The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

236 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

Genesis;^204 and, so far as they have been examined by Professor
Hilprecht, it would appear that they relate to all the various
branches of knowledge which were known and studied at the
time. History, chronology, religion and literature, philology and
law, are all alike represented in them. When we remember that
the catastrophe which overwhelmed them occurred more than
two thousand years before the Christian era, we may well ask
what new and unexpected information the future has in store for
us, and hesitate about coming to conclusions which the discovery
[257] of to-morrow may overthrow. We know but a tithe of what
the monuments of Babylonia have yet to reveal to us, and much
that we seem to know to-day will be profoundly modified by the
knowledge we shall hereafter possess.
The imperfection of his materials places the student of
Babylonian religion at a greater disadvantage than the student
of Babylonian history or social life. The facts once obtained in
the field of history or of social life remain permanently secured;
the theories based upon them may have to be changed, but the
facts themselves have been acquired by science once for all. But
a religious fact is to a large extent a matter of interpretation,
and the interpretation depends upon the amount of the evidence
at our disposal as well as upon the character of the evidence
itself. Moreover, the history of religion is a history of spiritual
and intellectual development; it deals with ideas and dogmas
which shift and change with the process of the ages, and take as
it were the colour of each succeeding century. The history of
religion transports us out of what German metaphysicians would
call the“objective”world into the“subjective”world of thought

(^204) The name of Khammu-rabi or Ammu-rabi is written Ammu-rapi in Harper,
Letters, iii. p. 257, No. 255 (K 552), as was first noticed by Dr. Pinches
(see theProc. of the Society of Biblical Archæology, May 1901, p. 191); Dr.
Lindl suggests that the final -lof the Hebrew form is derived from the titleilu,
“god,”so often given to the king. Professor Hommel further points out that
the characterbewith which the final syllable of the royal name is sometimes
written also had the value ofpil.