ries connected
with this cult acquired among the Romans, another link will be added
connecting the ramifications of ancient culture with the civilization of
the Euphrates Valley. The strong admixture of Semitic elements both in
early Greek mythology and in Grecian cults is now so generally admitted
by scholars as to require no further comment.[1623] These Semitic
elements are to a large extent more specifically Babylonian. The spread
of the Gilgamesh epic and of the Ishtar cult into Asia Minor and Greece
may be instanced as illustrations of Babylonian influence; and granting
that the Phoenicians acted largely as the mediators in carrying these
ideas to the Greek settlements, still there must have been influences at
work long before this direct contact with Semitic culture that prepared
the way for the ready acceptance which Semitic conceptions and Semitic
practices found. The time has not yet come for pronouncing an opinion as
to the influence exerted by Babylonia upon lands in the distant East.
The theory of DeLacouperie[1624] and Ball, which proposes to trace the
Chinese script to the hieroglyphic system of Babylonia, is still to be
tested. Early commercial contact between the Euphrates Valley and India
is maintained as a probable theory by several scholars,[1625] and the
possibility, therefore, of the spread of the religious ideas of
Babylonia to the distant East is not to be rejected. Patient research
and the additional discoveries (which are constantly being made) will
alone place us in a position some day to give a definite answer to the
question. Whatever that answer may be, the verdict as to the high
quality and profound influence of the religion that arose in the valley
of the Euphrates and that flourished for several millenniums will not be
altered.

To show the general indebtedness of Grecian, Roman, mediaeval, and even
modern civilization to Babylonian culture lies beyond the range of this
work, but the profound impression made upon the ancient world by the
remarkable manifestations of religious thought in Babylonia and by the
religious activity that prevailed in that region is but an index of the
influence that must have been exerted in other directions by the varied
intellectual activity that converted a district, exposed to the by no
means tender mercies of the elements, into one of the most notable
illustrations of the power and achievements of man.

FOOTNOTES:

[1594] See above, pp. 183, 266.

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