Note 120.2 — Chapter VII · The Deities as Social-Powers.

Now a few isolated texts might be quoted to suggest that this idea of divine parentage was not confined to the kings, but that even the private Babylonian might at times rise to the conception that he was in a sense the child of God. At least in one incantation, in which Marduk is commissioned by Ea to heal a sick man, the man is called “the child of his god”;120.2 and Ishtar is often designated “the Mother of Gods and men” and the source of all life on the earth, human, animal, and vegetative.120.3 But the incantation points only to a vague spiritual belief that might be associated with a general idea that all life is originally divine. We may be sure that the feeling of the divine life of the king was a much more real and living belief than was any sense that the individual might occasionally cherish of his own celestial origin. The king and the god were together the joint source of law and order. The greatest of the early Babylonian dynasts, Lugalzaggisi, whose reign is dated near to 4000 B.C., styles himself the vicegerent (Patesi) of Enlil, the earth-god of Nippur;120.4 and in early Babylonian contracts, oath was taken in the names both of the god and the king.120.5 Hammurabi converses with Shamash and receives the great code from his hands, even as Moses received the law from Jahwé or Minos from Zeus. Did any monument ever express so profoundly the divine origin of the royal authority and the State institutions as the famous Shamash relief?121.1 It is the gods who endow Hammurabi with his various mental qualities: he himself tells us so in his code, “Marduk sent me to rule men and to proclaim Righteousness to the world”;121.2 and he speaks similarly of the sun-god Shamash: “At the command of Shamash, the great Judge of Heaven and Earth, shall Righteousness arise up in the land.”121.3 He proclaims himself, therefore, the political prophet of the Lord; and curses with a portentous curse any one who shall venture to abolish his enactments. The later Assyrian kings have the same religious confidence: Sargon (B.C. 722-705) proclaims that he owes his penetrating genius to Ea, “the Lord of Wisdom,” and his understanding to the “Queen of the crown of heaven.”121.4 We find them also, the Assyrian kings, consulting the sun-god by presenting to him tablets inscribed with questions as to their chances of success in a war, or the fitness and loyalty of a minister whom they proposed to appoint.121.5