Lecture VII. The Sacred Books. 371
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
[405]
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
isdimmer, of whichdimme,“a ghost,”anddimmea,“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 theliland 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 titles of the
deities of the official pantheon. The same process had been
followed in the Semitic translations which were added to the
(^313) En-me, literally,“lord of the voice,”appears to have been pronouncedên
in Sumerian, since the Semiticênuwas borrowed from it. The word has the
same root asên,“an incantation,”and theênudenoted the priest who“recited”
the incantatory ritual. He may thus be compared with the Egyptiankher-heb.
There was anênuor“chanter of Istar,”whose technical name wasukurrim, and
another of Ea,“the holy father,”who was called thesennu. The incantatory
formulæ, it must be remembered, relate for the most part to Ea and Istar.
Another class of theênuwas calledsailu,“the magian,”in Assyrian (literally,
“the questioner”of the spirits who may have practised ventriloquism); in
Sumerian the name may be readên-lil,“the chanter of thelil.”
(^314) I can still see no better etymology fordimmer,dingir,“god,”than the one
I proposed in my Hibbert Lectures (p. 143), viz.dim,“to create”or“make.”
From the same root we havedimordimma,“offspring”(WAI.v. 29. 71), which
illustrates the antithesis between the Sumerian who regarded generation as an
act of creation, and the Semite who regarded creation as an act of generation.
InWAI.ii. 47. 29,dimtakes the place ofdumu,“son.”Dimmeanddimmea
show that indimmerthe final consonant is a suffix.