The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria | Page 7

divinity--who, in its district, was regarded as supreme--with a
number of lesser gods forming his court. It was the adding together of
all these small pantheons which ultimately made that of Babylonia as a
whole so exceedingly extensive. Thus the chief divinity of Babylon, as
has already been stated, as Merodach; at Sippar and Larsa the sun-god
Šamaš was worshipped; at Ur the moon-god Sin or Nannar; at Erech
and Dêr the god of the heavens, Anu; at Muru, Ennigi, and Kakru, the
god of the atmosphere, Hadad or Rimmon; at Êridu, the god of the deep,
Aa or Êa; at Niffur[*] the god Bel; at Cuthah the god of war, Nergal; at
Dailem the god Uraš; at Kiš the god of battle, Zagaga; Lugal-Amarda,
the king of Marad, as the city so called; at Opis Zakar, one of the gods
of dreams; at Agadé, Nineveh, and Arbela, Ištar, goddess of love and of
war; Nina at the city Nina in Babylonia, etc. When the chief deities
were masculine, they were naturally all identified with each other, just
as the Greeks called the Babylonian Merodach by the name of Zeus;
and as Zer-panîtum, the consort of Merodach, was identified with Juno,
so the consorts, divine attendants, and children of each chief divinity,
as far as they possessed them, could also be regarded as the same,
though possibly distinct in their different attributes.
[*] Noufar at present, according to the latest explorers. Layard (1856)
has Niffer, Loftus (1857) Niffar. The native spelling is Noufer, due to
the French system of phonetics.

How the religion of the Babylonians developed.
The fact that the rise of Merodach to the position of king of the gods
was due to the attainment, by the city of Babylon, of the position of
capital of all Babylonia, leads one to suspect that the kingly rank of his
father Êa, at an earlier period, was due to a somewhat similar cause,
and if so, the still earlier kingship of Anu, the god of the heavens, may
be in like manner explained. This leads to the question whether the first
state to attain to supremacy was Dêr, Anu's seat, and whether Dêr was
succeeded by Êridu, of which city Êa was the patron--concerning the
importance of Babylon, Merodach's city, later on, there is no doubt
whatever. The rise of Anu and Êa to divine overlordship, however, may
not have been due to the political supremacy of the cities where they
were worshipped--it may have come about simply on account of
renown gained through religious enthusiasm due to wonders said to
have been performed where they were worshipped, or to the reported
discovery of new records concerning their temples, or to the influence
of some renowned high-priest, like En-we-dur-an-ki of Sippar, whose
devotion undoubtedly brought great renown to the city of his dominion.
Was Animism its original form?
But the question naturally arises, can we go back beyond the
indications of the inscriptions? The Babylonians attributed life, in
certain not very numerous cases, to such things as trees and plants, and
naturally to the winds, and the heavenly bodies. Whether they regarded
stones, rocks, mountains, storms, and rain in the same way, however, is
doubtful, but it may be taken for granted, that the sea, with all its rivers
and streams, was regarded as animated with the spirit of Êa and his
children, whilst the great cities and temple-towers were pervaded with
the spirit of the god whose abode they were. Innumerable good and evil
spirits were believed in, such as the spirit of the mountain, the sea, the
plain, and the grave. These spirits were of various kinds, and bore
names which do not always reveal their real character--such as the
/edimmu/, /utukku/, /šêdu/, /ašakku/ (spirit of fevers), /namtaru/ (spirit
of fate), /âlû/ (regarded as the spirit of the south wind), /gallu/, /rabisu/,
/labartu/, /labasu/, /ahhazu/ (the seizer), /lilu/ and /lilithu/ (male and

female spirits of the mist), with their attendants.
All this points to animism as the pervading idea of the worship of the
peoples of the Babylonian states in the prehistoric period--the
attribution of life to every appearance of nature. The question is,
however, Is the evidence of the inscriptions sufficient to make this
absolutely certain? It is hard to believe that such intelligent people, as
the primitive Babylonians naturally were, believed that such things as
stones, rocks, mountains, storms, and rain were, in themselves, and
apart from the divinity which they regarded as presiding over them,
living things. A stone might be a /bît îli/ or bethel--a "house of god,"
and almost invested with the status of a living thing, but that does not
prove that the Babylonians thought of every stone as being endowed
with life, even in prehistoric times. Whilst, therefore, there are traces of
a