Lecture VII. The Sacred Books. 379
“Show mercy to thy city of Babylon;
to Ê-Saggil thy temple incline thy face;
grant the prayers of thy people the sons of Babylon!”But there is yet another proof of the sacred character that
attached itself to the hymns. Many of them were employed as
incantations. Not only were they introduced into the magical
texts, like the verses of the Bible when used as charms, but the
magical element was inserted in the hymn itself. The address to
the deity was combined with spells and incantations, producing
a confused medley of spiritual expressions and grovelling
superstition that is at once repellent and grotesque to our modern
notions. The hymn, moreover, is prefaced by the wordên
or“incantation,”which makes its words as authoritative and
unalterable as the rest of the magical ritual. The same sacredness
that invests the latter invests also the hymn. The hymn, in
short, is as much verbally inspired as the incantation or spell;
indeed, between the hymn and the incantation no clear line of
demarcation was drawn by the Babylonian, and it is questionable
whether he would have recognised that there was any such line
at all.
It was in the use that was made of them, and not in their
essential nature, that the hymn to the god and the incantation
differed from one another. And as animism preceded the official
religion of Babylonia, and the belief in spirits preceded the [414]
worship of the gods, so too did the incantation precede the hymn.
The sacredness that was acquired by the hymn was originally
reflected from the incantation; it was not the contents of the
hymn, but the actual words of which it was composed, that
gave it its sacred and authoritative character, and consecrated its
employment by the priestly caste.
It is accordingly with good reason that I have described the
hymns, like the incantations proper, as verbally inspired. The
inspiration lay in the words more than in the sense they conveyed;