the patroness of love and war. No doubt 

 the heavenly host was influenced by the peculiar cosmo- 

 gony which obtained. It was thought that from out the 

 waters which, in the darkness of chaos, alone at first 

 ■existed, abnormal creatures sprang. Over this mon- 

 strous brood the woman-dragon Tiamat was supreme, 

 until, after creating the gods, she rose in revolt against 

 them. She was vanquished and slain by the divine 

 champion Marduk, who employed the fragments of her 

 body to fashion the earth and heaven. The portion used 

 to make the earth he shaped as an inverted bowl sur- 

 mounted by the remainder of the corpse bent into the 

 hollow hemispherical vault of heaven, and both resting 

 NO. Ij«4. VOL. 61] 



on the waters of that great de^p, from which all things 

 had their origin. Above the firmament was a celestial 

 ocean, and beyond that the innermost heaven to which 

 the gods retired when weary of their earthly abodes and 

 the immediate conduct of haman affairs. 



Beneath the earth was the seven-walled house of the 

 dead in the " Land of no Return." Here no distinction 

 was made between the good and the bad, all being alike 

 condemned to the same joyless existence. The gloom 

 which pervaded the tomb may have originated in the 

 rapidity of decomposition and decay in the moist alluvial 

 soil of Mesopotamia, and the elaborate burial rites which 

 were observed had no further object than to prevent the 

 wanderings of the earth-bound shade, who would haunt 

 those who neglected to secure him a safe passage to 

 Hades. 



Whilst this and other passages scattered through the 

 text will give the student of folk-lore and demonology 

 much food for thought, the chief interest of the work 

 naturally centres in ,the exposition of the resemblances 

 which exist between the Babylonian myths and the Jewish 

 traditions recorded in the Bible. Mr. King has directed 

 attention to the legends of the Great Dragon, the Crea- 

 tion, and the Deluge, and shows that both nations 

 derived their narratives from a common source, or that, 

 at any rate, the Hebrews' indebtedness to the Baby- 

 lonians was long antecedent to the period of the 

 captivity. It is a matter for regret that the limits of this 

 notice forbid more than an allusion to this section of the 

 volume, which is likely to be that most generally 

 attractive. In the succeeding portion is recited the 

 poem of Gilgamesh,in which are recounted his exploits and 

 those of his semi-divine friend Ea-bani. This story has 

 no Biblical equivalent, unless we see in Ea-bani, who " was 

 clothed with long hair like a woman," was of stupendous 

 strength, and became a victim to the wiles of the woman 

 Ukhat, the analogue of Samson and Delilah. Such re- 

 semblances must necessarily arise, and to insist upon too 

 close an identification may be unwise ; but, in leaving 

 such speculations, we pass to what is of more human 

 interest, the personal relations which existed between 

 the Babylonian and his gods. Here we find that to each 

 man, from his birth, a god and goddess were allotted as 

 guardians and monitors. They departed from him if he 

 transgressed, and when they so withdrew, priestly inter- 

 vention was necessary to secure a return of their favour. 

 At first mere defects of ritual observance or the utterance 

 of ill-omened words were the sole causes of divine estrange- 

 ment ; but as the mental conceptions of the people were 

 elevated, injustice to their fellows and sins against their 

 neighbours were regarded as constituting equally valid 

 grounds for the wrath of the gods. And so in process of 

 time it came to pass that upon a foundation of much 

 apparent absurdity, the good sense of the Babylonians 

 erected a working code of morality which an existing 

 tablet cataloguing acts that were regarded as sins shows 

 to have been little inferior to that of the Hebrews. 



It is impossible within the necessary limits to do fitting 

 justice to the contents of these most interesting volumes, 

 and the care with which the great mass of lacts which 

 they contain has been condensed defies any attempt to 

 reduce them to a precis. That they fill an existing blank 

 in the text-books on comparative religions is obvious, and 



