The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

252 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

animated them, and the religious ritual which they observed. But
such inscriptions are still comparatively few, their translation is
full of difficulties, and the references contained in them to the
theology of the time are scanty and unsatisfactory. And the most
important of them—those of the high priests of Tello—belong
to an epoch when the Semite had been for many centuries in
the land, influencing and being influenced by his Sumerian
neighbours. Though Lagas was still Sumerian, its overlord was
the Semitic king of Ur.^215
You must not, therefore, expect either so complete or so
detailed an account of Babylonian religion as that which it is now
possible to give of the religion of Egypt. There are no pictures
from the walls of tombs, no bas-reliefs from the temples, to help
us; we have to depend almost wholly on the literature that has
come down to us, mutilated and only half examined as it is.
Our efforts to interpret it are without the assistance of pictorial
representations such as are at the disposal of the Egyptologist;
[275] they rest upon philology alone, and the element of uncertainty
in them is therefore considerable.
The advances made in our knowledge of Babylonian religion,
since I lectured upon it some fifteen years ago, are consequently
not so great as the inexperienced student might be tempted to
believe. There are some things to be added, there is more to be
corrected, but the main facts and principles which I then tried
to place before the world of scholars remain intact. In some
cases confirmation has come of suggestions which seemed only
possible or probable; in other cases others have worked with
greater success and better materials upon the foundations which
I laid. If, therefore, the progress made during the past few years
may appear disappointing, there is no reason for surprise; the
fault lies not with the Assyriologist, but with the materials with
which he has to deal. The labourer is ready, but the harvest is not

(^215) This at least was the ease in the time of Gudea, to whom we owe all the
more important theological references found in the Tello texts.