We may next consider the attribute of purity as a divine characteristic, to see whether in this respect the East differed markedly from the West. As regards ritual-law, all the religions of the old world agree in demanding ritual-purity: the worshipper who approaches the deities must be free from physical taint and impurity: this idea is so world-wide and so deeply embedded in primitive thought, that the mere presence of it is of no service for proving the interdependence of any religions in the historic period. From this ritual-law the concept naturally arises of “pure gods,” deities who themselves are believed to be pure because they insist on purity in their worshippers. Marduk is called “the purifier” in one of the incantation-texts, in allusion to his power of exorcising the evil demon of sickness by cleansing processes.[163.1] The cathartic rules that the law of ritual prescribes will differ according to the instincts and prejudices of different societies. But the Babylonian service demanded more than mere ritual-purity; for instance, in a fragment of a striking text published by Delitsch, we find this injunction: “In the sight of thy God thou shalt be pure of heart, for that is the distinction of the Godhead.”[163.2] {164} As regards the moral and spiritual sense of purity, the sense in which we speak of “purity of heart,” we should naturally include purity in respect of sexual indulgence. But in applying this test to the Mesopotamian religion we are confronted with a singular difficulty. In the first place, the mythology is strikingly pure in our modern sense of the word, so far as the materials have as yet been put before us. It agrees in this respect with the Hebraic, and differs markedly from the Hellenic; the gods live in monogamic marriage with their respective goddesses, and we have as yet found no licentious stories of their intrigues. It may be that generally the Babylonian imagination was restrained by an austerity and shy reverence that did not control the more reckless and lighter spirit of the Hellene; or it may be that the priestly and royal scribes, to whom we owe the whole of the Babylonian religious literature that has come down to us, deliberately excluded any element of licentiousness that they may have found in the lower folklore. But there is one curious exception. In the Epic of Gilgamesh the hero repulses the proffered love of Ishtar, and taunts her with her cruel amours, giving a long list of her lovers whom she had ruined: one of these is Tammuz, “the spouse of thy youth,” upon whom “thou didst lay affliction every year”: then he mentions her other lovers who suffered at her hands--a singular list: a bird, a lion, a horse, a shepherd of the flock, some Babylonian Paris or Anchises, whom Ishtar treated as Artemis treated Aktaion. We must suppose these allusions are drawn from Babylonian folklore, of which nothing else has survived, concerning the amorous adventures of the goddess.