in the period preceding Hammurabi, led to regulated legal forms and practices for the purpose of carrying out obligations and of settling commercial and legal difficulties. The proof has been furnished by Dr. Meissner[139] that syllabaries prepared for the better understanding of the formulas and words employed in preparing the legal and commercial tablets, date, in part, from the period which we may roughly designate as that of Hammurabi—covering, say, the three centuries 2300 to 2000 B.C. With this evidence for the existence of pedagogues devoted to the training of novices in the art of reading and writing, in order to fit them for their future tasks as official scribes, we are safe in assuming that these same schoolmen were no less active in other fields of literature. If, in addition to this, we find that much of the religious literature, in the shape that we have it, reflects the religious conditions such as they must have shaped themselves in consequence of the promotion of Marduk to the head of the pantheon, the conclusion is forced upon us that such literary productions date from this same epoch of Hammurabi. This influence of the schoolmen while centering, as repeatedly pointed out, around the position of Marduk, manifests itself in a pronounced fashion, also, in the changed position henceforth accorded to the god Ea. It will be recalled that in the earliest period of Babylonian history, Ea does not figure prominently. At the same time we must beware of laying too much stress upon the negative testimony of the historical texts. Besides the still limited material of this character at our disposal, the non-mention of a deity may be due to a variety of circumstances, that may properly be designated as accidental. The gods to whom the kings of the ancient Babylonian states would be apt to appeal would be, in the first instance, the local deities, patrons of the city that happened to be the capital of the state; in the second instance, the gods of the vanquished towns; and thirdly, some of the great deities worshipped at the sacred centers of the Euphrates valley, and who constituted, as it were, the common heritage of the past. Ea, as the god of the Persian gulf, the region which forms the starting-point of Babylonian culture, and around which some of the oldest and most precious recollections center, would come within the radius of the third instance, since, in the period we have in mind, Eridu no longer enjoyed any political importance. We may be sure, then, despite the silence of the texts, that Ea was always held in great esteem, and that even the absence of temples in his honor, did not affect the reverence and awe that he inspired. As for the epoch of Hammurabi, the historical spirit that is never absent in a truly intellectual age would be certain to restore Ea to his proper prestige, assuming that a previous age had permitted him to fall into neglect. Next to Marduk, there is no deity who is given such distinction in Babylonia, after the union of the Babylonian states, as Ea. In the religious literature, moreover, as reshaped by the schoolmen of the time, his rôle is even more prominent than that of Marduk. As a water-god, and more particularly as the god to whom the largest body of water known to the Babylonians was sacred, Ea was regarded as the source and giver of wisdom. Fountains everywhere were sacred to him; and so he becomes also the giver of fertility and plenty. Berosus tells us of a mystic being, half man, half fish, who spent his nights in the waters of the gulf, but who would come out of the waters during the day to give instruction to the people, until that time steeped in ignorance and barbarism. This 'Oannes,' as Berosus is said[140] to have called him, was none other than Ea. As the great benefactor of mankind, it is natural that Ea should have come to be viewed as the god whose special function it is to protect the human race, to advance it in all its good undertakings, to protect it against the evil designs of gods or demons. In this rôle, he appears in the religious literature—in the epics, the cosmogony, and the ritual—of Babylonia. There is no god conceived in so universal a manner as Ea. All local connection with Eridu disappears. He belongs to no particular district. His worship is not limited to any particular spot. All of Babylonia lays claim to him. The ethical import of such a conception is manifestly great, and traces of it are to be found in the religious productions. It impressed upon the Babylonians the common bond uniting all mankind. The cult of Ea must have engendered humane feelings, softening the rivalry existing among the ancient centers of Babylonian power, and leading the people a considerable distance, on the road to the conception of a common humanity. When the gods decide to destroy mankind, it is Ea who intercedes on behalf of humanity; when the demon of disease has entered a human body, it is to Ea that, in the last resort, the appeal is made to free the sufferer from his pain. Ea is the god of the physicians. Nay, more, it is Ea who presided at the birth of humanity, so that his protection reaches far back, beyond even the beginnings of civilization, almost to the beginning of things. Lastly, as the god of civilization, it is to him that the great works of art are ascribed. He is the god of the smithy, the patron of the gold and silversmiths, of workers in lapis-lazuli, and all kinds of precious stones. He is the god of sculpture. The great bulls and lions that guarded the approaches to the temple and palace chambers, as well as the statues of the gods and kings, were the work of his hands. Furthermore, he is the patron of weavers, as of other arts. This conception may have been perfected in a general way, and in all probability was perfected before the days of Hammurabi, though perhaps not prominently brought forward; but important modifications were introduced into it, through the compromise that had to be arranged between the position of Ea and that of Marduk. Of course, neither the rulers nor the priests of Babylon could have permitted the reverence for Ea to have gone to the length of throwing Marduk into the shade. Many of the functions assigned to Ea seemed to belong of right to Marduk, who, as the patron of Babylon, presided over the destinies of what to the Babylonians was the essential part of mankind—namely, themselves. Moreover, Babylon being the seat of culture as well as of power, in the period following upon Hammurabi, Marduk was necessarily conceived as possessing the same wisdom that distinguishes Ea. As a consequence, the attributes of Ea were transferred in a body to Marduk. An amalgamation of the two, however, such as took place in the case of other deities, was neither possible, nor, indeed, desirable. It was not possible, because of the antiquity of the Ea cult and the peculiar position that he, as a common heirloom of all Babylonia, occupied; nor was it desirable, for to do so would be to cut off completely the bond uniting Babylon to its own past and to the rest of Babylonia. The solution of the problem was found in making Ea, the father of Marduk—the loving and proud father who willingly transfers all his powers and qualities to his son, who rejoices in the triumph of his offspring, and who suffers no pangs of jealousy when beholding the superior honors shown to Marduk, both by the gods and by men.
The combination of the two gods is particularly frequent in the so-called incantation texts. Marduk becomes the mediator between Ea and mankind. The man smitten with disease, or otherwise in trouble, appeals to Marduk for help, who promptly brings the petition to his father Ea. The latter, after modestly declaring that there is nothing that he knows which his son Marduk does not know, gives Marduk the necessary instructions, which in turn are conveyed to the one crying for divine succor. It is clear that these texts have been reshaped with the intention of adding to the glory of Marduk. They must, therefore, have been remodelled at a time when the Marduk cult was in the ascendancy. This was after the days of Hammurabi, and before the subjugation of Babylonia to Assyrian rule. The limits thus assigned are, to be sure, broad, but from what has above been said as to the intellectual activity reigning in the days of Hammurabi, we need not descend far below the death of the great conqueror to find the starting-point for the remodelling of the texts in question. Not all of them, of course, were so reshaped. There are quite a number in which Ea is alone and directly appealed to, and these form a welcome confirmation of the supposition that those in which Ea is joined to Marduk have been reshaped with a desire to make them conform to the position of Marduk in the Babylonian pantheon. Again, there are incantations in which the name of Marduk appears without Ea. Such are either productions of a later period, of the time when Marduk had already assumed his superior position, or what is also possible, though less probable, old compositions in which the name of Ea has been simply replaced by that of Marduk. An especially interesting example of the manner in which ancient productions have been worked over by the Babylonian theologians, with a view to bringing their favorite Marduk into greater prominence, appears in one of the episodes of the Babylonian
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