DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52552#0058
VI. The Classical Greek and the Tibetan
Thunderweapon.
Quite a different conception of the phenomenon of lightning
is encountered in the pictorial representations of the Babylonian
cycle of culture, which for classical Greece had a special and
quite decisive significance in regard to the branch of the subject
now under discussion. Another aspect of the natural pheno-
menon now comes to the front—the fire.
In the chain of ideas we have hitherto been following, it was
the actual stroke upon which attention was concentrated; both
the fire and the thunder-clap were regarded merely as conse-
quences of the stroke. But in Babylonian art and throughout the
whole region dominated by it, the lightning was depicted as the
heavenly fire, a conception which also appears in inscriptions.
Thus Assurnasirpal says : “ For two days I thundered over them
like the thundergod Adad; I made flames of fire to rain down
upon them1.” Whether the original inhabitants had previously had
the conception of a thunderstone and this was superseded by the
Babylonian idea of lightning can hardly be determined. It is
possible that the representation of the lightning as the heavenly
fire arose from the cosmogonic system which Babylonian
astronomy had formulated at an early date; in that case it
would, in spite of its age, be of a comparatively late, one might
almost say, of a literary origin. But it is also possible that this
conception of lightning as fire is a genuinely original one. It is
not difficult to suppose that the natural conditions of treeless
plains and long, grasslike vegetation, dry and withered in
1 Y. Le Gac, Les inscriptions LAsszir-nasir-aplu, in. p. 82, kindly translated by
Professor Valdemar Schmidt.
Thunderweapon.
Quite a different conception of the phenomenon of lightning
is encountered in the pictorial representations of the Babylonian
cycle of culture, which for classical Greece had a special and
quite decisive significance in regard to the branch of the subject
now under discussion. Another aspect of the natural pheno-
menon now comes to the front—the fire.
In the chain of ideas we have hitherto been following, it was
the actual stroke upon which attention was concentrated; both
the fire and the thunder-clap were regarded merely as conse-
quences of the stroke. But in Babylonian art and throughout the
whole region dominated by it, the lightning was depicted as the
heavenly fire, a conception which also appears in inscriptions.
Thus Assurnasirpal says : “ For two days I thundered over them
like the thundergod Adad; I made flames of fire to rain down
upon them1.” Whether the original inhabitants had previously had
the conception of a thunderstone and this was superseded by the
Babylonian idea of lightning can hardly be determined. It is
possible that the representation of the lightning as the heavenly
fire arose from the cosmogonic system which Babylonian
astronomy had formulated at an early date; in that case it
would, in spite of its age, be of a comparatively late, one might
almost say, of a literary origin. But it is also possible that this
conception of lightning as fire is a genuinely original one. It is
not difficult to suppose that the natural conditions of treeless
plains and long, grasslike vegetation, dry and withered in
1 Y. Le Gac, Les inscriptions LAsszir-nasir-aplu, in. p. 82, kindly translated by
Professor Valdemar Schmidt.