his imagination fails to conceive what lies across
the waste of waters or the far blue hills. Of the future he hardly thinks,
and of the past he knows only what has been handed down to him by word of
mouth from his savage forefathers. To suppose that a world thus
circumscribed in space and time was created by the efforts or the fiat of
a being like himself imposes no great strain on his credulity; and he may
without much difficulty imagine that he himself can annually repeat the
work of creation by his charms and incantations. And once a horde of
savages had instituted magical ceremonies for the renewal or preservation
of all things, the force of custom and tradition would tend to maintain
them in practice long after the old narrow ideas of the universe had been
superseded by more adequate conceptions, and the tribe had expanded into a
nation.

(M85) Neither in Babylonia nor in India, indeed, so far as I am aware, is
there any direct evidence that the story of the Slaughter of the Dragon
was ever acted as a miracle-play or magical rite for the sake of bringing
about those natural events which it describes in figurative language. But
analogy leads us to conjecture that in both countries the myth may have
been recited, if not acted, as an incantation, for the purpose I have
indicated. At Babylon the recitation may have formed part of the great New
Year festival of Marduk, which under the name of Zagmuk was celebrated
with great pomp about the vernal equinox.(337) In this connexion it may
not be without significance that one version of the Babylonian legend of
creation has been found inscribed on a tablet, of which the reverse
exhibits an incantation intended to be recited for the purification of the
temple of E-zida in Borsippa.(338) Now E-zida was the temple of Nabu or
Nebo, a god closely associated, if not originally identical, with Marduk;
indeed Hammurabi, the great king of Babylon, dedicated the temple in
question to Marduk and not to Nabu.(339) It seems not improbable,
therefore, that the creation legend, in 