Lecture V. Sumerian And Semitic
Conceptions Of The Divine: Assur And
Monotheism.
In the preceding lectures I have assumed that the conception
of the deity which we find in the later historical monuments
of Babylonia and Assyria was of Semitic origin, differing
radically from that formed of the godhead by the earlier Sumerian
population. But it will doubtless be asked what basis there is
for such an assumption; why may we not suppose that the
later conception has developed naturally and without any violent
break from older beliefs which were equally Semitic? Why, in
short, must we regard the animism which underlay the religion
of Babylonia as Sumerian, and not rather as the earliest form of
Semitic faith?
The first and most obvious answer to the question would be, the
fact that the older names of the superhuman beings who became
the gods of the later creed are not Semitic, but Sumerian. En-lil
of Nippur is the Sumerian En-lila,“lord of the ghost(s)”; when he
becomes a Semitic god he receives the Semitic title of Bilu, Baal,
“the lord.”And the further fact that in many cases the Sumerian
name continued to be used in Semitic times, sometimes slightly
changed, sometimes adapted to the needs of Semitic grammar,
proves not only that the Sumerian preceded the Semitic, but
also that the Sumerian cult on its literary and philological side
was assimilated by the Semitic settlers in Babylonia. The gods
and goddesses of Babylonia were Sumerian before they were [349]
Semitic; though they wear a Semitic dress, we have to seek their
ancestry outside the Semitic world of ideas.
As we know them, they are clothed in human form. The deities
whose figures are found on the seal-cylinders of Babylonia or
engraved on the walls of the Assyrian palaces are all alike in“the
likeness of man.”Bel-Merodach is as much a man as the king