The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Part 19

The word I have rendered "chaos" is _mummu_. Damascius explains it as ???t?? ??s??, "the world of thought" or "ideas." It is a world which has as yet no outward form or content, a world without matter, or perhaps more probably a world in which matter is inseparable from thought. And for this reason it is formless; matter as yet had a.s.sumed no shape, there is no single part of it which is so defined and separated from the rest as to receive a name and thereby to exist. There is nothing but a dark and formless deep, which can be imagined but not pictured or described.

The chaos, however, is a chaos of waters. Once more, therefore, we are taken back to Eridu and the sh.o.r.es of the Persian Gulf, and to the cosmology which saw in the water the origin of all things. But the cosmology itself has been strangely changed. There is no longer a creator G.o.d, no longer an Ea, who, like Yahveh, existed before creation, and to whom the earth and its inhabitants owe their existence. He has been swept aside, and an atheistic philosophy has taken his place. The mythological garb of the larger part of the poem cannot disguise the materialism of its preface; in the later tablets of it Tiamat may once more be the dragon of popular imagination, but the first tablet is careful to explain that this is but an adaptation to folk-lore and legend, and that Tiamat is really what her name signifies, the chaos of waters.

The process of creation is conceived of under the Semitic form of generation. The Deep and the chaos of waters become male and female principles, from whom other pairs are generated. The process of generation easily pa.s.sed into the emanation of the Gnostic systems of theosophy under the influence of Greek metaphysics. But the poet of Babylon remained true to his Semitic point of view; for him creation is a process of generation rather than of emanation; and though the divine or superhuman beings of the old mythology have become mere primordial elements, they are still male and female, begetting children like men and G.o.ds.

To find the elemental deities or principles that could thus form links in the chain of evolution, it was necessary to fall back on the spirits or ghosts of the early Sumerian cult who were essentially material in their nature, and had nothing in common with the Semitic Baal. Lakhmu and his consort were part of the monstrous brood of Tiamat; they represented the first attempts to give form and substance to the universe. But the form was still chaotic and immature, suitably symbolised by beings, half human and half b.e.s.t.i.a.l, which had descended to Semitic Babylonia from Sumerian animism, and whose memory was kept alive by religious art.

Lakhmu and Lakhamu were followed by An-sar and Ki-sar, the upper and lower firmament. The one originally denoted the spirit-world of the sky, the other the spirit-world of the earth.(310) They were not G.o.ds in the Semitic sense of the term. But the Babylonian theologians transformed them into abstractions, or rather into Platonic archetypes of the heaven and earth. Their appearance meant that the world had at last taken form and substance; the reign of chaos was over, and limits had been set which should never again be overpa.s.sed. The earth and the sky bounded and defined one another; the age of formlessness was ended, and an orderly universe was being prepared fit to receive the present creation.

But the work of preparation was a long one, and not until it was finished could the G.o.ds of Semitic Babylonia be born. But even they have ceased to be G.o.ds for the philosophic cosmologist. They are replaced and represented by the triad of Anu, Bel, and Ea, who thus become mere symbols of the sky, the earth, and the water, the elements which Babylonian philosophy regarded as const.i.tuting the present world. Doubtless, did we possess the rest of the tablet, we should read how the other "great G.o.ds" were sprung from them.

The later tablets of the Epic, which are devoted to the glorification of Merodach, are for the most part of little interest for the cosmologist.

They describe at wearisome length and with tedious reiteration the challenge of Tiamat to the G.o.ds, the arming of Merodach, and his victory over the dragon. Religions and mythological conceptions of all kinds have been laid under contribution, and confusedly mingled together. It was necessary that Merodach, the supreme G.o.d of Babylon, should have been the creator of the world; and it was therefore also necessary that the creative acts of the other creator G.o.ds of Babylonia should be transferred to him, however diverse they may have been. Hence, in the course of the poem, Merodach is described as destroying and creating by his word alone,-a cosmological conception which reminds us of that of the Egyptian school of Hermopolis, while after the destruction of Tiamat he is said to have cut her in half like a flat fish, forming the canopy of heaven with one half, above which the "fountains of the great deep" were kept firmly barred. This is in flagrant contradiction with the cosmogony of the Introduction, but it is probable that it was derived from Nippur, where En-lil was perhaps described as creating the heavens and earth in a similar fas.h.i.+on. When the creative functions of En-lil were usurped by Merodach, the old myth was transferred to the G.o.d of Babylon; and accordingly, in the paean which seems to form the end of the Epic, Bel of Nippur is declared to have bestowed upon Merodach his name of "lord of the earth," and therewith the powers and functions which accompanied it.

The struggle between Tiamat, the dragon of darkness, and Merodach, the G.o.d of light, must originally have symbolised the dispersion of the black rain-cloud and raging tempest by the rays of the sun. But the author of the poem evidently regards it from a cosmological point of view. For him it is the victory of order over chaos, of the present creation over the formless world of the past, and of fixed law over anarchy and confusion.

The conception of a law, governing the universe and unable to be broken, lay deep in the Babylonian mind. Even the G.o.ds could not escape it; they too had to submit to that inexorable destiny which distinguished the world in which we live from the world of chaos. All they could do was to interpret and reveal the decrees of fate; the decrees themselves were unalterable. It was not Bel who issued them; they were contained in the tablets of destiny which he wore on his breast as the symbol of his supremacy, and which enabled him to predict the future. These were, indeed, the Urim and Thummim which, like the high priest of Israel, he was privileged to consult.(311) What they did was not to make him the arbiter of fortune, but its interpreter and seer. He learned from them how the laws of the universe were going to work, what destiny had in store for it, and how, therefore, it was needful to act. It does not even seem that his prevision extended beyond a year; at all events, when Bel of Nippur had yielded up his rights to Bel of Babylon, we are told that the latter had to sit each New Year's day in the mystic "chamber of the fates,"

determining the destiny of mankind during the ensuing year.

The victory over Tiamat was followed by the a.s.signment of particular posts in the sky to Anu, Bel, and Ea. This again harmonises but ill with the cosmology of the preface to the poem; but the astronomers had long since divided the heaven between the G.o.ds of the Babylonian triad, and the honour of first doing so is accordingly a.s.signed to Merodach. Then comes an account of the creation of the heavenly bodies-

"He prepared the stations of the great G.o.ds; the stars corresponding to them he established as constellations; he made known the year, and marked out the signs of the zodiac.

Three stars he a.s.signed to each of the 12 months, from the beginning of the year till (its) close.

He established the station of Jupiter that they might know their bounds, that they should not sin, should not go astray, any one of them.

The stations of Bel and Ea he fixed along with it.

He opened gates on both sides, he strengthened (their) bolts on the left hand and the right; in the middle he set a staircase.(312) He made the moon appear illuminating the night; he established it as the luminary of night that the days might be known."

Here it will be noticed that, as in Genesis, the heavenly bodies are regarded as already in existence. What the creator did was to establish them in their stations, and appoint them to mark and register time. In fact, as soon as Ansar-the upper firmament-appeared, they appeared also, though in an embryonic form. Merodach is thus an arranger rather than a creator, the founder of astronomy and the calendar rather than the maker of the stars. It is significant, however, that there is no reference to the sun; the sun-G.o.d could hardly fix for himself the laws he had to obey.

It has usually been supposed that the account of the orderly arrangement of the stars was followed by that of the creation of animals. But the tablet on which the latter is found is a mere fragment, and Professor Zimmern may be right in thinking that it belongs to a different story of the creation. At any rate, the creation in it is a.s.signed to "the G.o.ds"

generally "in their a.s.sembly" rather than to Merodach alone. On the other hand, as we have seen, the author of the Epic did not hesitate to introduce into it cosmological myths and ideas which agreed but badly together, and it is not likely that he would have omitted to notice the creation of animate things.

But a description of the creation of the world, or even of the great struggle between the G.o.ds of light and the dragon of darkness, was not the main purpose of the Babylonian poem. This was the glorification of the G.o.d of Babylon. The story of the creation was introduced into it because it was necessary that the supreme G.o.d of the universe should also be its creator, and it was for the same reason that the overthrow of the powers of darkness and anarchy was a.s.signed to Merodach alone. He usurped and absorbed the prerogatives and attributes of the older G.o.ds; their virtues, as it were, pa.s.sed to him along with their sovereignty and kingdom. The fact is very plainly expressed in what appears to be the concluding tablet of the Epic. Here the names, and therewith the essential natures, of the other deities are formally handed over to Bel-Merodach of Babylon.

Henceforward he is acknowledged in heaven as well as in earth, the supreme Bel or Baal of Semitic faith, the father of G.o.ds and men. Ea, the lord of the deep, and Bel of Nippur, "the lord of the earth," alike yield up to him their powers; he a.s.sumes their names and t.i.tles; and, thanks to the centralising influence of Babylon, Babylonian religion approaches monotheism as nearly as its local character ever allowed it to do. The creator alone could rightfully claim the wors.h.i.+p of the creatures he had made.

But it was an approach merely; the final step was never taken, even by the more speculative theologians of Babylonia, which swept away the polytheism of the local cults, and left Merodach without a rival.

Herein lies the great contrast between the Babylonian and the Hebrew conceptions of the creation. The Hebrew cosmology starts from the belief in one G.o.d, beside whom there is none else, whether in the orderly world of to-day or in the world of chaos that preceded it. On its forefront stand the words, "In the beginning G.o.d created the heavens and the earth."

There was chaos, it was true, but it was a chaos which had no existence apart from G.o.d, who was its absolute master to carve and fas.h.i.+on as He would. The deep, too, was there; but the deep was neither the impersonation of Tiamat nor the realm of Ea; the breath of the one G.o.d brooded over it, awaiting the time when the creative word should be uttered, and the breath of G.o.d should become the life of the world. The elements, indeed, of the Hebrew cosmology are all Babylonian; even the creative word itself was a Babylonian conception, as the story of Merodach has shown us; but the spirit that inspires the cosmology is the ant.i.thesis of that which inspires the cosmologies of Babylonia. Between the polytheism of Babylonia and the monotheism of Israel a gulf is fixed which cannot be spanned.

The Babylonian Epic of the Creation, as we may continue to call it, sums up and incorporates the various cosmological systems and fancies that had been current in the country. They are thrown into a mythological form with a philosophical introduction. We may therefore regard it as embodying the latest and most fully elaborated attempt of the Babylonian mind to explain the origin of things. It is probably not much older than the age of the Second a.s.syrian empire, though the materials out of which it has been composed go back to the earliest days of Babylonian antiquity. But it exemplifies the three principles or fundamental ideas upon which Babylonian cosmology rested-the belief that water is the primal element, the belief in a lawless chaos from which the present world has, as it were, been rescued after a long and fierce struggle between the powers of darkness and light, and a belief in generation as the primary creative force. The doctrine that in water we must see the source of all things-a doctrine that made its way through the cosmologies of Phnicia and Israel into that of the Greek philosopher Thales-can be traced back to the days when Eridu was the seaport of Babylonia, and its inhabitants reclaimed the marshlands from the sea, and speculated on the origin of the soil on which they dwelt. The belief in the two creations of darkness and light, of confusion and law, may have arisen from the first contact between the teaching of Nippur and that of Eridu, and the endeavour to reconcile the antagonistic conceptions that underlay them, and the contrary systems of creation which they presupposed. The belief, finally, in generation as a motive force was part of the religious heritage that was common to the Semitic race. Semitic religion centred in a divine family which corresponded to the family of the wors.h.i.+pper on earth; the G.o.ds were fathers and mothers, and begat children like the human parents, after whom they were modelled. In so far, therefore, as the universe was divine, it too must have been evolved in the same fas.h.i.+on; it was only when it ceased to partake of the divine nature, and to a.s.sume its present form, that the G.o.d could deal with the materials of which it consisted, as the potter dealt with his clay; or could even create by the simple word of his mouth, like the man who similarly created the names of things, and therewith the things themselves which the names denoted. With the rise of philosophic speculation the process of divine generation became a process of emanation. The G.o.ds pa.s.sed into mere symbols, or rather cosmic principles and elements; they retained, indeed, their double nature as male and female; but that was all. The human element that once was in them disappeared, the concrete became the abstract. Mummu Tiamat was explained as the world of immature ideas,-the simple "apprehension," we might almost say, of the Hegelian philosophy,-and the first of the "aeons" of the later Gnosticism was thus started on its way. Babylonian religion had been narrowly local and anthropomorphic; under the guidance of a cosmological philosophy it tended to become an atheistic materialism. The poet who wrote the introduction to the Epic of the Creation could have had but little faith in the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses he paraded on the scene; in the self-evolved universe of the schools there was hardly room even for the creator Merodach himself.

Lecture VII. The Sacred Books.

Every organised religion has had its sacred books. They have been as indispensable to it as an organised priesthood; indeed, Mohammedanism is a proof that the sacred book is more necessary to its existence than even a priesthood. The sacred book binds a religion to its past; it is the ultimate authority to which, in matters of controversy, appeal can be made, for it enshrines those teachings of the past upon which the faith of the present professes to rest. It remains fixed and permanent amid the perpetual flow and ebb of human things; the generations of men pa.s.s quickly away, rites and ceremonies change, the meaning of symbols is forgotten, and the human memory is weak and deceitful; but the written word endures, and the changes that pa.s.s over it are comparatively few and slight.

Babylonia possessed an organised religion, a religion that was official, and to a large extent the result of an artificial combination of heterogeneous elements; and it too, therefore, necessarily possessed its sacred books. But they differed essentially from the sacred books of ancient Egypt. The Egyptian lived for the future life rather than for the present, and his sacred books were Books of the Dead, intended for the guidance of the disembodied soul in its journey through the other world.

The interest and cares of the Babylonian, on the contrary, were centred in the present life. The other world was for him a land of shadow and forgetfulness; a dreary world of darkness and semi-conscious existence to which he willingly closed his eyes. It was in this world that he was rewarded or punished for his deeds, that he had intercourse with the G.o.ds of light, and that he was, as is often said in the hymns, "the son of his G.o.d." What he needed, accordingly, from his sacred books was guidance in this world, not in the world beyond the grave.

The sacred books of Babylonia thus fall into three cla.s.ses. We have, first, the so-called magical texts or incantations, the object of which was to preserve the faithful from disease and mischief, to ward off death, and to defeat the evil arts of the witch and the sorcerer. Secondly, there are the hymns to the G.o.ds; and, lastly, the penitential psalms, which resemble in many respects the psalms of the Old Testament, and were employed not only by the individual, but also in seasons of public calamity or dismay. We owe the first discovery of this sacred literature to the genius of Francois Lenormant; he it was who first drew attention to it and characterised its several divisions. It was Francois Lenormant, moreover, who pointed out that its nearest a.n.a.logue was the Hindu Veda, a brilliant intuition which has been verified by subsequent research.

Unfortunately our knowledge of it is still exceedingly imperfect. We are dependent on the fragmentary copies of it which have come from the library of Nineveh, and which resemble the torn leaves, mixed pell-mell together, that alone remain in some Oriental library from vanished ma.n.u.scripts of the Bible and the Christian Fathers. Until the great libraries of Babylonia itself are thoroughly explored, our a.n.a.lysis and explanation of the sacred literature of the country must be provisional only; the evidence is defective, and the conclusions we draw from it must needs be defective as well.

Moreover, the purely ritual texts, which stand to the hymns in the same relation that the Atharva-Veda stands to the ?ig-Veda, have as yet been but little examined. Their translation is difficult and obscure, and the ceremonies described in them are but half understood. The ritual, nevertheless, const.i.tuted an important part of the sacred literature, and its rubrics were regarded with at least as much reverence as the rubrics of the Anglican Prayer-book. Doubtless the actual words of which they consisted did not possess the same magical or divine power as those of the incantations and hymns, they were not-in modern language-verbally inspired, but they prescribed rites and actions which had quite as divine and authoritative an origin as the hymns themselves. They were, furthermore, the framework in which the hymns and spells were set; and they all formed together a single act of divine wors.h.i.+p, the several parts of which could not be separated without endangering the efficacy of the whole.

That the incantations were the older portion of the sacred literature of Chaldaea, was perceived by Lenormant. They go back to the age of animism, to the days when, as yet, the mult.i.tudinous spirits and demons of Sumerian belief had not made way for the G.o.ds of Semitic Babylonia, or the sorcerer and medicine-man for a hierarchy of priests. Their language as well as their spirit is Sumerian, and the _zi_ or "spirit" of heaven and earth is invoked to repel the attack of the evil ghost, or to shower blessings on the head of the wors.h.i.+pper. They transport us into a world that harmonises but badly with the decorous and orderly realm of the G.o.ds of light; it is a world in which the _lil_ and the _utuk_, the _galla_ and the _ekimmu_, reign supreme, and little room seems to be left for the deities of the Semitic faith. The G.o.ds themselves, when they are introduced into it, wear a new aspect. Ea is no longer the creator and culture G.o.d, but a master of magic spells; and his son Asari displays his goodness towards mankind by instructing them how to remove the sorceries in which they have been involved, and the witcheries with which they are tormented.

But it must be borne in mind that the incantations do not all belong to the same age. The description I have just given holds good only of the oldest part of them. The Sumerian population continued to exist in Babylonia after the Semitic occupation of the country, and Sumerian animism continued to exist as well. By the side of the higher Semitic faith, with its G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, its priesthood and its cult, the ancient belief in sorcery and witchcraft, in spells and incantations, and in the ghost-world of En-lil, flourished among the people. And as in India, where Brahmanism has thrown its protection over the older cults and beliefs of the native tribes, a.s.similating them as far as possible, or explaining them in accordance with the orthodox creed; so too in ancient Babylonia, the primeval animism of the people was tacitly recognised by the religion of the State, and given an official sanction. There was no declaration of hostility towards it such as was made by the religion of Israel; on the contrary, the old incantations were preserved and modernised, and the sanct.i.ty with which they had been invested allowed to remain unimpaired. At the same time, they were harmonised, so far as could be, with the official creed. The G.o.ds of the State religion were introduced into them, and to these G.o.ds appeal was made rather than to "the spirit of heaven" and "the spirit of earth." The spirits and ghosts of the night existed, indeed, but from henceforth they had to be subservient to the deities of the official faith. It was no longer the medicine-man, but the priest of the Semitic deity, who recited the incantation for the suppliant and the sufferer.

We can almost trace the growth of what I will term the Book of Incantations down to the time when it a.s.sumed its final form. It was no Book, however, in the proper sense of the term, and it is doubtful whether all the collections which might have been comprised in it were ever combined together. But it is convenient to speak of it in the singular, so long as we remember that this is merely a mode of speech.

As a matter of fact, each great sanctuary seems to have had its own collection. These were added to from time to time; some of them were amalgamated together, or parts belonging to one collection were incorporated into another. Spells which had been found effective in warding off disease or preventing evil, were introduced into a collection which related to the same subject, whatever may have been their source, and the list of G.o.ds invoked was continually being enlarged, in the hope that some one at least among them might give the sufferer relief. The older collections were modified in accordance with the requirements of the State religion, and the animism that inspired them accommodated to the orthodox belief; while new collections came into existence which breathed the later Semitic spirit, and were drawn up under the supervision of the Babylonian priesthood. Hymns and even penitential psalms were embodied in them, like the verses of the Bible or the Quran, which are still used as charms in Christian and Mohammedan countries; and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the hymn that served merely as an incantation and the hymn that was chanted in the service of the G.o.ds.

Indeed, incantatory formulae are not unfrequently intermixed with the words of the hymn or psalm, producing that grotesque and embarra.s.sing medley of exalted spiritual thought and stupid superst.i.tion which so often meets us in the religious literature of Babylonia. How late some of the collections are in the history of Babylonian religion, may be judged from the fact that a time came when the old Sumerian language was no longer considered necessary to ensure the efficacy of the charm, and collections of incantations were made in the Semitic language of later Babylonia.

Criticism will hereafter have to sift and distinguish these collections one from the other, and, above all, determine the earlier and later elements contained in each. At present such a task is impossible. Few, if any, of the collections have come down to us in a perfect state; there are many more, doubtless, which future research will hereafter bring to light; and as long as we are dependent solely on the copies made for the library of Nineveh, without being able to compare them with the older texts of the Babylonian libraries, the primary condition of scientific investigation is wanting. Nevertheless there are certain collections which stand out markedly from among the rest. They display features of greater antiquity, and the animism presupposed by them is but thinly disguised. It is comparatively easy to separate in them the newer and older elements, which have little in common with each other. Most of them point to Eridu as the source from which they have been derived, though there are others the origin of which is probably to be sought at Nippur.

In these older incantations the G.o.ds of the official cult are absent, except where their names have been violently foisted in at a later date, and their place is taken by the spirits or ghosts of early Sumerian belief. The _Zi_ or "spirit of the sky," "the spirit of the earth," "the spirit of Ansar and Kisar," such are the superhuman powers that are invoked, and to whom the wors.h.i.+pper turns in his extremity. Even when we come across a name that is borne by one of the deities of the later Babylonian religion, we find that it is the name not of a G.o.d, but of a denizen of the ghost-world. "O spirit of Zik.u.m, mother of Ea," we read in one place; "O spirit of Nina, daughter of Ea"; "O spirit, divine lord of the mother-father of En-lil; O spirit, divine lady of the mother-father of Nin-lil"; "O spirit of the moon, O spirit of the sun, O spirit of the evening star!" There is as yet neither Bel of Nippur, nor Sin and Samas and Istar; the sorcerer knows only of the spirits that animate the universe, and bring good and evil upon mankind. Nothing can be more striking than the enumeration of the divine powers to whom the prayer is directed, in an incantation of which I have given the translation in my Hibbert Lectures (p. 450 sqq.)-

"Whether it be the spirit of the divine lord of the earths; or the spirit of the divine lady of the earths; or the spirit of the divine lord of the stars; or the spirit of the divine lady of the stars; or the spirit of the divine lord of progenies; or the spirit of the divine lady of progenies; or the spirit of the divine lord of ...; or the spirit of the divine lady of ...; or the spirit of the divine lord of the holy mound (Ea); or the spirit of the divine lady of the holy mound (Damkina); or the spirit of the divine lord of the dayspring of life; or the spirit of the divine lady of the dayspring of life; or the spirit of the divine chanter of the spirit-hosts (En-me-sarra); or the spirit of the divine chantress of the spirit-hosts."(313)

Even the word "divine," which I have used here in default of anything better, imports theological ideas into the texts which were really foreign to them. The original means nothing more than "superhuman" or perhaps "non-human"; the Sumerian term is _dimmer_, of which _dimme_, "a ghost,"

and _dimmea_, "a spectre," are but other forms; and the ideograph by which it is symbolised is an eight-rayed star.(314) "The divine lord" and "divine lady" of the incantation are but the _lil_ and its handmaid under another guise; they are merely the ghost-like spirits who display themselves at night in the points of light that twinkle and move through the sky.

The theologians of a later day amused themselves by cataloguing the Sumerian names of the spirits invoked in the ancient incantations, and transforming them into t.i.tles of the deities of the official pantheon. The same process had been followed in the Semitic translations which were added to the incantatory texts. The spirit of the sun became Samas, the spirit of the evening star became Istar. En-lil of Nippur was trans.m.u.ted into Bel, and Nin-lil, the lady of the ghost-world, into Bilat or Beltis.

The process was facilitated by the changes undergone at Eridu by the magical texts themselves, even before the days of Semitic influence.

Maritime intercourse with other lands had already deeply affected the theology of Eridu; the crude animism of an earlier epoch had made way for the conception of a culture-G.o.d who taught men the elements of civilisation, and wrote books for their instruction. He was still a "spirit" rather than a G.o.d in the Semitic sense of the word, but he was a spirit who had emerged above the rest, who had acquired those family ties which formed the very foundation of civilised life, and to whom the creation of the world was due. Ea was not indeed a Baal, but he was already on the way to become a G.o.d in human form.

At the same time, both Ea and his son Asari still appear in animal shape.

Asari is, it is true, "the benefactor of man," but he is also "the mighty one of the princely gazelle," and even "the gazelle" himself; while Ea is "the antelope of the deep," or more simply "the antelope."(315) At other times he is the "lord of the earth" which he has created, or the "king" of that "holy mound" of waters which rose up against the sky like a mountain, and behind which the sun appeared at dawn. The t.i.tles that he bears point unmistakably to Eridu. Here alone Ea was the creator of the earth, and here too, in the temple of the G.o.d, was a likeness of that "holy mound"

whereon the future destinies of mankind were declared. The oldest incantations which have come down to us must have been composed at Eridu in the days of its Sumerian animism.

There are other divine or semi-divine names in them which tell the same tale. The pure waters which heal the sick and destroy the power of witchcraft are brought by the water-spirit Nin-akha-kudda, "the mistress of spells," whom the theologians of a later time transformed into a daughter of Ea. Bau, too, the heifer of the city of Isin,(316) appears along with the water-spirit. Like Zik.u.m, she was the mother of Ea and "the generatress of mankind," and she shared with Asari the honours of the New Year's festival. But Bau, it would seem, was not originally from Eridu.

She had come there from a neighbouring city, and her presence in the incantations is a proof that even in these oldest monuments of a sacred literature we are still far from the beginnings of Babylonian religion.

At Nippur it was the ghosts and vampires, who had their habitation beneath the ground, that were objects of terror to the men who lived upon it. At Eridu the demons were rather the raging winds and storm-clouds which lashed the waters of Ea into fury, and seemed for a time to transform his kingdom into a chaos of lawless destruction. The fisherman perished in his bark, while the salt waves inundated the land and ravaged the fields of the husbandman. It was here, on the sh.o.r.es of the Persian Gulf, that the story of the great flood was perhaps first thrown into literary form, and that conception of the universe grew up which found its last expression in the legend of the struggle between Merodach and the forces of anarchy. At any rate it was here that the spirits of evil were pictured as the seven evil demons in whom the tempest was, as it were, incarnated-

"Seven are they, seven are they, in the hollow of the deep seven are they!

Gleams (?) of the sky are those seven.

In the hollow of the deep, in a palace, they grew up.

Male they are not, female they are not.