Babyloniaca, études de philologie assyro-babylonienne.

BABYLONIAN BOOKS OF PRIVATE DEVOTION

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cited from the Sumerian period are all incantations against demons,
in which Ea the water god and his son Marduk play an important part.
In none of these incantations, however, is water the magical element.
The elements used indicate rather the act of purification by fire. There
is however ohe incantation from this ritual in which the magical element
is water but it is used in the Maqlu ritual, one of the fire cults1. The
mythological message brought by Marduk from the all wise father to
insure the divine right of the priest to use the sacred ritual of water,
was evidently transfered at an early date to the fire cult. The right to
priestly functions, the right to act as representative of the water god
who alone revealed wisdom and gave miraculous power to formulae
and symbolic acts, belonged only to the priesthood of Ea. The chapels,
or huts where these rituals were performed were called c" house of
washing,,, " house of baptism,,, and perhaps by many other names
which have been lost. In case of the ritual whose chiefest symbolic act
was the tying of the patient's limbs with a cord and then breaking the
cord, it is barely possible that the place where it was performed
was called bit nesiri2. At any rate the place where a ritual of incantation was performed took its name from the nature of the service. It is
highly probable that the oldest form of sympathetic magic was washing
by holy water in which the evils of. soul and body were thought to
disappear with the passing of the ablution. Into the sphere of their
magic the priesthood of the water god then appropriated every other
kind of magic. It was, therefore, necessary to incorporate the mythical
history of the divine right to minister in the mysteries into every cult
in which the priest served. The oldest examples of these mysteries
which we now possess are the bit niri rituals. They show us how the
dogma of revelation and consecration by the god of water had pervaded every form of mystery in the Sumerian religion before it passed
to the Semites. They show us also, with the help of ancient seal
1. MaqlMi VII 144-151.
2. Sm. 1939 in BEZOLD, Catalogue, and CT IV 5, 14 where a ritual for the
eclipse of the moon in Tammuz is given, beginning: 2 ume ina bit me-sir usab
= 'he shall sit two days in the bit mesir '.