The Prisoners in the Cave

 @SemprePhi drew my attention to the following book review on the 23^rd November:

Phillip Sidney Horky, Plato and Pythagoreanism 2013. Reviewed by Simon Trépanier bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014-05-1… #brynmawr #philosophy

I responded in four short posts, which I’ve now augmented with further discussion.

@SemprePhi Hi. Thanks for the pointer to Horky's book and the review. Where to start! You cannot rely on Aristotle for accurate information about the Pythagoreans. Huffman has been occupying academic space for thirty years, and won't cross the boundaries. 1/

Note the whole argument is based on the idea that philosophy in Greece is an autocthonous development. Not invented elsewhere. I've shown that Pythagoras derived many of his ideas from Mesopotamia. And that these influences are reflected in Plato. They just don't want to see. 2/

Or they fear to step outside the accepted paradigm for fear of committing heresy, and having to pay for their sin. There is much information about what Pythagoras brought back from the east in Greek writing. But scholars don't know what it is, and why [it] is important. 3/

In order to stay within the acceptable paradigm, or 'episteme', they don't read the full range of sources which are available. Consequently it is difficult to make sense of the sources that they do read. If you read the full range of sources, it is an eye-opener. 4/

Philosophers and Historians are nervous about crossing the boundaries of their subjects, not just because of the risk to their reputations. They are happiest when sense can be made of what they are looking at. That sense isn’t always the sense that things made in antiquity. Modern scholars make fictions, and sit upon the pile they have made.

The philosopher Adrian Moore wrote a history of the infinite in 1990, and presented a series on BBC radio in 2016 on the same subject. Both discuss the problems and issues around the human response to the idea of the infinite. However Moore’s idea of the history of man’s relationship is strangely structured. Writing about the broadcast series I pointed out that:

We  get many clues about the Greek understanding of the infinite and the unlimited from a number of Plato’s dialogues, including The Timaeus, The Sophist, The Republic, The Theaetetus, The Laws, and The Parmenides. In skipping Plato, the first reference to Parmenides and his notion of the universe as simply one and one alone, is as an introduction in the first episode to his pupil Zeno of Elea, and his response to paradox. There is no discussion of Plato’s demolition of Parmenides arguments, no discussion of the Platonic forms, no discussion of the relationship of the forms to the form of the Good, which is another way of talking about what is infinite, and no discussion of what amounts to a different logical modality in the pages of Plato (where he discusses things passing into one another by means of their similitude), which is a way of understanding the relationship of finite things to the infinite.  

What Moore has constructed is a Catholic perspective on the idea of the infinite, since it is viewed from the perspective of Thomas Aquinas and Bishop Anselm. What made sense to those scholars, makes sense to Moore. Plato was largely unavailable to any scholars  of that period (with the exception of some sections of the Timaeus). But to write now about the infinite as if the writings of Plato are unknown to us, or of no importance to our understanding of the human response to the infinite, is difficult to fathom. I summarised part of this first episode of the series as follows:

Essentially Aristotle’s rapprochement, which Moore characterises as an attempt to make the concept of the infinite more palatable to the Greeks, involved dividing the idea of the infinite into two. As already mentioned, one of these was the potential infinite, and the second was the actual infinite. As outlined in the first episode, Zeno’s paradoxes depended on the idea of an infinite divisibility, which seemed to make the idea of any kind of movement impossible, since that would require a universe of infinite complexity. Zeno therefore regarded all forms of movement as illusion. Since in order to travel a certain distance, you would have to travel half the distance to your destination, and then half of the distance remaining, and then half of that, and half of what still remained, and so on. Which would result in an infinite number of steps. Which would be impossible. 

Aristotle’s response was that though the various stages of the journey could be understood in such a way, the stages were not marked, and did not have to be considered in making a journey. The idea of limit is however a crucial point. What Aristotle was saying is that there are two ways of looking at the idea of what a limit is.  Essentially there is limitation which is defined by what a thing is, and there is limitation which is not. In the first case the limit of a thing cannot be transcended without the nature of that thing turning into something else.

The essence of this argument is that there are forms of limit which can be ignored. One of which is the actual infinite: instead we should deal with the potential infinite. The actual infinite, by its nature, is always there. But we cannot deal with it. The potential infinite we can work with, since it is not always there, and spread infinitely through reality. So we can count numbers without ever arriving at infinity, or ever being in danger of arriving there. Moore mentioned that this conception of infinity more or less became an orthodoxy after Aristotle, though not everyone accepted that his argument against actual infinity was solid. Which is something of an understatement. Aristotle’s distinction between the potential infinite and the actual infinite is between what is, in practical terms, something we can treat as finite, and what is actually infinite. 

 

Moore has defined himself as an Aristotelian finitist, meaning that, since (he argues), man cannot deal with the actual infinite, only the potential infinite can make any sense to us. And so, much ancient discussion is swept away, as of very little interest or importance. This is why we cannot easily understand much of the intellectual world of antiquity. Instead we choose to write unflattering fictions about it.

I said that we cannot rely on Aristotle for accurate information on the Pythagoreans. This is not because I regard him as a poor scholar. Both Plato and Aristotle taught in the Academy in Athens. They were both dealing with a body of traditional doctrine (there are many passages where a comparison shows this – their discussion of the importance of the liver, for example). But they had quite different ways of discussing doctrine. Plato gives the reader real information about the subject, but hedges it about with other arguments, and sometimes talks in terms of images and myth (the account of the prisoners in the cave, in the Republic, for example). So his work makes sense to those who already know the doctrine, and intrigues those who don’t. Aristotle on the other hand, seems to have had the job of sifting through students to find those who might have the intelligence to  be able to grasp the essence of the doctrine (when properly instructed). He did this sometimes by constructing complex sophistical arguments which actually contradicted doctrine, and sometimes even rational sense.

Two examples: The first is Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, originally a series of lectures, ends up concluding the gods cannot act in the world, but only contemplate. Imagine the response to that argument in the ancient world! Why did Aristotle argue like this? He was looking for students who could provide critical rational responses to the argument, and who could  see that it did not make any sense in a reality which was (at the time) populated by divinities expected to play a constructive role in the world. The second example is Aristotle’s comments on logical modality (mostly in the Metaphysics), which I’ve discussed elsewhere (in ‘Logical Modality in Classical Athens’). This also contradicts traditional doctrine which underpinned the human relationship with the divine. And not just in Greece. Plato discusses the logical modality which enables contact and engagement with the divine, and other authors do too. We ignore all of this information concerning doctrine, because we prefer the unfathomable shadows on the wall.

However, despite the occasional tricksiness of Aristotle, he tells us something important, which, if we are familiar with relevant texts by other authors, we can figure out. I quote again from my critical review of Adrian Moore’s broadcast History of the Infinite, concerning the arguments of Zeno:.

The idea of limit is however a crucial point. What Aristotle was saying is that there are two ways of looking at the idea of what a limit is.  Essentially there is limitation which is defined by what a thing is, and there is limitation which is not. In the first case the limit of a thing cannot be transcended without the nature of that thing turning into something else.

Aristotle’s discussion references the doctrinal view which is also discussed by Plato. Which is that there is an important connection between the idea of limit and the infinite. The infinite is just another way of specifying what is unlimited, and beyond the physical world. Paradoxically, it is the actual limit of what is, and what can be. This does not represent a retreat from commerce with the actual infinite, but actually tells us how that commerce was supposed to work.

However the physical and finite world is also full of limits. These sometimes function as boundaries, and serve to close off access. Some limits you can choose to pass beyond, and there are others which you cannot pass. And in some cases, because of the nature of the limit, it is the nature of the limit itself which allows commerce with the ultimate limit of everything, which is where the Gods were once understood to have their existence.

This is the most important thing to understand about antiquity, both east and west. For Moore, the actual infinite is simply something which defies our understanding. In antiquity, the actual infinite was something of vital importance, and which we could have commerce with through its earthlly analogues (totalities, completions, limits. etc). Aristotle, in talking about Zeno’s paradox, is referencing the key doctrinal point, which is that reality has a double nature. And that we have (if we are properly informed), a choice about how we respond to that double nature.

In modern times, we no longer have this choice, since the doctrine concerning actual infinity has been mostly lost, and in fact entirely lost to those who function in the modern successors of Plato’s Academy. We are stuck in a world that imagines it must deal with everything in terms of calculable finitudes. Effectively we are, to quote the Mesopotamian king Esarhaddon, “blind and deaf ” for the whole of our lives.

It was not always so.

Greece and the cultural Impact of the Assyrian Empire

In 'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria' I discussed Pauline Albenda's work on pavement slab designs, which seem to have been derived from originals in carpet form. The designs may have originated in Egypt, and perhaps these may have been adopted as the result of cultural interaction beween Egypt and Assyria. 

This particular pattern of ornamentation was present in a Greek context of a similar period, somewhere between the later 8th century B.C.E., and the end of the 7th century B.C.E. Plate 295 of Richter's A Handbook of Greek Art *1 reproduces a photograph of the rear of a breastplate, found in the river Alpheios at Olympia [now in the national Museum, Athens], which is dated to the middle of the 7th century B.C.E.. The text on p 211 suggests that it is engraved with ‘animals and monsters and with a group perhaps to be interpreted as Zeus greeting Apollo’.

This is quite likely, but there is so much more of interest to the design. The Greek figures walk on a palmate border of a ‘fleur-de-lys’ type repeating pattern, and between Zeus and Apollo there is a form of open blossom. These figures occupy the bottom half of the backplate: above them are designs which are of largely Mesopotamian origin. Behind each shoulder of the backplate there are two crescent motifs, each facing outwards; between them are opposing sphinxes rampant; and below these, what appear to be opposing lions rampant. Inside the left crescent (from the back) there is a lion figure, apparently trotting, and looking back over its shoulder. The open area of the crescent is divided into two major spaces by a line, and below the line there is an image of a bull, looking forwards, with its head held low. Within the crescent on the right there is the same division of space, and above the line there is a similar lion to the first, and it too faces back, away from the centre of the design. Beneath the line, there is another similar bull figure, likewise with its head held low, and opposing the first bull. The final space within the crescents shows a palmate design, of alternating buds and blossoms. There are also traces of the palmate design behind the hind legs of the lions, running along the line of the armour’s armholes.

This does not seem to me to be a symbolically empty appropriation of foreign design elements. Any of the elements could have been used by the creator of this armour, but the elements used and the arrangement of those elements speak of a degree of understanding of the symbolism of these images, since both the foreign iconography and the native Greek images are arranged according to the same logic which we have seen in the context of Assyria. The rampant sphinxes are directly above the meeting of Zeus and Apollo, as the open blossom is directly below. The two figures behind Apollo are arranged very much as in Mesopotamian iconography: a handmaiden reaches forward and touches the shoulder of Apollo, and holds the wrist of the figure behind, in the manner which establishes proximity and contact with the divine in Mesopotamia. The line of figures on the left, headed by Zeus, are connected by their overlapping shields and robes.

Richter tells us that: ‘Several shields found in the Idaean cave in Crete are conspicuous examples of early Orientalizing art (c. 700 B.C. ?); they are decorated in embossed relief with monsters and animals in so marked an Eastern style that they are thought by many to be importations;…’ ,*2

This rear breastplate comes from what is known as the ‘orientalising period’ in Greece, generally agreed to be about 720 to 550 B.C.E.. This was ‘a period of change all over the Mediterranean world. Colonies were being founded east and west; intercommunications were improved; and contact with the ancient Oriental civilisations – Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Phoenicia – was established. The resultant Oriental influence is shown by the adoption of Eastern floral motifs, such as the lotus and palmette, and of Oriental monsters and beasts, such as sphinxes, panthers, and lions’. *3

 According to the evidence at present available, substantive stone sculpture, that is, statues and reliefs approximately life-size and over, were not produced in Greece before about the middle of the seventh century B.C.E. Before that time even cult images were apparently more or less small in size and mostly of wood. It evidently was contact with the East that initiated the making of large stone sculptures in Greece.  *4 

In 681 B.C.E. Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, was murdered while praying in a temple *5 Sennacherib marks a potential high-water mark for Aegean/Assyrian contact. Cory’s Ancient Fragments records a statement by a Greek writer (Abydenus) that Sennacherib (or more likely his generals) once captured Athens. *6  The capture of Athens is not attested by any other source.

Sennacherib was succeeded by Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s youngest son, after a short violent dynastic crisis. The first act of the new king was to rebuild Babylon in atonement for the 'sin of Sennacherib' in destroying it. There was an abortive attempt in 680 B.C.E. by Merodach-Baladan’s son to capture Ur, and in 677 B.C.E. the King of Sidon, Abdi-Milkuti, revolted, was caught and beheaded. Sidon was ‘torn up and cast into the midst of the sea’, its inhabitants deported to Assyria, and its territority given to its rival, Tyre. Esarhaddon then had to deal with problems along the eastern and northern borders, principally the Scythians (Assyr Ishkuzai), who had crossed the Caucasus and joined the Cimmerians who were already in Asia Minor, Armenia and Iran.

The Medes, located north of Elam, became a problem around 680 B.C.E. – Esarhaddon tried to prevent them becoming a serious difficulty for Assyria, partly through dividing them against each other. He put a friendly prince on the throne of Elam in 675 B.C.E. (Urtaki). Ultimately Esarhaddon’s goal was the invasion of Egypt – already in 679 B.C.E. he had captured the city of Arzani ‘on the border of the brook of Egypt’. He was met by the resistance of the Pharaoh Taharqa in the spring of 671 B.C.E.… ‘

I laid siege to Memphis, his royal residence, and conquered it in half a day by means of mines, breaches and assault ladders. His queen, the women of his palace, Ushanahuru, his ‘heir apparent’, his other children, his possessions, horses, large and small cattle beyond counting I carried away as booty to Assyria…. Everywhere in Egypt, I appointed new (local) kings, governors, officers, harbour overseers, officials and administrative personnel. I installed regular sacrificial dues for Ashur and the (other) great gods, my lords, for all times… 

In May 672 B.C.E. Esarhaddon proclaimed his son Ashurbanipal as his legitimate heir (Esarhaddon died in Harran in 669 B.C.E.). He fought Taharqa as his father had done. Egypt remained under Assyrian control until about 655 B.C.E., when Psametik expelled the Assyrians with the help of Ionian and Carian mercenaries.*7

Traditionally much of the orientalising influence is ascribed to Egypt, partly because some of the Greeks said the Egyptians had influenced the development of their country (though it is denied by scholars for later periods), but mainly because the evidence is unequivocal: the sculptures, ivories and other items are plainly the product of Egyptian influence. However, while agreeing with the importance of Egyptian aesthetic influence on the development of Greek civilisation at this time, I would like to argue for an equally important influence on Greek civilisation over a much longer period, stretching from the late 2nd millennium,  to the sixth century B.C.E. By this I mean the influence of Mesopotamian culture in general, and the influence of the culture of Assyria in particular.

In the Laws, Plato argues that a hostile relationship similar to that which the Greeks experienced with the Persians,  had existed in the past with Assyria: ‘…the inhabitants of the region about Ilium, when they provoked by their insolence the Trojan War, relied upon the power of the Assyrians and the Empire of Ninus, which still existed and had a great prestige; the people of those days fearing the united Assyrian Empire just as we now fear the Great King. And the second capture of Troy was a serious offence against them, because Troy was a portion of the Assyrian Empire.’*8 

We are also told by Plato that the constitutions of Greek states were framed in order to meet this danger. If this statement by Plato is correct, the implications are huge, and it is perhaps surprising that there has been so little discussion of it by scholars. The Laws is however a philosophical and literary work, and not automatically a source you would consult for accurate historical information. 

If Plato's suggestion is in fact correct, what it means is that political developments in Greece from the Trojan War onwards,  were shaped, to a degree hard to determine at this distance, by the nature and the political ambitions of the Assyrian Empire. Plato's view is that the influence was negative,  in the sense that the  Greek constitutions were created to counter the power and influence of the Assyrian Empire by means other than direct military action against it. 

If the Greek anti-Assyrian confederation (we need to give it a name) deliberately shaped their political arrangements to counter the influence of Assyria, such a strategy implies that the Greeks had, or very quickly developed, a strategic understanding of the power of Assyria sometime in the twelfth century B.C.E., at a time proximate to the Trojan War. But having that knowledge of Assyrian culture and intentions, could have had unexpected consequences. Some aspects of the Assyrian empire, for example, might have been adopted by the Greeks, rather than being rejected. Perhaps including the idea of a form of  empire itself - a quasi-imperial structure which could be opposed to the Assyrian threat. But an imperial structure with important differences. 

Interestingly, the three persons of the dialogue are an un-named Athenian stranger, Cleinias, a Cretan, and Megillus, a Lacedaemonian – representing the three cultural groups explicitly named by Protagoras as practising philosophy in Plato’s dialogue of the same name. *9. These three cultural groups were perhaps the core of a Greek confederation against the 'empire of Ninus'.

The translation of this passage in the Laws, published by Thomas Taylor, is slightly different, suggesting that the time spoken of was later than the Empire of Ninus, and contemporary with the Heraclidae: ‘…those that dwelt about Ilion, who, trusting to the power of the Assyrians descended from Ninus, dared to excite war against Troy. For the form of that government, which was still preserved, was by no means despicable. And as we at present fear a mighty king, in like manner all at that time feared that collected coordination of people. For the destruction of Troy a second time raised a great accusation against them; because the Trojan power was a portion of the Assyrian government’ *10

There was some fairly accurate information available about the Assyrian Empire to the Greek speaking world, though some sources available to us severely garble some of the details. These accounts were collected by Isaac Preston Cory in the early years of the Nineteenth century, when there were no contemporary documents available, and only the Bible and Classical literature contained relevant information. This collection is not much consulted now, though still occasionally reprinted, since we have access to a large number of original documents, inscriptions, and other artifacts. *11

Diodorus Siculus reports the years of the empires existence reasonably accurately: ‘…the empire of the Assyrians, after having continued from Ninus thirty descents, and more than 1400 years, was finally dissolved by the Medes. *12 . Whereas Herodotus says, quite inaccurately, that: 'The Medes were the first who began the revolt from the Assyrians after they had maintained the dominion over Upper Asia for a period of 520 years'.*13 Herodotus mentions more than once in his Histories that he would write a history of Assyria. We can be fairly sure therefore that it would not (or did not, if it was actually written) cover Assyrian history more than 520 years before its fall between 612 and 609 B.C.E. – that is, not much earlier than 1120 B.C.E..

On Sennacherib, through a quotation which survives in Eusebius, Alexander Polyhistor, whose accounts are of variable quality, says:

After the reign of the brother of Senecherib, Acises reigned over the Babylonians, and when he had governed for the space of thirty days, he was slain by Marodach Baladanus, who held the empire by force during six months: and he was slain and succeeded by a person named Elibus. But in the third year of his reign Senecherib king of the Assyrians levied an army against the Babylonians; and in a battle, in which they were engaged, routed, and took him prisoner with his adherents, and commanded them to be carried into the land of the Assyrians. Having taken upon himself the government of the Babylonians, he appointed his son Asordanius (Ashur-nadin-shumi) their king, and he himself retired again into Assyria. *14

This pretty much squares with what we know from recovered contemporary sources. Merodach-Baladan (Marduk-apal-iddina)  was an old adversary of Sargon II and former king of Babylon. He returned from refuge in Elam in the first year of Sargon’s reign, and ‘assisted by Elamite officers and troops raised the entire Aramean population of southern Iraq against the Assyrians, entered the capital-city and proclaimed himself King of Babylon’ *15 The armies of Assyria marched against him, and he was defeated at Kish. However Merodach-Baladan escaped and hid ‘in the midst of the swamps and marshes’. Roux continues: Sennacherib plundered his palace, captured innumerable prisoners, deported 208,000 persons to Assyria and gave Babylon a king of his choice, Bêl-ibni, ‘the son of a master-builder’ who had grown up in Nineveh ‘like a young puppy’.

‘Elibus’ may be a Greek rendering of Bêl-ibni (‘Belibnus’). Between the chaotic years 703 and 700 B.C.E. there were three kings of Babylon. If they are the same, he is, as Polyhistor’s account says, successor to Merodach-Baladan, but he did not slay him (he survived to fight another day). Bêl-ibni seems to have been trouble – Roux suggests that he was ‘more than suspect of collusion with the rebels’ and was himself taken away and replaced by Sennacherib’s son, (Asordanius).

So in many of the details in this account, Polyhistor is clearly relating broadly accurate data from sources available to him. And some of the information is more detailed (though we cannot be sure that it is more accurate) than we have even now from contemporary documents painstakingly dug from the earth.

Which makes the following part of the quotation, of particular interest to us, so interesting: he says that, during the reign of Sennacherib, the Greeks, directly or indirectly, mounted an expedition against the Assyrian Empire.

When he received a report that the Greeks had made a hostile descent upon Cilicia, he marched against them and fought with them a pitched battle, in which, though he suffered great loss in his own army, he overthrew them, and upon the spot he erected the statue of himself as a monument of his victory; and ordered his prowess to be inscribed upon it in the Chaldæan characters, to hand down the remembrance of it to posterity. He built also the city of Tarsus after the likeness of Babylon, which he called Tharsis. And after enumerating the various exploits of Sinnecherim (Sennacherib), he adds that he reigned 18 years, and was cut off by a conspiracy which had been formed against his life by his son Ardumusanus. *16

So the Greeks mounted an expedition against the Assyrian empire around 700 B.C.E., and engaged Sennacherib in battle in Cilicia.* 17 Locating the statue of himself which he erected as a monument to his victory over the Greeks would be a remarkable discovery, if it still survives.

Burn says of the colonisation of the Eastern Mediterranean by the Greeks: ‘As early as the foundation of Cumae, Ionians were beginning to trade and settle in the Levant. There were new settlements in the plain of Tarsus and one, called Poseideion, at Al Mina north of Ras Shamra. Geometric pottery reached Hamath (Hamah), which was sacked by the Assyrians in 720; but the Assyrians also severely checked Greek aggression. King Sargon, in a famous boast, says that he ‘dragged the Ionians like fish from the sea’, in operations near Tarsus, and ‘gave peace to Cilicia and Tyre’. *18  Greek trade with the Levant remained important, and influenced Greek culture….’ *19  Tarsus was clearly the key point on the coast of Cilicia during the late 8th and early 7th century B.C.E, and the engagement with Sennacherib was probably close by. His enhancement of Tarsus into an Anatolian Babylon suggests the conscious creation of a semi-autonomous centre of power in a place regularly threatened by various groups. [Tarsus was the chief city of Cilicia, standing near the centre of the Cilicia Campestris, on the river Cydnus, about twelve miles above its mouth. *20

But there is more extraordinary information to come. Another fragment relating to Sennacherib surviving in the pages of Eusebius is by the historian Abydenus, a disciple of Aristotle according to I. P. Cory’s introduction. He says that Abydenus wrote an Assyrian History, and was also a copyist from Berossus, a Babylonian by birth and a priest of Bel, with access to the literature of his own country. Berossus flourished during the reign of Alexander the Great, and resided at Athens for some years. He does not seem to think much of Sennacherib in terms of kingly qualities. But he tells us that the Cilician military engagement involved a sea battle. This may not surprise us: it is more likely than that the Greeks marched across Anatolia. However what follows is not to my knowledge mentioned any where else, and therefore is surprising. Abydenus suggests that the defeat of the Greeks was so severe that Sennacherib was in a position to build a temple at Athens.

At the same time the twenty-fifth who was Senecherib can hardly be recognized among the kings. It was he who subjected the city of Babylon to his power, and defeated and sunk a Grecian fleet upon the coast of Cilicia. He built also a temple at Athens and erected brazen statues, upon which he engraved his own exploits. And he built the city of Tarsus after the plan and likeness of Babylon, that the river Cydnus should flow through Tarsus, in the same manner as the Euphrates intersected Babylon.

A Sargonid temple in Athens, and the erection of bronze statues, with a portion of his annals inscribed upon them, is an extraordinary thought [the annals of Sennacherib’s campaigns found in Assyria on prisms do not contain an account of a campaign which extended to Attica, but they are not complete]. I am not aware of any archaeological discoveries in Athens which would support the contention that Sennacherib or his armies were ever on Athenian soil, but the statement comes from someone who was a student at Aristotle’s Lyceum, and is so extraordinary that it is hard to imagine it being made unless there was some basis to it. One could argue that the parallelling of the Assyrian experience with the Persian experience (in Plato’s Laws) is employed here too – the Persians had come to Athens, and had forced the Athenians to abandon their city. However the Persians had looted Athens, destroying much of the city – there is no parallel with this for Sennacherib's visit. The Persian attack would probably have accounted for the destruction of a surviving Assyrian Temple, if such existed, along with much else of interest in pre-Periclean Athens.

After the defeat of the Assyrians at the hands of the Babylonians and the Medes (somewhere between 612 and 609 (the exact details are unclear), Babylon became the capital of the Assyrian Empire. The following years concerning Babylon are also unclear in the record, and the details are sometimes contradictory, but these details are not of importance to this argument.

Astyages reigned over the Medes from 585 –550 B.C.E., followed by Cyrus (Axerdis). Cyrus eventually became the first Great King of the Persian Empire (formerly he had been known as the King of Anshan). We are told by Abydenus that Axerdis was the first that levied mercenary soldiers, and that one of whom was Pythagoras, a follower of the wisdom of the Chaldæans:

Can this be the famous Pythagoras who stands close to the beginnings of Greek philosophy? The remark is made by a member of Aristotle’s Lyceum, and is made without any fear that a mis-identification might be made. The dates are about right – Pythagoras flourished about 540-510 B.C.E., which would place him at the right time to be such a mercenary soldier, sometime after 560 B.C.E. (Cyrus became king of Babylon in 538 B.C.E.). He would not be the first soldier in the world whose horizons were broadened by travel in the service of a king. * 21

 Chaldaea is often used in a vague geographic way, but Xenophon refers to Chaldaeans in the mountains North of Mesopotamia. Effectively this is the land which is known to the Greeks as ‘Syria’, encompassing Cappadocia and Cilicia, as well as the northern Levant and Mesopotamia [the term also refers to lands in the south of Mesopotamia, (for reasons which are not clear within the contemporary model of the distribution of power and influence in the Levant of the 1st Millennium B.C.E.). Merodach-Baladan thus is counted as a Chaldaean]. It is interesting that here no mention is made of Pythagoras as a follower of the wisdom of the Egyptians, which might be taken to suggest an understanding that Levantine and Mesopotamian sources were of significance for his doctrines as much as those later assumed to be important in late antiquity, i.e., Egypt.

In the account of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, a letter is quoted (from Pythagoras to Anaximenes) which contains some lines which show Pythagoras to be aware of Median power and its dangers, though he is clearly in Italy at the time of writing: 

….if you, the best men, abandon your cities, then will their good order perish, and the peril from the Medes will increase. For always to scan the heavens is not well, but more seemly is it to be provident for one’s mother country. For I too am not altogether in my discourses but am found no less in the wars which the Italians wage with one another. *22

Clearly Pythagoras was no stranger to political disputes, and indeed seems to have perished in the course of one. It is not inconceivable that he was once a soldier, and his interest in the Medes may be the result of mercenary service in the Median army in the early sixth century, as the remark by Abydenus claims. *23

‘…[Axerdis] also reduced under his dominion Egypt and the country of Cælo-Syria, whence came Sardanapallus.’ *24

Pythagoras would have found himself in both Egypt and in Caelo-Syria (i.e., ‘upper Cilicia’ - Cilicia and Cappadocia) if he was in the service of Cyrus for any length of time, and in a position to explore the philosophy and theology of these cultures. ‘Sardanapalus’ is ‘Ashurbanipal’, who appears in the Old Testament as ‘Asnapper’. If he came from Caelo-Syria, this would very likely make him a Chaldaean. In fact Alexander Polyhistor explicitly describes Sardanapalus as ‘the Chaldaean.’*25

If Ashurbanipal is Chaldaean, and his lineage is clear, then either or both his father and mother count as Chaldaean also. Going back in time, the first clear break in the continuity of the lineage is Sargon II (Sharru-kin, or ‘true king’). His name invites suspicion, and his ancestry is not known. He arrived on the throne in the same year that Merodach-Baladan mounted the throne of Babylon (721 B.C.E.). This suggests a degree of instability across the whole of Mesopotamia, suitable for the purposes of usurpers. In which case Assyria had been run by Chaldaean kings for nearly two hundred years by the time Pythagoras encountered Chaldaean ideas.

If Assyria was as powerful and as long-lasting an entity as it was, and a major factor in the development of Greek constitutional arrangements, why do we have no history of the Assyrian Empire written by a Greek writer? Herodotus said he would write one - we get some information about Assyria from his Histories, but the main focus of his book is the later conflict between Greece and Persia. Abydenus apparently wrote one, but it is no longer extant. Another history of Assyria was written by John of Mauretania, but that has gone too. So they did once exist. Plato's information perhaps comes from the history written by Herodotus.

All that survives from Greek writers however is quotations and fragments here and there, often embedded in the pages of Eusebius. It is possible that these histories did not survive because they revealed more about the reactive nature of the Greek relationship with the Assyrian empire than was comfortable. Particularly as the years passed, and they were confronted with a new threat from the East. The development of the Greek constitutions, and the development of the institution of the polis, may have owed a very great deal to the challenge presented by Assyria. And if Sennacherib did inflict a severe defeat on the Ionians near Cilicia in the seventh century, and conquered Athens, it is likely to have been an experience they were only too happy to forget. 

Notes and references.

1. Richter, G.M, A Handbook of Greek Art, Phaidon, 1959, fourth impression 1994, pbk  Plate 295
2  Richter, G.M, A Handbook of Greek Art, Phaidon, 1959, fourth impression 1994, pbk p210-11,
3  Richter, G.M, A Handbook of Greek Art, Phaidon, 1959, fourth impression 1994, pbk. p297 - 

4.  NB:  Richter states incorrectly that:‘Egypt had conquered Assyria in 672 B.C., and from then on the East was opened to Greece’. [p56].

5 See also: the ‘Babylonian Chronicle’ (ABC, pp 81); ARAB, II, sect.795. See: E.G Kraeling, ‘The death of Sennacherib’, JAOS, LIII (1933), pp. 335-46; S. Parpola, ‘The murder of Sennacherib’ in B. Alster (ed.), Death in Mesopotamia, Copenhagen, 1980, pp. 171-82). [Roux in his Iraq, p323, says ‘Sennacherib….. met with the end he deserved: he was stabbed to death by one of his sons or, according to another version, crushed by the winged bulls that protected the sanctuary.’ (n 15 Ch 20 ‘The House of Sargon’;  see also II Kings xxx. 36-7.)
6  Cory, I.P., Ancient Fragments, 1832.
7 Roux, G., Iraq p323-332  Penguin Books, new edition, 1992.
 8 Plato, Laws, translated with an introduction by T.J. Saunders. Penguin Library. 1970.
9 Plato, Protagoras and Meno. translated by W.K.C. Guthrie, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1956 (various printings).
10 Works of Thomas Taylor, Plato's Laws. Prometheus Trust, 1996 [first ed., 1804]
11 Cory, I.P.,  Ancient Fragments, 1832.
12 Diodorus Siculus, lib. II. p. 81.
13 Herodotus, The Histories Lib. I. c. 95
14 Alexander Polyhistor, quoted in  Cory’s Ancient Fragments, 1832.
15 Roux, G. Iraq, Ch 20 ‘House of Sargon’, p321. new edition 1992.
16 Alexander Polyhistor, quoted in Eu. Ar. Chron. 42. [Armenian Chronicle of Eusebius].
17  Burn mentions that ‘Greeks and Assyrians clash in Levant’ in his 2nd Chronological Table ‘The Growth of Greek Civilization c 780-480 B.C E'. (Burn, A. R,  A History of Greece, p88-9, 1965, rev. ed. 1979).
18 . Cilicia was Quê to the Assyrians - Roux, G. Iraq, ‘The Assyrian Empire’, p31.
19 Burn, A. R., A History of Greece, p88-9, 1965, rev. ed. 1979.
20 Smith, William, A Smaller Classical Dictionary of biography, mythology, and geography. Abridged from the larger dictionary. Lond., 1852
21 Abydenus,  quoted in Cory’s Ancient Fragments, 1832. So much to discuss here! It is unlikely that Astyages was the first to levy mercenaries, but Greek hoplite soldiers were certainly serving in armies around the near East. They can be identified in a number of wall reliefs, including some in the British Museum's Assyrian galleries. They are quite distinctive in the reliefs illustrating the siege of Lachish.
22. Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Bk VIII 49-50 In this passage it is clear that it is the city (the polis) and how it functions and is organised, that was understood to be a bulwark against Median and Assyrian influence. If the city was neglected, then good order would perish.
 23 see Diogenes Laertius Lives of Eminent Philosophers, bk 2 for his account of Pythagoras
24 Abydenus, quoted in Eu. Ar. Chron. 53.
25 Alexander Polyhistor, quoted in Eu. Ar. Chron. p 44.

At the very Edge: Marking Transition and Transformation in Antiquity

One of the principal themes of my work is the importance accorded to the idea and the function of limit in ancient thought. Discussion of the idea of limit (and the unlimited) can be found in early Greek philosophy, and limit is a key idea in both Mesopotamian and Roman civilization. However currently it is not a major focus of interest for scholars, and so its importance is scarcely understood. 

Here are pointers to seven texts which discuss the significance of the idea of limit in antiquity. 

***

'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria'. http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-threshold-in-ancient-assyria.html?spref=tw The chapter is based on pioneering research by the scholar Pauline Albenda.

[From The Origins of Transcendentalism in Ancient Religion (forthcoming)]

***

 'The Divine and the Limit' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-divine-and-limit.html?spref=tw …  explores the prominence of Janus in the ritual life of the Romans. In the songs of the Salii (‘jumpers’ or dancers) he was called the good creator, and the god of gods; he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things. The king, and in later times the rex sacrōrum, sacrificed to him. At every sacrifice he was remembered first; in every prayer he was the first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter. He is especially associated with the idea of limit, which is a preoccupation of a number of ancient cultures.

[From Understanding Ancient Thought (2017)]

***

Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/being-kabbalah-and-assyrian-sacred-tree.html  The Assyrian Sacred Tree appears to be associated with the ideas of divine being and also with the idea of limit. The explanation for such an association is that the Mesopotamians conceived divinity to be at the limit of that which is. The parallels between the Kabbalah and the Assyrian Sacred Tree were uncovered by the Assyriologist Simo Parpola in the 1990s. This was achieved using the god numbers which the Mesopotamians used to reference their gods. 

[an extract from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

***

'Ocean and the Limit of Existence' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2017/03/ocean-and-limit-of-existence.html?spref=tw There are similar ideas associated with Ocean in Europe and in the Ancient Near East. These parallels, and the concepts which underpin them, are explored in this chapter. 

[a full chapter from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

***

'Remarks on the Telos (and other lost ideas)' https://t.co/FBciqYgSWk  We recognise only one cause in the modern world, which is the efficient cause. This is concerned with work, energy and power. In antiquity Aristotle described four causes, which are discussed here. Did Aristotle conjure these by himself, or were these concepts understood across the civilised world for centuries before Classical Greece?

[From the chapter: 'Aristotle’s Four Causes' in: Understanding Ancient Thought (2017)]

***

'The Esoteric Conception of Divinity in the Ancient World' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-esoteric-conception-of-divinity-in.html  In my twenties, I was struck by the strong interest the ancients had in the idea of limit – in art, architecture, philosophy, and ritual. This interest did not much seem to engage modern scholarly attention, with a couple of notable exceptions. Initially I had no idea at all what the significance of the idea of limit might be, and no idea where pursuing it would take me. Or that it would lead to a book it would take me four years to write, and which would reframe my understanding of human intellectual history in the process.

[Some extracts from the essay: 'The Esoteric Conception of Divinity in the Ancient World', in Man and the Divine (2018)] 

***

'The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria.' https://t.co/6CMNzMiGw2 We have good information about the installation and refurbishment of the gods in Assyrian temples from Esarhaddon, who ruled Assyria before his son Ashurbanipal. Such operations were agreed (via diviners present in the workshop of the gods) with the relevant divinities beforehand (principally Shamash, the sun god), and the omens were cross-checked for accuracy. The full strangeness of what we now know renders a lot of previous anthropological interpretation horribly out of date.

[a full chapter from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

***

'Installing the Gods in Heaven: the Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-babylonian-mis-pi-ritual.html?spref=tw … This extract contains analysis and commentary on one of the surviving descriptions of the ritual found in Ashurbanipal's library during excavations. Boundaries and limits serve an important function at key moments of the three day ritual. 

[An extract from the chapter 'The Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual', from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

TY, August 30, 2018

The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria

A key chapter from The Sacred History of Being, published in November 2015. This chapter will be quite perplexing for readers who imagine that the important aspects of ancient religious practice, its preoccupations and purposes, are essentially the same as those which we are accustomed to in the later Abrahamic religions. Modern religion in fact bears very little relation to ancient religion, except in terms of some generalised concepts and vestigial remains. 

As far as the ancient Mesopotamian religious elite was concerned, it was within their power to both create divine images, and to set them up in Heaven. Strange? It is to us. But we don't make this conception unimportant by refusing to address what the evidence tells us. This chapter gives an indication of the extensiveness and detail in the evidence which has emerged from the ground over the past 150 years or so. 

The evidence for this strikingly different understanding of the nature of reality is largely ignored (currently), except by specialists in a relatively narrow field. It is hard to understand, and without an understanding of ancient philosophical ideas about the world, virtually impenetrable to modern scholarship. I've given some reasons in the chapter why this is so. 

This is just one of the puzzling areas of Mesopotamian civilization. There is elsewhere on this site a collection of divination texts, with the title 'Who will Appear Before the City?'. Equally strange, they concern conversation with Shamash the Sun god, about what will happen in the future. 

Thomas Yaeger, February 20, 2018. 

***

"Enki's beloved Eridug, E-engura whose inside is full of abundance! Abzu, life of the Land, beloved of Enki! Temple built on the edge, befitting the artful divine powers!" 

 'Enki's journey to Nibru.'  [i]

I have argued that the practice of philosophy in Greece is rooted in the context of religious ritual, and that philosophy as practised and discussed by Plato had as a principal purpose the exposing of a paradoxical quality in reality, in that reality has a two-fold nature (containing the limited, existing in time; and the unlimited, which participates in eternity), and that the world of experience is in effect an illusion within the ur-reality. As a consequence, the world as it presents itself is a series of images of Being, which point to its ineffable and invisible nature. Plato also spoke of the heavens as a moving image of eternity, patterned after the nature of Being, the 'most fair' image of divinity after which to pattern the world and everything contained within it. He also intimated that what applied to the reality of the Forms also applied to the 'revered and holy' images of the gods. This is possible because of the two-fold nature of reality. Things can be made holy, and holiness can be withdrawn.

So Plato was not talking entirely abstractly about Ideas and the Forms. They can have both concrete form on earth as well as a presence in Heaven. This suggests that in Ancient Greece, there was ritual practice associated with the making of divine statues, built on the precepts of the transcendent theology of the divine cults. Unfortunately, none of the rituals which might have existed have survived from the Greek cultural context.

The presence of a theory of Being in ancient Assyria has been demonstrated to be likely, on the basis of the clear similarity between the structures of the Jewish Kabbalah and the Assyrian Sacred Tree. The following chapters seek in addition to establish relationships between what Plato had to say about the creation of the world and its patterning, and ritual practice concerning the making of gods in Assyria. We have good detail for the latter. If the Assyrians understood the concept of Being as the root of reality itself, then the relationship of the forms of things to a wholly abstract concept of Being in Assyria should show parallels with the discussion in Plato.

The reconstruction of the Mis Pî ritual and its associated incantations mainly comes from the Neo-Assyrian or Neo/Late Babylonian periods. So that is from the 8th to 5th century B.C.E, although there are some fragments from Uruk dating to the 2nd century.  [ii]  These tablets come from Nineveh, Assur, Babylon, Sippar, Nippur, Kalhu (Nimrud), and a small number of other, more widely spread locations. The majority come from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, and so date from the 7th century B.C.E. Their colophons confirm that they were the property of the library. Some of the texts from Nineveh are copies of texts originating elsewhere, but the tablets do not often give the sources. Full details of the existing texts are given in The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001, p27 - 29.

The following text concerning the preparation for the renewal of divine images, dates from the latter days of the reign of Esarhaddon (680-669 B.C.E.), and describes the process of the renewal of the cult images from the initial consultation of the oracles, to the final installation of the images.  [iii]

When in heaven and on earth signs favourable for the renewal of the (statue of) the gods occurred,  [iv]  then I, Esarhaddon, king of the universe, king of the Land of Assur,  the apple of Assur’s eye, the beloved of the great gods, with the great intelligence and vast understanding,  which the great Nudimmud, the wise man of the gods, bestowed on me,  with the wisdom which Assur and Marduk entrusted to me when they made me aware of the renewal of (the statue of) the great gods,  with lifting of hands, prayers, and supplication, (I) prayed to the divinities Assur, king of the Gods, and to the great Lord Marduk.

The following passage concerning the right to make gods we have already encountered. I repeat it here, within its original context:

 “Whose right is it, O great gods, to create gods and goddesses in a place where man dare not trespass? This task of refurbishing (the statues), which you have constantly been allotting to me (by oracle), is difficult! Is it the right of deaf and blind human beings who are ignorant of themselves and remain in ignorance throughout their lives? The making of (images of) the gods and goddesses is your right, it is in your hands; so I beseech you, create (the gods), and in your exalted holy of holies may what you yourselves have in your heart be brought about in accordance with your unalterable word”. 

Again, as is common in the translation of texts which seem to make little sense without minor emendation, this translation inserts words apparently required in English to render the meaning clear. Thus the line which says “…the renewal of the (statue of) the gods occurred” actually ought to be rendered “….the renewal of the gods occurred,” in order not merely to be strictly faithful to the original text, but in fact to enable us to understand what the text is actually saying. Likewise with the sentence “the making of (images of) the gods and goddesses is your right,” the rendering ought to be simply: ”the making of the gods and goddesses is your right.” We are dealing with a pattern of belief which employs images towards the worship of its divinities, and understands these images as actualisable representations of that which cannot be represented as an image, since that image transcends all of the categories of our understanding. The gods can have existence in this physical world precisely because of this transcendent nature.

Such existence defies common-sense, but it does not defy the logic of idolatry. Just as for some modern worshippers there is no necessary contradiction between a divinity who is transcendent in nature and yet immanent, in antiquity there was no necessary contradiction between a transcendent god and his incarnation in a cult image. The idea – by its elusive nature - was always subject to criticism, and latterly ridicule, both within and beyond the cultural grouping which supported such a notion, but it made sense within the implex of ideas around the role of the cult image.

The passage referring to Esarhaddon as: ‘the beloved of the great gods, with the great intelligence and vast understanding, which the great Nudimmud, the wise man of the gods, bestowed on me, with the wisdom which Aššur and Marduk entrusted to me when they made me aware of the renewal of (the statue of) the great gods,’ yokes together the idea of knowledge with kingship, and also with divinity, since the gods Aššur and Marduk made him aware of the need for the renewal of the great gods. He has the ‘great intelligence and vast understanding’ of ‘the great Nudimmud’, who  is in fact the god Ea, often identified with Enki the trickster god, but also the god of craftsmen. ‘Nu.dim.mud’ is one of Ea’s epithets, meaning ‘fashioner of images’.

We have already discussed the interesting equation between knowledge and ‘vast understanding’ and its contrast with the non-royal, non-divine ignorance which is the common lot of mankind within this model - the “deaf and blind human beings who are ignorant of themselves and remain in ignorance throughout their lives…”, and also Esarhaddon’s allusion to one of the theological questions of the day, by asking ‘Whose right is it, O great gods, to create gods and goddesses in a place where man dare not trespass?” Clearly however this is Esarhaddon’s task, and no-one else’s. It is a royal task, communicated to Esarhaddon by divine command, and not easy to perform: “This task of refurbishing (the statues), which you have constantly been allotting to me (by oracle), is difficult!”

The text continues with details of the means by which the gods are to be renewed.  Esarhaddon says:

Endow the skilled craftsmen whom you ordered to complete this task with as high an understanding as Ea, their creator.  Teach them skills by your exalted word; make all their handiwork succeed through the craft of Ninshiku.

Ninshiku is yet another name for Ea, a late form from post-Kassite times, though based on the Sumerian Nin-ši-ku.  [v]  Esarhaddon is asking that the workmen be endowed with all the qualities of understanding and skill associated with Ea, the god of the craftsmen (i.e., the god also known as Nudimmud). This is tantamount to the request that the craftsmen have at least a temporary divinity for the duration of the renewal of the gods. The craftsmen have the excellence of the craftsman god only for a limited period, and for a precise purpose. They are therefore in a sense demiourgoi, like Plato’s craftsman in the Timaeus, able to fashion an image after the nature of the divine, while not being wholly or permanently divine themselves. Except that in this case, the gods themselves (aspects of the transcendent divinity) are being created.

Esarhaddon’s text continues with details of the means of oracular transmission of the gods wishes to the king:

I arranged diviners in groups in order to obtain a reliable oracular pronouncement about entering the bīt mummi. I performed divination (in order to determine whether the renewal should be done) in Aššur, Babylon (or) Nineveh. To determine the experts who should do the work and their initiation, I decided that each group should decide for itself separately; and still all the extispicies were in perfect agreement; they gave me a reliable, positive answer.

In other words, the oracular inquiries made by several groups of diviners produced answers which arrived together at the same time and agreed about the same issue.

Esarhaddon tells us that the oracular answers ordered him to enter the Bit Mummi in Aššur,

The capital, city, the dwelling of Aššur, Father of the gods; they indicated to me the names of the artisans (fit) for completing the work. By authority of a reassuring and favourable oracle, the diviners ordered me to do this work as follows:  “do it quickly, pay attention, and be careful; do not let up, do not direct your attention elsewhere”.  I trusted their positive and unchangeable oracle; I placed full reliance (on it).

It would seem from this text that there were at least two sets of oracular responses involved – those which ordered Esarhaddon to enter the Bit Mummi in connection with the renewal of the gods, and a second grouping of responses which were given within the precincts of the Bit Mummi, which named the artisans who were to undertake the work, and therefore those who were to be given a temporary divinity for the purpose of renewing the gods. Esarhaddon’s will is not to be focused on any other activity than this renewal.

In a favourable month, on a propitious day in the month of Shabatti, the favourite month of Enlil, I entered the bit mummi, the place where refurbishing was done, which the gods had chosen.

Among the epithets of Enlil (Sumerian ‘Ellil’) is ‘king of the foreign lands’, and the center of his cult was the temple E-kur, the ‘mountain house’, at Nippur. One of the images associated with Enlil is ‘merchant’ which suggests association with transactions.  [vi]  Arranging the work for the month of Shabatti, Enlil’s favourite month, would therefore be seen as propitious for work so definitively connected with the otherness of the gods in heaven.

I brought carpenters, goldsmiths, metalworkers, stone-cutters, “skilled artisans knowledgeable in the mysteries” into the temple which Shamash and Adad had indicated through divination. I installed the craftsmen there.

The work by the artisans is to be done in a place of both mystery and knowledge. We might infer from the choice of this place by the gods Shamash and Adad that the place in which the renewal is to happen is not fixed.  [vii]  The choice of the Bit Mummi is therefore likely to have a special significance for this occasion of renewal. The craft of making cult images, of the manufacture of the gods, is a religious mystery, knowledge of which is granted only to a limited group, who are installed in the chosen temple.

Red gold, mined in the mountains, which no one had as yet worked for artistic purposes, countless precious stones, not yet cut…., native to the mountains and upon which Ea had generously bestowed his splendour so that they might be fit for the lordly deities, I prepared in abundance for the shrines of the great gods, my lords, and for the bejewelling of their divinity, I gave (all these costly materials) into the pure hands (of the craftsmen).

Emphasis is laid on the fact that the materials which are to be used for the renewal of the gods have not yet been worked for such purposes – in other words they have not already served as materials for another form. They are as gifted by the gods – ‘upon which Ea had generously bestowed his splendour’, and therefore suitable for the work of the renewal. The Red gold, mined in the mountains (kur – a place of otherness), has not been worked, and ‘precious stones, not yet cut’, for the ornamentation of the divine images, Esarhaddon ‘gave…. Into the pure hands’.

‘Splendour’ here is indicated by ME.LAM/Melammu.  [viii]  Black and Green suggest that it connotes a ‘brilliant, visible glamour which is exuded by gods, heroes, sometimes by kings, and also by temples of great holiness and by gods’ symbols and emblems’.  They also suggest that ‘while it is in some ways a phenomenon of light, melam is at the same time terrifying and awe-inspiring’. Further:

Gods are sometimes said to ‘wear’ their melam like a garment or a crown, and like a garment or a crown, melam can be ‘taken off.’ If the god is killed, his melam disappears. While it is always a mark of the supernatural, melam carries no connotation of moral value: demons and terrifying giants can ‘wear’ it too.

[i] Black, Cunningham, Robson, Zόlyomi, The Literature of Ancient Sumer, 2004, p330


[ii] The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001, p27.


[iii] The Esarhaddon text comes from Borger’s Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Königs von Assyrien. AfO Beiheft. 9. Graz. It is reproduced in translation in C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001 p25-27.


[iv] Note 79 on page 25 indicates that the astronomical sign meant here was the heliacal rising of Jupiter. The omen is discussed in detail in Borger 1956: 17-18. Note 79 also suggests a comparison with an omen declaration given to Ashurbanipal CT 35 pl.13-15, line 23 , which runs: ‘I commissioned you with the renewal of these (images of the) gods and of their temples (as before the words supplied by the translator in brackets should be ignored). The astronomical omen also had to be confirmed by a liver omen.


[v] C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001.p25, n84.


[vi] Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, ‘Enlil’ p76.


[vii] Shamash and Adad were invoked in Babylonian extispicy rituals see Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, 'Utu', p184 . It is possible that the instruction to use the Bit Mummi as the place for the renewal of the gods was received through divination by liver. Interestingly Plato’s account of the liver in the Timaeus describes the organ as reflecting the reason, which is a reflection of the reason of the heavens, exactly as it might have been regarded here (revealing the wishes of the gods Shamash and Adad). See also Black and Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, 'melam' and 'ni', p 130-1.


[viii] C.B.F. Walker and Michael B. Dick’s The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia, SAALT1, 2001.p26, n86. It can be understood in terms of a visible counterpart of the 'me' of the gods.

Preface to 'The Sacred History of Being'

The "Great Chain of Being," from Ramon Lull's De ascensu & descensu intellectus, 1512.

Arthur Lovejoy explored the long history of the idea of Being (particularly the associated idea of plenitude) in the cultural history of the West, from Plato to modern times, in The Great Chain of Being. In the process he created the discipline of the History of Ideas, which stands to some degree in opposition to the History of Philosophy. The latter is in thrall to the intellectual frame which was established by the Greeks and the scholars and compilers of the Hellenistic world, which has been endlessly refined since the renaissance, and significantly revised since the later rise of the research university in the mid to late eighteenth century. This intellectual frame is now protected by classics and philosophy departments worldwide. The History of Ideas by contrast is a discipline which has no a priori interest in maintaining the current status of any body of ideas, since it seeks to place ideas in their proper context, whatever their current context may be.

This book is an essay in the History of Ideas. It differs from Lovejoy’s extensive essay in that it inserts the idea of Being into the period extending from the middle of the second millennium BCE up until Plato and Aristotle, which is nominally the point at which the idea of Being begins as a subject of articulate discussion. The reason for inserting this idea into a period where it is not supposed to belong, is that the evidence for the existence of this idea is in fact clearly present, and in volume, and the existing arguments against the presence of an articulate idea of Being in antiquity before the advent of Greek philosophy are outdated and essentially baseless. Much ink and argument has been expended to keep the early first millennium intellectual world free of a coherent idea of Being, but the evidence indicates that this is an idea which was integral and underpinning to concepts of essential importance to Mesopotamian civilisation.

When the followers of Arthur Lovejoy entered the territory of the European renaissance in the middle years of the twentieth century, they found the territory practically deserted, except for art historians and literary specialists. They were not threatening established academic disciplines and reputations with this incursion, and as a result, have repaired much of the damage to our understanding of this critical period of our intellectual history, which had suffered centuries of neglect.

By contrast, the study of ancient civilization is laden with a number of established academic interests – classics, history, anthropology, philosophy, etc. The territory is relatively crowded. History in particular is a discipline with a heavy interest in interpretation, since it employs an approach to evidence which (historians believe) has a universal applicability, and so they are defending a methodological approach, as well as the interpretation of the evidence.

Plato is supposedly the first to rigorously engage with the idea of Being. He is one of our best sources for the understanding of ancient ways of thinking, and it is useful to read him carefully, and to follow the consequences of his arguments, since he wished to be understood, even if he expressed himself through necessarily obscure and technical language. Some of the esoteric doctrines turn out to be present in his text, once key aspects of his argument are properly grasped. This is true particularly in connection with his idea of the Forms, and his theory of knowledge.

It can be shown that his arguments about the Forms or Ideas are connected with the practice of the worship of divine statues, which connection should long ago have been made by scholarship. All direct documentation of the ritual for the installation of cult statuary in Greece has perished, even if we have, in cryptic form, an account of the rationale from Plato. However, through extraordinary good fortune,  rituals and incantations for the installation of cult statues in Assyria and Babylonia survive, so it is possible for us to examine these to understand how these cult objects fitted into a social structure focussed on knowledge of the divine (as was the case in both Greece and Assyria).

Assyria is, for a period of around a hundred and fifty years, the best documented civilization in antiquity. From it we have an invaluable record of the actual conduct of a ritual installation conducted by Esarhaddon, one of the last kings of Assyria. This tells us many things about how the process was understood, which otherwise we would have to guess at.

Idolatry has been very poorly served by historians and scholars of antiquity until recently. It seems in general that scholarship has been content to treat idolatry as a part of the ancient world which not only does not make sense to us, but was probably also an incoherent and wholly credulous nonsense to the ancients. In other words it is seen as the product of a primitive stupidity (urdummheit), bearing no relation to anything approaching reason, and we should not expect to make much of it. However Wittgenstein warned against this approach to evidence, particularly in connection with J. G. Frazer’s widely read (and critically outmoded) interpretation of ancient systems of belief. He suggested that perhaps if we understood the context of the beliefs, we would understand how these beliefs might represent what, at the time, would have been an intelligible response to that context. In any case it is arrogant of us to assume, a priori, that those who have quite different belief systems from ourselves, are foolish and misguided.

The idea of Being and its associated ideas represents a noumenal frame which can (and should) underpin an understanding of the phenomena of ancient religions in the Mediterranean and in the near East.  By this I mean that the idea of Being was common to a number of cultures in this area in the millennium and a half before the advent of the common era. The suggestion is, that it is possible to build phenomenal public religious structures, with distinctive and distinct imagery and liturgy, on the basis of a very similar set of discussions of the noumenal basis which a theory of Being provides. In other words, a number of cultural features which are held in common in states such as Greece and Assyria, such as polytheism, idolatry, sacrifice, divination, and so on, have their origin and their source of meaning in the common grasp of a theory of Being by the priestly classes around the Mediterranean and the near-east.

In general, during the past two hundred years, scholarship has accepted that the creation described in Plato’s Timaeus involves a copy of reality, which contains the universe of movement and change. This argument was always a tease by Plato, indicated by his labelling it as a ‘likelihood’. It is however possible to show, through close analysis of Plato’s argument, that he tells us what he really holds about the nature of reality, and the relationship of the moving image of it to that reality. Which is that there is only subjective apprehension of aspects of Being, and nothing is fundamentally separable from Being. This interpretation is explored, in particular for its important implications for the theory of Forms, his neglected theory of vision, and the perceived relationship between epistemology and ontology in the ancient world. It explains a large number of things in the evidence which remains, which otherwise have no explanation, such as the emphasis on the power of the word, and the power to call the gods into existence.

Plato’s view of reality as ultimately subjective has a close parallel in the philosophy of Bishop Berkeley’s seventeenth century view, in which, similarly, there is no objective reality which can be established beyond our capacity to perceive.

So, this is a radical book.  It sets out to critique our view of the ancient past, which is essentially a complex consensus reality - reducing to meaninglessness many crucial and endlessly repeated details - through criticism of some of the many preconceptions and assumptions we use to understand the evidence. It also seeks to sketch out an alternative construction of the intellectual world of antiquity in both Greece and Assyria.  It isn't a book to be read by students studying for examinations. Though students of these subjects might like to read it afterwards for a significantly different background perspective.

The plan of the book is relatively simple. It is divided into three main parts. The first part explores the ontological argument from the early modern period (Bishop Anselm) up to Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Ontology is really about the study of reality, rather than about providing a proof of the existence of God, which is what the ontological argument is now understood to be. The point of the survey is to show that most of the discussion relating to the proof of the existence of God is poorly argued, and often based on loose and unreliable definitions. These arguments also don't deal credibly with the nature of reality, for the reason that the ideas of God under discussion aren't understood to have a bearing on the nature of reality itself. This is true even for Kant (for whom I have enormous respect), who understood better than most that the question of what reality is, depends on what the available categories of our understanding bring to the inquiry.

Discussion of Being and the nature of reality itself was much more sophisticated in the ancient world than anything produced since, though not written up as formal argument. Exploration of argument about the nature of Being in ancient Greece is the subject of the second part.  The history of Plato scholarship (only around two centuries old) is also critically examined. Currently split into two camps, the first arguing his thought developed over time, and the second arguing he was writing around a consistent but impenetrable doctrine, which is not explained in the texts. The former ignore many of Plato's statements and arguments in order to make their case. The latter are usually fighting a rearguard action, since it is hard to define what they are defending.

A third position is considered, based on a formulation which appears in Plato's Timaeus, whose implications have not been explored properly.  This formulation, in conjunction with discussion elsewhere in Plato's work, about whether reality is one or two,  necessarily promotes the idea that Plato was writing about a reality that is wholly transcendental in nature. That is, there is no real distinction between the ineffable and unchanging nature of Being, and the world of movement and change, the knower and the known, and that consequently, the latter world is an illusion. What is new here is the analysis of Plato's arguments, which provides support for the third position.

This has a bearing on Plato's discussion of the Forms. Both camps have made nothing of a key remark in the Sophist where the Forms are directly and unequivocally connected with divine statues. [1] The home of gods, but apparently devoid of thought or movement on earth. This remark connects Plato's discussion of Being with the ritual and theology of both Greece and the near East, and suggests (as Plato himself did) a great age for the practice of philosophy.

The role of Being in the 1st millennium BCE in both Greece and Assyria, and the evidence for it, is the subject of the Third Part.

A few notes on spellings. This is a cross-disciplinary work, which quotes from a wide variety of sources. Greek text has been kept to a minimum, and has been transliterated into roman letters, so it can be pronounced as it appears. A dash over a vowel indicates that it is long. Thus an 'ō indicates the omega, which is a long vowel, as in 'zōon.' Pronunciation of Sumerian and Akkadian words is not settled and secure, and since I've quoted from different writers, the same names appear in slightly different forms, such as Apsu/Abzu. I chose not to normalise these throughout the text. Shamash, here rendered in roman letters, will sometimes be found spelled 'Šamaš.' So 'š'  is vocalised as 'sh'. Other letters found in Akkadian are: 'ḫ'  which is pronounced as a roughly vocalised 'h', close to the 'ch' sound in 'loch';   'ṣ' is a dental sibilant, which should be pronounced 'ts' as in 'tsar'.

There is a bibliography at the end of the book. Articles consulted are referenced in the footnotes.

Thomas Yaeger, Edinburgh, February 2015.

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[1] In Lewis Campbell's edition of the Sophist, from 1867.