The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

282 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

of the Sumerian faith. Their attributes had been taken from them,
and they had been transformed into goddesses whose sole end
was to complete the family of the culture-god.
The old faith was avenged, however, when Babylon became
the political head of Babylonia. Ea was supplanted by his son,
and the honours he had received were transferred to the younger
god. It was his son, too, under a new and foreign name. Merodach
was son of Ea only because he had been identified with Aaari,
who was son of Ea in the theology of Eridu. Henceforward Ea
shines merely by reflected light. His wisdom is handed on to
Merodach; even the creation of mankind is denied to him. It is
not Ea, but Merodach, who conquers the dragon of chaos and
introduces law and order into the world, and it is equally not Ea
but Merodach who is the creator of all visible things. Ea is not
robbed, like Bel of Nippur, of his name and prerogatives, he is
[308] simply effaced.^242
Midway between Nippur and Eridu stood the city of Erech.
Doubtless it was of Sumerian foundation, like the other great
cities of Babylonia, but as far back as we can trace its history
it is already a seat of Semitic power and religious cult. Its god
was Anu, the sky. It may be that Anu had been brought from
elsewhere, for a Babylonian inscription of the twelfth century
B.C. calls Dêr rather than Erech his city; but if so, the Semitic

(^242) Similarly, as I first indicated in my Hibbert Lectures (p. 132), the first
two antediluvian kings of Babylonia given by Berossos do not belong to the
original list, but have been prefixed to it when Babylon became the leading
city of the country, and it was accordingly necessary to make it the capital of
the kingdom from the very beginning of time. It is worth notice that, just as the
first two antediluvian Babylonian kings are a later addition to the original list,
so the first two antediluvian patriarchs in the Book of Genesis seem to have
been added to the original eight. Adam and Enos are synonyms like Cainan and
Cain, for whom Seth, the Sutu or Bedâwin (Num. xxiv. 17), was substituted.
In the Babylonian list, Amelon or Amilu,“man,”corresponds with Enos, just
as Ammenon (Ummanu,“the craftsman”) corresponds with Cainan or Cain,
“the smith.”For both the Babylonian and the Hebrew, man in the abstract was
followed immediately by civilised man.