Babylonian tradition itself bore witness to the fact. The Chaldæan historian Berossos tells us that the elements of culture, and therewith of the organised religion of a later day, were brought to Babylonia from abroad. Oannes or Ea, the culture-god, had risen morning by morning out of the waters of the Persian Gulf, and instructed the savage races of the shore in the arts of life. It was not from Nippur and the worshippers of En-lil, but from that mysterious deep which connected Babylonia with other lands, that its civilisation had come. It was Ea who had taught men “to found the temple” in which the gods of aftertimes were to be adored. The culture-god of Babylonia was Ea, and the home of Ea was not in Babylonia, but in the deep. There is no mistaking the significance of the legend. The culture of Babylonia originated on the seacoast, and was brought to it across the sea. The elements of civilisation were due to intercourse with other lands. And this civilisation was associated with a god—with a god, too, who represented all the higher aspects of Babylonian religion, and was regarded as the author of its sacred books. The impulse which transformed the “lord of the ghost-world” into a god, and replaced the sorcerer by a priest, came not from within, but from without. The impulse went back to that primitive age when Sumerian supremacy was still unquestioned in the land. Other races, so the legend averred, were already settled there, but they were all alike rude and savage “as the beasts of the field.” How far distant it may have been in the night of time we can but dimly conjecture. At the rate at which the northern coast of the Persian Gulf is being slowly silted up, it would be at least eight thousand years ago when the old seaport of Eridu and the sanctuary of its god Ea stood on the shores of the sea. But the influence of the Semite was already beginning to be felt, though indirectly, through maritime trade. New ideas came from the south. Ea was a god, and like the gods of the Semitic race he had a wife and son. While he himself was lord of the deep, Dam-kina, his wife, was the mistress of the land. His son was Aṡari, “the prince who does good to man,”(233) and who, in contradistinction to the night-demons of Nippur, brought knowledge and healing to the men whom Ea had created. The Sumerian might indeed speak of the “Zi”—“the spirit”—of Ea, or rather of the deep, but to the Semite he was a veritable god.