The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

280 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

of Eridu.^236 But in the days when she is first known to us by
contemporaneous inscriptions, she is already a goddess, and the
Semitic conception of a divine mother is already attached to
her.^237 She thus resembles another goddess, Aruru by name,
whom an old cosmological poem associates with Merodach (or
rather Ea) in creating“the seed of man,”which springs forth
from her bosom like the reed from the marsh or“the wild cow
with its young.”In their origin Bau and Aruru are alike but Dam-
kina under other names,—the earth-spirits of the old Sumerian
religion, who beget or create all living things. The underground
world over which En-lil held rule was not only the home of the
dead, it was also the place where the seed must be buried before
it can spring up into the green herb. That same ghost-world,
consequently, to which the dead must journey, is also the source
of life. Thelil(or rather the Zi) who inhabits it is the mother
of mankind, even though it is also the home of the demon who
plagues them with disease.
Hence it was that when Bau assumed the dress of a Semitic
goddess, she became first the creatress-mother, and then the
mother of the creator. As such, however, she entered into rivalry
with another deity who was similarly in process of development
out of an earlier form. This was Zi-Kum or Zi-Garum,“the spirit
[306] of the sky,”who is called“the mother that has begotten heaven
and earth,”and“the seeress of the spirit of the earth”(Ê-kur),
that is to say, of En-lil.^238 To the primitive seafarer of Babylonia

(^236) Her assignment as a wife to the sun-god of Kis or to Nin-ip of Nippur
belongs to a later period; see my Hibbert Lectures, p. 263.
(^237) Originally, however, she had been merely a spirit in the form of a heifer;
WAI.ii. 62. 45, where“the ship of Bau”is called“the ship of the holy cow.”
The name is doubtless Sumerian, and it seems to be the origin of the Baau of
Phœnician cosmology, which asserted that the first men, Æôn and Protogonos,
were born of“the wind Kolpia and his wife Baau, which is interpreted Night”
(Eusebius,Prœpar. Evang.i. 10). Baau is probably the HebrewBohu.
(^238) See my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 262, 374, 375. Ê-kur,“the house of the
earth,”was the name of the temple of En-lil at Nippur. It was the abode of the