tirely of brass, and hollow inside. It had a bull's
head, the bull being a favorite emblem of physical
might, and therefore of the male principle in na-
ture, of the Sun-god at his fiercest. The statue's
arms were of monstrous length, and in its huge
outstretched hands the victims were laid, which
the arms, worked by chains and pulleys placed
behind its back, lifted up to an opening in the
breast, till they rolled into the furnace blazing in-
side of the statue, on an invisible grate, through
which the cinders and ashes fell, forming a gradu-
ally increasing heap between the colossus' legs.
It is supposed that grown-up victims were first
killed, but it is certain that children were consigned
living to the horrible red-hot hands. No sorrow
was to be shown. While being prepared for immo-
lation, the children's cries were to be soothed with
caresses. Most hideous and incredible as it seems,
the mothers had to be present, and to repress their
tears, their sobs, every sign of grief, as otherwise
they would not only have lost all the credit reflected
on them by the great honor thus publicly paid
them, but might have drawn down the anger of the
vengeful god on the community, and one unwilling
offering, one begrudged victim might have defeated
the entire sacrifice, nay, made matters worse than
they were before. So weak-minded a mother would
have been branded for life as unpatriotic and un-
THE RELIGION OF CANAAN. i >>c
worthy. An incessant noise of drums and flutes
was kept up, not only to drown the little victims'
cries, but also to heighten the public exaltation.
The rite was doubtless accompanied with solemn
dances, at least in Syria this was certainly the case ;
and hymns of praise and invocations were sung, as
customary in Phoenicia and Canaan, a sort of lit-
any wherein the name of the god constantly recurred.
And if the priests had any doubts of the sacrifice
being acceptable to him, they were bound to sup-
port and emphasize it by shedding their own blood.
The Bible-writers, in speaking of such sacrifices,
mostly use the expression : " To cause their chil-
dren to pass through the fire unto" or in honor of
Moloch or Baal. Hence it has been supposed that
in most cases a ceremony of consecration through
fire took the place of actual immolation. But there
seems to be nothing to support this hypothesis; in-
deed, many passages are explicitly against it. In
speaking to Jerusalem in the name of the Lord, to
reprove the royal city for her backslidings and in-
iquities, Ezekiel says : " . . . . thou hast slain my
children and delivered them up, in causing them to
pass through the fire unto them ; " and, a few verses
further on : " . . . . because of all the idols of thy
abominations, and for the blood of thy children
which thou hast given unto them. . . ." For the
Jews had so thoroughly adopted the custom of their
neighbors and kindred nations, that they had a place
outside the walls of Jerusalem, the valley of Tophet,
specially devoted to the worship of Baal ? where the
136
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
sacrificial pyres were constantly kept blazing and
were often fed with child-victims.*
28. On the principle that the gift is acceptable
in proportion as it is precious to the giver, the
national sacrifices were to consist of none but chil-
dren of the noblest houses, and when parents were
convicted of eluding the demand the punishment
was terrible. Once when the Carthaginians had
been beaten in a very important battle, the loss of
which endangered the commonwealth, we are told
that a severe investigation showed that the city
nobles had for some time been in the habit of pur-
chasing and fattening low-born children and substi-
tuting these for their own offspring. To this im-
piety the anger of the god was attributed, and a
national expiatory sacrifice was ordered on an
unusually large scale : two hundred boys of the
noblest ruling families perished, and of the par-
ents, some authors say that three hundred who
had been guilty of the accursed malpractice vol-
untarily gave their own lives. One shudders
to think what opportunities were thus presented
to priests and to others for the indulgence of fam-
ily feuds and personal grudges. Not until the
reign of the Roman emperor, Tiberius, a contem-
porary of Christ, was the execrable custom offi-
cially put a stop to in Carthage. The Romans,
then the rulers of the world, were not noted for
gentleness or tender-heartedness. Yet when a
Roman legion under the reign of that emperor
* See 2 Kings, xxiii. 10 ; Jeremiah, vii. 31 ; xix. 5-7.
THE RELIGION OF CANAAN. Y ^y
came upon the priests of Moloch in the midst of a
child-sacrifice, so great was their horror and pity
that they not only dispersed the crowd, and re-
leased the victims, as many as were still living, but
hung every one of the priests ; after which >a law
was issued, forbidding the repetition of the unnat-
ural rite in future. But there can be no doubt that
it was indulged in occasionally and surreptitiously
for another hundred years or two in fact, until
Christianity gained a firm hold on the African prov-
inces of the Roman Empire.*
29. Sometimes human sacrifices were offered in
gratitude, or in accomplishment of a vow. The
Carthaginians sacrificing their fairest women-cap-
tives to Moloch after a victory give us an instance
of the former custom, while the latter is strikingly
exemplified in the famous story of Jephthah and
his daughter. "And Jephthah vowed a vow unto
Yahveh and said : If thou wilt indeed deliver the
children of Ammon into mine hand, then it shall
be that whosoever cometh forth of the doors of my
house to meet me, when I return in peace from
the children of Ammon, it shall be Yahveh's, and I
will offer it up for a burnt-offering " (Judges, xi.
30-31). But a wholesale form of this kind of sacri-
fice, " vowing " or " devoting " things, animals and
persons to the deity as a thank-offering for the re-
ception of a certain boon petitioned for, was long
* See Miinter, " Religion der Karthager." For a thrilling and most
learned description of a child-sacrifice on a large scale see the chap-
ter "Moloch" in Gustave Flaubert's Carthaginian novel "Sa-
lammbo."
138 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
preserved among the Jews, who called it the
Kherem. It consisted in promising to " devote " to
Yahveh this or that city, if he would deliver it
into their hands, a promise which meant that
the city with all its wealth should be destroyed
and all that had life in it should be killed all in
honor and for the glory of Yahveh. The most
complete instance of such a Kherem, or " devotion,"
we have in the command laid on Saul by Samuel,
as he sent him against the Amalekites. (See p. 10.)
And how strictly the fulfilment of it was demanded
we see from the denunciation hurled against him
for sparing the life of the king and the finest cattle.
Knowing this, we can well understand why Saul's
plea that " the people spared the best of the sheep
and of the oxen to sacrifice unto the Lord," availed
him naught before the prophet: what sense or
merit was there in sacrificing a part, since the whole
was "devoted"? In Deuteronomy (xx. 13-14)
we find the " devotion " of conquered cities erected
into a law and sacred precept. Only, as this book
was written at a much later time (about 800 B.C.),
the rigor of the " kherem " is somewhat moderated
and the law of death applies only to the males of
the population ; slavery and confiscation are the lot
of the rest. Here is the entire passage : " And when
Yahveh thy god delivereth it (the city) into thine
hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the
edge of the sword, but the women, and the little
ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city shalt
thou take as a prey unto thyself, and thou shalt eat
the spoil of thine enemies which the Lord God hath
THE RELIGION OF CANAAN. x ^Q
given thee." Accordingly we continually come
across passages like the following : " If thou wilt
indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will
devote their cities" (Numbers, xxi. 2-3). " And
Yahveh hearkened to the voice of Israel and de-
livered up the Canaanites, and they devoted their
cities" (2 Kings, iii. 27). So little doubt is there
about the sense in which the word "devote" is
used in all these passages, that the translators of
the Bible have rendered it in the popular version
by " utterly destroy."
And now we can at last close this digression,
long, but most necessary for the right comprehen-
sion not only of the very important group of kin-
dred religions that has been called u Syrian," or of
Western Asia, but of that most puzzling and intri-
cate side of all ancient religions which bears on
what has always been considered the great Mystery
of Sacrifice.
30. It is a pity that Sanchoniatho should be
neither so late nor so authentic a writer as Bero-
sus. He is said to have been, like the latter, a
priest of one of the principal sanctuaries in his own
country. Many doubt whether Sanchoniatho, as
an individual, really did exist, there being no evi-
dence thereto but a name bare of all personal traits
or details. But what is certain is that the frag-
ments preserved under that name contain teachings
handed down by the priestly colleges of GEBAL
(Greek Byblos), a city only second to Tyre and
Sidon in commercial and political greatness, and
superior to them in sanctity. It appears to have
140
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
been a sort of headquarters of priestly lore, of re-
ligious legends and observances and sacerdotal au-
thority. Even in their sadly imperfect condition
they give a very elaborate system of the Cosmog-
ony,* said to be that of the Phoenician nations.
Unfortunately the account, transmitted in an ab-
breviated yet intricate form by a Greek writer of
the early Christian period, himself a Christian,f
is so corrupted and inextricably confused by the
admixture of late Greek ideas and by most of the
names being rendered into Greek, unaccompanied
by the Phoenician originals, that it is scarcely possi-
ble to disentangle the two elements. The result
is very puzzling. A great deal has been written on
the subject without as yet producing much clear-
ness. This is therefore not the place where we can
discuss those nevertheless most valuable and inter-
esting relics, for at the present stage of our studies
we strive mainly to unravel and record the genuine,
original religious conceptions and traditions of the
several peoples. This, as already remarked (see p.
70), is especially difficult in dealing with the Phoe-
nicians and Canaanitic nations generally, and there
is no likelihood of any monuments forthcoming to
throw such light on the so-called " Sanchoniatho
fragments " as those of the Mesopotamian states
shed on the more authentic Berosus.
31. That both the Cosmogony of the Phoenicians
and their principal myths were nearly akin to those
* For the meaning of the word see " Story of Chaldea," p. 259 ff.
t Eusebius.
THE RELIGION OF CANAAN. l ^ T
of ancient Chaldea is as certain as that their art
was in great part derived from that of Babylonia.
It is therefore without very much surprise that we
meet with the Chaldean Dumuzi making his home,
under the name of ADONIS-THAMMUZ, in the holi-
est seat of Phoenician worship, Gebal. (" Adonis "
simply means "lord, master," and is identical with
the Hebrew word "Adon," much used by the
Hebrews as a title of God.) However unsympa-
thetic and coarse the Canaanites' moral tendency,
they could not rob of its poetry and pathos the
beautiful story of the lovely Sun-Youth tragically
done to death. He was beloved by the goddess
Baalath (Greek Beltis), the local equivalent
of Ishtar and Ashtoreth, and taken from her by a
cruel accident : * killed while hunting in the forests
of Lebanon by the tusk of a fierce boar, sent, ac-
cording to some, by his deadly foe, Baal-Moloch,
the Fiery. It was in midsummer, July, a month
sacred among the Semites to the young slaughtered
god. The river that flows by Gebal was named
after him, Adonis, and it was said that in his month
it flowed red with his blood. This pretty conceit
was suggested by an actual fact : the springs of the
river flow through certain red clay passes, which,
becoming dry and crumbling in the hot season,
are partly washed down by its waters. The myth-
ical sense of the story is evident. It is the vic-
tory of the fierce and wicked Sun-god, the De-
stroyer, over the beneficent Sun, the fair Spring-
* See " Story of Chaldea," pp. 323-326.
142
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
god, the bridegroom of Nature in her prime. Of
course he comes to life again. His festival was
celebrated in early spring. It began in mourn-
ing, with processions of wailing women, tearing
their hair and clothes, crying out that the god was
dead, calling on his name and repeating, " Ailanu !
ailanu ! " (" Woe is us ! ") They laid a wooden
effigy of him, clothed in regal robes, on a bier,
anointed it with oil and performed over it the
other rites for the dead, fasting severely all the
while. The bier was carried in procession, followed
by an ever increasing crowd, with the usual extrav-
agant demonstrations of grief. Then the god's
resurrection was celebrated with equally extrava-
gant rejoicings, after the fashion of the race, and
the air resounded with the triumphant cry of
"Adonis is living," instead of the universal wail,
" Thammuz is dead ! " It need scarcely be re-
marked that this festival in its double aspect was
of an essentially orgiastic character. One very
pretty custom was connected with it : that of the
so-called " Adonis-gardens." It consisted in sowing
seeds of several garden herbs and early plants in
wooden boxes, so as to have them green and in
bloom for the festival, to greet the awakening of
the god, to whose renovated power they moreover
bore witness. These must have been something
like our window gardens.
32. The nearest approach to a moral conception
of the divine nature that we can credit the Phoeni-
cians with is the creation of the divine group of the
Seven Kabirim (" Mighty ones "). They are no
THE RELIGION OF CANAAN. j^
new creations. Melkarth and Ashtoreth were of
the number, and it is very probable that the five
others were originally planetary powers. If so,
they underwent some transformations, and even
received names significant of the moral qualities
ascribed to them. One is " the Orderer," and in-
vents the art of working iron ; another is " Law."
And all seven are said by Sanchoniatho to be the
sons of " SYDYK, the Just," or, as we might perhaps
render the idea, if not literally the name, of Justice.
The most original feature about this group is the
addition to it of an eighth Kabir, higher still and
greater than the rest, although called their brother.
His name was ESHMUN, (the word means simply
" the Eighth "), and he was understood as concentrat-
ing in himself the essence and power of all the others
a desperate but lame effort towards monotheism.
The Kabirim represented the divine Intelligence
and All-wisdom in every aspect, and while they
were the guardians of the nation's political and
social organization, the inventors of the arts which
ensured its prosperity, above all of ship-building,
navigation and the working of iron, they were also
its religious teachers. The fragment of Sanchonia-
tho closes with the declaration : " These things the
Kabirim, the seven sons of Sydyk, and their eighth
brother, Eshmun, first of all set down in their
records .... and they delivered them to their suc-
cessors and to foreigners. . . ." Consequently the
Phoenicians considered their sacred writings as re-
vealed by the Kabirim, just as the Babylonians
ascribed the revelation of their own to their most
144
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
ancient god, Ea, the Oannes of Berosus. These
"records" must have been preciously treasured,
since they had priestly colleges, and even a city
called " the City of Books " (Kiriath-Sepher), and
it is very strange that not the least trace of them
should have turned up.
33. It is scarcely needful to state that wherever
the Phoenicians had commercial settlements or col-
onies they carried their gods and their worship.
This was the case with all the Greek and Italian
islands, and many portions of the Greek continent
also, especially along the eastern shore of it. The
pliant and receptive mind of the Greeks adopted
them in a great measure, and amalgamated them
with their own beliefs and ideas, bringing to bear
on them their own poetical genius, and thus subject-
ing them to a transformation which made the old,
rude, barbaric forms unrecognizable, except to the
eye of practised scholarship.
*
THE NEIGHBORS OF ASSHUR. REVIVAL OF THE
EMPIRE.
1. The blank of nearly two hundred years which
occurs in the monumental history of Assyria after
the brilliant incident of Tiglath-Pileser's reign (see
p. 63), gave us an opportunity of taking a long excur-
sion to the cities of the sea-shore without doing an
injustice to our master-subject. When next we
turn our eyes to the valley of the Upper Tigris, the
10th century B.C. is drawing to its close, the cloud
has lifted from Nineveh, and the Assyrian lion is
stronger and hungrier than ever. An uninter-
rupted line of mighty warrior-kings now holds the
throne, perhaps a new dynasty, with fresh ener-
gies and a vigorous military organization. These
we can follow in their succession and their exploits
with an ease and certainty very refreshing after the
almost hopeless gropings of early chronological re-
search, thanks to a peculiar and very practical insti-
tution of the Assyrians, contrived by them for the
express purpose of keeping up a system of reliable
dates.
2. It appears that, from very remote times, it was
usual to name each year after one of the great mag-
istrates of the state. The year was then designated
10 145
146
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
as the " LlMMU " of So-and-So. It is thought by
many that the magistrates themselves, in their
capacity of time-keepers, had the special title of
LlMMU in addition to the title they held from their
office. Modern scholars have rendered the word by
EPONYMS.* This office seems to have been con-
sidered a great distinction, for we find none but the
highest dignitaries invested with it. Every king was
limmu at least once, generally the second full year
of his reign. (The king counted his regnal years not
from the day of his accession, but from the begin-
ning of the next year; whatever remained of the old
year was simply called " the beginning of the reign.")
In his second year, then, the king was limmu ; after
him came, in more or less regular rotation, the tur-
tan or general of his forces, then his chief minister
of state, then a functionary whom George Smith
supposes to have been the head of the priesthood,
then an officer whom the same scholar defines as a
sort of aide-de-camp to the king ; after these followed
the governors of provinces and important cities,
Assyrian or conquered. Of course lists of the
eponyms with their respective years were carefully
kept, and the manner of dating was something like
this : " Fourth year of Shalmaneser, limmu So-and
So ; " or " Second year of Shalmaneser, limmu the
King." How far back this custom began we do not
know, for the lists which have been found take us
only to about 900 B.C. No less than four copies of
limmu lists have been exhumed, greatly injured and
even erased in places, but the fragments fitting into
*See explanation of the word in " Story of Chaldea," p. 134.
THE NEIGHBORS OF ASSHUR. x ^j
each other and completing one another so beauti-
fully that, by the simple expedient of writing them
out in four parallel columns, an uninterrupted and
fully reliable scheme of reigns has been obtained,
covering over two hundred years (about 900 to 666
B.C.). This is the famous so-called Assyrian EPONYM
CANON, i. e., " authentic table of Eponyms." A
further and still greater help has been derived from
the discovery of tables of eponyms with a short
notice attached of the principal feature of each
year; for instance, "(Expedition) to Babylon," or
u to the land of Nairi," or "to the land of Cedars,"
or " In the land," the latter meaning that the king
had not gone out of Assyria that year a very un-
frequent notice. An eclipse opportunely mentioned
in one of these tables furnished the means of firmly
locating the entire row of dates. This result was
.especially desirable for this particular period, be-
cause it is the period when the history of Assyria
and that of the Jews are in constant collision.
Almost every event connected with Assyria men-
tioned in the Bible is faithfully recorded in the his-
torical inscriptions of the Assyrian kings, and the
Eponym Canon enables us to correct the somewhat
loose chronology of the Jewish historians, who kept
no such yearly record and were too much given to
deal in averages and round figures for perfect ac-
curacy.
3. When Assyria emerged from that long spell of
inactivity and obscurity, and once more stepped
forth aggressively upon the stage of the world her
-world that stage was greatly altered. The Hittite
148
THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
power, which even in the time of Tiglath-Pileser I.
had virtually ceased to exist as an independent
empire, or, more correctly, as a compact confeder-
acy, is now altogether broken up, and though
-Karkhemish still retains considerable importance, it
is more as a wealthy station on one of the great
commercial high-roads (see p. 31), and as a seat of
national worship, than as a political centre. The
Aramaeans have come to the front, everywhere sup-
planting the Hittites and driving many of them
north, towards the passes of the Amanus and Taurus
-ridges. Aram has become a powerful and united
nation, under the rule of kings who have established
their seat of empire in Damascus. (See p. 56.)
But it is not only the Aramaeans' steady pushing
from the Euphrates westward that has displaced or
overruled the ancient Hittite power. They have
been pressed upon from the south by the Jews, who
have gradually, in the course of several hundred
years, occupied the lands around the Dead Sea and
along both sides of the Jordan, that " land of
Canaan M which they firmly believed to be their own
promised patrimony by right divine, and of which
they took possession by dint of stubborn determina-
tion and ruthless cruelty. Thus, although the his-
torical inscriptions of this period make frequent
mention of the " cities of the Khatti " (Hittites),
the " land of the Khatti," the word has become a
vague geographical designation, meaning in a gen-
eral way the land and cities of what has later been
called Syria, the people thus designated being as
often of Aramaean as of Hittite race.
THE NEIGHBORS OF ASSHUR. ^g
4. A change has also come over the great trading
communities of the sea-shore. The supremacy of
Tyre, which had begun to supplant that of Sidon
among them, has become more and more confirmed,
and the people are no longer known, as in the oldest
times, under the general name of " Sidonians."
The colonizing process is going on more actively
than ever; only whereas the first colonies which
followed on the exploration of the Greek seas and
islands were for the most part Sidonian, the later
and more distant ones (see p. 90 on Gades and Tar-
shish) were sent out from Tyre. More and more
distant they were, because the Greeks had ousted
the Phoenician traders from their own waters, and
had, very naturally, established there their own com-
merce and merchant navy. More and more fre-
quently, too, the old hive sent out new swarms, be-
cause more and more closed in and cramped for
room by the advance and spreading of Aram and
Israel in the East, and in the South of another
^nation, the Pelishtim (Philistines), new comers of
a different and probably European race. In the
Bible they are said to have come from Kaphtor,
an island far away in the West. This is thought
to be none other than Crete, the largest and most
southern of the Greek islands, but not with any
degree of certainty. It is the more hopeless to
obtain anything like reliable authority on the origin
of this warlike people, so interesting from its long
conflict with the Jews, because they appear to have
been promptly Semitized, as shown by their proper
names and by their religion. We have already seen
I 50 THE STORY OF ASSYRIA.
that they worshipped principally Dagon and Atar-
gatis (Derketo), the Fish-god and Fish-goddess.