In these older incantations the gods of the official cult are absent, except where their names have been violently foisted in at a later date, and their place is taken by the spirits or ghosts of early Sumerian belief. The Zi or “spirit of the sky,” “the spirit of the earth,” “the spirit [pg 404] of Ansar and Kisar,” such are the superhuman powers that are invoked, and to whom the worshipper turns in his extremity. Even when we come across a name that is borne by one of the deities of the later Babylonian religion, we find that it is the name not of a god, but of a denizen of the ghost-world. “O spirit of Zikum, mother of Ea,” we read in one place; “O spirit of Nina, daughter of Ea”; “O spirit, divine lord of the mother-father of En-lil; O spirit, divine lady of the mother-father of Nin-lil”; “O spirit of the moon, O spirit of the sun, O spirit of the evening star!” There is as yet neither Bel of Nippur, nor Sin and Samas and Istar; the sorcerer knows only of the spirits that animate the universe, and bring good and evil upon mankind. Nothing can be more striking than the enumeration of the divine powers to whom the prayer is directed, in an incantation of which I have given the translation in my Hibbert Lectures (p. 450 sqq.)—
“Whether it be the spirit of the divine lord of the earths;
or the spirit of the divine lady of the earths;
or the spirit of the divine lord of the stars;
or the spirit of the divine lady of the stars;
or the spirit of the divine lord of progenies;
or the spirit of the divine lady of progenies;
or the spirit of the divine lord of ...;
or the spirit of the divine lady of ...;
or the spirit of the divine lord of the holy mound (Ea);