tralization of power in a limited number of
deities. Instead of gods of boundaries, we have numerous demons and
spirits in the case of the developed Babylonian religion, into whose
hands the care of preserving the rights of owners to their lands is
entrusted. Symbols of these spirits--serpents, unicorns, scorpions, and
the like--are added on the monuments which were placed at the
boundaries, and on which the terms were specified that justified the
land tenure. To this class of monuments the name of 'Kudurru,' or
'boundary' stones, was given by the Babylonians themselves. The
inscription on which the name of Pap-u occurs belongs to this class; and
he is invoked, as already said, along with many other gods--in fact,
with the whole or a goodly portion of the pantheon. It would seem,
therefore, that we have in Pap-u a special boundary god who has survived
in that role from a more primitive period of Babylonian culture. He
occupies a place usually assigned to the powerful demons who are
regarded as the real owners of the soil.[206]

Perhaps the most interesting of the minor deities during this second
period is

Gula.

As has just been stated, she is the consort of Ninib. She is not
mentioned in any of the inscriptions of this period till we come to the
days of Nebuchadnezzar I., who invokes her as the bride of
Eshara,--_i.e._, of the earth.[207] We also meet with her name in that
of several individuals, Balatsu-Gula[208] and Arad-Gula,[209] and we
have seen that she is also known as _Damu_ and _Mamu_, or _Meme_. We
have a proof, therefore, of her cult being firmly established at an
early period of Babylonian history. Her role is that of a 'life-giver,'
in the widest sense of the word. She is called the 'great physician,'
who both preserves the body in health and who removes sickness and
disease by the 'touch of her hand.' Gula is the one who leads the dead
to a new life. She shares this power, however, with her husband Ninib.
Her power can be exerted for evil as well as for good. She is appealed
to, to strike the enemy with blindness; she can bring on the very
diseases that she is able to heal, and such is the stress laid upon
these qualities that she is even addressed as the 'creator of mankind.'
But although it is the 'second' birth of mankind over which she
presides, she does not belong to the class of deities whose concern is
with the dead rather than the living. The Babylonians, as we shall have
occasion to point