The Human Cosmos. Jo Marchant

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СКАЧАТЬ of the most famous finds from the library is the epic Gilgamesh, often described as the world’s first story. Thought to have been written in Babylon around 1700 BC but based on Sumerian poems centuries older, it describes a young, arrogant ruler – inspired by a real king of Uruk from the third millennium BC – who gains wisdom through a desperate, doomed search for immortality. Hailed today as a literary masterpiece, Gilgamesh caused a sensation when it was discovered because it includes a version of the biblical tale of Noah and the Flood, written centuries before the oldest copy of Genesis. (When assistant curator George Smith first deciphered this passage in the Reading Room of the British Museum in November 1872, he reportedly became so excited that he started taking off his clothes.) The poem is also full of celestial references. In one scene, the king has to outrun the sun. In another, he and his friend Enkidu defeat the Bull of Heaven – the constellation we now know as Taurus – set on them by the goddess Ishtar (associated with the planet Venus), and throw its severed thigh in her face. Some scholars think it’s a mythical explanation for why this constellation, by Mesopotamian times, had lost its hindquarters.

      Another Babylonian epic from the library is Enuma Elish (‘When on High’). It’s less well known than Gilgamesh but arguably just as significant because it is one of the earliest known creation myths, the oldest surviving attempt to describe how the cosmos came about. It reached its definitive form around 1500 BC, but again was probably based on much older stories. The poem tells how Babylon’s patron god, Marduk (Jupiter), defeats the mother-goddess Tiamat and the forces of chaos. He tears her in half ‘like a dried fish’, and from the two pieces he creates the heavens and the Earth.

      Marduk then brings order to the cosmos, setting the paths of the planets and stars and dividing the year into twelve months of thirty days, entrusting the night to the moon and the day to the sun. He unleashes the weather, and causes the Euphrates and Tigris rivers to run from Tiamat’s eyes. Then he builds himself a shrine in Babylon, and, with Ea, the god of water and wisdom, creates humankind. Like other early accounts of how people saw their cosmos, it’s a rich, epic vision, clearly more concerned with creating meaning than explaining facts. Archaeological evidence suggests that the people of the Palaeolithic and Neolithic saw events on the Earth and in the sky as intimately entwined. Gilgamesh and Enuma Elish, dating from the birth of civilisation, reveal a similarly holistic universe in which the terrestrial and celestial reflect and influence each other as two sides of the same coin.

      Accordingly, Mesopotamian gods simultaneously inhabited both Earth and sky. Each major divinity existed as a statue in its own home city: Marduk, for example, lived in the Esagila temple in Babylon. Excavations show that the temple was 200 metres long, with huge courtyards leading to an inner shrine, and stood next to a ziggurat, or stepped tower. Priests at the temple attended to Marduk and his divine entourage (also statues), clothing, feeding and entertaining them, and carrying them around the city during religious processions. The twelve-day New Year’s festival was particularly important, during which, says the French Assyriologist Jean Bottéro, ‘the gods were exalted to not only renew time . . . but the universe itself’.

      The gods also appeared in the heavens as celestial bodies, with the planets, including Marduk and Ishtar, accompanied by the moon god, Sin, and the sun, Shamash. They were thought capable of determining events on Earth, and through their celestial movements gave clues about what was to come. The priests of the Esagila temple, known as the ‘scribes of Enuma Anu Enlil’, were renowned for their ability to decode heavenly messages, with expertise dating back centuries. By interpreting the signs correctly and carrying out the appropriate rituals, it was possible to avoid any dire predicted consequences.

      Ashurbanipal’s motivation in gathering these texts, then, wasn’t purely philosophical. He saw knowledge of the cosmos as vital for his very survival. By far the largest group of Babylonian texts in the king’s library concerns omens and divination, particularly relating to celestial events. His master plan, says Fincke, was ‘to collect as many tablets as possible with instructions for rituals and incantations that were vital to maintain him on his throne and in power’.

      Watching the sky wasn’t the only form of divination: pretty much anything could yield messages from the gods, from sheep entrails, birthmarks, smoke or dice, to the call of a particular bird. To avert negative predictions, Babylonians had an arsenal of rituals called namburbi, a Sumerian word that means ‘loosening’ or ‘dispelling’; the evil could be untied like a knot. Like the residents of Çatalhöyük, with its cave-like houses, they inhabited a magical world in which there were no boundaries between the physical and spirit realms, and in which everything was at the will of the gods.

      Celestial signs were the most powerful, though. A sign observed privately within the home, such as the sudden appearance of insects, might apply to a single person. An omen visible in the street could cover a whole neighbourhood. But events in the sky could theoretically be witnessed by everyone, so these heralded the fate of the entire country: its harvest, warfare, politics or king. The tablets from the library detail how priests stationed around Ashurbanipal’s empire, but particularly in Babylon, sent him regular reports, with information about the celestial events they had observed and advice on what to do.

      Their wisdom was collated in the Enuma Anu Enlil, the title coming from its first words, ‘When Anu and Enlil . . .’ (Anu was god of the heaven or sky; Enlil, god of the atmosphere, was ‘lord of the wind’.) Compiled around the late second millennium BC, it is essentially a handbook covering the earthly consequences of events, from the movements of the planets to the colour of the sun. ‘If on the first day of Nisannu the sunrise [looks] sprinkled with blood,’ reads one tablet, ‘grain will vanish in the country, there will be hardship and human flesh will be eaten.’ Another notes that if a solar eclipse takes place while Venus and Jupiter are visible, ‘the country will be attacked’. Among the most important events were lunar eclipses, which often foretold the death of a king. The moon’s disc was divided into quadrants, corresponding to the four regions of the known world: Amurru, Elam, Assyria and Babylonia. The areas darkened by the eclipse revealed which king was to die.

      Letters from Ashurbanipal’s library describe the chilling way in which Mesopotamian kings avoided this fate. If an eclipse was observed, the monarch temporarily abdicated his position, and a substitute – an enemy, criminal, or just the gardener – would be dressed in the king’s robes and placed on the throne with a ‘girl’ or ‘virgin’ beside him as queen. The pair were entertained in luxury for up to a hundred days, enjoying sumptuous banquets, court musicians, and even royal boat trips. Then they were executed, and with the prediction fulfilled, the real king could safely return to his throne.

      It’s a fascinating glimpse into a civilisation ruled by the sky, for whom the celestial dance of the sun, moon and planets was literally a matter of life and death. The priests of the Esagila temple weren’t simply superstitious fortune-tellers, however. In 1878, a reclusive Jesuit priest started copying more Babylonian tablets from the British Museum’s vast stores, and helped to reveal that their knowledge of the sky went far beyond what anyone had dreamed.

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      After the destruction of Nineveh in 612 BC, the Babylonians inherited control of the Assyrian empire, stretching from what is now central Turkey in the north down to the Arabian desert. King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ascended the throne in 604 BC, spent the forty-three years of his reign rebuilding Babylon, until the city surpassed even its former glory. He built a huge palace, and protected the city with moats and walls so thick you could drive around the top in a four-horse chariot. There were eight gates in the walls, the most impressive of which was the Ishtar Gate, through which a 20-metre-wide processional street led into the city, ending at the Esagila temple. The gate and parade route were lined with glazed blue bricks, decorated with fierce yellow-and-white animals: dragons, lions and aurochs bulls.

      Next to the temple, Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt the city’s ziggurat (previously destroyed by Sennacherib), СКАЧАТЬ