CHAPTER II.

THE LAND OF RIVERS AND THE GOD OF THE DEEP

Fertility of Ancient Babylonia—­Rivers, Canals, Seasons, and Climate—­Early Trade and Foreign Influences—­Local Religious Cults—­Ea, God of the Deep, identical with Oannes of Berosus—­Origin as a Sacred Fish—­Compared with Brahma and Vishnu—­Flood Legends in Babylonia and India—­Fish Deities in Babylonia and Egypt—­Fish God as a Corn God—­The River as Creator—­Ea an Artisan God, and links with Egypt and India—­Ea as the Hebrew Jah—­Ea and Varuna are Water and Sky Gods—­The Babylonian Dagan and Dagon of the Philistines—­Deities of Water and Harvest in Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, Scotland, Scandinavia, Ireland, and Egypt—­Ea’s Spouse Damkina—­Demons of Ocean in Babylonia and India—­Anu, God of the Sky—­Enlil, Storm and War God of Nippur, like Adad, Odin, &c.—­Early Gods of Babylonia and Egypt of common origin—­Ea’s City as Cradle of Sumerian Civilization.

Ancient Babylonia was for over four thousand years the garden of Western Asia.  In the days of Hezekiah and Isaiah, when it had come under the sway of the younger civilization of Assyria on the north, it was “a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of oil olive and of honey[28]”.  Herodotus found it still flourishing and extremely fertile.  “This territory”, he wrote, “is of all that we know the best by far for producing grain; it is so good that it returns as much as two hundredfold for the average, and, when it bears at its best, it produces three hundredfold.  The blades of the wheat and barley there grow to be full four fingers broad; and from millet and sesame seed, how large a tree grows, I know myself, but shall not record, being well aware that even what has already been said relating to the crops produced has been enough to cause disbelief in those who have not visited Babylonia[29].”  To-day great tracts of undulating moorland, which aforetime yielded two and three crops a year, are in summer partly barren wastes and partly jungle and reedy swamp.  Bedouins camp beside sandy heaps which were once populous and thriving cities, and here and there the shrunken remnants of a people once great and influential eke out precarious livings under the oppression of Turkish tax-gatherers who are scarcely less considerate than the plundering nomads of the desert.

This historic country is bounded on the east by Persia and on the west by the Arabian desert.  In shape somewhat resembling a fish, it lies between the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, 100 miles wide at its broadest part, and narrowing to 35 miles towards the “tail” in the latitude of Baghdad; the “head” converges to a point above Basra, where the rivers meet and form the Shatt-el-Arab, which pours into the Persian Gulf after meeting the Karun and drawing away the main volume of that double-mouthed river.  The distance from Baghdad to Basra is