BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA, LIGION OF.
(1) Sources—Origin of the Pantheon. Be fore the discovery and the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions, our knowledge of the re ligion of the people that lived in ancient times on the borders of the Euphrates and Tigris was lim ited to the information given by Greek authors. Since 1835 a great number of documents have been found in the ruin-mounds of the now almost de serted country that bear testimony to the power and civilization of its ancient inhabitants. Parts of temples and palaces were laid bare, inscriptions were found and deciphered by the ingenuity of English and French scholars, and an almost un known world was revealed. The excavations of the latest years, conducted by the French consul, de Sarzea, and by the University of Pennsylvania, added materials of the highest value to the large collections of monuments preserved in London, Paris, and Berlin.
One of the most remarkable finds was the dis covery of the remains of Sardanapalus' (668-626 B. C.) library in the mound of Kojundshik (Nineveh), that provided us with numerous texts, copied by order of the king (see NINEVEH). These copies form the chief source for our knowl edge of Babylonian religious life, and contain prayers, incantations, forecasts, lists of gods, lists of temples, etc. But as they do not mention the date of the originals they were taken from, and as there is only a small number of well preserved texts (owing to the fragility of the tablets, made of baked clay), our knowledge of the religion, though increasing every year, is still very imperfect, especially as to its development.
In the oldest times a number of small king doms existed in North and South Babylonia (Ur, Uruk, Eridu, Larsa, Lagash, Nippur, Agade), the population being formed by tribes of different descent and race. Among these the Sumerians possessed a high civilization. Before 380o B. C. Semitic tribes took possession of a part of the country (kingdom of Sargon of Agade, 380o B. C.), and after 2250 B. C. Babel became the pre dominating town (conquests of King Kham murabi). One branch of the Semites. the Assy
rians, settled in MEsoPoTANnA (which see); their might increased, and several times the Baby lonian empire was overpowered by Assyrian kings. After the fall of Nineveh, the capital of the As small pantheon, and was always governed by the Lord and Lady of the town. Where the popula tion of a town was homogeneous, the gods were also of uniform nature; in the case of diverse origin among the inhabitants, there was a differ ence also between the characters of the gods; for men make their gods according to their own peculiar qualities.
As the Semites of Babylon became predomi nant in the country, the gods of their capital town took the leading place, but in many instances the lords of other places were brought into relation with them by the schools of priests. The gods were almost always believed to live in matrimony, and so it was easy to make genealogies, which, owing to the differences between the schools of priests, were not always in harmony. Local deities of the same character were often regarded as different manifestations of one god, and thus it happens that we have an enormous number of names for some twenty gods, representing distinct types.
(3) Gods, Local Cults. The Babylonian-As syrian gods belong to the class of nature-gods. In many instances the heavenly bodies are be lieved to be their incorporations, but we must remember that gods and stars were not identi fied; it was only by means of them that the gods showed themselves. In other cases we find animals as an attribute of gods, because the pecu liar power of a god was especially proper to a cer tain animal, but the animal itself was not es teemed as a god.
The first place of the Pantheon is taken by Ana or "Nu, God of Heaven. In the inscriptions of Gudea, priest of Lagash. he and his companions, Bel, and Ea, are already mentioned at the head of the list of gods, but at the same time we know him as the local god of Urick, where he, his wife, Anatu and his daughter Nana, or Ishtar are worshiped in the temple E-anna, house of heaven.