The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

240 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

While Eridu looked seaward, Nippur looked landward, and the
[261] influences that emanated from each were accordingly diverse
from the very outset.
As I pointed out in my Hibbert Lectures, Babylon must have
been a colony of Eridu. Its tutelary god was a son of Ea of
Eridu, and had been worshipped at Eridu long before his cult was
carried northward to Babylon. Dr. Peters has since suggested that
Ur was similarly a colony of Nippur. The moon-god of Ur was
the son of the god of Nippur, and though Ur lay but a few miles
from Eridu, it was an inland and not a maritime town. It stood
on the desert plateau to the west of the Euphrates, overlooking
the Babylonian plain, which at the time of its foundation had
doubtless not as yet been reclaimed. But its situation exposed it
to Arabian influences. Unlike the other great cities of Babylonia,
it was in Arabia rather than in Babylonia, and its population from
the outset must have contained a considerable Arabian element.
Semitic settlers from Southern Arabia and Canaan occupied it,
and it was known to them as Uru,“the city”par excellence.^206
Nippur and Eridu were already old when Ur first rose to
fame. They were both great sanctuaries rather than the capitals
of secular kingdoms. The god of Nippur was El-lil,“the lord of
[262] the ghost-world,”^207 the ruler of the spirits, whose abode was

(^206) Years ago I pointed out thaturuwas one of the words which (along with
what it signified) was borrowed by the Semites from their Sumerian neighbours
or predecessors (Transactions of Society of Biblical Archæology, i. 2, pp. 304,
305).
(^207) Literally,“the lord of the ghost(s),” “the ghost-lord.”The name has been so
misunderstood and misinterpreted, that it is necessary to enter into some details
in regard to it, though the facts ought to be known even to the beginner in
Assyriology. The Sumerianlillaorlilmeant a“ghost,” “spirit,”or“spook,”and
was borrowed by the Semites under the form oflilû, from which the feminine
lilîtuwas formed in order to represent the femalelilwhom the Sumerians called
kiel lilla,“handmaid of (the male)lil.”Lilîtuis the HebrewLîlîth(Isa. xxxiv.
14). In the lexical tablets thelilis explained as“a breath of wind”(saru), or
more exactly as azaqiqu, or“dust-cloud”(not, of course,“a fog,”as it has
sometimes been translated, in defiance alike of common sense and of modern