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THE PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
ANIMAL ETHICS SERIES

Animals and
Business Ethics
Edited by
Natalie Thomas
The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series

Series Editors
Andrew Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Oxford, UK

Clair Linzey
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
Oxford, UK
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our treat-
ment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of other
scholars have followed from historians to social scientists. From being a
marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics and in
multidisciplinary inquiry. This series will explore the challenges that
Animal Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional
understandings of human-animal relations. Specifically, the Series will:

• provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out
ethical positions on animals;
• publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accom-
plished, scholars;
• produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary
in character or have multidisciplinary relevance.

For further information or to submit a proposal for consideration, please

contact Amy Invernizzi, amy.invernizzi@palgrave-usa.com.

More information about this series at

https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14421
 Natalie Thomas
Editor

Animals and Business

Ethics
Editor
Natalie Thomas
Department of Philosophy
University of Guelph
Guelph, ON, Canada

ISSN 2634-6672     ISSN 2634-6680 (electronic)

The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series
ISBN 978-3-030-97141-0    ISBN 978-3-030-97142-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97142-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Chris Strickland / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 For my parents, with love.
In honour of your sixty years of marriage and in gratitude for your constant
encouragement to us, your three “girls”.
 Series Editors’ Preface

This is a new book series for a new field of inquiry: Animal Ethics.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ethics of our
treatment of animals. Philosophers have led the way, and now a range of
other scholars have followed from historians to social scientists. From
being a marginal issue, animals have become an emerging issue in ethics
and in multidisciplinary inquiry.
In addition, a rethink of the status of animals has been fuelled by a
range of scientific investigations which have revealed the complexity of
animal sentiency, cognition, and awareness. The ethical implications of
this new knowledge are yet to be properly evaluated, but it is becoming
clear that the old view that animals are mere things, tools, machines, or
commodities cannot be sustained ethically.
But it is not only philosophy and science that are putting animals on the
agenda. Increasingly, in Europe and the United States, animals are becom-
ing a political issue as political parties vie for the “green” and “animal”
vote. In turn, political scientists are beginning to look again at the history
of political thought in relation to animals, and historians are beginning to
revisit the political history of animal protection.
As animals grow as an issue of importance, so there have been more
collaborative academic ventures leading to conference volumes, special
journal issues, indeed new academic animal journals as well. Moreover, we
have witnessed the growth of academic courses, as well as university posts,
in Animal Ethics, Animal Welfare, Animal Rights, Animal Law, Animals
and Philosophy, Human-Animal Studies, Critical Animal Studies, Animals

vii
viii SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

and Society, Animals in Literature, Animals and Religion—tangible signs

that a new academic discipline is emerging.
“Animal Ethics” is the new term for the academic exploration of the
moral status of the non-human—an exploration that explicitly involves a
focus on what we owe animals morally, and which also helps us to under-
stand the influences—social, legal, cultural, religious, and political—that
legitimate animal abuse. This series explores the challenges that Animal
Ethics poses, both conceptually and practically, to traditional understand-
ings of human-animal relations.
The series is needed for three reasons: (i) to provide the texts that will
service the new university courses on animals; (ii) to support the increas-
ing number of students studying and academics researching in animal-­
related fields, and (iii) because there is currently no book series that is a
focus for multidisciplinary research in the field.
Specifically, the series will

• provide a range of key introductory and advanced texts that map out
ethical positions on animals;
• publish pioneering work written by new, as well as accomplished,
scholars, and
• produce texts from a variety of disciplines that are multidisciplinary
in character or have multidisciplinary relevance.

The new Palgrave Macmillan Series on Animal Ethics is the result of a

unique partnership between Palgrave Macmillan and the Ferrater Mora
Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. The series is an integral part of the mis-
sion of the Centre to put animals on the intellectual agenda by facilitating
academic research and publication. The series is also a natural complement
to one of the Centre’s other major projects, the Journal of Animal Ethics.
The Centre is an independent “think tank” for the advancement of pro-
gressive thought about animals and is the first Centre of its kind in the
world. It aims to demonstrate rigorous intellectual enquiry and the high-
est standards of scholarship. It strives to be a world-class centre of aca-
demic excellence in its field.
We invite academics to visit the Centre’s website www.oxfordanimaleth-
ics.com and to contact us with new book proposals for the series.

Oxford, UK Andrew Linzey

 Clair Linzey
 Acknowledgements

I want to thank all of the authors who contributed chapters to this vol-
ume. Each chapter is unique and reflects the span of expertise in areas
related to animals and business practices. I appreciate your patience, work
and knowledge. I am quite honoured to bring all of your voices together
in this volume and look forward to seeing the reception and promotion of
your work by others who are motivated to respond and further develop
this important area of research. I also am thankful to Dr Clair Linzey and
Professor Andrew Linzey for supporting me over the years and for provid-
ing a place for this book to land. Your unceasing efforts to better the lives
of animals is an ongoing source of inspiration and your support for those
working in the field is deeply appreciated.
Thanks also goes to Don Dedrick and Patricia Sheridan of the
Philosophy Department at the University of Guelph for supporting my
Adjunct position there and for supporting my work.
Many, many thanks go to Adam Langridge, who worked with me on
our chapter and who continues to share his mind with mine. We make a
great team and I look forward to many more years of working together.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the billions of animal lives that are used
by and for humans, and I hope that the work here will help us all to think
more on their suffering and on the many ways we can work to reduce it.

ix
 Contents

1 Animals and Business Ethics  1

Natalie Thomas

Part I Animals and Business Practices, Work, Labour and

Jobs  19

2 Are Animals Always Commodified in the Context of

Business? 21
Katy Fulfer and Patrick Clipsham

3 (Not) Serving Animals and Aiming Higher: Cultivating

Ethical and Sustainable Plant-­Based Businesses and
Humane Jobs 43
Kendra Coulter and Josh Milburn

4 Prospects for an Animal-Friendly Business Ethics 67

Brian Berkey

5 Working Animals, Ethics and Critical Theory 91

José-Carlos García-Rosell and Philip Hancock

xi
xii Contents

Part II Animal Welfare, Animal Agriculture and Animals as

Food 111

6 Competition, Regulation, and the Race to the Bottom in

Animal Agriculture113
Steven McMullen

7 Corporate Disclosure Initiative for Animal Welfare131

Carrie P. Freeman and Eugenia Ferrero

8 McVeg*n: A Critical Analysis of Vegetarianism, Business

Ethics and Animals as Food157
Kay Peggs

9 Animal Suffering, Environmental Impact, and

Lab-Cultured Meat179
Trevor Hedberg

10 Gene Editing, Animal Disenhancement and Ethical

Debates: A Conundrum for Business Ethics?203
Natalie Thomas and Adam Langridge

Part III Human and Animal Relationships in the Context

of Businesses and Industries 227

11 Moral Feelings, Compartmentalization and

Desensitization in the Practice of Animal
Experimentation229
Rebekah Humphreys

12 Denied Relationship: Moral Stress in the Vocational

Killing of Non-Human Animals251
Tomaž Grušovnik and Maša Blaznik
 Contents  xiii

13 Dolphins, Captivity and Cruelty271

Thomas I. White

14 Animals as Stakeholders297
Joshua Smart

Index325
 Notes on Contributors

Brian Berkey is an assistant professor in the Department of Legal Studies

and Business Ethics in the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in the Department of
Philosophy at Penn. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University
of California-Berkeley in 2012, and did his undergraduate work in
Philosophy and Politics at New York University. Before moving to Penn,
he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford
University. His academic work is in moral and political philosophy, and he
has written about issues such as the demandingness of morality, individual
obligations of justice, climate change mitigation obligations, effective
altruism, and entitlements of justice for non-human animals.
Maša Blaznik obtained her Honours degree in Psychology from the
Open University, UK. She is an independent researcher and writer whose
work focuses on dysfunctions within families and society. Her article
“Training Young Killers: How Butcher Education Might Be Damaging
Young People” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Animal
Ethics. She is working as a crisis response counsellor for children and ado-
lescents. Her rescue cats Taxi and Buby are gentle reminders of animal
sentience.
Patrick Clipsham is an assistant professor in the Department of
Philosophy at Winona State University. His research focuses on a number
of topics in ethics and moral philosophy, including metaethics, ethical
issues surrounding conscientious objections, and animal ethics. His publi-

xv
xvi Notes on Contributors

cations have appeared in such venues as Philosophical Studies, Public

Affairs Quarterly, and Between the Species.
Kendra Coulter is an associate professor and Chancellor’s Chair for
Research Excellence at Brock University, Canada. She is a member of the
Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists
and an award-­winning author. She has written widely on the intersections
of animals and labour and developed the concept of humane jobs as a way
to conceptualize and encourage work that is underscored by multispecies
respect. Her most recent book is Animals, Work, and the Promise of
Interspecies Solidarity (Palgrave Macmillan/Springer, 2016).
Eugenia Ferrero originally from Florida, graduated from St. Thomas
University in 1996 with a B.A. in English and Psychology. She continued
her studies at The American University in Washington, D.C., receiving an
M.A. in Public Communication in 2000. Ferrero’s thesis focused on envi-
ronmental communication, public relations, and advertising. Upon grad-
uation, Ferrero began law school, earning a J.D. from The University of
Georgia School of Law in 2003. During law school, she served on the
Editorial Board and as a notes editor for the Georgia Journal of
International and Comparative Law. Ferrero’s legal practice began in civil
litigation but later, she specialized in commercial real estate as well as con-
tract preparation and negotiations. Ferrero continued her academic pur-
suits, earning a PhD from Georgia State University in August 2016. Her
dissertation focused on the First Amendment, media ethics, and strategic
communication. Ferrero returned to academia in 2011, as an adjunct pro-
fessor for local universities and colleges. She joined St. Thomas University
as a full-­time faculty member in August 2015, and then as assistant dean
for the School of Leadership, Education, and Communication. She has
taught a variety of courses in the Department of Communication.
Carrie P. Freeman is Associate Professor of Communication at Georgia
State University in Atlanta. She is a critical/cultural studies media
researcher who has published in over 15 scholarly books and journals on
strategic communication for activists, media ethics, environmental com-
munication, and critical animal studies, with a specialty in animal agribusi-
ness and veganism. She is the author of a 2014 vegan advocacy book
Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights (www.
framingfarming.com), co-edited the anthology Critical Animal & Media
Studies: Communication for Nonhuman Animal Advocacy, and co-
 Notes on Contributors  xvii

authored media style guidelines for respectful coverage of animals at www.

animalsandmedia.org. Freeman has been active in the animal rights and
vegetarian movement since the mid-1990s, leading and volunteering with
local grassroots groups in Florida, Georgia, and Oregon. She co-hosts an
environmental radio programme (In Tune to Nature, Tuesdays 6:30 pm)
and an animal rights programme (Second Opinion Radio, Wednesdays
6 pm) on Atlanta’s indie station WRFG 89.3FM.
Katy Fulfer is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at
the University of Waterloo. Her research interests are in feminist bioeth-
ics, specifically around reproduction and animals, and the philosophy of
Hannah Arendt. Her publications have appeared in Hypatia, Developing
World Bioethics, and IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches
to Bioethics.
José-Carlos García-Rosell is Senior Lecturer in Tourism Studies at the
University of Lapland, Faculty of Social Sciences, Multidimensional
Tourism Institute (MTI). His research interests are in the areas of sustain-
able business development, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder
theory, responsible tourism, tourism product development, management
education, action research and ethnographic research. He obtained a PhD
in Management from the University of Lapland, a Licentiate Degree in
Marketing from the University of Oulu, and a Master’s degree in
Agricultural Economics from the University of Natural Resources and Life
Sciences, Vienna. He has published his research in various books and jour-
nals such as Management Learning, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of
Sustainable Tourism, and Society and Leisure.
Tomaž Grušovnik is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education and
scientific associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Primorska,
Koper, Slovenia. His main areas of research include environmental and
animal ethics, philosophy of education, the philosophies of later
Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, and pragmatism. He was a Fulbright vis-
iting colleague at the Department of Philosophy, University of New
Mexico (2009), and guest lecturer at the Centre for Development and the
Environment, University of Oslo (2010). Since 2018, he has been presi-
dent of Slovenian philosophical association. He has published two books
on environmental and animal ethics, a book of fictocritical essays (all in
Slovenian), as well as a number of papers and essays on various fields of
interest. He is co-editor (together with Eduardo Mendieta and Lenart
xviii Notes on Contributors

Škof) of the book Borders and Debordering: Topologies, Praxes,

Hospitableness (2018).
Philip Hancock is Professor of Work and Organisation at Essex Business
School, University of Essex, UK. He has previously held posts at the
University of Warwick and Glasgow Caledonian University. His research
interests include the aesthetic management of work and society, critical
approaches to workplace recognition, and Christmas as a global medium
of sociomaterial organization. He has published in a range of journals
including Academy of Management Review, Organization Studies, Human
Relations, Organization, Gender, Work and Organization, and Work
Employment and Society. He is also a co-author of The Body, Culture and
Society and Work, Postmodernism and Society: A Critical Introduction, and
a co-editor of Art and Aesthetics at Work (Palgrave), The Management of
Everyday Life (Palgrave), and Understanding Corporate Life.
Trevor Hedberg is a postdoctoral scholar with Ohio State University. He
received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Tennessee in 2017,
and his primary research interests are in applied ethics and epistemology.
His prior work has appeared in venues such as Environmental Values,
Synthese, Journal of Business Ethics, and Philosophia. His recent book The
Environmental Impact of Overpopulation: The Ethics of Procreation was
published in 2020 by Routledge.
Rebekah Humphreys is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of
Wales, Trinity Saint David. Her research interests include applied ethics
(especially animal ethics and environmental ethics), environmental phi-
losophy, and moral philosophy in general. She has teaching interests in
additional areas. Selected publications include “Justice and Non-Human
Beings” (co-authored with Robin Attfield), Part II, in Bangladesh Journal
of Bioethics (8:1), 2017, 44–77; “Justice and Non-Human Beings” (co-
authored with Robin Attfield), Part I, in Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics
(7:3), 2016, pp. 1–11; “Dignity and its violation examined within the
context of animal ethics”, in Ethics and the Environment (21:2), Fall 2016,
143–162; “Biocentrism”, Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics, Springer, online
publication 2014, hard copy published 2016; and “The Argument from
Existence, Blood-Sports, and ‘Sport-Slaves’”, Journal of Agricultural and
Environmental Ethics, (27:2), 2014, 331–345.
Adam Langridge is Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy,
Political Science and Economics Department at Nipissing University in
 Notes on Contributors  xix

North Bay, Canada. His research interests are primarily in the history of
philosophy, although Langridge has teaching interests in theoretical and
applied ethics.
Steven McMullen is Associate Professor of Economics at Hope College
in Holland, Michigan. His research has focused on animal ethics and eco-
nomics, including the publication of Animals and the Economy (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016). He has also published applied microeconomic research
in education policy, focusing on homework and school calendar reform.
He received his PhD in Economics from the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill in 2008.
Josh Milburn is a philosopher who is a Lecturer in Political Philosophy
at the Loughborough University, UK. He is interested in questions about
animals in both moral and political philosophy. His publications include
papers in the European Journal of Political Theory, the Journal of Applied
Philosophy, and the Journal of Social Philosophy, and chapters in collections
from Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, and Oxford University Press. He is
an editor of the journal Politics and Animals, and was the winner of the
2016 Res Publica essay prize for a paper on in vitro meat.
Kay Peggs is Professor of Criminology and Sociology at Kingston
University, UK and is Fellow of the UK Oxford University Centre for
Animal Ethics. Publications include: Identity and Repartnering after
Separation (Palgrave 2007) with Richard Lampard, Animals and Sociology
(Palgrave 2012) and chapters and articles in journals such as Sociology,
British Journal of Sociology, and Sociological Review. She is co-editor of
Critical Social Research Ethics (2018) and Observation Methods (2013)
with Barry Smart and Joseph Burridge and is assistant editor of the Palgrave
Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics. Forthcoming publications include
“Experiments, Animal Bodies and Human Values” and the co-authored
“Consuming Animals: Ethics, Environment and Lifestyle Choices”.
Joshua Smart is a member of the Philosophy department at Southern
Illinois University. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the University
of Missouri in 2017. His primary research is in epistemology and metaphi-
losophy, and he has also published work in the philosophy of science.
Natalie Thomas is an adjunct faculty member in the Philosophy depart-
ment at the University of Guelph. She received her PhD in Philosophy
xx Notes on Contributors

from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, where she focused

her research on animal ethics and the study of animal minds. She is a fel-
low at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a Woman for Humane
Canada. She teaches applied ethics courses including business ethics,
media ethics, environmental ethics, and animal ethics at various universi-
ties and colleges. In 2016, she published Animal Ethics and the Autonomous
Animal Self as part of the Animal Ethics Series with Palgrave Macmillan.
Thomas I. White is the Conrad N. Hilton Professor Emeritus of Business
Ethics at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and Founder and
Director of the International Business Ethics Case Competition. He is also
a visiting professor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley,
Massachusetts. White is the author of seven books and numerous articles
on topics ranging from sixteenth-­century renaissance humanism to con-
temporary applied ethics. The main focus of his research is the philosophi-
cal and ethical implications of the scientific research on whales and
dolphins. He argues that such practices as the captivity of dolphins and
orcas, the deaths and injuries of dolphins in connection with hunting and
fishing practices, and attempts to bring back commercial whaling are all
ethically indefensible. White is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal
Ethics. He is also a scientific advisor to the Wild Dolphin Project, a
research organization studying Atlantic-­spotted dolphins in the Bahamas,
and served as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.’s 2007/2008 Year of the
Dolphin Program.

Contributors
Brian Berkey Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and of
Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Maša Blaznik Independent Researcher, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Patrick Clipsham Department of Philosophy, Winona State University,
Winona, MN, USA
Kendra Coulter Department of Labour Studies, Brock University, St.
Catherines, ON, Canada
Eugenia Ferrero Department of Communication, Georgia State
University, Atlanta, GA, USA
 Notes on Contributors  xxi

Carrie P. Freeman Department of Communication, Georgia State

University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Katy Fulfer Department of Philosophy and Gender & Social Justice
Program, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
José-Carlos García-Rosell Tourism Studies, Multidimensional Tourism
Institute (MTI), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland,
Rovaniemi, Finland
Tomaž Grušovnik Faculty of Education, University of Primorska, Koper,
Slovenia
Philip Hancock Essex Business School, University of Essex,
Colchester, UK
Trevor Hedberg Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Rebekah Humphreys Department of Philosophy, University of Wales
Trinity Saint David, Ceredigion, UK
Adam Langridge Department of Philosophy, Political Science and
Economics, Nipissing University, North Bay, ON, Canada
Steven McMullen Department of Economics, Hope College,
Holland, MI, USA
Josh Milburn International Relations, Politics and History,
Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK
Kay Peggs Department of Criminology and Sociology, Kingston
University, Kingston upon Thames, UK
Joshua Smart Department of Philosophy, Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville, Edwardsville, IL, USA
Natalie Thomas Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph,
Guelph, ON, Canada
Thomas I. White Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
 CHAPTER 1

Animals and Business Ethics

Natalie Thomas

The human relationship with other animals is fraught with moral contra-
dictions, and this is due, in part, to the socioeconomic framework that it
is embedded in. This framework originated from and continues to be
based on the benefits it provides for humans, and as such it is due time that
we exert effort and place priority on analysing the ethics of our use of
animals in business practices. This volume arises from concerns about the
ethical implications of our uses of other animals and does so from theoreti-
cal perspectives in animal welfare, animal ethics, human-animal studies,
business ethics and other related disciplines. We are animals ourselves of
course, and yet we have distinguished ourselves from other animals based
on things like religion, rationality and culture that are used to give license
and justification to our use of animals for profit. We love our pets, giving
rise to a global pet industry of an estimated $100 billion (USD) by 2020
(Arenofsky 2017), and yet we annually slaughter billions of other mam-
mals, who arguably possess similar levels of intelligence and emotions
under conditions that cause much suffering (Halteman 2011). Indeed, as
McMullen claims, “While many human-animal interactions are

N. Thomas (*)
Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada
e-mail: natevans@uoguelph.ca

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
N. Thomas (ed.), Animals and Business Ethics, The Palgrave
Macmillan Animal Ethics Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97142-7_1
2 N. THOMAS

positive, …humans benefit at the expense of other animals. Moreover, the

harm that non-human animals experience at the hands of humans is largely
determined by economics. Among those animals that are owned by
humans, property laws and economic function dictate their experiences in
life and death.” (2015, 11). As beliefs and social norms about the welfare
and ethical treatment of animals and workers in animal-related industries
have changed and evolved in recent years, it is incumbent on businesses to
ensure that this is taken into account when using animals for profit, as
many academics and the public are calling for (Janssens and Kaptein 2016;
Keeling 2005; Lusk and Bailey Norwood 2010; Sorensen et al. 2001;
Wang and Chan 2017). As such, the purpose of this book is to engage
with some of the main ethical issues that arise from the use of animals in
various business practices, and to provide direction for the improvement
of both human and non-human lives in animal-related industries. The goal
here is to expand business ethics by including considerations about the
welfare, treatment and ethical value of animals from an interdisciplinary
perspective. So far, this topic has largely been ignored by business ethics
scholars despite the rapid growth in animal ethics scholarship and societal
concerns about the ethical implications of practices like animal agriculture
and experimentation (Peggs 2013). This volume is an attempt to expand
the field of business ethics to include the ethical consideration of animals
in business practices in ways that have not previously been addressed, or at
least have not been addressed in much detail.1
So far, there has been little consideration of animals in the scholarly
business ethics literature, despite mentions of the need for greater connec-
tions to be made between the fields of animal welfare, animal ethics and
business ethics, particularly given the advent of new technologies that
enable humans to modify animals in the pursuit of greater productivity
and efficiency in agriculture and experimentation, as well as rising environ-
mental concerns such as climate change and loss of biodiversity (Peggs
2015; Rossi and Garner 2014; Ilea 2009; Frawley and Dyson 2014). The
study of business ethics, broadly speaking, engages with a broad range of
frameworks, theories and concepts as they pertain to the practices of busi-
nesses, corporations, management and their implications for civil society,
but most often animals are only mentioned as a sub-topic in relation to

1
For simplicity, I will be using the term ‘animal’ to refer to non-human animals. It is fully
recognized that humans are also animals and that this is easy to forget and can symbolize our
separation from animals in morally significant ways.
 1 ANIMALS AND BUSINESS ETHICS 3

environmental sustainability and social responsibility, if at all. Given the

increasing pressure for businesses to demonstrate corporate social respon-
sibility and corporate citizenship, as well as appropriate and adequate
stakeholder management, these chapters in this volume seek to under-
stand and analyse ways that animals can be included in these frameworks.
To do this, both simple and more complex questions need to be asked.
These include such questions as to whether or not animals should be
treated as commodities, given their sentience, whether or not animals
should be considered stakeholders and to what extent their interests ought
to be considered by management and businesses generally. Further to
these questions, we must also consider the effects of animal-related work
on the humans that perform such labour, as well as how businesses and
management ought to be making decisions that have ethical impacts on
the animals, humans, and natural environments they use for profit.
This volume is a timely contribution to the study of business ethics for
a number of reasons. The first is that consumers are becoming more aware
of animal welfare concerns related to the use of animals for food, products,
research and experimentation and tourism (Webster 2005; Norwood and
Lusk 2011; Marie 2006; Janssens and van Wesel 2016; Auger et al. 2003;
Bell et al. 2017; Kline 2018). Animal agriculture in particular, due to its
scale and global impact raises a number of urgent ethical issues for agri-­
food industries and farms to address. The consumer awareness of these
issues is translated into a greater demand for transparency regarding how
the animals were raised and treated in addition to the increased demand
for more ethically produced animal products. Any business that makes
claims of social responsibility can be held accountable for their actions as
they affect their stakeholders and the environment, and due to rising con-
sumer concerns about the ethical treatment of animals, this must also be
accounted for by businesses and how they treat the animals they use for
profit. This is apparent with greater demand for the cessation of animal
testing for products such as cosmetics, the demand for fair trade products,
and the rise and success of plant-based and vegan foods. For example, the
rising number of those adopting vegetarian, vegan and flexitarian diets has
created a multi-million dollar market for meat-free products, and about
5% of Americans refuse to eat meat with approximately 8.5 million people
identifying as vegetarian, and 7.5 million as vegans (Potts 2017, 21).
There are also extensive debates concerning animal research and experi-
mentation and the ethics of using animals for the pursuit of knowledge
and for profit, such as developing animal models of disease and in the
4 N. THOMAS

development and testing of pharmaceuticals (Linzey and Linzey 2018;

Garrett 2012; Clark 2014). The debates about the ethics of animal
research and experimentation are driven by concerns about animal welfare
and ethics and despite various forms of regulation in place to protect ani-
mals, it still remains relative to the individual company or business as to
the degree to which they adhere to them or to ethical standards and poli-
cies. Additionally, there can be significant, harmful effects on the humans
that perform such research (psychological and emotional), further dem-
onstrating the need for deeper ethical analyses of business practices involv-
ing animals and humans.
Second, with the urgency of climate change, many people are increas-
ingly aware of the environmental implications of animal agriculture. A full
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (IPCC 2014)
not only outlines the impact of animal agriculture on CO2 and green-
house gas emissions levels but also urges people to reduce or eliminate
their consumption of animal products, especially of beef and dairy, in
order to mitigate climate change, global warming and the disastrous
effects that we all may face in the very near future. Although the estimates
vary to an extent, it is generally accepted that animal agriculture accounts
for 10–12% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC
2014). This includes emissions from the cutting down of forests to grow
feed for livestock, along with the gases emitted by the livestock, to the
energy required for machinery and transportation involved in the full
product life cycle. This means that ethical issues for animal agriculture can
relate to many different industries and businesses that are part of the jour-
ney from the field to the farm to the plate. In addition to the harms com-
mitted directly to the animals themselves, harms to animal habitats and
wildlife due to the clearing of land and forests, for example, threaten to
displace animals and further contribute to the human-caused loss of bio-
diversity and extinction of species that we are already witnessing (Bulliet
2005; Kolbert 2014). Concern about the link between the agri-food
industry globally and the environmental effects of natural resource use,
pollution, deforestation and climate change is on the rise now more than
ever, and businesses need to address these concerns if they are to justify
industrial agriculture while making claims to social responsibility and sus-
tainability (Lerner et al. 2013; Maloni and Brown 2006; Kimmerer 2015).
Lastly, to meet the growing demand for animal products and animal
research, more technologies are being developed to increase yields and
productivity in the agri-food industry and animal models for research
 1 ANIMALS AND BUSINESS ETHICS 5

industries, raising ethical concerns about the nature, uses and conse-
quences of these technologies for animals, humans and the environment.
In farming, this is reflected by the shift from animal husbandry practices to
industrial and intensive farming practices which focus more on efficiency
and productivity. The development of artificial insemination, cross-­
breeding and genetic manipulation (including transgenic and gene-editing
technologies) of livestock, and improved control over animal diseases
resulted in greater efficiency, higher production and lower prices which
result from an increased demand for animal products, in part as a result of
a growing global population (Norwood and Lusk 2011). However, these
advances, while resulting in cheaper prices for consumers, have also
resulted in lower welfare and well-being for animals and for the humans
who work with them. In fact, much more awareness has been brought to
the suffering of workers in industries that cause suffering to animals,
including the agri-food industry and animal experimentation (Ellis 2014,
Porcher and Schmitt 2012, Porcher 2017, Stull and Broadway 2004,
Potts 2017). Although farm animals are primarily valued for the produc-
tion of goods and are valued primarily as commodities, their sentience
demands ethical consideration for their basic desires to avoid suffering
(Webster 2013). Business ethics, however, cannot address these ethical
issues without being informed by animal welfare and animal ethics. Animal
ethics in particular provides the reasons and arguments for why we ought
to care about animal use, their welfare and their suffering.
While those in the field of animal welfare seek to improve the lives and
experiences of animals in various industries that use them for profit, animal
ethics studies the foundations and applications of the moral value of ani-
mals themselves, and they tend to ask more theoretical questions about
whether or not animals should be ‘used’ at all, and under what sorts of
circumstances the uses of animals are morally acceptable. The study of
animal ethics has resulted in an increased recognition of the moral value of
animals beyond their uses for profit or as commodities. This academic field
of study is populated by those from a range of disciplines and focuses on
the elaboration and examination of views and arguments that support the
notion that animals are morally considerable, both directly and indirectly.
Although there is some disagreement as to the basis of this moral consid-
erability, it is generally accepted that many, if not most, animals possess
interests due to their sentience and ability to feel pain and suffering and to
feel pleasure and positive emotions and mental states similar to humans
(Thomas 2016). Views on animal ethics can be conceived of as existing on
6 N. THOMAS

a scale, where on one end there are those who accept the use of animals
for human purposes and profit with considerations made for their welfare
and well-being. On the other end of the scale are those who believe ani-
mals should not be used for any human purposes, such as animal aboli-
tionists (Francione 2008). Along that scale are those who argue for greater
or lesser moral consideration of animals, based on different characteristics
that species or individual animals possess, or on the grounds of particular
moral theories (e.g., Dawkins 2012; Garner 2005; Gruen 2011; Gruen
2015; Korsgaard 2018; Milligan 2015; Rollin 2006; Singer 2006; Sunstein
and Nussbaum 2004; Taylor 2009; Waldau 2011; Thomas 2016; Williams
and DeMello 2007). If animals are understood to possess certain cognitive
capacities, including agency, consciousness and self-awareness, intelligence
and rationality, all of which are now studied in a variety of disciplines
(Thomas 2021), then the view that most animals possess traits that make
them morally considerable is justifiable from evolutionary and psychologi-
cal perspectives. It can then be further specified within ethical theories
such as deontological or utilitarian, for example, the degree to which ani-
mals can flourish or live according to their interests and preferences
(Thomas and Langridge 2021). As a result of the increasing knowledge
we have about animal minds, behaviours, and capabilities, as well as our
knowledge of how these capabilities exist across and within different ani-
mal species, it becomes more and more difficult to ignore calls for greater
attention to be paid to not only how we treat non-human animals, but
also to how we ought to treat them. All of these views on animals entail dif-
ferent positions on the ethical and legal status of animals, and all can be
applied to the ethical assessment or judgement of business practices as
they affect animals and the human-animal relationship (Thomas and
Langridge 2021). What is important here, as demonstrated by the various
contributions in this book, is that particular views of animal ethics are not
all necessarily, mutually exclusive. The unifying goal of animal ethics is to
question, analyse and develop views on how animals ought to be treated,
given what we know about their physical, psychological and emotional
traits. The chapters in this book provide such analyses of how animals are
and ought to be treated in business practices involving animals in agricul-
ture, tourism, experimentation and research.
Although there are a number of different industries that use animals in
various ways, many of the chapters in this book focus on animal agricul-
ture, animal experimentation and research involving animals. The focus on
these particular topics is a result of both the magnitude of the numbers of
 1 ANIMALS AND BUSINESS ETHICS 7

animals that are used and consumed in order to produce food and food
products, along with the dismal conditions animals must endure in large-­
scale and intensive animal production and research facilities. They are also
ethically significant given the impacts on human workers (psychologically
and physically) and the environmental effects such as pollution, loss of
biodiversity and global warming. It is estimated that over 2 billion mam-
mals (including cows, pigs, sheep and goats) are slaughtered each year
globally, along with another 50 billion chickens, and over 150 million tons
of seafood (Thornton 2019; Potts 2017; Meat atlas 2014) for food. Due
to rising population and income levels in Africa, India and Asia, the
demand for meat and animal food products is rising dramatically, and is
predicted to continue to rise as much as 80% in those locations by 2030
(World Economic Forum 2019). The consumption of animal products in
Europe and North America per person is still the highest in the world,
despite the slowing down of consumption of cattle and sheep over the last
ten years or so (Potts 2017). However, the consumption of poultry and
pork is rising steadily in both developing and industrialized countries
(Thornton 2019; Potts 2017; Norwood and Lusk 2011).
Animals used in experimentation and research each year are conserva-
tively estimated to be around 115 million (Linzey and Linzey 2018),
while animals killed for their fur numbered over 150 million in 2014/15
(Humane Society International 2020). Animals are also used for enter-
tainment purposes, including hunting, and are confined and forced to per-
form in zoos, circuses, rodeos, film, television and aquariums (Gruen
2011). The fields of animal studies, human-animal studies and critical ani-
mal studies provide ethical analyses of these uses of animals and their
labour that are useful perspectives to incorporate into business ethics (e.g.,
Kaushik 1999; DeMello 2012; Kaloff and Fitzgerald 2007; Malamud
2013; Sorenson 2014; Coulter 2016). There is also profit to be made
using animals in tourism, as pets, and as materials for clothing, medicines
and jewellery. The ethics of using animals for profit in such industries as
tourism, for example, is being increasingly examined and debated, given
our knowledge of the impacts of such businesses on wildlife (Shani and
Pizam 2007; Fennell 2012; Fennell 2014; Kline 2016). The roles that
media play in advertising that create or perpetuate positive or negative
perceptions of animals for human use are also being examined and anal-
ysed from ethical perspectives (e.g., Almiron et al. 2016; Arluke and
Sanders 2009; de Jonge and van den Bos 2005; Gross and Vallely 2012).
All of these topics are in need of ethical examination and analyses if
8 N. THOMAS

businesses are to take animal welfare and animal ethics seriously, not only
to improve their level of social responsibility and moral behaviour, but also
to adequately address stakeholder concerns and global demands for animal
products that are now jeopardizing environmental sustainability and long-­
term profits.
Animals are used and consumed by humans on a massive scale. They
play a large part in our global economy both directly and through other
related industries, and as such, their use and treatment should be ethically
scrutinized in these business practices. This book is the first of its kind and
is devoted to the ethical analysis of the use of animals in business, includ-
ing industries such as animal agriculture, tourism, experimentation,
research and entertainment. These uses of animals not only raise ethical
issues concerning the animals themselves as labourers and as objects or
commodities, but also for the humans who perform work in these indus-
tries. Ethical issues involving the effects of labour in these industries, both
for animals and for humans, and the ethical implications and harms of such
labour are also addressed in this book. The following chapters provide an
overview and analysis of some of these issues while also providing direc-
tion for further study in business ethics. In a time when we are facing
global challenges with food security and environmental sustainability, and
as we are more informed about the mental, emotional and physical lives of
animals than ever before, the study of animals in business ethics brings
together interdisciplinary thinkers that can provide theoretical and applied
solutions to these ethical issues.
The chapters in this volume have been organized into three distinct
parts based on some of the key themes and topics that unify them. In Part
I, the included chapters focus on issues related to more general areas of
ethical concerns raised by the use of animals in businesses and industries.
The labour and work of animals and humans within animal-related indus-
tries, as well as how and why animals ought to be considered in business
ethics, are discussed in the chapters of this first part. The chapters included
in Part II all relate to issues that arise from the use of animals as food.
Animal welfare and animal suffering within the context of animal agricul-
ture is an ethical issue that needs to be addressed by these industries, and
the chapters in this section focus on what sorts of policies or changes in
views on animals should be revised or reconsidered. Given new related
technologies such as gene editing and lab-cultured meat, some chapters
also consider the ethics of these and whether or not they have the potential
for benefits to animals, humans and the environment. Part III is the final
 1 ANIMALS AND BUSINESS ETHICS 9

section of this volume and it focuses on ethical issues raised within the
context of human-animal relationships in industries such as animal experi-
mentation and entertainment. Whether or not animals ought to be con-
sidered stakeholders and to what extent is also examined, providing a
fitting conclusion to this volume by raising the opportunity for new ways
to include animals in business ethics.
Part I begins by considering one of the inevitable consequences of
using animals and their bodies for products and services which is that they
are turned into commodities that can be bought and sold in the market-
place. If animals are sentient, intelligent creatures, then this presents an
ethical issue for animal-related business practices, as we are reducing their
value to that of something, rather than recognizing them as individuals.
Focusing on this problem, the second chapter of this book addresses the
question of when it is ethically acceptable to use animals to generate a
profit. Clipsham and Fulfer present and apply their anti-commodification
principle to distinguish between permissible and non-permissible uses of
animals in business. In particular, they examine the animal entertainment
industry, the pet or companion animal industry, and the animal agribusi-
ness industry to see if there are ways for these types of businesses to avoid
morally problematic animal commodification.
As a result of increasing ethical concerns related to animal agriculture
and the consumption of animals as food, there has of late been a rise of
vegan and plant-based food products and industries. For those that want
to avoid supporting animal-related food industries, these companies pro-
vide alternatives to the continued commodification of animals into food
products. With the rise of these new companies, we also see different sorts
of ethical issues that are related to practical, economic and labour issues
that are addressed by Coulter and Milburn who look at both the chal-
lenges and benefits they bring with them. By applying the lens of humane
jobs to these issues, they also elaborate on the potential that these compa-
nies bring to provide opportunities for the prioritization of work well-­
being and environmental protection. Their chapter allows us to envision
plant-based companies that create more ethical food choices while also
creating a more humane workforce and working environment.
The issue concerning to what extent business ethics ought to relate to
or rely on moral theory is discussed by Berkey, and he argues that standard
theoretical approaches in business, such as Shareholder and Stakeholder
theories, for example, are inadequate in accounting for animal interests. If
we are generally in agreement that animals possess interests and have
10 N. THOMAS

moral value, then business ethics should adopt a more animal-friendly

theoretical approach. Berkey points out that the principles of business eth-
ics that apply to managerial conduct are often separated from moral prin-
ciples governing personal conduct. In order to achieve animal-friendly
business ethics then, it requires greater commitments to moral theory.
Looking at animals in tourism, Garcia-Rosell and Hancock examine the
workplace management and exploitation that can occur within relation-
ships between human and non-human animals. They do this using the
work of Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory as
a framework that they apply to a unique example of a working environ-
ment that includes both human and non-human animals. Specifically, they
focus on Christmas tourism in Lapland, where reindeer and human work-
ers are used to create memorable experiences for visiting tourists. Their
analysis of this industry demonstrates the interconnections between ethics
and the structures of economic activities that can lead to the problematic
exploitation of both human and non-human animals.
Part II begins with a chapter that considers how the practices and insti-
tutions of animal agriculture can be understood to determine the actual
treatment of animals in the economy. The intensification of industrial ani-
mal agriculture has resulted in both greater efficiency and productivity but
has also resulted in decreased quality of life for many animals. McMullen
examines this trend by focusing on the market incentives that encourage
farmers to participate in an ethical race to the bottom where animal wel-
fare is often sacrificed in order to achieve greater quality and volume of
products such as meat, dairy and eggs. Rather than condemn the actions
of farmers, McMullen examines the implications of this competitive sys-
tem, noting that farmers often have less latitude for ethical action than
most ethicists assume, and the regulation of animal industries need to
account for the dynamic of competition and constraint in order to be
effective. Finally, he claims that the regulation of animal agriculture can be
beneficial to both producers and consumers by creating a system that
enables all participants within it to act ethically.
Businesses who aim to achieve greater corporate social responsibility
must also have in place an effective communication strategy to achieve
transparency and accountability with their stakeholders. Although this is a
commonly accepted claim within business ethics, so far it hasn’t been
explicitly applied to businesses that use animals to address the harms that
are caused to those animals, as well as to their habitats. Freeman and
Treadwell acknowledge the increased public interest in the treatment of
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the son or the youthful favourite.” If we put aside the suggestion of a
matriarchal theory here, the main idea in this judgment accords
generally with the evidence that the author of it has himself done
most to accumulate and to present to us. It is not insignificant that
the earliest type of Aegean idol in existence is that of a goddess, not
a god; and in the more developed Minoan period the representations
of the goddess are more frequent and more imposing than those of
the god; while in the few scenes of cult where the male deity appears
in her company, he appears in a subordinate position, either in a
corner of the field or standing before her throne.93.1 And a strong
current of early Greek legend induces us to believe that when the
earliest Hellenes reached Crete they found a powerful goddess-cult
overshadowing the island, associated with the figure of a young or
infant god: hence spread the Cretan worship of Rhea and the Μήτηρ
τῶν θεῶν, and hence there came to a few places on the Hellenic
mainland, where Minoan influence was strong, the cult and the cult-
legend of the infant Zeus.93.2 Yet we must not strain the evidence too
far; besides the youthful or infant Cretan god, there may have been
the powerful cult of a father-god as well. On three monuments we
catch a glimpse of the armed deity of the sky.93.3 What is more
important is the prominence of the double-headed axe in the service
of the Minoan palace; and this must be a fetichistic emblem
mystically associated with the thunder-god, though occasionally the
goddess might borrow it. The prominence and great vogue of this
religious emblem detracts somewhat from the weight of the evidence
as pointing to the supremacy of the female divine partner. It is Zeus,
not Rhea, that inspired Minos, as Jahwé inspired Moses, and
Shamash Hammurabbi. Yet the view is probably right on the whole
that the mother-goddess was a more frequent figure in the Minoan
service, and was nearer and dearer to the people.
May we also regard her as the prototype of all the leading Hellenic
goddesses? The consideration of this question will bring this
particular line of inquiry to a close.
If we find goddess-supremacy among the early Hellenes, shall we
interpret it as an Aryan-Hellenic tradition, or as an alien and
borrowed trait in their composite religion? If borrowed, are they more
likely to have derived it from the East or from their immediate
predecessors in the regions of Aegean culture? The latter question,
if it arises, we ought to be able to answer at last.
We might guard ourselves at the outset against the uncritical
dogma which has been proclaimed at times that the goddesses in
the various Aryan polytheisms were all alien, and borrowed from the
pre-Aryan peoples in whose lands they settled. Any careful study of
the Vedic and old-Germanic, Phrygo-Thracian religions can refute
this wild statement: the wide prevalence in Europe of the worship of
“Mother Earth,” which Professor Dieterich’s treatise establishes,94.1
is sufficient evidence in itself. Nor could we believe that the early
Aryans were unmoved by an anthropomorphic law of the religious
imagination that is almost universally operative. The Hellenic Aryans,
then, must be supposed to have brought certain of their own
goddesses into Greece, and perhaps philology will be able one day
to tell us who exactly they were. On linguistic and other grounds,
Dione and Demeter may be accepted as provedly old Hellenic: on
the same grounds, probably, Hera; also the name and cult of Hestia
is certainly “Aryan,”94.2 only we dare not call her in the earliest, and
scarcely at any period, a true personal goddess. Now, there is a
further important induction that we may confidently make: at the
period when the Aryan conquerors were pushing their way into
Aegean lands and the Indo-Iranians into the Punjaub and
Mesopotamia, they had a religious bias making for the supremacy of
the Father-God and against the supremacy of the goddess. We can
detect the same instinct also in the old Germanic pantheon.95.1 Its
operation is most visible when the Thrako-Phrygian stock, and their
cousins the Bithynian, broke into the north of Asia Minor, and the
regions on the south of the Black Sea. The god-cult they bring with
them clashes with the aboriginal and—as it proved—invincible
supremacy of the goddess linked to her divine boy: we hear of such
strange cult-products as Attis-Παπαῖος, Father Attis, and one of the
old Aryan titles of the High God appears in the Phrygian Zeus
Βαγαῖος, Bagha in old Persian and Bog in Slavonic meaning deity.
The Aryan hero-ancestor of the Phrygian stock, Manes, whom Sir
William Ramsay believes to be identical with the god Men, becomes
the father of Atys;95.2 also we have later proof of the powerful cult of
Zeus the Thunderer, Zeus the Leader of Hosts, in this region of the
southern shore of the Black Sea. Another induction that I venture,
perhaps incautiously, to make, is that in no Aryan polytheism is there
to be found the worship of an isolated or virgin-goddess, keeping
apart from relations with the male deity: the goddesses in India,
Germany, Ireland, Gaul,96.1 Thrace, and Phrygia are usually
associated temporarily or permanently with the male divinity, and are
popularly regarded as maternal, if not as wedded. Trusting to the
guidance of these two inductions, and always conscious of the
lacunae in our records, we may draw this important conclusion
concerning the earliest religious history of Hellas: namely, that where
we find the powerful cult of an isolated goddess, she belongs to the
pre-Hellenic population. The axiom applies at once and most forcibly
to Artemis and Athena; the one dominant in certain parts of Arcadia
and Attica, the other the exclusive deity of the Attic Acropolis. Their
virginal character was probably a later idea arising from their
isolation, their aversion to cult-partnership with the male deity.96.2
The Aryan Hellenes were able to plant their Zeus and Poseidon on
the high hill of Athens, but not to overthrow the supremacy of Athena
in the central shrine and in the aboriginal soul of the Athenian
people. As regards Hera, the question is more difficult: the
excavations at the Heraeum have been supposed by Dr. Waldstein
to prove the worship of a great goddess on that site, going back in
time to the third millennium B.C.,96.3 a period anterior to the advent
of the god-worshipping Aryan Hellenes. And this goddess remained
dominant through all history at Argos and Samos. But we have no
reason for supposing that her name was Hera in that earliest period.
Phonetically, the word is best explained as “Aryan”: if it was originally
the name brought by the Hellenes and designating the wife-goddess
of the sky-god—and in spite of recent theories that contradict it I still
incline to this view—the Hellenes could apply it to the great goddess
of the Argolid, unless her aversion to matrimony was a dogma, or
her religious isolation a privilege, too strong to infringe. This does not
seem to have been the case. The goddess of Samian cult, a twin-
institution with the Argive, was no virgin, but united with the sky-god
in an old ἱερὸς γάμος. Nevertheless, throughout all history the
goddess in Argos, and probably in Samos, is a more powerful cult-
figure than the god.
 As regards Aphrodite, few students of Greek religion would now
assign her to the original Aryan-Hellenic polytheism. Most still regard
her as coming to the Greek people from the Semitic area of the
Astarte cult. And this was the view that I formerly developed in the
second volume of my Cults. But at that time we were all ignorant of
the facts of Minoan-Mycenaean religion, and some of us were
deceived concerning the antiquity of the Phoenician settlements in
Cyprus and Hellas. The recently discovered evidence points, I think,
inevitably to the theory that Sir Arthur Evans supports; that the
goddess of Cyprus, the island where the old Minoan culture lived
longest, is one form of the great goddess of that gifted Aegean
people, who had developed her into various manifestations through
long centuries of undisturbed religious life. Let us finally observe that
it is just these names, Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, that have hitherto
defied linguistic explanation on either Aryan or Semitic phonetic
principles. We do not yet know the language of King Minos.
A cursory and dogmatic answer may now be given to the two
questions posed above. The Aryan Hellenes did not bring with them
the supremacy of the goddess, for the idea was not natural to them:
they did not borrow it from any Semitic people in the second
millennium, for at that time it was not natural to the Semites: they
found it on the soil of the Aegean lands, as a native growth of an old
Mediterranean religion, a strong plant that may be buried under the
deposits of alien creeds, but is always forcing its head up to the light
again.
Therefore in tracing goddess-cult from the Euphrates valley to the
western Aegean shores, as a test of the influence of the East on the
West, we are brought up sharply at this point. The Western world is
divided from the Eastern by this very phenomenon that the older
scholars used to regard as proving a connection. And it may well
have been the Western cult that influenced the western Semites.
 CHAPTER VI.
The Deities as Nature-Powers.

So far as we have gone our main question must be still regarded as

an open one. We may now compare the particular conceptions
concerning divinity that prevailed at the period to which our search is
limited, in the valley of the Euphrates, and in the other communities
that are in our route of comparison. Many striking points of general
similarity will present themselves, upon which we must not lay too
much weight for our argument, since all polytheisms possess a
certain family likeness: of more importance will be certain strikingly
dissimilar features, if we find any.
First, in regard to the general concepts or characters of the
divinities, the same formula seems mainly applicable to the
Mesopotamian as to the Hellenic facts: the leading divinities have
usually some distinct association with the world of nature; but the
natural phenomenon or elemental fact that may be there in the
background of their personality, becomes overlaid and obscured by
the complex ethical and mental traits that are evolved. Therefore the
mere nature-fact rarely explains the fully-developed god, either of
Babylon or of Hellas. A few salient examples will make this clear. It is
only perhaps Shamash the sun-god of Sippar, and Sin the moon-god
of Ur, that retain their nature-significance rarely obscured. The hymn
to Sin in Dr. Langdon’s collection reveals an intelligible lunar imagery
throughout; but in another published by Zimmern,100.1 his personality
becomes more spiritual and mystical; he is at once “the mother-body
who bears all life, and the pitiful gracious father,” the divinity who has
created the land and founded temples; under the Assyrian régime he
seems to have become a god of war.100.2 Shamash even surpasses
him in grandeur and religious value, so far as we can judge from the
documents; but his whole ethical and spiritual character, clearly
articulated as it is, can be logically evolved from his solar. But in
studying the characters of Marduk and Nergal, for instance, we feel
that the physical theories of their origin help us but little, and are at
times self-contradictory; and it might be well for Assyriologists to take
note of the confusion and darkness that similar theories have spread
in this domain of Hellenic study. Thus we are told that the Sun in the
old Sumerian-Babylonian system gave birth to various special
personalities, representing various aspects of him: Marduk is the
spring-sun, rejoicing in his strength, although his connection with
Shamash does not seem specially close; yet Jeremias, who
expresses this opinion,100.3 believes also that Marduk is a storm-
god, because “his word can shake the sea.” Shall we say, then, that
Jahwé is a storm-god “because the voice of the Lord shaketh the
cedar-trees”? The phrase is quite innocent if we only mean by it that
any and every personal God could send a storm; it becomes of
doubtful value if it signifies here that Marduk is an impersonation of
the storm. The texts seem sometimes to contradict each other; Ninib,
for instance, is regarded by Jeremias101.1 as the rising sun, on the
ground of certain phrases in his hymn of praise; but the concept of
him as a storm-god is more salient in the oldest texts, and thus he is
pre-eminently a deity of destruction and death, and becomes
specially an Assyrian war-god. Does it help us if we imagine him
originally as the Storm-Sun, as Jensen would have us? or is it not
allowable to suspect that solar terms of religious description became
a later Babylonian convention, and that any deity might attract them?
Nergal, again, the god of Kutha, has been supposed to have had a
solar origin, as the god of the midday and destructive sun;101.2 yet
his special realm is Hades, where he ruled by the side of the
goddess Allatu, and his name is doubtfully interpreted as the Lord of
the Great Habitation, and thus he is regarded as a god of disease
and death. This did not hinder him from becoming with Ninib the
great war-god of the Assyrians and their god of the chase, nor a
pious Babylonian poet from exalting him as “God of the little ones, he
of the benevolent visage.”101.3 In one of the Tel-El-Amarna texts he
is designated by an ideogram, that almost certainly means “the god
of iron.”101.4 This last fact, if correct, is an illustration of that which a
general survey of the Babylonian texts at last impresses upon us: the
physical origin of the deity, if he had one, does not often shape and
control his whole career; the high god grows into manifold forms,
dilates into a varied spiritual personality, progresses with the life of
his people, reflects new aspects of life, altogether independently of
any physical idea of him that may have originally prevailed. Adad,
the god of storms, becomes a god of prophecy, and is addressed as
a god of mercy in the fragment of a hymn.102.1 Ea the god of waters
becomes par excellence the god of wisdom, not because waters are
wise, but probably because Eridu, the seat of his cult, was an
immemorial home of ancient wisdom, that is to say, magic. As for the
great Nebo of Borsippa, Jeremias,102.2 who is otherwise devoted to
solar theories, has some good remarks on the absence of any sign
of his nature-origin: his ideogram designates “the prophet,” in his
earliest character he is the writer, his symbol is the “stilus” of the
scribe. Yet he does not confine himself to writing: he is interested in
vegetation, and eulogised in one hymn as “he who openeth the
springs and causeth the corn to sprout, he without whom the dykes
and canals would run dry.” Surely this interest comes to him, not
from the planet Mercury,102.3 but from his wisdom and his concern
with Babylonian civilisation, which depended upon dykes and canals.
We are presented here with a progressive polytheism, that is, one of
which the divinities show the power of self-development parallel with
the self-development of the people.
The question we have just been considering, the physical
character of the Babylonian deities in relation to their whole
personality, suggests two last reflections. Their gods have a certain
relation to the planets, which is preserved even in our modern
astronomy. That the early Sumerians worshipped stars is
probable,102.4 as the Sumerian sign for divinity is a star; but that the
Sumerian-Babylonian high gods were personal forms of the planets,
is denied by leading modern Assyriologists,103.1 except in the case of
the sun and the moon, Shamash and Sin. It was only the Chaldaean
astronomic theory that came to regard the various planets in their
varying positions as special manifestations of the powers of the
different personal gods; and the same planet might be a
manifestation, according to its different positions, of different gods:
the “star Jupiter at one point is Marduk, at another point Nebo”; this
dogma is found on a seventh-century tablet, which declares at the
same time that “Mercury” is Nebo.103.2 This planetary association of
the deities is well illustrated by the memorial relief of Asarhaddon
found at Sinjerli, and the relief of Maltaija, showing stars crowning
their heads;103.3 but both these are later than the period with which
we are here immediately concerned.
Lastly, we fail to observe in that domain of the old Babylonian
religion which may be called nature-worship, any clear worship of the
earth regarded as a personal and living being, as the Hellenes
regarded Gaia. The great goddesses, Ishtar, the goddess at once
warlike and luxurious, virgin and yet unchaste, terrible and merciful,
the bright virgin of the sky, Bau, the wife of Ninib, the “amorous lady
of heaven,” are certainly not of this character. Still less is Allatu, the
monstrous and grim Queen of Hell, at whose breast the lions are
suckled. It seems that if the early Sumerians conceived the earth as
a personal divinity at all, they imagined it as a male divinity. For in
the inscriptions of Nippur, Enlil or Bel appears as a Lord of the
underworld, meaning our earth as distinct from the heavens: he is
hymned as the “lord of the harvest-lands, lord of the grain-fields”104.1
—he is the “husbandman who tends the fields”; when Enlil is angry,
“he sends hunger everywhere.” In another hymn he is thus
described: “The great Earth-Mountain is Enlil, the mountain-storm is
he, whose shoulders rival the heavens, whose foundation is the
bright abyss”;104.2 and again, “Lord, who makest to abound pure oil
and nourishing milk;… in the earth Lord of life art thou”; “to give life
to the ground thou dost exist.”104.3 It is evident that Enlil is more than
the personal earth regarded as a solid substance; he is rather the
god of all the forces and life that move on and in the earth, hence he
is “the lord of winds.”104.4 He is more, then, than the mere equivalent
of Gaia. One might have expected to find a Sumerian counterpart for
this goddess in Ninlil or Belit, the wife and female double of Enlil or
Bel: but in an inscription that is dated as early as 4000 B.C. she is
styled “The Queen of Heaven and Earth,”104.5 and though in a hymn
of lamentation addressed to her104.6 she is described as the goddess
“who causeth plants to come forth,” yet the ecstatic and mysticising
Babylonian imagination has veiled and clouded her nature-aspect.
 This strange religious poetry which had been fermenting for
thousands of years, was likely enough to transform past recognition
the simple aboriginal fact. It is only the lesser deities, the
“Sondergötter” of the Sumerian pantheon, whose nature-functions
might remain clear and unchanged: for instance, such a corn-deity
as we see on a cylinder, with corn-ears in his hand and corn-stalks
springing from his shoulders.105.1 Even the simple form of Tammuz,
the darling of the Sumerian people, has been somewhat blurred by
the poetry of passion that for long ages was woven about him. As
Zimmern has shown in a recent treatise,105.2 he was never the chief
deity of any Babylonian or Assyrian state, but nevertheless one of
great antiquity and power with the Sumerian people, and his cult and
story were doubtless spreading westward in the second millennium.
In spite of all accretions and the obscurity of his name, which is
interpreted to mean “real son of the water-deep,”105.3 we can still
recognise the form of the young god of vegetation who dies in the
heat of the summer solstice and descends to the world below,
leaving the earth barren till he returns. This idea is expressed by
some of his names, “the Lord of the land’s fruitfulness, the Lord of
the shepherd’s dwelling, the Lord of the cattle-stall, the God of
grain,”105.4 and by many an allusion to his legend in the hymns,
which are the most beautiful and pathetic in the old Sumerian
psalmody: “in his manhood in the submerged grain he lay”; “how
long still shall the verdure be imprisoned, how long shall the green
things be held in bondage?”105.5 An interesting title found in some of
the incantation liturgies is that of “the shepherd,” and like some other
vegetation-powers he is at times regarded as the Healer. Though he
was not admitted as the compeer of the high gods into the
Babylonian or Assyrian pantheon, he may be said to have survived
them all, and his name and myth became the inspiration of a great
popular religion. No other of that vast fraternity of corn-spirits or
vegetation-spirits into which Dr. Frazer has initiated us, has ever had
such a career as Tammuz. In one of his hymns he is invoked as
“Lord of the world of Death,” because for a time he descended into
Hell.106.1 If this idea had been allowed to germinate and to develop
its full potentiality, it might have changed the aspect of Babylonian
eschatology. But, as we shall see, the ideas naturally attaching to
vegetation, to the kindly and fair life of seeds and plants, were never
in Babylonia properly harmonised with those that dominated belief
concerning the lower world of the dead. The study of the Tammuz-
rites I shall reserve for a later occasion.
We have now to consider the other Anatolian cults from the point
of view of nature-worship. The survey need not detain us long as our
evidence is less copious. As regards the western Semites, our
trustworthy records are in no way so ancient as those that enlighten
us concerning Mesopotamia. Philo of Byblos, the interpreter of the
Phoenician Sanchuniathon, presents us only with a late picture of
the Canaanite religion, that may be marred by their own symbolic
interpretations. Because we are told106.2 that “the Phoenicians and
Egyptians were the first to worship the sun and the moon and the
stars,”106.2 or “the first to deify the growths of the earth,”106.3 we
cannot conclude that in the second millennium the religion of the
Phoenicians was purely solar or astral, or merely the cult of
vegetation-gods. “Baalshamin” means the lord of the heavens, an
Aramaic and Phoenician god, and Sanchuniathon explained him as
the sun;107.1 but Robertson Smith gives good reason for the view
that the earliest conception of the local Baal was of a deity of the
fertilising spring, a local divine owner of a well-watered plot, hence
the giver of all life to fruits and cattle.107.2 Nor are we sure what was
the leading “nature-aspect” of the cult of Astarte. The title “Meleket
Ashamaim,” “the Queen of the Heavens,” which Ezekiel attaches to
her, does not inform us precisely concerning her earliest and original
character. From her close association with the Minoan goddess of
Cyprus, she was no doubt worshipped as the source of the life of
plants and animals and men. Also, it is of some value to bear in mind
the later records concerning the worship of Helios at Tyre in the
Roman Imperial period, and of Helios and the thunder-god at
Palmyra, where Adad-Rimmon, the storm-god who was in power
among the western Semites in the earliest period, may have
survived till the beginning of Christianity. We may conclude from all
this that in the oldest period of the western Semite societies the cult
of special nature-deities was a prominent feature of the religion. But
even these may already in the second millennium have acquired a
complex of personal attributes ethical and spiritual. In the later
Carthaginian religion, the personal deities are clearly distinguished
from the mere nature-powers, such as the sun, earth, and moon; and
this important distinction may have arisen long before the date of the
document that proves it.107.3
Of the Hittite gods we may say this much at least, that the
monuments enable us to recognise the thunder-god with the
hammer or axe, and in the striking relief at Ibreez we discern the
form of the god of vegetation and crops, holding corn and grapes.
The winged disk, carved with other doubtful fetich-emblems above
the head of the god who is clasping the priest or king on the Boghaz-
Keui relief, is a solar emblem, borrowed probably from Egyptian
religious art. And the Hittite sun-god was invoked in the Hittite treaty
with Rameses II.108.1 Whether the mother-goddess was conceived
as the personal form of Gaia is doubtful; her clear affinity with Kybele
would suggest this, and in the Hittite treaty with Rameses II.
mentioned above, the goddess Tesker is called the Mistress of the
Mountains, the express title of the Phrygian Mother, and another “the
Mistress of the Soil.”108.2 Yet evidently the Hittite religion is too
complex to be regarded as mere nature-worship: the great relief of
Boghaz-Keui shows a solemn and elaborate ritual to which doubtless
some spiritual concepts were attached.
As regards the original ideas underlying the cults of those other
Anatolian peoples who were nearer in geographical position and
perhaps in race to the Aegean peoples, we have no explicit ancient
records that help us to decide for the second millennium. For some
of these various communities the goddess was, as we have seen,
the supreme power. The great Phrygian goddess Kybele is the cult-
figure of most importance for our purpose, and it is possible to divine
her original character with fair certainty.108.3 In her attributes,
functions, and form, we can discern nothing celestial, solar or lunar;
she was, and remained to the end, a mother-goddess of the earth, a
personal source of and life of fruits, beasts, and man: her favourite
haunt was the mountains, and her earliest image that we know, that
which the Greeks called Niobe on Mount Sipylos, seems like a
human shape emerging from the mountain-side: she loved also the
mountain caverns, which were called after her κύβελα; and
according to one legend she emerged from the rock Agdos, and
hence took the name Agdestis. The myth of her beloved Attis is clear
ritual-legend associated with vegetation; and Greek poetry and
Greek cult definitely linked her with the Greek Gaia. We gather also
from the legend of Attis and other facts that her power descended to
the underworld, and the spirits of the dead were gathered to her;109.1
hence the snake appears as her symbol, carved as an akroterion
above her sepulchral shrine, where she is sculptured with her two
lions at Arslan Kaya—“the Lion Rock in Phrygia”;109.2 and her
counterpart, the Lydian Mother Hipta, is addressed as χθονίη.109.3
In all her aspect and functions she is the double of the great
Minoan mother-goddess described already, whose familiar animals
are the lion and the serpent, who claims worship from the mountain-
top, and whose character is wholly that of a great earth goddess with
power doubtless reaching down to the lower world of the dead. Only
from Crete we have evidence which is lacking in pre-Aryan Phrygia
of the presence of a thunder or sky-god by her side.109.4
Turning our attention now to the early Hellenic world, and to that
part of its religion which we may call Nature-worship, we discern
certain general traits that place it on the same plane in some
respects with the Mesopotamian. Certain of the higher deities show
their power in certain elemental spheres, Poseidon mainly in the
water, Demeter in the land, Zeus in the air. But of none of these is
the power wholly limited to that element: and each has acquired, like
the high gods of Assyria and Babylon and Jahwé of Israel, a
complex anthropomorphic character that cannot be derived, though
the old generation of scholars wearily attempted to derive it, from the
elemental nature-phenomenon. Again, other leading divinities, such
as Apollo, Artemis, Athena, are already in the pre-Homeric period, as
far as we can discern, pure real personalities like Nebo and Asshur,
having no discoverable nature-significance at all. Besides these
higher cults, we discern a vast number of popular local cults of
winds, springs, rivers, at first animistically and then
anthropomorphically imagined. So in Mesopotamia we find direct
worship of canals and the river. Finally, we discern in early Hellas a
multitude of special “functional” divinities or heroes, “Sondergötter,”
like Eunostos, the hero of the harvest: and it may be possible to find
their counterparts in the valley of the Euphrates.110.1 We have also
the nameless groups of divine potencies in Hellas, such as the
Πραξιδίκαι, Μειλίχιοι, these being more frequent in the Hellenic than
in the Mesopotamian religion, which presents such parallels as the
Annunaki and the Igigi, nameless daimones of the lower and upper
world: and these in both regions may be regarded as products of
animism not yet developed into theism.
But such general traits of resemblance in two developed
polytheisms deceive no trained inquirer; and it would be childish to
base a theory of borrowing on them. What is far more important are
the marked differences in the nature-side of the Greek polytheism,
as compared with the Sumerian-Babylonian. In the latter, the solar-
element was very strong, though perhaps not so omnipresent as
some Assyriologists assure us. On the contrary, in the proto-Hellenic
system it was strikingly weak, so far as we can interpret the
evidence. The earliest Hellenes certainly regarded the Sun as a
personal animate being, though the word Helios did not necessarily
connote for them an anthropomorphic god. But the insignificance of
his figure in the Homeric poems agrees well with the facts of actual
cult. As I have pointed out in the last volume of my Cults,111.1 it was
only at Rhodes that Helios was a great personal god, appealing to
the faith and affections of the people, revered as their ancestor and
the author of their civilisation, and descending, we may believe, from
the period of the Minoan culture111.2 with which Rhodes was closely
associated in legend. And it appears from the evidence of legend
and Minoan art that sun-worship was of some power in the pre-
Hellenic Aegean civilisation. In the Mycenaean epoch he may have
had power in Corinth, but his cult faded there in the historic age
before that of Athena and Poseidon. The developed Hellene
preferred the more personal deity, whose name did not so obviously
suggest a special phenomenon of nature. And if he inherited or
adopted certain solar personages, as some think he adopted a sun-
god Ares from Thrace, he seems to have transformed them by some
mental process so as to obliterate the traces of the original nature-
perception.
Even more significant for our purpose is the comparison of the two
regions from the point of view of lunar-cult. We have sufficiently
noted already the prominence of the moon-god Sin in the Babylonian
pantheon, an august figure of a great religion: and among all the
Semitic peoples the moon was a male personality, as it appears to
have been for the Vedic Indians and other Aryan peoples. The
Hellenic imagination here presents to us this salient difference, that
the personal moon is feminine, and she seems to have enjoyed the
scantiest cult of all the great powers of Nature. Not that anywhere in
Greece she was wholly without worship.112.1 She is mentioned in a
vague record as one of the divinities to whom νηφάλια, “wineless
offerings,” were consecrated in Athens: she had an ancient place in
the aboriginal religion of Arcadia; of her worship in other places the
records are usually late and insignificant. The great Minoan goddess
may have attracted to herself some lunar significance, but this
aspect of her was not pronounced.
Here, then, is another point at which the theory of early Babylonian
influence in nascent Hellenic religion seriously breaks down. And in
this comparison of Nature-cults it breaks down markedly at two
others. The pantheon of Mesopotamia had early taken on an astral-
character. The primitive Hellenes doubtless had, like other peoples,
their star-myths; and their superstitions were aroused and
superstitious practices evoked by celestial “teratology,” by striking
phenomena, such as eclipses, comets, falling stars.113.1 But there is
no record suggesting that they paid direct worship to the stars, or
that their deities were astral personations, or were in the early period
associated with the stars: such association, where it arose, is merely
a sign of that wave of Oriental influence that moved westward in the
later centuries. The only clear evidences of star-cult in Hellenic
communities that I have been able to find do not disturb this
induction: Lykophron and a late Byzantine author indicate a cult of
Zeus Ἀστέριος in Crete, which cannot, even if real, be interpreted as
direct star-worship:113.2 at Sinope, a city of Assyrian origin, named
after the Babylonian moon-god, a stone with a late inscription
suggests a cult of Seirios and the constellations;113.3 and an Attic
inscription of the Roman Imperial epoch, mentions a priest of the
φωσφόροι, whom we must interpret as stellar beings.113.4 What,
then, must we say about the Dioskouroi, whom we are generally
taught to regard as the personal forms of the morning- and the
evening-star? Certainly, if the astral character of the great Twin-
Brethren of the Hellenes were provedly their original one, the general
statement just put forth would have to be seriously modified. But a
careful study of their cult does not justify the conventional view; and
the theory that Wide has insisted on113.5 appears to me the only
reasonable account of them, namely, that originally they were heroic
“chthonian” figures, to whom a celestial character came later to be
attached: it is significant that the astral aspect of them is only
presented in comparatively late documents and monuments, not in
Homer or the Homeric hymn, and that their most ancient ritual
includes a “lectisternium,” which properly belonged to heroes and
personages of the lower world.
Lastly, the nature-worship of the Hellenes was pre-eminently
concerned with Mother-earth—with Ge-meter, and this divine power
in its varied personal forms was perhaps of all others the nearest
and dearest to the popular heart: so much of their ritual was
concerned directly with her. And some scholars have supposed,
erroneously, I think, but not unnaturally, that all the leading Hellenic
goddesses arose from this aboriginal animistic idea. We may at least
believe this of Demeter and Kore, the most winning personalities of
the higher Hellenic religion. And even Athena and Artemis, whatever,
if any, was their original nature-significance, show in many of their
aspects and much of their ritual a close affinity to the earth-goddess.
But, as I have indicated above, it is impossible to find in the early
Mesopotamian religion a parallel figure to Ge: though Ishtar was
naturally possessed of vegetative functions—so that, when she
disappears below the world, all vegetation languishes—yet it would
be hazardous to say that she was a personal form of earth: we may
rather suspect that by the time the Semites brought her to
Mesopotamia from the West, she had lost all direct nature-
significance, and was wholly a personal individual.
Finally, the cleavage between the two groups of peoples in their
attitude towards the powers of nature is still further marked in the
evolution of certain moral and eschatologic ideas. The concept of a
Ge-Themis, of Earth as the source of righteousness, and of Mother-
earth as the kindly welcomer of the souls of the dead, appears to
have been alien to Mesopotamian imagination, for which, Allatu, the
Queen of the lower world, is a figure wholly terrible.
 CHAPTER VII.
The Deities as Social-Powers.

The next important section of our survey is the comparison of the

social and ethical aspects of the religions in the eastern and western
areas. Here again the former warning may be repeated, not to draw
rash conclusions from the observance of mere general points of
similarity, such as occur in the religious systems of all the more
advanced societies of which we have any explicit record.
The idea that religion is merely a concern of the private individual
conscience is one of the latest phenomena in all religious history.
Both for the primitive and the more cultured communities of ancient
history, religion was by a law of its nature a social phenomenon, a
force penetrating all the institutions of the political life, law and
morality. But its precise contribution to the evolution of certain social
products in the various communities is still a question inviting and
repaying much research. It will be interesting to compare what may
be gleaned from Assyriology and the study of Hellenism bearing on
this inquiry, although it may not help us much towards the solution of
our main question.
We may assume of the Mesopotamian as of other peoples, that its
“social origins” were partly religious; only in the valley of the
Euphrates, society had already so far advanced in the fifth
millennium B.C. that the study of its origins will be always
problematic. The deities are already national, having developed far
beyond the narrow tribal limits before we begin to discern them
clearly; we have not to deal with the divinities of clans, phratries, or
septs, but of complex aggregates, such as cities and kingdoms. And
the great cities are already there before our knowledge begins.
In the Sumerian myth of creation, it is the high god himself who,
after settling the order of heaven and earth, immediately constructs
cities such as Borsippa; a passage in Berosus speaks of Oannes,
that is to say, Ea as the founder of cities and temples;117.1 and the
myths may enshrine the truth that the origin of the Mesopotamian
city was often religious, that the temple was its nucleus. I cannot
discover that this is indicated by the names of any other of the great
cities, Babylon, Borsippa, Sippar, Kutha; but it is shown by the name
of Nineveh and its connection with the Sumerian goddess Nin or
Nina, possibly a form of Ishtar.117.2 And in the inscription of Sargon
giving the names of the eight doors of his palace, all named after
deities, Ninib is described as the god “who lays the ground-stone of
the city for eternity”;117.3 also we find designations of particular cities,
as the city of such-and-such a deity.117.4 Finally, it may be worth
noting in this direction that Nusku the fire-god, who lights the
sacrifices, is called “the City-Founder, the Restorer of Temples.”117.5
The evidence of Anatolia is late, but it tells the same story: Sir
William Ramsay has emphasised the importance for early political
history of such names as Hieroupolis, the City of the Temple,
developing into Hierapolis, the Holy City.118.1 In Hellas the evidence
is fuller and older of the religious origin of some, at least, of the
πόλεις, for some of the old names reveal the personal name or the
appellative of the divinity. Such are Athenai (the settlements of
Athena); Potniai, “the place of the revered ones”; Alalkomenai, “the
places of Athena Alalkomene”; Nemea, “the sacred groves of Zeus”;
Megara, probably “the shrines of the goddess of the lower world”;
Diades, Olympia and others. The reason of such development is not
hard to seek: the temple would be the meeting-place of many
consanguineous tribes, and its sanctuary would safeguard intertribal
markets, and at the same time demand fortification and attract a
settlement. Mecca, the holy city of Arabia in days long before and
after Islam, had doubtless this origin.118.2 We have traces of the
same phenomenon in our English names: Preston, for instance,
showing the growth of a city out of a monastery. In the later history of
Hellenism the religious origin of the πόλεις is still more frequently
revealed by its name: the god who leads the colonists to their new
home gives his name to the settlement; hence the very numerous
“Apolloniai.”
But though it is not permissible to dogmatise about the origin of
the great cities in the valley of the Euphrates, we have ample
material supplied by Babylonian-Assyrian monuments and texts of
the close interdependence of Church and State, to illustrate what I
remarked upon in my inaugural lecture, the political character of the
pantheon. This emerges most clearly when we consider the relations
of the monarch to the deity. Of all Oriental autocracies, it may be
said with truth that the instinctive bias of the people to an autocratic
system is a religious instinct: the kingship is of the divine type of
which Dr. Frazer has collected the amplest evidence. And this was
certainly the type of the most ancient kingship that we can discover
in the Mesopotamian region. The ancient kings of the Isin dynasty
dared to speak of themselves as “the beloved consort of Nana.”119.1
But more usually the king was regarded as the son or fosterling of
the divinity, though this dogma need not have been given a literal
interpretation, nor did it clash with the well-established proof of a
secular paternity. An interesting example is the inscription of
Samsuilina, the son of Hammurabi, who was reigning perhaps as
early as the latter part of the third millennium:119.2 the king proclaims,
“I built the wall in Nippur in honour of the goddess Nin, the walls of
Padda to Adad my helper, the wall of Lagab to Sin the god, my
begetter.” The tie of the foster-child was as close as that of actual
sonship; and Assurbanipal is regarded as the foster-child of the
goddess of Nineveh. Nebo himself says to him in that remarkable
conversation between the god and the king that an inscription has
preserved,119.3 “weak wast thou, O Assurbanipal, when thou sattest
on the lap of the divine Queen of Nineveh, and didst drink from her
four breasts.” Similarly, the early King Lugalzaggisi declares that he
was nourished by the milk of the goddess Ninharsag, and King
Gudea mentions Nina as his mother.119.4 In an oracle of
encouragement given by the goddess Belit to Assurbanipal, she
speaks to him thus, “Thou whom Belit has borne, do not fear.”120.1
Now a few isolated texts might be quoted to suggest that this idea
of divine parentage was not confined to the kings, but that even the
private Babylonian might at times rise to the conception that he was
in a sense the child of God. At least in one incantation, in which
Marduk is commissioned by Ea to heal a sick man, the man is called
“the child of his god”;120.2 and Ishtar is often designated “the Mother
of Gods and men” and the source of all life on the earth, human,
animal, and vegetative.120.3 But the incantation points only to a
vague spiritual belief that might be associated with a general idea
that all life is originally divine. We may be sure that the feeling of the
divine life of the king was a much more real and living belief than
was any sense that the individual might occasionally cherish of his
own celestial origin. The king and the god were together the joint
source of law and order. The greatest of the early Babylonian
dynasts, Lugalzaggisi, whose reign is dated near to 4000 B.C., styles
himself the vicegerent (Patesi) of Enlil, the earth-god of Nippur;120.4
and in early Babylonian contracts, oath was taken in the names both
of the god and the king.120.5 Hammurabi converses with Shamash
and receives the great code from his hands, even as Moses received
the law from Jahwé or Minos from Zeus. Did any monument ever
express so profoundly the divine origin of the royal authority and the
State institutions as the famous Shamash relief?121.1 It is the gods
who endow Hammurabi with his various mental qualities: he himself
tells us so in his code, “Marduk sent me to rule men and to proclaim
Righteousness to the world”;121.2 and he speaks similarly of the sun-
god Shamash: “At the command of Shamash, the great Judge of
Heaven and Earth, shall Righteousness arise up in the land.”121.3 He
proclaims himself, therefore, the political prophet of the Lord; and
curses with a portentous curse any one who shall venture to abolish
his enactments. The later Assyrian kings have the same religious
confidence: Sargon (B.C. 722-705) proclaims that he owes his
penetrating genius to Ea, “the Lord of Wisdom,” and his
understanding to the “Queen of the crown of heaven.”121.4 We find
them also, the Assyrian kings, consulting the sun-god by presenting
to him tablets inscribed with questions as to their chances of success
in a war, or the fitness and loyalty of a minister whom they proposed
to appoint.121.5
And this religion affords a unique illustration of the intimacy of the
bond between the king as head of the State and the divine powers.
The gods are the rulers of destiny: and in the Hall of Assembly at
Esagila each year the Council of the Gods under the presidency of
Nebo fixed the destiny of the king and the Empire for the ensuing
year.121.6 This award must have signified the writing down of oracles