s shown to Marduk,
both by the gods and by men.

Ea and Marduk.

The combination of the two gods is particularly frequent in the
so-called incantation texts. Marduk becomes the mediator between Ea and
mankind. The man smitten with disease, or otherwise in trouble, appeals
to Marduk for help, who promptly brings the petition to his father Ea.
The latter, after modestly declaring that there is nothing that he knows
which his son Marduk does not know, gives Marduk the necessary
instructions, which in turn are conveyed to the one crying for divine
succor. It is clear that these texts have been reshaped with the
intention of adding to the glory of Marduk. They must, therefore, have
been remodelled at a time when the Marduk cult was in the ascendancy.
This was after the days of Hammurabi, and before the subjugation of
Babylonia to Assyrian rule. The limits thus assigned are, to be sure,
broad, but from what has above been said as to the intellectual activity
reigning in the days of Hammurabi, we need not descend far below the
death of the great conqueror to find the starting-point for the
remodelling of the texts in question. Not all of them, of course, were
so reshaped. There are quite a number in which Ea is alone and directly
appealed to, and these form a welcome confirmation of the supposition
that those in which Ea is joined to Marduk have been reshaped with a
desire to make them conform to the position of Marduk in the Babylonian
pantheon. Again, there are incantations in which the name of Marduk
appears without Ea. Such are either productions of a later period, of
the time when Marduk had already assumed his superior position, or what
is also possible, though less probable, old compositions in which the
name of Ea has been simply replaced by that of Marduk. An especially
interesting example of the manner in which ancient productions have been
worked over by the Babylonian theologians, with a view to bringing their
favorite Marduk into greater prominence, appears in one of the episodes
of the Babylonian cosmogony. Prior to the creation of man a great
monster known as Tiamat had to be subdued. The gods all shrink in terror
before her. Only one succeeds in conquering her. In the form of the
story, as we have it, this hero is Marduk, but it is quite evident[141]
that the honor originally belonged to an entirely different god, one who
is much older, and who stands much higher than the god of Babylon. This
was Bel,--the