ed, that the sea,
with all its rivers and streams, was regarded as animated with the
spirit of Ea and his children, whilst the great cities and
temple-towers were pervaded with the spirit of the god whose abode
they were. Innumerable good and evil spirits were believed in, such as
the spirit of the mountain, the sea, the plain, and the grave. These
spirits were of various kinds, and bore names which do not always
reveal their real character--such as the /edimmu/, /utukku/, /sedu/,
/asakku/ (spirit of fevers), /namtaru/ (spirit of fate), /alu/
(regarded as the spirit of the south wind), /gallu/, /rabisu/,
/labartu/, /labasu/, /ahhazu/ (the seizer), /lilu/ and /lilithu/ (male
and female spirits of the mist), with their attendants.

All this points to animism as the pervading idea of the worship of the
peoples of the Babylonian states in the prehistoric period--the
attribution of life to every appearance of nature. The question is,
however, Is the evidence of the inscriptions sufficient to make this
absolutely certain? It is hard to believe that such intelligent
people, as the primitive Babylonians naturally were, believed that
such things as stones, rocks, mountains, storms, and rain were, in
themselves, and apart from the divinity which they regarded as
presiding over them, living things. A stone might be a /bit ili/ or
bethel--a "house of god," and almost invested with the status of a
living thing, but that does not prove that the Babylonians thought of
every stone as being endowed with life, even in prehistoric times.
Whilst, therefore, there are traces of a belief similar to that which
an animistic creed might be regarded as possessing, it must be
admitted that these seemingly animistic doctrines may have originated
in another way, and be due to later developments. The power of the
gods to create living things naturally makes possible the belief that
they had also power to endow with a soul, and therefore with life and
intelligence, any seemingly inanimate object. Such was probably the
nature of Babylonian animism, if it may be so called. The legend of
Tiawthu (Tiawath) may with great probability be regarded as the
remains of a primitive animism which was the creed of the original and
comparatively uncivilised Babylonians, who saw in the sea the producer
and creator of all the monstrous shapes which are found therein; but
any development of this idea in other directions was probably cut
short by the priests, who must