Note 283.1 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

The subject that has been discussed at some length is also connected with the whole question of ritual-purity and purification. The primitive conception of purity had at an early stage in its evolution been adopted by higher religion; and the essential effect of impurity was to debar a person from intercourse with God and with his fellow-men. Hence arises a code of rules to regulate temple-ritual. So far as I am aware, the Babylonian rules for safeguarding the purity of the shrines were not conspicuously different from the Greek or the Hebraic.283.1 The taint of bloodshed and other physical impurities was kept aloof; and it is in the highest degree probable that the function of the “hetairai” was only performed outside the temple, for Herodotus specially tells us that this rule was observed in the Mylitta-rite. The cathartic methods of East and West agree in many points. The use of holy water for purifying purposes was known to the early Greeks.283.2 It was still more in evidence in the Babylonian ritual: the holy water of the Euphrates or Tigris was used for a variety of purposes, for the washing of the king’s hands before he touched the statues, for the washing of the idol’s mouths,283.3 perhaps also for baptism. For we hear of some such rite in a hymn to Enlil translated by Dr. Langdon284.1—the line that he renders “Son whom in the sacred bowl she baptized,” seems to refer to a human child. Ablution was prominent also in the exorcism-ritual, and the “House of Washing” or “House of Baptism” was the centre of a liturgy that had for its object deliverance from demons.284.2 The whole State was at times purified by water.284.3 And in all this ritual the water must itself be of a peculiar purity—rain-water, for instance,284.4 or the water of the Euphrates, whence came probably the Water of Life that was kept in Marduk’s temple with which the Gods and the Annunaki washed their faces, and which was used in the feast of the Doom-fixing.284.5 According to the Babylonian view ordinary water was naturally impure (we may well believe that it was so at Babylon, where the river and canals were so pressed into the service of man), and a person incurred impurity by stepping over a puddle or other unpurified water.284.6 The Greek did not need to be so scrupulous, for most water in his land was naturally pure, being spring or brook; yet in his cathartic rules we find often that only a special water was suitable for the religious purpose, running water especially, or sea-water, or in a particular locality one sacred fountain only.284.7 But though it was to him as to most peoples, the simple and natural means of purification, he did not apply it to such various cathartic purposes as the Babylonian. Nor as far as we can discover had he developed in old days the interesting rite of baptism: we hear of it first in the records of the fifth century, and in relation to alien cults like that of the Thracian goddess Kotytto.285.1