A planet that collided with other planets in the sky and rushed against the earth as if with a fire-sword became the god of battle, wresting this title from the hands of Athene-Ishtar.
"The gods of heaven put themselves in war against thee," the hymns to the planet Nergal say, and this is the war that was recounted in the Iliad.
Nergal was named quarradu rabu, "the great warrior"; he waged war against gods and the earth.
The most frequent ideogram for Nergal in Semitic cuneiform is read namsaru, which means
"sword"; 6
2 I Chronicles 21 : 16. 3 Isaiah 31 : 8-9. * Isaiah 34 : 4-5.
s Gundel, "Kometen," in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, XI, Col. 1177, with reference to Cat. cod. astr., VIII, 3, p. 175.
6 Bollenriicher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, p. 8.
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the planet Mars, in the Babylonian inscriptions of the seventh century, was called "the most violent among the gods."
Herodotus said that the Scythians worshiped Ares (Mars), and that a scimitar of iron was their image of him; to him they made human sacrifices and poured the blood on the scimitar.7 Solinus wrote of the people of Scythia: "The god of this people is Mars; instead of images they worship swords." 8
War in heaven among the colliding planets, war on earth among the nations wandering in unrest, a planet running toward the earth with an outstretched flaming sword, attacking land and sea, participating in the wars among the nations—all these made Mars the god of war.
The sword of the god of battle was not like the sword "of a mighty man"; it was not thrust into the belly, and yet it caused sickness and death. The god of war scattered pestilence. In a prayer to the planet Mars (Nergal) it is said: 9
robin-bobin
Radiant abode, that beams over the land . . .
Who is thy equal?
When thou ridest in the battle,
When thou throwest down,
Who can escape thy look?
Who can run away from thy storming?
Thy word is a mighty catch net,
Stretched over Sky and Earth. . . .
His word makes human beings sick, It enfeebles them.
His word—when he makes his way above-Makes the country sick.
The outbreak of pestilence that appears to have accompanied the first contact with the planet Mars was repeated on each subsequent contact. Amos uttered these words: "I have smitten you with blasting and mildew. ... I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt."
7 Herodotus iv. 62.
8 Solinus Polyhistor (transl. A. Golding, 1587), Chap, xxiii.
9 Bollenriicher, Gebete und Hymnen an Nergal, p. 36.
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WORLDS IN COLLISION
The planet Nergal was regarded by the Babylonians as the god of war and pestilence; thus, too, did the Greeks regard the planet Ares and the Romans the planet Mars.
Fenris-Wolf
In the Babylonian astrological texts it is said that "a star takes the shape of divers animals: lion, jackal, dog, pig, fish."1 This, in our opinion, explains the worship of animals by ancient peoples, notably by the Egyptians.
The planet Mars, its atmosphere distorted by its approaches to other celestial bodies—Venus, earth, moon—took on different shapes. The Mexicans narrated that Huitzilopochtli, the bellicose destroyer of cities, took the form of various birds and beasts.2 On one occasion Mars very characteristically resembled a wolf or a jackal. In Babylonia Mars had seven names—Jackal was one of them.3 Also, the god with the head of a jackal or wolf in the Egyptian pantheon was apparently Mars. Of him it is said that he is a "prowling wolf circling this land." *
In the Chinese Chart of Soochow, in which it is related on the authority of more ancient sources that "Once Venus suddenly ran into the Wolf-Star," Wolf-Star apparently means Mars.5
Wolf or Lupus Martius was the animal symbol for Mars of the Roman religion.6 It gave rise to the legend about Romulus, son of Mars, who was fed by a she-wolf. According to the tradition, the conception of Romulus took place during a prolonged eclipse.
1 Kugler, Babylonische Zeitordnung, Vol. II of Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, 91.
2 Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana, Vol. I. s Bezold, in Boll's Sternglaube und Sterndeutung, p. 9.
4 Breasted, Records of Egypt, III, Sec. 144.
' The translators of the chart surmised that by Wolf-Star Sirius is meant. 6 Cf. Virgil Aeneid iv.
566; Livy, History of Rome, Bk. XXII. i. 12. A statue of Mars on the Appian Way stood between figures of wolves. "Among the animal symbols of Mars, the wolf holds first place. . . . The wolf belonged so definitely to Mars that Lupus Martius or Martialis became its usual name. As to the meaning of this symbol, it is difficult to understand it." Roscher in Roscher's Lexikon d.
griech.und rom. Myth., s. v. "Mars," Col. 2430.
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The Slavic Vukadlak, who followed the clouds and devoured the sun or the moon, had the shape of a wolf.7 The North-Germanic tribes, too, spoke of the wolf Skoll that pursued the sun.8 In the Edda, the planetary god that darkened the sun is called Fenris-Wolf. "Whence comes the sun to the smooth sky back, when Fenris has swallowed it forth?" The battle of Mars and Venus is presented, in the Icelandic epos, as a fight between the wolf Fenris and the serpent Midgard.
robin-bobin
"The bright snake gaping in the heaven above" and "the foaming wolf" battle in the sky. Storms come in summer. Then comes the day, and "dark grows the sun"; in a great upheaval "the heaven is cloven." "In anger smites the warden of earth, forth from their homes must all men flee. . . .
The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea, the hot stars down from the heaven are whirled, fierce grows the stream ... till fire leaps high above heaven itself."9
Sword-Time, Wolf-Time
Quaking of places, tumult of peoples, scheming of nations, confusion of leaders. -IV Ezra 9
The fear of the Judgment Day not only did not pacify the nations, but on the contrary, uprooted them, impelling them to migration and war.
The Scythians came down from the plains of the Dnieper and Volga and moved southward. The Greeks left their home in Mycenae and on the islands of the Aegean and carried on the siege of Troy through years of cosmic disturbances. Assyrian kings waged war in Elam, Palestine, Egypt, and beyond the Caucasus.
Civil war in the nations, tribal strife, and strife between members of households became so widespread that the same complaint was
1 J. Machal, Slavic Mythology (1918), p. 229.
8L. Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes (1904), I, 198.
9 The Poetic Edda: Vbluspa (transl. Bellows, 1923).
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heard in many parts of the world. As I have already said, Mars was named the war god not only because of his swordlike appearance, but also because of these conflicts.
". . . The land [is] darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother," said Isaiah (9 : 19). In Egypt an inscription of the eighth century that refers to the moon disturbed in its movement, mentions incessant fighting in the land: "While years passed in hostility, each one seizing upon his neighbor, not remembering his son to protect."1 Isaiah, speaking of the Day of Wrath, says: "And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom." 2 It was no different seven hundred years earlier, in the days of the catastrophes caused by Venus. At that time an Egyptian sage complained: "I show thee the land upside down; the sun is veiled and shines not in the sight of men. I show thee the son as enemy, the brother as foe, a man slaying his father." 3