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She lay outside the circle of Semitic theology with its divine family, over which the male Baal presided, and the position she occupied in later Babylonian religion was due to the fusion between the Sumerian and Semitic forms of faith, which took place when the Semites became the chief element in Babylonia.
The rôle of mother of mankind was also shared, as we have seen, by the Semitic Ishtar. And though the old Sumerian goddess, Ninkharsagga, the "Lady of the Mountains", appears in our Sumerian text for the first time in the character of creatress, some of the titles we know she enjoyed, under her synonyms in the great God List of Babylonia, already reflected her cosmic activities.
How then are we to account for this correspondence of Sumerian and Hebrew traditions, on points completely wanting in our intermediate authorities, from which, however, other evidence suggests that the Hebrew narratives were derived? At the risk of anticipating some of the conclusions to be drawn in the next lecture, it may be well to define an answer now.
It is unfortunate that the ends of all the lines in this column are wanting, but enough remains to show a close correspondence of the first two lines quoted with a passage in the Gilgamesh Epic where Ishtar is described as lamenting the destruction of mankind. This will be seen more clearly by printing the two couplets in parallel columns: SUMERIAN VERSION SEMITIC VERSION Gilg. Epic, XI, l. 117 f.
The Babylonian civilisation, with which we are best acquainted, was the result of this amalgamation of Sumerian and Semitic elements. Out of this mixture of Sumerians and Semites there arose a mixed people, a mixed language, and a mixed religion. The language and race of Babylonia were thus like those of England, probably also like those of Egypt.
In both of them Anu, Enlil, and Enki appear as creators "through their sure counsel". In the Sumerian extract they create the Moon and ordain its monthly course, while in the Semitic text, after establishing heaven and earth, they create in addition to the New Moon the bright Day, so that "men beheld the Sun-god in the Gate of his going forth".
This grouping of Sumerian and Hebrew authorities, against the extant sources from Babylon, is emphasized by the general framework of the Sumerian story. For the literary connexion which we have in Genesis between the Creation and the Deluge narratives has hitherto found no parallel in the cuneiform texts. In Babylon and Assyria the myth of Creation and the Deluge legend have been divorced.
There were dictionaries and grammars for explaining the Sumerian language to Semitic pupils, interlinear translations of Sumerian texts, phrase-books, lists of synonyms, and commentaries on difficult or obsolete words and passages, besides syllabaries, in which the cuneiform characters were catalogued and explained.
Poebel that in each version two separate goddesses are represented as lamenting, Nintu or Bêlit-ili and Innanna or Ishtar. For Innanna as a separate goddess had no share in the Sumerian Creation, and the reference to "her people" is there only applicable to Nintu. Dr.
The evidence we thus obtain that the early Sumerians themselves regarded Eridu as the first city in the world to be created, increases the hope that future excavation at Abu Shahrain may reveal Sumerian remains of periods which, from an archaeological standpoint, must still be regarded as prehistoric. Cf. Poebel, op. cit., p. 41.
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