The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

256 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

of the tomb. The child had his favourite toys to play with, the
woman her necklace of beads. The water-jar was there, filled
with“the pure water”for which the dead thirsted, along with
the bowl of clay or bronze out of which it might be drunk.“A
garment to clothe him,”says an old hymn,“and shoes for his
feet, a girdle for his loins and a water-skin for drinking, and food
for his journey have I given him.”^217
Like men, the gods too had each his Zi. We hear of the Zi of
Ea, the god of the deep;^218 and the primeval“mother, who had
begotten heaven and earth,”was Zi-kum or Zi-kura,“the life of
[279] heaven”and“earth.”^219
In the early magical texts“the Zi of heaven”and the“Zi of
earth”are invoked to remove the spell that has been cast over the
sick or the insane. Even when Ea and his son Asari had taken
the place of the demons of the older faith, the official religion
was still compelled to recognise their existence and power. The
formula of exorcism put into the mouth of Ea himself ends with
an appeal to the“life”of heaven and earth. It begins, indeed, with
“the charm of Ea,”through the efficacy of which the evil spell
is to be dissolved; but the charm of the god of wisdom is soon
forgotten, and it is to the Zi of heaven and earth that the exorcist
finally has recourse.“O life of heaven, mayest thou conjure it; O
life of earth, mayest thou conjure it!”thus, and thus only, could
the exorcism end. The old associations were too strong to be
overcome, and the worshippers of Ea had to allow a place at his
side for the“spirits”of an earlier age.

(^217) King,Babylonian Religion, p. 46.
(^218) WAI.ii. 36. 54, 56. 33-38.
(^219) See my Hibbert Lectures onBabylonian Religion, p. 375. A common
phrase is“the Zi (Assyr. nis) of the great gods”(Delitzsch,Assyrisches
Handwörterbuch, s.v.nisu). In the incantation text,WAI.iv. 1, 2, the gods
of later times are stillZis. A translation of part of the text will be given in a
future chapter. For the possibility that the Zi and the Lil originally had much
the same meaning, the one being used at Eridu and the other at Nippur, see the
next lecture.