“Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.”
Nabu was a major deity in the Assyro-Babylonian pantheon, patron of the art of writing and a god of vegetation. A city was erected to honor him. His symbols were the clay tablet and the stylus, the instruments held to inscribe the fates assigned to men by the gods.
But by the time Cyrus took over Babylon in the 6th century BCE and replaced the old gods with the Zoroastrian religion - even Nabu couldn’t write himself into the new mythology. His name still echoes when we think of the great kings whose names includes the god’s name - Nebuchadnezzar, or the last king of Babylon - Nabonidus - but only scholars know this now, and nobody worships at the forgotten shrines of that old mighty deity anymore.
( SO much better than the TV series, btw) is about what happens when the ideas about gods die out and new deities try to replace them. All throughout our histories idols and ideas are replaced/rebranded as myths morph and trends transform old truths into has-been superstitions. Old Nabu’s fate is not unique - but his demise was captured by Isaiah, living through the pivotal historical moment in Babylonian-Persian history as the old guard is toppled and a new one was ushered in.
Nor was Nabu alone - an entire pantheon of major deities, along with their enormous economy of temples and priests, sacrificial systems and annual festivals either became used in new religious ways or lost and eventually forgotten. Central among them was Nabu’s father, Marduk, also known as Bel. He who was chief of all the gods, feared and loved through centuries, was also lost to history under the new regime.
Isaiah barely hides his scorn. He describes the famous festival processions during which the images of the great gods were carried by the worshippers - but now the magic is gone, and the gods lost their luster - time’s up:
But even as Isaiah goes on to ridicule the old gods and their worshippers, in favor of the God of Israel who transcends time and space, the old gods and their worship won’t quite disappear, but rather - morph. Nabu’s rituals of scribal power would become the Jewish Book of Life - inscribed on each new Jewish year, exactly as it was in Babylon.
As Gaiman claims - old gods die hard, and even when we don’t quite realize - we often keep worshiping their mythic meaning and unique, peculiar ideologies long after they are - if they ever are - gone.
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