The moral-religious literature of the Babylonians is not inferior in interest to the stories just mentioned.  The hymns to the gods are characterized by a sublimity and depth of feeling which remind us of the odes of the Hebrew Psalter.  The penitential hymns appear to contain expressions of sorrow for sin, which would indicate a high development of the religious consciousness.  These hymns, apparently a part of the temple ritual, probably belong to a relatively late stage of history; but they are none the less proof that devotional feeling in ancient times was not limited to any one country.

Other productions, such as the hymn to the seven evil spirits (celebrating their mysterious power), indicate a lower stage of religious feeling; this is specially visible in the magic formulas, which portray a very early stratum of religious history.  They recall the Shamanism of Central Asia and the rites of savage tribes; but there is no reason to doubt that the Semitic religion in its early stages contained this magic element, which is found all the world over.

Riddles and Proverbs are found among the Babylonians, as among all peoples.  Comparatively few have been discovered, and these present nothing of peculiar interest.  The following may serve as specimens:—­“What is that which becomes pregnant without conceiving, fat without eating?” The answer seems to be “A cloud.”  “My coal-brazier clothes me with a divine garment, my rock is founded in the sea” (a volcano).  “I dwell in a house of pitch and brick, but over me glide the boats” (a canal).  “He that says, ’Oh, that I might exceedingly avenge myself!’ draws from a waterless well, and rubs the skin without oiling it.”  “When sickness is incurable and hunger unappeasable, silver and gold cannot restore health nor appease hunger.”  “As the oven waxes old, so the foe tires of enmity.”  “The life of yesterday goes on every day.”  “When the seed is not good, no sprout comes forth.”

The poetical form of all these pieces is characterized by that parallelism of members with which we are familiar in the poetry of the Old Testament.  It is rhythmical, but apparently not metrical:  the harmonious flow of syllables in any one line, with more or less beats or cadences, is obvious; but it does not appear that syllables were combined into feet, or that there was any fixed rule for the number of syllables or beats in a line.  So also strophic divisions may be observed, such divisions naturally resulting from the nature of all narratives.  Sometimes the strophe seems to contain four lines, sometimes more.  No strophic rule has yet been established; but it seems not unlikely that when the longer poetical pieces shall have been more definitely fixed in form, certain principles of poetical composition will present themselves.  The thought of the mythical pieces and the prayers and hymns is elevated and imaginative.  Some of this poetry appears to have belonged to a period earlier than 2000 B.C.  Yet the Babylonians constructed no epic poem like the (Iliad,) or at any rate none such has yet been found.  Their genius rather expressed itself in brief or fragmentary pieces, like the Hebrews and the Arabs.