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 {241} 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] Unless, then, documents yet to be revealed contradict this positive and negative evidence, we have here a fact of great weight to set against the theory that we are discussing. Whencesoever the Hellenes derived their genial conception of the sacrifice as a communion-meal, they did not derive it from Babylon. And all Robertson Smith’s speculations concerning the inner significance of the Semitic sacrifice cannot yet be applied to Mesopotamia, whence he was not able to glean any evidence. In Babylonia the sacrificer got no share of the victim. He might eat with the spirits of the dead in certain ritual, but he was not, it appears, privileged {242} to eat with the god or goddess. The deity took the victim, or the sacrifice of cereals and fruits, as a present, and the priest got his share. But we are not told that the priest ate with the god, or where he ate; nor can we say that the priest represented the worshipper.