The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

276 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

New ideas came from the south. Ea was a god, and like the
gods of the Semitic race he had a wife and son. While he himself
was lord of the deep, Dam-kina, his wife, was the mistress of
the land. His son was Aaari, “the prince who does good to
man,”^233 and who, in contradistinction to the night-demons of
Nippur, brought knowledge and healing to the men whom Ea
had created. The Sumerian might indeed speak of the“Zi”—“the
spirit”—of Ea, or rather of the deep, but to the Semite he was a
veritable god.
At the same time it was the conception only of Ea and his
family which we need trace to a foreign source. Their names
[301] are purely Sumerian, and their origin consequently must be
Sumerian too. Doubtless they had once been merelilsor ghosts,
belonging to the ghost-world of the god of Nippur, and the spells
taught by Ea to mankind were survivals from the day when the
sorcerer was still his priest.^234 But under Semitic influence thelil
had been transformed into a god; the sacred book took the place
of the charm, and the priest of the magician. The charm and the
magician were still recognised, but it was on the condition that
they adapted themselves to the new ideas. Sumerian shamanism
was overlaid by Semitic polytheism, and in process of time was
absorbed into it.
The culture of Eridu spread northward, along with the religious
ideas which formed so integral a part of it. The worship of Ea was
adopted in other cities of Babylonia, and the god of Babylon was
identified with his son. Thelilwhich had been pictured under
animal shape put on human form, and the Sumerian accepted the
conviction of the Semite, that man was made in the likeness of his

(^233) Aaari-galu-dugga. We owe the interpretation of the name to the insight and
learning of Fr. Lenormant, from whose untimely death the investigation of
Babylonian religion has suffered grievously.
(^234) Is it possible that the original difference between the Zi and the Lil was that
the one term was used at Eridu the other at Nippur, the meaning being pretty
much the same in both cases? Unfortunately we have no materials at present
for answering the question.