Note 52.1 — Chapter IV · Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean.

The comparison now becomes more complex, and can only be summarily attempted. The first leading question concerns the way in which the personal divine being is imagined. In Mesopotamia was the religious perception dominatingly anthropomorphic, not merely in the sense that the higher divine attributes were suggested by the higher moral and spiritual life of humanity, but in the more material sense that the deity was imagined and represented habitually in human form? This question has been summarily treated in the first chapter. The Mesopotamian cults are mainly anthropomorphic; in the earliest hymns and liturgies, as well as in the art-monuments, the divinities appear to have been imagined as glorified human forms. The figure of Shamash on the relief, where he sits enthroned inspiring Hammurabi,52.1 the form of Ninni bringing the captives to Annabanini,52.2 prove a very early dominance of anthropomorphic art in Mesopotamia. And the rule holds true on the whole of nearly all the great divinities of the Pantheon; the statue of Nebo the scribe-god in the British Museum,52.3 and the representation of him on the cylinders, are wholly anthropomorphic. The seven planetary deities on the relief from Maltaija are human-shaped entirely;52.4 we may say the same of the procession of deities on the relief from a palace of Nineveh published by Layard,52.5 except that Marduk has horns branching from the top of his head; just as on the alabaster relief containing the scene of worship noted above,52.6 and on the wall-relief in the British Museum he is represented with wings; but even the rigorous anthropomorphism of Greece tolerated both these adjuncts to the pure human type. The types of Ramman the weather-god,52.7 and the representations of a Babylonian goddess, who is occasionally found with a child on her knee, and whom sometimes we may recognise as Ishtar, show nothing that is theriomorphic. On the other hand, we must note exceptions to this general rule. In one of the cuneiform inscriptions that describe certain types of deities, we read the following: “Horn of a bull, clusters of hair falling on his back; human countenance, and strength of a…; wings… and lion’s body.” And this description agrees exactly, as Jeremias has pointed out, with the winged colossal figures, half-lion, half-man, that guarded the gate of the palace of Nineveh. And we must therefore interpret them as gods, not as mere genii; and he gives some reason for regarding them as a type of Nergal, the god of the underworld.53.1