'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎160v] (325/862)

■ BHMRBH
222
HISTORY
partly syllabic and partly alphabetical and partly ‘ideographs’
representing. a whole word. Hence knowledge was accessible only
by the mediation of trained scribes, and the temples with their
professional class of learned priests became the storehouses of
knowledge. Yet despite the cumbersome complexity of cuneiform it
became the common medium of the Middle East, and was adopted
as the script of diplomacy by Egyptians, Hittites, and later by
Persians (photos. 108-110).
Religion. The religion of Babylonia was based on the polytheistic
nature-worship common to all the ancient Mediterranean peoples.
Particular forces of nature were personified in human form and
named: the sun as Shamash and Anu, the moon as Sin, rain or water
as Nabu, thunder and lightning as Adad, and the mystery of growth
and reproduction as Nana or Ishtar, the ‘mother-goddess’ of Baby
lonia. This multiplicity of gods and attributes, reproduced with
different names within each separate community or tribe, was
eventually organized by priestly learning into a pantheon, but the
Semitic polytheism differed from that of Greece and Rome in the
great stress laid on power. The notion of one all-powerful deity,
the lord of hosts and lord of lords, terms often applied to Bel Marduk
and Enlil (originally Sun-gods), is common to all Semitic thought
and was expressed in cuneiform hymns and psalms at an early period.
Ideas that later attained full growth and purer form in Judaism and
Islam were already current in Babylonia, amid a welter of crude and
superstitious beliefs and practices (photo. 91).
The Babylonian priesthoods were responsible for another set of
notions, the astrological interpretations of astronomy, which have
endured into modern times. But the building up of a system of
astrological predictions applicable to individuals was the work of
later ages, after the Greek conquest. In Babylonian astrology only
great units were concerned—kingdoms, states, and peoples and
astrological prediction arose from calculations based on the genuine
observation of heavenly bodies. The reason for astronomical
observation was that it was the priests’ duty to regulate the calendar,
a prime necessity of agriculture in the climate of Mesopotamia.
Towns and Buildings. Mesopotamia, particularly lower Mesopo
tamia, was a land of numerous towns, many with a large population.
This feature, common to Abbasid and modern Iraq, is mainly due
to climatic and topographical factors which encourage the settlement
of the agricultural population in large units. But towns also de
veloped with a different basis, particularly market towns and bazaar