Lecture IX. The Ritual Of The Temple. 429
is driven into the desert like the Hebrew Azazel, carrying away
with it the sins and sickness of those who let it loose.^365 The gods
of Semitic Babylonia were essentially human, and what man
lived upon they too required. They had, moreover, given their
worshippers all they most needed and prized—fruitful fields, fat
cattle, rain in its season, and the blessings of the sunshine. In
return they demanded the first-fruits of what was in reality their
own; they could, if they so chose, deprive man of the whole, but
they were generously satisfied with a part. The Semitic Baal was
indeed like a divine king; lord and master though he was of the
cultivated soil and of all that it produced, he was content only
with a share.
Was the firstborn of man included among the sacrifices that
were deemed acceptable to heaven? Years ago I published an
early text which seemed to show that such was the case. My
interpretation of the text has been disputed, but it still appears
to me to be the sole legitimate one. The text is bilingual in
both Sumerian and Semitic, and therefore probably goes back
to Sumerian times. Literally rendered, it is as follows:“Let the
algalproclaim: the offspring who raises his head among men,
the offspring for his life he must give; the head of the offspring [468]
for the head of the man he must give, the neck of the offspring
for the neck of the man he must give, the breast of the offspring
for the breast of the man he must give.”^366 It is difficult to attach
(^365) J. D. Price in theJournal of the American Oriental Society, xxi. 2, pp. 1-22.
In the hemerology published inWAI.iv. 32, the animal mentioned in col. 1,
line 3, is not a gazelle, as I have supposed in my Hibbert Lectures, p. 70, but a
“goat”(Sumeriansikku, Assyriansapparu).
(^366) There is no question here of a scape-goat or anything similar. The word
“offspring”isuritsu, which is the regular equivalent of Bir“suboles.”The
addition of the wordssa amiluti,“of mankind,”confines it in this case to man.
Already, in 1875, in myElementary Assyrian Grammar(p. 123), I pointed
out that it was connected with the Arabic warats, which I see (like many other
things of the same sort) has recently been announced as a new discovery. The
verbittadin, by the way, is an Iphteal, not a Niphal, and therefore cannot be