Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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'W' ' x-, THE GATES OF SUNRISE IN THE OLDEST MYTHOLOGIES. In a noteworthy contribution to Vol. III. of the American journal of Archaeology, Dr. William Hayes Ward, of New York, advances convincing considerations in favor of interpreting a cer- tain representation often recurring in the ancient Babylonian cylinders, as referring to the Gates of Sunrise and to the coming forth of Shamash, the Sun-god, from them. No competent student of the subject can well doubt that the explanation is at once strikingly original and correct. But where in ancient Babylonian thought were these Gates of Sunrise located? Not above the Median mountains, to the East of Babylonia, as Dr. Ward inadvertently implies, and as any one unmindful of the peculiarities of ancient cosmology would inevitably suppose. Not on the Eastern but zmricr the Nor-lhem horizon stood the twin mountains and the Sacred Gate. The Egyptians had a similar Gate of their Sun-god Ra. As Maspero says: La Porte Sacree est representee dans les vig- nettes du Livre des Morts, tantot ouverte et laissant paraitre entre ses deux montants le disque solaire ou le dieu Toumou a forme humaine, tantot fermee et verrouillee. 1 And where was this Sacred Portal? Under the Northern horizon of Egypt, reached by the sun six hours after his apparent setting, and left by him six hours before his apparent rising? More precisely it was 'fau point ou Shou souleve le ciel fp. 2745 5 consequently, though below the horizon of Egypt, it was at the true summit of the Earth, the Northern Pole? The twin mountains represented in the Shamash cylinders are doubtless the twin Qmasij mountains referred to in the second 1A'wne de !'1lix!oixe der Rflzlgialzs. Paris, 1887, p. 274 n. 210511 p. 275. 3See the six theses in Egyptian cosmology in Harlan U1zizfw'.fz'5f YL-ar Book, Vol. x, p. 33: or in 1'arzm'1'.re f21unaQ p. 173.

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THE CRY OF THE SOUL. The tree stands full of ripened seeds, The tempest smites it hareg Tha! tempest pzgf is juxl enough To root lhwn every-zvhere J The night that settles on the clay, And lills with gloom and douht, lVha! is il, pray, bu! heawnhv 'wise 'zvaj' Ta make the .rlrzrx .thine out .9 O heart, take heart! In nights of soul, In every loss of good, Reach outward hands of faith and touch The mothering Vastitude! 'Tis not a mindless, pulseless void, A senseless, lifeless Allg It is a Fulness thrice deployed, A Presence Personal. The bosom in which all things lie, The nest of all that lives, It is not space, nor air, nor sky, God's living heart it is! O Heart of God, thou wert too wide For my small creaturehood, But that, all worlds and souls beside, Thou dost Thyself include. O Heart of God, thrice wondrous love And life in Thee are found, A Love that Speaks, and Breathes, and loves, In one eternal round. O Heart of God, wherein all wings Arc still which highest soar, In Thee my poised heart, soaring, sings- It can be tossed no more.

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YYIE G41 TES OF SU1VRISl5. 31 column of the ninth tablet of the Epic of Gisdhubarf' They appear to have been terminal peaks of the mountain of the world, which, like the Hara-berezaiti of the Iranians, was f' the support and mother of all lesser mountains. Professor Sayce is quite right in making the Babylonian mountain of sunrise and mountain of sunset one and the same 35 nor need he have hesitated as he seems to have done to identify that one with the Mountain of the World. 6 In the bilingual hymn appended to Dr Ward's article, it is abundantly identitied with that great mountain, U the mountain of Cate, ff the place of destinies. 7 But, though to a person in the latitude of Babylonia or Egypt the mountain of the sunrise was below the local horizon, it was not properly in the underworld. In Us own Zzzliizfrie it was the dazzling summit of the spherical earth, the only stairway to the abode of the gods. Hence, speaking with reference to the true heaven-the heaven of the gods, the poet could, with perfect consistency, sing of the sunrising as in a heavenly region, in the Navel of Heaven, and allude to the Sun-gate as a gate of the Skye. Failing to recognize the like sphericity of the old Egyptian earth, whose mountain of sunrise exactly corresponded to the 45ayce, lhbburt Lectures, p. 363 n. If as Brugseh has conjectured, the lfour Props of Heaven in Egyptian mythology were terminal peaks of their polar W'ellbu1gg answering to the four contreforts of Mount Meru in the four cardinal points, it is likely that the Babylonian Kharsag-kurkura also had four such peaks, and that the two represented in the Shamash seals are those which in Puranic geography stand in the N. li. and S. E. corners of llzivrita. In starting upon his Iiastward journey it would be between those two that the Sun-god would naturally issue forth from the Saz111mgu1'lu1z am lWu'df1r1!. In this connection it should be noted, that the Iigptian picture given by Brugsch and others, in which Nut is represented as supported at four extreme points by feet and hands, and at the Navel by Shu, is not, as usually understood, a picture ofthe sky above Egpyt, but is a representation of the polar heaven of the gods. The hands and feet of the goddess are the Four Props. Shu, at the Navel of Heaven Qand Navel of Earth j, is the prototype of Atlas and thc Atlas pillar. The passage of the sun through her body represents, not the twelve hours of an equatorial night, but the bricfer transit of thc child of Nut through the heaven that overspans Ta-nuter. 516123 p. 361. 0Parafl1'.ve Fommi pp. 123-137. 7Warcl, IMA p. 56: Sayee, Ibiza p. 515. On the expression ffplace of destinies compare Lajard, Le Cults cl lex lllyrlires do Illlqlhfll. Paris, 1867, pp. 39, 133. 8 Hfust Arirm In.w,-rzptiom, iv.l 7. Translated by Sayce in llibbl-rt Lt-ctmw, p. 171. On the Navel of Heaven, see I'nrzm'i.re 1221111111 pp. 202-224. 1- ,f H