The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

242 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

with the early civilisation of Babylonia. Foreign ideas made their
way into the country, trade brought culture in its train, and it may
be that the Semites, who exercised so profound an influence upon
Babylonia, first entered it through the port of Eridu. However
this may be, it was at Eridu that the garden of the Babylonian
Eden was placed; here was“the centre of the earth”; here, too,
the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates were poured out on either
side from vases held by the god.^208
Until Eridu, however, is excavated with the same systematic
care as Nippur, we must be content to derive our knowledge of
it and of its influence upon the primitive culture and religion of
Babylonia from the records which have been found elsewhere.
That its sanctuary was at least as old as that of Nippur, we may
gather from the fact that it was founded before the coast-line had
receded from the spot on which it stood. Its early relations to
Nippur must be left to the future to disclose.
That neither Nippur nor Eridu should have been the seat of
a secular kingdom, is not so strange as at first sight it appears
to be. The priesthood of each must have been too numerous
and powerful to surrender its rights to a single pontiff, or to
[264] allow such a pontiff to wrest from it its authority in civil
affairs. It is difficult for a king to establish himself where a
theocratic oligarchy holds absolute sway, and the reverence in
which the temples and worship of El-lil and Ea were held would
have prevented the success of any attempt of the kind. It was
their sanctuaries which made Babylonia a holy land, wherein
all who could were buried after death. Like Abydos in Egypt,
Nippur or Eridu continued to be a sanctuary, governed by its
own hierarchy and enjoying its own independent existence, while
secular kingdoms grew up at its side.^209

(^208) See Pinches,“Certain Inscriptions and Records referring to Babylonia and
Elam,”in theJournal of the Victoria Institute, xxix. p. 44:“between the
mouths of the rivers on both sides.”
(^209) It is significant that although the antediluvian kings enumerated by Berossos