SOURCE: "Babylonian Myth and Ritual," in Myth and Ritual: Essays on the Myth and Ritual of the Hebrews in Relation to the Culture Pattern of the Ancient East, edited by S. H. Hooke, Oxford University Press, 1933, pp. 40-67.

In the following essay, Gadd explores the network of Babylonian rituals centering around the motif of renewal and suggests that it reflects existential concerns.

It is tedious to read in a first sentence the familiar complaint that the material to be studied in the following essay is sadly deficient. Those who are concerned about the affairs of remote antiquity must accustom themselves to being constantly in this situation, and I should not, therefore, consider it worthy of remark that the remains of Babylonian ritual, and partly also of myth, are scanty and almost wholly preserved in late documents were there not a special and interesting reason for this. The Babylonian...