d
to writing, would serve as a point of departure for further
speculations. The existence of a text to which any measure of value is
attached, is bound to give rise to various attempts at interpretation,
and if this value be connected with the religion of a people, the result
is, invariably, that the ancient words are invested with a meaning
conformable to a later age. Each generation among a people characterized
by intellectual activity has a signature of its own, and it will seek to
give to the religious thoughts of the time its own particular impress.
Since, however, the material upon which any age works is not of its own
making, but is furnished by a preceding one, it follows that much of the
intellectual activity of an age manifests itself in a transformation of
its literary or speculative heritage. This process was constantly going
on in Babylonia, and had we more material--and older material--at our
disposal, we would be able to trace more clearly than we can at present,
the various stages that led to the system of theology, as embodied in
the best productions of the ancient Babylonian schoolmen.

The days of Hammurabi, as they were politically of great importance,
also appear to have ushered in a new era in the religious life of the
people. Stirring political events are always apt to bring in their wake
intellectual movements, and in a country like Babylonia, where politics
react so forcibly on religious conditions, the permanent establishment
of the supremacy of the city of Babylon would be fraught with important
consequences for the cult. The main change brought about by this new
epoch of Babylonian history was, as we have seen, the superior position
henceforth accorded in the pantheon to Marduk as the patron deity of
Babylon; but this change entailed so many others, that it almost merits
being termed a revolution. In order to ensure Marduk's place, the
relations of the other deities to him had to be regulated, the legends
and traditions of the past reshaped, so as to be brought into consistent
accord with the new order of things, and the cult likewise to be, at
least in part, remodelled, so as to emphasize the supremacy of Marduk.
This work, which was an inevitable one, was primarily of an intellectual
order. We are justified, then, in looking for traces of this activity in
the remains that have been recovered of ancient Babylonian literature.
We know from direct evidence that the commercial life of Babylonia