NA TURE 



489 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1896. 



BABYLONIAN MAGIC AND SORCERY. 

 Diihyloniiin Mat^ic and Sora-iy. By L. \V. King, M.A. 

 I'p. XXX -j- '99- (London : Luzac and Co., 1896.) 



IT is clear from the seventy-five plates of cuneiform 

 texts with which Mr. King has furnished his book, 

 that he addresses himself mainly to the little group of 

 cuneiform scholars who in England, America, and Ger- 

 many are pushing on their science with strenuous en- 

 deavours ; but those who take the trouble to read his 

 translations of these texts, and his remarks upon the 

 same, will at once see that he is in reality speaking to 

 a much larger audience — namely, to all those who take 

 an interest in the science of the ancient religions of the 

 world, and to those who spend their time in tracing the 

 development of the sister subjects of magic and sorcery 

 from the earliest ages to the present day. The founda- 

 tion of all real study in comparative religion must, after 

 all, be the documents which the priests wrote, and the 

 copies of them which the scribes attached to the temples 

 made for their use ; no student of anthropology can 

 afford to neglect the evidence obtained from these 

 sources, and the student of comparative religion who 

 ignores them imperils both his credibility and reputation. 

 Further, all schemes of the religions of ancient nations 

 which are drawn up without due consideration of every 

 available document must be defective, and are, probably, 

 useless, and no man should theorise without his sheaf 

 of facts, that is to say his ancient texts, at his elbow. 

 It is now some sixty years since Rawlinson and Lassen 

 found the key which unlocked our storehouse of native 

 Babylonian and Assyrian information on this subject ; 

 and yet until within the last five years we possessed 

 very little e.xact information concerning the religious 

 beliefs of the Babylonians and of the people of the more 

 northerly country- of Assyria. We had translations of 

 hymns and of documents which were clearly of a re- 

 ligious nature, but they afforded us no real insight into 

 the system of religion which existed in Mesopotamia in 

 the earliest times; moreover, both texts and translations 

 were generally fragmentary and disconnected, and in 

 cases where they were not so the reader was puzzled, 

 and could not guess their true significance. Little by 

 little, however, as students devoted themselves to the 

 subject, it Was found that the text on a tablet was not 

 necessarily complete in itself, and soon it was recognised 

 that many tablets were needed for copying a religious 

 work, or, as we might say, "service." Next it was found 

 that certain parts of the texts consisted of rubrical 

 directions, and then it was known that we had become 

 the fortunate possessors of copies of the " service-books " 

 « hi( h were probably in use in Babylonia several thousands 

 of years before Christ. Most of these copies were made 

 by the order of the great King Assur-bani-pal (.'\snapper), 

 for use in his Royal Library at Nineveh in the seventh 

 century B.C. ; and, as a large number of words, names, 

 and phrases in them were in the agglutinative language 

 of the non-Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia, it was pretty 

 clear that the king had had these compositions trans- 

 NO. 1404, VOL. 54] 



lated from it into his own Semitic speech. We now 

 know that the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia possessed 

 a series of legends concerning the Creation of the heavens 

 and of the earth and of all that is therein ; a series of 

 legends of the deeds of the mythical hero Gilgamish ; 

 and a series of mythological stories. They had formed 

 in their imagination an abode for the gods, and an under- 

 world wherein the souls of the dead had their place 

 together with the infernal gods. They had, at an early 

 date, formulated a great trinity of Anu, Ea and Bel, and 

 they gave to one of their gods, at least, the attribute of 

 mediator and intercessor between men and their god. 

 They believed in the efficacy of prayer when accompanied 

 by certain ceremonies, and in brief they held many re- 

 ligious ideas and beliefs in common with their cousins 

 the Hebrews. Whether they ever succeeded in estab- 

 lishing a personal relation with their god or gods, is open 

 to doubt ; but the texts which Mr. King has published 

 lead us to think that a development in this direction was 

 going on when the Assyrian Empire was overthrown. 

 The group of compositions which Mr. King has edited 

 belongs to a class of texts which are known to scholars 

 as the " Prayers of the Lifting of the Hand," and all of 

 them were written for the use of individuals, the name 

 of the suppliant at times being given. Many prayers 

 to be efficacious must be accompanied by an offering of 

 some object to the god, and it was necessary that the 

 rubrical directions should be strictly adhered to ; certain 

 prayers were, however, only potent at certain times — as, 

 for example, on a lucky day, or at night, or during a 

 certain phase of the moon. It is probable, too, that, as 

 in ancient Egypt, the correct recital of a prayer was 

 deemed of the first importance, and that any prayer 

 offered without the burning of incense was in vain. The 

 use of fire in the accompanying ceremonies was common 

 and of the utmost importance, and its purifying properties 

 were well understood ; and as the flame consumed the 

 object which the suppliant, or the priest on his behalf, 

 cast into it, so the disease, or calamity, or trouble vanished 

 straightway. The part played by fire in certain religious 

 ceremonies was so prominent that two series of inscribed 

 Assj'rian tablets were called Shurpu and Maklil respec- 

 tively ; both these names mean " burning." As a specimen 

 of a petition, we quote the following lines from an address 

 to Ishtar : — 



" Have mercy on me, O Ishtar ! Command abundance. 



" Truly pity me and take away my sighing. . . . 



" I have borne thy yoke : do thou give consolation. . . . 



" I have sought thy light : let thy brightness shine. 



" I have turned towards thy power : let there be life 

 and peace. . . . 



" -Speak, and let the word be heard. 



" Let the word I speak, when I speak, be propitious. 



" Let health of body and joy of heart be my daily 

 portion. 



" My days prolong, life bestow : let me live, let me be 

 perfect, let me behold thy divinity. 



" When I plan, let me attain (my purpose) : Heaven be 

 thy joy, may the Abyss hail thee." 



When these words had been said an oftering of incense 

 and a drink-oflering w-ere set before Ishtar, and the 

 suppliant raised his hand three times. 



Our space will not admit of further quotation from this 

 interesting work, and we have only to add, for the in- 



V 



