Pythagoras and the Four Elements

Question: Pythagoras is said to have studied in Babylon, and that this was perhaps the source of the doctrine of Four Elements. Do you think this is likely?

To begin with a bit of background about Babylonian beliefs:

The Enûma Eliš (also spelled as Enuma Elish, found in 1849 at Ninevah, now Mosul, in Iraq) is the Babylonian creation myth, which was written down around the 7th century BCE on seven clay tablets, each holding between 115 and 170 lines of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform ('wedge-shaped') script - one of the earliest known forms of writing. Some of the elements of the beliefs it describes - which includes the creation of the world and of man, and a battle between the gods to do with the supremacy of Marduk/Marutuk ("bull calf of the sun god Utu") - are attested by illustrations dating to the Kassite era (18th to 16th centuries BCE - wow.) 

As well as the Creation myth and the battle of the gods, the Enûma Eliš also documents the belief in four gods who may be understood as the personifications of the cosmic elements of Sea, Earth, Sky, and Wind. Babylonian mythology itself is said to have been influenced by Sumerian religion, which ascribed responsibility for all matters to do with the natural and social order to the divinities.

Sumer was one of the earliest known civilisations, along with those of Ancient Egypt and of the Indus Valley, located in southern Mesopotamia - modern day Iraq - along the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. When the Amorite Babylonians gained dominance over the area by the mid 17th century BCE, the Sumerian and Akkadian languages were retained for religious purposes and for some literature (such as the Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh) while the pantheon was altered, notably by the introduction of Marduk and the evolution of the goddess Ishtar as counterpart to the Sumerian goddess Inanna.

So, turning to Pythagoras: he was born around 570 BCE on the Ionian (Greek) island of Samos, which is said to have been a 'thriving cultural hub' known for its feats of engineering and its riotous festival culture. It was a major centre of trade with the Near East - and traders of course brought with them their cultural and religious ideas, concepts, and beliefs. At the same time, natural philosophy, begun by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was flourishing in the Ionian islands, that is, the philosophical study of nature and the physical universe, regarded as a precursor of natural and modern science. Pythagoras was also a contemporary of Anaximander and Anaximenes (both material monist philosophers) and the historian/geographer Hecataeus, who all lived in Miletus, on the mainland just across from Samos.

As well as these Milesian influences, Pythagoras is said both to have studied at Thebes in Egypt, and to have been a student of Magi from Persia, possibly even of Zarathustra himself. And although the most likely dates of Zarathustra's lifetime don't support this nice idea, it does indicate a link between Pythagoras and Zoroastrianism. Greek writers of the classical period also assert that Pythagoras visited Crete, learnt astronomy from the Chaldeans, arithmetic from the Phoenicians, and studied under 'the Jews', the Hindu sages in India, and the Celts of Iberia. Busy man!'

All of which perhaps goes at least some way toward indicating that the influences on Pythagoras were many and varied, and almost certainly would have included the Babylonian concept of the four elements.

Pythagoras himself was a particular influence on the pre-Socratic Sicilian philosopher Empedocles, to whom is ascribed the origination of the cosmogenic theory of the four classical elements - earth, air, fire, and water - from which he believed all the structures in the world were made, being represented as energies, gases, liquids, and solids. Empedocles called the four elements 'roots' (it was Plato who coined the term 'elements') and regarded them as indestructible and unchangeable. His concept that nothing new comes or can come into being, and that the only change that can occur is a change in the juxtaposition of element with elements, became the standard dogma for the next 2000 years.

Empedocles also identified the 'roots' with the deities Zeus (the sky/thunder king of the gods),

Hera (sister-wife of Zeus and queen of the gods), 

Nestis (aka Persephone, wife of Hades and queen of the underworld), 

and Aidoneus (a mythical king, represented as the husband of Persephone/Nestis, and thus the same as Hades): 

"Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: enlivening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus. And Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears"... from which it would seem that Nestis is Water, Zeus would be Fire, Hera could be Air, and Hades would be Earth.

Here in Brittany, the triskele emblem is said to represent Earth, Sea, and Sky, which certainly surround us. We have to make the Fire ourselves! :-)