Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/97

Rh of the storm-cloud have been likened to snakes, the lightning-flashes have been held to be serpents, and the waterspout has been imagined to be a huge dragon. Dr. Smythe Palmer quotes numerous examples of such beliefs or comparisons, and refers to various passages in the Old Testament, more especially the book of Job, where allusion is made to them. In Babylonia itself, moreover, the ocean which was said to encircle the earth was called a serpent.

Tiâmat and her demoniac allies were reproduced in the rebellious angels of Jewish belief and the Satan of the Middle Ages. The figure of Tiâmat flying from Merodach, as the Dragon flies from the Archangel Michael, which is sculptured on one of the Assyrian bas-reliefs now in the British Museum, might almost stand for a picture of the mediæval devil. Claws, horns, wings, and tail are all there. Indeed, we can now trace historically the successive steps by which the Babylonian impersonation of Chaos passed into the Satan of European legend; and those who wish to study them can do so in Dr. Smythe Palmer's volume. Apocryphal and canonical books, Church Fathers, and popular imagination have all helped in the process.

Dr. Smythe Palmer is content to begin with Tiâmat, and therefore leaves untouched a problem of which a satisfactory solution has not yet been found. Babylonian mythology, as we have seen, makes Tiâmat, "the deep," the representative of chaos and evil, both physical and moral. But "the deep" was also the dwelling-place of Ea, the god of wisdom and culture, who first taught men to be civilised and instilled into them the principles of order and