14

NABU

Mercury, Scribe to the Gods

Curiously little is known of the cult of Nabu. This is especially surprising because it is clear that during the first millennium BCE Nabu’s cult became so widespread and so popular that it began to rival that of Marduk. Indeed, the cult is believed to have survived into the Christian period—to the fourth century CE. Yet so few documents have been found that describe any rituals or texts integral to his cult that this major god essentially remains a mystery to us.

The center of Nabu’s cult was the Babylonian city of Borsippa, situated by a lake near the Euphrates River about ten miles south of Babylon, which generally dominated it politically. Borsippa’s existence is recorded from the beginning of the second millennium BCE. Nabu’s temple, the Ezida, held a notable library to which Ashurbanipal sent his men in their search for unusual tablets. Unfortunately, Borsippa has not been extensively or scientifically excavated by archaeologists.

Nabu’s cult, however, seems to have arisen rather late. While he is first mentioned during the reign of Hammurabi, it was only around the turn of the first millennium BCE that Nabu became god of Borsippa and at the same time replaced the earlier Sumerian goddess, Nisaba or Nidaba, as the deity presiding over wisdom, writing, and accounts, and as the patron of scribes and writing. He became sufficiently popular for the later kings to have a formula mentioning their support of the temples of Marduk and Nabu stamped upon each of their building bricks. And he became sufficiently widespread for the prophet Isaiah to complain about him.*34

Nabu was the messenger of the gods “without whom no plan is initiated in heaven.”†35 His name means literally “herald,” which was later repeated by the Roman Mercury, herald of the gods. The similarities do not end there; Nabu was considered to reflect the rapid motion of the planet Mercury and thus had the attribute of swiftness.1 His symbol, carved upon stelae, was most commonly the writing desk, but he was also represented, on occasion, by a mason’s chisel or a measuring rod.2

Nabu’s divine role is not described in the creation myth, the Enuma Elish, which was formulated early in the second millennium BCE, yet he appears in the texts associated with the great spring festival as son of Marduk and divine scribe. He was also the one who, on the seventh day of the festival (the seventh of Nisannu), rescued Marduk from his imprisonment. Then, on the eleventh day, when the gods assembled to decide the destiny, the fate, of the world for the next year, it was Nabu who recorded them.

Although simple, this story gives an unexpected insight into the origins of a popular modern (and medieval) astrological technique: that of casting an astrological chart for the moment of the spring ingress—the moment that the sun enters Aries—in order to predict the events of the coming year.

Why should such a chart for the sun’s entrance into the first sign of the zodiac determine the character of the subsequent year? The answer would seem to lie in the ancient Babylonian festival and its associated mythology. For if, as they believed, the fate of the coming year was determined by the gods, then, through their interpreters—the planets—this fate would be declared to all who had the ability to read it.

The sky was considered to be the Book of Heaven, Shitir Shame, and hence in the sky this fate is to be read. Thus, at the beginning of the year, the fate for the coming year could be read in the movements of the planets. And this is precisely what a modern astrologer is doing when an ingress chart is cast. Modern astrologers still retain vestiges of the Babylonian spring festival. And that the Assyrians also had some prototype of this ingress chart is revealed by one statement in the reports translated by Professor Thompson: “When Jupiter appears at the beginning of the year, in that year its corn will be prosperous.”3

From 1846 to 1855 the explorer Henry Rawlinson—who had earlier climbed the rock of Behistun to copy the cuneiform inscriptions—conducted a number of excavations in Iraq. One of them, in the summer and autumn of 1854, was the first to be conducted at Borsippa, where he uncovered the remains of the temple of Nabu. As his workers dug their trenches farther down into the mound, uncovering layer upon layer of the outer wall of the terraced temple, Rawlinson noticed something odd: several of the stages seemed either to be made of different colored bricks or to have been covered by a substance imparting different colors to them. It appeared evident to Rawlinson that this was the result of a deliberate attempt, on the part of the Babylonian constructors, to impart a different color to each successive stage of the temple.

This temple was a ziggurat tower made up of seven stages, the first being 272 feet square and 26 feet high. This stage had a coating of black pitch about half an inch thick. Above this the next stage, of the same height, was made of red bricks. Above there were stages of a light yellow brick, a gray brick, and one, the second highest, was covered with a vitrified layer of “blue slag.” As Rawlinson writes:

I was soon struck with the coincidence, that the colour black for the first stage, red for the third, and blue for what seemed to be the sixth, were precisely the colours which had belonged to the first, third, and sixth spheres of the Sabaean planetary system . . . were the colours which appertained to the planets Saturn, Mars and Mercury, by whom those spheres were respectively ruled!4

The Sabaeans were a religious group during the sixth to tenth centuries CE who were based in Harran, a major city on the route from Assyria and Babylonia to the Mediterranean. They had retained much ancient star lore from the past, and it pervaded their writings, which were available in the Arab world.

Struck by these parallels, Rawlinson then looked again at some artifacts he had discovered. The ancient Babylonians were in the habit of burying, at each corner of the foundations of a new building, an inscribed cylinder recording details of the king or other prominent person under whose auspices this construction was carried out. Rawlinson had found two of these: the cylinders, which were identical, recorded not only “that the Temple was dedicated to ‘the planets of the seven spheres’” but that it was called “the stages of the seven spheres.”5

Rawlinson then felt justified in proposing the following reconstruction: that each stage of the temple was dedicated to a different planet and that each was given this planet’s color. Noting that the order of the planets for the Sabaeans was Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon, he suggested that the first stage, that upon the ground and coated with jet-black pitch, was dedicated to Saturn; the second, of red-brown bricks, was dedicated to Jupiter; the third, of brighter red bricks, to Mars; the fourth, to the sun, though he could not distinguish any color difference in the bricks; the fifth, of yellow bricks, to Venus; the sixth, covered by a vitrified blue layer, to Mercury; and the seventh stage, to the moon, although, as with the fourth stage, he could not detect any color difference here. He suggested that the fourth stage had originally been covered with a gold veneer and the seventh with a silver.

While subsequent excavations over the succeeding century or more have revealed certain other temples with remains that suggest that some or all of their stages were colored, no further evidence has ever been discovered in the tablets that could prove that Rawlinson’s interesting speculations had a basis in fact. His thoughts cannot, even today, be dismissed, and time may yet prove him correct. Indeed, as we shall see, his looking to the Sabaeans for clues was not without justification.

In the reports found in the Nineveh repositories, Mercury was written in the Sumerian figures GU.UD, often translated as Gud. It was pronounced in Akkadian as Shihtu, which means “jumping,” and is perhaps a reflection of its speed in relation to the other planets. Its most well-known effect was to cause rain; one of the prayers given on day five of the spring festival mentions “the star Gud which causes rain.”6

This depiction of Mercury as a “rainmaker” receives confirmation in the reports: “When Mercury is seen in Iyyar, a flood will come and benefit the fields and meadow lands.”7 It is useful to remember that for the Mesopotamians a flood was, in general, of benefit to the country so long as the water control systems were not overwhelmed. The corollary to this is revealed in another report: “When Mercury appears in Elul, there will be a heightening of the market, an increase of cereals.”8 For if the land received a plentiful rainfall, then the farmers would have a good harvest, meaning that the markets would be filled with high-quality produce. This same omen also reports that aspects of Mercury suggest that “cattle will be numerous in the fields” and that “sesame and dates will prosper,” the clear inference being that Mercury affected the production and sale of basic agricultural commodities.

Apart from these commercial aspects of Mercury, omens drawn from this planet played a particularly important role in the organization of the palace for, as the reports state unequivocally, “The planet Mercury is the crown prince.”9 This clearly derives from the mythological role of Nabu being the son of Marduk.

Any variation in Mercury’s appearance or movement affected the crown prince and his duties. A number of reports are concerned with the correct time for the prince to enter the palace and meet the king, the implication being that there was a strong stricture against the king’s heir and the king being in the same place at the same time. However, if the planet was particularly bright, then this was one of the most advantageous times: “The planet Mercury is very bright; as it is the star of the crown prince, it means fortune . . . for the king and the crown prince. The crown prince is to enter into the presence of the king.”10

The connections between these ancient attributes of Mercury and those used by modern astrologers are not immediately apparent. Yet beneath the ancient symbolism are the seeds of the modern. While it is true that Mercury today no longer has any connection with rainmaking, it would seem that the effect of this rainmaking, the bountiful harvest and active markets, is the beginning of one of the modern attributes of Mercury—that of ruling commerce and markets. While large companies and multinational commerce are represented by other factors for modern astrologers, Mercury is still seen as ruling the marketplace itself, where buying and selling is done directly.11 This includes stock and commodity markets and even the “horsetrading” done on a daily basis by bankers and politicians. One can see how this derives from the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian city marketplaces.

Of course, while the astrological reports do not mention anything to do with predictions for the part of society that fell under the patronage of Nabu, the scribes, this mythological attribute of Mercury finds its way into modern astrology. Today Mercury also rules over writing and communication.12

During this survey of the Babylonian and Assyrian gods and their links with the planets we have had occasion to note certain minor attributes that, rather than having fallen by the wayside, have remained associated with the planets until the modern day. Often these attributes seem curious, even weird. Mercury is no exception. In modern astrology Mercury rules thieves. Can we see a beginning of this idea in the following report from the eighth century BCE? “When Mercury is visible in Kislew, there will be robbers in the land.”13