Chapter 8: Mordecai, Esther, Vashti, and Haman

It may be asked, How did Humman or Marduk come to appear as the god connected with the Sacæa, whereas Tammuz had previously taken that part? The answer is that Humman and Marduk came in when we were tentatively regarding Purim, not (1) as a Semitic Tammuz feast, nor yet (2) as a Persian punishment of a condemned criminal acting asking’s proxy, but (3) as a festival for ‘the final victory of the Babylonian deities’ (Marduk and the rest) ‘in the very capital of their rivals’ (Humman and his company).[1] This was a theory suggested by Professor Nöldeke. It has etymological bases.

The name Mordecai resembles Marduk, Esther is like Ishtar, Haman is like Humman, the Elamite god, and there is a divine name in the inscriptions, read as resembling ‘Vashti, ‘ and probably the name of an Elamite goddess. Thus the human characters in Esther are in peril of merging in Babylonian and Elamite gods. But, lest that should occur, we ought also to remember that Mordecai was the real name of a real historical Jew of the Captivity, one of the companions of Nehemiah in the return from exile to Jerusalem.[2] Again, Esther appears to me to be the crown-name of the Jewish wife of Xerxes, in the Book of Esther: ‘Hadassah, that is Esther.’[3] In the Biblical story she conceals her Jewish descent. Hadassah, says Nöldeke, ‘is no mere invention of the writer of ‘Esther.’[4] Hadassah is said to mean ‘myrtle bough, ‘ and girls are still called Myrtle. Esther appears to have been an assumed name, after a royal mixed marriage.

Now if a real historical Jew might be named Mordecai, which we know to be the case, a Jewess, whether in fact, or in this Book of Esther, which, says Dr. Jastrow, ‘has of course some historical basis, ‘ might be styled Esther.[5] Dr. Jastrow supposes from the proper names ‘that there is a connection between Purim’ (the Jewish feast accounted for in ‘Esther’) and some Babylonian festival, ‘not that of Zagmuku, ‘ or Zakmuk. Nöldeke says that no Babylonian feast coinciding with Purim in date has been discovered.[6] Indeed this fact gives Mr. Frazer some reason for various conjectures, as the date of Purim is not that of Zakmuk. But, if Mordecai be, as it is, an historical name of a real Jew of the period, while Esther may be, and probably is, a name which a Jewess might bear, it is not ascertained that Vashti really is the name of an Elamite goddess. Yet Vashti is quite essential as a goddess to Mr. Frazer’s argument. ‘The derivation, ‘ he says, ‘of the names of Haman and Vashti is less certain, but some high authorities are disposed to accept the view of Jensen that Haman is identical with Humman or Homman, the national god of the Elamites, and that Vashti is in like manner an Elamite deity, probably a goddess whose name appears in inscriptions.’[7] Now suppose that we adopt Mr. Frazer’s method about that unruly month Lous. ‘The identification of the months of the Syro-Macedonian Calendar is a matter of some uncertainty; as to the month Lous in particular the evidence of ancient writers appears to be conflicting, and until we have ascertained beyond the reach of doubt when Lous fell at Babylon in the time of Berosus, it would be premature to allow much weight to the seeming discrepancy in the dates of the two festivals.’

Following this method we might say ‘the identification of Haman and Vashti with a probable Elamite god and goddess is a matter of some uncertainty; as to Vashti in particular the opinion of modern writers seems to be conflicting, and until we have ascertained beyond the reach of doubt that Vashti was an Elamite goddess, and a goddess of what sort, it would be premature to allow much weight to the conjecture’--and then we might go on to allow none at all. But this would be too hard a method of dealing with Mr. Frazer’s hypothesis. We should merely be getting rid of his theory in the same way as his theory evades a definite historical obstacle.

It is clear, from the facts about the names Mordecai, Esther, Haman, and Vashti, that to explain these as necessarily connected with Purim, Zakmuk, and the Sacæa, as a feast of rejoicing for a Babylonian divine victory over Elamite gods, is a very perilous hypothesis, among many others as hazardous, or even more insecure. Mr. Frazer, however, is intent on connecting the characters of ‘Esther’ with Babylonian and Elamite gods. They are essential to his theory that, at the Sacæa and Purim, there were a pair of human representatives of gods: Haman, with a probable sacred harlot, Vashti, doing duty for the dying; Mordecai with Esther, doing duty for the re-arisen god of vegetation. To this point we return.

Now, as to this festival of a resurrection of such a god, we have seen that, in vol. ii. 122, 253, 254, it occurred in July, to Mr. Frazer’s content. But, when it had to occur in March in vol. iii., we were met by the difficulty of two, or rather three, feasts of this kind in the year. Perhaps we get rid of this obstacle in iii. 177-179. The resurrection is here that not of Tammuz, but of a hero of the same type, is fixed by Jensen at Zakmuk, and therefore by Mr. Frazer, though not by Jensen, at the Sacæa in spring.

Jensen’s theory is that the death and resurrection ‘of a mythical being, who combined in himself the features of a solar god and an ancient king of Erech, were celebrated at the Babylonian Zakmuk or festival of the new year, and that the transference of the drama from Erech, its original seat, to Babylon, led naturally to the substitution of Marduk, the great god of Babylon, for Gilgamesh or Eabani in the part of the hero.’ Jensen, fortunately for his peace of mind, ‘apparently does not identify the Zakmuk with the Sacæa.’ Jensen constructs his scheme thus.

Gilgamesh was a hero of Erech, who repelled the amorous advances of the goddess Ishtar. Gilgamesh became extremely unwell. His friend Eabani also aroused the fury of Ishtar, and died. Gilgamesh procured his return from the world of the dead to the upper world.[8] The feast celebrating this resurrection was removed from Erech to Babylon. Instead of a mortal hero, Gilgamesh or Eabani, a being cold and chaste as Joseph Andrews, the Babylonians now cast Marduk, their supreme god, for the part. The feast was Zakmuk.[9]

Of course this is precisely as if we said that an old feast of Adonis was turned into a new feast of Zeus, whose coldness, as regards goddesses, was not proverbial, like the frigidity of Adonis, Gilgamesh, Eabani, Mr. Andrews, and other notable examples.

The theory seems to lack plausibility, but as Jensen ‘apparently does not identify Zakmuk with the Sacæa’ he escapes the curious theory of supposing that Marduk (late Gilgamesh, or Eabani) is whipped and hanged in the person of his human representative--an unheard-of way of honouring the personator of the supreme being. However, if we accept Jensen’s theory, and also, like Mr. Frazer, identify Zakmuk with the Sacæa, then, remembering that Eabani rose from the dead (if he did), and that Marduk is now Eabani, and that the Sacæan victim is or may be Marduk, and is also the king, we get a reason for supposing that the victim, too, was feigned to rise from the dead--in the person of Mordecai (Marduk). But why was the representative of Marduk, who in Jensen’s theory represented Eabani, whipped and hanged? The victim, on this theory, if we add it to Mr. Frazer’s, seems to me to personate

1. The King of Babylon, 2. Marduk, 3. Eabani, 4. Or Gilgamesh,

and thus to combine a god or hero of vegetation (which Eabani is bound to be) with a mortal king, and a supreme god--and, oh, why is he whipped and hanged? Taking the theory of iii. 177-179 it seems to run thus, in combination with all that has gone before: The king was burned alive annually. His royal substitute was next burned alive annually. His criminal substitute was burned alive annually, till this was commuted for whipping and hanging, with or without burning. The king (before the feast of Zakmuk was brought from Erech to Babylon) had incarnated some god or other (I presume of vegetation). After the Eabani feast at Erech became the Marduk feast at Babylon, the king, I think, but I may be wrong, represented Eabani plus Marduk. If he did, so, too, does the victim at the Sacæa. But Eabani, in a Babylonian poem, has a resurrection: though I cannot find it in Jastrow’s account of the poem. The victim then, being a personation of Eabani, of Marduk, and of the king, has a resurrection--after he has been hanged under the name of Humman, a god of the Elamites. He owes that name, Mr. Frazer thinks, to a popular misconception, for he really is the king, plus Eabani, plus Marduk. Dying as king, and as Marduk, under the alias of Humman (Haman), he is feigned, according to the theory, to rise under the name of Marduk (Mordecai). The Mordecai of one year becomes the Haman of the next, is hanged, and so on.

This is an hypothesis of some complexity. An effort is needed to maintain the mental equilibrium as we contemplate this hypothesis. However, by thus amalgamating the ideas of Jensen and of Mr. Frazer, one gets in the mock royalty (from the king), the scourging and hanging (from the mitigation of burning alive), the divinity of vegetation (from Eabani, who lends that part of his attributes to Marduk), and the resurrection from Eabani, who, in the Babylonian poem, rose again: though I own that in Dr. Jastrow’s account of the poem I am unable to discover this incident. The spirit of Eabani is conjured up, indeed, in the poem, but ‘there is a tone of despair in the final speech of Eabani.’[10] This is hardly a resurrection. However, I am but poorly seen in Babylon and its poetry, and no doubt Eabani had his resurrection. From that or a similar resurrection Mr. Frazer deduces the probability that the Sacæan victim in his resurrection was represented by Mordecai.[11] He, like Haman, had a sacred bride, Esther. In the Book of Esther, to be sure, she is Mordecai’s cousin and adopted daughter. Mr. Frazer knows better.

I. ESTHER LOVED BY MORDECAI

‘A clear reminiscence’ of the time when Esther was the goddess bride of Mordecai (her cousin) appears in modern Jewish plays in which Mordecai is the lover (I hope merely platonic) of Esther.[12] And a very natural modern touch it is. The pair were cousins, and Esther was extremely pretty. In exactly the same way two little girls of my acquaintance dramatised ‘Bluebeard, ‘ and made the brother (who rescues Mrs. Bluebeard in the tale) the lover of Mrs. Bluebeard. She had preferred to marry Bluebeard for his money, on which, in this most immoral drama, Mrs. Bluebeard and her lover, her husband’s slayer, lived happily ever afterwards. This is modern! The original tale does not run thus.

Again, Mr. Frazer says that the Babbis maintain that Xerxes only wedded a shadow Esther, ‘while the real Esther sat on the lap of Mordecai.’ A most natural shift to save Esther’s character in a case of mixed marriages. So Stesichorus and Euripides, long before, gave a shadow Helen into the arms of Paris. The real Helen, meanwhile, saved her character by leading a life of remarkable purity in Egypt. These late shifts and evasions have no real bearing on the question of the original relations between Esther and Mordecai.

II. THE PERSIAN BUFFOON

Mr. Frazer now harms his cause, perhaps, by proving that just as, in Esther, Mordecai had a royal ride, so, in Persia, a beardless, and if possible one-eyed buffoon rode in mock royalty through the streets, collecting money or goods, exactly like our Robin Hood before and even after the Scottish Reformation.[13] It was une quête; examples are endless. After his second round he fled, for the people might beat him if they caught him, obviously in revenge, I think, for his robberies. But Mr. Frazer, as usual, supposes the right to beat the buffoon to ‘point plainly enough to the harder fate’ of the sacrificed mock-king. No date is given for this Persian custom, but, if it existed when the Jews were in Persia, did it coexist with sacrifice of a mock-king? If not, if it was a substitute for that obsolete cruelty, why are the Jews supposed to have borrowed the cruelty no longer practised? This is a question of dates, which may be implied, but are not given, though I understand Mr. Frazer to mean that the buffoon’s ride is later than the origin of Purim.[14]

On the other hand, Lagarde, one of the most learned of Orientalists, thinks that the ride of the beardless was already customary at the time when the stories about Esther and Purim were composed. The Persians, says Lagarde, had the Feast of Farwardîgân, a feast of jollity, the rich making presents to the poor, as at Purim. They had also the Feast of the Massacre of the Magi (Magophonia), and, thirdly, they had the popular diversion of the Bide of the Beardless. Now the authors of the Esther legend ‘had these three colours on their palette, and with these three painted, not a portrait of one feast, but a kind of mixed caricature for the Jewish carnival.’[15] The Magophonia lent the colours of the massacre, Farwardîgân lent the jollity and the presents, the ride of the beardless lent the procession of Mordecai.

In that case, and if Lagarde is right, the Jews found at Babylon, not a slaying of a mock-king, but the ride of the beardless. So they did not borrow the slaying of a mock-king, but introduced into the Esther legend an incident of a ride suggested by the ride of Mordecai, which Mr. Frazer calls ‘a degenerate copy of the original, ‘ namely the reign and death of the mock-king.[16]

Whether Lagarde’s view be correct or not, this part of the evidence is far too sandy a foundation for a theory about a matter of solemn importance. The Jews could not borrow the hanging of a victim from the Sacæa, if in their exile they only found the ride of the beardless one, as in Lagarde’s theory--not that he mentions the Sacæa.

Mr. Frazer, at all events, sees a connection between Purim and the ride of the beardless. But the latter is popular, not official, in spite of the fact that the king takes most of the goods facetiously robbed. As popular, the ride is more primitive, he thinks, and shows its meaning better than the Sacæa does. So Mr. Frazer says ‘if there is any truth in the connection thus traced between Purim and the “Ride of the Beardless One,” we are now in a position to finally unmask the leading personages in the Book of Esther, ‘ and show how Marduk and Humman got into the plot.

Purim is not only the Sacæa, sacrifice and all, but is also connected with the ‘Ride of the Beardless One, ‘ in which there was no sacrifice. How this, if true, enables us ‘to finally unmask’ the characters in Esther, is not at first very clear. Apparently the buffoonery of the beardless one, who complained of the heat while the populace snowballed him in March, was a magical ceremony, to make hot weather by pretending that the weather, in fact, was hot.[17] Therefore, the hypothetical rites of

Haman

Vashti

Mordecai

Esther

represent, in the first pair, the decaying; in the second pair, the reviving, energies of vegetation, past and present. One pair mates and the male, at least, is slain; the other pair mates and survives, to encourage vegetable life.

By the hypothesis the first pair (Haman and Vashti) originally lived as man and wife for a whole year, ‘on the conclusion of which the male partner’ (Haman) ‘was put to death.’ Of course, even if Haman was the mock-king slain at the Sacæa (which we do not grant), his mock-kingship was very brief. However, it lasted for a year, Originally, we may conjecture.’ The later fortunes of Vashti are wrapped up in mystery. But I cannot refrain from quoting one of my author’s most eloquent passages on this obscure subject. We do not hear that Vashti was put to death, in fact we do not hear anything about her at all from our one authority; but I the nature of maternity suggests an obvious reason for sparing her a little longer, till that mysterious law, which links together woman’s life with the changing aspects of the nightly sky, had been fulfilled by the birth of an infant god, who should in his turn, reared perhaps by her tender care, grow up to live and die for the world.’[18]

As Vashti, except for her profession, was not an habitual criminal, let us hope that she was spared to look after the baby. Her issue, if any, and if male, was apparently an hereditary criminal, for otherwise he would not be hanged: the victims were always condemned criminals. The cruelty of thus deliberately breeding such a criminal class, for the mere purpose of hanging them, is shocking to the modern mind. We wish to know whether the Jewish Hamans were also born and bred up to the business. Mr. Frazer does not tell us that this was the case, or what became of Vashti’s female issue.

The ride of Mordecai in royal raiment is connected with and explained (if I follow my author) by the ride of the Persian beardless buffoon. To be sure the buffoon rode naked on an ass; Mordecai rode ‘in royal apparel of blue and white, with a crown of gold.’ But the buffoon is clearly later than the origin of Purim in Mr. Frazer’s opinion, though not in that of Lagarde. ‘So long as the temporary king was a real substitute for the reigning monarch, and had to die sooner or later in his stead, it was natural that he should be treated with a greater show of deference... ‘[19]

But Mordecai, who rode royally, was the man who did not die: Haman died. Therefore Mr. Frazer has to guess that the Mordecai of one year died as the Haman of the next.

Ah me, there are so many guesses!

In any case, Mordecai is nothing but ‘a slightly altered form of Marduk or Merodach, ‘ as is now ‘generally recognised by Biblical scholars.’ Nevertheless, a real historical Jew called Mordecai occurs, as we saw, in Ezra and Nehemiah: so the name was a Jewish name, odd as it appears.[20] Now Mordecai, by the theory, has to be whipped and hanged finally; and that seems an odd compliment to Merodach, or Marduk, who, as supreme Babylonian god, is presiding over the gods, while his human substitute is being slain infamously. But, remember, when whipped and hanged, the Mordecai of 1900, so to speak, has become the Haman of 1901. And ‘some high authorities are disposed to accept the theory of Jensen that Haman is identical with Humman or Homman, the national god of the Elamites.’[21]

III. A HELPFUL THEORY OF MY OWN

If these high authorities are right, I at last see my way clear! Haman, or the victim of the Sacæa, is now neither the representative of the King of Babylon, nor of Tammuz, nor of both at once, nor of Marduk, nor of Eabani, nor of Gilgamesh. He is now (if Nöldeke or Jensen is right) the representative of a conquered and hostile god, Humman of the Elamites. Tout va bien! The human representative of a hostile and defeated god may well have been whipped and hanged in derision. I shall grant that Humman was also the Elamite god of vegetation, Tammuz or the like (what else could he be?), and so had to fall as the leaves fall, and also had to spring up as the flowers do; and this both in June-July[22] and also in March-April.[23]