'within him' another self with 'thoughts' contrary to his disloyal actions, who could loathe the man he smiled at, would be much more successful in perpetuating himself and his family in the new millennium.
Natural Selection
My last comment brings up the possibility that natural selection may have played a role in the beginning of consciousness.
But in putting up this question, I wish to be very clear that consciousness is chiefly a cultural introduction, learned on the basis of language and taught to others, rather than any biological necessity. But that it had and still has a survival value suggests that the change to consciousness may have been assisted by a certain amount of natural selection.
It is impossible to calculate what percentage of the civilized world died in these terrible centuries toward the end of the second millennium B.C. I suspect it was enormous. And death would come soonest to those who impulsively lived by their unconscious habits or who could not resist the commandments of their gods to smite whatever strangers interfered with them. It is thus possible that individuals most obdurately bicameral, most obedient to their familiar divinities, would perish, leaving the genes of the less impetuous, the less bicameral, to endow the ensuing generations. And again we may appeal to the principle
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of Baldwinian evolution as we did in our discussion of language.
Consciousness must be learned by each new generation, and those biologically most able to learn it would be those most likely to survive. There is even Biblical evidence, as we shall see in a future chapter, that children obdurately bicameral were simply killed.13
Conclusion
This chapter must not be construed as presenting any evidence about the origin of consciousness. That is the burden of several ensuing chapters. My purpose in this chapter has been descriptive and theoretical, to paint a picture of plausibility, of how and why a huge alteration in human mentality could have occurred toward the end of the second millennium B.C.
In summary, I have sketched out several factors at work in the great transilience from the bicameral mind to consciousness: (1) the weakening of the auditory by the advent of writing; (2) the inherent fragility of hallucinatory control; (3) the unwork-ableness of gods in the chaos of historical upheaval; (4) the positing of internal cause in the observation of difference in others; (5) the acquisition of narratization from epics; (6) the survival value of deceit; and (7) a modicum of natural selection.
I would conclude by bringing up the question of the strictness of all this. Did consciousness really come de novo into the world only at this time? Is it not possible that certain individuals at least might have been conscious in much earlier time? Possibly yes. As individuals differ in mentality today, so in past ages it might have been possible that one man alone, or more possibly a cult or clique, began to develop a metaphored space with analog selves. But such aberrant mentality in a bicameral theocracy 13 Zechariah, 13 : 3-4.
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would, I think, be short-lived and scarcely what we mean by consciousness today.
It is the cultural norm that we are here concerned with, and the evidence that that cultural norm underwent a dramatic change is the substance of the following chapters. The three areas of the world where this transilience can be most easily observed are Mesopotamia, Greece, and among the bicameral refugees. We shall be discussing these in turn.
C H A P T E R 4
A Change of Mind in
Mesopotamia
ABOUT 1230 B.C., Tukulti-Ninurta I, tyrant of Assyria, had a stone altar made that is dramatically different from anything that preceded it in the history of the world. In the carving on its face, Tukulti is shown twice, first as he approaches the throne of his god, and then as he kneels before it. The very double image fairly shouts aloud about this beggarly posture unheard of in a king before in history. As our eyes descend from the standing king to the kneeling king just in front of him, it is as emphatic as a moving picture, in itself a quite remarkable artistic discovery.
But far more remarkable is the fact that the throne before which this first of the cruel Assyrian conquerors grovels is empty.
No king before in history is ever shown kneeling. No scene before in history ever indicates an absent god. The bicameral mind had broken down.
Hammurabi, as we have seen in II.2, is always carved standing and listening intently to a very present god. And countless cylinder seals from his period show other personages listening eye to eye or being presented to the just-as-real figures of human-shaped gods. The Ashur altar of Tukulti is in shocking contrast to all previous depictions of the relations of gods and men. Nor is it simply some artistic idiosyncrasy. Other altar scenes of Tukulti are similarly devoid of gods. And cylinder seals of Tukulti's period also show the king approaching other nonpresent divinities, sometimes represented by a symbol. Such comparisons
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Carving on the front of the Tukulti Altar now in the Berlin Museum. Tukulti stands and then kneels before the empty throne of his god. Note the emphasis of the pointing forefinger.
strongly suggest that the time of the breakdown of the bicameral mind in Mesopotamia is some time between Hammurabi and Tukulti.
This hypothesis is confirmed in the cuneiform remains of Tukulti and his period. What is known as the Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta 1 is the next clearly dated and well-preserved cuneiform document of note after Hammurabi. In the latter's time there is no doubt of the gods' eternal undeviant presence among men, directing them in their activities. But at the beginning of Tukulti's somewhat propagandalike epic, the gods of the Babylonian cities are angry with the Babylonian king for his inattention to them. They therefore forsake their cities, leaving the inhabitants 1 Translations of this and the other texts discussed in this section can be found in W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960).
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without divine guidance, so that the victory of Tukulti's Assyrian armies is assured. This conception of gods forsaking their human slaves under any circumstances whatever is impossible in the Babylon of Hammurabi. It is something new in the world.
Moreover, it is found throughout whatever literature remains of the last three centuries of the second millennium B.C.
One who has no god, as he walks along the street, Headache envelops him like a garment.
So one cuneiform tablet from about the reign of Tukulti.
If the breakdown of the bicameral mind involved the involuntary inhibition of temporal lobe areas of the right hemisphere, as we have conjectured earlier, this statement takes on an added interest.
Also from about the same period come the famous three tablets and a questionable fourth named for its first words, Ludlul bel nemeqiy usually translated as "I will praise the lord of wisdom."
"Wisdom" here is an unwarranted modern imposition. The translation should be something closer to 'skill' or 'ability to control misfortune,' the lord here being Marduk, the highest god of Babylon. The first completely readable lines of the damaged first tablet are: