THE MYSTERY OF BEING.

 EARLY GROPINGS OF HUMANITY

Mr. Hector Macpherson, F.R.A.S., writing in the "Scientific American" on Babylonian Cosmology, says that from the earliest ages the human mind has been confronted by the great questions presented by the natural world — the earth, its nature and origin— and the outer universe — its structure and origin. The name of the first actual student of Nature must remain for ever in obscurity. It is tolerably clear, however, that astronomy is the oldest branch of science, because the heavenly bodies are the most prominent of natural objects. The early students of Nature must have noted the phases of the moon and the fact that the starry skies presented different aspects at different seasons. Later men must have observed that the sun itself did not remain fixed in position, but varied in its altitude above the horizon.
Probably this kind of knowledge grew up in various countries simultaneously. There are traditions of early astronomers and astrologers in China, in India, in Egypt and in Babylonia; for early astronomy was inextricably mixed up with astrology and religious ceremonial, and thus the priests of the ancient religions were in many cases the pioneers of astronomical observation.
An observant study of Nature, however, is almost invariably accompanied by what is called a cosmology or world concept. The mind of man, even in primitive conditions, is not content with mere appearances; it desires to know things as they are, and to penetrate behind the veil of appearances. The human mind ever seeks a world concept. Thus, even in very primitive times, men formulated theories of the natural order and of the relation of the earth, our dwelling place, to the outside world as a whole.
Every ancient people has its cosmology, or concept of the order of the world, and accompanying this, its cosmogony or theory of the world's origin. That these early ideas were crude and fantastic is not to be wondered at; they are interesting as illustrating the first groupings of humanity after an explanation of the mystery of being.
Among early peoples, as the late Professor Pfleiderer points out, "cosmogony is at the same time theogony." We might also say that cosmology is at the same time theology, for if not quite identical, the two were inextricably connected. To the ancients Nature was full of deities. There were gods of land and sea, gods of sun and stars, gods of storm, and tempest Both religion and service were born of a crude cosmo-theology, largely the product of wonder and fear — wonder at the marvels of external Nature, and fear at its caprices and vagaries.
The closeness of the connection be tween early cosmology and theology is obvious when we consider the influence of climate on early religious cults. We find the sidereal cult in countries like Babylonia, India, or Egypt, where the skies are clear and the brilliant stars force themselves on the attention of mankind. In the words of Professor Cumont— "Every sidereal cult, properly so called, was originally foreign to the Greeks as to the Romans— a fact which undoubtedly proves that the common ancestors of the Italians and the Hellenes dwelt in a northern land, where the stars were frequently concealed by fogs or obscured by clouds. For them nearly all the constellations remained a nameless and chaotic mass and the planets were not distinguished from the other stars. Even the sun and moon, although they were regarded as divinities, like all the powers of Nature, occupied but a very secondary place in the Greek religion.
In Babylonia, as in Egypt and India, science and religion were almost inextricably mixed, fused in a popular mythology. As Pfleiderer points out, "Among the eastern Semites of Mesopotamia, the Babylonians, or Chaldeans and Assyrians, the old Semitic star worship was mixed up with the more naturalistic beliefs of the original inhabitants of the land, now generally distinguished by the name of Accadians or Sumerians. From the intermixture proceeded alike the mythology, the cultus and the art of the Babylonians."

In the old animistic worship, animals, plants and stones, rain, winds and storms were regarded as divine, while the Eemites worshipped the stars, which they were thus compelled to study closely. The Babylonian priest astronomers devoted themselves first of all to the measurement of time and the distinction of the planets and the stars, On a tablet, dated 539, is to be found the relative positions of sun and moon, calculated in advance. The conjunctions of the moon and planets and of the planets among themselves, and the zodiacal positions of moon and planets are noted with their exact dates. These planetary bodies were always in some way or other associated with the divinities whom the priests worshipped.
In the Babylonian system of divinities, the five gods of the planets were combined with two triads of deities, which correspond with the upper world. Above all, supreme over the other gods was the Lord of Lords, the "Bel Beli," who was also known as "Ilu," "the god." The star gods were also prominent in the local cultus of the town of Babel. These were Naba (Mercury), the god of revelation and priestly wisdom; Nergal (Mars), the god of war; Merodach (Jupiter), the lucky or propitious star; and Istar or Bilit, the Hellenic Venus, goddess of fertility and also of death.
From the connection between planets and gods arose the Babylonian system of astrology. Of all natural objects, the Babylonians ascribed a chief influence to the stars. This is not to be wondered at, for the stars in the clear air of Syria and Mesopotamia shine with a brilliance quite unknown in western lands. The brilliant stars and the even more brilliant and at the same time mysterious "planets," or wanderers, filled these Oriental peoples with a sense of superstitious awe. Hence arose the astrology of the Babylonians. The priestly astronomers became pre-eminently astrologers. As Schiaparelli truly remarks, "the tendency which dominates the whole Babylonian astronomy is to discover all that is periodic in celestial phenomena, and to reduce it to a numerical expression in such a manner as to be able to predict its repetition in the future." Hence, astrology and religion remained in the closest union among the Babylonians. Theology and cosmology — and therefore theogony and cosmogony — were closely intermixed.
The Babylonian cosmology consists of speculations as to— (1) The present state of the world, and (2) how the world came to be.
In regard to the constitution of the world, the Babylonian conception did not differ much from those of other primitive peoples. The heaven was believed to be a solid vault, whose foundations rested on "the deep" (apsu), on which the earth also rested. Higher than the vault of heaven were the "upper waters," while higher still was the dwelling of the gods, "the interior of the heavens." From this celestial house the sun emerged through a door in the morning, and into the same house he passed in the evening, through another door. The earth itself was supposed to be a huge mountain, of which the under portion was hollow. In the east is the mountain of sunrise, and in the west the corresponding mountain of sunset, while in the north is an unknown and mysterious country. Inside the earth, above the hollow central portions, is the abode of the dead, the entrance into which lies toward the west. Finally, between the vault of heaven and the crust of the earth, are the waters of the eastern and western oceans, which, along with the southern ocean, form part of the deep, or the "apsu."
The connection of the deep played a very important part not only in Babylonian cosmology proper, but in cosmogony as well. The culture of primitive Babylonia, as Professor Sayce has pointed out, radiated from two chief centres, the sanctuary of Nippur in the north and the seaport of Eridu in the south. The former was an inland sanctuary, while the latter was on the coast, and, as Sayce remarks, "what I may term the geographical setting of the two streams of culture varied accordingly." The great temple at Nippur was known as "E-kur," the "house of the mountain land," while Eridu was the home of Ea, the "god of the deep." In the cosmogony of Eridu, water was the origin and source of all things. The solid earth itself was believed to have sprung from the deep. The deep, however— subject to the scheme of things presided over by the gods of light— was no mere chaos in which there was no law. "Chaos," it is true, was the designation of a lawless realm. But the conception of the "chaos of Timiat" belongs, in the opinion of Sayce, to the cosmogony of Nippur. "The world of Nippur was a world from which the sea was excluded; it was a world of plain and mountain and of the hollow depths which lay beneath the surface of the earth. . . . The earth and not the water would have been the first in order of existence. ... In the chaos of Timiat, accordingly, I see the relics of a cosmology which emanated from Nippur, and was accepted wherever the influence of Nippur prevailed." The two conceptions, so obviously antagonistic, belong to separate schools of thought. They were destined to become considerably modified in the course of time. Merodach was the god of the city of Babylon, and he took the place of Ea as the creator. The early cosmology of Nippur was afterwards blended with that of Eridu, and, as a result again to quote Sayce, "there are two creations, the first chaotic, the second that of the present world."
The Babylonian Epic of Creation, which has attracted so much attention in recent years on account of its similarity, real or supposed, to the creation story in the Book of Genesis, is a combination of these two legends by a much later writer. First, there is a struggle between Timiat the dragon of darkness, and Merodach, the god of light, resulting in the victory of the latter, and symbolising the triumph of the forces of order over chaos, of creation over the void, of law over anarchy. The victory over chaos was only the beginning of creation. The gods of the triad— Anu, Bel and Ea; — were given particular positions in the heavens. Next comes the creation by Merodach of the heavenly bodies.
He prepared the stations of the great gods;
The stars corresponding to them he established as constellations.
He made known the year and marked out the signs of the zodiac.
Three stars he assigned to each of the twelve months,
From the beginning of the year till its close.
. . . . .
He made the moon appear, illuminating the night.
Generally, it was believed that the account of the creation of the heavenly bodies was followed by an account of the creation of the animal world, but Zimmern thinks that it belongs to another story, in which not Merodach, but "the gods" collectively, exercised the functions of creation.
Another account of the creation was discovered by an English scholar, Mr. Pinches. This legend, which is believed to go back to Sumerian times, emanated from the temple of Eridu, and is less complicated than the Epic of Creation. It has certain points of resemblance to the second account of the creation in Genesis; in another fragment the analogy is still more striking. The story is distinctly parallel to the Biblical account of Adam and the Fall. The Epic of Creation itself is a comparatively late production. It is the final word of Babylonian thought on the origin of things, and is distinguished by the three principles underlying the cosmology and cosmogony of Babylonia. These were: — (1) The belief in water as the primal element; (2) the conception of a lawless chaos from which the world has been rescued as a result of the conflict of light and darkness, and (3) the conception of generation as the chief creative force.
Interesting in itself, the Babylonian cosmology, is still more interesting when viewed in relation to the Hebrew cosmology and the early philosophic conceptions of Greece. Widely as the Hebrew and Greek races differed in their essential characteristics, widely different as were the ultimate forms of their cosmological speculations, they both betray affinities to the Babylonian world view. Whether the creation story in Genesis is derived from the Babylonian account, or whether both are derived from an earlier document, does not concern us here; but the similarity between the two is by no means accidental. On the other hand, Babylonian thought exercised a great influence on early Greek speculation. Thales, the founder of Greek philosophy, fixed on water as the primary substance of the universe. From Babylonian science, then, Greek and Hebrew thought drew a certain degree of inspiration.

Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1950), Tuesday 31 October 1916, page 7