In the early magical texts “the Zi of heaven” and the “Zi of earth” are invoked to remove the spell that has been cast over the sick or the insane. Even when Ea and his son Asari had taken the place of the demons of the older faith, the official religion was still compelled to recognise their existence and power. The formula of exorcism put into the mouth of Ea himself ends with an appeal to the “life” of heaven and earth. It begins, indeed, with “the charm of Ea,” through the efficacy of which the evil spell is to be dissolved; but the charm of the god of wisdom is soon forgotten, and it is to the Zi of heaven and earth that the exorcist finally has recourse. “O life of heaven, mayest thou conjure it; O life of earth, mayest thou conjure it!” thus, and thus only, could the exorcism end. The old associations were too strong to be overcome, and the worshippers of Ea had to allow a place at his side for the “spirits” of an earlier age.
The ancient conception of the Zi lingered long among the Babylonian population. But, as the Semitic element became predominant, it fell more and more into the background, and survived—so far at least as the official religion was concerned—only in a few old formulæ and names. One of the fixed stars, for example, was called Sib-zi-Anna, “the Shepherd of the Life of Heaven,” and a common form of oath was by “the life of the gods” or “king” (nis ilâni, nis sarri). Even Sennacherib swears by “the life of Assur”; but it is questionable whether either he or any of his contemporaries remembered the original meaning and history of the phrase. The Sumerian Zi had received a Semitic translation, and therewith a Semitic connotation. The ideas attached to the Semitic nêsu were not those which had once clustered around the Zi. On the lips of the Semite even the word Zi itself meant “life” and little more. When [pg 280] Pur-Sin ii. of Ur, a century or two before Abraham, addresses a dedication in Sumerian to the moon-god, he calls himself “the divine Zi of his country”[220]—in other words, a “god who gives life to his land.” There is no question here of a vital force which is the counterpart of a man or god; we have, on the contrary, the Semitic conception of a divine father from whom his people derive their life. The Semite has transferred his own ideas to the language of his Sumerian predecessors, and “life” for him is no materialised reflection of an individual thing, but a principle which is diffused, as it were, from a divine centre. The “Zi of heaven” has become the abstract life, which the god can communicate to those about him.
It is only in the dim background of history, therefore, that we find in Babylonia a belief analogous to that which created the Egyptian doctrine of the Ka. It was foreign to the Semitic mind, and with the rise of Semitic supremacy, accordingly, it disappeared from the religion of Babylonia. We have to look for its fossilised relics in the old magical texts, which, like the spells and charms of modern folk-lore, have preserved so many of the beliefs and superstitions of an otherwise forgotten past, or else in divine names and epithets which go back to a remote antiquity. The animism of the Sumerian is difficult to discover and trace, for it was already buried under Semitic modes of thought when the first libraries of Babylonia were being formed.
It was another Sumerian belief which exercised a greater influence upon the Semitic mind. This was the belief in ghosts. The lil or ghost was distinct from the Zi; while the Zi belonged to the world of the living, the lil belonged to the world of the dead. The lil consequently was no counterpart or double of either man or [pg 281] god, but a being with an independent existence of its own. Its home was beneath the earth, where the dead had their dwelling; but it visited this upper world under the shadow of night, or in desert places to which nothing living came.[221] It was essentially a spirit of darkness, and one of the names by which it was known was that of “the light-despoiler.”[222] It came in the raging wind which darkens the heaven with clouds, or in the cloud of dust which betokens the approach of the storm. The lil, in fact, was essentially a demon, “without husband or wife,” one of those evil spirits who tormented and perplexed mankind.
The sexless Lil was waited on by “a maid,” who under the cover of night enticed men to their destruction, or seduced them in their dreams. She was a veritable vampire, providing the Lil she served with its human food. When the Semite succeeded to the heritage of the Sumerian, the sexless Lil disappeared. Semitic grammar demanded that there should be a distinction between masculine and feminine, and Semitic modes of thought equally demanded that a female Lilît should take her place by the side of a male Lilu. The attributes of the “serving-maid” of the Sumerian Lil were transferred to the new creation of the Semitic mind, and the siren who lured men to their destruction ceased to be a serving-maid, and became the female Lilît herself. But the origin of the powers she exercised was never forgotten. When the name and character of the Babylonian Lilît were borrowed by the Hebrews under the form of Lilith, she was conceived of as a single individual spirit rather than as a class. Isaiah (xxxiv. 14) tells us how Lilith shall haunt the desolate ruins of Edom, and find among [pg 282] them “a place of rest”; while, according to the Rabbis, Lilith had been the first wife of man, in appearance the fairest of women, but in reality a vampire demon who sucked at night the blood of her victims.
The lord and ruler of the Lils was the god who was worshipped at Nippur. He bore, accordingly, the title of En-lil, “the lord of the ghost-world,” and his temple was one of the oldest sanctuaries of Sumerian Babylonia.[223] It was a centre of primeval civilisation, and the source of the magical arts which gathered round the belief in the spirits of the underworld. But the lordship of the underworld implied also a lordship over the earth, of which it formed a part. En-lil, “the lord of the ghost-world,” thus became in time the ruler, not only of the dead, but also of the living. His empire ceased to be confined to the realms of darkness, and was extended to this upper world of light and of mankind. Up to the last, however, his primitive character was never forgotten. In the story of the Deluge he appears as the destroyer of men; Namtar, the plague-demon, is his minister; and like Kingu, the demon-god of chaos, he wore the tablets of destiny, which determine when men shall die.[224]
En-lil was accordingly the sovereign of the dead as well as of the spirits of the underworld. The Sumerian lil must therefore have once included the ghosts of men as well as other ghosts which never had a material existence in the flesh. The lil must once have meant [pg 283] that immaterial part of man which, after death, had its home in the underworld, from whence it issued at night to satisfy its cravings for food with the garbage of the streets. By the side of the Zi there must also have been the Lil; but we must wait till more monuments of Sumerian antiquity are discovered before we can define the exact relationship between them.[225]
In the Epic of Gilgames it is said that when the shade of Ea-bani was called up from the dead, like that of the shade of Samuel by the Witch of Endor, “it arose from the earth like a cloud of dust.”[226] It was fitting that the ghost should be likened to a dust-storm. Its home was in the ground; and there, in the dark underworld, its food, we are told, was dust. But the word used by the poet for the ghost of Ea-bani is not lil. It is another word, utukku, which occurs frequently in the magical texts. Here the utukku is a general name for a demon, and we hear of the utukku “of the field,” “of the mountain,” “of the sea,” and “of the grave.” The “utukku of the grave” must be the restless ghost of some dead man which has become a spirit of darkness, working evil to mankind. The ordinary utukku, however, had no human ancestry; it was a demon pure and simple, which sat upon the neck of the sufferer and inflicted upon him pain and death. It corresponded with the vampire of European folk-lore; and just as the ranks of the vampire might be recruited from the dead, [pg 284] so too might the class of demons whom the Babylonians termed utukki.
It was the same with another species of demon, the ekimmu, which hovered around the tomb and attacked the loins of those who fell in its way. But the ekimmu was a being whose origin was known. It was the spirit of an unburied corpse over whose unsanctified remains the funeral rites had never been performed. The mystic ceremonies and magical words which consigned the dead to their last resting-place had been neglected, and the hapless spirit was left unprovided with the talismans that would enable him to cross the river of death, or join his comrades in the passive tranquillity of the lower world. Restlessly, therefore, it wandered about the desert places of the earth, finding at times a shelter in the bodies of the living, whom it plagued with sore diseases, and seeking to satiate its hunger under the cover of night with the refuse it could pick up “in the street.” The food and drink which pious hands laid in the tomb were denied to the tombless ghost, and it had to search for them where it could. The Epic of Gilgames concludes with a description of it, which paints in vivid colours the old Babylonian belief—
“He whose body lies forsaken in the field,