It is rather difficult nowadays to distinguish the link which united science to astrology and astrology to religion. The Assyrio-Chaldean dogma is not formulated in a text by which we may grasp the whole, and thus we are obliged to seek traces of it in fragments of different sources and of different times, without being able to give them the unity they must have had in their complete form; in other words, we cannot reconstruct the Assyrian pantheon as a whole.
The most superficial examination suffices to show that we are in the presence of a very complicated polytheism, but there is no text to explain the hierarchy which must have reigned in the celestial world. At the summit of this hierarchy one can perceive a divinity, one, and at the same time divisible. Dogma proclaims this divinity in certain passages, but when we wish to learn its exact individuality, it eludes us, so that we may only seize the abstraction. We are led to believe in a celestial hierarchy of beings inhabiting a superior world and subordinated to an all-powerful God, who governs gods, world, and men. He is enthroned in spaces inaccessible to us in our condition, and appears only in legends; his power intervenes only when the order of the universe is threatened, as we shall see in the legend of Ishtar, when the goddess of the dwellings of the dead wishes to keep the daughter of Sin in the dark dwelling, where she is so boldly detained.
This all-powerful God does not seem to be accessible to human beings; secondary divinities revolve about him and seem, like him, to be pure spirits. In the practice of the religion one has a glimpse of an assembly of divinities, whose relations with humanity are more tangible. These gods assume more definite form, as a general thing the human one often joined with that of various animals, fish, oxen, or birds. The wings seem to have but a single symbolical signification, to denote beings of a superior order.
These gods have a rather definite hierarchy, twelve of them being known as “great gods.” The one who appears to be the chief varies according to locality and time. The chances of political conquest seem to influence him, and he is changed according to the fortunes of war that give the upper hand to such and such locality where his cult is followed.
At Nineveh, the god which seems to have been the highest in the celestial hierarchy, is Ilu; his character is no further defined and his symbol is often only the abstract representation of the divinity.
Winged Bull discovered at Arban
(Layard)
In the historical texts of the Assyrian kings we find an enumeration of the great gods who were invoked by the sovereigns of the earth; their number and order is not always constant, but such as they are we can mention: Ilu (Ana), who is often confounded at Nineveh with Asshur; then Bel (Baal); and lastly Anu. These three divinities appear as the reflection of the gods of the superior world, which we have already mentioned, but to which we have been unable to ascribe names. Then follow the gods more particularly associated with the visible world: Sin, the god of the moon; Shamash, god of the sun; Bin (Ramman or Adad), god of the higher regions of the atmosphere, arbitrator of the heavens and earth, the god who presides over tempests.
A series of divinities seems especially given over to the superintendence of the planets: Adar over Saturn, Marduk over Jupiter, Nergal over Mars, Ishtar over Venus, Nabu over Mercury.
Ishtar seems always to have a peculiar and special individuality, notwithstanding that each of the great gods has a spouse who is often invoked with him, and who seems to complete him. The rôle of the great spouses of the great gods is not well understood; with Ishtar we can see Beltis figure, whose name is transformed and often becomes like that of Ishtar, a collective appellation of all female divinities; those whose names seem to have a more permanent character are Zarpanit, the goddess who particularly represents the fertile principle of the universe, and Tasmit, the goddess of wisdom. All female divinities seem to have direct relations with humanity, but they often disappear in the higher and inaccessible world, and then only reveal themselves through secondary influences. Secondary gods, whose number is infinite, are born of these divine couples; a tablet from the Nineveh library gives us the list of twelve sons of Anu with their attributes; of these sons other divinities are born, but their descent we cannot follow. It is so with other great gods.
At Babylon the divinities are the same, but the hierarchy is different; Bel seems to have replaced Ilu (Ana), and Marduk takes the place of Asshur. It is easy to be seen that these theogonies come from a common source, which is every day becoming more accessible to us, but which we have not yet sufficiently explored to know its exact nature.
The artistic development at which the Chaldeans had arrived from the remotest antiquity, allows us easily to suppose that we ought to discover in the pictured monuments that which the texts have not yet revealed to us. Unfortunately we cannot fix upon the meaning of the figures on the engraved stones until we shall have complete enlightenment from the texts. The significance of a symbol cannot be guessed at; also it is the most we can do if from all these representations we are able to recognise the figures of four or five divinities—Ilu, Nabu, Marduk, Ishtar, and Zarpanit. There is, moreover, a special reason why we should be most cautious in our comparisons; we know that when the Assyrians took possession of a hostile town, they carried away the images of strange divinities, and restored them to their possessors, after inscribing on these images the names of Assyrian gods. Therefore we should not trust too much to an Assyrian inscription to fix on the identification of the image of a divinity, as deeds of this nature might have been repeated in every campaign. It is thus, doubtless, that we may explain the fact that, while in the whole of Mesopotamia the abstract idea of the divinity was mentioned by the name Ilu, it appears on the monuments of the Achæmenidæ as Ormuzd.
The Assyrio-Chaldean cult had a very solemn ritual; we already have a great number of hymns addressed to the principal divinities; and as every month and every day of the month was under the protection of a particular divinity, one may understand that the Assyrio-Chaldean ritual must have had a considerable development. There were hymns dedicated to Nabu, Sin, Shamash, Anuit, to Fire, and to the Elements. Here is a hymn which can give an idea of the lyric poetry of which the library of Nineveh included numerous fragments:
“Lord Illuminator of darkness who penetrates obscurity. The Good God, who uplifts those who are in abjection, who sustains the feeble. The great gods turn their eyes towards thy light. The spirits of the abyss eagerly contemplate thy face. The language of praise is addressed to thee as a single word. The … of their heads seeks the light of the Southern sun. Like a betrothed thou restest full of joy and graciousness. In thy splendour thou attainest the limits of Heaven. Thou art the Standard of this wide World. O God, the men who live afar off contemplate thee and rejoice.”
Religious ceremonies bore a relation to external worship; they all ended in invocation or sacrifice. The cylinder-engraved scenes give us an idea of these ceremonies; we usually see the priest in an attitude of adoration or prayer, sometimes alone, but often before an altar, on which reposes the object of adoration, or that which is going to be sacrificed. The most usual victim is a ram or a kid. The Assyrian kings never began an important expedition without having invoked the gods and held religious ceremonies; after a victory they offered a sacrifice on the borders of their newly conquered states. These sacrifices generally took place in the open air; nevertheless, temples were numerous in Assyria and Chaldea; their traditional form is that of a step-pyramid (ziggurat); every town had one or two temples of this kind under the patronage of one of the divinities of the Assyrian pantheon.