out causing
blood to flow. The reference is to the lightning stroke.

[447] IVR. 29, no. 1.

[448] Perhaps a reference to Ea.

[449] Name for the inhabitants of Babylonla, and then used in general
for mankind. _Cf._ p. 281.

[450] IVR. 18, no. 2. Badly preserved.

[451] _I.e._, call upon thee to be pacified.

[452] _I.e._, salute thee.

[453] Bel.

[454] The strongly fortified city of Babylon is compared to a bolt and
the temple to an enclosure.

[455] IVR. 28, no. 2.

[456] _I.e._, fly to a safe place.

[457] _I.e._, the sun is obscured.

[458] See above, p. 84.

[459] Delitzsch, _Assyrische Lesestuecke_ (3d edition), pp. 134-136.

[460] The portents taken through observation of the position of Ishtar
or Venus in the heavens were of especial value.

[461] Phrases introduced to illustrate the power, not the function, of
Ishtar.

[462] The liver as the seat of the emotions.

[463] _I.e._, house of heaven. Name of Ishtar's temple at Erech.

[464] _I.e._, court of the universe. Name of one of Ishtar's temples.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PENITENTIAL PSALMS.

It will be recalled that both in the Ishtar hymn and in the one to
Marduk above quoted, great stress is laid upon pacifying the deity
addressed. Starting from the primitive conception that misfortunes were
a manifestation of divine anger, the Babylonians never abandoned the
belief that transgressions could be atoned for only by appeasing the
anger of the deity. But within this limitation, an ethical spirit was
developed among the Babylonians that surprises us by its loftiness and
comparative purity. Instead of having recourse merely to incantation
formulas, the person smitten with disease or pursued by ill fortune
would turn in prayer to some god at whose instigation the evil has come
and appeal for the pacification of the divine wrath. But while the
origin of the so-called penitential psalms is thus closely bound up with
the same order of thought that gave rise to the incantation texts, no
less significant is the divorce between the two classes of compositions
that begins already at an early stage of the literary period. The
incantations, it is true, may be combined with compositions that belong
to a higher order of religious thought. We have seen that they have been
so combined, and yet the dividing line between the two is also sharply
marked. Zimmern, to whom, more than to any one else, the interpretation
of these penitential psalms is due,