HEA, or HOA.

The third god of the first Triad was Hea, or Hoa, probably the Aus of Damascus.  His appellation is perhaps best rendered into Greek by the [—­] of Helladius—­the name given to the mystic animal, half man, half fish, which came up from the Persian Gulf to teach astronomy and letters to the first settlers on the Euphrates and Tigris.  It is perhaps contained also in the word by which Berosus designates this same creature—­Oannes—­which may be explained as Hoa-ana, or “the god Hoa.”  There are no means of strictly determining the precise meaning of the word in Babylonian; but it is perhaps allowable to connect it, provisionally, with the Arabic Hiya, which is at once life and “a serpent,” since, according to the best authority, there are very strong grounds for connecting Hea or Hoa with the serpent of Scripture and the Paradisaical traditions of the tree of knowledge and the tree of life.

Hoa occupies, in the first Triad, the position which in the classical mythology is filled by Poseidon or Neptune, and in some respects he corresponds to him.  He is “the lord of the earth,” just as Neptune is [Greek]; he is “the king of rivers;” and he comes from the sea to teach the Babylonians; but he is never called “the lord of the sea.”  That title belongs to Nin or Ninip.  Hoa is “the lord of the abyss,” or of “the great deep,” which does not seem to be the sea, but something distinct from it.  His most important titles are those which invest him with the character, so prominently brought out in Oe and Oannes, of the god of science and knowledge.  He is “the intelligent guide,” or, according to another interpretation, “the intelligent fish,” “the teacher of mankind,” “the lord of understanding.”  One of his emblems is the “wedge” or “arrowhead,” the essential element of cuneiform writing, which seems to be assigned to him as the inventor, or at least the patron of the Chaldaean alphabet.  Another is the serpent which occupies so conspicuous a place among the symbols of the gods on the black stones recording benefactions, and which sometimes appears upon the cylinders. [PLATE XIX., Fig. 3.] This symbol, here as elsewhere, is emblematic of superhuman knowledge—­a record of the primeval belief that the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field.  The stellar name of Hoa was Kimmut; and it is suspected that in this aspect he was identified with the constellation Draco, which is perhaps the Kimah of Scripture.  Besides his chief character of “god of knowledge,” Hoa is also “god of life,” a capacity in which the serpent would again fitly symbolize him.  He was likewise “god of glory,” and “god of giving,” being, as Berosus said, the great giver of good gifts to man.

The monuments do not contain much evidence of the early worship of Hoa.  His name appears on a very ancient stone tablet brought from Mugheir (Ur); but otherwise his claim to be accounted one of the primeval gods must rest on the testimony of Berosus and Helladius, who represent him as known to the first settlers.  He seems to have been the tutelary god of Is or Hit, which Isidore of Charax calls Aeipolis, or “Hea’s city;” but there is no evidence that this was a very ancient place.  The Assyrian kings built him temples at Asshur and Calah.