Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/103

 THE CHALD^EAN RELIGION. found in polytheistic religions, and that for sufficiently obvious reasons. The most simple relationship offered by the organic world to the mind of man is the relationship of the sexes, their contrast, and the necessity for their union. Wherever religious conceptions spring up gods and goddesses are created together. All the forces divined by human intelligence are doubled into two persons, closely united, the one the complement of the other. The one has the active, the other the passive role. Egypt, Chaldsea, Greece, all had these divine couples ; Apsou, or, as Damascius calls him, Apason and Tauthe ; Anou and Antou, the Anaitis of the Greek writers ; Bel and Belit, or Beltu, perhaps the Greek Mylitta ; Samas, the sun, and Allat, the queen of the dead ; Merodach (or Marduk) and Zarpanit, a goddess mother who protected unborn infants and presided at births ; Nabou and Nana ; Assur and Istar ; Dumouzi and Istar. Precise details as to the status of these divinities are still want- ing. Several among them seem to have been at one time endowed with a dis- tinct individuality, and at other periods to have been almost indistinguishable from some other deity. They were without the distinct features and at- tributes of the inhabitants of Olympus, but we are left in no doubt as to the binary divisions of which we have been speaking. The attraction of desire and the union of the sexes leads to the birth of the child ; with the appearance of the latter the family is complete, and, with it, the type upon which the triple classification of the gods was founded. But even when we attempt to trace the composition of a single group and to assign his proper place to each of its members, the embarrassment is great. We find a single god sometimes filling, to all appearance, the role of husband and father, and sometimes that of the son ; or a single goddess acting at different times as the wife and daughter of one and the same god. Some of these apparent contradictions must be referred to the want of certainty in oui interpretation of the FIG. 16. Terra-cotta Statuette; from Heuzey's Figinvues antiques du Musee dtt Louvre.