swallowed him. This 'fish,' it has been claimed, is merely a marine form of Tiawath, the dragon of chaos, and the three days and nights which Jonah remains inside it are "the winter months."7 This does not seem very clear. Hercules in like manner descended into the belly of a fish and emerged again after three days, according to the Phœnicians. The name of Jonah may be compared with that of Oannes or Ea. The love-god, in the Hindu Vishnu Purana, thrown into the sea, is swallowed by a fish, like the ring of Gyges. Was there a local sea-monster at Joppa, a variant of Tiawath, and is it the same in the Jonah myth as that in the tale of Perseus? A tawny fountain at Joppa was thought to derive its colour from the blood of the sea-monster slain by Perseus, says Pausanias. Was then the monster who lay in wait off Joppa, Tiawath the goddess of darkness, and was Jonah none other than Ea or Oannes, her mortal foe, the god of light, whom she would mythologically swallow during the sere months of winter?
1. Another spelling is Tiamat.
2. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, p. 374.
3. Of whom we now hear for the first time.
4. In many mythologies we find the gods praying and sacrificing to one another, and even to deities presumably higher than themselves and unknown to man or only guessed at by him. Thus the Vedic gods are constantly sacrificing one to the other, and there are many American instances of this worship of god by god.
5. See Pinches, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 39.
6. This account has been claimed as a weak version of that part of the creation story which deals with the creation of the host of the abyss. The fact that Nergal states that he destroyed these monsters might justify us in believing that the myth was on this occasion so edited as to provide the monarch with an opportunity for boasting.
7. Bible Folk Lore, London, 1884. Anonymous.
CHAPTER III:
EARLY BABYLONIAN RELIGION
The Beginnings of Babylonian Religion
The true beginning of a religion is that epoch in its history when it succeeds, by reason of local or national circumstances and environment and by racial genius, in raising itself from those purely animistic influences which are characteristic of early faith and from which all great religions have emerged, if they have not been able entirely to free themselves from associations which by reason of their antiquity and the hold they achieve on the mind of humanity are particularly difficult to cast off. Thus a sense of nationality and the attainment of a high standard of righteousness assisted in shaping Jewish religion. The necessity for military efficiency and therefore of sacrifice to the gods was moulding a real if terrible religion in ancient Mexico when the invading Spaniards ended the hideous masque of tragedy. Insight and meditation lent an air of ethical exaltation to the Vedic religion of India. Thus in a manner peculiarly its own, and according to the trend of its particular genius, did each race evolve a suitable religion from an original animistic basis.
If we are to discover the foundations of any system or cult, however, if we are to excavate the soil religious as we would the soil archæological in the hope of coming upon the basis of any particular faith, we must undertake the work in a manner as thorough as that of the antiquary who, pick in hand, delves his way to the lowest foundations of palace or temple. The earliest Babylonian religious ideas—that is, subsequent to the entrance of that people into the country watered by the Tigris and Euphrates—were undoubtedly coloured by those of the non-Semitic Sumerians whom they found in the country. They adopted the alphabet of that race, and this affords strong presumptive evidence that the immigrant Semites, as an unlettered people, would naturally accept much if not all of the religion of the more cultured folk whom they found in possession of the soil.
There is no necessity in this place to outline the nature of animistic belief at any length. This has been done in so many other volumes of this series and in such detail that it is sufficient to state here succinctly that animism is a condition of thought or belief in which man considers everything in the universe along with himself to be the possessor of 'soul,' 'spirit,' or at least volition. Thus, the wind, water, animals, the heavenly bodies, all live, move, and have their being, and because of his fear of or admiration for them, man placates or adores them until at length he almost unconsciously exalts them into a condition of godhead. Have we any reason to think that the ancient Semites of Babylonia regarded the universe as peopled by gods or godlings of such a type? The proofs that they did so are not a few.
Spirits and Gods
Spirits swarmed in ancient Babylonia, as the reader will observe when he comes to peruse the chapter dealing with the magical ideas of the race. And here it is important to note that the determinative or symbolic written sign for 'spirit' is the same as that for 'god.' Thus the god and the spirit must in Babylonia have had a common descent. The manner in which we can distinguish between a god and a spirit, however, is simple. Lists of the 'official' gods are provided in the historical texts, whereas spirits and demons are not included therein. But this is not to say that no attempt had been made to systematize the belief in spirits in Babylonia, for just as the great gods of the universe were apportioned their several offices, so were the spirits allotted almost exactly similar powers. Thus the Annunaki were perhaps regarded as the spirits of earth and the Igigi as spirits of heaven. So, at least, are they designated in an inscription of Rammannirari I. The grouping evidently survived from animistic times, when perhaps the spirits which are embraced in these two classes were the only 'gods' of the Babylonians or Sumerians, and from whose ranks some of the great gods of future times may have been evolved. In any case they belong to a very early period in the Babylonian religion and play no unimportant part in it almost to the end. The god Anu, the most ancient of the Babylonian deities, was regarded as the father of both companies, but other gods make use of their services. They do not appear to be well disposed to humanity. The Assyrian kings were wont to invoke them when they desired to inculcate a fear of their majesty in the people, and from this it may be inferred that they were objects of peculiar fear to the lower orders of the population—for the people often cling to the elder cults and the elder pantheons despite the innovations of ecclesiastical politicians, or the religious eccentricities of kings. There can, however, be no doubt as to the truly animistic character of early Babylonian religion. Thus in the early inscriptions one reads of the spirits of various kinds of diseases, the spirit of the south wind, the spirits of the mist, and so forth. The bit-ili or sacred stones marking the residence of a god were probably a link between the fetish and the idol, remaining even after the fully developed idol had been evolved.
Was Babylonian Religion Semitic in Type?
It has already been stated that the religion of ancient Babylon was probably greatly influenced by those non-Semitic people whom the Semitic Babylonians found occupying the country when they entered it. The question then arises (and it is one of high importance), how far did the religion of ancient Babylonia and Assyria partake of the character of that group of religions which has been called 'Semitic.' The classical pronouncement upon this phase of the
