THE BABYLOXIAX STORY OF THE CREATION. 



43 



had at that date become identified with Auu, and worshipped 

 under the double name. 



It may therefore be taken as an established fact, that Mero- 

 dach, being the divinity of Babylon, had been generally 

 adopted as the chief of the Babylonian pantheon on that 

 accoimt, for all would naturally recognize the claims of the 

 great god of the capital of the new empire. It must not be 

 thought, however, that his kingship was accepted by all 

 without question. There were naturally many who would 

 have none of these innovations, and among them the Baby- 

 lonian Xoah (whose name has been found to read Uta- 

 na(v)istim) seems to have been coimted. When the patriarch 

 asked the god Ae what answer he was to give when questioned 

 as to why he was building the ship (the ark), he was instructed 

 to answer as follows : — 



" It has been told me (that) the God Bel hates me, 



I will not dwell in . . . and 



[In] the territory of Bel I will not set my face — 



[I shall] descend to the deep, with [Ae] mv lord I shall (constantly) 

 dweU. 



[As for] you, he will cause abundance to rain down upon you."' 



As this is merely a legend, it may be supposed that the 

 opinion here expressed, and put into the mouth of the Baby- 

 lonian Xoah, only reflects the attitude of a section of the people, 

 who could not becon e reconciled to the new state of things, 

 and remained faithful to the old belief in Ae as the head of 

 the pantheon. 



Fortunately, we are not without independent information as 

 to what the Babvlonian believed with reo-ard to the crenealoev 

 of the divine personages which were the foimdation of their 

 faith, and the important inscriptions for this are the lists of 

 gods. These texts are, luckily, numerous, but on the other 

 hand are often in a fragmentary condition, which naturally 

 places the student at a disadvantage when examining them. 

 One of the most important of these lists, for its bearing on 

 what is stated in the Semitic Babylonian Creation-Legend, is 

 that pubhshed in the second volume of the Cuneiform 

 Inscriptions of Western Asia, Plates 55 and 56. It will be 

 remembered that Damascius says that the Babylonians de- 

 nominated Tauthe or Tiawthu the mother of the gods, pointing 

 to a time when she was net the evil genius she is represented 

 in the inscriptions dealt with in the present paper. If my 

 comparisons be correct, this is confirmed by the list of gods to 

 which I have referred, for we find there, at the beginning. 



