collection--the
myths and legends--tales which originally symbolized the change of seasons,
or in which historical occurrences are overcast with more or less copious
[v.03 p.0115] admixture of legend and myth, were transferred to the
heavens, and so it happens that creation myths, and the accounts of
wanderings and adventures of heroes of the past, are referred to movements
among the planets and stars as well as to occurrences or supposed
occurrences on earth.

The ritual alone which accompanied divination practices and incantation
formulae and was a chief factor in the celebration of festival days and of
days set aside for one reason or the other to the worship of some god or
goddess or group of deities, is free from traces of the astral theology.
The more or less elaborate ceremonies prescribed for the occasions when the
gods were approached are directly connected with the popular elements of
the religion. Animal sacrifice, libations, ritualistic purification,
sprinkling of water, and symbolical rites of all kinds accompanied by short
prayers, represent a religious practice which in the Babylonian-Assyrian
religion, as in all religions, is older than any theology and survives the
changes which the theoretical substratum of the religion undergoes.

On the ethical side, the religion of Babylonia more particularly, and to a
less extent that of Assyria, advances to noticeable conceptions of the
qualities associated with the gods and goddesses and of the duties imposed
on man. Shamash the sun-god was invested with justice as his chief trait,
Marduk is portrayed as full of mercy and kindness, Ea is the protector of
mankind who is grieved when, through a deception practised upon Adapa,
humanity is deprived of immortality. The gods, to be sure, are easily
aroused to anger, and in some of them the dire aspects predominated, but
the view becomes more and more pronounced that there is some cause always
for the divine wrath. Though, in accounting for the anger of the gods, no
sharp distinction is made between moral offences and a ritualistic
oversight or neglect, yet the stress laid in the hymns and prayers, as well
as in the elaborate atonement ritual prescribed in order to appease the
anger of the gods, on the need of being clean and pure in the sight of the
higher powers, the inculcation of a proper aspect of humility, and above
all the need of confessing one's guilt and sins without any reserve--all
this bears testimony to th