The hymn or incantation which thus describes them belongs to a late period in the history of Babylonian religion. The animism of primitive times has been replaced by the gods and goddesses of the later official faith. But the belief in the seven evil spirits still lingered, not only in the popular mind, but also in the ranks of the official hierarchy; and it was still remembered that they had been at the outset the spirits of the tempest, born in the clefts of the ravine or on the stormy mountain-top, from whence they issued like wild horses. The flame of sacrifice could alone avert their onset, and incantations were still composed under official sanction, with the help of which they might be driven away. The fact shows to how late an epoch the composition of spells and incantatory hymns may come down, even when the atmosphere they breathe is still that of Eridu, and the language in which they are written is still the sacred Sumerian. But there are collections of magical hymns and formulæ which are even yet later in date. The eight books of the so-called Maqlû or “Burning” collection are written throughout in Semitic Babylonian;(318) and though two out of the nine books of another collection—that of the Surpu or “Consuming Fever”—are bilingual, they have been clearly translated from the more original Babylonian into Sumerian, like the Latin exercises of to-day.(319) The official canon of the magical texts, in fact, was long in formation, and did not assume its final shape until the age of Khammurabi or later, even though its roots go back to the earliest period of Babylonia, to the age of animism and the medicine-man, when the Sumerian was still dominant in the land, and the Semitic nomad or trader was content to learn from him the elements of civilisation.