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and the temple of Merodach at Babylon was also known as his
tomb. As the gods were born, so could they die; they could marry
also and beget children, and they needed meat and drink like
the sons of men. Indeed, the world of the gods was a duplicate
and counterpart of the world of mankind. On“the mountain
of the world,”the Babylonian Olympos, the supreme god held [351]
his court; around him were ranged his subjects and servants, for
there were servants in heaven as there were on earth; celestial
armies went forth at his bidding, and there were wars among the
gods as among men. Even theft was not unknown among them;
a legend tells us, for instance, how the god Zu stole the tablets
of destiny which were hung like the Urim and Thummim on the
breast of“father Bel,”and therewith acquired for awhile the right
and power to control the fate of the universe. As far back as we
can trace the history of Semitic religion, whether in Babylonia,
in Canaan, or in Arabia, its fundamental conception is always the
same; the gods are human, and men are divine.
It is not surprising, therefore, that as soon as the Semitic
element becomes paramount in Babylonia, the king becomes a
Lectures, pp. 220-245, and need not be repeated here. He was primarily a Zi
or spirit worshipped at Eridu, where he was known as“the Son of the Spirit of
the Deep,”i.e.Ea. He was, in fact, the primitive sun-god of Eridu, though his
character underwent strange transformations in the course of his identification
with Nin-girau (Inguriaa) and other gods. But Tammuz was a sun-god who
spent half his annual life in the underworld, or, according to another view, as
fellow-warder with Nin-gis-zida of the gates of heaven. Hence he pastures his
cattle in the fields beyond the river Khubur, the ocean-stream that encircles
the earth, on the road to the land of the dead (Craig,Religious Texts, i. p.
17). On the other hand, he was also said to dwell in the midst of the cosmic
temple of Ea at Eridu, between the Tigris and Euphrates (WAI.iv. 15. 58-59).
It is possible, though not yet proved, that in Tammuz two deities have been
combined together, the sun-god and the vegetation of the spring which the
young sun of the year brings into existence. However this may be, in Tammuz
and Nin-gis-zida I see the Babylonian prototypes of the two pillars Jachin and
Boaz erected by Solomon in front of the temple (1 Kings vii. 21). Nin-gis-zida
means“the lord of the upright post”(bil itsi kêniin Semitic Babylonian), and
thus corresponds with Jachin.