Lecture II. Primitive Animism. 257
The ancient conception of the Zi lingered long among the
Babylonian population. But, as the Semitic element became
predominant, it fell more and more into the background,
and survived—so far at least as the official religion was
concerned—only in a few old formulæ and names. One of the
fixed stars, for example, was called Sib-zi-Anna,“the Shepherd
of the Life of Heaven,”and a common form of oath was by
“the life of the gods”or“king”(nis ilâni,nis sarri). Even
Sennacherib swears by“the life of Assur”; but it is questionable
whether either he or any of his contemporaries remembered
the original meaning and history of the phrase. The Sumerian
Zi had received a Semitic translation, and therewith a Semitic
connotation. The ideas attached to the Semiticnêsuwere not
those which had once clustered around the Zi. On the lips of
the Semite even the word Zi itself meant“life”and little more.
When Pur-SinII. of Ur, a century or two before Abraham, [280]
addresses a dedication in Sumerian to the moon-god, he calls
himself“the divineZiof his country”^220 —in other words, a“god
who gives life to his land.”There is no question here of a vital
force which is the counterpart of a man or god; we have, on the
contrary, the Semitic conception of a divine father from whom
his people derive their life. The Semite has transferred his own
ideas to the language of his Sumerian predecessors, and“life”
for him is no materialised reflection of an individual thing, but a
principle which is diffused, as it were, from a divine centre. The
“Zi of heaven”has become the abstract life, which the god can
communicate to those about him.
It is only in the dim background of history, therefore, that
we find in Babylonia a belief analogous to that which created
the Egyptian doctrine of the Ka. It was foreign to the Semitic
mind, and with the rise of Semitic supremacy, accordingly, it
disappeared from the religion of Babylonia. We have to look for
(^220) Scheil inRecueil de Travaux, xxii. p. 38.