Culture and religion of ancient Arabia Automatic translate

Everyone knows something about the ancient Egyptian culture on the Nile and the ancient Babylonian-Assyrian culture on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. But only a few know that long before Muhammad in I or in II millennium BC. e. in Arabia, another “third culture” flourished. From it remained numerous ruins and several thousand inscriptions.

Prior to the opening of shipping on the Black Sea, trade caravans from India to Europe were sent through Arabia, stretched with gold thread through this poor country. In the southern and western parts of the Arabian Peninsula, where these trade routes passed, separate kingdoms arose. Each of them had a monopoly on a certain segment of caravan routes. In these states, great wealth accumulated, which is described by ancient writers.

The Danish "Niebuhr Expedition" (1761 - 1767) drew attention to interesting ruins in various places in South Arabia. Other researchers followed in the wake of this expedition. French Orientalist prof. Joseph Halevi undertook (1870 - 1871) a trip full of dangers to South Arabia and brought from there the first large collection of inscriptions. The Austrian Eduard Glaser brought such an extensive collection of texts (c. 1800) that they are still not yet published and interpreted.

Previously, Arabia, this huge barren peninsula with vast steppes and impassable deserts, was considered a country without culture. It was indisputable that any possibility of a more or less high culture was excluded here. It was argued that the people living in Arabia, forever and ever condemned to remain without culture, unchanged, like the very nature of this country, the nature of the desert.

Whereas in Northern Arabia and Palestine, in Transjordan and Mesopotamia, striking monumental traces of former high culture are found in impassable and uninhabited deserts, then in southern Arabia water was also used in remote times with the help of dams, canals and terraces. This made it possible to irrigate and make the land fertile in arid time, while now in the rainy season water without benefit goes into the sand. To this we must add the great wealth that settled in the country as a result of profitable trade.

Ancient writers report large kingdoms in Arabia. These states, says Eratosthenes, are ruled by kings, are in a flourishing state and decorated with beautiful temples. The houses here are similar to the houses in Egypt, and in the territory of each of these kingdoms exceeds the Nile Delta.

Agatharchid praises the culture of incense in the kingdom of Sheba and the welfare of the inhabitants. “They,” he claims, “are the largest people in all of Arabia. Their country, so-called. “Happy Arabia” is rich in fossils as well as cattle. Incense plants emit such a strong odor that even sailors who sail past the coast on sailing ships can smell it. However, among the fragrant plants, small red snakes are found, the bite of which is fatal. The eternal fragrance is so intense that residents often fall ill from it. If this people is distinguished by its wealth, then the reason for this is trade, which brings countless incomes. In addition, this country is rich in gold and silver. Due to her distant position, she has never been subjected to foreign conquest. ”

“In the city of Saba, where the royal palace is located, one can meet all kinds of high-value works of art.” Among them, Agatharhide names gold and silver goblets of artwork, halls with numerous columns, gilded or decorated with capitals silver images.

“The ceilings and doors are decorated with golden violets. When building houses, residents with great wastefulness use gold, silver, ivory… Residents have been serenely enjoying this happiness for a long time, because they did not come into contact with people who were greedy for someone else’s wealth. ”

These ancient descriptions resemble the stories of classic writers about Babylon and Egypt, stories that are almost fabulous in nature.

Recent critical science did not give them faith until these ancient cultures were discovered, thanks to travelers, excavations, finds and explorations. Of course, the inscriptions do not confirm all the details of the descriptions that have come down. For example, queens are not mentioned in the lists of South Arabian kings. However, the content of the inscriptions makes it clear why the ancient storytellers spread so much about the richness and high culture of South Arabia.

Road and irrigation structures, vast temples, palaces, castles and fortresses built from large hewn stones rise from the sand of the desert. The holes between them are filled with molten lead, which allowed these structures to withstand the destructive effect of time for thousands of years. These witnesses of past greatness are not dumb. More than 2,000 inscriptions from South Arabia (one of them contains more than a thousand words), temple tables made of stone and cast bronze, inscriptions on buildings and tombs, statues, gold and silver coins, etc., speak of a new, previously unknown culture in Arabia.. d.

The main center of this culture was in South, “happy” Arabia, but in general this culture spread along caravan routes in the Black Sea all the way to the bordering Palestine, where inscriptions written in the same alphabet, and sometimes even in South Arabic, indicate diligent activity merchant people.

These monuments expanded the historical era of Arabia by more than 1, 5 thousand years. If you operate with round numbers, then before almost nothing was known about the history of Arabia until the time of Muhammad. Many scholars did not believe that until that time the Arabs could read and write. And now historians have extensive inscriptions dating back to around 1000 BC. e. Such a high civilization cannot arise suddenly, and therefore its beginning can be attributed to the II millennium BC. e. Some researchers believe that certain groups of inscriptions should be attributed precisely to this millennium.

With the help of ruins and inscriptions, the geographical position was established, and partly the existence of four large kingdoms in South Arabia, which was mentioned by ancient authors. The smaller kingdoms also became known. To the south of the Ruba Al-Khali desert, equal in size to France, Belgium and Holland, there was a large kingdom of Hadramaut. Of all the ancient Arab kingdoms, it is the least explored. Beyond the rivers that flowed into the sea at the old trading port of Kane Emporion, the capital of Sabvat (Sabota) lay in the fertile area. In the vicinity of it are still found many massive, tall, like towers, buildings in the ancient style and numerous ruins. Only a few inscriptions from this kingdom are known.

Decades ago, as little was known about the kingdom of Kataban West as was the kingdom of Hadramaut. Penetration into these parts was for Europeans the greatest danger to life. However, the scientist Ed. Glaser, who lived for many years in South Arabia, managed to persuade several Bedouins to make imprints (on paper) of ancient inscriptions. So, he got a hundred copies of very ancient and valuable inscriptions. Some of these copies have been published. The main part of the copies is gradually published by Glaser compatriot by the Austrian scientist N. Rodokonakis, who prepares them for printing with exemplary thoroughness. But things are moving slowly. We have to overcome great difficulties of a lexical as well as historical nature. There are inscriptions from both mentioned kingdoms dating back to both BC and the new one. The exact chronology is still not possible to establish.

But historians have a list of Sabei kings. It is longer than the list of Danish kings, although Denmark is the oldest kingdom in Europe. In the kingdom of Saba, with the capital Marib north of Kataban, kings are indicated from the 9th century. BC e. until about 550 AD e. After a humble beginning in the barren region, these kings subjugated all major parts of South Arabia to their power, until Saba became the most powerful state in South Arabia, and her name was overshadowed by all other Sabei states. The last significant inscription from the brilliant times of this power is carved on the wall of a powerful dam, which soon afterwards collapsed and captured the decline of the state. This inscription consists of 136 lines and belongs to King Abrach (circa 540 CE), who changed the faith of the fathers and converted to Christianity.

With the fourth large ancient kingdom, the so-called. Minean, there are many puzzles that await their resolution. The capital of this kingdom, Mine, is located northwest of ancient Saba. In language and writing, as well as in culture and religion, there are local features, despite the common similarities with the southern and eastern states. Regarding the time of the existence of this kingdom, scientists hold different views. According to Glaser and prof. Gommel, its heyday belongs to the II millennium BC. e., other scholars claim that it coincides with the ancient Sabean era.

Be that as it may, the caravan stations and colonies of the Menaeans extended far north: inscriptions testify to this.

What do ancient monuments say about this country? They say the same thing as the ruins of palaces and cities in Babylon and Assyria, the pyramids and the ruins of temples in Egypt. They testify to the former greatness of the country, which, thanks to the industriousness and outstanding energy of the population, has become a center of high culture. Subsequently, when the nodal points of trade and culture advanced further, this culture was destroyed. Before scientists is the history of an ancient culture that shone like a lamp, but then again plunged into darkness. Now the country is vegetating in darkness, for the centers of culture have moved. Messages of inscriptions on wars and local events are of little interest to modern man, but these inscriptions indicate the level of culture, which is of particular importance for the history of culture and religion. This is the only material revealing one of the foundations of the current religion in Europe.

It is Arabia that is considered the homeland of the Semites. Obviously, Semitic peoples (Babylonians, Assyrians, Jews, etc.) came from here, who laid the foundation for high cultures in the northern regions. The Arabian culture is that initial basis which then meets in all the highest Semitic cultures. In the same way, the primitive Arab religion served as the basis for other Semitic religions of antiquity, and through them for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The primitive Arab pre-Islamic religion remained previously unknown, as Muslim fanatics mercilessly uprooted its remnants, everything that had passed from the “jahiliya,” the “century of barbarism and ignorance.”

So, religion is the dominant element in the ancient Arab ideology. This religion is the foundation lacking a historical starting point for later Semitic religions.

Scientists have long paid attention to ancient Arabia in the hope of finding here the missing historical basis for the Old Testament. A number of cult details in ancient Arabic inscriptions reveals a striking resemblance to the Jewish religion and to the cult so characteristic of Jews without religious images. Other Semites have such a cult only in the ancient Arab religion.

The idea turned out to be correct, but only in recent years, as the inscriptions were published and interpreted, did historians begin to understand that there are similarities not only in external moments, that the central ideas of both Judaism and Christianity can be reduced to the ancient Arab religion, and through it to primitive worldview, which is found in other primitive religions. The ancient Arabs can find that primitive picture of the world, which is found not only in most of the primitive peoples, but also as a prehistoric religious relic from some cultural peoples.

Heaven and earth are the arena of life and peace. They don’t think about their origin. Reflections on this subject can be found only later, among cultural peoples, in their myths about the Creation of the world. The question is only about the origin of living things.

According to the ancient ideas of the Arabian Bedouins, a tribe, people and even the whole human race are one big family, descending from a common ancestor. This also applies to creatures living in the sky. According to the animistic representations of primitive peoples, everything that moves is a living creature. The path of the stars in the sky and the effects emanating from them show that they are living beings. In the ancient Arab religion, as in other primitive religions, the meeting of the moon and the sun during the new moon is considered a sexual union. The moon and the sun are the heavenly Adam and Eve, from whom the heavenly beings descend. Stars are heavenly children.

Venus, which under the tropics seems like a small moon, occupies a special place among the stars in magnitude and brightness. She is included with the Moon and the Sun in the holy trinity of gods, consisting of father, mother and son. This trinity is found thousands of years BC in the developed Semitic religions, as well as in the Christian era. In this divine trinity, the son is especially close to his father. Other stars are also the sons of God, but Venus occupies a special place among them, as the first-born (bacour) of the supreme god.

There is no impassable gulf between Heaven and Earth; they meet on the horizon. Therefore, there is also no gaping abyss between celestials and earthly beings. The sons of men are at the same time the sons of God, with star children serving as a link. People come from the divine father and mother, from the heavenly Adam and Eve, whom the ancient Arabs worship in the person of the Moon and the Sun, as the sources of all life.

The ancient Babylonians several millennia BC, the lunar deity is a gracious father who gave birth to all living things, “both gods and people,” while the Sun here was also originally a mother deity, judging by the name “shamashummiya” (“The Sun is my mother "). The key to unraveling the mysteries of life is birth: a primitive person does not know another way for life to appear.

Over the course of millennia, this mythology has turned lifeless, impersonal celestial bodies, mechanically making their way across the horizon and not interfering in human affairs, into personal beings, into ethical deities, graciously defending for their earthly children.

The naturalistic foundation has completely fallen away. God - the father no longer lives on the moon, but sits above the heavenly bodies, as a supernatural invisible deity. This is no longer a naturalistic deity. Cultural Semitic religions, as well as biblical religions, break the blood connection that originally connected the person with the god-father. God is no longer the father of people in the physical sense, but the religious side of this fatherhood remained, which was extremely important already in the ancient Arab religion in its higher forms.

The celestial bodies were of great help to the Arabs in their wanderings through the vast desert: they showed the way to the nomads. But if the personal creatures that lived on these luminaries became even more important in the religion of the Arabs, becoming for them the guardian angels, protecting their lives from the cradle to the grave, then this process was based on the idea of ​​the relationship between the stars and man.

When the poor Bedouin turned his gaze to heaven, - as believers do everywhere on earth - he saw only heavenly bodies and believed that they graciously contemplate his life and help him in happiness and unhappiness. Belief in kinship with these creatures was originally a primitive inference, a primitive attempt to explain the mystery of the origin of life. But this religious faith was a powerful reinforcement of man’s hopes for the help of celestials.

For Bedouins, help can come only from a family or tribe, everything else is naturally hostile to them. Since celestial beings are my first parents, they belong to my family, so I can be sure of their help. The mythology of kinship has transformed, therefore, the impersonal celestial bodies into personal friends of a person, connected with him by the most sacred ties that primitive culture knows.

Among the ancient Semites, the father has power over his wife, children and grandchildren to the extent that the peoples of Europe do not know. The omnipotent head of the family is, on the one hand, a strict judge over the life and death of his subjects, and on the other hand, a zealous father who takes care of all the little things for his younger offspring.

The same relationships in the family of gods among the ancient Arabs. Here, too, the God-father, originally in the form of the Moon, is the omnipotent supreme deity both for the family of gods in the close sense, and for the crowd of human children. With requests are addressed to him. Initially, the female deity and god-son play a subordinate role in religion. But already in the higher forms of the ancient Arab ethnic religion, the higher deity loses its lunar character, in any case, in the official cult. It is called a “god,” unlike other deities who are called “gods,” but cannot claim the name of a “god.”

“God” is first and foremost the father of the people and is revered as an official deity under a special name and with a monotheistic connotation. There is no rich religious literature such as the Bible and Babylonian-Assyrian mythology, but only meager indications in the inscriptions. Тем не менее, есть основания предполагать, что поклонение Луне являлось здесь низшей ступенью религии, своего рода идолопоклонством, и официально было распространено лишь в широких массах.

Высшее официальное божество, став национальным богом, освобождается от того натуралистического фундамента, на котором оно возникло. Не подлежит сомнению, что даже этот национальный бог был первоначально лунным божеством. Этот бог появляется в старейших частях Ветхого завета, где он сопровождает свой народ от горы Синая, очевидно, имевшей издревле культовое значение в Северной Аравии, до Ханаана. Утратив связь с Луной, божество называется отныне просто “богом”. В еврейских личных теофорных именах оно именуется “богом” и “отцом”. Израиль почитает его под особым названием, как бога и отца народа.

Лишь после выступлений пророков этот национальный бог стал универсальным богом, богом и отцом всех людей, причем евреи все же остаются его избранным народом. Многочисленные свидетельства указывают, что бог, которому Израиль поклонялся, первоначально носил тот же характер, что племенные божества у арабов, происходящие все от общего лунного бога – родоначальника всей жизни.

В Ветхом завете также есть населяющие небо дети бога под различными названиями, соответствующими названиям ангелов в Новом завете. Они называются “сынами божьими” и иногда явно отождествляются со звездами. Здесь, как и в народной религии арабов, ещё сказывается натуралистическая основа, отпавшая уже по отношению к богу-отцу. Однако в одном решающем месте Библия разрывает узы крови, связывающие первоначально бога и людей. Человек уже не “рожден” богом, а “сотворен” им. Происхождение человека объясняется, как в культурных религиях Вавилона и Египта: бог берет кусок мокрой глины или земли, лепит из него как бы куклу и затем вдувает в нее жизнь.

Хотя этот рассказ, казалось бы, исключает всякое кровное родство человека с богом, однако и “сотворение” человека сохраняет первоначальное представление о божественной природе человека, о небе, как первоначальной родине человека, и о том, как последующие поколения все более деградируют. Каждое поколение все более удаляется от бога, и с течением времени, когда прошло много поколений, родство с богом становится все отдаленнее.

Согласно библейской мифологии, человек не “рожден” богом, а “сотворен” им. Но он сотворен “по образу и подобию божьему”, наделен божественными качествами, телесными и духовными. Он обитал первоначально в “раю”. Эта священная небесная родина человека находится далеко “на востоке”, очевидно на горизонте, где сходятся Небо и Земля. Отсюда произошли все небесные и земные существа. Этот “рай” — своего рода преддверие к Небу, охраняемое ангелами. Лишь после грехопадения и изгнания из рая в жизнь человека, входят грех и смерть, и он все более отдаляется от бога. Но древнейшие поколения все ещё живут чрезвычайно долго, как своего рода полубоги (Мафусаил).

Кроме того, люди являются также детьми бога, хотя уже в переносном значении. На сей раз бог уже не реальный родоначальник их, люди — его приемные дети, о которых он печется, как действительный отец.

Древнеарабская и древнесемитская божественной троица играет важную роль, как в вавилонском, так и в египетском богословии. В национальных религиях два других божества оттеснены на второй план главным богом, как национальным богом. Тем не менее, в Ветхом завете имеются следы божественной троицы, как это установило христианское богословие. В языческом христианстве она фигурирует в виде отца, сына и святого духа.

Как известно, учение о триединстве является позднейшим церковным догматом. В Библии нет упоминания о триединстве. Однако по христианскому вероучению, божественная троица, три самостоятельных божественных лица, вечно существовала на небесах. Здесь ещё сохраняется представление о рождении сына: бог-сын “рожден”, а не “сотворен” отцом. По отношению к другим небесным и земным существам, как ангелам, так и людям, творец является отцом лишь в переносном значении. Только бог-сын занимает здесь такое же исключительное положение, как в древнеарабских надписях “перворожденный” (бакур).

Святой дух является, по христианскому вероучению, самостоятельной ипостасью божества наряду с богом-отцом и богом-сыном. Нужно ли изучать семитскую мифологию, чтобы прийти к убеждению, что эта ипостась первоначально была матерью бога-сына? Если в божественной троице две ипостаси — отец и сын, причем сын не “сотворен”, а “рожден” богом-отцом, то ясно, что третьей ипостасью должна была быть первоначально мать. Иначе, откуда мог взяться этот сын?

The way it is. В семитических языках “святой дух” христиан — женский образ, о нём говорится только в женском роде.

В последние столетия до нашей эры это божество, подобно другим семитским божествам, под влиянием греческой философии было превращено в отвлеченное понятие. Подобно тому, как бог-отец превратился в “духа”, а бог-сын в “слово”, божество-мать тоже превращается под различными наименованиями в духа, причем “дух святой” тем легче вытеснил мать, что допущение супружеских отношений между богом-отцом и богиней-матерью казалось неприемлемым.

Однако ещё в “Евангелии от евреев” святой дух есть мать Иисуса: в Апокалипсисе Иоанна она, царица небесная, рожает на небесах бога-сына. Можно шаг за шагом проследить исторически и показать, как мать бога-сына превращается в “святого духа”. Даже тот порядок, в котором называют одного за другим членов божественной троицы, сохранился в течение тысячелетий. В древнесемитских надписях и обращениях к богам женщина фигурирует на последнем месте, сообразно семитскому обычаю. Поэтому в источниках такой порядок: отец — сын — мать. Точно так же в христианском вероучении говорится: отец — сын – святой дух.

На практике католическая церковь заменила почитание “святого духа”, слишком абстрактного для верующих, почитанием девы Марии, как матери бога-сына. Однако нельзя утверждать, что в настоящее время в христианской церкви почитается древнеарабская семья богов. Для этого расстояние между древнеарабской и христианской религиями слишком велико. Но если искать историческую преемственность в жизни человечества и его религий, нельзя ограничиваться Ветхим заветом, как единственным историческим базисом Нового завета. Можно найти переходы и точки соприкосновения, которые связывают как еврейскую, так и христианскую религию со стоящими на более низкой стадии семитическими религиями.

Абдуллаева Наталья Васильевна