Note 241.1 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

But the consideration of the early Hellenic sacrifice, of which the salient features have been slightly sketched above, is of signal value for our present purpose. For it reveals at once a marked contrast to Babylonian ideas so far as these at present are revealed to us. The Babylonian-Assyrian liturgies, epics, and chronicles have failed to disclose any other theory of the sacrifice than that which is called the gift-theory. A general term for the Babylonian sacrifice is “kishtu” or “present.”241.1 The deities are supposed to eat what is given them; in the Epic of the Deluge the naïve phrase occurs, “The gods smell the savour, the delightful savour, the gods swarm like flies around the sacrificer.” No evidence is as yet forthcoming that the sacrificer was supposed or was allowed to eat with the deity, as in the Hellenic communion-sacrifice. On the contrary, certain texts can be quoted which seem expressly to forbid such a thing.241.2 The document already cited that was found in Assurbanipal’s library, containing the Job-like lament of the good man who had found no profit in goodness, contains a verse in which he compares himself with the sinner who neglects all religious ordinances, and who has even “eaten the food of God.” And so we find that among the various evil or impure or unlucky deeds that could bring a man under the ban of the gods, the “devouring of sacrificial flesh” is expressly mentioned.241.3