Lecture III. The Gods Of Babylonia. 275
represent two diverse currents of belief, which may for a time
run side by side, but never actually coalesce.
Babylonian tradition itself bore witness to the fact. The
Chaldæan historian Berossos tells us that the elements of culture,
and therewith of the organised religion of a later day, were
brought to Babylonia from abroad. Oannes or Ea, the culture-
god, had risen morning by morning out of the waters of the
Persian Gulf, and instructed the savage races of the shore in the
arts of life. It was not from Nippur and the worshippers of En-lil,
but from that mysterious deep which connected Babylonia with
other lands, that its civilisation had come. It was Ea who had
taught men“to found the temple”in which the gods of aftertimes
were to be adored. The culture-god of Babylonia was Ea, and the
home of Ea was not in Babylonia, but in the deep.
There is no mistaking the significance of the legend. The
culture of Babylonia originated on the seacoast, and was brought
to it across the sea. The elements of civilisation were due
to intercourse with other lands. And this civilisation was [300]
associated with a god—with a god, too, who represented all the
higher aspects of Babylonian religion, and was regarded as the
author of its sacred books. The impulse which transformed the
“lord of the ghost-world”into a god, and replaced the sorcerer
by a priest, came not from within, but from without.
The impulse went back to that primitive age when Sumerian
supremacy was still unquestioned in the land. Other races, so
the legend averred, were already settled there, but they were
all alike rude and savage“as the beasts of the field.”How far
distant it may have been in the night of time we can but dimly
conjecture. At the rate at which the northern coast of the Persian
Gulf is being slowly silted up, it would be at least eight thousand
years ago when the old seaport of Eridu and the sanctuary of
its god Ea stood on the shores of the sea. But the influence of
the Semite was already beginning to be felt, though indirectly,
through maritime trade.