In none of the ancient scriptures do we get back to any theory or explanation of the origin of evil or of the enemies of the gods. In a Persian text at Persepolis, of Darius I., Ahriman is called with simplicity ‘the Other’ (Aniya), and ‘the Hater’ (DuvaisaÑt, Zend thaisat), and that is about as much as we are really told about the devils of any race. Their existence is taken for granted. The legends of rebellion in heaven and of angels cast down and transformed to devils may supply an easy explanation to our modern theologians, but when we trace them to their origin we discover that to the ancients they had no such significance. The angels were cast down to Pits prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and before it, and when they fell it was into the hands of already existing enemies eager to torment them. Nevertheless these accounts of rebellious spirits in heaven are of great importance and merit our careful consideration.

It is remarkable that the Bible opens with an intimation of the existence of this ‘Other.’ Its second verse speaks of a certain ‘darkness upon the face of the deep.’ The word used here is Bohu, which is identified as the Assyrian Bahu, the Queen of Hades. In the inscription of Shalmaneser the word is used for ‘abyss of chaos.’1 Bahu is otherwise Gula, a form of Ishtar or Allat, ‘Lady of the House of Death,’ and an epithet of the same female demon is Nin-cigal, ‘Lady of the Mighty Earth.’ The story of the Descent of Ishtar into Hades, the realm of Nin-cigal, has already been told (p. 77); in that version Ishtar is the same as Astarte, the Assyrian Venus. But like the moon with which she was associated she waned and declined, and the beautiful legend of her descent (like Persephone) into Hades seems to have found a variant in the myth of Bel and the Dragon. There she is a sea-monster and is called Tiamat (Thalatth of Berosus),—that is, ‘the Deep,’ over which rests the darkness described in Genesis i. 2. The process by which the moon would share the evil repute of Tiamat is obvious. In the Babylonian belief the dry land rested upon the abyss of watery chaos from which it was drawn. This underworld ocean was shut in by gates. They were opened when the moon was created to rule the night—therefore Prince of Darkness. The formation by Anu of this Moon-god (Uru) from Tiamat, might even have been suggested by the rising of the tides under his sway. The Babylonians represent the Moon as having been created before the Sun, and he emerged from ‘a boiling’ in the abyss. ‘At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night, his horns are breaking through to shine on heaven.’2 In the one Babylonian design, a seal in the British Museum,3 which seems referable to the legend of the Fall of Man, the male figure has horns. It may have been that this male Moon (Uru) was supposed to have been corrupted by some female emanation of Tiamat, and to have fallen from a ‘ruler of the night’ to an ally of the night. This female corrupter, who would correspond to Eve, might in this way have become mistress of the Moon, and ultimately identified with it.

Although the cause of the original conflict between the Abyss beneath and the Heaven above is left by ancient inscriptions and scriptures to imagination, it is not a very strained hypothesis that ancient Chaos regarded the upper gods as aggressors on her domain in the work of creation. ‘When above,’ runs the Babylonian legend, ‘were not raised the heavens, and below on the earth a plant had not grown ... the chaos (or water) Tiamat was the producing mother of the whole of them.’ ‘The gods had not sprung up, any one of them.’4 Indeed in the legend of the conflict between Bel and the Dragon, on the Babylonian cylinders, it appears that the god Sar addressed her as wife, and said, ‘The tribute to thy maternity shall be forced upon them by thy weapons.’5 The Sun and Moon would naturally be drawn into any contest between Overworld (with Light) and Underworld (with Darkness).

Though Tiamat is called a Dragon, she was pictured by the Babylonians only as a monstrous Griffin. In the Assyrian account of the fight it will be seen that she is called a ‘Serpent.’ The link between the two—Griffin and Serpent—will be found, I suspect, in Typhonic influence on the fable. In a hymn to Amen-Ra (the Sun), copied about fourteenth century b.c. from an earlier composition, as its translator, Mr. Goodwin, supposes, we have the following:—

The allusion in the second line indicates that this hymn relates to the navigation of Ra through Hades, and the destruction of Apophis.

We may read next the Accadian tablet (p. 256) which speaks of the seven Hathors as neither male nor female, and as born in ‘the Deep.’

Another Accadian tablet, translated by Mr. Sayce, speaks of these as the ‘baleful seven destroyers;’ as ‘born in the mountain of the sunset;’ as being Incubi. It is significantly said:—‘Among the stars of heaven their watch they kept not, in watching was their office.’ Here is a primÆval note of treachery.6

We next come to a further phase, represented in a Cuneiform tablet, which must be quoted at length:—

(The lines giving the names and descriptions of the spirits are here broken.)

Column II.

[The rest of the legend is lost.]

Nukimmut is a name of Hea which occurs frequently: he was the good genius of the earth, and his son Marduk was his incarnation—a Herakles or Saviour. It will be noted that as yet Ishtar is in heaven. The next Tablet, which shows the development of the myth, introduces us to the great female dragon Tiamat herself, and her destroyer Bel.

[Bel now offers to the Dragon to decide their quarrel by single combat, which the Dragon accepts. This agrees with the representations of the combat on Babylonian cylinders in Mr. Smith’s ‘Chaldean Genesis,’ p. 62, etc.]

In the fragment just quoted we have the ‘flaming sword which turned every way’ (Gen. iii. 24). The seven distinct forms of evil are but faintly remembered in the seven thunderbolts taken by Bel: they are now all virtually gathered into the one form he combats, and are thus on their way to form the seven-headed dragon of the Apocalypse, where Michael replaces Bel.10 ‘The angels, her allies who had come to help her,’ are surely that ‘third part of the stars of heaven’ which the apocalyptic dragon’s tail drew to the earth in its fall (Rev. xii. 4). Bel’s dragon is also called a ‘Tempter.’

At length we reach the brief but clear account of the ‘Revolt in Heaven’ found in a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum, and translated by Mr. Fox Talbot:11—

It will be observed that there were already hostile gods to whom these riotous angels were sent. It is clear that in both the Egyptian and Assyrian cosmogonies the upper gods had in their employ many ferocious monsters. Thus in the Book of Hades, Horus addresses a terrible serpent: ‘My Kheti, great fire, of which this flame in my eye is the emission, and of which my children guard the folds, open thy mouth, draw wide thy jaws, launch thy flame against the enemies of my father, burn their bodies, consume their souls!’12 Many such instances could be quoted. In this same book we find a great serpent, Saa-Set, ‘Guardian of the Earth.’ Each of the twelve pylons of Hades is surmounted by its serpent-guards—except one. What has become of that one? In the last inscription but one, quoted in full, it will be observed (third line from the last) that eleven (angel) tribes came in after Bel’s battle to inspect the slain dragon. The twelfth had revolted. These, we may suppose, had listened to ‘the serpent’s voice’ mentioned in the last fragment quoted.

We have thus distributed through these fragments all the elements which, from Egyptian and Assyrian sources gathered around the legend of the Serpent in Eden. The Tree of Knowledge and that of Life are not included, and I have given elsewhere my reasons for believing these to be importations from the ancient Aryan legend of the war between the Devas and Asuras for the immortalising Amrita.

In the last fragment quoted we have also a notable statement, that mankind were created to fill the places that had been occupied by the fallen angels. It is probable that this notion supplied the basis of a class of legends of which Lilith is type. She whose place Eve was created to fill was a serpent-woman, and the earliest mention of her is in the exorcism already quoted, found at Nineveh. In all probability she is but another form of Gula, the fallen Istar and Queen of Hades; in which case her conspiracy with the serpent SamaËl would be the Darkness which was upon the face of Bahu, ‘the Deep,’ in the second verse of the Bible.

The Bible opens with the scene of the gods conquering the Dragon of Darkness with Light. There is a rabbinical legend, that when Light issued from under the throne of God, the Prince of Darkness asked the Creator wherefore he had brought Light into existence? God answered that it was in order that he might be driven back to his abode of darkness. The evil one asked that he might see that; and entering the stream of Light, he saw across time and the world, and beheld the face of the Messiah. Then he fell upon his face and cried, ‘This is he who shall lay low in ruin me and all the inhabitants of hell!’

What the Prince of Darkness saw was the vision of a race: beginning with the words (Gen. i. 3, 4), ‘God said, Let there be Light; and there was Light; and God saw the Light that it was good; and God divided between the Light and the Darkness;’ ending with Rev. xx. 1, 2, ‘And I saw an angel come down from heaven having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.’