The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

80 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

was born.
Between the Babylonian and the Egyptian schemes the
differences are slight. In the Ennead of Heliopolis, Tum, the
offspring of Nu, takes the place of Mummu, the watery chaos; but
this was because he was the god of the State, and had therefore to
be made the creator and placed at the head of the gods. It merely
interposes another link in the chain of generation, separating Nu
from the two elemental deities which in the Babylonian scheme
[086] proceeded immediately from it. For Nu was the exact equivalent
of the Babylonian Mummu. Both denote that watery chaos out
of which, it was believed, all things have come. And what makes
the fact the more remarkable is, that though the conception of a
primeval watery chaos was natural in Babylonia, it was not so in
Egypt. Babylonia was washed by the waters of the Persian Gulf,
out of which Ea, the god of the deep, had arisen, bringing with
him the elements of culture, and the waves of which at times
raged angrily and submerged the shore. But the Egyptians of
history lived on the banks of a river and not by the sea; it was
a river, too, whose movements were regular and calculable, and
which bestowed on them all the blessings they enjoyed. So far
from being an emblem of chaos and confusion, the Nile was to
them the author of all good. I do not see how we can avoid the
conclusion that between the Ennead of Heliopolis with its theory
of cosmology, and the cosmological doctrines of Babylonia, a
connection of some sort must have existed.^57
Indeed, the native name of Heliopolis is suggestive of Asiatic
relations. It is the On of the Old Testament, and was called
On of the north to distinguish it from another On, the modern
Erment, in the south. It was symbolised by a fluted and painted

(^57) One of the old formulæ embedded in the Pyramid texts (Teta86) reads like
a passage from a Sumerian hymn:“Hail to thee, great deep (ageb), moulder of
the gods, creator of men.”It belongs to Babylonia rather than to Egypt, where
the“great deep”could have been a matter only of tradition.