The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. Morris Jastrow

Babylonia, therefore, being identified in theory with the city of Babylon, there was no need of emphasizing the power of Marduk by establishing his cult elsewhere. Within the limits of Babylon, however, there might be more than one shrine to Marduk, and accordingly, when the city was extended so as to include the place known as Borsippa, a temple to Marduk was also erected there. The temple on the east side of the Euphrates, known as E-Sagila, 'the lofty house,' was the older, and dates probably from the beginnings of Babylon itself; that in Borsippa, known as E-Zida, 'the true house,' seems to have been founded by Hammurabi.[122] While it was not in accord with the dignity attaching to Marduk that his cult should be established outside of the precincts of the city of Babylon, it would only add to his glory to have the worship of other deities grouped around his own sanctuary. Such a course would emphasize the central position of Marduk among the gods, and accordingly, we find that the chief gods of Babylonia are represented by shrines within the sacred precincts of his great temples at Babylon and Borsippa. First among these shrines is that of Marduk's consort,

Sarpanitum.

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Neither Hammurabi nor his immediate successor make mention of Sarpanitum, and at no time does she appear independently of Marduk. The glory of Marduk did not permit of any rival, and so his consort becomes merely his shadow—less significant than most of the consorts of the male deities. Her name, signifying the 'silvery bright one,' evidently stands in some connection with the solar character of her consort. Popular etymology, by a play upon the name, made of Sarpanitum (as though Zer-banit) the 'offspring-producing' goddess. She had her shrine within the precincts of the great temple E-Sagila, but we are not told of any special honors being paid her, nor do we find her invoked to any extent in incantations or in votive inscriptions. Agumkakrimi, or Agum (as he is also called), who rules about five centuries after Hammurabi, speaks of having recovered the image of Sarpanitum, and that of Marduk, out of the hands of a mountainous people living to the northwest of Babylonia, in the district between the Bay of Iskenderun and the Euphrates. The capture of the statues of the patron gods points to a great humiliation which Babylon must have encountered. Upon receiving a favorable omen from the sun-god, Agum undertakes the task of bringing Marduk and Sarpanitum back to their seats. Their temples, too, at Babylon appear to have suffered damage during the invasion of the city, and accordingly the statues are placed in the temple of Shamash pending the restoration of E-Sagila. Agum dwells at length upon the handsome garments and head-dress, studded with precious stones, that he prepared for the god and his consort. In all this description, one feels that it is Marduk for whom the honors are intended, and that Sarpanitum is of less than secondary importance—shining merely by the reflected glory of her great liege, whose presence in Babylon was essential to a restoration of Babylon's position.

There are reasons for believing, however, that Sarpanitum once enjoyed considerable importance of her own, that prior to the rise of Marduk to his supreme position, a goddess was worshipped in Babylon, one of whose special functions it was to protect the progeny while still in the mother's womb. A late king of Babylon, the great Nebuchadnezzar, appeals to this attribute of the goddess. To her was also attributed the possession of knowledge concealed from men. Exactly to what class of deities she belonged, we are no longer able to say, but it is certain that at some time, probably about the time of Hammurabi, an amalgamation took place between her and another goddess known as Erua,[123]—a name that etymologically suggests the idea of 'begetting.'[124] She is represented as dwelling in the temple of E-Zida at Borsippa, and was originally the consort of Nabu, the chief god of this place.[125] A late ruler of Babylon—Shamash-shumukin—calls her the queen of the gods, and declares himself to have been nominated by her to lord it over men.

A factor in this amalgamation of Erua and Sarpanitum was the close association brought about in Babylon between Marduk and a god whose seat was originally at the Persian Gulf—Ea. The cult of this god, as we shall see, survived in Babylonia through all political vicissitudes, and so did that of some other minor water-deities that belong to this region. Among these was Erua, whose worship centered in one of the islands in or near the gulf. Wisdom and the life-giving principle were two ideas associated in the Babylonian mind with water. As inferior in power to Ea, Erua appears to have been regarded as the daughter of Ea, and such was the sway exercised by Ea over men's minds, that even the Babylonian schoolmen did not venture to place Marduk over Ea, but pictured him as Ea's son. Erua, however, was not prominent enough to become Marduk's mother, and so she was regarded as his consort. In this capacity she was associated with Sarpanitum, and the two were merged into one personality. It rarely happens that all the links in such a process are preserved, but in this case, the epithets borne by Sarpanitum-Erua, such as 'lady of the deep,' 'mistress of the place where the fish dwell,' 'voice of the deep,' point the way towards the solution of the problem involved in the amalgamation of Erua and Sarpanitum.[126]

Nabu.

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The god Nabu (or Nebo) enjoys a great popularity in the Babylonian cult, but he owes his prestige to the accident that, as god of Borsippa, he was associated with Marduk. Indeed, his case is a clear instance of the manner in which Marduk overshadows all his fellows. Only as they are brought into some manner of relationship with him do they secure a position in the pantheon during this second period of Babylonian history. Since Nabu's position in the pantheon, once established, incurs but little change, it will be proper, in treating of him, to include the testimony furnished by the historical records of the Assyrian kings. The most prominent attribute of Nabu, at least in the later phases of the Babylonian religion, is that of wisdom. He is the wise, the all-knowing. He embodies in his person all the wisdom of the gods. To him the Assyrian kings are particularly fond of ascribing, not merely the understanding that they possess, but the thought of preserving the wisdom of the past for future ages; and in doing this the Assyrians were but guided by examples furnished by the south. Wisdom being associated, in the minds of the Babylonians, with the watery deep, one is tempted to seek an aqueous origin for Nabu. Such a supposition, although it cannot be positively established, has much in its favor. It is not necessary, in order to maintain this proposition, to remove Nabu from Borsippa. The alluvial deposits made by the Euphrates yearly have already demonstrated that Babylon lay much nearer at one time to the Persian Gulf than it does at present. The original seat of Ea, whose worship continued through all times to enjoy great popularity at Babylon, was at Eridu, which, we know, once lay on the Persian Gulf, but does so no longer. The similarity of the epithets bestowed in various texts upon Ea and Nabu point most decidedly to a similar starting-point for both; and since in a syllabary[127] we find the god actually identified with a deity of Dilmun—probably one of the islands near Bahrein—there are grounds for assuming that a tradition survived among the schoolmen, which brought Nabu into some connection with the Persian Gulf. Sayce[128] has already suggested that Borsippa may have originally stood on an inlet of the Persian Gulf. Nabu is inferior to Ea, and were it not for the priority of Marduk, he would have become in Babylonian theology, the son of Ea. Since this distinction[129] is given to Marduk, no direct indication of an original relationship to Ea has survived.

But besides being the god of wisdom and intelligence, Nabu is a patron of agriculture, who causes the grain to sprout forth. In religious and historical texts, he is lauded as the deity who opens up the subterranean sources in order to irrigate the fields. He heaps up the grain in the storehouses, and on the other hand, the withdrawal of his favor is followed by famine and distress.