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and Arad-Gula,[209] and we have seen that she is also known as Damu and Mamu, or Meme. We have a proof, therefore, of her cult being firmly established at an early period of Babylonian history. Her rôle is that of a 'life-giver,' in the widest sense of the word. She is called the 'great physician,' who both preserves the body in health and who removes sickness and disease by the 'touch of her hand.' Gula is the one who leads the dead to a new life. She shares this power, however, with her husband Ninib. Her power can be exerted for evil as well as for good. She is appealed to, to strike the enemy with blindness; she can bring on the very diseases that she is able to heal, and such is the stress laid upon these qualities that she is even addressed as the 'creator of mankind.' But although it is the 'second' birth of mankind over which she presides, she does not belong to the class of deities whose concern is with the dead rather than the living. The Babylonians, as we shall have occasion to point out, early engaged in speculations regarding the life after death, and, as a result, there was developed a special pantheon for the nether world. Gula occupies a rather unique place intermediate, as it were, between the gods of the living and the gods of the dead.

      Of the other deities occurring in the inscription of this same Nebuchadnezzar I. it is sufficient to note that two, Shir and Shubu, are enumerated among the gods of Bit-Khabban. They were, therefore, local deities of some towns that never rose to sufficient importance to insure their patrons a permanent place in the Babylonian pantheon. 'Belit of Akkad,' whom Nebuchadnezzar invokes, is none other than the great Belit, the consort of Bel. 'Akkad' is here used for Babylonia, and the qualification is added to distinguish her from other 'ladies,' as, e.g., 'Belit-ekalli,' who, we have seen, was Gula.

Malik and Bunene.

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Upon reaching so late a period as the days of Nabubaliddin (c. 850 B.C.), it becomes doubtful whether we are justified in including the additional deities occurring in his inscription among the Babylonian pantheon of the second period. The occurrence of some of these gods in the religious literature is a presumption in favor of regarding them as ancient creations, rather than due to later influences. Certainly this appears to be the case with Malik and Bunene, who, with Shamash, form a triad that constitutes the chief object of worship in the great temple E-babbara at Sippar, to whose restored cult Nabubaliddin devotes himself. Both names, moreover, occur as parts of proper names in the age of Hammurabi. Malik—i.e., ruler—is one of the names frequently assigned to Shamash, just as the god's consort was known as Malkatu, but for all that Malik is not the same as Shamash. Accompanying the inscription of Nabubaliddin is a design[210] representing the sun-god seated in his shrine. Before him on a table rests a wheel, and attached to the wheel are cords held by two figures, who are evidently directing the course of the wheel. These two figures are Malik and Bunene, a species of attendants, therefore, on the sun-god, who drive the fiery chariot that symbolized the great orb. Bunene, through association with Malik, becomes the latter's consort, and it is interesting to observe the extent to which the tendency of the Babylonian religion to conceive the gods in pairs goes. Bunene is not the only instance of an originally male deity becoming through various circumstances the female consort to another. Originally, Malik may have been a name under which the sun-god was worshipped at some place, for the conception that makes him the chariot-driver to Shamash appears to be late. The absorption by the greater sun-cults (at Sippar and Larsa more particularly) of the lesser ones leads to the complete transfer of the names of minor sun-deities to the great Shamash, but in some instances the minor deities continue to lead a shadowy existence in some rôle of service to the greater ones.

Nin-igi-nangar-bu, Gushgin-banda, Nin-kurra, and Nin-zadim.

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      We have seen that Ea, among other powers assigned to him, was regarded as the god of fine arts—in the first instance as the god of the smithy, because of the antiquity and importance of the smith's art, and then of art in general, including especially the production of great statues. In accordance with this conception, Nabubaliddin declares that it was through the wisdom of Ea that he succeeded in manufacturing the great image of Shamash that was set up by him in the temple at Sippar. But in the days of Nabubaliddin the arts had been differentiated into various branches, and this differentiation was expressed by assigning to each branch some patron god who presided over that section. In this way, the old belief that art comes to men from the gods survived, while at the same time it entered upon new phases.[211] Accordingly, Nabubaliddin assigns several deities who act the part of assistants to Ea. The names of these deities point to their functions. Nin-igi-nangar-bu is the 'lord who presides over metal-workers'; Gushgin-banda, 'brilliant chief,' is evidently the patron of those skilled in the working of the bright metals; Nin-kurra, 'lord of mountain,' the patron of those that quarried the stones; while Nin-zadim is the patron of sculpture. Ea stands above these as a general overseer, but the four classes of laborers symbolized by gods indicate the manner of artistic construction in the advanced state of Babylonian art, and of the various distinct professions to which this art gave birth. In a certain sense, of course, these four gods associated with Ea belong to the Babylonian pantheon, but not in the same sense in which Ea, for example, or the other gods discussed in this chapter, belong to it. They cannot even be said to be gods of a minor order—they are hardly anything more than personifications of certain phenomena that have their source in the human intellect. In giving to these personified powers the determinative indicative of deity, the Babylonian schoolmen were not conscious of expressing anything more than their belief in the divine origin of the power and skill exercised by man. To represent such power as a god was the only way in which the personification could at all be effected under the conditions presented by Babylonian beliefs. When, therefore, we meet with such gods as Nin-zadim, 'lord of sculpture,' it is much the same as when in the Old Testament we are told that Tubal-cain was the 'father' of those that work in metals, and where similarly other arts are traced back to a single source. 'Father' in Oriental hyperbole signifies 'source, originator, possessor, or patron,' and, indeed, includes all these ideas. The Hebrew writer, rising to a higher level of belief, conceives the arts to have originated through some single personage endowed with divine powers;[212] the Babylonian, incapable as yet of making this distinction, ascribes both the origin and execution of the art directly to a god. In this way, new deities were apparently created even at an advanced stage of the Babylonian religion, but deities that differed totally from those that are characteristic of the earlier periods. The differentiation of the arts, and the assignment of a patron to each branch, reflect the thoughts and the aspirations of a later age. These views must have arisen under an impulse to artistic creation that was called forth by unusual circumstances, and I venture to think that this impulse is to be traced to the influence of the Assyrian rulers, whose greatest ambition, next to military glory, was to leave behind them artistic monuments of themselves that might unfold to later ages a tale of greatness and of power. Sculpture and works in metal were two arts that flourished in a special degree in the days when Assyria was approaching the zenith of her glory. Nabubaliddin's reign falls within this period; and we must, therefore, look from this time on for traces of Assyrian influence in the culture, the art, and also to some extent in the religious beliefs of the southern district of Mesopotamia.

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