The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

The reading of the name as Ramman (or Rammanu) is provisional. The ideograph Im with which the name is written designates the god as the power presiding over storms; and while it is certain that, in Assyria at least, the god was known as Ramman, which means 'the thunderer,' it is possible that this was an epithet given to the god, and not his real or his oldest name. It is significant that in the El-Amarna tablets (c. 1500 B.C.), where the god Im appears as an element in proper names, the reading Addu is vouched for, and this form has been justly brought into connection with a very famous solar deity of Syria,—Hadad. The worship of Hadad, we know, was widely spread in Palestine and Syria, and there is conclusive evidence that Hadad (or Adad), as a name for the god Im, was known in Babylonia. Professor Oppert is of the opinion that Adad represents the oldest name of the god. Quite recently the proposition has been made that the real name of the deity was Immeru.[172] The ideograph in this case would arise through the curtailment of the name (as is frequently the case in the cuneiform syllabary), and the association of Im with 'storm' and 'wind' would be directly dependent upon the nature of the deity in question. The material at hand is not sufficient for deciding the question. Besides Immeru, Adad, and Ramman, the deity was also known as Mer—connected apparently with Immeru.[173] So much is certain, that Ramman appears to have been the name currently used in Assyria for this god.

Adad may have been employed occasionally in Babylonia, as was Mer in proper names, but that it was not the common designation is proved by a list of gods (published by Bezold[174]) in which the foreign equivalent for Im is set down as Adad. We may for the present, therefore, retain Ramman, while bearing in mind that we have only proof of its being an epithet applied to the god, not necessarily his real name and in all probabilities not the oldest name.

We meet with the god for the first time in the hymn to which reference has already been made,[175] and where the god is mentioned together with Shamash. If the suggestion above thrown out is correct, that the hymn is older than the days of Hammurabi, Ramman too would be older than his first mention in historical texts. However, it is worthy of note that in this hymn each of the other gods mentioned receives a line for himself, and that Ramman is the only one who is tacked on to another deity. It is not strange that in making copies of older texts, especially those of a religious character, the scribes should have introduced certain modifications. At all events, the god does not acquire any degree of prominence until the days of Hammurabi; so that whatever his age and origin, he belongs in a peculiar sense to the pantheon of Hammurabi rather than to that of the old Babylonian period. The successor of Hammurabi, Samsu-iluna, dedicates a fort, known as Dur-padda, to Ramman whom he addresses as his 'helper', along with several other gods. Despite this fact, his worship does not appear to have been very firmly established in Babylonia, for Agumkakrimi, who follows upon Samsu-iluna, does not make mention of Ramman. During the reign of the Cassite dynasty, however, the worship of Ramman appears to have gained a stronger foothold. Several kings of this dynasty have incorporated the name of this deity into their own names, and in an inscription dealing with events that transpired in the reign of one of these kings, Ramman occupies a prominent place.

Immediately after the great triad, Anu, Bel, and Ea, there is enumerated a second, Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, and only then there follows Marduk.[176] More than this, Ramman is introduced for a second time in conjunction with Shamash, as in the hymn of Hammurabi. The two are appealed to as 'the divine lords of justice.' The conqueror of the Cassites, Nebuchadnezzar I., also holds Ramman in high esteem. For him, Ramman is the god of battle who in companionship with Ishtar abets the king in his great undertakings. He addresses Ramman as the great lord of heaven, the lord of subterranean waters and of rain, whose curse is invoked against the one who sets aside the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar or who defaces the monument the king sets up. While acknowledging the supremacy of Marduk, upon whose appeal he proceeds to Babylonia to rid the country of its oppressors, Nebuchadnezzar nevertheless shows remarkable partiality for Ramman, perhaps as a matter of policy to offset the supposed preference shown by Ramman towards the previous dynasty. Ramman with Nergal and Nanâ are also enumerated as the special gods of Namar—a Babylonian district which caused the king considerable annoyance, and which may have been one of the strongholds whence the Cassitic kings continued their attacks upon Nebuchadnezzar.

In order to determine more precisely the nature of this deity, it is necessary to turn to Assyria, where his worship dates from the very earliest times, and where he appears consistently in a single rôle,—that of the god of storms, more particularly of thunder and lightning. The oldest Assyrian ruler known to us is Samsi-Ramman (c. 1850 B.C.), whose name, containing the god as one of its elements, points to the antiquity of the cult of Ramman in the north. Another king who has frequently been mentioned, Ramman-nirari (i.e., Ramman is my helper), bears evidence to the same effect, and Tiglathpileser I. speaks of a temple to Ramman whose foundation carries us back several centuries beyond the period of these two kings—almost to the days of Hammurabi. The theory has accordingly been advanced that the worship of Ramman came to Babylonia from the north, and since the cult of this same god is found in Damascus and extended as far south as the plain of Jezreel, the further conclusion has been drawn that the god is of Aramaic origin and was brought to Assyria through Aramaic tribes who had settled in parts of Assyria. The great antiquity of the Ramman cult in Assyria argues against a foreign origin. It seems more plausible to regard the Ramman cult as indigenous to Assyria; but reverting to a time when the population of the north was still in the nomadic state of civilization, the cult may have been carried to the west by some of the wandering tribes who afterwards established themselves around Damascus.

Up to a late period Aramaic hordes appear from time to time in western Assyria; and in a higher stage of culture, contact between Aramaeans and Assyrians was maintained by commercial intercourse and by warfare. Since the earliest mention of Ramman's cult is in the city of Ashur, it may be that he was originally connected with that place. As already intimated, he was essentially a storm-god, whose manifestation was seen in the thunder and lightning, and the god was known not merely as 'the thunderer,' but also as Barku, i.e., lightning. Perhaps it was because of this that he was also brought into association with the great light of heaven,—the sun-god. In many mythologies, the sun and lightning are regarded as correlated forces. At all events, the frequent association of Shamash and Ramman cannot have been accidental. This double nature of Ramman—as a solar deity representing some particular phase of the sun that escapes us and as a storm-god—still peers through the inscription above noted from the Cassite period where Ramman is called 'the lord of justice,'—an attribute peculiar to the sun-god; but in Assyria his rôle as the thunder-and storm-god overshadows any other attributes that he may have had.

There are two aspects to rainstorms in Babylonia. The flooding of the fields while committing much havoc is essential to the fertility of the soil. Ramman is therefore the carrier of blessings to the cities, the one who supplies wells and fields with water; but the destructive character of the rain and thunder and lightning are much more strongly emphasized than their beneficent aspects. Even though the fields be flooded, Ramman can cause thorns to grow instead of herbs. The same ideograph Im that signifies Ramman also means distress. When the failure of the crops brings in its wake hunger and desolation, it is the 'god of the clouds,' the 'god of rain,' the 'god of the overflow,' whose wrath has thus manifested itself. It is he who (as a hymn puts it) 'has eaten the land.' No wonder that the 'roar' of the god is described as 'powerful,' and that he is asked to stand at the right side of the petitioner and grant protection. When Ramman lets his voice resound, misfortune is at hand. It was natural that he who thus presided over the battle of the elements should come to be conceived essentially as a god of war to a people whose chief occupation grew to be conquest. As such he appears constantly in the inscriptions of Assyrian kings, and to such a degree as to be a formidable rival, at times, to the head of the Assyrian pantheon. The final victory of the Assyrian arms is generally attributed to Ashur alone, but just before the battle and in the midst of the fray, Ramman's presence is felt almost as forcibly as that of Ashur.

He shares with the latter the honor of invocations and sacrifices at such critical moments. In this capacity Ramman is so essentially an Assyrian god that it will be proper to dwell upon him again in the following chapter, when the specially Assyrian phases of the religion we are investigating will be taken up. The consort of Ramman also, the goddess Shala, will best be treated of in connection with the Assyrian phases of the Ramman cult.

Of the other gods whose names occur in the inscriptions of Hammurabi, but little of a special character is to be noted. The attributes that he gives them do not differ from those that we come across in the texts of his predecessors. It is sufficient, therefore, to enumerate them. The longest list is furnished by the hymn which has already been referred to. The text is unfortunately fragmentary, and so we cannot be sure that the names embrace the entire pantheon worshipped by him. The list opens with Bel (who, as we have seen, is the old Bel of Nippur); then follow Sin, Ninib, Ishtar, Shamash, Ramman. Here the break in the tablet begins and, when the text again becomes intelligible, a deity is praised in such extravagant terms that one is tempted to conclude that Hammurabi has added to an old hymn a paean to his favorite Marduk[177]. To Bel is given the honor of having granted royal dignity to the king. Sin has given the king his princely glory; from Ninib, the king has received a powerful weapon; Ishtar fixes the battle array, while Shamash and Ramman hold themselves at the service of the king. With this list, however, we are far from having exhausted the pantheon as it had developed in the days of Hammurabi. From the inscriptions of his successors we are permitted to add the following: Nin-khar-sag, Nergal, and Lugal-mit-tu, furnished by Samsu-iluna; Shukamuna, by Agumkakrimi; and passing down to the period of the Cassite dynasty, we have in addition Nin-dim-su, Ba-kad, Pap-u, Belit-ekalli, Shumalia.[178]

During the Cassitic rule, Marduk does not play the prominent part that he did under the native rulers, but he is restored to his position by Nebuchadnezzar I., who, it will be recalled, succeeds in driving the Cassites out of power. But besides Marduk, Nebuchadnezzar invokes a large number of other deities. For purposes of comparison with the pantheon of Hammurabi, and of his immediate successors, I give the complete list and in the order mentioned by him in the only inscription that we have of this king. They are Ninib, Gula, Ramman, Shumalia, Nergal, Shir, Shubu, Sin, Belit of Akkad. Moreover, Anu is referred to as the especial god of Der, and a goddess Eria[179] is worshipped in Elam. Passing still further down, we obtain as additional names, Malik and Bunene, from the inscription of Nabubaliddin (c. 883-852 B.C.).[180]

We may divide this long period from Hammurabi down to the time that the governors of Babylonia became mere puppets of the Assyrian rulers into three sections: (1) Hammurabi and his successors, (2) the Cassite dynasty, (3) the restoration of native rulers to the throne. A comparison of the names furnished by the inscriptions from these three sections shows that the gods common to all are Marduk, Bel, Shamash, Ramman. But, in addition, our investigations have shown that we are justified in adding the following as forming part of the Babylonian pantheon during this entire period: Sarpanitum, Belit, Tashmitum, Sin, Ninib, Ishtar, Nergal, Nin-khar-sag, and the two other members of the triad, Anu and Ea, with their consorts, Anatum and Damkina. All these gods and goddesses are found in the texts from the first and third section of the period, and the absence of some of them from texts of the second section is simply due to the smaller amount of material that we have for the history of the Cassite dynasty in Babylonia. Some of the deities in this list, which is far from being exhaustive,[181] are foreign, so e.g., Shukamuna and Shumalia, who belong to the Cassitic pantheon; others are of purely local significance, as Shir and Shubu.[182] As for Sin, Ninib, and Ishtar, the worship of none of these deities assumes any great degree of prominence during this period.

No doubt the local cult was continued at the old centers much as before, but except for an occasional invocation, especially in the closing paragraphs of an inscription, where the writers were fond of grouping a large array of deities so as to render more impressive the curses upon enemies and vilifiers, with which the inscriptions usually terminated, they do not figure in the official writings of the time. Of Sin, it is of some importance to note that under the Cassite dynasty he stands already at the head of a second class of triads which consists of Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, or Ishtar (see note 3 on page 152), and that through the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar I., we learn of an additional district of Babylonia,—that of Bit-Khabban, where in association with Belit of Akkad, the consort of the older Bel, he was worshipped as the patron deity. Nebuchadnezzar himself does not enumerate Sin among the chief gods. Ninib appears in the familiar rôle as a god of war. After Hammurabi he is only mentioned once in inscriptions of the Cassitic period and then again in the days of Nebuchadnezzar I., who assigns a prominent place to him. It is Ninib who, with the title 'king of heaven and earth,' leads off in the long list of gods whose curses are invoked upon the king's opponents. Similarly, the belligerent character of Ishtar is the only phase of the goddess dwelt upon during this period. While for Agumkakrimi, she still occupies a comparatively inferior rank, coming seventh in his list, Nebuchadnezzar places her immediately after Anu and before Ramman and Marduk.

This advance foreshadows the superior rôle that she is destined to play in the pantheon during the period of Assyrian supremacy. The cult of Nergal does not figure prominently during this period. In fact, so far as the historical texts go, he disappears from the scene till the time of Nebuchadnezzar I., when he is incidentally invoked in a group with Ramman and Nanâ as the gods of a district in Babylonia known as Namar. Exactly where Namar lay has not yet been ascertained. Since Nergal, as was shown in the previous chapter, was the local patron of Cuthah, it may be that the latter city was included in the Namar district. At all events, we may conclude from the silence of the texts as to Nergal, that Cuthah played no conspicuous part in the empire formed of the Babylonian states, and that the cult of Nergal, apart from the association of the deity in religious texts with the lower world, did not during this entire period extend beyond local proportions. Lastly, it is interesting to note that Samsu-iluna, the son of Hammurabi, refers to Belit of Nippur as Nin-khar-sag, which we have seen was one of her oldest titles.