The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

302 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

transferred to Merodach the sovereignty of the civilised world;
the power of Nippur and its priesthood had passed to Babylon,
and its god had to make way for a younger rival. As long as
Babylon remained the capital of the kingdom, the Bel or“lord”
of Babylonia was Merodach. The god followed the fortunes of
his State.
The sanctity that had lingered for so many centuries around
the temple of Nippur now passed to Ê-Saggil, the temple of
Merodach. The priests of Merodach inherited the rights and
functions of the priests of En-lil. From henceforth it was
[329] Merodach and his priests who could make and unmake kings;
it was only the prince who had“taken the hand of Bel”of
Babylon, and thereby been adopted as his son, that could claim
legitimate rule. The descendants of the conquerors who had
carried Babylonian culture to the lands of the West, derived their
title to dominion not from Nippur, but from Babylon, and it
was forgotten that the title had ever had any other source. The
lordship of the world had indeed been transferred to a new god
and a new city; Zeus had supplanted his father Kronos.
A sort of pæan in praise of Merodach, which is supposed to
form part of the Epic of the Creation, describes how the god
of Babylon received the names, and therewith the attributes and
powers, of the older deities. In the great assembly of the gods he
was greeted as their Zi or“Life,”^259 then as Ea under his name
of“god of divine life,”then as Hadad or the god of“the good
wind,”^260 and finally as Sin with“the divine crown,”in whose

(^259) Though Zi is used here in its Semitic sense of“life”in the abstract, the
position given to it as the first of the divine names and qualities bestowed on
Merodach is significant. Before he can be identified with any of the gods of the
official pantheon, he must become a Zi or“spirit,”or more strictly“thespirit”
of heaven. Similarly the divine essence of Ea is still called his Zi or“spirit,”a
survival from a time when Ea was not yet a god.
(^260) It is probable that the word“wind”here, though its original sense was
obscured or forgotten, goes back to an age when it signified thelilof which in
the lexical tablets it is given as an equivalent.