O lord, cast not away thy servant! Overflowing with tears, take him by the hand! The sins I have sinned, turn to a blessing; the transgressions I have committed may the wind carry away! Strip off my manifold transgressions as a garment. O my god, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins! O my goddess, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins! O god whom I know and whom I know not, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins! O goddess whom I know and whom I know not, seven times seven are my transgressions; forgive my sins! Forgive my sins, and let me humble myself before thee. May thy heart be appeased as the heart of a mother who has borne children! May it be appeased as that of a mother who has borne children, as that of a father who has begotten them!” Lecture VIII. The Myths And Epics. A lecture on the myths of Babylonia may perhaps seem out of place in a course, the subject of which is Babylonian religion. But religion has its mythology as well as its theology, and sometimes the mythology has had a good deal to do with moulding or even creating its theology. Moreover, the myths of Babylonia were intimately connected with its worship of the gods. They all related, so far as we know, to the gods and spirits, or else, to what Greek theology would have called heroes and demi-gods. They embody religious beliefs and practices; they contain allusions to local cults; above all, they not unfrequently reflect the popular conception of the divine. Only we must beware of basing theological conclusions on their unsupported evidence. They have come to us in a literary form, and students of folk-lore know how little trustworthy, even for the purposes of the folk-lorist, a tale is which has undergone literary remodelling. It is difficult to distinguish in it what is peculiar to the individual author or the literary circle in which he moves, and what is really the belief of the people or the traditional heritage of the past. In fact, all mythology, whether literary or otherwise, suffers from the mixture within it of old and modern ideas. The old ideas may be preserved in it like the fossils in a geological formation, or they may have been coloured and explained away in accordance with the conceptions of a later age; but in either case they are mingled with the beliefs and notions of after generations, which our ignorance necessarily prevents us from separating with the requisite care. In dealing with the history of religion, therefore, we ought to treat the language of a literary myth with extreme caution, and refrain from drawing any far-reaching inferences from the statements we find in it.