The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

258 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

its fossilised relics in the old magical texts, which, like the spells
and charms of modern folk-lore, have preserved so many of the
beliefs and superstitions of an otherwise forgotten past, or else in
divine names and epithets which go back to a remote antiquity.
The animism of the Sumerian is difficult to discover and trace,
for it was already buried under Semitic modes of thought when
the first libraries of Babylonia were being formed.
It was another Sumerian belief which exercised a greater
influence upon the Semitic mind. This was the belief in ghosts.
Thelilor ghost was distinct from theZi; while theZibelonged to
the world of the living, thelilbelonged to the world of the dead.
Thelilconsequently was no counterpart or double of either man
[281] or god, but a being with an independent existence of its own. Its
home was beneath the earth, where the dead had their dwelling;
but it visited this upper world under the shadow of night, or in
desert places to which nothing living came.^221 It was essentially
a spirit of darkness, and one of the names by which it was known
was that of“the light-despoiler.”^222 It came in the raging wind
which darkens the heaven with clouds, or in the cloud of dust
which betokens the approach of the storm. Thelil, in fact, was
essentially a demon,“without husband or wife,”one of those evil
spirits who tormented and perplexed mankind.
The sexless Lil was waited on by“a maid,”who under the
cover of night enticed men to their destruction, or seduced them
in their dreams. She was a veritable vampire, providing the Lil
she served with its human food. When the Semite succeeded to
the heritage of the Sumerian, the sexless Lil disappeared. Semitic
grammar demanded that there should be a distinction between
masculine and feminine, and Semitic modes of thought equally
demanded that a female Lilît should take her place by the side of
a male Lilu. The attributes of the“serving-maid”of the Sumerian

(^221) See Sm. 1981. 3, where theedinnaor“desert”is called the home of the
lilla.
(^222) Uda-kára.