Lecture VI. Cosmologies. 357
folk-lore and legend, and that Tiamât is really what her name
signifies, the chaos of waters.
The process of creation is conceived of under the Semitic form
of generation. The Deep and the chaos of waters become male
and female principles, from whom other pairs are generated.
The process of generation easily passed into the emanation of
the Gnostic systems of theosophy under the influence of Greek
metaphysics. But the poet of Babylon remained true to his Semitic
point of view; for him creation is a process of generation rather
than of emanation; and though the divine or superhuman beings
of the old mythology have become mere primordial elements,
they are still male and female, begetting children like men and
gods.
To find the elemental deities or principles that could thus
form links in the chain of evolution, it was necessary to fall
back on the spirits or ghosts of the early Sumerian cult who [390]
were essentially material in their nature, and had nothing in
common with the Semitic Baal. Lakhmu and his consort were
part of the monstrous brood of Tiamât; they represented the
first attempts to give form and substance to the universe. But
the form was still chaotic and immature, suitably symbolised
by beings, half human and half bestial, which had descended to
Semitic Babylonia from Sumerian animism, and whose memory
was kept alive by religious art.
Lakhmu and Lakhamu were followed by An-sar and Ki-sar,
the upper and lower firmament. The one originally denoted the
spirit-world of the sky, the other the spirit-world of the earth.^310
They were not gods in the Semitic sense of the term. But the
(^310) So inWAI.iv. 25. 49,an-sar ki-saris translated“the hosts of heaven and
earth.”InWAI.v. 43. 27, the Sumerian“the divine scribe, the creator of the
hosts of earth,”is paraphrased by the Semitic translatorNabû pakid kissat samê
u irtsiti,“Nebo, the captain of the hosts of heaven and earth.”For the Semite,
the god he worshipped was lord of the hosts of heaven as well as of the spirits
of the earth.