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Hêriş Golpîra Editor

Application
of Mathematics
and Optimization in
Construction Project
Management
Application of Mathematics and Optimization
in Construction Project Management
Hêriş Golpîra
Editor

Application of Mathematics
and Optimization in
Construction Project
Management
Editor
Hêriş Golpîra
Department of Industrial Engineering
Sanandaj Branch, Islamic Azad University
Sanandaj, Iran

ISBN 978-3-030-81122-8 ISBN 978-3-030-81123-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81123-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my mother Himêra, my wife Someye, and
my daughter Hozan
Preface

A project is a unique, novel, and transient endeavor undertaken to create a unique

product or service through a well-defined set of tasks that must all be completed
to meet specific but limited goals or, more generally, to solve an organizational
or business problem. Project management is then a multidisciplinary discipline that
combines renewable and non-renewable resources in a systematic process to achieve
the goals and ultimately the success of the project. Traditionally, the success of
a project, especially construction projects, is assessed based on measures such as
technical and operational goals, and meeting schedule and budget. However, several
other measures should be addressed to define project success.
Mathematical and operations research (OR) techniques, despite their reliability
and ability to solve multi-dimensional problems in a reasonable time, are generally
less considered due to the lack of familiarity of project managers with their basics
and usefulness. This increases the importance of paying attention to the applications
of mathematics and optimization to construction projects as a challenging issue. In
response to this need, the book at hand provides comprehensive coverage of the
mathematical decision-making methods and optimization techniques leveraged in
construction project management.
One of the main parts of the book is related to modeling the time, cost, and quality
of projects using OR techniques and related solution methods, taking into account
existing constraints, especially resource constraints. To this end, a comprehensive
and categorized review of the types of modeling and decision-making processes
introduced for project management has been conducted in this book. This study not
only includes a critical, systematic, and categorical introduction of existing mathe-
matical methods as well as OR approaches but also provides useful suggestions for
future research in any of the areas of project management science.
The book could be useful for engineers and managers working on construction
projects, as well as postgraduate students and academic researchers. The book
describes mathematical and optimization issues from introductory to advanced
steps. The book is organized into ten chapters.
Chapter 1 studies the basic and sometimes contradictory definitions and prin-
ciples of a project as well as its organization and management in a way that

vii
viii Preface

provides a general and accurate summary of the concept of project management

and corresponding concepts. Definitions of relative terms have been collected and
expressed and a comprehensive review, with emphasis on the basics, processes, and
applications of project management techniques in different organizations, has been
presented.
Chapter 2 gives an overview of research in project scheduling. It provides a
survey that covers the most important models as well as related solution approaches.
The chapter sketches out and classifies the most important problem settings,
with a focus on settings that are relevant for construction projects. This includes
the basic resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) as well as
its major extensions such as multiple modes, generalized precedence relations,
different resource categories, various objectives, and stochastic aspects. Moreover,
related algorithms are outlined, ranging from exact to heuristic (and in particular
metaheuristic) algorithms.
Chapter 3 studies the literature on mathematical optimization of the construction
project scheduling problems to examine and further classify the mathematical
aspects of the problem modeling and solution approaches. The chapter explains the
mathematical details of modeling, solution methods, and the development process
of the problem. It also proposes some potentials for further extension of the concept.
Chapter 4 examines the time-cost tradeoff problem (TCTP) as an important
optimization problem. In the chapter, the TCTP has been extensively studied
considering its several variants, as well as many exact and non-exact solution
techniques.
Chapter 5 recognizes the TCTP as an important aspect of construction project
management subject to the project’s fixed budget/deadline or to obtain minimum
cost/duration for the project. It, in its continuous or discrete variants, generally
deals with the deterministic or non-deterministic mathematical, heuristics, and
metaheuristics approaches. Stochastic, fuzzy, and robust optimizations are the
modeling approaches that are widely used in the background of the concept.
Accordingly, this chapter reviews the literature of the concept and provides some
potential directions for future research.
Chapter 6 studies the literature on mathematical optimization of the quality of
construction projects, focusing especially on the time-cost-quality tradeoff problem
(TCQTP). It explains the mathematical details of modeling, solution approaches,
and their extension process.
Chapter 7 addresses an overview of the construction supply chain (CSC) concept,
given the importance of procurement in construction projects. Not only the past
research trend in the field of CSC is considered from the point of view of
mathematical modeling and optimization but also the existing research gaps are
extracted and the existing potentials for future research are introduced.
Chapter 8 illustrates some heuristic approaches in resource management, dif-
ferent optimization models in resource management and their shortcomings, and
a new and novel optimization model and its benefits from the implementation
in construction projects. Furthermore, some potential research areas in resource
management are suggested which can be carried out in the future.
Preface ix

Chapter 9 critically reviews the literature on project stakeholder management

(PSM) and motivation. It studies the research works in the area of PSM and
coordinates and further analyzes them with a comprehensive view focusing on the
applications of mathematical approaches that may be useful to further extend the
concept.
Chapter 10 describes the general approaches in project risk management (PRM).
Additionally, it introduces and analyzes the general procedure as well as different
approaches of the main existing multiple attribute decision making (MADM) and
optimization methods used in construction risk management. It provides practition-
ers and early-stage researchers with basic research topics and solution approaches
in PRM.

Sanandaj, Iran Hêriş Golpîra

June 2021
Contents

1 Overview of Project Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Hêriş Golpîra
2 Optimization Models and Solution Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Sönke Hartmann
3 Optimization for Project Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Hêriş Golpîra, Sina Safaeipour, and Syed Abdul Rehman Khan
4 Optimization for Project Cost Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Leila M. Naeni and Amir Salehipour
5 Time –Cost Trade-off Optimal Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Hêriş Golpîra, Heibatolah Sadeghi, and Syed Abdul Rehman Khan
6 Optimization for Project Quality Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Hêriş Golpîra, Cosimo Magazzino, and Sina Safaeipour
7 Optimization for Construction Supply Chain Management . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Hêriş Golpîra and Erfan Babaee Tirkolaee
8 Optimization for Project Resource Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Kumar Neeraj Jha and Santu Kar
9 Project Stakeholder Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Cosimo Magazzino, Marco Mele, and Hêriş Golpîra
10 Optimization for Project Risk Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
A. Karam, M. Hussein, A. B. Eltawil, and T. Zayed

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251

xi
About the Editor

Hêriş Golpîra obtained his PhD in industrial engineering – operations research and
system engineering from Sciences & Research Branch, Islamic Azad University,
Tehran, Iran (2016). Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of
Industrial Engineering, Sanandaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran.
He is the author and co-author of more than 60 journal/conference papers.

xiii
Chapter 1
Overview of Project Management

Hêriş Golpîra

1.1 What Are the Projects?

A project, in general, is a dynamic [1] and a temporary endeavor made to create a

unique product, service, or result. While the temporary nature of the project means
that it sets up to meet a specific goal with a definite start and a fixed end [2, 3], its
dynamic nature reflects the need for the knowledge of their evolution over time [4].
Narrowing down the scope of the project, its evaluation requires (1) the description
of the system’s initial state, (2) the identification of the system to be purposefully
transformed from a state to another, and (3) the explanation of the system’s new
state, including the project’s objectives [5]. The project then becomes a network
of unique, complex, and interrelated tasks/activities that are integrated to achieve a
single goal and must be performed at a specific time, with a budget, and according
to specifications [6, 7]. And the project ends when the goal is achieved or ensured
that it will not or cannot be met, or the project is no longer needed [2]. So, it is
important to control if the project has achieved what it was set up to do. This is
perfectly consistent with looking at the project not only as a temporary organization,
given its temporary nature, but also as an open organization that is closely related
to the grassroots organization and its environment. Because looking at the project
as a closed entity reduces the need for control [8]. While in an open organization,
the use of new resources inside and outside to adapt to rapid environmental change
[9] greatly increases the need for control, even under temporary openness [10, 11].
This is because in an open organization, the focus is more on the process than the
structure and free human interaction is more effective than the impersonal chain-
of-command hierarchy [12]. So, not only task but organizational perspectives are

H. Golpîra ()
Department of Industrial Engineering, Sanandaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, Iran
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

H. Golpîra (ed.), Application of Mathematics and Optimization in Construction
Project Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81123-5_1
2 H. Golpîra

Fig. 1.1 Framework for the Organization

analysis of project research Mono Multi
Mono-project Project
Mono
organization network
Project
Multi-project Project business
Multi
organization network

fundamental in managing projects [8, 13], while leading to different but related
ways of viewing the functions of project management [8].
The first has found its way in engineering science and applied mathematics,
especially in planning techniques and methods. And the last challenges the engi-
neering approach using economics and organizational psychology and sociology
aspects [14]. More specifically, a task, within a single project, is defined in
terms of the resources used, its duration, and the order in which it is performed
relative to other activities [15]. However, project research attempts are further
expanded toward broader aspects of the organizational unit [16] or even project
business. A project organization, unlike the traditional ones, involves the owner
and the contractors temporarily to create a cooperative system based on shared
objectives [17]. While a project business refers to multiple projects and multiple
organizations [18] as a specific risk-averse and reactive business [19, 20] that
is time-limited, and often disposable. It includes hostile relationships between
actors, separation of design and production, competitive bidding, high uncertainty,
and limited possibilities for standardization [21–23]. Accordingly, Söderlund [24]
combines projects and organizations as the two dimensions to categorize different
lines of project management research as shown in Fig. 1.1.
More specifically, mono-project management is known as a well-researched
area. Several project management standard documents provide an overview of what
mono-project management includes in its application area [2, 25–27]. While the
main focus of mono-project management is on the network of activities/tasks and
their characteristics, in a multi-project organization, successful projects are the
only prerequisite for business success [28]. However, simultaneously managing the
throughput times, resource allocations, and cost controlling of projects to obtain
a good balance between the multiple participants’ interests is a more challenging
issue [15, 29–32]. Therefore, some researchers have introduced frameworks of
managing multi-project organizations aiming at investigating the control issues to
design holistic frameworks of control mechanisms [33]. For instance, using the
concept of backlogging incoming projects, introduced in [34], Anavi-Isakow and
Golany [35] have introduced project control mechanisms to limit the number of
active projects in multi-project environments.
While the main focus of multi-project management is on balancing the projects’
needs and achievements, what is crucial in the project network management
is how multi-stakeholder interests are synchronized due to the high level of
interdependence between them [36]. In this regard, Cleland [37] and Gudienė,
1 Overview of Project Management 3

et al. [38] have claimed effective and efficient relationship management as an

important, but challenging [39] success factor in a project network. The challenge
is further aggravated if the number of stockholders from multiple disciplinary
parties increases. In such a challenging situation, the importance of proper risk
management to deal with uncertainty and unavoidable risk becomes much greater
[40, 41]. Because the difference in interests and opinions of stakeholders [42] and
poor communication among them are the main sources of risk and vulnerability
of the project network. It may result in poor project definition, inadequate pre-
project planning, ineffective design, and omissions and information inaccuracies
[43], or inadequate project change management, which negatively affect project
success [44]. In this regard, Strachan and Stephenson [45] have introduced cost,
reliability, mobility, ease of installation and management, security, application
services, and overall performance for measuring the performance and suitability
of communication tools for construction project networks.
While Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) is important in the project
network concept, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a crucial dimen-
sion of a project business [46]. Because it refers to an industrial marketing position
in which business is built in the case of discontinuous, unique, and complex project
deliveries [47, 48]. Today with the increasing influence of networks of organizations
[18] due to the increase in outsourcing, liberalization, technological convergence,
solutions in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and digitization
[49, 50], the project business has attracted a lot of attention, although it does not ease
to manage [47, 51]. It is because the unique qualities and discontinuities of inter-
related projects in the project business and marketing draw more management’s
attention to the transactions and trade-offs [52].
As can be seen, the breadth of project management science has, over the years,
brought with it many concepts, challenges, and advertising programs. However, in
the background of the concept, no research can be found that has uniformly studied
and reviewed such issues and the concepts designed and introduced in line with
them. The current chapter fills this research gap by integrating and linking almost
all the basic definitions of concepts in project and project management with special
concern in temporary organizations.
The rest of the paper is as follows. In the next section, the concept of temporary
organizations is explained concerning the definition of the project. Afterward, the
necessity to define projects is studied and project management is defined. Project
success/failure factors are then defined supported by more relevant references
followed by the project management main process definition to achieve project
success. A short review of applications of project management techniques is then
provided followed by its specific application in construction project management,
which is the basic direction of the book. Finally, a conclusion is obtained at the end
of the chapter.
4 H. Golpîra

1.2 What Are Temporary Organizations?

According to the literature, there are several ways to categorize projects [53].
Projects can be considered separately from the organizations or treated as a subset
or branch of them [54]. The former may use the classical contingency theory
to distinguish different projects [55, 56], while the latter recognizes projects as
project-based [57] or temporary organizations [58, 59]. From Fig. 1.2 and Table 1.1,
temporary organizing can be viewed along the participation dimension [60, 61]. It is
because the nature of a temporary organization is that they last for a short but well-
known from the beginning period, i.e., it is temporary in nature, and the teams that
participate in the specific activities/tasks, or some aspects of them, are temporary
[62]. In a temporary organization, participants usually have another “home” before,
during, and after participating. The team, which is temporarily organized by clients
[63, 64] in the case of project organizing, depends on other organized areas, which
can be permanent or temporary, in addition to the current temporary organization
[58].
Limited aspects of temporary organizations have yet been explained and under-
stood theoretically. This may be due to the fact that the difference between per-
manent and temporary organizations is not clear because permanent organizations
usually require temporary elements [65]. And, these organizations may resemble
each other in many ways [66], but with different logics [67, 68]. Nonetheless,
Söderlund [61] has highlighted the differences that exist between temporary and
permanent organizations, declared in Fig. 1.2. Permanent organizations are defined
by goals (rather than tasks), durability (rather than time), functional organizations
(rather than teams), and production processes as well as continual development
(rather than transition) [58]. More specifically, unlike permanent organizations,
temporary organizations naturally last for a short time and have temporary partici-
pating teams [62] depicted to cope with time-limited tasks of high complexity in an
uncertain environment [61]. By this means, the project as a temporary organization
can be defined as an agency to manage the resources, which are assigned by the
permanent organization [14], change in functional organizations, and uncertainty

Fig. 1.2 A typology of Structure

permanent/temporary Permanent Temporary
Permanent Project
organizing [61] Permanent
organizing organizing
Participation
Temporary Temporary
Temporary
employment organizing

Table 1.1 Characteristics of the permanent/temporary organizing

Typology Participation Structural control
Permanent organizing Long-term Bureaucratic, clan form
Temporary employment Short-term Bureaucratic, professional
Project organizing Long-term Professional, adhocracy, clan form
Temporary organizing Short-term Professional, network control
1 Overview of Project Management 5

[69]. The permanent organization has then become responsible for describing the
project’s level of authority and responsibility as well as defining its scope, thus
giving it an embryo of identity [70, 71]. Besides, as a complex organized collective
practice aimed at extracting a nonroutine process and/or producing a nonroutine
product, a temporary organization has a predefined lifetime and its specific kind of
performance measure [72]. In this sense, the theory of temporary organization can
be summarized to be built on four aforementioned building blocks as the task, time,
team, and transition/transformation [58] to create and manage a project.
Despite the aforementioned descriptions, some researchers such as Sedita [73]
have explained how a temporary organization can be embedded in a permanent
organizational environment with interpersonal and interorganizational networks
to provide more flexibility claimed by Bechky [74]. Van Donk and Molloy [54]
have shown the relevance of contingency theory and organization design theory
for categorizing projects in five basic organizational configurations inspired by
Mintzberg [75]. However, different types of projects should be managed and
organized in different ways [54, 55]. So, emphasizing the need to define project
typology definition in the process of project organizing and management, Andersen
[14] and Doty and Glick [76] have evaluated some factors such as regulation and
sophistication, stability, complexity, market diversity, hostility, external control,
internal power, industrial sector, contract types, size, etc., as important factors
in this way. Accordingly, out of the five defined configurations, i.e., (1) simple
project, (2) machine bureaucratic project, (3) divisionalized project, (4) professional
project, and (5) adhocracy, the second configuration can be evaluated as the most
suitable environment for construction projects. Because the bureaucratic project
management aims to ensure the organization’s use of resources in ways consistent
with the disparate goals and objectives. Now it is time to look at why, basically
with permanent organizations, there is a reason to define projects within temporary
organizations within them.

1.3 Why Are Projects Created?

Organizations, whether permanent or temporary, have been created to deliver

something. In construction projects, they are created to produce buildings, bridges,
tunnels, factories, and so on [77]. The increasing need for integrating, planning,
and controlling such schedule-intensive endeavors to enhance overall organizational
performance [78, 79] is the main driver to motivate managers to move toward
projectizing their products and services [80]. Because, projects, whether they are
revenue projects or capital projects [81], are not simply just getting the job done,
but initiated for business goals [82]. The major goals in projects, especially in
construction projects, are budget, schedule, and quality, called Iron Triangle [83].
However, depending on the nature of the project, stockholders, and company,
some other goals such as safety, market-entry, and satisfaction of the stakeholders
can also be specifically considered as other goals [84, 85]. Such goals, some are
Other documents randomly have
different content
severe reprobation on the part of the father of unchastity in his
unmarried daughter; myths telling of cruel sentences of death
imposed for the offence. But these suggest no religious feeling; the
sentiment may well have arisen from the fact that under the
patriarchal system the virgin-daughter was the more marriageable
and commanded a higher bride-price.
Looking at the code of family and social duties in the ethical
religion of Babylon, of which the private penitential hymns and
confessional ritual of exorcism are the chief witnesses, we find no
figures whose concept and function remind us at all of the Erinyes,
the curse-powers on the side of righteousness; but there is evidence
in the literature of a family morality more advanced and more
articulate than the primitive Greek. Among the sins mentioned in the
ritual of confession, alluded to above, those indicated by the
following questions are of interest: “Has he caused variance between
father and son, mother and daughter, father-in-law and daughter-in-
law, brother and brother, friend and friend, partner and partner? Has
he conceived hatred against his elder brother, has he despised his
father and mother, insulted his elder sister?”151.1 All these acts of
social misconduct are supposed to give a man into the possession of
the evil demon, which must be exorcised before God will admit him
to his fellowship again. Though magical ideas are operative in the
ceremony, yet we discern here a high religious morality. And among
the other moral offences clearly considered as sins in the same
formula are such as shedding one’s neighbour’s blood, committing
adultery with one’s neighbour’s wife, stealing from one’s neighbour.
We find also a certain morality in the matter of property and
commerce given a religious sanction in this text: “Thou shalt not
remove thy neighbour’s landmark” was a religious law in ancient
Babylonian ethics as in our present liturgy; it would appeal to the
Hellene who reverenced Zeus Ὅριος; and there are reasons for
believing this cult-idea to have been in vogue very early in Greece.
The Babylonian code also recognises the sin of using false measure
or false coin. And the confessional liturgy agrees in many points with
the famous hymn to Shamash, where phrases occur such as
“Shamash hates him who falsifies boundaries and weights”;
“Shamash hates the adulterer.”152.1 It excites our envy also, by
stamping as sins certain unpatriotic acts, such as “the spreading a
bad report concerning one’s city,” or “bringing one’s city into evil
repute.”
We may say, then, that we find a high degree of morality in early
Greece, a still higher at a still earlier period in Babylon, and both are
obviously indigenous and natural products. And both reveal the
phenomenon that marks an early stage of social morality: as the
tribe or the family are one flesh, one corporate unit of life, so the
members are collectively responsible, and “the sins of the fathers are
visited on the children.” This was the familiar law of old Hellas, and
we may say of the ancient Mediterranean society; the first to make
the momentous protest against it, and to proclaim the responsibility
of the individual conscience, was Theognis for the Hellenes and
Ezekiel for the Hebrews. The Babylonian, advanced in moral thought
as he was, had not escaped the bondage of the older clan-faith: in
an incantation-hymn to Marduk,152.2 the man who is seeking
deliverance prays “may the sins of my father, of my grandfather, my
mother, my grandmother, my family, my whole circle of kindred, not
come near me, may they depart from my side.”
One other characteristic of early moral thought and feeling is that
the sense of sin is not wholly ethical according to our modern
criteria, but is partly regarded as something external to the will and
purpose, something inherent in certain acts or substances of which
the performance or the contagion renders a man a sinner. Thus in
the Babylonian confessional liturgy and hymns of penitence, while
there is much that would appeal to the most delicate moral
consciousness, and is on the same level with the most spiritual
passages in the Hebrew psalms, there is also a strong admixture of
what is alien and non-moral. The confessional formula153.1 asks a
man, for instance, “whether he has sat in the chair of a person under
a ban,” that is, “a man forbid,” a person impure and under a curse;
“whether he has met him, has slept in his bed, has drunk from his
cup.” In one of the penitential hymns that might be addressed to any
god, “to the god that I know, and to the god that I do not know,” as
the formula expresses it, we find such sorrowful confessions as
“without knowing it, I have eaten of that which is abominable in the
sight of my god: without knowing it, I have trodden on that which is
filthy in the sight of my goddess”; “my sins are many, great is my
transgression.”153.2 This must be taken quite literally: contact with
unclean things or with unclean persons, eating of forbidden food, is
put in the same category with serious offences against social
morality, and all these expose a man equally to the power of the evil
demon and to the loss of his God’s protection. And this is a half-
civilised development in Babylonian psychology of the primeval
savage law of tabu: nor, as I think, is there yet any proof that the
people of the Mesopotamian culture ever attained to the highest
plane of ethical enlightenment; the later Zarathustrian religion of the
Persian domination is strongly fettered by this ritualistic morality, in
which the distinction between that which is morally wrong and that
which is physically unclean, is never clearly apprehended.
This mental attitude is supported in the older and later
Mesopotamian system by a vivid polydaimonism; the evil demon is
on the alert to destroy the family and the individual; and where the
demon is in possession the god departs. As the demon takes
advantage of every accidental act, whether conscious or
unconscious, the idea arises in the over-anxious spirit that one
cannot be sure when or how often one has sinned, and all illness or
other misfortune is attributed to some unknown offence.154.1 The
utterance of the Hebrew psalmist, “who can tell how oft he offendeth:
cleanse Thou me from my secret faults,” may express the intense
sensitiveness of a very spiritual morality, or it may be merely
ritualistic anxiety. This latter is certainly the explanation of the
strikingly similar phrases in a Babylonian penitential hymn—“the sins
that I have done I know not; the trespass that I have committed I
know not.”154.2 The feeling of sin is here deep and very moving
—“take away from me my wickedness as a cloak… my God, though
my sins be seven times seven, yet undo my sins”; yet the context
that illustrates this passionate outpouring of the heart, shows that the
sin might be such as the accidental stepping on filth. Such ideas,
allowed to obsess the mind, easily engender despondency and
pessimism; and this tone is heard and once or twice is very marked
in some of the most striking products of Babylonian religious poetry;
for instance, in the penitential hymn just quoted from, the poet
sorrowfully exclaims: “Men are dumb, and of no understanding: all
men who live on the earth, what do they understand? Whether they
do right, or wrong, they understand nothing.” But the strangest
example of this is a lyric of lamentation that reminds us vividly of the
book of Job, found in the library of Assurbanipal, and of great
antiquity and of wide vogue, as Zimmern shows.155.1 It is a
masterpiece of the poetry of pessimism: the theme is the sorrow and
tribulation of the righteous who has served God faithfully all his life,
and feels at the last that he has had no profit of it; and his main
thought is expressed in the lines, “If I only knew that such things
were pleasing before God; but that which seems good to a man’s
self, is evil in the sight of God: and that which according to each
man’s sense is to be despised, is good in the sight of his God. Who
can understand the counsel of the Gods in heaven? A god’s plan is
full of darkness, who hath searched it out?”
It is easy in all this to detect the intimate associations with Biblical
thought and feeling; and we may trace back to Babylon the
daimonistic theory of morals that colours the New Testament, and
has prevailed throughout the centuries of Christendom, and is only
slowly losing its hold. But at the same time all this sharply divides
early Babylonian thought from what we can discern of the early
Hellenic, and more than any other evidence confirms the belief that
the great Eastern and Western races were not in close spiritual
contact at the time when Hellenism was in the making. Certain
external resemblances in the thought and feeling about these
matters are to be found in Hellas and in Mesopotamia; that is to say,
the germs are identical, for they are broadcast all over the world; but
the intensity of their cultivation, and their importance in relation to
other life-forces, are immeasurably different. In the earliest Greek
legend we discover the reflex of that external unpurposive morality
that I have tried to define above: the acts of Oedipus were not
according to our moral judgment ethically wrong, for they were
wholly unintentional: yet in the oldest legend he is πᾶς ἄναγνος, as
he calls himself in Sophocles’ play, and a sinner in the eyes of the
gods; nor could all the virtue and valour of Bellerophon save him
from the wrath of heaven aroused by the accidental slaying of his
brother. Certain acts were supposed to put upon a man a quasi-
physical, quasi-spiritual miasma, without reference to will or purpose,
and render him hateful to God and man. But the bondage of the
Greek mind to this idea was slighter and more temporary. And after
all, the external sins in these legends were parricide, incest, and
fratricide, dreadful things enough in themselves. We do not hear of
any Hellene’s agony of remorse on account of treading accidentally
on filth, or eating malodorous food. Homer, indeed, is marvellously
untroubled by any ritualistic pharisaic code; we might even take him
as a witness that there was none at all in earliest Hellas. We should
be undoubtedly wrong. The early Greek must have had, like all
mankind, his “tabus” in plenty; for to suppose that all that we find in
Hesiod and in the later inscriptions were a sudden discovery, would
be childish. I may be able to consider the evidence concerning early
Greek tabus when I compare the ritual. I will only say here that we
have reason to believe that at no period was the Hellene morbidly
perturbed about these, or ever moralised them up to that point where
they could exercise a spiritual tyranny over his moral sense. He
might object to touching a corpse or to approaching an altar with
blood upon him; but it does not seem to have occurred to him, as it
did to the Persian, and with almost equal force to the Babylonian,
that accidental contact with an impure thing instantly started into
existence an army of demons, who would rush abroad to destroy the
world of righteousness.157.1
In fact, Hellenic tabus and purification-laws, except, indeed, the
law concerning purification from bloodshed, had only this contact
with religion, that the breach of them might offend an irritable divinity,
which it would be unwise to do; they were not religious, so far as we
can discern, in the sense that they were associated with a vivid belief
in evil spirits, as they were in the Babylonian and Persian creeds.
There were germs indeed which might have developed into a
vigorous daimonistic theory in early Hellas. We hear even in Homer
of such unpleasant things as “a black Kér”; and a mythic hero of
Megara kills a monster called a ποινή, almost, we may say, a devil.
Certain days, according to Hesiod, might be unlucky, because
perhaps Erinyes or ghosts were walking about, though that popular
poet is not clear about this. But certainly not in early nor often in later
Greece were men habitually devil-ridden: nor did they see devils in
food or blood or mud. Therefore, on the whole and comparatively,
early Greek religion, when we first catch a glimpse of it, appears
bright and sane, a religion of the healthy-minded and of men in the
open air. And therefore, when secular philosophy arose, Greek moral
theory made no use of evil spirits except in certain Pythagorean
circles where we may detect Oriental influence. Superstition and
magic must have been more rife in ancient Greece than the Homeric
picture would lead us to suppose: yet the higher culture of the
people, in the earliest period which we are considering, was
comparatively free from these influences and refused to develop by
religious speculation or anxious brooding the germs of daimonism
always embedded in the lower stratum of the national mind. The
Universe could not, therefore, be viewed by the Hellene as it was by
the Zarathustrian, and to some extent by the Babylonian, as the
arena of a cosmic struggle between the powers of good and the
powers of evil. Nor could the Hellene personify the power of evil
majestically, in such a guise as Ahriman or Satan; he only was
aware of certain little daemon-figures of death and disease, ghostly
shadows rather than fully outlined personages; or such vaguely
conceived personal agencies as Ate and Eris, which belonged not to
religion, but to the poetic-moral thought of the people. When we
compare the various rituals, we shall discern that the Hellenic was by
no means wholly bright or shallow, but that some of its most ancient
forms were gloomy and inspired by a sense of sin or sorrow:
nevertheless, it is just in respect of the comparative weakness of this
sense that it differed most markedly from the Babylonian.
There are other aspects of the divine character interesting to
compare in the religious theory of East and West. Despite the
apparent grimness of the Babylonian-Assyrian theology, no divine
trait is more movingly insisted on in the liturgies than the
mercifulness of the deity: Nebo is “the merciful, the gracious”;159.1
Ishtar is “the mighty lady of the world, queen of humanity, merciful
one, whose favour is propitious, who hath received my prayer”;159.2
Sarpanitum is addressed as “the intercessor, the protectress of the
captive”;159.3 Shamash as “the merciful god, who liftest up those that
are bowed down and protectest the weak”;159.4 Sin as “the
compassionate, gracious Father”; and “Gamlat the merciful” is
mentioned as a descriptive general epithet of an unknown Assyrian
deity.159.5
These phrases may attest in the end a genuine and fervent faith;
but originally they were probably inspired by the word-magic of
penitence, the sinner believing that he can make the deity merciful
by repeatedly calling him so. At any rate, Babylonian religion catches
thus the glow of a high ethical ideal; and as the deities were invoked
and regarded as by nature merciful, so the private man was required
at certain times to show mercy, as the confessional formula proves.
The same idea, though a less fervent and ecstatic expression is
given to it, is found in the oldest record of Greek religion: “Even the
gods are moved to pity… them men turn aside from wrath by
sacrifice, libation, and gentle prayers, when a man hath sinned and
trespassed against them. For prayers are the daughters of great
God,… and if a man do them honour when they come anigh him, to
him they bring great blessings, and hear him when he prayeth.” This
Homeric utterance in the great speech of Phoenix160.1 is the voice of
a high and civilised religion; and the idea inspires the ancient cults of
Zeus μειλίχιος and ἱκέσιος.
The Babylonian conception of divine mercy gave rise to an
interesting phrase which is attached as a quasi-liturgical formula to
many of the leading gods and goddesses—“the awakener of the
dead,” “thou who raisest up the dead”: a phrase which has
erroneously been supposed to refer to an actual resurrection of the
dead:160.2 various contexts attest its real significance as an
expression of the divine grace shown in restoring the sick to health,
in saving men from the hand of death. Hellenic religious vocabulary
affords no parallel to this formula nor to that title of Enlil—“Lord of the
breath of life of Sumer”;160.3 or that of Bel, “Lord of the life of the
Land.”160.4 In some passages of Babylonian literature we mark the
glimmering of the idea that life in its varied forms on the earth is a
divine substance sustained by the personal deity. Ishtar is described
as the protectress of all animate existence, and all life languishes
when she descends to the nether regions.160.5 The goddess of
Erech, identified with Ishtar, speaking of her own functions, exclaims,
“In the place of giving birth in the house of the begetting mother,
guardian of the home am I.”160.6 It is specially Tammuz who, by the
side of Ishtar, impersonates the life of the soil, as appears in the
striking refrain recurring in his hymn of lament: “When he slumbers,
the sheep and the lambs slumber also; when he slumbers, the she-
goats and the kids slumber also”;161.1 and the same thought may
have inspired a phrase that is doubtfully translated at the end of the
hymn: “In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of life perishes.” Still
more explicit is another Tammuz hymn, in which, while bewailing the
departed god, they wail for all the life of the earth, “the wailing is for
the herbs;… they are not produced: the wailing is for the grain, ears
are not produced: the wailing is for the habitations, for the flocks, the
flocks bring forth no more. The wailing is for the perishing wedded
ones, for the perishing children; the dark-headed people create no
more.”
In all this we see the reflection of a pantheistic feeling that links the
living world and the personal divine power in a mystic sympathy.
Now the idea of divinity immanent in living nature is inconsistent with
a severely defined anthropomorphic religion; hence we scarcely find
it in the earlier religion of Hellas. Zeus is called the father of men and
gods, but in a reverential rather than in any literal creative sense: nor
is there found any trace of the idea that divine power is immanent in
the life or soul of man, till we come to the later period of philosophic
speculation and Orphism. Only here and there behind the
anthropomorphism we discern in Hellenic myth or cult the vaguer
thought of diffused and immanent divinity; this reveals itself more
than once in the myth and cult of Demeter, whose anger and sorrow
at the loss of her daughter causes a sympathetic disappearance of
the crops and the fruits of the earth; and it is embodied in the Attic
cult on the Akropolis of Demeter Χλόη,161.2 which title expresses the
immanence in the verdure of the life-giving potency of the goddess.
The ancient folklore of Greece, and a few cult-records of the
primitive village-communities, reveal figures that recall faintly the
lineaments of Tammuz, Eunostos of Tanagra, Skephros of Tegea,
who may belong, as Linos certainly did, to that group of heroes of
crop and harvest, who die and are bewailed in the fall of the year,
and whose life is sympathetically linked with the life of the earth. But
we find this type of personage in other parts of Europe, and there is
every reason for believing that the western shores of the
Mediterranean had not been touched by the Tammuz-myth and
service in the second millennium B.C.
The evidence then suggests that the pregnant idea of the godhead
as the source of life was more prominent and more articulate in
Babylonian than in Hellenic religion.
 CHAPTER IX.
Purity a Divine Attribute.

We may next consider the attribute of purity as a divine

characteristic, to see whether in this respect the East differed
markedly from the West. As regards ritual-law, all the religions of the
old world agree in demanding ritual-purity: the worshipper who
approaches the deities must be free from physical taint and impurity:
this idea is so world-wide and so deeply embedded in primitive
thought, that the mere presence of it is of no service for proving the
interdependence of any religions in the historic period. From this
ritual-law the concept naturally arises of “pure gods,” deities who
themselves are believed to be pure because they insist on purity in
their worshippers. Marduk is called “the purifier” in one of the
incantation-texts, in allusion to his power of exorcising the evil
demon of sickness by cleansing processes.163.1 The cathartic rules
that the law of ritual prescribes will differ according to the instincts
and prejudices of different societies. But the Babylonian service
demanded more than mere ritual-purity; for instance, in a fragment of
a striking text published by Delitsch, we find this injunction: “In the
sight of thy God thou shalt be pure of heart, for that is the distinction
of the Godhead.”163.2
As regards the moral and spiritual sense of purity, the sense in
which we speak of “purity of heart,” we should naturally include purity
in respect of sexual indulgence. But in applying this test to the
Mesopotamian religion we are confronted with a singular difficulty. In
the first place, the mythology is strikingly pure in our modern sense
of the word, so far as the materials have as yet been put before us. It
agrees in this respect with the Hebraic, and differs markedly from the
Hellenic; the gods live in monogamic marriage with their respective
goddesses, and we have as yet found no licentious stories of their
intrigues. It may be that generally the Babylonian imagination was
restrained by an austerity and shy reverence that did not control the
more reckless and lighter spirit of the Hellene; or it may be that the
priestly and royal scribes, to whom we owe the whole of the
Babylonian religious literature that has come down to us, deliberately
excluded any element of licentiousness that they may have found in
the lower folklore. But there is one curious exception. In the Epic of
Gilgamesh the hero repulses the proffered love of Ishtar, and taunts
her with her cruel amours, giving a long list of her lovers whom she
had ruined: one of these is Tammuz, “the spouse of thy youth,” upon
whom “thou didst lay affliction every year”: then he mentions her
other lovers who suffered at her hands—a singular list: a bird, a lion,
a horse, a shepherd of the flock, some Babylonian Paris or
Anchises, whom Ishtar treated as Artemis treated Aktaion. We must
suppose these allusions are drawn from Babylonian folklore, of
which nothing else has survived, concerning the amorous
adventures of the goddess. Hence modern accounts are apt to
impute a licentious character to Ishtar, as a goddess of violent and
lawless passion, and to connect with this aspect of her the institution
in her temple at Erech of the service of sacred prostitutes, attested
by certain cuneiform texts. In comparing the ritual of East and West,
I shall give some consideration to this phenomenal practice. But this
view of Ishtar is utterly contrary to that presented of her in the hymns
and liturgies. Not only are certain hymns to Ishtar transcendently
noble and spiritual in tone, surpassing most of the greatest works of
Babylonian religious poetry, but certain phrases specially exalt her
as the virgin-goddess. In one of the lamentations we read, “Virgin,
virgin, in the temple of my riches, am I.”165.1 “The spirit-maid, glory of
Heaven: the Maiden Ishtar, glory of Heaven.”165.2 In a psalm to
Nana, one of the by-names of Ishtar, she is called “Virgin-goddess of
Heaven”;165.3 in another she speaks of herself, “she of the pure
heart, she without fear was I.”165.4 This virgin-character of hers must
then be regarded as fixed by such epithets and phrases, of which
more examples might no doubt be found. Therefore the phrase
attached to her in the Epic of Gilgamesh,165.5 “Kadisti Ilani,” must not
be translated as Dhorme would translate it,165.6 “the courtesan of the
Gods,” merely on the ground that the same word is applied to her
temple-harlots: for the word properly means “pure” from stain, hence
“holy,”165.7 and in this latter sense it could be applied to her
consecrated votaries, in spite of their service, which seems to us
impure: the same word “Kedesh” is used for the votaries of the same
ritual in Phoenicia and Syria. This apparent contradiction in the
conception of Ishtar’s character is sometimes explained166.1 by the
suggestion that she was really a combination of two distinct
goddesses, a voluptuous and effeminate goddess of Erech, and a
pure and warlike Assyrian goddess of Nineveh. But there is no real
contradiction; for in Babylonian religious and liturgical literature the
lower view of Ishtar is never presented at all. She is always
worshipped as pure and holy; the licentiousness of folklore, if there
was any such in vogue, was not allowed to intrude into the temple-
service. Therefore Ishtar is no real exception to the rule that purity,
even in our sense, is a prevailing characteristic of Babylonian
divinity, as it was of the Hebraic.
But now another phenomenon claims our interest: while being a
virgin-goddess, she is sometimes addressed as a mother. In the
inscription of Sargon (722-705 B.C.) she is described as “the Lady of
the Heavenly Crown, the Mother of the Gods”;166.2 and in some of
the older hymns, which have already been quoted, she speaks of
herself at one time as mother and at another as maid: “Mother who
knows lamentation,” and “I am the Virgin-Goddess.”166.3 Similarly, in
the hymn to Nana she is called in one place “the Virgin-Goddess of
Heaven”; in another, “Mother of the faithful breasts.”166.4 Another
goddess, Bau, who is eminently the mother or the wife-goddess, the
spouse of Ningirsu or Ninib, is characterised in a hymn to the latter
god as “thy spouse, the maid, the Lady of Nippur.”166.5
From these phrases, then, seems to emerge the conception of a
virgin-mother. Only we must not press it too far, or suppose at all that
it crystallised into a dogma. It is characteristic of the ecstatic
Babylonian imagination that in the swoon of rapture the intellect does
not sharply hold contradictions apart, and the mystic enthusiasm
reconciles contrary ideas as fused in one divine personality. Thus
even a divinity naturally and properly male, might be mystically
addressed as Father-Mother, for the worshipper craves that the
godhead should be all in all to him. Thus motherhood is the natural
function and interest of the goddess; therefore the Babylonian
supplicated his goddess as mother, even as mother of the gods,
without thinking of any divine offspring or of any literal genealogy or
theogony. Virginity is also beautiful, and a source of divine power
and virtue. Therefore the mother Bau might rejoice to be addressed
occasionally as maid. As for Ishtar, she was aboriginally, perhaps, a
maid, in the sense that no god entered into her worship; and this
idea shaped the early spiritual conception of her. But as a great
goddess she must show her power in the propagation of life;
therefore she must be recognised in prayer and supplication as a
mother; the adorer wishing to give her the virtue of both states,
probably without dogmatising or feeling the contradiction. This
explanation appears more likely, when we consider the psychologic
temper of the Babylonian poetry, its often incoherent rapture, than
the other obvious one that Ishtar the virgin happened in many places
to appropriate to herself the cult of a mother-goddess, though this
might easily happen.
As regards the other polytheistic Semitic races, we can infer that
the same religious ideas concerning ritual-purity were in vogue; but
our scanty records do not enable us to determine whether and how
far they were quickened by spiritual significance.168.1 But we can
trace through Asia Minor the double concept of mother and virgin in
the personality of the goddesses; though it is difficult to decide
whether they ever coincided, and with what degree of definiteness,
in the same personage. Astarte must have been imagined generally
as a mother-goddess, and she appears conspicuously as the female
consort of Baal; thus her Hellenic equivalent is often given as
Aphrodite; yet in another aspect of her worship she must have
appeared as virginal, for she is also often identified with Artemis, just
as a similar goddess Anath in Cyprus was identified with Athena.168.2
The goddess Atargatis of Hierapolis, described by Lucian, was
evidently a mother-goddess, bearing, according to him, a marked
resemblance to Rhea, and placed in the temple by the side of her
husband, Bel or Zeus. Among the Sabaean inscriptions of South
Arabia, we find a dedication by some parents in behalf of their
children to the goddess Umm-Attar, a name that signifies “Mother-
Attar” (or “Mother Astarte”168.3; and a late record, too late to serve as
witness for the early period we are considering, speaks of a virgin-
mother among the Arabs.168.4 Finally, the earliest Carthaginian
inscriptions record the cult of the great goddess Tanit, addressed
usually as the “Lady Tanit, the Face of Baal,” and called in one
dedication “The Great Mother.”168.5 If she is the same as the divinity
whom Augustine describes as the Virgo Caelestis, the Heavenly
Virgin,169.1 then either the dual concept was mystically combined in
the same personage, or the Carthaginian goddess was worshipped
at different times and at different seasons as the mother and then as
the maid. But the evidence is quite uncertain, and we must not
combine too rashly the records of different ages.
Looking at the non-Semitic races of Asia Minor, we have noted the
monumental evidence among the Hittites for the worship of a
mother-goddess, who with her son figures in the procession on the
reliefs at Boghaz-Keui. It may be she who appears on a Hittite votive
relief as a large seated female with a child on her knees,169.2 a type
which the Greeks would call κουροτρόφος. Her name may have
been Umma; for this divine word is now given us among the names
of Hittite divinities in cuneiform texts recently discovered, which have
been published and interpreted by Professor Sayce in the Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society.169.3 He there connects the word with the
Assyrian Umma = Mother, and regards this Hittite goddess as the
ancestress both by name and nature of the Cappadocian goddess
Mā, famous at Comana in the later period. Now the name Mā
designates “the mother,” and yet the Hellenes identified this goddess
not only with the great mother Kybele, but freely with Artemis. I
believe the external inducement to this latter assimilation was the
isolation of Mā in her cult, into which no god entered. From this late
evidence it is too hazardous to infer an early Hittite virgin-mother,
especially as the processional relief at Boghaz-Keui seems to
present us with a ἱερὸς γάμος, the solemn union of a god and a
goddess. As regards the great goddess of the Asia-Minor coast, it
has been somewhat hastily concluded that here and there her cult
included the mystic idea of a virgin-mother. We have only some
evidence from a late period, and in any case it would be a bold leap
to argue back from it to the second millennium. But the evidence is
weak. I have criticised it elsewhere, and I found it and still find it very
frail.170.1 I have not been able to detect any clear consciousness of
the idea in the cult and cult-legends of Kybele: we must not build
much on the Pessinuntian story that Arnobius gives us concerning
her resistance to the love of Zeus, for certainly the general legend of
Kybele and Attis is inconsistent with any dogma of the goddess’s
virginity, nor was she ever called Παρθένος in cult. She was rather
the mother-goddess, with whom the worshipper himself in a mystic
ritual might be united in corporeal union.170.2
If we search the other parts of the Asia-Minor littoral, neither in the
prehistoric nor in the later periods before Christianity is the concept
we are seeking clearly to be traced. I cannot find the Leto-Artemis,
the goddess who was at once essentially a virgin and a mother.
What we discern in Crete is a great mother-goddess and a virgin,
Ἀφαία or Britomartis, “the Sweet Maid.” That the prehistoric or later
Cretans mystically combined the two concepts in one personality we
do not know. When we examine legends and ritual, usually dateless,
of early Hellas, we are aware that a goddess who was worshipped
as a Maid in one locality might be worshipped as a Mother in
another; or the same goddess at different times of the year might be
worshipped now under one aspect, now under another. Hera of
Argos yearly renews her divinity by bathing in a certain stream. Kore,
the young earth-goddess, was probably an early emanation from
Demeter. How powerful in pre-Hellenic days was the appeal of the
virginal aspect of certain goddesses, is shown by the antiquity and
the tenacity of the dogma concerning the virginity of Artemis and
Athena. Yet the latter was called Μήτηρ at Elis171.1. But it would be
very rash to declare that here at last the Virgin-Mother is found in old
Greece. Athena has no offspring; there is neither loss nor miraculous
preservation of her virginity. Only the Elean women, wishing
themselves to be mothers, pray to the Virgin-goddess for offspring,
and strengthen their prayer by applying a word to Athena of such
powerful spell-efficacy as “Mother.” It would be a misinterpretation of
the method of ancient hieratic speech to suppose that Athena Μήτηρ
was mystically imagined as herself both Virgin and Mother.171.2
The ritualistic value of purity was probably a postulate of the
religious feeling of early Hellas, though Homer gives us only faint
glimpses of the idea. Φοῖβος was an old cult-title of Apollo, and its
root-significance may well have been “Pure.” We hear of Hagné, “the
pure goddess,” probably a reverential name for Kore at the
Messenian Andania:172.1 and on the hilltop above the Arcadian
Pallantion, Pausanias records the cult of a nameless group of
divinities called οἱ καθαροὶ θεοί,172.2 a cult which, according to his
account of it, appears to have descended from very ancient times.
The question of purity in Greek ritual may be reserved for a later
stage in our comparative study. I will only remark here on the fact
that Greek worship, early and late, was in marked antagonism in this
respect to Greek mythology, the former being on the whole solemn
and beautiful, the latter often singularly impure. In fact, both in the
Phrygian and Hellenic popular imagination we detect an
extraordinary vein of grossness, that seems to mark off these Aryan
peoples sharply from the Mesopotamians, and equally, as far as we
can see, from the other Semites.
 CHAPTER X.
The Concept of Divine Power and the
Ancient Cosmogonies.

We may profitably compare the Eastern and Western peoples

according to their respective conceptions of the divine power.
Looking carefully at the Babylonian hymns and liturgies, we cannot
say that the idea of divine omnipotence was ever an assured dogma,
vividly present to the mind and clearly expressed. Any particular
hymn may so exalt the potency of the particular deity to whom it is
addressed that, in the ecstasy of prayer and adoration, the
worshipper may speak as if he believed him or her to be powerful
over all things in heaven and earth. But this faith was temporary and
illusive. The power of the deity in the popular creed, and indeed in
the hieratic system, was bound up with his temple and altar. When
Sanherib laid waste Babylon and the temples, the “gods must flee
like birds up to heaven.” In the Babylonian epic the deities
themselves are greatly alarmed by the flood. In one of the hymns of
lamentation, Ishtar laments her own overthrow in her ruined city,
where she “is as a helpless stranger in her streets.”173.1 It is
probable that the popular belief of Babylon agreed in this respect
with that of all other nations of the same type of religion; for the
popular religious mind is incapable of fully realising or logically
applying the idea of divine omnipotence. But this at least is clear in
the Babylonian system, that the higher divinities acting as a group
are stronger than any other alien principle in the Universe, from the
period when Marduk, or originally, perhaps Ninib, won his victory
over Tiamit.174.1 The evil power embodied in the demons remains
indeed active and strong, and much of the divine agency is devoted
to combating them. And the demons are impressive beings,
impersonating often the immoral principle, but they do not assume
the grandeur of an Ahriman, or rise to his position as compeers of
the high god. Thus the Babylonian theology escapes the duality of
the Zarathustrian; the god can always exorcise and overpower the
demon if the demon-ridden man repents and returns to communion
with his deity by penance and confession.
Furthermore, the ancient documents reveal the Babylonian deities
as the arbiters of destiny. Marduk is named by King Neriglassar “the
Leader of Destiny”;174.2 and we have frequent allusions to the gods
fixing the yearly fates at an annual meeting. Nebo the scribe is the
writer and the keeper of the “Doomsbook” of Heaven, and this book
is called “the tablets that cannot be altered, that determine the
bounds (or cycle) of Heaven and Earth.”174.3 Fate is neither
personified nor magnified into a transcendent cosmic force
overpowering and shaping the will of the gods.
How the other religions of polytheistic Asia Minor dealt with these
matters is not revealed; and the comparison here, as in many other
points, must be immediate between Mesopotamia and Hellas. Much
that has just been said of the former may be affirmed of the latter in
this respect. In Homer the pre-eminence, even the omnipotence, of
Zeus is occasionally expressed as a dogma, and we must believe
that this deity had risen to this commanding position before the
Homeric period, at least among the progressive tribes;175.1 and
throughout the systematised theology of Greece his sovereignty was
maintained more consistently than, owing to the shifting of the
powers of the cities, was that of Marduk or Bel or Enlil in the
Sumerian-Babylonian system. Probably the high idea of divine
omnipotence was as vaguely and feebly realised by the average
primitive Hellene as we have reason to suspect that it was by the
average Babylonian. Also, as Hellas was far less centralised than
Babylonia, the efficacy of the local or village god or goddess or
daimon might often transcend the influence of Zeus. But at least we
have no Hellenic evidence of so narrow a theory, as that the deity’s
power depended upon his temple or his image, or even upon his
sacrifice.
It has often been popularly and lightly maintained that the Hellenic
deities were subordinate to a power called Fate. This is a shallow
misjudgment, based on a misinterpretation of a few phrases in
Homer; we may be certain that the aboriginal Hellene was incapable
of so gloomy an abstraction, which would sap the vitality of personal
polytheism, and which only appears in strength in the latter periods
of religious decay. Were it, indeed, a root-principle of Hellenic
religion, it would strongly differentiate it from the Mesopotamian.
In thus comparing the two religions according to their respective
conceptions of divine power, we note two striking phenomena in the
Eastern world. The Mesopotamian gods are magicians, and part of
their work is worked by magic. Marduk and Ea, the wise deity of
Eridu, serve as exorcisers of demons in behalf of the other gods.176.1
In a panegyric on the former, the strange phrase occurs, “the spittle
of life is thine,”176.2 which probably alludes to the well-known magical
qualities of the saliva. Eridu, the home of Ea, was also the original
home of Chaldean magic. When in the early cosmic struggle
between the powers of light and darkness, Tiamat, the mother and
queen of the latter, selects her champion Qingou as leader, she
proclaims, “I have pronounced thy magic formula, in the assembly of
the gods I have made thee great.”176.3 In magic, great is the power
of the spoken word, the λόγος; and the Word, of which the
efficacious force arose in the domain of magic, has been exalted, as
we are well aware, by higher religion to a great cosmic divine
agency, sometimes personified. It was so exalted in early Babylonian
religion. The deity acts and controls the order of the world by the
divine Word. Many of the Sumerian hymns lay stress on its quasi-
personal virtue or “mana”; and often on its terrible and destructive
operation; and in one, as we have seen, the goddess Nana is
identified with the Word of Enlil.176.4 In a great hymn to Sin,176.5 the
might of his Word is glorified in verses that recall the Psalmist’s
phrase: “The voice of the Lord is mighty in operation.” The Word of
Bel-Marduk is said to be stronger than any exorciser or diviner, and
is the theme of a special hymn.177.1 It is described in another as “a
net of majesty that encompasseth heaven and earth.” The Word of
Marduk shakes the sea,177.2 as the Hebrew poet declares that “the
voice of the Lord shaketh the cedar-trees.” “The spirit of the Word is
Enlil… the Word which stilleth the heavens above… a prophet it hath
not, a magician it hath not,”177.3—that is, no prophet can fully
interpret, no magician can control, the Word. A most potent word is
the name of the divinity, and the partial apotheosis of the name itself
is a strange religious phenomenon, which also originated in the
domain of magic, and has played a momentous part in the Egyptian,
Judaic, Christian, and other high religions.177.4 It appears also in
Mesopotamian religion. In a hymn to Enlil we find the phrase: “at thy
name, which created the world, the heavens were hushed of
themselves.”177.5 In the Babylonian poem of creation the primal state
of Chaos is thus described, “no god had yet been created, no name
had yet been named, no destiny fixed.”177.6 The gods name the fifty
names of Ninib, and the name of fifty becomes sacred to him, so that
even in the time of Gudea a temple was actually dedicated to
Number Fifty.177.7
Now, in the respects just considered, the earliest aspect of Greek
religion that is revealed to us presents a striking contrast. The
relations between magic and religion are markedly different.178.1
Magic had doubtless the same hold on early Greece as it has on
most societies at a certain stage of culture. We can conclude this
from the glimpses of it revealed by Homer and some ancient myths,
such as the story of Salmoneus, as well as by the evidence of its
practice in later Greece, and as such phenomena are not of sudden
growth we can safely believe that they were part of an ancient
tradition always alive among the people. But while Babylonian magic
proclaims itself loudly in the great religious literature and highest
temple ritual, Greek magic is barely mentioned in the older literature
of Greece, plays no part at all in the hymns, and can only with
difficulty be discovered as latent in the higher ritual. Again,
Babylonian magic is essentially demoniac; but we have no evidence
suggesting that the pre-Homeric Greek was demon-ridden, or that
demonology and exorcism were leading factors of his consciousness
and practice: the earliest mythology does not suggest that he
habitually imputed his physical or moral disorders to demons, nor
does it convey any hint of the existence in the early society of that
terrible functionary, the witch-finder, or of the institution of witch-
trials.
Had Greek religion and mythology been deeply impregnated with
Babylonian influences we should find it difficult to account for this
momentous difference.