The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

278 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

Sumerian family the woman held a foremost place by the side of
the man. It was otherwise among the Semites. The distinction
between the masculine and the feminine is engrained in the
Semitic languages, but the distinction is attained by forming
the feminine out of the masculine. While a considerable part
of Semitic flexion is the result of vowel changes within the
[303] word itself, the feminine is created by attaching an affix to the
masculine form. The masculine presupposes the feminine, but
the feminine is dependent on the masculine.
Semitic grammar merely reflects the fundamental ideas of the
Semitic mind. For the Semite the woman is the lesser man,
formed out of him and dependent upon him. Like the feminine
of the noun, she is the colourless reflection of her husband,
though without the reflection there can be no husband. Wherever
the Semitic spirit has prevailed, the woman has been simply the
helpmeet and shadow of the man; for the orthodox Mohammedan
she hardly possesses a soul. It is only where the Semitic spirit has
been met and checked by the influence of another race that this is
not the case; the high place retained by the woman in Babylonian
society would of itself have been a proof that Semitic culture
had here been engrafted on that of an older people, even if the
monuments had not revealed to us that such was indeed the fact.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the goddesses or female
spirits of Sumerian faith faded away as the Semitic element in
Babylonian religion became stronger. At first Semitic influence
had done no more than transform the“handmaid of thelil”
into a goddess; then the goddesses themselves became like the
woman in Semitic thought, pale and colourless, existing merely
for the sake of the god. Dam-kina, the lady of the earth, was
remembered only by the antiquarian or by the compiler of a
cosmological system. When she became the wife of Ea her fate
was sealed.
Her attributes and office, in fact, were transferred to him. At
Eridu he had necessarily been more than the lord of the deep; he