669TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING.

HELD IN COMMITTEE HOOM B, THE CENTI~AL HALL,

WESTMINSTER, S.W. 1, ON MONDAY, DECEMBER 8TH, 1924,
AT 4.30 P.M.
DH. JAMF.S

w.

THIRTLE,

M.R.A.S., F.R.G.S.,

IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed and signed,
and the Honorary Secretary announced the following Elections since the
last Meeting :-W. Bell Dawson, Esq., M.A., [Link]. (son of the well-known
scientist, Sir William Dawson, an honoured Member of the Victoria
Institute), as a Member, and the Rev. S. S. Farrow, L. T. Chambers, Esq.,
W. J. Scales, Esq., Miss A. A. Browne, R.R.C., Mrs. E. S. C. Hutchinson,
the Rev. W. D. Vater, E. R. Wheeler, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., Miss M. W.
Rouzee, B.A., Wilfred M. Clayton, Esq., the Rev. James Holroyde, M.A.,
and Louis H. Loft, Esq., as Associates.
The Chairma.n then introduced Professor T. G. Pinches, LL.D.,
M.R.A.S., the well-known Assyriologist, to read his paper on "The
Worship of Idols in Assyrian History in Relation to Bible References."

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY

IN RELATION TO BIBLE REFERENCES.
By PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S.
all the noteworthy things in Jewish history, as told in
I N the
Old Testament, there is probably nothing which strikes
the reader . more than the unique position occupied
by the chosen people owing to the religious isolation in which
they found themselves. On every side, far or near, they were
surrounded by heathendom. And this fact comes to our notice
so often that the reader is tempted to take it as a most natural
state of things, as though it had existed from the beginning
of the history of the nations of the Near East; but the truth
of the matter seems to be, that there was no monotheism in
the Mediterranean coast-lands before the arrival of Abraham,
who, about 2,000 years before Christ, brought that creed with
him from Ur of the Chaldees, when Amraphel, who is identified
with lJammurabi, the Ammurapi of a late Assyrian letter,
ruled over Western Asia. Though this letter is of no great

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

11

importance, it shows that he had a certain amount of popularity

in the northern kingdom of Assyria, just as the fragments of
an Assyrian copy of his laws show that he was also renowned
as a lawgiver in the Mesopotamian tract. 'l'hat. his laws should
have been known--and probably well known-in Syria and
Palestine during his lifetime, when he was lord of Amurruthe land of the Amorites--is not without its significance, and
that fact may have some bearing on the subject of idol-worship
in the district with which we are now dealing.
Abraham, the father of the Israelites, on arriving in Palestine,
iound himself in a land which, like Babylonia, whence he had
come, possessed quite a pantheon of gods. In this district
there were not only the native deities, but also many from other
countries, including Babylonia and, possibly, Assyria, though
the latter country had not yet attained the renown which it
:wquired in later centuries, when it had thrown off the Babylonian
yoke. The fact that Babylonian deities had reached Palestine
and the neighbourhood before the arrival of Abraham implies
considerable intercourse between Babvlonia and the western
tract long before the time of ljammu;abi, the king who ruled
in Abraham's time. And in this connection we may quote
the name of the goddess Istar, who was always known in that
district as Ashtoreth, with a feminine suffix which certainly
did not belong to the name, seeing that the original language
-that in which the name arose-was the genderless Sumerian.
In connection with the worship of this important goddess in
the Near Eastern world of 2,000 years before Christ it is
noteworthy that a tablet from Babylonia in the British Museum
seems to give no less than ten identifications with a divinity
called A.;Jratum, which is probably the asherah, "grove," of
the Old Testament and the English translations. Such a text
as this list naturally shows that as yet we have but meagre
detaiL3 of the heathen worship of the Canaanites.
Of all the [Link] deities which we shouhl expect to
find sympathetic to the Hebrews, we may take the Babylonian
king of the gods, Merodach, as being the most to their liking.
This, in fact, seems to have been really the case, for, as I have
pointed out before, a name containing, as i~s main element,
that of the deity in question, namely, Mordechai (better
Maredachai) introduced during the [Link] captivity, is to
he found among the Jews even to-day. But it was not the
Babylonian Merodach whom they thus honoured, but Jahwah

12

.PROFJ<~SSOR THEOPHILUS G.

PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

under his Babylonian name. The only passage where Merodach

is mentioned--and that as a Babylonian god--is Jer. 1, 2 :-" Declare ye among the nations and publish, and set up a
standard; publish, and conceal not; say: Babylon is taken,
Bel is put to shame, Merodach is dismayed (or broken down):
her images are put to shame, her idols are dismayed (or broken
down)."
Notwithstanding that Bel and Merodach are here spoken of
as though they were different deities, they were really one and
the same ; for although all the gods of Babylonia were, in their
degree, Mle or "lords," Merodach bore this title in a special
sense as bel Mle, "lord of lords"-- chief of all the other gods
bearing that title. As a fine Babylonian hymn handed down
to us by the Assyrians tells us, he was:--The merciful one among the gods,
The merciful one who loves to give life to the [Link], Icing of heaven and earth.
King of Babylon, lord of E-sagila,
King of E-zida, lord of E-mabtila,
Heaven and earth are thine-Yea, heaven and earth are thine;
The charm of life is thine,
The philtre of life is thine,
Sar-azaggu, gn ab::n (the glorious pronouncement-, the wor<l
of the Deep), is thine.
Mankind, the black-head race (= the Babylonians),
The creatures of life, as many as announce a name (and) exist
in the land,
The regions four as many as exist,
The Igigi of the host of heaven and earth, as many as
exist-Verily to thee are their ears [directed].
An idealized idolatry, this, which sets up a king of heaven and
earth, and makes everything, even the "five-one-one "-the
lgigi-the five planets and the sun and the moon, subject to
him, without acknowledging their likeness to him except by
setting the divine prefix before the word. Was it this conception
of the lord of creation on the part of the Babylonians which
appealed to the Hebrews and led them to look indulgently upon
the personality of their chief god 1 And here it is worthy of
note, as the fact has a. tendency to be overlooked, that there

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

1:1

w 1rc, in ancient times, several statues of god~:<-- seven. or eight,

or nine in number -set up at Babylon, near the gate (probably
the chief entrance to the city), and each of those gods bore a title.
The teacher, we find (or was it the preacher ? -the word is broken
away) was an image of Nebo; $b ~ T::T ~1
awezu sag-ub-bara,
meaning, among numerous other possible significations, " the
chief overthrowing the boundary," or the like, was the "official
title," as it were, of Nergal, and if this be the rendering
it should designate him as god of war--or, perhaps better,
unwarranted hostile (surprise) attack. After this comes rnubarru,
"the discerner," the title of the god
1J::T ~, d. Di-kud-that is, "judgment-deciding," in Semiticdayanu, "the judge,"--a
Babylonian word taken into Hebrew under the form of l~"! ,
dayan, used by the Jews even now. Last on the list is the
zazzaku, the title borne by the god Papilsag, well known to the
Assyriological student as the equivalent of Architenens, " the
Archer" of the signs of the Zodiac. These divine names occur
on the reverse of that well-known tablet first published in the
Journal of the Victoria Institute, vol. xvi, pp. 8-10---the "monotheistic tablet," on the obverse of which 14 or more Bahylonian
deities are identified with 1\ierodach. In this important inscription Enlil, or lllil, the t,.,~~, elil (plural u.,~.,~~, elilirn,
"idols" of the Hebrews), appears as "Merodach of Lordship and
counsel "--Maruduk sa beliltu n rnitlnktu, the last word in the
sense, apparently, of reflection and consideration, with a view to
the rule either of the heavenly kingdom, which was M:erodach's
domain, or any earthly 1.-ingdom to whose ruler he might give
advice. Though we only know this inscription from the late
copy published in the Journal of this Institute, I am inclined to
think that it dates from the time of the first Dynasty of Babylonthat of Hammurabi-and if this be the case, the monotheistic
doctrine ~ontained therein may easily have emanated from "the
land of the Amorites," the Semitic predecessors of the Jews.
Upon this point Prof. Clay, of Yale, will probably, later on,
enlighten us. He thinks that the Babylonian story of the Flood
may have originated with them, and early took on that monotheistic form which Genesis has handed down to us.
But there is no evidence that the Amorites were in any sense
monotheists-the identification of all the gods with Merodach
was a belief held by those, in the time of the " dynasty of
Babylon" (which was, it would seem, a foreign dynasty), who

+,

,._+

14

PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

were in the army of Sumu-abi (" Shem is my father"), the first

king. And this suggests the probability that there were in all
polytheistic lands a section of the people who did not believe in
a multiplicity of gods. 1Jammurabi, of the foreign dynasty of
Babylon, therefore accepted this doctrine of their identification
with Merodach and had the tablet declaring it set up after his
assumption of regal power in the .twentieth century before
Christ.
But the Amorites of Palestine did not accept Merodach ; they
seem to have held to Merodach's predecessor-a sun-god like
him--namely, Tammuz. Of all the deities of Semitic heathendom.
there is hardly one who has a more interesting mythological
career than this favourite of the Palestinian tract and of the
women of Israel, for they must have been worshippers of
Tammuz long before the women of Jerusalem lamented for him
in the court of the temple at Jerusalem, as related by Ezekiel.
The worship of Tammuz goes back to an exceedingly early
date, as the name is found in the temple accounts of the time
of Lugal-anda and Uru-ka-gina, who reigned at Lagas about
3,000 years before Christ. 'l'he full form of the name Tammuz
in the original language, Sumerian, is Dumu-zida, meaning
" the true " or "faithful son," probably referring to the belief
that he constantly kept his word and went down to pass the
winter months of every year with Eres-ki-gal (Persephone) in
the underworld. Though always written Dumu-zi(da), it is
contended that the name of the god was pronounced Tammuz
in Babylonia as well as in the Palestinian tract. From tbis
name, however, that of the fourth month of the Babylonian year,
Du'uzu (for Duwuzu, and this, again, for Dumu-zi), Tammuz,
was derived, which seems to argue against the pronunciation
suggested, except among those Babylonians and Assyrians who
came into contact with the Palestinians. Naturally a change
in the pronunciation would have obscured the etymology,
which must have been known to the scribes.
The first element of the name is easy, dumu being the Sumerian
word for "child," "son." Zida, shortened to zi, is probably
to be rendered in Semitic Babylonian by a form of the root
kanu, "to be set, fixed, true, faithful." It also stands for
imnu, "the right (hand)," wbich is [Link] Akkadian form of the
Hebrew l~~;, yamin, with the same meaning. Tbis would make
the name Tammuz practically the same in meaning as the Hebrew

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

r~~-p

15

Bin-yiimin, Benjamin, the usual rendering of which is

"son of (the) right hand." A right-hand son naturally suggests
a faithful supporter, like a master's right-hand man. Other
meanings of zida seem to contain the ideas of greatness, height,
and splendour.
In view of the importance of this west-Semitic deity I give
some of his other names from Western Asia Inscriptions II, pl. 59.
After mentioning the attendants of the sun-god Samas, who were
named J{ittum and Me!iarum, "justice and righteousness," we
have a rlialectic form of the name of Tammuz, '(u-zizi, explained
(though broken here) by the regular form, [Dumu]-zi, which is
carried ink> the Semitic explanatory column by means of the
characters ~u-rna, " the same," and after this we have another
of his names, very rarely found in the inscriptions-d. U-libir-si I
dEn-ubar-si I dDumu-zi, Tammuz.
The meaning of this three-element name is instructive ; it
may be rendered as Belu remfita mala," the lord filled with grace."
As a sun-god, Tammuz is rightly classed, as here, with the
attendants of Samas, the sun in a general sense, as seen all the
year round, and not merely the luminary favouring the growth
of the fruits of the earth and the living creatures thereon.
The attraction of the Israelites towards this deity is therefore
not to be wondered at, especially when we consider the importance
of the solar heat in nature. The lamentation, after the summer
solstice, was only what might be expected in a nation surrounded
by idolators still more devoted to heathen practices than the
Jews. As for the Assyrians and Babylonians, they were influenced likewise by patriotic feelings. Whether the Hebrews
used the hymns composed in Babylonia or not is uncertain,
but we may imagine that they sang compositions of a similar
nature to the extracts which I now quote after subjecting my
older renderings to a further revision. The opening lines possibly
refer to an enemy of the god :-

The
The
The
The

ewe and her lamb he taketh;

goat and her kid he taketh ;
ewe and her lamb he smiteth down ;
goat and her kid he smiteth down.

Arise, then, go, thou hero, the road of No-return.

Ah hero-warrior, Lord-physician.
Ah hero-my hero, my god Damu.

16

.PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

Ah hero-son-my faithful lord.

Ah hero-god Lamga, lord of the outspread net.
Ah hero-l!:bir, lord of sacrifice.
Ah hero-Gu-silim the bright-eyed.
Ah hero-thou who art my heavenly light.
Ab hero-A ma-u:~u-gal-ana. *
Ah hero-brother, mother, heavenly vine.
He goeth, he goeth to the bosom of the earthHe will cause abundance for the land of death.
(Variant translation :-The Sun-god bath made him great
for the land of death.)
[Neither of these tram;lations, suggested by Assyro-Babylonian
scribes, however, seem to give the sense of the original words.
which are best transcribed as follows :-[u]-zale
u-zale
kur . ugana - ~u
Daylight, daylight, for the land of death ! J

The rest of this noteworthy paragraph I translate mainly

from the original dialectic Sumerian :For the bitter grief, for the day of the descent,t
For the unpropitious month of thy yeart ;
For the last road of thy people ;
For my acclaiming of the lord(Thou goest), hero, to the distant unseen land.
In suchwise reads, roughly, the non-Semitic Sumerian text.
The Akkadian translation, however, is somewhat as follows :-Filled with lamentation on the dav when he fell and was in
grief,

In an unpropitious month of his year,
To the road of the peoples' end (or mankind's rest),
At the cry of the lord (or my lord),
(Thou goest}, hero, to the distant land which is not seen.
It is strange that the Akkadians should not have known
exactly how to translate these remarkable lamentations, but
such seems to have been the case. The wording, however,
* "Mother, great unique one (of) heaven."
t To the underworld.
t Th.e month [Link].

17

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

suggests that there was some mysterious meaning in them, but

this we have not time to deal with ; it is enough to include here
these few specimens, even though the renderings may not be
altogether satisfactory.
It is naturally difficult to get away from the subject of the
god Tammuz-his worship was so general in the Palestinian
tract, as well as in Babylonia, and so many books have been
written about it, from the Italian monograph of Lenormant
to Sir James Frazer's noteworthy work; that any discussion
of the importance of the cult in a paper such as the present is
bound to give but a faint idea of its popularity-indeed, Tammuz
seems to have become in Palestine almost like a national deity.
In Babylonia, on the other hand, he was largely superseded by
that more glorious sun-god, Merodach, whose worship seems
not to have prevailed in the extreme west of Asia.
The heathen worship of the national god of the Babylonians
seems, moreover, not to have affected the Israelites either; but
notwithstanding this, it is needful to say something about it
here. As I have already pointed out, the Jews were inclined
to identify the chief of the Babylonian pantheon with Jahwah
or Jehovah. But in stating this, I do not mean that they
regarded Merodach as a separate deity from Jehovah; it was
simply his name in another language.
Concerning Merodach and his merciful nature I have already
spoken (p. 12), and a few examples of the worship addressed to
him by the Babylonians may be of interest. It appears on
Plate XXIX of Craig's Religious Texts:I will celebrate thy name (0) Merodach, the mighty one of
the gods, governor of heaven and earth,
Who, having been well created, is alone supreme.
Thou bearest now heavenly divinity, sovereignty, power of
uniting (1), royalty,

Thou embracest all wisdom, perfect in strength.

Beloved, counsellor, supreme prince, powerful, magnified,
He has caused his dominion to be glorious, he has prepared
resistance-even A[ nu ?].

18

PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

In heaven thou art supreme, in earth thou art king, able in

wisdom.
Fixing the totality of the habitations, holding the ends
of the firmament and of the e[arth ].
Thou now art made great among the gods, the image he hath
created for thee Nudimmud hath [set]
He who hath caused thee to hold the fates of the great gods
set in thine hands.
He hath caused (them) to kiss they feet, they have spoken,
they have blessed (thee), (even) the[y].
Here the text becomes defective, and though there are many
more lines worth notice, I refrain from continuing the translation
owing to its length. It will be seen, however, that though the
other gods of the Babylonian pantheon are recognized, l\le; odach
was, among the Babylonians, the supreme deity and lord of the
universe. In this sense the Israelites regarded themselves
justified in using his name as the equivalent of Jehovah.
Concerning the worship of the Assyro-Babylonian gods in
Palestine we get but little information from the Old Testament.
In the case of Baal, based upon Phrenician practices, or the
Baalized worship of Jehovah, the places of worship were on the
hill-tops, and among the trees. Here were to be found Asheras,
or wooden poles or masts of unknown shape, and possibly
carved or draped in some distinctive way. Or a ma~~ebah
either a single stone or a heap of stones, may have been set
up to indicate the sacred nature of the place. At the accompanying altars offerings of the fruits of the earth and of the
flocks were made ; as to the rites performed, it is not my
intention here to describe them. They had their own priests
and prophets, and on the more important ceremonial occasions
these leapt upon the altar, calling upon the god to show his
power, and trying to induce him to do so by gashing themselves
with knives. How far the out-door ceremonies of the Babylonians may have followed the same lines it is impossible to
say, but the solemnity and decorum of their temple-worship was
in many cases undoubted, even in the strange ritual which
follows:3. .
gate;

. . dust of the shrine of the dust-god of the great

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

19

4. dust of the crossways (?) of the regions (or of dusts), dust

of the divine dove ;
5. who (is) Azaga the four-winged (?), dust of alammeti (?) ;
6. dust of the prostitute's gate, dust of the night-gate ;
7. dust of the recruiter's gate, dust of the palace-gate;
8. dust of the orchard(1)-gate, dust of the sabt1-gate, dust of
the road;
9. dust of the orchardman's gate, dust of the carpenter's gatethese dusts,
10. all of them, thou shalt crush, thou shalt mingle in the
river(-water),
11. cypress-oil in the midst thou shalt pour (?), the gate of
the house of the . . .
12. thou shalt prepare a platform, pour out pure (or holy)
water,* thou shalt set up a GAB-reedt before !Star;
13. 12 foods thou shalt apportion, food of oil thou shalt
pour out, honey (and) cream thou shalt set on,
14. dates (and) rice(?) flour thou shalt heap up, a braziert of
cypress thou shalt set on,
15. A wether (or) a ewe thou shalt raise on to the platform,
at its end
16. thou shalt tie it, and thou shalt place it on the right of
the brazen image, (and) thus (the minister) shall say : 17. "!Star, Nanaa, and Kasbaya,ll
18. unto it (i.e., the house) be helpful." This he shall say,
and
19. the word of his heart he shall pronounce, and [i]n the house
of the sabU
20. he shall write. That house in future days will be happy.
21. INCANTATION: !Star, the mighty one of the great
gods,
22. Exalted, brilliant, warlike !Star,

*
t

.t

H <H

:::m~. aazagga.
Possibly a substitute for the W. Semitic asherah.
Martin: cassolette, "perfume-box," "perfume-burner"

Me elliti, written

(censor),

mlcnalclcu.
The scribe's original evidently had

ft ,... >f, which he could not

He has therefore written W under this group, making
tasahlc-an, "thou shalt place," the reading adopted here.
Martin: Gazbd.

understand.

W -+.
11

c 2

~0

23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.

PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

Dominating, grand, Irnini, the lordly,

To me be helpful, thou createst and thou protectest,
Divinity of the people, goddess of men,
My counterpart of the people, my august one, !Star,
Daughter of Anu, offspring of the great gods,
Giver of sceptre, throne, [and rule] to [all the rulers].

Here the obverse breaks off. Of the reverse the remains of

eight lines are preserved, and read as follows:-2. Thou shalt set up a GAB-reed . . .
3. A censor of cypress thou shalt place . .
4. Thou shalt repeat the incantation 7 times, and [put on]
a woollen garment, . . .
5. Into the water thou shalt pour. [Thou shalt repeat] the
incantation 7 [times,]
6. The gate of the house thou shalt sprinkle, and [the
slaughter 1]
7. Of an ox thou shalt make and [shalt set it] beneath a
aare-[oven 1]
8. If a man (by) seal and the killing of a sheep, the driving (1)
of a sheep to the river . . .
9. Tablet CXXXVth (of the series) Namhur-bi.
Notwithstanding its tedious length, this is o~e of the most
interesting of the ritual tablets from Babylonia which the
Assyrians have preserved to us. The collection of dust from the
various places trodden by the feet of all the classes of men of
which the writer of the text speaks is doubtless intended to
symbolize the offering's benefit to all the inhabitants of the
land, who naturally had a right to make use of it. In more
than one passage in the Old Testament men are compared with
dust, either because of its evanescence, or the impossibility of
numbering its particles. Dust and water, however, formed
part of the ceremony of the jealousy-test (Numbers v, 17ff.)analogous, but very different in its intention, to that of the
Assyro-Babylonian Text here translated.* The mixing of the
watered dust with oil was followed by the setting up of a

* In Lev. xiv, 41, where the dust was scraped away from an infected
house, this was simply done as a scientific measure.

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

21

platform, and the offering of the fruits of the earth, a wether, and
a ewe, thereon. When reading this part we realize that these
preparations were connected with the asking of a blessing on
what seems to have been a new house for the saM-an unknown
official, but possibly a vine-dresser. In the course of this
invocation-ceremony !Star (Ashtoreth), Nanaa, and Kaf?baya
were invoked. A noteworthy point in the address to these
deities, however, is that the imperative verb contained therein
is in the singular-perhaps because they were all regarded as
indicating the same goddess, and therefore a single person.
From its form, Kat?baya should be a gentilic noun, but, if so,
its ending is masculine-for the feminine we should expect
Kafbaitum instead of K~baya.
The goddesses having been invoked, the celebrant had
apparently to write something of the nature of a blessing or
good wishes on his own account, and place it in the sabu's house.
Then follows the incantation to Htar, giving her all the honorific
terms to which she was entitled.
One of the most interesting references to the gods of Assyriamythological creations worshipped first of all by the Babylonians-is in that interesting and characteristic passage in
2 Kings xvii, where it is recorded that the king of Assyria transported men from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim to the cities of Samaria to replace the exiled children of
Israel. The new-comers, finding themselves a prey to the
lions which infested Samaria, appealed to the king of Assyria
to be taught the way of the god of the land, who, they believed,
had control over the beasts, and could prevent their attacks.
He therefore sent an Israelitish priest to teach them, and they
combined the worship of their own gods with that of the worship
of .Jehovah.
" The men of Babylon made Sukkoth-benoth, and the men
of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima.
" And the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites
burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech,
the gods of Sepharvaim."
As there is no proof that Sepharvaim was Sippara of the
Sun-god and of Anunitum, the identification of Adrammelech and
~ammelech with the deities worshipped there is seemingly
Impossible, and Nibhaz and Tartak, worshipped by the Avites,
were probably not Babylonian gods either. There remain,

22

PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

then, only two deities with which we have to deal-Succothbenoth and Nergal. As Succoth-benoth was worshipped by
the men of Babylon, I conjectured some years ago that this
must have been a name of Merodach, the god of the city, and
published in the International Bible Encyclopmdia a suggestion
that the name should really be read Sakut ban wdtM, a variant
for Dikut ban mdti (as Assyriologists would transcribe the words),
the whole meaning "Sakut (for Dikut, the Judge}, creator of
the land "-a good title of Merodach. When writing this paper,
however, I asked myself: Why not return to the old explanation that Succoth-benoth is a phrase, and means what it seems
to mean-" Booths of daughters," or "maidens" 1 We all
know the reputation of the Babylonians when it came to the
worship of !Star ; Herodotus tells us all about it, as does also
the Epistle of Jeremy, appended to the Book of Baruch. In
this the women with cords about them, sitting in the ways, are
described. And as many of them had to sit there a long time,
it is not improbable that wooden booths were constructed for
them, as a protection against the sun and the rain. In this
case we may imagine that the King of Assyria deported to
Samaria the more undesirable portion of the population of
Babylon, who at once set up the most immoral of the customs
connected with the worship of !Star of Babylon there. But is
it likely that they would have done this to the neglect of the
worship of the king of the gods, the merciful Merodach, he who
loved the giving of life 1 Besides, " booths of daughters "
could hardly be objects of worship. There is still something to
be said, then, for Sakut ban wath as these exiles' way of saying
Sakut bani mdti. Friedrich Delitzsch's comparison of Succoth
with the Babylonian divine name Sakkut is rendered improbable
by the fact that it does not designate one of the great gods of
Babylonia, but simply one of the attendant-deities of Anu, the
god of the heavens.
Clearer, and therefore more interesting, is the name of the
god of Cuth, otherwise Cuthah, that interesting city about
18 miles north-east of Babylon. This site, which is now known
as [Link], "the mound of Abraham," was that of one
of the primreval cities of Babylonia, and its Akkadian name, K uti1,
is derived from the original Sumerian form, ...ta -:::.~ H <IEJ ,
Guduak'. Its patron-god was, as indicated in 2 Kings xvii, 30,
Nergal, the great deity of the underworld, who ruled there with

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

23

his spouse Eres-ki-gal, the queen of that region before he became

her consort. Nergal was conceived as a lion-headed god,
probably to indicate his warlike character, and he was also the
god of plague, disease, and death. As " lord of the grave "
( :/ ::::,T ::f ff<T , Sa qabri) he was N e-eri-gal, " ruler of the
great abode "-the place where all those who have departed
~TT, U-Gur, "the
this life await the day of bliss. AB
lord who turns," he was Nergal Sa lw-yiiti, "Nergal of inspecting,"
doubtless because he went about the earth and the underworld
seeking those chosen for the fate to which they were destined
-death or the reward of a well-spent life, as the Babylonians
understood that term.
A great deal more could be written about Nergal, the Babylonian god of the underworld. His names are very numerous,
and there is one of them which arouses our curiosity. His temple
at Cuthah was called fl-rrwJlr,m, " the house of the palm-growth,"
or the like, and he himself therefore bore the name of N eSlam-ta-ea,
" he who came forth from the palm-growth." As the plague-god,
smiting at random, and seemingly without cause, he might be
likened to the god of the assassin, striking down by a chance
shaft from a bow. But could he be described as coming forth
from the wood of that bow? It seems doubtful, and we may,
therefore, have to look for some romantic legend concerning himone of the series of the legends of the gods, like those of Merodach
or Tammus, or En-urta, " the lord from the beam," who was
also a god of battle, differing, probably, from Nergal in that
he was advocate of conflict in fair fight and military strategy.
The literature concerning Nergal is of some extent, though
far from equalling that referring to Merodach. As a specimen
I select an extract from what reads somewhat like a litany, though
in all probability it should be regarded as a simple liturgical
text:-

-+ (

(Priest:) IJeader, whose face is bright, the shining mouth of

the powerful fire-god [ilhuuinateth him].
(People:) Nergal, leader, whose face is bright, etc.
(Priest :) The lusty son beloved of the heart of Enlil, the
great director [of the world].
(People:) Nergal, the lusty son, etc.
(Priest:) Prince of the great gods, [who spreadeth] fear and
awe.
(People:) Nergal, prince, etc.

. 24

PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

(Priest:) Giant of the Anunnaki, who [spreadeth] terrible awe

[over all the lands].
(People:) Nergal is the giant, etc.
(Priest:) Lord, supreme head-raiser, beloved of E-kura, the
record of whose name [overcometh evil].
(People:) Nergal is the supreme lord, etc.
(Priest:) High one of the great gods, who [holdeth] sceptre
and judgment [over the land].
(People:) Nergal is the high one, etc.
(Priest:) Dragon sublime, who poureth out venom over them
(i.e., the hostile lands).
(People:) Nergal, dragon sublime, etc.
{Priest:) His bright (1) image terrifieth the powerful demons
right and 1[eft].
(People:) Nergal, his (bright) image, etc.
(Priest:) The long arm whose blow (i.e., disease) is invisible,
{smiteth] the evil one with his arm.
(People:) Nergal, the long arm, etc.
(Priest:) [Great Nergal] at the sound of whose foot the house
of the worthy [is not disturbed].
(People:) Nergal, great god, etc.
The remainder of this striking address to the god of disease
and strife is mutilated, but enough is left to show what it was
like. In the above rendering I have attempted a completion of
the defective lines wherever needed, but these restorations must
be taken as merely provisional, and a more perfect copy is needed
to give a really good rendering. The indications (Priest) and
(People) are also mine.
Another important reference to the worship of a god of the
Assyrian pantheon is that connected with the death of Sennacherib. The follo"'ing is the rendering of the Revised Version of
2 Kings xix, 36, where, after recording the Assyrian retreat from
Jerusalem, the murder of Sennacherib is described :" And the king of Assyria departed, and went and returned,
and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was
worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and Sharezer (his sons) smote him with the sword:
and they escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esar-haddon
his son reigned in his stead."

THE WORSHIP ?F IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

25

Nisroch has always been a puzzling name for Assyriologists,

as no deity so called appears in the numerous lists of divine names
handed down to us by the Assyrians. The Greek manuscripts of
the Septuagint version, however, give Esdrach, Esthrach,
Nassarach, and Asarach, whilst the Vulgate has Nesroch, just as
it has Nemrod for Nimrod in Genesis x, 10. It is, therefore,
certain that the initial M is not original, and of the forms given I
am of opinion that Asarach is the best. Now Nimrod is for
Nimrodach or Amarodach (Merodach), and it looks as though the
termination had been taken off the earlier name to place on the
later one. This would transform Asarach into Asar, for A.<l'(S)ur,
the well-known national gorl of Assyria. I must adinit, however,
that this form Asarach may not, after all, be due to the scribes of
the Septuagint (and the Hebrew) versions-it may be owing to
Assyrian pedantism, for as the name of the god Assur was very
often written with the characters
-4, An-S'ar-the group
given, in the Babylonian lists and the Story of the Creation, as
expressing the divine " host of heaven "-it is possible that it
had once a fuller form, namely, AnS'arak, which, when the
Assyrians adopted this ideographic group, became one of its
readings, and furnished. the alternative pronunciation. In connection with this it is to be noted, that AMur has become Esar
in Esar-haddon, the Hebrew form of the name of Sennacherib's
son, who succeeded him.
Nisroch being thus identified, I give here a translation of a
dedication which Sennacherib made to his god in the temple
E-sarra at Assur. If this referred to a temple of Assur at
Nineveh one Inight imagine that the tragedy took place in that
city. As it is, the exact locality is doubtful, for 2 Kings xxx, 37,
does not give it. It is not impossible, however, that Sennacherib
may have used, or intended to use, some of the phrases contained
in this dedication, and we may take it as giving good examples of
his literary style. In any case, the wording of this address is in
some cases noteworthy :-To Assur, king of the host of the gods, creator of himself, father
of the gods,
whose personality grew up within the Deep, king of the heavens
and the earth.
Lord of the gods totally, he who assembleth the Igigi and the
Anunnaki,
he who hath created the heaven of Anu and the world beneath,
maker of all the settlements (of men).

,....+

26

PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S, ON

He who dwelleth in the glorious firmament.. Enlil of the gods,

fixer of fates,
he who dwelleth in E-sarra, which is within Assur, the great
lord, his lord, [Sennach ]erib,
king of Assyria, maker of the image of Assur, the great god
[f]or [the preservation of his life],
the lengthening of his days, the good of his heart, the establishment of his reign . . . . . .
a liles of massive copper, the work . . . . . . . .
which by the art of the god Igi-duggu . . . . . . .
artistically he has had made for . . .
and the repose of his heart . . . . . . . . . . . . .
day 5th, day 7th . . . . . . . . .
and the festival . . . . . . . : . . .
Here the text comes to an end. The copy which I [Link]
to use is that of Prof. Craig, and, excellent though it is, there
are a few doubtful details of it which I should have liked to
revise-perhaps I may be able to do this when brighter weather
comes.
By way of comment it may be noted that the name of Assur
is written ...
~, * the group which, at that time, was seemingly
pronounced As8ar, for An8ar. The god Assur differs from 1\Ierodach in many ways, but mainly in the belief that, whilst 1\Ierodach
was seemingly begotten, Assur created himself, as well as the
world and the universe as the Assyrians conceived it. In fact,
the chief of the Assyrian pantheon was more like a supreme deity
than even the Babylonian 1\Ierodach. Noteworthy, too, is his
title" Enlil of the gods "-the word which, under the form Ellil,
was borrowed by the Hebrews.t E-sarra, the temple in the city
of Assur where Sennacherib dedicated the image, means " the
house of the host," probably because a num"9er of other gods were
worshipped there. It seeins likely that E-sarra was the most
important, or at least the most renowned, temple in the city of
Assur, and the tale of its gods would be the first in any list drawn
up. Unfortunately, the first section of the text printed in
Western Asia Inscriptions, Ill, pl. 66, is imperfect, but it
contains a lengthy list of the gods worshipped at one of the
city's great sanctuaries, and we gather from it that Assur was

-------------- Seep. 25.

Seep. 13.

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

27

worshipped in this temple under many forms. In line 14 his

name occurs between those of Dagan (Dagon) and .Agil; and in
line 18 the sun-god Samas seems to be described as " Assur, he
who captures" (kasidu). As, however, I have already overrun
my space, I cannot examine this list at greater length, so at
present will only say that in other sections the names Laban and
JSmela (Ishmael), one of the judges of the tezr:ple of Assur, occur
with the divine prefix; also we find the gods Salm,anu (Shalman),
Mal1'k (identified with Moloch), Amurr'u (the Amorite), etc., and
many combined forms. I should have liked to deal with some of
these names, though they are not always really subject to my
title-and to these I must add Hadad and Abil-Addu, or Ablada
(Ben-Hadad the god, not the Syrian king)-but these must be
for another time.
Though my paper is far from perfect, it may have had one
useful effect, as it shows the action of the ancient religions of the
ancient Near East upon each other, and how, though the Hebrews
may have been tempted to heathenism, there were among the
heathen of that tract and elsewhere men who were tempted to,
and even embraced, monotheism. We may, indeed, say that
within heathenism itself in those days there was a tendency to
higher things.

APPENDIX.

The following inscription, which has some bearing on the

subject of ceremonies, with which the above monograph deals,
was given to the author by Mr. F. S. Rudler, 1.8.0., Uurator of
the Museum of Practical Geology, many years ago. This recorJ,
~hich, from internal evidence, comes from Abu-Habbalt (Sippar),
1s .unfortunately mutilated, but the general drift can be gathered
With considerable probability. Although there was a111ple room
fur further details (the reverse being uninscribed), there is no
date, but it may be as early as the time of Nabopolassar (626 B.O.
or ~ater). It has a parallel in one of the late Assyrian lettHrs,
which describes a ceremony (or ceremonies, in which ton:hes
were carried, and in which the king (Assurbanipal) was to take
part.

28 PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

Tmnscription.
l. [ a-we-lu-tum ?] sa Bel-ahe-iki-sa D.P. ki-i-pi. E-bauba-ra
2. [Sam~s]-uballit (?) D.P. sangu Sip-parki D.P. TU-MAL
d. Samas
3. [a-sib?] E-babba-ra Warad-dA-nu-ni-tum D.P. si-pir
4. [sa B]elit A-kadki u D.P. ki-na-ul-tum E-ul-mas
5. . . . . . . -nu abli-su-sa [Nal?il-u~;>ur]-su Nabu-abla-u~;>nr
6. [abti-su sa m] sum (?) -ukin Samas-etir abli-su sa Le'n
d. Tu-tu
7. . . . . . . . ina pagari iq-ta-bu-u um-ma Umu esrai51-sina.
8. [uma esraia-salsa u umu] esraia-irbu sa warah Sabati
D.P. la-mu-ta-nu
9. [sa . . ... abli]-su sa Bel-usallim ti-pa-ri a-na mug-~i
10. . . . . . . -tum u-sa-et-ti-qu ni-il-te-mu.
Free Rendering.
[The staff] of Bel-age-ikisa, Governor of E-babbara;
[Link] of Sippar, priest of the Sun-god [who dwelleth] in
E-babbara ; W arad-Anunitum, secretary of the [house of the
La]dy of Akkad, and the staff of E-ulmas, said to ... -~u, s0n
of [Nabu-u~ur]-su; NabU-abla-uJ?ur, son of Sum(?)-ukin; Sarnasetir(?), son of Le'u-Tutu, [and . . . . ], in the assembly, thus:
"(On) the 22nd, [2::1rd, and] 24th days of Sebat, the eunuchs
[of .... ], son of Bel-usallim, will carry round the torches upon
the . . . . We have been round."
The only uncommon word is kirw,lt~~"', possibly from kanasu,
"to bow down," implying obeisance and service. As rabU-sa-resi,
"great one of the chiefs," or "head-;men," was apparently a

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

29

military title-he seems to have been a ennuch-mbscwis-1

am inclined to regard la1nutanu ("not men" or "not husbands")
as including "eunuchs." The hairless priests of the cylinderseals were seemingly shaven as a mark of their office, but this
was probably not a universal custom either in Assyria or
Habylonia. Beardless eunuchs, if admitted to the priestly
otfices, possibly occupied a different position from that of their
unq_astrated colleagues.
E-babbara is the usual transcription of ~mr
>f""t.l, "house
of light," the temple of the sun at Sippara, and E-ulmas was a
kindred shrine. Judging from Cuneiform Texts j1om Bab.
Tablets, xxiv, 11 and 24 (lines 4 f.), the god Ulmas was one
of the
~T >-t:f, G1tbba, of E-kura, probably the temple of
that name at Nippur or Niffer, the city identified with the
Coluch of Gen. x, 10, by the Jews of Rabbinical times.
Whether there is an analogy in the ceremony here referred
to with the "smoking furnace" and the "lamp of fire" in
Gen. xv, 17, is uncertain.

iJ

--+

DISCUSSION.
The CHAIRMAN, [Link] a vote of thanks to Professor Pinches,
suggested that, under the impressions conveyed by the lecture, it
should now be profitable for instructed Christian people to go
through the Old Testament afresh, and note the many places in
which the jealousy of the God of Israel is expressed in regard to the
worship of idols. It will be seen that, in the midst of the chosen
people such worship was denounced as an abomination, while among
the surrounding nations it was a thing of vanity-from Merodach
downward the divinities were " gods that were no gods," " gods
of earth," the creation of human perversity and folly.
The Rev. J. J. B. CoLES thanked the learned lecturer for his
scholarly and interesting paper.
As to the origins of idolatry, there were four principal sources :1. The worship of the sun, moon and stars, or Sabeanism;
2. The reverence paid to the perverted symbols of the Cherubim,
the winged man-headed bulls and lions of Assyria;
3. Ancestor worship-Nimrod and others ;
4. The deification of human passions, as in the worship of Greeoe
and Rome.

30

PROFESSOR. THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, LL.D., M.R.A.S., ON

A good history of caricature had not yet been written-the

images of the gods of Egypt were often caricatures of Divine attributes. Men had changed the glory of the incorruptible God into
images of corruptible man, of four-footed beasts and creeping
things (scarabs, etc.); and Israel, too, alas! changed their glory
into the similitude of a calf.
The gods of Egypt had caricatured and debased the teaching of
the Patriarchs. Professor J. G. Fraser's books ignored this sad
perversion of Divine Revelation. Myths and legends were often
corruptions of primitive truth-and not the original source of true
religious ideas.
Mr. THEODORE RoBERTS thanked Professor Pinches for informing
us of many things which we should not otherwise have known, and
likened him to the engineer who made the road across the Alps
whereby Napoleon took his hungry and ragged solruers down to the
rich plains of Italy. Mr. Roberts thought we could learn most
from the paper by contrast, and instanced the absurdity of the
god who was said to have created himself in comparison with our
God who covered Himself with light as with a garment (Ps. civ, 2).
He pointed out that Joshua, speaking in the name of Jehovah,
three times over told the IsraelitPs that their fathers, even Terah,
the father of Abraharn, had served "other gods" (that is, idols)
beyond the river (Euphrates) (Joshua xxiv, 2, 14, 15); so that the
kno~ledge of the true God which Abraham brought from Ur to
Danaan appeared to have been the result of a revelation made to
him. This was the first mention of idols in the Bible, save the prohibitions of the Law; and the last, according to the historical order
of the books, was found in the last verse of the first Epistle of John" [Link] children, keep yourselves from idols "-where our Lord
Jesus Christ was presented as the alternative.
It was in contrast to idols that God was thrice described in the
New Testament as the true (or real) God, namely, the Father, in
the earliest Christian writing (1 Thess. i, 9) and our Lord's highpriestly prayer (John xvii, 3), and the Son in 1 John v, 20. The
Son is there described as the real or " very" God, because all that
can be known of God is set forth in Him, He being God. He is
there also described as the Eternal Life-that is, the ideal Man,
namely, all that man can be for God. It is only by undivided

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

31

loyalty to His Person that we can be kept from idolatry in its

present subtle, and, therefore, more dangerous, forms.
Lieut.-Colonel G. MACKINLAY writes: "This is a very valuable
paper. Bearing in mind that Abraham came from Ur of the
Chaldees, it is reasonable to expect that some relationship exists
between the religion of the Jews and that of the Babylonians. It
is of interest to know that modern Jews (p. 13) still use a word which
is derived from the Old Babylonian language, and also that the
Babylonians, and even more [Link] Assyrians, recognized a supreme
God who occupied a leading pre-eminence among all their gods or
idols (pp. 11, 17, 18, 26).
"The Japanese have a tradition that Jews came to this country
many centuries ago, and the Afghans to the North of India possess
many resemblances in features and in habits to the Hebrews. On
the first page of this paper our author speaks of nations of the
Near East; one is led to ask him if any resemblances to the worship
of Jehovah can be found in any other of the religions of Asia.
"Perhaps the Professor will tell us in the future paper at which
he hints on p. 27, which we much hope he will give us ere long."
AuTHOR's REPLY.
I am glad to have the clear statement of the Rev. J. J. B. Coles
with regard to the four forms of idolatry. There is no doubt that
the Babylonians and Assyrians were great sinners (they ought to
be pardoned, for they knew no better) in worshipping the heavenly
bodies. The identification of Merodach with Jupiter, !Star with
Venus, etc., shows how they desired to honour their gods, and it is
very probable that these identifications go back to a period earlier
than the foundation of the Sabean states. Whether ancestorworship, and the deification of kings and heroes, goes back to an
earlier date than the worship of the heavenly bodies is uncertain,
but the glories of the Eastern skies, seen by the Babylonians from
the earliest ages, must have suggested to the men of those days
that the changeless starry host, if not the gods themselves, were at
least their symbols.
Yes, from our point of view, the Egyptian mystic and often
abhorrent images of the gods whom they worshipp'ed were certainly
caricatures. In this respect the Babylonians were very moderate,

32

THE WORSHIP OF IDOLS IN ASSYRIAN HISTORY, ETC.

and it is mainly on the boundary-stones that animal-symbols of the

gods whom they worshipped are seen. How far these were adopted
by the Israelites we do not know, but they were probably well
acquainted with them. The name of Merodach means " the steer
of day," but I do not remember having ever seen that god represented as a steer. The cuneiform character for Samas originally
represented the sun's disc, and this we find on the cylinder-seals,
often accompanied by the crescent of the moon. In connection
with this it is to be noted that., as Professor Garstang has pointed
out, the Ottoman crescent and star, which serve as their national
symbols, and are found on their flag, are a modification of the
Babylonian sun's disc within the moon's crescent, as found on these
same Babylonian cylinder-seals.
Egyptian overcharged symbolism is repellent to us, but there is
much to be said about symbolism in general, and we ought not to
despise it-even the symbolism of the heathen Assyro-Babylonians.
But that is a subject for future treatment.
It is needless to say that I thank Mr. Theodore Roberts for his
kindly and appreciative remarks. I feel that I am not worthy to
be compared with the great imperial general whose masterly leadership he instances, but this I can say, that there are pastures richer
far than those to which I have led you-or, rather, than those of
which I have given you a glimpse. All members of this Institute
will, I am sure, be gratified with Mr. Roberts's comments and
quotations-quotations which recall to our minds so many interesting and acceptable passages of the Testaments, both the Old and
the New. One of the most attractive subjects with which I should
have liked to deal is that of the signs of the Zodiac and the Sumerian
names of the months, but this would have entailed too long a study.
Many a legend, however, is probably connected with their origin.
Of special interest, also, is the legend (may I use the word 1) of the
dragon Rahab.
I am much obliged to our Chairman, Dr. Thirtle, for his kind
remarks, as well as for the appreciative words of those who have
joined in the discussion. I also thank Lieut.-Colonel G. Mackinlay
for his interesting letter. If I can make the tablet of divine names
referred to on p. 27 really interesting-as interesting as it is important
-that, too, might be dealt with along with other lists of heathen
divinities.