Lecture III. The Gods Of Babylonia. 279
was lord of the city as well. He had as it were migrated from the
deep; he had left his palace of the sea and come to dwell in a [304]
sanctuary on land. The ground on which Eridu stood was the gift
of the sea, the soft silt which the retreating waves of the Persian
Gulf had left behind them. It had once been part of the domain of
Ea, if not Ea himself. Ea accordingly came to be addressed as the
“lord of the earth”as well as of the sea, and Eridu, his city, was
the“city of the lord of the land.”The men who inhabited it were
his creation: he had formed them like a potter out of the clay,
and as the divine“potter”he was therefore known unto them.^235
Like the Egyptian Khnum at the Cataract, he was the first artist
in clay, and the models that he made were the first men.
The god of culture was thus also the creator of mankind. He
brought civilisation to them from his home beneath the waves,
but it was because he had already created them. They were
not indeed his children, but the creation of his hands, for the
culture-god was necessarily an artist, and the men he moulded
were the highest products of his skill. Water and earth had alike
gone to their formation; Ea was master not only of the sea, but
of the land of Eridu as well.
The heritage of Dam-kina was thus usurped by the god whom
Semitic influence had given to her as husband. And therewith
the heritage of another goddess of the Sumerian cult was usurped
as well. This was Bau, whose native home was probably farther
to the north, though she had been as it were domesticated at
Eridu in early days. As Dam-kina was made the wife of Ea, so
Bau was made his mother. For this there was a special reason.
Bau was known as“the great mother,”from whom mankind had
received the herd and the flock as well as the crops of the field.
She it was who gave fertility to the soil, and protected those who
tilled it. The heifer was her symbol, and she may have been [305]
originally the local spirit of some field in the neighbourhood
(^235) WAI.ii. 55. 43, 58. 57; iii. 67. 156.