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Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science
Gerard O’Regan
Mathematics
in Computing
An Accessible Guide to Historical,
Foundational and Application Contexts
Second Edition
Undergraduate Topics in Computer
Science
Series Editor
Ian Mackie, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Advisory Editors
Samson Abramsky , Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford,
Oxford, UK
Chris Hankin , Department of Computing, Imperial College London, London, UK
Mike Hinchey , Lero – The Irish Software Research Centre, University of
Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Dexter C. Kozen, Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca,
NY, USA
Andrew Pitts , Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of
Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Hanne Riis Nielson , Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science,
Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Steven S. Skiena, Department of Computer Science, Stony Brook University, Stony
Brook, NY, USA
Iain Stewart , Department of Computer Science, Durham University, Durham, UK
‘Undergraduate Topics in Computer Science’ (UTiCS) delivers high-quality
instructional content for undergraduates studying in all areas of computing and
information science. From core foundational and theoretical material to final-year
topics and applications, UTiCS books take a fresh, concise, and modern approach
and are ideal for self-study or for a one- or two-semester course. The texts are all
authored by established experts in their fields, reviewed by an international advisory
board, and contain numerous examples and problems, many of which include fully
worked solutions.
The UTiCS concept relies on high-quality, concise books in softback format,
andgenerally a maximum of 275–300 pages. For undergraduate textbooks that arelikely
to be longer, more expository, Springer continues to offer the highly regardedTexts in
Computer Science series, to which we refer potential authors.
Mathematics
in Computing
An Accessible Guide to Historical,
Foundational and Application Contexts
Second Edition
123
Gerard O’Regan
SQC Consulting
Mallow, Cork, Ireland
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To
My dear aunts Mrs. Rita Lowry and
Mrs. Kitty Butler
and
In memory of my late uncle Moses Fenton.
Preface
Overview
The objective of this book is to give the reader a flavour of mathematics used in the
computing field. We emphasize the applicability of mathematics rather than the
study of mathematics for its own sake, and the goal is that the reader will appreciate
the rich applications of mathematics to the computing field. This includes appli-
cations to the foundations of computing; to error detection and correcting codes
with finite field theory; to the field of cryptography with the results of number
theory; to the modelling of telecommunication networks with graph theory; to the
application of discrete mathematics and proof techniques to the software correct-
ness field (especially safety-critical systems using formal methods and model
checking); to language theory and semantics; and to computability and decidability.
The first chapter introduces analog and digital computers, and the von Neumann
architecture which is the fundamental architecture underlying a digital computer.
Chapter 2 discusses the foundations of computing, and we describe the binary
number system and the step reckoner calculating machine that were invented by
Leibniz. Babbage designed the difference engine as a machine to evaluate poly-
nomials, and his analytic engine provided the vision of a modern computer. Boole
was an English mathematician who made important contributions to mathematics
and logic, and his symbolic logic is the foundation for digital computing.
Chapter 3 provides an introduction to fundamental building blocks in mathe-
matics including sets, relations and functions. A set is a collection of well-defined
objects and it may be finite or infinite. A relation between two sets A and B
indicates a relationship between members of the two sets and is a subset of the
Cartesian product of the two sets. A function is a special type of relation such that
for each element in A there is at most one element in the co-domain B. Functions
may be partial or total and injective, surjective or bijective.
vii
viii Preface
system; they may be employed to derive a program from its mathematical speci-
fication; and they may provide a rigorous proof that the implemented program
satisfies its specification. They have been mainly applied to the safety-critical field.
Chapter 22 presents the Z specification language, which is one of the most
widely used formal methods. It was developed at Oxford University in the U.K.
Chapter 23 discusses automata theory, including finite-state machines, push-
down automata and Turing machines. Finite-state machines are abstract machines
that are in only one state at a time, and the input symbol causes a transition from the
current state to the next state. Pushdown automata have greater computational
power, and they contain extra memory in the form of a stack from which symbols
may be pushed or popped. The Turing machine is the most powerful model for
computation, and this theoretical machine is equivalent to an actual computer in the
sense that it can compute exactly the same set of functions.
Chapter 24 discusses model checking which is an automated technique such that
given a finite-state model of a system and a formal property, then it systematically
checks whether the property is true or false in a given state in the model. It is an
effective technique to identify potential design errors, and it increases the confi-
dence in the correctness of the system design.
Chapter 25 discusses probability and statistics and includes a discussion on
discrete and continuous random variables, probability distributions, sample spaces,
sampling, the abuse of statistics, variance and standard deviation and hypothesis
testing. The application of probability to the software reliability field is discussed.
Chapter 26 discusses complex numbers and quaternions. Complex numbers are
of the form a + bi where a and b are real numbers, and i2 = −1. Quaternions are a
generalization of complex numbers to quadruples that satisfy the quaternion for-
mula i2 = j2 = k2 = −1.
Chapter 27 provides a very short introduction to calculus and provides a
high-level overview of limits, continuity, differentiation, integration, numerical
analysis, Fourier series, Laplace transforms and differential equations.
Chapter 28 is the concluding chapter in which we summarize the journey that we
have travelled in this book.
Audience
The audience of this book includes computer science students who wish to obtain
an overview of mathematics used in computing, and mathematicians who wish to
get an overview of how mathematics is applied in the computing field. The book
will also be of interest to the motivated general reader.
Preface xi
Acknowledgements
1 What Is a Computer? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Analog Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Digital Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.1 Vacuum Tubes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.2 Transistors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.3 Integrated Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.4 Microprocessors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 von Neumann Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Hardware and Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.6 Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2 Foundations of Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Step Reckoner Calculating Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Binary Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.4 The Difference Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 The Analytic Engine—Vision of a Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.5.1 Applications of Analytic Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.6 Boole’s Symbolic Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.6.1 Switching Circuits and Boolean Algebra . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.7 Application of Symbolic Logic to Digital Computing . . . . . . . 27
2.8 Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3 Overview of Mathematics in Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2 Set Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2.1 Set-Theoretical Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2.2 Properties of Set-Theoretical Operations . . . . . . . . . . . 37
xiii
xiv Contents
5.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
6 Algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
6.2 Simple and Simultaneous Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
6.3 Quadratic Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
6.4 Indices and Logarithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.5 Horner’s Method for Polynomials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6.6 Abstract Algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6.6.1 Monoids and Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
6.6.2 Rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
6.6.3 Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
6.6.4 Vector Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
6.7 Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
6.8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
7 Sequences, Series and Permutations and Combinations . . . . . . . . . 117
7.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
7.2 Sequences and Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
7.3 Arithmetic and Geometric Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
7.4 Arithmetic and Geometric Series . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
7.5 Simple and Compound Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
7.6 Time Value of Money and Annuities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
7.7 Permutations and Combinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
7.8 Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
7.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
8 Mathematical Induction and Recursion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
8.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
8.2 Strong Induction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
8.3 Recursion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
8.4 Structural Induction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
8.5 Review Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
8.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
9 Graph Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
9.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
9.2 Undirected Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
9.2.1 Hamiltonian Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
9.3 Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
9.3.1 Binary Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
9.4 Graph Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
9.5 Graph Colouring and Four-Colour Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
xvi Contents
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 449
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
List of Figures
xxiii
xxiv List of Figures
Key Topics
Analog computers
Digital computers
Vacuum tubes
Transistors
Integrated circuits
von Neumann architecture
Generation of computers
Hardware
Software
1.1 Introduction
recipient. However, today’s technology has transformed the modern world into a
global village, and the modern citizen may make video calls over the Internet or
post pictures and videos on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The
World Wide Web allows business to compete in a global market.
A computer is a programmable electronic device that can process, store and
retrieve data. It processes data according to a set of instructions or program. All
computers consist of two basic parts, namely, hardware and software. The hard-
ware is the physical part of the machine, and the components of a digital computer
include memory for short-term storage of data or instructions; an arithmetic/logic
unit for carrying out arithmetic and logical operations; a control unit responsible for
the execution of computer instructions in memory; and peripherals that handle the
input and output operations. Software is a set of instructions that tells the computer
what to do.
The original meaning of the word ‘computer’ referred to someone who carried
out calculations rather than an actual machine. The early digital computers built in
the 1940s and 1950s were enormous machines consisting of thousands of vacuum
tubes. They typically filled a large room but their computational power was a
fraction of the personal computers and mobile devices used today.
There are two distinct families of computing devices, namely, digital computers
and the historical analog computer. The earliest computers were analog not digital,
and these two types of computer operate on quite different principles.
The computation in a digital computer is based on binary digits, i.e. ‘0’ and ‘1’.
Electronic circuits are used to represent binary numbers, with the state of an
electrical switch (i.e. ‘on’ or ‘off’) representing a binary digit internally within a
computer.
A digital computer is a sequential device that generally operates on data one step
at a time, and the earliest digital computers were developed in the 1940s. The data
are represented in binary format, and a single transistor (initially bulky vacuum
tubes) is used to represent a binary digit. Several transistors are required to store
larger numbers.
An analog computer operates in a completely different way to a digital com-
puter. The representation of data in an analog computer reflects the properties of the
data that are being modelled. For example, data and numbers may be represented by
physical quantities such as electric voltage, whereas a stream of binary digits is used
to represent them in a digital computer.
James Thompson (who was the brother of the physicist Lord Kelvin) did early
foundational work on analog computation in the nineteenth century. He invented a
wheel-and-disc integrator, which was used in mechanical analog devices, and he
worked with Kelvin to construct a device to perform the integration of a product of
two functions. Kelvin later described a general-purpose analog machine (he did not
1.2 Analog Computers 3
build it) for integrating linear differential equations. He built a tide predicting
analog computer that remained in use at the Port of Liverpool up to the 1960s.
The operations in an analog computer are performed in parallel, and they are
useful in simulating dynamic systems. They have been applied to flight simulation,
nuclear power plants and industrial chemical processes.
Vannevar Bush developed the first large-scale general-purpose mechanical
analog computer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bush’s differential
analyser (Fig. 1.1) was a mechanical analog computer designed to solve sixth-order
differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform
the integration. The mechanization allowed integration and differential equations
problems to be solved more rapidly. The machine took up the space of a large table
in a room and weighed about 100 tonnes.
It contained wheels, discs, shafts and gears to perform the calculations. It
required a considerable setup time by technicians to solve an equation. It contained
150 motors and miles of wires connecting relays and vacuum tubes.
Data representation in an analog computer is compact, but it may be subject to
corruption with noise. A single capacitor can represent one continuous variable in
an analog computer. Analog computers were replaced by digital computers shortly
after the Second World War.
Early digital computers used vacuum tubes to store binary information, and a
vacuum tube may represent the binary value ‘0’ or ‘1’. These tubes were large and
bulky and generated a significant amount of heat. Air conditioning was required to
cool the machine, and there were problems with the reliability of the tubes.
Shockley and others invented the transistor in the late 1940s, and it replaced
vacuum tubes from the late 1950s onwards. Transistors are small and consume very
little power, and the resulting machines were smaller, faster and more reliable.
Integrated circuits were introduced in the early 1960s, and a massive amount of
computational power could now be placed on a very small chip. Integrated circuits
are small and consume very little power, and may be mass-produced to a very
high-quality standard. However, integrated circuits are difficult to modify or repair,
and are nearly always replaced on failure.
The fundamental architecture of a computer has remained basically the same
since von Neumann and others proposed it in the mid-1940s. It includes a central
processing unit which includes the control unit and the arithmetic unit, an input and
output unit, and memory.
A vacuum tube is a device that relies on the flow of an electric current through a
vacuum. Vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) were widely used in electronic devices
such as televisions, radios and computers until the invention of the transistor.
The basic idea of a vacuum tube is that the current passes through the filament,
which then heats it up so that it gives off electrons. The electrons are negatively
charged and are attracted to the small positive plate (or anode) within the tube.
A unidirectional flow is thus established between the filament and the plate. Tho-
mas Edison had observed this while investigating the reason for breakage of lamp
filaments. He noted an uneven blackening (darkest near one terminal of the fila-
ment) of the bulbs in his incandescent lamps and noted that current flows from the
lamp’s filament and a plate within the vacuum.
The first generation of computers used several thousand bulky vacuum tubes,
with several racks of vacuum tubes taking up the space of a large room. The
vacuum tube used in the early computers was a three-terminal device, and it con-
sisted of a cathode, a grid and a plate. It was used to represent one of two binary
states, i.e. the binary value ‘0’ or ‘1’.
The filament of a vacuum tube becomes unstable over time. In addition, if air
leaks into the tube then oxygen will react with the hot filament and damage it. The
size and unreliability of vacuum tubes motivated research into more compact and
reliable technologies. This led to the invention of the transistor in the late 1940s.
The first generation of digital computers all used vacuum tubes, e.g. the
Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) developed at the University of Iowa in 1942;
1.3 Digital Computers 5
1.3.2 Transistors
The transistor is a fundamental building block in modern electronic systems, and its
invention revolutionized the field of electronics. It was smaller, cheaper and more
reliable than the existing vacuum tubes.
The transistor is a three-terminal, solid-state electronic device. It can control
electric current or voltage between two of the terminals by applying an electric
current or voltage to the third terminal. The three-terminal transistor enables an
electric switch to be made which can be controlled by another electrical switch.
Complicated logic circuits may be built up by cascading these switches (switches
that control switches that control switches, and so on.).
These logic circuits may be built very compactly on a silicon chip with a density
of over a million transistors per square centimetre. The switches may be turned on
and off very rapidly (e.g. every 0.000000001 s). These electronic chips are at the
heart of modern electronic devices.
The transistor (Fig. 1.2) was developed at Bell Labs after the Second World
War. The goal of the research was to find a solid-state alternative to vacuum tubes,
as this technology was too bulky and unreliable. Three Bell Labs inventors
(Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain) were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956
in recognition of their invention of the transistor.
William Shockley was involved in radar research and anti-submarine operations
research during the Second World War, and after the war he led the Bell Labs
research group (that included Bardeen and Brattain) that aimed to find a solid-state
alternative to the glass-based vacuum tubes.
Bardeen and Brattain succeeded in creating a point-contact transistor in 1947
independently of Shockley who was working on a junction-based transistor.
Shockley believed that the points contact transistor would not be commercially
viable, and his junction point transistor was announced in 1951.
Shockley formed Shockley Semiconductor Inc. (part of Beckman Instruments)
in 1955. The second generation of computers used transistors instead of vacuum
tubes. The University of Manchester’s experimental Transistor Computer was one
of the earliest transistor computers. The prototype machine appeared in 1953, and
the full-size version was commissioned in 1955. The invention of the transistor is
discussed in more detail in (O’Regan 2018).
Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments invented the integrated circuit in 1958. His
invention used a wafer of germanium, and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semicon-
ductors did subsequent work on silicon-based integrated circuits. The integrated
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names Bel and Hadad figure here, however; but this may be a late borrowing from their Aramæan
neighbours. From northern Hedjaz we have a considerable number of inscriptions and graffiti, copies of
which are still to be regarded with caution, and there, too, the names Bel, Hadad and compounds of the
Babylonian Nabu, are found in the list of names of the nomads.
More interesting is the ancient name of Mecca, Macoraba, which originally designated the celebrated
central sanctuary of the region. This name is derived front the verb karaba, which in Babylonian means
“worship, bless, pray”, in evident proof of an ancient borrowing from the idiom of the cuneiform texts.
We shall know some day what the inscriptions of middle and southern Hedjaz contain in the way of
theophorous names. These inscriptions certainly exist, and await a traveller courageous enough to save
them from total destruction at the stupid hands of the pilgrims. The famous black stone of Kaaba seems
to bear an inscription of which it would be well to have a photograph.
We know still less what is reserved for us in the graffiti scattered in the intermediate region between
Hedjaz and Yemen; the graphic chain cannot have been interrupted in this latitude, which from great
antiquity formed the entrance to the highly civilised kingdom of Sheba, and which, owing to its
production of aromatic essences, had commercial relations with the peoples of the Mediterranean.
Yemen was composed of four kingdoms, of which that of Sheba seems to have been the most ancient
and most powerful; the other three are Catabania, Hadramaut, Mahrah or Tafat. Of the latter we have
no indigenous information prior to Islamism, and there is reason to believe that it formed a vassal state
of Hadramaut. The latter is pre-eminently the spice-producing region, and Catabania may be considered
as an ancient colony of Hadramaut, which was founded on the northern route for a commercial
purpose, and later gained its independence.
In its turn Catabania founded, again, on the northern route, another colony, which, on gaining its
freedom, called itself the Minyæan people, after the principal city, Ma’in. The Minyæi left traces of their
activity at Egra on the frontier of Nabatia, and in central Egypt at Oxyrhyncus, where they had a
settlement at the time of the first Ptolemies; but their presence in Egypt in the Persian period is proved
by a votive inscription, thanking their gods for having saved their caravan from the danger by which it
had been threatened during the war between the Egyptians and the Medes, i.e., the Persians. From
Egypt they sent their caravans to Gaza in Phœnicia and into all Syria.
Prior to this the trade in incense and spices seems to have been in the hands of the Sabæans.
Solomon (about the year 1000 b.c.) sought to make a treaty with this people, whose queen had made
him an official visit at Jerusalem. It is to be presumed that the Sabæans also sent caravans directly to
Nineveh and Babylon by way of the oases of Negran, Wady Dawassir, and Gebel-Sammar. Owing to
these almost uninterrupted visits, the peoples of southern Arabia were in a position to learn and
practise customs and rites peculiar to the eastern Semites; for example, the employment of aromatic
fumigation as a means of purification after sexual intercourse. The Sabæan pantheon contained El (the
Assyrio-Babylonian Ilu) under the guise of a divine personage, and not simply as an abstract term for
“god.” The Babylonian Ishtar, daughter of Sin, is transformed into a male divinity, Athtar, son of Sin. The
manifold diversification of the Babylonian goddess appears also in the Sabæan Athtar; the great
religious centres of Sheba each possess their own Athtar. Nabu, the Babylonian god of writing and
prophecy, was also worshipped by the Catabanians under the somewhat disguised form of Anbai. From
the point of view of art, the technique of sculpture and decoration often recalls the Babylonian style.
Finally, we meet in the kingdom of Sheba the Assyrian institution of the limmi, or annual archons, an
institution that existed also at Carthage, but nowhere else on the Asiatic continent, least of all in a
monarchical state.
We know very little of the religion of the Agazi or Semites of Abyssinia; a pre-Christian inscription
asserts, however, that the cult of El and of Astar (Astarte) flourished among them. Their pantheon
included also a god of war called Mahram, the equivalent of the Ninib or Adar of the Semites of the
north.
On the opposite side, at the extreme east of the Arabian peninsula, along the Persian gulf, the most
important agglomeration formed the kingdom of Gerrha. The Gerrhæans maintained commercial
relations with both Egypt and Chaldea. One of their cities bore the name of Bilbana, “Bil (Bel) has built,”
a certain indication that it had adopted the cult of the most popular Babylonian god. Facing this coast is
the Bahrein group of islands, the largest of which contains a number of tombs in which cuneiform
inscriptions in the Babylonian language have been found.
We have now made the round of the whole Semitic region, and everywhere we have been able to
show striking Babylonian influences in spite of the enormous distance in time and space that separates
the converging rays from their point of radiation. But before concluding, we must halt upon a particular
territory, a territory that forms but an imperceptible point in this vast region, but which in spite of its
material diminutiveness brought forth a nation that was destined to assume the glorious rôle of being
the legitimate heir of the great Babylonian ancestor, and of directing the conscience not only of the
Semitic race, but of the most civilised portion of the human race in general.
This nation, which chance seems to have thrown into the world without defence, in the midst of
hostile elements that were furious for its destruction, and whose name, Israel, exactly symbolises the
unremitting struggle against the terribly destructive powers that surround it, this nation, I say, had the
strength to transform the splendid polytheistic heritage that had fallen to it from Babylon into a
monotheistic theory of an astounding originality. The transformation of the antique legacy took place
only after centuries of struggle between the best part of the nation, the party of the prophets, and the
conservatism of the mass of the people, who were everywhere attached to the ancient traditions.
The writings of this monotheistic minority, which finally imposed itself upon the entire nation, enable
us to appreciate the importance of the ancient elements, the dross of which was rejected in the refining
process of the prophets. Genesis has preserved two great and very characteristic Babylonian epics,—the
Creation, and the Deluge,—but how different in spirit, in spite of the close similarity in outline and
external form.
In the Babylonian cosmogony, chaos, incarnate in the female dragon Tiamat, the primordial ocean,
brings forth at the same time the gods and the most horrible, malevolent monsters. Having learned that
the gods wish to build themselves a more commodious residence in her domain, she gathers her forces,
furiously attacks the clan of gods, and puts them to flight. They unite again and choose as their
champion Marduk, the son of Yan, who succeeds in vanquishing the terrible ancestress. Marduk cuts the
body of Tiamat into two pieces, and of them he constructs heaven and earth. Then he proceeds to
make the heavenly bodies, and arranges them in an immutable order; he stocks the earth with plants
and animals, and has man made by the goddess Arura, who fashions him out of the dust of the earth.
This myth, splendid as an epic invention, is too rude to contain the least philosophical principle. The
Hebrew thinker, while retaining the general outline, has eliminated the whole crowd of monstrous or
ugly divinities unworthy to receive the homage of the human race. The picture has lost nothing in
extent; but a single, all-powerful god first creates chaotic matter, and then organises it, step by step, for
the sole benefit of the human race. The cycle of the ten antediluvian patriarchs, which includes millions
of years, is reduced to sixteen hundred years, and thus brought within the range of actual humanity.
Finally, the deluge, in the primitive legend the result of the mad arrogance of the god Bel, is justified by
the extraordinary corruption of the men of that epoch.
Like a true reformer the prophetic narrator has raised upon the Babylonian basis a new system whose
rational and moral side need not fear comparison with any other religious doctrine of humanity. Among
the Greeks, no religious or social reform could be developed and preserved that took for a basis their
castes of irresponsible gods. Egypt perished without having attempted to rise from its coarse animal-
worship. Babylonianism alone, by its hymns and its epics, still lives to-day as an important factor in
universal religion, although under a form idealised by genius. Materially, Babylon is but a memory, but a
delicate part of its atoms passed into the vigorous constitution of its spiritual heir, the sacred book of
Hebrew monotheism, to become the common property of humanity.
MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE
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