The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

378 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

without religious centralisation a common service-book and
canon are not very probable. Perhaps, moreover, the hymns
to the gods were too long in detaching themselves from the
magical ritual, and too late in acquiring a sacred character of
their own, to attain the same degree of divine authority as the
incantations. Many of them are not only in Semitic Assyrian,
but were composed as late as the reigns of the last Assyrian
kings, while even those which are bilingual seem to have been in
many cases the work of Semitic poets, the Sumerian text being a
translation from the Semitic into the sacred language of theology.
At the same time, Lenormant was not far wrong in comparing
the religious hymns of Chaldæa with those of the Rig-Veda. Like
the latter, they belong to different periods of time, and comprise
poems as unlike one another as war-songs and incantations and
philosophic addresses to the gods. Moreover, as in the case of
the incantations, there were collections of hymns addressed to
the god or gods of the sanctuary in whose service they were used.
Thus many of them belong to a collection that must have been
made for the temple of the sun-god at Sippara or Larsa; all alike
are addressed to the sun-god, the supreme judge of mankind; and
the language that is used of him is the same in each. Other hymns
celebrate the moon-god of Ur, while others belong to Nippur
or to the sanctuary of Merodach at Babylon. The hymn to the
god was as much a necessary portion of divine service as the
incantation or the ceremonial rite.
The ritual texts tell us how and when it was employed. Thus
[413] on the festival of the New Year the service in the temple of
Bel-Merodach was opened by a hymn in honour of his ark; and
on the second of Nisan the priest was ordered to go down to the
Euphrates at the beginning of the first hour of the night, and then,
after putting on the prescribed vestment, and taking the waters
of the river in his hand, to“enter into the presence of Bel,”and
there recite a long hymn in praise of the god. The hymn closed
with a prayer—