me of the finest hymns, in which elevated thoughts are
elaborated with considerable skill, reveal their origin by having
incantations attached to them. Again, others which are entirely
independent productions are full of allusions to sickness, demons, and
sorcerers, that show the outgrowth of the hymns from the incantations;
and none are entirely free from traces of the conceptions that are
characteristic of the incantation texts. The essential difference
between these two classes of closely related texts may be summed up in
the proposition that the religious thought which produced them both is
carried to a higher point of elaboration in the hymns. The prayers and
hymns represent the attempt of the Babylonian mind to free itself from a
superstitious view of the relationship of man to the powers around him;
an attempt, but--it must be added--an unsuccessful one.

It is rather unfortunate that many of the hymns found in the library of
Ashurbanabal are in so fragmentary a condition. As a consequence we are
frequently unable to determine more than their general contents. The
colophons generally are missing,--at least in those hymns hitherto
published,[424]--so that we are left in the dark as to the special
occasion for which the hymn was composed. Without this knowledge it is
quite impossible to assign to it any definite date except upon internal
evidence. In the course of time, the hymnal literature of the great
temples of Babylonia must have grown to large proportions, and, in
collecting them, some system was certainly followed by the priests
engaged in this work. There is evidence of a collection having been made
at some time of hymns addressed to Shamash. Some of these were intended
as a salute upon the sun's rising, others celebrated his setting. These
hymns convey the impression of having been composed for the worship of
the god in one of his great temples--perhaps in E-babbara, at Sippar. We
have several hymns also addressed to Marduk, and one can well suppose
that at the great temple E-sagila, in Babylon, a collection of Marduk
hymns must have been prepared, and so for others of the great gods. But,
again, many of the hymns convey the impression of being merely sporadic
productions--composed for certain occasions, and without any reference
to a possible position in a ritual.

Of the hymns so far published, those to Shamash are probably the finest.
The conception of the sun-god as the judge of mankind lent itself
re