The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

238 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

Unfortunately we have nothing in Babylonia that corresponds
with the Pyramid texts of Egypt. We have no body of doctrine
which, in its existing form, is coeval with the early days of the
monarchy, and can accordingly be compared with the religious
belief and the religious books of a later time. The Pyramid texts
have enabled us to penetrate behind the classical age of Egyptian
religion, and so trace the development of many of the dogmas
[259] which distinguished the faith of later epochs; it is possible that
similarly early records of the official creed may yet be discovered
in Babylonia; but up to the present nothing of the sort has been
found. We are confined there to the texts which have passed
through the hands of countless editors and scribes, or else to such
references to religious beliefs and worship as can be extracted
from the inscriptions of kings and priests. The sacred books of
Babylonia are known to us only in the form which they finally
assumed. The Babylonian religion with which we are acquainted
is that official theology in which the older Sumerian and Semitic
elements were combined together and worked into an elaborate
system. To distinguish the elements one from the other, and
discover the beliefs and conceptions which underlie them, is a
task of infinite labour and complexity. But it is a task which
cannot be shirked if we would even begin to understand the
nature of Babylonian religion, and the fundamental ideas upon
which it rested. We must analyse and reconstruct, must compare
and classify and piece together as best we may, the fragments of
belief and practice that have come down to us. Above all, we
must beware of confusing the old with the new, of confounding
Sumerian with Semitic, or of ascribing to an earlier epoch the
conceptions of a later time.
The picture will be at most but a blurred and mutilated one.
But its main outlines can be fixed, and with the progress of
discovery and research they will be more and more filled in.
And the importance of the picture lies in the fact that Babylonian
religion exercised a profound influence not only over the lands