（外文电子版资料）Part 3.doc

ASSYRO-BABYLONIAN MYTHOLOGY INTRODUCTION From the beginning of the third millennium B.C., a flourishing civilization existed on the lower banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates, due to two neighboring peoples: the Akkadians and the Sumerians. The land of Sumer was situated around the upper end of the Persian Gulf, which in those days probably extended much further inland than it does to-day, although this belief has recently been challenged. The towns of Eridu to the south and Nippur to the north marked its extreme limits: other towns were Lagash, Umma, Erech, Larsa and Ur. The Sumerians had probably come from central Asia or the Siberian steppes. The land of Akkad, which lay immediately to the north of Sumer, was peopled by Semites who had probably come from northern Syria. The site of the city, Agade, from which it took its name, has not yet been identified. Its other principal towns were - from south to north - Borsippa, Babylon, Kish, Kutha and Sippar. The question of which of these two peoples was the older has been disputed, as has the part attributable to each in the development of civilization. As to the respective contributions of the two races to religion which is all that concerns us here, it is probably most accurate to regard Assyro-Babylonian religion as not primarily a Semitic religion but as one resulting from the semitisation of an originally Sumerian or, to employ a more general term, Asian basis. However that may be, there was indubitably a reciprocal penetration between the religions of Sumer and Akkad. Each city doubtless venerated its own divinities, but each also welcomed those of neighboring cities. Conquerors, moreover, would impose their own gods on regions subdued. In time, these new gods would become identified with the indigenous gods and, if not actually assimilated, form affiliations and relationships with them. It is this intermixture of the Akkadian and Sumerian pantheons, completed by the contributions of later epochs, which const