BEL, the Accadian word for "lord," the counterpart of the Phoenician Baal (q.v.), Sumerian en. It is, therefore, a title given to a deity at the head of a pantheon. It may have been first applied as a divine name to En-lil, of which the first element again has the force of "lord" and the second "wind." En-lil is asso ciated with the ancient city of Nippur. The designation of En lil as "Bel" or the "lord" reverts to a very early period—prior to 300o B.C. when Nippur had become the centre of a political dis trict of considerable extent. Inscriptions found at Nippur, during 1888-190o show that En-lil of Nippur was in fact regarded as the head of an extensive pantheon. Among the titles accorded to him are "king of lands," "king of heaven and earth" and "father of the gods." His chief temple at Nippur was known as E-Kur, signifying "mountain house," and such was the sanctity acquired by this edifice that Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, to the latest days, embellished and restored Bel's seat of worship, and the name itself became the designation of a temple in general. Grouped around the main sanctuary there arose temples and chapels to the gods and goddesses who formed his court, so that E-Kur became the name for an entire sacred precinct in the city of Nippur. The tower, however, also had its special designation of "E-Im-Khur-sag," meaning "House of the wind of the moun tain," i.e., wind of the earth mountain, the Sumerians believing that the winds emerge from caverns of the lower world, hence the titles of the earth god En-lil, Imkhursag.
With the rise of Babylon as the centre of a great empire, Nip pur yielded its prerogatives to the city over which Marduk presided; the attributes and the titles of En-lil were transferred to Marduk, who becomes the "lord" or Bel of later days. The older Bel did not, however, entirely lose his standing. Nippur continued to be a sacred city after it ceased to have any con siderable political importance. When the Greek writers refer to the Babylonian deity Belos, they invariably mean Marduk of Babylon, especially in his role as Tammuz the dying god. It is most uncertain that the Babylonians ever referred to En-lil and Nin-lil of Nippur as the deities Bel and Belit.
See also BLIT and BAAL. For the apocryphal book of the Bible, Bel and the Dragon, see DANIEL: Additions to Daniel.