390 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniastage on which they move is human also. It was the pantheism of
the Egyptian, in conjunction with the deification of the Pharaoh,
that made him rationalise the stories of his gods; in Babylonia
there was no such temptation; each deity retained his individual
character, and from the outset he had worn the likeness of a man.
But it was a likeness only, behind which the divinity revealed
itself, though the likeness necessarily caused the revelation to
be made through individual features, clearly cut and sharply
defined. Bel was no human king possessed of magical powers,
who had once sat on the throne of Babylon; he remained the
god who could, it is true, display himself at times to his faithful
worshippers, but whose habitation was in the far-off heavens,
from which he surveyed and regulated the actions of mankind.
The gods of Babylonian mythology still belonged to heaven and
not to earth, and its heroes are men and not humanised gods.
I have already referred to the story of the first man, Adapa,
and his refusal of the gift of immortality. The story, as we have
it, has received a theological colouring; like the narrative of the
[425] Fall in the Book of Genesis, it serves to explain why death has
entered the world. Man was made in the likeness of the gods, and
the question therefore naturally arose why, like them, he should
not be immortal. The answer was given, at any rate by the priests
of Eridu, in the legend of Adapa and his journey to the sky.
There was yet another story which illustrated the punishment
of human presumption,—the attempt of man to be as a god,—and
is thus a parallel to the story of the tower of Babel. It is the
legend of Etana and the eagle, who tempts the hero to ascend
with him to the highest heavens and there visit the abodes of the
gods. Borne accordingly on the breast of the bird, Etana mounts
upwards. At the end of two hours the earth looks to them like
a mere mountain, the sea like a pool. Another four hours and
“the sea has become like a gardener's ditch.”At last they reach
“the heaven of Anu”; but even there they refuse to stay. Higher
still they ascend to the heaven of Istar, so that the sea appears to