its course in detail
may have been, was not uninfluenced by the theological dogma whereby a
god was supposed to have a 'reflection' who was pictured as his consort.
Through this conception, as we have already seen, many a goddess once
ruling in her own right, and enjoying an independent existence,
degenerated into a mere shadow of some male deity, though, on the other
hand, it must be borne in mind that these female deities would have
disappeared altogether but for the opportunity thus afforded them of
becoming 'attachees' to some male deity. This theory of the
_quasi_-artificial character and origin of Tashmit finds support in the
manner in which the mention of her name is entwined with that of Nabu.
Sarpanitum, bound up as the goddess is with Marduk, has at least a
shrine of her own, and occasionally she is spoken of in the texts
without her husband Marduk.[137] The mention of Tashmitum, however,
invariably follows that of Nabu. It is always 'Nabu and Tashmitum,' and
it is never Tashmitum without Nabu. While the creation of Tashmitum may
be a product of Babylonian religious thought, it is in Assyrian texts
that her name is chiefly found. The great Ashurbanabal, in the
conventional subscript attached to his tablet, is particularly fond of
coupling Tashmitum with Nabu, as the two deities who opened his ears to
understanding and prompted him to gather in his palace the literary
treasures produced by the culture that flourished in the south. Tashmit
has no shrine or temple, so far as known, either in Borsippa or in any
of the places whither the Nabu cult spread. She has no attributes other
than those that belong to Nabu, and, what is very remarkable, the later
Babylonian kings, such as Nebuchadnezzar II., when they deem it proper
to attach a consort to Nabu call her Nana,[138] _i.e._, simply the lady,
and not Tashmitum, a proof, how little hold the name had taken upon the
Babylonian populace. If to this it be added, that in by far the greater
number of instances, no reference whatsoever to a consort is made when
Nabu is spoken of, an additional reason is found for the unreal, the
shadowy character of this goddess.

Ea.

In treating of the position occupied by Ea in the oldest period of
Babylonian history (see above, pp. 61-64), it has already been mentioned
that he grows to much larger proportions under the influence of a more
fully developed theological system. Indeed, there is no god who shows
such profound traces