Lecture I. Introductory. 249
influenced by the Babylonians than the Babylonians by them.
Their own culture was inferior, and Babylonia was their teacher
in the arts and comforts of life. The wild Bedâwin, who tended
the flocks of their Babylonian masters, the Amorite merchants
from Canaan, who formed trading settlements in the Babylonian
cities, even the South Arabian princes who headed the national
revolt against Elamite supremacy and made Babylon the capital
of their kingdom, were all alike absorbed into the Babylonian
race. They became the children of Babylonian civilisation,
and, along with the culture, they adopted the language of the
Babylonian people. The mixed race which had produced the
civilisation of Babylonia, was destined to retain its individuality
unimpaired down to the day when Europe took the place of Asia
in the history of the civilised world.
But the fact of the mixture must never be lost sight of. Without
it, Babylonian religion, like the Babylonian system of writing,
would be a hopeless puzzle. We could, indeed, draw up long
lists of obscure deities with unmeaning names, and enumerate
the titles which the inscriptions give them, but any attempt to
trace their history or discover the religious ideas of which they
are the expression, would be impossible. We must know what is
Semitic and what is Sumerian, or what is due to a combination
of the two elements, before we can penetrate to the heart of
the old Babylonian theology, and ascertain the principles on
which it rests. The native writers themselves were aware of
this, and fully realised the fact that Sumerian conceptions of
the godhead formed the background of the official faith. But
their uncritical efforts to solve the problem of the origin of their
religion have added only to the complication of it. Just as the
English lexicographers of a past generation found a Greek or [272]
Latin derivation for the Teutonic words of our language, so
the scholars of Babylonia discovered Sumerian etymologies for
Semitic words and divine names, or else assimilated them to
other words of a different origin. Thus the Semitic wordSabattu,