[199] _Kossaer_, pp. 25-27.

[200] Delitzsch, _Kossaer_, p. 33.

[201] See above, p. 105.

[202] Examples of punning etymologies on names of gods are frequent. See
Jensen's discussion of Nergal for examples of various plays upon the
name of the god. _Kosmologie_, pp. 185 _seq._

[203] Jensen, _Kosmologie_, pp. 185 _seq._ and p. 218.

[204] _Kosmologie_, p. 195.

[205] Rawlinson, i. 29, 16.

[206] This notion that the ground belongs to the gods, and that man is
only a tenant, survives to a late period in Semitic religions. The
belief underlies the Pentateuchal enactments regarding the holding of
the soil, which is only to be temporary. See W. R. Smith, _Religion of
the Semites_, pp. 91 _seq._

[207] In Babylonian, _Kallat Eshara_, with another play upon her name.
See above, p. 173.

[208] _I.e._, (Protect) his life, O Gula.

[209] Servant of Gula.

[210] See V.R. pl. 60.

[211] To this day in the Orient, fine productions of man's skill are
attributed to the influence of hidden spirits, good or bad, as the case
may be.

[212] This position does not, of course, exclude the fact that in the
original form of the tradition, Tubal-cain, Naamah, and other personages
in the fourth chapter of Genesis were deities.

CHAPTER XI.

SURVIVALS OF ANIMISM IN THE BABYLONIAN RELIGION.

The Assyrian influence however was only one factor, and a minor factor
at that, in maintaining the belief in countless spirits that occupied a
place of more or less importance by the side of the great and lesser
gods. That conservatism which is a distinguishing trait of the popular
forms of religion everywhere, served to keep alive the view that all the
acts of man, his moods, the accidents that befell him, were under the
control of visible or invisible powers. The development of a pantheon,
graded and more or less regulated under the guidance of the Babylonian
schoolmen, did not drive the old animistic views out of existence. In
the religious literature, and more especially in those parts of it which
reflect the popular forms of thought, the unorganized mass of spirits
maintain an undisputed sway. In the incantation texts, which will be
discussed at length in a subsequent chapter, as well as in other
sections of Babylonian literature embodying both the primitive and the
advanced views of the Babylonians regarding the origin of the universe,
its subdivisions, and its order of development, and, thirdly, in the
legends and ep