§ 5. Saturnalia in Western Asia.

The Babylonian festival of the Sacaea.

When we pass from Europe to western Asia, from ancient Greece to ancient Babylon and the regions where Babylonian influence penetrated, we are still met with festivals which bear the closest resemblance to the oldest form of the Italian Saturnalia. The reader may remember the festival of the Sacaea, on which I had occasion to touch in [pg 355] an earlier part of this work.808 It was held at Babylon during five days of the month Lous, beginning with the sixteenth day of the month. During its continuance, just as at the Saturnalia, masters and servants changed places, the servants issuing orders and the masters obeying them; and in each house one of the servants, dressed as a king and bearing the title of Zoganes, bore rule over the household. Further, just as at the Saturnalia in its original form a man was dressed as King Saturn in royal robes, allowed to indulge his passions and caprices to the full, and then put to death, so at the Sacaea a condemned prisoner, who probably also bore for the time being the title of Zoganes, was arrayed in the king's attire and suffered to play the despot, to use the king's concubines, and to give himself up to feasting and debauchery without restraint, only however in the end to be stript of his borrowed finery, scourged, and hanged or crucified.809 From Strabo we learn that this Asiatic counterpart of the Saturnalia was celebrated in Asia Minor wherever the worship of the Persian goddess Anaitis had established itself. He describes it as a Bacchic orgy, at which the revellers were disguised as Scythians, and men and women drank and dallied together by day and night.810

The Sacaea by some identified with Zakmuk or Zagmuk, the Babylonian festival of the New Year, which was held about the spring equinox in March. Annual renewal of the king of Babylon's power at the Zakmuk festival.

As the worship of Anaitis, though of Persian origin, appears to have been deeply leavened with coarse elements which it derived from the religion of Babylon,811 we may perhaps regard Mesopotamia as the original home from which the Sacaean festival spread westward into other parts of Asia Minor. Now the Sacaean festival, described by the Babylonian priest Berosus in the first book of his history of Babylon, has been plausibly identified812 with the great [pg 356] Babylonian festival of the New year called Zakmuk, Zagmuk, Zakmuku, or Zagmuku, which has become known to us in recent times through inscriptions. The Babylonian year began with the spring month of Nisan, which seems to have covered the second half of March and the first half of April. Thus the New Year festival, which occupied at least the first eleven days of Nisan, probably included the spring equinox. It was held in honour of Marduk or Merodach, the chief god of Babylon, whose great temple of Esagila in the city formed the religious centre of the solemnity. For here, in a splendid chamber of the vast edifice, all the gods were believed to assemble at this season under the presidency of Marduk for the purpose of determining the fates for the new year, especially the fate of the king's life. On this occasion the king of Babylon was bound annually to renew his regal power by grasping the hands of the image of Marduk in his temple, as if to signify that he received the kingdom directly from the deity and was unable without the divine assistance and authority to retain it for more than a year. Unless he thus formally reinstated himself on the throne once a year, the king ceased to reign legitimately. When Babylonia was conquered by Assyria, the Assyrian monarchs themselves used to come to Babylon and perform the ceremony of grasping the god's hands in order to establish by this solemn act their title to the kingdom which they had won for themselves by the sword; until they had done so, they were not recognized as kings by their Babylonian subjects. Some of them indeed found the ceremony either so burdensome or so humiliating to their pride as conquerors, that rather than perform it they renounced the title of king of Babylon altogether and contented themselves with the more modest title of regent. Another notable feature of the Babylonian festival of the New Year appears to have been a ceremonial marriage of the god Marduk; for in a hymn relating to the solemnity it is said of the deity that “he hastened to his bridal.” The festival was of hoar antiquity, for it was known to Gudea, an old king of Southern Babylonia who flourished between two and three thousand years before the beginning of our era, and it is mentioned in an early account of the Great Flood. At [pg 357] a much later period it is repeatedly referred to by King Nebuchadnezzar and his successors. Nebuchadnezzar records how he built of bricks and bitumen a chapel or altar, “a thing of joy and rejoicing,” for the great festival of Marduk, the lord of the gods; and we read of the rich and abundant offerings which were made by the high priest at this time.813

Reasons for identifying the Sacaea with Zakmuk.

Unfortunately the notices of this Babylonian festival of the New Year which have come down to us deal chiefly with its mythical aspect and throw little light on the mode of its celebration. Hence its identity with the Sacaea must remain for the present a more or less probable hypothesis. In favour of the hypothesis may be alleged in the first place the resemblance of the names Sacaea and Zoganes to Zakmuk or Zagmuku, if that was the real pronunciation of the name,814 and in the second place the very significant statement that the fate of the king's life was supposed to be determined by the gods, under the presidency of Marduk, at the Zakmuk or New Year's festival.815 When [pg 358] we remember that the central feature of the Sacaea appears to have been the saving of the king's life for another year by the vicarious sacrifice of a criminal on the cross or the gallows, we can understand that the season was a critical one for the king, and that it may well have been regarded as determining his fate for the ensuing twelve months. The annual ceremony of renewing the king's power by contact with the god's image, which formed a leading feature of the Zakmuk festival, would be very appropriately performed immediately after the execution or sacrifice of the temporary king who died in the room of the real monarch.

A difficulty in identifying the Sacaea with Zakmuk is that the two festivals seem to have been celebrated at different times of the year, Zakmuk falling in March and the Sacaea in July. Suggested ways of meeting the difficulty.

A difficulty, however, in the way of identifying the Sacaea with the Zakmuk arises from the statement of Berosus that the Sacaea fell on the sixteenth day of Lous, which was the tenth month of the Syro-Macedonian calendar and appears to have nearly coincided with July. Thus if the Sacaea occurred in July and the Zakmuk in March, the theory of their identity could not be maintained. But the dating of the months of the Syro-Macedonian calendar is a matter of some uncertainty; the month of Lous in particular appears to have fallen at different times of the year in different places,816 and until we have ascertained beyond the reach of doubt when Lous fell at Babylon in the time of Berosus, it would be premature to allow much weight to the seeming discrepancy in the dates of the two festivals. At all events, whether the festivals were the same or different, we are confronted with difficulties which in the present state of our knowledge may be pronounced insoluble. If the festivals were the same, we cannot explain their apparent difference of date: if they were different, we cannot explain their apparent similarity of character. In what follows I [pg 359] shall, with some eminent Oriental scholars,817 provisionally assume the identity of Zakmuk and Sacaea, but I would ask the reader to bear clearly in mind that the hypothesis leaves the apparent discrepancy of their dates unexplained. Towards a solution of the problem I can only suggest conjecturally either that the date of the festival had been for some reason shifted in the time of Berosus, or that two different festivals of the same type may have been held at different seasons of the year, one in spring and one in summer, perhaps by two distinct but kindred tribes, who retained their separate religious rites after they had coalesced in the Babylonian empire. Both conjectures might be supported by analogies. On the one hand, for example, in the Jewish calendar New Year's Day was shifted under Babylonian influence from autumn to spring,818 and in a later part of this work we shall see that the Chinese festival of new fire, at first celebrated in spring, was afterwards shifted to the summer solstice, only however to be brought back at a later time to its original date. On the other hand, the popular festivals of our European peasantry afford many examples of rites which appear to be similar in character, though they fall at different times of the year; such, for instance, are the ceremonies concerned with vegetation on May Day, Whitsuntide, and Midsummer Day,819 and the fire festivals which are distributed at still wider intervals throughout the months.820 Similarly in ancient Italy the agricultural festival of the Ambarvalia was celebrated by Italian farmers at different dates in different places.821 These cases may warn us against the danger of hastily inferring an essential difference between Zakmuk and Sacaea on the ground of a real or apparent difference in their dates.

An argument for identifying Sacaea and Zakmuk is the apparent connexion of both with the Jewish festival of Purim.

A fresh and powerful argument in favour of the identity [pg 360] of the two festivals is furnished by the connexion which has been traced between both of them and the Jewish feast of Purim.822 There are good grounds for believing that Purim was unknown to the Jews until after the exile, and that they learned to observe it during their captivity in the East. The festival is first mentioned in the book of Esther, which by the majority of critics is assigned to the fourth or third century b.c.,823 and which certainly cannot be older than the Persian period, since the scene of the narrative is laid in Susa at the court of a Persian king Ahasuerus, whose name appears to be the Hebrew equivalent of Xerxes. The next reference to Purim occurs in the second book of Maccabees, a work written probably about the beginning of our era.824 Thus from the absence of all notice of Purim in the older books of the Bible, we may fairly conclude that the festival was instituted or imported at a comparatively late date among the Jews. The same conclusion is supported by the book of Esther itself, which was manifestly written to explain the origin of the feast and to suggest motives for its observance. For, according to the author of the book, the festival was established to commemorate the deliverance of the Jews from a great danger which threatened them in Persia under the reign of King Xerxes. Thus the opinion of modern scholars that the feast of Purim, as celebrated by the Jews, was of late date and oriental origin, is borne out by the tradition of the Jews themselves. An examination of that tradition and the mode of celebrating the feast renders [pg 361] it probable that Purim is nothing but a more or less disguised form of the Babylonian festival of the Sacaea or Zakmuk.

The Jewish festival of Purim seems to be derived from the Babylonian festival of Zakmuk.

In the first place, the feast of Purim was and is held on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar, the last month of the Jewish year, which corresponds roughly to March.825 Thus the date agrees nearly, though not exactly, with the date of the Babylonian Zakmuk, which fell a fortnight later in the early days of the following month Nisan. A trace of the original celebration of Purim in Nisan may perhaps be found in the statement that “they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman” in Nisan, the first month of the year.826 It has been suggested with some plausibility that the Jews may have shifted the date of Purim in order that the new and foreign festival might not clash with their own old festival of the Passover, which began on the fourteenth day of Nisan. Another circumstance which speaks at once for the alien origin of Purim and for its identity with Zakmuk is its name. The author of the book of Esther derives the name Purim from pur, “a lot,”827 but no such word with this signification exists in Hebrew, and hence we are driven to look for the meaning and etymology of Purim in some other language. A specious theory is that the name was derived from an Assyrian word puvru, “an assembly,” and referred primarily to the great assembly of the gods which, as we have seen, formed a chief feature of the festival of Zakmuk, and was held annually in the temple of Marduk at Babylon for the purpose of determining the fates or lots of the new year;828 the august assembly appears to have been occasionally, if not regularly, designated by the very name puvru.829 On this hypothesis the traditional Jewish explanation of the name Purim preserved a genuine [pg 362] kernel of historical truth, or at least of mythical fancy, under the husk of a verbal error; for the name, if this derivation of it is correct, really signified, not “the lots,” but the assembly for drawing or otherwise determining the lots. Another explanation which has been offered is “that pūr or būr seems to be an old Assyrian word for ‘stone,’ and that therefore it is possible that the word was also used to signify ‘lot,’ like the Hebrew גורל ‘lot,’ which originally, no doubt, meant ‘little stone.’ ”830 Either of these explanations of the name Purim, by tracing it back to the New Year assembly of the gods at Babylon for settling the lots, furnishes an adequate explanation of the traditional association of Purim with the casting of lots—an association all the more remarkable and all the more likely to be ancient because there is nothing to justify it either in the Hebrew language or in the Jewish mode of celebrating the festival. When to this we add the joyous, nay, extravagant festivity which has always been characteristic of Purim, and is entirely in keeping with a New Year celebration, we may perhaps be thought to have made out a fairly probable case for holding that the Jewish feast is derived from the Babylonian New Year festival of Zakmuk. Whether the Jews borrowed the feast directly from the Babylonians or indirectly through the Persian conquerors of Babylon is a question which deserves to be considered; but the Persian colouring of the book of Esther speaks strongly for the view that Purim came to Israel by way of Persia, or at all events from Babylon under Persian rule, and this view is confirmed by other evidence, to which I shall have to ask the reader's attention a little later on.

Connexion of Purim with the Sacaea. The joyous nature of Purim.

If the links which bind Purim to Zakmuk are reasonably strong, the chain of evidence which connects the Jewish festival with the Sacaea is much stronger. Nor is this surprising when we remember that, while the popular mode of celebrating Zakmuk is unknown, we possess important and trustworthy details as to the manner of holding the [pg 363] Sacaea. We have seen that the Sacaea was a wild Bacchanalian revel at which men and women disguised themselves and drank and played together in a fashion that was more gay than modest. Now this is, or used to be, precisely the nature of Purim. The two days of the festival, according to the author of the book of Esther, were to be kept for ever as “days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.”831 And this joyous character the festival seems always to have retained. The author of a tract in the Talmud lays it down as a rule that at the feast of Purim every Jew is bound to drink until he cannot distinguish between the words “Cursed be Haman” and “Blessed be Mordecai”; and he tells how on one occasion a certain Rabba drank so deep at Purim that he murdered a rabbi without knowing what he was about. Indeed Purim has been described as the Jewish Bacchanalia, and we are told that at this season everything is lawful which can contribute to the mirth and gaiety of the festival.832 Writers of the seventeenth century assert that during the two days, and especially on the evening of the second day, the Jews did nothing but feast and drink to repletion, play, dance, sing, and make merry; in particular they disguised themselves, men and women exchanging clothes, and thus attired ran about like mad, in open defiance of the Mosaic law, which expressly forbids men to dress as women and women as men.833 Among the Jews of Frankfort, who inhabited the squalid but quaint and picturesque old street known as the Judengasse, which many of us still remember, the revelry at Purim ran as high as ever in the eighteenth century. The gluttony and intoxication began punctually at three o'clock in the afternoon of the first day and went on until the whole community seemed to have taken leave of their senses. They ate and drank, they frolicked and cut capers, they reeled and staggered [pg 364] about, they shrieked, yelled, stamped, clattered, and broke each other's heads with wooden hammers till the blood flowed. On the evening of the first day the women were allowed, as a special favour, to open their latticed window and look into the men's synagogue, because the great deliverance of the Jews from their enemies in the time of King Ahasuerus was said to have been effected by a woman. A feature of the festival which should not be overlooked was the acting of the story of Esther as a comedy, in which Esther, Ahasuerus, Haman, Mordecai, and others played their parts after a fashion that sometimes degenerated from farce into ribaldry.834 Thus on the whole we may take it that Purim has always been a Saturnalia, and therefore corresponds in character to the Sacaea as that festival has been described for us by Strabo.

The origin of Purim according to the book of Esther. The rival pairs Mordecai and Esther on the one side, Haman and Vashti on the other.

But further, when we examine the narrative which professes to account for the institution of Purim, we discover in it not only the strongest traces of Babylonian origin, but also certain singular analogies to those very features of the Sacaean festival with which we are here more immediately concerned. The book of Esther turns upon the fortunes of two men, the vizier Haman and the despised Jew Mordecai, at the court of a Persian king. Mordecai, we are told, had given mortal offence to the vizier, who accordingly prepares a tall gallows on which he hopes to see his enemy hanged, while he himself expects to receive the highest mark of the king's favour by being allowed to wear the royal crown and the royal robes, and thus attired to parade the streets mounted on the king's own horse and attended by one of the noblest princes, who should proclaim to the multitude his temporary exaltation and glory. But the artful intrigues of the wicked vizier miscarried and resulted in precisely the opposite of what he had hoped and expected; for the royal honours which he had looked for fell to his rival Mordecai, and he himself was hanged on the gallows which he had made ready for his foe. In this story we seem to detect a reminiscence, [pg 365] more or less confused, of the Zoganes of the Sacaea, in other words, of the custom of investing a private man with the insignia of royalty for a few days and then putting him to death on the gallows or the cross. It is true that in the narrative the part of the Zoganes is divided between two actors, one of whom hopes to play the king but is hanged instead, while the other acts the royal part and escapes the gallows to which he was destined by his enemy. But this bisection, so to say, of the Zoganes may have been deliberately invented by the Jewish author of the book of Esther for the sake of setting the origin of Purim, which it was his purpose to explain, in a light that should reflect glory on his own nation. Or, perhaps more probably, it points back to a custom of appointing two mock kings at the Sacaea, one of whom was put to death at the end of the festival, while the other was allowed to go free, at least for a time. We shall be the more inclined to adopt the latter hypothesis when we observe that corresponding to the two rival aspirants to the temporary kingship there appear in the Jewish narrative two rival queens, Vashti and Esther, one of whom succeeds to the high estate from which the other has fallen. Further, it is to be noted that Mordecai, the successful candidate for the mock kingship, and Esther, the successful candidate for the queenship, are linked together by close ties both of interest and blood, the two being said to be cousins. This suggests that in the original story or the original custom there may have figured two pairs of kings and queens, of whom one pair is represented in the Jewish narrative by Mordecai and Esther and the other by Haman and Vashti.

Analysis of the names Mordecai and Esther, Haman and Vashti. Jensen's theory that Haman and Vashti were Elamite deities in opposition to the Babylonian deities Mordecai (Marduk) and Esther (Ishtar).

Some confirmation of this view is furnished by the names of two at least out of the four personages. It seems to be now generally recognized by Biblical scholars that the name Mordecai, which has no meaning in Hebrew, is nothing but a slightly altered form of Marduk or Merodach, the name of the chief god of Babylon, whose great festival was the Zakmuk; and further, it is generally admitted that Esther in like manner is equivalent to Ishtar, the great Babylonian goddess whom the Greeks called Astarte, and who is more familiar to English readers [pg 366] as Ashtaroth. The derivation of the names of Haman and Vashti is less certain, but some high authorities are disposed to accept the view of Jensen that Haman is identical with Humman or Homman, the national god of the Elamites, and that Vashti is in like manner an Elamite goddess whose name Jensen read as Mashti in inscriptions. Now, when we consider that the Elamites were from time immemorial the hereditary foes of the Babylonians and had their capital at Susa, the very place in which the scene of the book of Esther is laid, we can hardly deny the plausibility of the theory that Haman and Vashti on the one side and Mordecai and Esther on the other represent the antagonism between the gods of Elam and the gods of Babylon, and the final victory of the Babylonian deities in the very capital of their rivals.835 “It is therefore possible,” says Professor Nöldeke, “that we here have to do with a feast whereby the Babylonians commemorated a victory gained by their gods over the gods of their neighbours the Elamites, against whom they had so often waged war. The Jewish feast of Purim is an annual merrymaking of a wholly secular kind, and it is known that there were similar feasts among the Babylonians. That the Jews in Babylonia should have adopted a festival of this sort cannot be deemed improbable, since in modern Germany, to cite an analogous [pg 367] case, many Jews celebrate Christmas after the manner of their Christian fellow-countrymen, in so far at least as it is a secular institution. It is true that hitherto no Babylonian feast coinciding, like Purim, with the full moon of the twelfth month has been discovered; but our knowledge of the Babylonian feasts is derived from documents of an earlier period. Possibly the calendar may have undergone some change by the time when the Jewish feast of Purim was established. Or it may be that the Jews intentionally shifted the date of the festival which they borrowed from the heathen.”836

But the proposed etymology of Vashti is untenable.

However, the theory of an opposition between the gods of Babylon and the gods of Elam at the festival appears to break down at a crucial point; for the latest and most accurate reading of the Elamite inscriptions proves, I am informed, that the name of the goddess which Jensen read as Mashti, and which on that assumption he legitimately compared to the Hebrew Vashti,837 must really be read as Parti, between which and Vashti there is no connexion. Accordingly, in a discussion of the origin of Purim it is safer at present to lay no weight on the supposed religious antagonism between the deities of Babylon and Elam.838

[pg 368]

The mock king of the Sacaea seems to have personated a god. The view of Movers.

If we are right in tracing the origin of Purim to the Babylonian Sacaea and in finding the counterpart of the Zoganes in Haman and Mordecai, it would appear that the Zoganes during his five days of office personated not merely a king but a god, whether that god was the Babylonian Marduk or some other deity not yet identified. The union of the divine and royal characters in a single person is so common that we need not be surprised at meeting with it in ancient Babylon. And the view that the mock king of the Sacaea died as a god on the cross or the gallows is no novelty. The acute and learned Movers long ago observed that “we should be overlooking the religious significance of oriental festivals and the connexion of the Sacaea with the worship of Anaitis, if we were to treat as a mere jest the custom of disguising a slave as a king. We may take it for certain that with the royal dignity the king of the Sacaea assumed also the character of an oriental ruler as representative of the divinity, and that when he took his pleasure among the women of the king's harem, he played the part of Sandan or Sardanapalus himself. For according to ancient oriental ideas the use of the king's concubines constituted a claim to the throne, and we know from Dio that the five-days' king received full power over the harem. Perhaps he began his reign by publicly cohabiting with the king's concubines, just as Absalom went in to his father's concubines in a tent spread on the roof of the palace before all Israel, for the purpose of thereby making known and strengthening his claim to the throne.”839

The mock king of the Sacaea may have mated with a woman who played the part of a goddess, whether Anaitis, Astarte, or Semiramis. Identity of the mythical Semiramis with Astarte. The lovers of Semiramis and Ishtar (Astarte).

Whatever may be thought of this latter conjecture, there [pg 369] can be no doubt that Movers is right in laying great stress both on the permission given to the mock king to invade the real king's harem, and on the intimate connexion of the Sacaea with the worship of Anaitis. That connexion is vouched for by Strabo, and when we consider that in Strabo's time the cult of the old Persian goddess Anaitis was thoroughly saturated with Babylonian elements and had practically merged in the sensual worship of the Babylonian Ishtar or Astarte,840 we shall incline to view with favour Movers's further conjecture, that a female slave may have been appointed to play the divine queen to the part of the divine king supported by the Zoganes, and that reminiscences of such a queen have survived in the myth or legend of Semiramis. According to tradition, Semiramis was a fair courtesan beloved by the king of Assyria, who took her to wife. She won the king's heart so far that she persuaded him to yield up to her the kingdom for five days, and having assumed the sceptre and the royal robes she made a great banquet on the first day, but on the second day she shut up her husband in prison or put him to death and thenceforward reigned alone.841 Taken with Strabo's evidence as to the association of the Sacaea with the worship of Anaitis, this tradition seems clearly to point to a custom of giving the Zoganes, during his five days' reign, a queen who represented the goddess Anaitis or Semiramis or Astarte, in short the great Asiatic goddess of love and fertility, by whatever name she was called. For that in Eastern legend Semiramis was a real queen of Assyria, who had absorbed many of the attributes of the goddess Astarte, appears to be established by the researches of modern scholars; in particular it has been shewn by Robertson Smith that the worship of Anaitis is not only [pg 370] modelled on Astarte worship in general, but corresponds to that particular type of it which was specially associated with the name of Semiramis.842 The identity of Anaitis and the mythical Semiramis is clearly proved by the circumstance that the great sanctuary of Anaitis at Zela in Pontus was actually built upon a mound of Semiramis;843 probably the old worship of the Semitic goddess always continued there even after her Semitic name of Semiramis or Astarte had been exchanged for the Persian name of Anaitis, perhaps in obedience to a decree of the Persian king Artaxerxes II., who first spread the worship of Anaitis in the west of Asia.844 It is highly significant, not only that the Sacaean festival was annually held at this ancient seat of the worship of Semiramis or Astarte; but further, that the whole city of Zela was formerly inhabited by sacred slaves and harlots, ruled over by a supreme pontiff, who administered it as a sanctuary rather than as a city.845 Formerly, we may suppose, this priestly king himself died a violent death at the Sacaea [pg 371] in the character of the divine lover of Semiramis, while the part of the goddess was played by one of the sacred prostitutes. The probability of this is greatly strengthened by the existence of the so-called mound of Semiramis under the sanctuary. For the mounds of Semiramis, which were pointed out all over Western Asia,846 were said to have been the graves of her lovers whom she buried alive.847 The tradition ran that the great and lustful queen Semiramis, fearing to contract a lawful marriage lest her husband should deprive her of power, admitted to her bed the handsomest of her soldiers, only, however, to destroy them all afterwards.848 Now this tradition is one of the surest indications of the identity of the mythical Semiramis with the Babylonian goddess Ishtar or Astarte. For the famous Babylonian epic which recounts the deeds of the hero Gilgamesh tells how, when he clothed himself in royal robes and put his crown on his head, the goddess Ishtar was smitten with love of him and wooed him to be her mate. But Gilgamesh rejected her insidious advances, for he knew the sad fate that had overtaken all her lovers, and he reproached the cruel goddess, saying:—

“Tammuz, the lover of thy youth,

Thou causest to weep every year.

The bright-coloured allallu bird thou didst love.

Thou didst crush him and break his pinions.

In the woods he stands and laments, ‘O my pinions!’

Thou didst love the lion of perfect strength,

Seven and seven times thou didst dig pit-falls for him.

Thou didst love the horse that joyed in the fray,

With whip and spur and lash thou didst urge him on.

Thou didst force him on for seven double hours,

Thou didst force him on when wearied and thirsty;

His mother the goddess Silili thou madest weep.

Thou didst also love a shepherd of the flock,

Who continually poured out for thee the libation,

And daily slaughtered kids for thee;

But thou didst smite him, and didst change him into a wolf,

So that his own sheep-boys hunted him,

And his own hounds tore him to pieces.”

[pg 372]

The sacred harlots of Ishtar.

The hero also tells the miserable end of a gardener in the service of the goddess's father. The hapless swain had once been honoured with the love of the goddess, but when she tired of him she changed him into a cripple so that he could not rise from his bed. Therefore Gilgamesh fears to share the fate of all her former lovers and spurns her proffered favours.849 But it is not merely that the myth of Ishtar thus tallies with the legend of Semiramis; the worship of the goddess was marked by a profligacy which has found its echo in the loose character ascribed by tradition to the queen. Inscriptions, which confirm and supplement the evidence of Herodotus, inform us that Ishtar was served by harlots of three different classes all dedicated to her worship. Indeed, there is reason to think that these women personated the goddess herself, since one of the names given to them is applied also to her.850

The myth of Ishtar (Astarte) and her lovers acted at the Sacaea in Zela.

Thus we can hardly doubt that the mythical Semiramis is substantially a form of Ishtar or Astarte, the great Semitic goddess of love and fertility; and if this is so, we may assume with at least a fair degree of probability that the high pontiff of Zela or his deputy, who played the king of the Sacaea at the sanctuary of Semiramis, perished as one [pg 373] of the unhappy lovers of the goddess, perhaps as Tammuz, whom she caused “to weep every year.” When he had run his brief meteoric career of pleasure and glory, his bones would be laid in the great mound which covered the mouldering remains of many mortal gods, his predecessors, whom the goddess had honoured with her fatal love.851

Such sacred dramas are magical rites intended to influence the course of nature.

Here then at the great sanctuary of the goddess in Zela it appears that her myth was regularly translated into action; the story of her love and the death of her divine lover was performed year by year as a sort of mystery-play by men and women who lived for a season and sometimes died in the character of the visionary beings whom they personated. The intention of these sacred dramas, we may be sure, was [pg 374] neither to amuse nor to instruct an idle audience, and as little were they designed to gratify the actors, to whose baser passions they gave the reins for a time. They were solemn rites which mimicked the doings of divine beings, because man fancied that by such mimicry he was able to arrogate to himself the divine functions and to exercise them for the good of his fellows. The operations of nature, to his thinking, were carried on by mythical personages very like himself; and if he could only assimilate himself to them completely he would be able to wield all their powers. This is probably the original motive of most religious dramas or mysteries among rude peoples. The dramas are played, the mysteries are performed, not to teach the spectators the doctrines of their creed, still less to entertain them, but for the purpose of bringing about those natural effects which they represent in mythical disguise; in a word, they are magical ceremonies and their mode of operation is mimicry or sympathy. We shall probably not err in assuming that many myths, which we now know only as myths, had once their counterpart in magic; in other words, that they used to be acted as a means of producing in fact the events which they describe in figurative language. Ceremonies often die out while myths survive, and thus we are left to infer the dead ceremony from the living myth. If myths are, in a sense, the reflections or shadows of men cast upon the clouds, we may say that these reflections continue to be visible in the sky and to inform us of the doings of the men who cast them, long after the men themselves are not only beyond our range of vision but sunk beneath the horizon.

Magical intention of sacred dramas and masked dances among savages.

The principle of mimicry is implanted so deep in human nature and has exerted so far-reaching an influence on the development of religion as well as of the arts that it may be well, even at the cost of a short digression, to illustrate by example some of the modes in which primitive man has attempted to apply it to the satisfaction of his wants by means of religious or magical dramas. For it seems probable that the masked dances and ceremonies, which have played a great part in the social life of savages in many quarters of the world, were primarily designed to subserve practical purposes rather than simply to stir the emotions of the [pg 375] spectators and to while away the languor and tedium of idle hours. The actors sought to draw down blessings on the community by mimicking certain powerful superhuman beings and in their assumed character working those beneficent miracles which in the capacity of mere men they would have confessed themselves powerless to effect. In fact the aim of these elementary dramas, which contain in germ the tragedy and comedy of civilized nations, was the acquisition of superhuman power for the public good. That this is the real intention of at least many of these dramatic performances will appear from the following accounts, which for the sake of accuracy I will quote for the most part in the words of the original observers.

Masked dances among the Indians of North-West America.

A conspicuous feature in the social life of the Indian tribes of North-Western America are the elaborate masked dances or pantomimes in which the actors personate spirits or legendary animals. Most of them appear designed to bring before the eyes of the people the guardian spirits of the clans. “Owing to the fact that these spirits are hereditary, their gifts are always contained in the legend detailing their acquisition by the ancestor of a clan. The principal gifts in these tales are the magic harpoon which insures success in sea-otter hunting; the death bringer which, when pointed against enemies, kills them; the water of life which resuscitates the dead; the burning fire which, when pointed against an object, burns it; and a dance, a song, and cries which are peculiar to the spirit. The gift of this dance means that the protégé of the spirit is to perform the same dances which have been shown to him. In these dances he personates the spirit. He wears his mask and his ornaments. Thus the dance must be considered a dramatic performance of the myth relating to the acquisition of the spirit, and shows to the people that the performer by his visit to the spirit has obtained his powers and desires. When nowadays a spirit appears to a young Indian, he gives him the same dance, and the youth also returns from the initiation filled with the powers and desires of the spirit. He authenticates his initiation by his dance in the same way as his mythical ancestor did. The obtaining of the magical gifts from these spirits is [pg 376] called lokoala, while the person who has obtained them becomes naualaku, supernatural, which is also the quality of the spirit himself. The ornaments of all these spirits are described as made of cedar bark, which is dyed red in the juice of alder bark. They appear to their devotees only in winter, and therefore the dances are also performed only in winter.”852 In some of the dances the performers imitate animals, and the explanation which the Indians give of these dances is that “the ceremonial was instituted at the time when men had still the form of animals; before the transformer had put everything into its present shape. The present ceremonial is a repetition of the ceremonial performed by the man animals or, as we may say, a dramatization of the myth. Therefore the people who do not represent spirits, represent these animals.”853

These masked dances represent mythical incidents and are supposed to have been revealed to the Indians by their guardian spirits.

Another observer of these Indians writes on the same subject as follows: “The dukwally (i.e., lokoala) and other tamanawas854 performances are exhibitions intended to represent incidents connected with their mythological legends. There are a great variety, and they seem to take the place, in a measure, of theatrical performances or games during the season of the religious festivals. There are no persons especially set apart as priests for the performance of these ceremonies, although some, who seem more expert than others, are usually hired to give life to the scenes, but these performers are quite as often found among the slaves or common people as among the chiefs, and excepting during the continuance of the festivities are not looked on as of any particular importance. On inquiring the origin of these ceremonies, I was informed that they did not originate with the Indians, but were revelations of the guardian spirits, who made known what they wished to be performed. An Indian, [pg 377] for instance, who has been consulting with his guardian spirit, which is done by going through the washing and fasting process before described, will imagine or think he is called upon to represent the owl. He arranges in his mind the style of dress, the number of performers, the songs and dances or other movements, and, having the plan perfected, announces at a tamanawas meeting that he has had a revelation which he will impart to a select few. These are then taught and drilled in strict secrecy, and when they have perfected themselves, will suddenly make their appearance and perform before the astonished tribe. Another Indian gets up the representation of the whale, others do the same of birds, and in fact of everything that they can think of. If any performance is a success, it is repeated, and gradually comes to be looked upon as one of the regular order in the ceremonies; if it does not satisfy the audience, it is laid aside. Thus they have performances that have been handed down from remote ages, while others are of a more recent date.”855

Gods or spirits personated by the actors in the masked dances.

Another writer, who travelled among the Indians of North-Western America, has expressed himself on this subject as follows: “The task of representing the gods is undertaken in every tribe by some intelligent and, according to their own account, inspired men; they form the Secret Societies, in order that their secret arts and doctrines, their mummeries and masquerades may not be revealed to the uninitiated and to the public. The intention of these exhibitions is to confirm the faith of the young people and the women in the ancient traditions as to the intercourse of the gods with men and as to their own intimate relations to the gods. In order to convince possible doubters, the members of the Secret Societies have had recourse to all kinds of mysterious means, which to a civilized man must appear the height of savagery; for example, they mutilate their bodies, rend corpses in pieces and devour them, tear pieces out of the bodies of living men, and so on. Further, the almost morbid vanity of the North-Western Indians and their desire to win fame, respect, and distinction may have served [pg 378] as a motive for joining the Secret Societies; since every member of them enjoys great respect.

“There were and still are hundreds of masks in use, every one of which represents a spirit who occurs in their legends. In the exhibitions they appear singly or in groups, according as the legend to be represented requires, and the masked men are then looked upon by the astonished crowd, not only as actors representing the gods, but as the very gods themselves who have come down from heaven to earth. Hence every such representative must do exactly what legend says the spirit did. If the representative wears no mask, as often happens with the Hametzes (the Cannibals or Biters) or the Pakwalla (Medicine-men), then the spirit whom he represents has passed into his body, and accordingly the man possessed by the spirit is not responsible for what he does amiss in this condition. As the use of masks throws a sort of mysterious glamour over the performance and at the same time allows the actor to remain unknown, the peculiarly sacred festivals are much oftener celebrated with masks than without them. In every Secret Society there are definite rules as to how often and how long a mask may be used. Amongst the Kwakiutl the masks may not, under the heaviest penalties, be disposed of for four winters, the season when such festivals are usually celebrated. After that time they may be destroyed or hidden in the forest, that no uninitiated person may find them, or they may be finally sold. The masks are made only in secret, generally in the deep solitude of the woods, in order that no uninitiated person may detect the maker at work....

The dances accompanied by songs.

“The dance is accompanied by a song which celebrates in boastful words the power of the gods and the mighty deeds represented in the performance. At the main part of the performance all present join in the song, for it is generally known to everybody and is repeated in recitative again and again. It seems that new songs and new performances are constantly springing up in one or other of the villages through the agency of some intelligent young man, hitherto without a song of his own, who treats in a poetical fashion some legend which has been handed down orally from their forefathers. For every man who takes part in the performances [pg 379] and festivals must make his début with a song composed by himself. In this way new songs and dances are constantly originating, the material for them being, of course, always taken from the tribal deities of the particular singer and poet.”856

Spirits personated by masked performers among the Esquimaux of Bering Strait.

Similar masquerades are in vogue among the neighbours of these Indians, the Esquimaux of Bering Strait, and from the following account it will appear that the performances are based on similar ideas and beliefs. “Shamans make masks representing grotesque faces of supernatural beings which they claim to have seen. These may be yu-ă, which are the spirits of the elements, of places, and of inanimate things in general; the tunghät, or wandering genii, or the shades of people and animals. The first-named are seen in lonely places, on the plains and mountains or at sea, and more rarely about the villages, by the clairvoyant vision of the shamans. They are usually invisible to common eyes, but sometimes render themselves visible to the people for various purposes.

“Many of them, especially among the tunghät, are of evil character, bringing sickness and misfortune upon people from mere wantonness or for some fancied injury. The Eskimo believe that everything, animate or inanimate, is possessed of a shade, having semihuman form and features, enjoying more or less freedom of motion; the shamans give form to their ideas of them in masks, as well as of others which they claim inhabit the moon and the sky-land. In their daily life, if the people witness some strange occurrence, are curiously affected, or have a remarkable adventure, during which they seem to be influenced or aided in a supernatural manner, the shamans interpret the meaning and describe the appearance of the being that exerted its power.

The animal masks worn by the actors.

“Curious mythological beasts are also said to inhabit both land and sea, but to become visible only on special occasions. These ideas furnish material upon which their fancy works, conjuring up strange forms that are usually modifications of known creatures. It is also believed that [pg 380] in early days all animate beings had a dual existence, becoming at will either like man or the animal forms they now wear. In those early days there were but few people; if an animal wished to assume its human form, the forearm, wing, or other limb was raised and pushed up the muzzle or beak as if it were a mask, and the creature became manlike in form and features. This idea is still held, and it is believed that many animals now possess this power. The manlike form thus appearing is called the inua, and is supposed to represent the thinking part of the creature, and at death becomes its shade. Shamans are believed to have the power of seeing through the animal mask to the manlike features behind. The ideas held on this subject are well illustrated in the Raven legends, where the changes are made repeatedly from one form to another.

Identification of the masked actor with the mythical being whom he represents.

“Masks may also represent totemic animals, and the wearers during the festivals are believed actually to become the creature represented or at least to be endowed with its spiritual essence. Some of the masks of the lower Yukon and the adjacent territory to the Kuskokwim are made with double faces. This is done by having the muzzle of the animal fitted over and concealing the face of the inua below, the outer mask being held in place by pegs so arranged that it can be removed quickly at a certain time in the ceremony, thus symbolizing the transformation. Another style of mask from the lower Kuskokwim has the under face concealed by a small hinged door on each side, which opens out at the proper time in a ceremony, indicating the metamorphosis. When the mask represents a totemic animal, the wearer needs no double face, since he represents in person the shade of the totemic animal.

“When worn in any ceremonial, either as a totem mask or as representing the shade, yu-ă or tunghâk, the wearer is believed to become mysteriously and unconsciously imbued with the spirit of the being which his mask represents, just as the namesakes are entered into and possessed by the shades at certain parts of the Festival to the Dead....857

[pg 381]

“Mask festivals are usually held as a species of thanksgiving to the shades and powers of earth, air, and water for giving the hunter success. The inuas or shades of the powers and creatures of the earth are represented that they may be propitiated, thus insuring further success.”858

Dramatic ceremonies of the Cora Indians of Mexico in which the actors personate gods. Masked dances of the Brazilian Indians to ensure fertility and abundance.

The religious ritual of the Cora Indians of Mexico comprises elaborate dramatic ceremonies or dances, in which the actors or dancers identify themselves with the gods, such as the god of the Morning Star, the goddess of the Moon, and the divinities of the Rain. These dances form the principal part of the Cora festivals and are accompanied by liturgical songs, the words of which the Indians believe to have been revealed to their forefathers by the gods and to exercise a direct magical influence upon the deities themselves and through them upon nature.859 The Kobeua and Kaua Indians of North-Western Brazil perform masked dances at their festivals in honour of the dead. The maskers imitate the actions and the habits of birds, beasts, and insects. For example, there is a large azure-blue butterfly which delights the eye with the splendour of its colour, like a fallen fragment of the sky; and in the butterfly dance two men represent the play of these brilliant insects in the sunshine, fluttering on the wing and settling on sandbanks and rocks. Again, the sloth is acted by a masker who holds on to a cross-beam of the house by means of a hooked stick, in imitation of the sluggish creature which will hang by its claws from the bough of a tree for hours together without stirring. Again, the darting of swallows, as they flit to and fro across a river, is mimicked by masked men dancing side by side: the swarming of sandflies in the air is acted by a swarm of maskers; and so with the movements of the black vulture, the owl, the jaguar, the aracu fish, the house-spider, and the dung-beetle. Yet these representations are not simple dramas designed to amuse and divert the mourners in their hour of sorrow; the Indian attributes to them a much deeper [pg 382] significance, for under the outer husk of beasts and birds and insects he believes that there lurk foul fiends and powerful spirits. “All these mimicries are based on an idea of magical efficiency. They are intended to bring blessing and fertility to the village and its inhabitants, to the plantations, and to the whole of surrounding nature, thereby compensating, as it were, for the loss of the dead man in whose honour the festival is held. By copying as faithfully as possible the movements and actions of the being whom he personates, the actor identifies himself with him. The mysterious force which resides in the mask passes into the dancer, turns the man himself into a mighty demon, and endows him with the power of banning demons or earning their favour. Especially is it the intention by means of mimicry to obtain for man control over the demons of growth and the spirits of game and fish.” When the festival is over, the masks are burned, and the demons, which are thought to have animated them, take flight to their own place, it may be to the other world or to a mountain top, or to the side of a thundering cascade.860

Masked dances of the Monumbo in German New Guinea. Masked dances of the Kayans of Borneo.

The Monumbo of German New Guinea perform masked dances in which the dancers personate supernatural beings or animals, such as kangaroos, dogs, and cassowaries. They consecrate the masks by fumigating them with the smoke of a certain creeper, and believe that by doing so they put life into them. Accordingly they afterwards treat the masks with respect, talk to them as if they were alive, and refuse to part with them to Europeans. Certain of the masks they even regard as guardian spirits and appeal to them for fine weather, help in the chase or in war, and so forth. Every clan owns some masks and the head man of the clan makes all the arrangements for a masquerade. The dances are accompanied by songs of which the words are unintelligible even to the natives themselves.861 Again, the Kayans of Central Borneo perform masked dances for the purpose of ensuring abundant crops of rice. The actors personate demons, wearing grotesque masks on their faces, their bodies [pg 383] swathed in cumbrous masses of green leaves. “In accordance with their belief that the spirits are more powerful than men, the Kayans assume that when they imitate the form of spirits and play their part, they acquire superhuman power. Hence just as their spirits can fetch back the souls of men, so they imagine that they can lure to themselves the souls of the rice.”862

Dramatic performances of the Sea Dyaks of Borneo, in which the actor personates a god.

When the Sea Dyaks of Borneo have taken a human head, they hold a Head-feast (Gawè Pala) in honour of the war-god or bird-chief Singalang Burong, who lives far away above the sky. At this festival a long liturgy called mengap is chanted, the god is invoked, and is believed to be present in the person of an actor, who poses as the deity and blesses the people in his name. “But the invocation is not made by the human performer in the manner of a prayer direct to this great being; it takes the form of a story, setting forth how the mythical hero Kling or Klieng made a head-feast and fetched Singalang Burong to it. This Kling, about whom there are many fables, is a spirit, and is supposed to live somewhere or other not far from mankind, and to be able to confer benefits upon them. The Dyak performer or performers then, as they walk up and down the long verandah of the house singing the mengap, in reality describe Kling's Gawè Pala [head-feast], and how Singalang Burong was invited and came. In thought the Dyaks identify themselves with Kling, and the resultant signification is that the recitation of this story is an invocation to Singalang Burong, who is supposed to come not to Kling's house only, but to the actual Dyak house where the feast is celebrated; and he is received by a particular ceremony, and is offered food or sacrifice.” At the close of the ceremony “the performer goes along the house, beginning with the head man, touches each person in it, and pronounces an invocation upon him. In this he is supposed to personate Singalang Burong and his sons-in-law, who are believed to be the real actors. Singalang Burong himself nenjangs the headmen, and his sons-in-law, [pg 384] the birds, bless the rest. The touch of the human performer, and the accompanying invocation are thought to effect a communication between these bird-spirits from the skies and each individual being. The great bird-chief and his dependants come from above to give men their charms and their blessings. Upon the men the performer invokes physical strength and bravery in war; and upon the women luck with paddy, cleverness in Dyak feminine accomplishments, and beauty in form and complexion.”863

Religious or magical origin of the drama.

Thus the dramatic performances of these primitive peoples are in fact religious or oftener perhaps magical ceremonies, and the songs or recitations which accompany them are spells or incantations, though the real character of both is apt to be overlooked by civilized man, accustomed as he is to see in the drama nothing more than an agreeable pastime or at best a vehicle of moral instruction. Yet if we could trace the drama of the civilized nations back to its origin, we might find that it had its roots in magical or religious ideas like those which still mould and direct the masked dances of many savages. Certainly the Athenians in the heyday of their brilliant civilization retained a lively sense of the religious import of dramatic performances; for they associated them directly with the worship of Dionysus and allowed them to be enacted only during the festivals of the god.864 In India, [pg 385] also, the drama appears to have been developed out of religious dances or pantomimes, in which the actors recited the deeds and played the parts of national gods and heroes.865 Hence it is at least a legitimate hypothesis that the criminal, who masqueraded as a king and perished in that character at the Bacchanalian festival of the Sacaea, was only one of a company of actors, who figured on that occasion in a sacred drama of which the substance has been preserved to us in the book of Esther.

The representation of mythical beings by living men and women may furnish a common ground where two rival schools of mythology can meet and be reconciled.

When once we perceive that the gods and goddesses, the heroes and heroines of mythology have been represented officially, so to say, by a long succession of living men and women who bore the names and were supposed to exercise the functions of these fabulous creatures, we have attained a point of vantage from which it seems possible to propose terms of peace between two rival schools of mythologists who have been waging fierce war on each other for ages. On the one hand it has been argued that mythical beings are nothing but personifications of natural objects and natural processes; on the other hand, it has been maintained that they are nothing but notable men and women who in their lifetime, for one reason or another, made a great impression on their fellows, but whose doings have been distorted and exaggerated by a false and credulous tradition. These two views, it is now easy to see, are not so mutually exclusive as their supporters have imagined. The personages about whom all the marvels of mythology have been told may have been real human beings, as the Euhemerists allege; and yet they may have been at the same time personifications of natural objects or processes, as the adversaries of Euhemerism assert. The doctrine of incarnation supplies the missing link that was needed to unite the two seemingly inconsistent theories. If the powers of nature or a certain department of nature be conceived as personified in a deity, and that deity can become incarnate in a man or woman, it is obvious that the incarnate deity is at the same time a real human being and a personification of nature. To take the [pg 386] instance with which we are here concerned, Semiramis may have been the great Semitic goddess of love, Ishtar or Astarte, and yet she may be supposed to have been incarnate in a woman or even in a series of real women, whether queens or harlots, whose memory survives in ancient history. Saturn, again, may have been the god of sowing and planting, and yet may have been represented on earth by a succession or dynasty of sacred kings, whose gay but short lives may have contributed to build up the legend of the Golden Age. The longer the series of such human divinities, the greater, obviously, the chance of their myth or legend surviving; and when moreover a deity of a uniform type was represented, whether under the same name or not, over a great extent of country by many local dynasties of divine men or women, it is clear that the stories about him would tend still further to persist and be stereotyped.

The legend of Semiramis and her lovers a duplicate of the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, of Cybele and Attis, of Isis and Osiris.

The conclusions which we have reached in regard to the legend of Semiramis and her lovers probably holds good of all the similar tales that were current in antiquity throughout the East; in particular, it may be assumed to apply to the myths of Aphrodite and Adonis in Syria, of Cybele and Attis in Phrygia, and of Isis and Osiris in Egypt. If we could trace these stories back to their origin, we might find that in every case a human couple acted year by year the parts of the loving goddess and the dying god. We know that down to Roman times Attis was personated by priests who bore his name;866 and if within the period of which we have knowledge the dead Attis and the dead Adonis were represented only by effigies, we may surmise that it had not always been so, and that in both cases the dead god was once represented by a dead man. Further, the license accorded to the man who played the dying god at the Sacaea speaks strongly in favour of the hypothesis that before the incarnate deity was put to a public death he was in all cases allowed, or rather required, to enjoy the embraces of a woman who played the goddess of love. The reason for such an enforced union of the human god and goddess is not hard to divine. If primitive man believes that the growth of the crops can be stimulated by the intercourse of [pg 387] common men and women,867 what showers of blessings will he not anticipate from the commerce of a pair whom his fancy invests with all the dignity and powers of deities of fertility?

Sardanapalus and Ashurbanapal. The legendary death of Sardanapalus in the fire.

Thus the theory of Movers, that at the Sacaea the Zoganes represented a god and paired with a woman who personated a goddess, turns out to rest on deeper and wider foundations than that able scholar was aware of. He thought that the divine couple who figured by deputy at the ceremony were Semiramis and Sandan or Sardanapalus. It now appears that he was substantially right as to the goddess; but we have still to enquire into the god. There seems to be no doubt that the name Sardanapalus is only the Greek way of representing Ashurbanapal, the name of the greatest and nearly the last king of Assyria. But the records of the real monarch which have come to light within recent years give little support to the fables that attached to his name in classical tradition. For they prove that, far from being the effeminate weakling he seemed to the Greeks of a later age, he was a warlike and enlightened monarch, who carried the arms of Assyria to distant lands and fostered at home the growth of science and letters.868 Still, though the historical reality of King Ashurbanapal is as well attested as that of Alexander or Charlemagne, it would be no wonder if myths gathered, like clouds, round the great figure that loomed large in the stormy sunset of Assyrian glory. Now the two features that stand out most prominently in the legends of Sardanapalus are his extravagant debauchery and his violent death in the flames of a great pyre, on which he burned himself and his concubines to save them from falling into the hands of his victorious enemies. It is said that the womanish king, with painted face and arrayed in female attire, passed his days in the seclusion of the harem, spinning purple wool among his concubines and wallowing in sensual delights; and that in the epitaph [pg 388] which he caused to be carved on his tomb he recorded that all the days of his life he ate and drank and toyed, remembering that life is short and full of trouble, that fortune is uncertain, and that others would soon enjoy the good things which he must leave behind.869 These traits bear little resemblance to the portrait of Ashurbanapal either in life or in death; for after a brilliant career of conquest the Assyrian king died in old age, at the height of human ambition, with peace at home and triumph abroad, the admiration of his subjects and the terror of his foes. But if the traditional characteristics of Sardanapalus harmonize but ill with what we know of the real monarch of that name, they fit well enough with all that we know or can conjecture of the mock kings who led a short life and a merry during the revelry of the Sacaea, the Asiatic equivalent of the Saturnalia. We can hardly doubt that for the most part such men, with death staring them in the face at the end of a few days, sought to drown care and deaden fear by plunging madly into all the fleeting joys that still offered themselves under the sun. When their brief pleasures and sharp sufferings were over, and their bones or ashes mingled with the dust, what more natural that on their tomb—those mounds in which the people saw, not untruly, the graves of the lovers of Semiramis—there should be carved some such lines as those which tradition placed in the mouth of the great Assyrian king, to remind the heedless passer-by of the shortness and vanity of life?

The burning of Sandan, a mythical god or hero of Western Asia. K. O. Müller's description of the burning of Sandan.

When we turn to Sandan, the other legendary or mythical being whom Movers thought that the Zoganes may have personated, we find the arguments in support of his theory still stronger. The city of Tarsus in Cilicia is said to have been founded by a certain Sandan whom the Greeks identified with Hercules; and at the festival of this god or hero an effigy of him was burned on a great pyre.870 This Sandan is [pg 389] doubtless the same with the Sandes whom Agathias calls the old Persian Hercules. Professing to give a list of the gods whom the Persians worshipped before the days of Zoroaster, the Byzantine historian mentions Bel, Sandes, and Anaitis, whom he identifies with Zeus, Hercules, and Aphrodite respectively.871 As we know that Bel was a Babylonian, not a Persian deity, and that in later times Anaitis was practically equivalent to the Babylonian Ishtar or Astarte, a strong presumption is raised that Sandes also was a Babylonian or at all events Semitic deity, and that in speaking of him as Persian the historian confused the ancient Persians with the Babylonians and perhaps other stocks of Western Asia. The presumption is strengthened when we find that in Lydia the surname of Sandon, doubtless equivalent to Sandan, is said to have been borne by Hercules because he wore a woman's garment called a sandyx, fine and diaphanous as gossamer, at the bidding of Queen Omphale, whom the hero served for three years in the guise of a female slave, clad in purple, humbly carding wool and submitting to be slapped by the saucy queen with her golden slipper.872 The familiar legend that Hercules burned himself alive on a great pyre completes the parallel between the effeminate Hercules Sandon of Lydia and the Assyrian Sardanapalus. So exact a parallel must surely rest on a common base of custom as well as of myth. That base, according to the conjecture of the admirable scholar K. O. Müller, may have been a custom of dressing up an effigy of an effeminate Asiatic deity in the semblance of a reveller, and then publicly burning it on a pyre. Such a custom appears to have prevailed not only at Tarsus in Cilicia, but also in Lydia; for a coin of the Lydian Philadelphia, a city which lay not far from the old royal capital Sardes, exhibits a device like that on coins of Tarsus, consisting of a figure stretched on a pyre. “We may suppose,” says Müller, “that in the old Assyrian mythology a certain being called Sandan, or perhaps [pg 390] Sardan, figured beside Baal and Mylitta or Astarte. The character of this mythical personage is one which often meets us in oriental religion—the extreme of voluptuousness and sensuality combined with miraculous force and heroic strength. We may imagine that at the great festivals of Nineveh this Sandan or Sardan was exhibited as a buxom figure with womanish features, the pale face painted with white lead, the eyebrows and eyelashes blackened with kohl, his person loaded with golden chains, rings, and earrings, arrayed in a bright red transparent garment, grasping a goblet in one hand and perhaps, as a symbol of strength, a double axe in the other, while he sat cross-legged and surrounded by women on a splendidly adorned couch under a purple canopy, altogether not unlike the figure of Adonis at the court festivals of Alexandria. Then the people of ‘mad Nineveh,’ as the poet Phocylides called it, ‘the well-favoured harlot,’ as the prophet Nahum has it, would rejoice and make merry with this their darling hero. Afterwards there may have been another show, when this gorgeous Sandan or Sardan was to be seen on a huge pyre of precious wood, draped in gold-embroidered tapestry and laden with incense and spices of every sort, which being set on fire, to the howling of a countless multitude and the deafening din of shrill music, sent up a monstrous pillar of fire whirling towards heaven and flooded half Nineveh with smoke and smell.”873

Death in the fire of men who personate gods or heroes.

The distinguished scholar whom I have just quoted does not fail to recognize the part which imagination plays in the picture he has set before us; but he reminds us very properly that in historical enquiries imagination must always supply the cement that binds together the broken fragments of tradition. One thing, he thinks, emerges clearly from the present investigation: the worship and legend of an effeminate hero like Sandan appear to have spread, by means of an early diffusion of the Semitic stock, first to the neighbourhood of [pg 391] Tarsus in Cilicia and afterwards to Sardes in Lydia. In favour of the former prevalence of the rite in Lydia it may be added that the oldest dynasty of Lydian kings traced their descent, not only from the mythical Assyrian hero Ninus, but also from the Greek hero Hercules,874 whose legendary death in the fire finds at least a curious echo in the story that Croesus, the last king of Lydia, was laid by his Persian conqueror Cyrus on a great pyre of wood, and was only saved at the last moment from being consumed in the flames.875 May not this story embody a reminiscence of the manner in which the ancient kings of Lydia, as living embodiments of their god, formerly met their end? It was thus, as we have seen, that the old Prussian rulers used to burn themselves alive in front of the sacred oak;876 and by an odd coincidence, if it is nothing more, the Greek Hercules directed that the pyre on which he was to be consumed should be made of the wood of the oak and the wild olive.877 Some grounds have also been shewn for thinking that in certain South African tribes the chiefs may formerly have been burnt alive as a religious or magical ceremony.878 All these facts and indications tend to support the view of Movers that at the Sacaea also the man who played the god for five days was originally burnt at the end of them.879 Death by hanging or crucifixion may have been a later mitigation of his sufferings, though it is quite possible that [pg 392] both forms of execution or rather of sacrifice may have been combined by hanging or crucifying the victim first and burning him afterwards,880 much as our forefathers used to disembowel traitors after suspending them for a few minutes on a gibbet. At Tarsus apparently the custom was still further softened by burning an effigy instead of a man; but on this point the evidence is not explicit. It is worth observing that as late as Lucian's time the principal festival of the year at Hierapolis—the great seat of the worship of Astarte—fell at the beginning of spring and took its name of the Pyre or the Torch from the tall masts which were burnt in the court of the temple with sheep, goats, and other animals hanging from them.881 Here the season, the fire, and the gallows-tree all fit our hypothesis; only the man-god is wanting.

Traces of human sacrifice in the Jewish festival of Purim; effigies of Haman burnt.

If the Jewish festival of Purim was, as I have attempted to shew, directly descended either from the Sacaea or from some other Semitic festival, of which the central feature was the sacrifice of a man in the character of a god, we should expect to find traces of human sacrifice lingering about it in one or other of those mitigated forms to which I have just referred. This expectation is fully borne out by the facts. For from an early time it has been customary with the Jews at the feast of Purim to burn or otherwise destroy effigies of Haman. The practice was well known under the Roman empire, for in the year 408 a.d. the emperors Honorius and Theodosius issued a decree commanding the governors of the provinces to take care that the Jews should not burn effigies of Haman on a cross at one of their festivals.882 We learn from the decree that the custom gave great offence to the Christians, who regarded it as a blasphemous parody of the central mystery of their own religion, little suspecting that it was [pg 393] nothing but a continuation, in a milder form, of a rite that had probably been celebrated in the East long ages before the birth of Christ. Apparently the custom long survived the publication of the edict, for in a form of abjuration which the Greek church imposed on Jewish converts and which seems to date from the tenth century, the renegade is made to speak as follows: “I curse also those who celebrate the festival of the so-called Mordecai on the first Sabbath (Saturday) of the Christian fast, and who nail Haman forsooth to the tree, attaching to it the symbol of the cross and burning him along with it, while they heap all sorts of imprecations and curses on the Christians.”883 A Jewish account of the custom as it was observed in Babylonia and Persia in the tenth century of our era runs as follows: “It is customary in Babylonia and Elam for boys to make an effigy resembling Haman; this they suspend on their roofs, four or five days before Purim. On Purim day they erect a bonfire, and cast the effigy into its midst, while the boys stand round about it jesting and singing. And they have a ring suspended in the midst of the fire, which (ring) they hold and wave from one side of the fire to the other.”884 Again, the Arab historian Albîrûnî, who wrote in the year 1000 a.d., informs us that at Purim the Jews of his time rejoiced greatly over the death of Haman, and that they made figures which they beat and burned, “imitating the burning of Haman.” Hence one name for the festival was Hâmân-Sûr.885 Another Arabic writer, Makrîzî, who died in 1442 a.d., [pg 394] says that at the feast of Purim, which fell on the fifteenth day of the month Adar, some of the Jews used to make effigies of Haman which they first played with and then threw into the fire.886 During the Middle Ages the Italian Jews celebrated Purim in a lively fashion which has been compared by their own historians to that of the Carnival. The children used to range themselves in rows opposite each other and pelt one another with nuts, while grown-up people rode on horseback through the streets with pine branches in their hands or blew trumpets and made merry round a puppet representing Haman, which was set on a platform or scaffold and then solemnly burnt on a pyre.887 In the eighteenth century the Jews of Frankfort used at Purim to make pyramids of thin wax candles, which they set on fire; also they fashioned images of Haman and his wife out of candles and burned them on the reading-desk in the synagogue.888

Accusations of ritual murder brought against the Jews. The accusations probably false.

Now, when we consider the close correspondence in character as well as in date between the Jewish Purim and the Christian Carnival, and remember further that the effigy of Carnival, which is now destroyed at this merry season, had probably its prototype in a living man who was put to a violent death in the character of Saturn at the Saturnalia, analogy of itself would suggest that in former times the Jews, like the Babylonians, from whom they appear to have derived their Purim, may at one time have burned, hanged, or crucified a real man in the character of Haman. There are some positive grounds for thinking that this was so. The early church historian Socrates informs us that at Inmestar, a town in Syria, the Jews were wont to observe certain sports among themselves, in the course of which they played many foolish pranks. In the year 416 a.d., being heated with wine, they carried these sports further than usual and began deriding Christians and even Christ [pg 395] himself, and to give the more zest to their mockery they seized a Christian child, bound him to a cross, and hung him up. At first they only laughed and jeered at him, but soon, their passions getting the better of them, they ill-treated the child so that he died under their hands. The thing got noised abroad, and resulted in a serious brawl between the Jews and their Christian neighbours. The authorities then stepped in, and the Jews had to pay dear for the crime they had perpetrated in sport.889 The Christian historian does not mention, and perhaps did not know, the name of the drunken and jovial festival which ended so tragically; but we can hardly doubt that it was Purim, and that the boy who died on the cross represented Haman.890 In mediæval and modern times many accusations of ritual murders, as they are called, have been brought against the Jews, and the arguments for and against the charge have been discussed on both sides with a heat which, however natural, has tended rather to inflame the passions of the disputants than to elicit the truth.891 Into this troubled arena I prefer not to enter; I will only observe that, so far as I have looked into the alleged cases, and these are reported in sufficient detail, the majority of the victims are said to have been children and to have met their fate in spring, often in the week before Easter. This last circumstance points, if there is any truth in the accusations, to a connexion of the human sacrifice with the Passover, which falls in this week, rather than with Purim, which falls a month earlier. Indeed it has often been made a part of the accusation that the blood of the youthful victims was intended to [pg 396] be used at the Passover. If all the charges of ritual murder which have been brought against the Jews in modern times are not, as seems most probable, mere idle calumnies, the baneful fruit of bigotry, ignorance, and malice, the extraordinary tenacity of life exhibited by the lowest forms of superstition in the minds of ignorant people, whether they are Jews or Gentiles, would suffice to account for an occasional recrudescence of primitive barbarity among the most degraded part of the Jewish community. To make the Jews as a nation responsible for outrages which, if they occur at all, are doubtless quite as repugnant to them as they are to every humane mind, would be a monstrous injustice; it would be as fair to charge Christians in general with complicity in the incalculably greater number of massacres and atrocities of every kind that have been perpetrated by Christians in the name of Christianity, not merely on Jews and heathen, but on men and women and children who professed—and died for—the same faith as their torturers and murderers. If deeds of the sort alleged have been really done by Jews—a question on which I must decline to pronounce an opinion—they would interest the student of custom as isolated instances of reversion to an old and barbarous ritual which once flourished commonly enough among the ancestors both of Jews and Gentiles, but on which, as on a noxious monster, an enlightened humanity has long set its heel. Such customs die hard; it is not the fault of society as a whole if sometimes the reptile has strength enough left to lift its venomous head and sting.

Mitigation of human sacrifice by the substitution of a criminal for the victim.

But between the stage when human sacrifice goes on unabashed in the light of common day, and the stage when it has been driven out of sight into dark holes and corners, there intervenes a period during which the custom is slowly dwindling away under the growing light of knowledge and philanthropy. In this middle period many subterfuges are resorted to for the sake of preserving the old ritual in a form which will not offend the new morality. A common and successful device is to consummate the sacrifice on the person of a malefactor, whose death at the altar or elsewhere is little likely to excite pity or indignation, since it partakes of the character of a punishment, and people recognize [pg 397] that if the miscreant had not been dealt with by the priest, it would have been needful in the public interest to hand him over to the executioner. We have seen that in the Rhodian sacrifices to Cronus a condemned criminal was after a time substituted for an innocent victim;892 and there can be little doubt that at Babylon the criminals, who perished in the character of gods at the Sacaea, enjoyed an honour which, at an earlier period, had been reserved for more respectable persons. It seems therefore by no means impossible that the Jews, in borrowing the Sacaea from Babylon under the new name of Purim, should have borrowed along with it the custom of putting to death a malefactor who, after masquerading as Mordecai in a crown and royal robe, was hanged or crucified in the character of Haman. There are some grounds for thinking that this or something of this sort was done; but a consideration of them had better be deferred till we have cleared up some points which still remain obscure in Purim, and in the account which the Jews give of its origin.

The “fast of Esther”before Purim. Jensen's theory that the “fast of Esther”was originally a mourning for the annual death of a deity like Tammuz.

In the first place, then, it deserves to be remarked that the joyous festival of Purim on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month Adar is invariably preceded by a fast, known as the fast of Esther, on the thirteenth; indeed, some Jews fast for several days before Purim.893 In the book of Esther the fast is traditionally explained as a commemoration of the mourning and lamentation excited among the Jews by the decree of King Ahasuerus that they should all be massacred on the thirteenth day of the month Adar; for “in every province, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.” And Esther, before she went into the presence of the king to plead for the lives of her people, “bade them return answer unto Mordecai, Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast in like manner.” Hence fasting [pg 398] and lamentation were ordained as the proper preparation for the happy feast of Purim which commemorated the great deliverance of the Jews from the destruction that had threatened them on the thirteenth day of Adar.894 Now we have seen that, in the opinion of some eminent modern scholars, the basis of the book of Esther is not history but a Babylonian myth, which celebrated the triumphs and sufferings of deities rather than of men. On this hypothesis, how is the fast that precedes Purim to be explained? The best solution appears to be that of Jensen, that the fasting and mourning were originally for the supposed annual death of a Semitic god or hero of the type of Tammuz or Adonis, whose resurrection on the following day occasioned that outburst of joy and gladness which is characteristic of Purim. The particular god or hero, whose death and resurrection thus touched with sorrow and filled with joy the hearts of his worshippers, may have been, according to Jensen, either the great hero Gilgamesh, or his comrade and friend Eabani.895 The doughty deeds and adventures of this mighty pair are the theme of the longest Babylonian poem that has been as yet discovered. It is recorded on twelve tablets, and this circumstance has suggested to some scholars the view that the story may be a solar myth, descriptive of the sun's annual course through the twelve months or the twelve signs of the zodiac. However that may be, the scene of the poem is laid chiefly at the very ancient Babylonian city of Erech, the chief seat of the worship of the goddess Ishtar or Astarte, who plays an important part in the story. For the goddess is said to have been smitten with the charms of Gilgamesh, and to have made love to him; but he spurned her proffered favours, and thereafter fell into a sore sickness, probably through the wrath of the offended goddess. His comrade Eabani also [pg 399] roused the fury of Ishtar, and was wounded to death. For twelve days he lingered on a bed of pain, and, when he died, his friend Gilgamesh mourned and lamented for him, and rested not until he had prevailed on the god of the dead to suffer the spirit of Eabani to return to the upper world. The resurrection of Eabani, recorded on the twelfth tablet, forms the conclusion of the long poem.896 Jensen's theory is that the death and resurrection of a mythical being, who combined in himself the features of a solar god and an ancient king of Erech, were celebrated at the Babylonian Zakmuk or festival of the New Year, and that the transference of the drama from Erech, its original seat, to Babylon led naturally to the substitution of Marduk, the great god of Babylon, for Gilgamesh or Eabani in the part of the hero. Although Jensen apparently does not identify the Zakmuk with the Sacaea, a little consideration will shew how well his general theory of Zakmuk fits in with those features of the Sacaean festival which have emerged in the course of our enquiry. At the Sacaean festival, if I am right, a man, who personated a god or hero of the type of Tammuz or Adonis, enjoyed the favours of a woman, probably a sacred harlot, who represented the great Semitic goddess Ishtar or Astarte; and after he had thus done his part towards securing, by means of sympathetic magic, the revival of plant life in spring, he was put to death. We may suppose that the death of this divine man was mourned over by his worshippers, and especially by women, in much the same fashion as the women of [pg 400] Jerusalem wept for Tammuz at the gate of the temple,897 and as Syrian damsels mourned the dead Adonis, while the river ran red with his blood. Such rites appear, in fact, to have been common all over Western Asia; the particular name of the dying god varied in different places, but in substance the ritual was the same. Fundamentally, the custom was a religious or rather magical ceremony intended to ensure the revival and reproduction of life in spring.

The resurrection of the dead god perhaps represented by a living man who afterwards died in earnest in the character of the god. This would explain the apparent duplication of the principal characters in the book of Esther: Haman and Vashti would represent the gods dying, while Mordecai and Esther would represent the gods rising from the dead.

Now, if this interpretation of the Sacaea is correct, it is obvious that one important feature of the ceremony is wanting in the brief notices of the festival that have come down to us. The death of the man-god at the festival is recorded, but nothing is said of his resurrection. Yet if he really personated a being of the Adonis or Attis type, we may feel pretty sure that his dramatic death was followed at a shorter or longer interval by his dramatic revival, just as at the festivals of Attis and Adonis the resurrection of the dead god quickly succeeded to his mimic death.898 Here, however, a difficulty presents itself. At the Sacaea the man-god died a real, not a mere mimic death; and in ordinary life the resurrection even of a man-god is at least not an everyday occurrence. What was to be done? The man, or rather the god, was undoubtedly dead. How was he to come to life again? Obviously the best, if not the only way, was to set another and living man to support the character of the reviving god, and we may conjecture that this was done. We may suppose that the insignia of royalty which had adorned the dead man were transferred to his successor, who, arrayed in them, would be presented to his rejoicing worshippers as their god come to life again; and by his side would probably be displayed a woman in the character of his divine consort, the goddess Ishtar or Astarte. In favour of this hypothesis it may be observed that it at once furnishes a clear and intelligible explanation of a remarkable feature in the book of Esther which has not yet, so far as I am aware, been adequately elucidated; I mean that apparent duplication of the principal characters to which I have already directed the reader's attention. If I am right, Haman represents [pg 401] the temporary king or mortal god who was put to death at the Sacaea; and his rival Mordecai represents the other temporary king who, on the death of his predecessor, was invested with his royal insignia, and exhibited to the people as the god come to life again. Similarly Vashti, the deposed queen in the narrative, corresponds to the woman who played the part of queen and goddess to the first mock king, the Haman; and her successful rival, Esther or Ishtar, answers to the woman who figured as the divine consort of the second mock king, the Mordecai or Marduk. A trace of the sexual license accorded to the mock king of the festival seems to be preserved in the statement that King Ahasuerus found Haman fallen on the bed with Esther and asked, “Will he even force the queen before me in the house?”899 We have seen that the mock king of the Sacaea did actually possess the right of using the real king's concubines, and there is much to be said for the view of Movers that he began his short reign by exercising the right in public.900 In the parallel ritual of Adonis the marriage of the goddess with her ill-fated lover was publicly celebrated the day before his mimic death.901 A clear reminiscence of the time when the relation between Esther and Mordecai was conceived as much more intimate than mere cousinship appears to be preserved in some of the Jewish plays acted at Purim, in which Mordecai appears as the lover of Esther; and this significant indication is confirmed by the teaching of the rabbis that King Ahasuerus never really knew Esther, but that a phantom in her likeness lay with him while the real Esther sat on the lap of Mordecai.902