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This digression is necessary, because, although the practical working of such beliefs as these may perplex us, the fact remains that they were shared in Palestine. The petty rulers in the Amarna letters thoroughly recognise the divine nature of the king who was a god and had the god for his father . Later, when Palestine had its own king, the 'Lord's anointed' was almost as the deity himself ; king and cult were one , and the king's death could be regarded as the extinction of the nation's lamp . Not to mention other details, the Messianic ideals of the divinely-begotten son and of the ruler whose origin was of aforetime preserve the inveterate belief in the divine ancestry of rulers, an honour which in other lands continued to be conferred upon rather than claimed by them.

+Recognised gods.+--It is very important to find that the representatives or possessors of divine powers are the worshippers of their deity in life and his inferiors in death. The recognised gods have their definite circles of clients, and if their human representatives are subsequently worshipped or even deified, this is a not unnatural development, especially as the official deities are apt to be at the mercy of political and religious changes. The older gods can be degraded and sink to the rank of demons , but the petty deities and the lower supernatural beings are as little influenced by external vicissitudes as the lower ranks of humanity with whom they always stand in closer relationship. Their persistence in popular belief is as typical as the descent of the more august beings, although even the latter are understood to retain an influence which those of more recent introduction have not yet acquired or are unable to exert. While the general fundamental conceptions remain virtually unchanged, they are shaped by the social and political institutions, for religious and political life formed part of the same social organism.

THE GODS

Apart from names whose meaning is uncertain , the list could be easily enlarged; a number of names of western type can be gleaned from the records of the First Babylonian Dynasty.

From the general resemblance subsisting between the distinct local gods it was possible to regard them as so many forms of a single god; and when groups combined and individual gods were fused, multiplicity of types ensued. The status of a local tutelary was affected when commercial intercourse widened the horizon of both the traveller and the native; and in the growth of political power and the rise of a kingship the conceptions entertained of the deity's attributes and powers were elevated. Through the extension of authority the way lay open to groups of gods who could not be fused, and equally to the superiority of one national patron deity over the rest. Political or other changes led to the promotion of this or the other god, and prominent or specialised deities in superseding others acquired fresh attributes, though local divergencies were again necessarily retained. This does not complete the vicissitudes of the gods or the intricacies caused by assimilation or identification. A popular epithet or appellative could appear by the side of the proper deity as a new creation, or the deity was sub-divided on cosmical and astral theories. The female deity could even change her sex; the specific name could also become employed as a common term for any deity, and the plural 'gods' could be applied to a single being as a collective representation of the characteristics it embodied.

Amid the intricate careers of the great names, the local deities obstinately survived in popular religious life. They have found their parallel in the welis or patrons, saints and holy sheikhs of the modern shrines . The modern analogy is instructive in many points of detail, particularly when we observe the vicissitudes which the occupants of the shrines have experienced. It is natural to ask for the ancient counterparts of the Allah, the supreme god in the official religion, who, as we have said, is vague and remote in the practical religious life of the peasant of to-day. A series of well-defined historical events made him pre-eminent over all other gods and goddesses and established Mohammedanism; internal and external causes shaped the varying conceptions of his nature, and gave birth to numerous sects. All the Oriental religions have this twofold aspect: the historical circumstances which affected the vicissitudes of the deities, and the more subtle factors which have influenced forms of belief. But we have no direct information upon the rise of the general conditions in Palestine during our period, and such problems as the origin of the term El 'God' belong to the pre-historic ages.

In the names in chapters vi. and vii., the more familiar Astarte is employed for Ashtart . Where cuneiform evidence is used the Babylonian form is usually retained.

Amon, the predominant god of Egypt, owed his rise from an obscure local deity of Thebes to the political growth of the city. He was then assimilated to Re of Heliopolis.

+The Influence of Egypt.+--Our latest source is the Egyptian account of the visit of Wenamon to Byblos to procure cedar-wood from Lebanon for the sacred-barge of Amon-Re, King of Gods . The human messenger took with him the divine messenger in the shape of a statue of 'Amon-of-the-Way,' reputed to confer life and health; a sacred image upon which no common eye might gaze. When at length Zakarbaal granted an interview , he was inclined to ignore the political supremacy of Egypt, although he appears to allow that Amon had civilised Egypt and thence all lands, and that artisanship and teaching had come from Egypt to his place of abode. Wenamon, for his part, showed that former kings not only sold cedars to Egypt, but spent their lives sacrificing to Amon. Even the evidence of 'the journal of his fathers' did not remove the king's reluctance. But the envoy urged the claim of Amon to be lord and possessor of the sea and of Lebanon, and solemnly warned Zakarbaal: 'wish not for thyself a thing belonging to Amon-Re, yea the lion loves his own.' Ultimately the king sent the wood, and he commemorated his obedience to Amon-Re by an inscription which was likely to be profoundly beneficial. For, as the envoy observed, should Byblos be visited by Egyptians who were able to read the stele with his name , he would 'receive water in the West like the gods who are here' .

Although the narrative is written from an Egyptian standpoint, the conviction which is ascribed to Zakarbaal finds a parallel in the familiar story of the journey of Osiris, the founder of Egyptian civilisation, from the Delta to Byblos. Even before the Hyksos period Egyptian women named themselves after the Baalath of Byblos whom they identified with Hathor and evidently regarded as an appropriate patroness. The connection between Egypt and the port of Lebanon may have been exceptionally close, but there were Egyptian settlements at Gezer, Megiddo, and the north at an equally early age. Under the conquerors of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the daughters of the small tributaries were taken into the royal harem, and the sons were removed as hostages and safely guarded in Egypt. Some of the latter settled down, others were appointed in due course to the thrones of their fathers, after having received the necessary anointing-oil from the great king. One of the latter recalls in the Amarna letters how he had served the king in Egypt and had stood at the royal gate, and from the grave-stone of a Palestinian soldier at El-Amarna we may see how settlement upon Egyptian soil had led to the acceptance of Egyptian ideas of the other world.

THE PANTHEON

Until the necessary evidence comes to light it is scarcely possible to do more than collect a few notes upon some of the gods and goddesses of our period. The most important sources are from Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt; but some additional information can be gleaned from Palestinian names, allowance being made for the fact that a personal name compounded with that of a deity is not enough to prove that the bearer was its worshipper.

Babylonian and Hittite sculptures depict the god brandishing a hammer with his right hand, while the left holds up a triad of lightning-flashes or thunder-bolts. On an inscription from North Syria Hadad has horns, and with this agrees the association of the bull with the god. Like all predominant gods he includes a variety of attributes, and we may conjecture that the small heads of bulls unearthed by the excavations are connected with his worship . The inscription in question places Hadad at the head of a small pantheon with El, Resheph, R-k-b--el and Shamash. In the Amarna letters one writer calls the king of Egypt his Addu, and Abimelech of Tyre, who likens him to both Shamash and Addu, addresses him as 'he who gives his thunder in the heavens like Addu.'

Together with this combination it is to be noticed that while Khammurabi 'the Sun of Babylonia' calls himself the mighty bull who gores the enemy, old Egyptian scenes actually represent 'the strong bull' breaking down fortresses with its horns or expelling the inhabitants. The Pharaoh was symbolised by the bull, and even the Egyptian sun-god is styled 'the bull of the gods.' The animal is doubtless typical of generative force and of strength, while the union of the attributes of Shamash and Addu are intelligible since to the sun and weather man owed the necessaries of life. It is noteworthy that the two deities are prominent in the Hittite treaty, where each is called 'lord of heaven' , and, as early as the nineteenth century, the Assyrian compound-name Shamshi-Adad indicates that they could be easily combined. The name is borne by two kings; one a 'priest-king' of the god Ashur, the other a son of Ishme-Dagan .

Dagan has left his traces in place-names and in the ruler, 'Dagan is strong' . The deity seems to have been of Assyrian or Mesopotamian rather than of Babylonian origin. It is possible that he was a corn-god. The Babylonian NEBO, the 'teacher,' can only be recovered from place-names in Judah and Moab. NINIB , both sun- and war-god, appears in the Amarna letters in two place-names , and in the personal-name 'Servant of Ninib.' The swine was sacred to Ninib, as also to Tammuz and the Phoenician Adonis; but neither of the latter can be traced in our period.

SHALEM, in Jeru-salem , has been identified with a god who is known later in Phoenicia, Assyria, and North Arabia, and who is perhaps combined with Resheph on an Egyptian stele of our period. He was perhaps identified with Ninib. The antiquity of GAD, the deity of fortune, can be assumed from place-names. In a disguised form the goddess, 'Fortune' was the guardian-deity of the cities in the Greek age, and allusion is made in the Talmud to the couch reserved for the 'luck of the house.' A deified 'Righteousness' has been inferred from a name in the Amarna age; it would find a parallel in 'Right' and 'Integrity' the sons of the Assyrian god Sham ash, and both 'Integrity' and 'Righteousness' find a place in the Phoenician cosmogony which, in spite of its late dress, preserves many old features which recur in Hebrew myths.

The Babylonian NERGAL, god of war, burning heat and pestilence, and ruler of Hades, the deity with whom was identified Saturn , should find a place in the pantheon. A seal from Taanach describes its owner as 'servant of Nergal' , and the king of Cyprus reports to Egypt the desolation caused by the god's hand. Even as late as the third century B.C. we hear of a Phoenician who was his high-priest. As a solar fire-god he had in the west the name Sharrab or Sharraph with which the familiar Seraph may be identified. The god El of later Phoenician myth was depicted with six-wings like the Seraphim. He was the god to whom children were sacrificed, whence the story that he had set the example by killing his own. If infants had been slain to Sharrab in Palestine, this would be in harmony with Nergal's character, and it may be noticed that Nusku, who is sometimes associated with Nergal, was symbolised by a lamp . In the Old Testament the grim rites belong to Molech , but there are independent reasons for the view that the latter was the proper-name of the Phoenician El. However this may be, the name MELEK, although really an appellative , passes over into a true proper-name; but it is not clear whether this is the case in our period where we meet with the personal names 'servant of Melek' , 'El is Melek,' etc.

The preceding paragraphs touch only the fringe of an important subject--the Palestinian pantheon in and after the Amarna age. Egyptian supremacy involved the recognition of Amon-Re, but it is difficult to determine to what extent this deity differed from the Palestinian Shamash. Excavations illustrate the result of intercourse, especially in the southern part of the land, but the numerous characteristic scarabs, and the representations of Osiris, Isis, Ptah, Sebek, Anubis, and the ever-popular Bes , need have no significance for the gods of Palestine. They may not always be specifically Egyptian; Bes, for example, appears to be of non-Egyptian ancestry. Further, a number of the names in the Amarna letters are neither Egyptian nor Semitic, but of northern origin, and the name of the king of Jerusalem, 'servant of Khiba,' introduces a goddess of the earlier 'Hittite' peoples whose influence upon Palestine is to be inferred upon other grounds.

H. Winckler , p. 48.

CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT--CONCLUSION

+Miscellaneous Ideas.+--Although the native literature of our period consists almost entirely of the begging-letters and reports in the Amarna Tablets, yet even from the language addressed to the human representative of the Sun-God, we may gain some idea of the intellectual environment, some hints, it may be, suggestive of the religious thought of the age. The Egyptian monarch is addressed not only as king of lands, king of battle but as a god . His commands are as powerful as the Sun in Heaven; he is like the Sun which rises over the lands every day, and, as for the rising of the Sun in Heaven, so the writers await the words which come from his mouth. They keep the king's command day and night and acknowledge that the king will curse the man who does not serve him. He who hearkens not to the word of the king, his lord, his city and house go to ruin, and his name will not be in the land for ever; but the servant who hearkens to his lord, his city and house flourish, and his name is unto eternity, 'for thou art the Sun which rises over me and the wall of bronze which is lifted up for me.'

It need hardly be remarked that the paragraphs classifying the more interesting ideas in the letters from Palestine and Syria have been made as literal as possible.

The vassals do obeisance seven and seven times; they prostrate themselves upon breast and back. They call themselves the throne on which the king sits, his footstool, the dust of his feet and of the soles of his sandals. They are the ground upon which he treads, the dirt over which he walks; his yoke is upon their neck and they bear it. 'Whether we mount up to heaven or descend to earth, our head is still in your hand,' writes one, and he makes the following striking acknowledgement: 'I look here and I look there and there is no light, but I look to my lord the king and there is light; and though a brick move away from under its coping, I will not move away from under the feet of my lord.' These phrases, which were evidently popular, are used by two other writers. A vassal thus declares his fidelity: 'I have not sinned in aught against the king my lord, I have not sinned; may the lord my king know his evil-doers.' Another seeks the way to his lord, and from his lord deserts not. A confident vassal prays the king not to take anything to heart; let not thy heart be pained, he writes. One writer asks if he is a dog that he should not obey the royal commands, and a second emphasises his remarks by a repetition of the oath 'as the king, my lord, liveth.'

The king of Byblos, who calls his city the king's faithful handmaid, complains of a deed against his city which had not been done since eternity; the dogs act after their hearts and cause the king's cities to go up in smoke. The fields are like a wife without a husband through lack of sustenance. He himself is caught like a bird in a cage. Again, he is old and stricken with disease; the gods of Byblos are enraged, and the illness is very severe, but, he continues, 'I have opened my sins to the gods.' He declares that since the day he received favour from the king his heart had not changed, his face is to serve him; if the king's heart is for his city let him send help.

+The Underlying Identity of Thought+ throughout the old Oriental world shows itself alike in Egyptian texts and in Hittite tablets from Boghaz-keui. The literature of Babylonia, Assyria, and often, too, of Egypt so frequently has analogies and parallels in the Old Testament, that we may assume that similar points of contact would be found, had we some of the religious writings of the Palestine of our period. Though we do not know how the Palestinian addressed his gods, the evidence whether direct or indirect partially enables us to fill the gap. Even the simplicity and poverty of Oriental pastoral life have never been accompanied by a corresponding inferiority of expression or dearth of religious reflection. An unbiased examination of the external religious literature shows the position which the deities held in the thoughts of their groups of worshippers. Religion was quite part of life, and the same fundamental conceptions underlay the manifold social-religious systems whether tribal or monarchical. To their head each group looked for all the gifts of nature and also for protection and succour; him they were loyally prepared to sustain, and they expected a corresponding loyalty on his part.

A topical example of the identity of thought is furnished by a hymn of the monotheist Ikhnaton in honour of Aton. The deities are largely what circumstances make them; the extension of Egypt's empire extended the supremacy of the national-god, the situation encouraged the conception of a world-god. Now, this domesticated and somewhat weak monarch, holding himself aloof from politics, endeavoured to found a cult of the sun-disc which was characteristically devoid of the usual association of the sun with the destructive aspect of the storm- or weather-god. Like other individual faiths, it was stamped with a profound spirit of humanity. Ikhnaton's deity was the sole god, beside whom there was no other; the beginning of life, the creator of 'the countries of Syria, Nubia, the land of Egypt'; the maker of all mankind diverse in speech, and of all that is upon the earth and on high. It was a despotic and ill-timed monotheism. It introduced a cult which was too far from ordinary worship, one which threatened to overthrow the old-established deities. What was probably more important was the fact that the deity had not the forceful and dominating attributes of the old sun-god. He was not a god of war, and, from the current standpoint, would be of no avail in the political storms which were beating upon the Egyptian empire in Asia. But this remarkable attempt at a reform claims attention especially because the cult was as little upon traditional and specifically Egyptian lines as was the idea of the beneficent life-giving sun whose rays were not confined to Egypt alone. As Professor Breasted has observed, the hymn is especially interesting for its similarity in thought and sequence with the late Psalm civ. There is no evidence, however, that any effort was made to spread Ikhnaton's cult over the Egyptian dominions in Western Asia, and the possibility of Asiatic influence upon the shaping of the cult cannot be altogether excluded. We quote a few lines from Professor Breasted's translation to illustrate Ikhnaton's conceptions of the sun-god, whose worship was one of the most popular in Babylonia and Assyria, who, indeed, was regarded there not merely as an illuminator but as a supreme and righteous judge, the god of truth and justice.

+The Influence of Babylonia.+--The fact that Palestine used the script and language of Babylonia suggests that it shared other features of its culture. Among the Amarna Tablets were Babylonian mythological texts which had been carefully studied or used for reading-exercises in Egypt. One, the myth of Eresh-ki-gal and Nergal, narrating the descent of the latter into Hades, recalls the story of Persephone. Another, the myth of Adapa, tells how the hero who refused the food and water of life in heaven was denied the gift of immortality. It is inconceivable that Palestinian speculation did not turn to the mysteries of life and death, or that a people should acknowledge Nergal--or any other deity--without some formal beliefs. May we assume, therefore, that Palestinian thought was pre-eminently Babylonian? The question is as important for our period as for the Old Testament, and, in the absence of texts wherewith to institute a comparison, we conclude with a brief account of the bearing of the available evidence upon the problem.

Some archaeological details may next be summarised. An altar at Taanach, with protuberances suggestive of horns, bore in bold relief winged animals with human faces, lions, a tree with a goat on either side, and a small human figure clutching a serpent. Though it may belong to the eighth or seventh century, similar scenes recur upon seals and other objects of all dates. Animals are common, either alone or in conjunction with trees or men. Man-headed bulls with wings, sphinxes, and scenes of combat also appear. The ubiquitous myth of the dragon-slayer finds a parallel in the Egyptian scene of a foreign god piercing the serpent with his spear, or in the later grandiose representations of the sturdy boy at Petra who grips the dragon. One seal shows a seven-branched tree grasped by two men with the sun and moon on one side and two stags on the other. In a second, a human figure stands before a kind of pillar which is surmounted by an eight-rayed star. A third had been impressed upon a tablet from Gezer which bore nineteen distinct objects, including sun, moon, star, serpent, fish, crab, animals, etc. Some of the signs were at once recognised as zodiacal, and less elaborate specimens from Gezer and Megiddo furnish parallels. But inscribed Babylonian boundary-stones of our period bear analogous symbols; they are the emblems of the deities whose powers are thus invoked by the inscription should the land-mark be damaged or removed. The more gods, the more powerful the charm.

Such objects with all their Babylonian associations may in certain cases have been imported or copied from foreign originals; the scenes could have been absolutely meaningless or even subject to a new interpretation. But it is as difficult to treat every apparently foreign object as contrary to Palestinian ideas, as it is to determine how sacrificial and other scenes would otherwise have been depicted. Religion found its expression in art; art was the ally of idolatry, and the later uncompromising attitude of Judaism towards display of artistic meaning implies that the current symbolism, etc., reflected intelligible religious conceptions. But it does not follow that these conceptions were everywhere identical.

Finally, whatever was the true effect of the early Babylonian supremacy, both Palestine and Syria, when not controlled by Egypt, were influenced by the northern power of Mitanni and by the Hittites who preserve distinctive features of their own. According to Professor Sayce most of the seals we have been noticing are Syrian modifications of the Babylonian type, and 'the more strictly archaeological evidence of Babylonian influence upon Canaan is extraordinarily scanty.' It is obvious that one must allow for the direct influence exerted upon the religious conditions from a quarter of which very little is known as yet. The fact that Babylonian was used in Palestine and among the Hittite peoples clearly does not allow sweeping inferences. Indeed, so far from the script or language having been imposed from without, the people of Mitanni apparently borrowed the cuneiform script and adapted it to their own language; while, in the Amarna Tablets, the native tongue of Palestine and Syria has left a distinct impress upon the Babylonian. This individuality repeats itself in Palestinian pottery, which has neither originality of concept nor fertility of resource. But it has vigour and vitality, and has not developed into the superior art with which it came into contact. In general the archaeological evidence shows very clearly that Palestine was not absorbed by Babylonian culture, still less by that of Egypt.

The fundamental religious conceptions have from time to time been elevated and ennobled by enlightened minds; but what European culture was unable to change in the age of Greek and Roman supremacy, influences of Oriental origin could not expel. Official cults, iconoclastic reforms, new positive religions have left the background substantially unaltered, and the old canvas still shows through the coatings it has received.

PRINCIPAL SOURCES AND WORKS OF REFERENCE

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

The following dates are based upon the latest researches, but are to be regarded as provisional. Some Biblical dates are added for comparison, those marked with an asterisk follow the margin of the Authorised Version.

FIRST BABYLONIAN DYNASTY between . . . . . . . . . . . . 2060-1800 B.C.

INDEX

Adonis, 36, 47, 92, 111.

Aegean isles, 6, 8.

Allah, 21, 61, 68.

Anath, goddess, 85.

Animism, 60.

Anointing, 14, 27, 42, 64, 76, 79.

Anubis, 96.

Anthropomorphism, 28, 49.

Apollo, 23, 84.

Ashirat, Ashirta, goddess, 53, 87.

Tell 'Ashtarah, 77, 81.

Atargatis, 31.

Baal , 33, 84, 89.

Baal-Zephon, 86.

Bes, 96.

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