I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fixed and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament.  The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks; They are all fire, and every one doth shine; But there’s but one in all doth hold his place.[360]

Associated with the Polar Star was the constellation Ursa Minor, “the Little Bear”, called by the Babylonian astronomers, “the Lesser Chariot”.  There were chariots before horses were introduced.  A patesi of Lagash had a chariot which was drawn by asses.

The seemingly steadfast Polar Star was called “Ilu Sar”, “the god Shar”, or Anshar, “star of the height”, or “Shar the most high”.  It seemed to be situated at the summit of the vault of heaven.  The god Shar, therefore, stood upon the Celestial mountain, the Babylonian Olympus.  He was the ghost of the elder god, who in Babylonia was displaced by the younger god, Merodach, as Mercury, the morning star, or as the sun, the planet of day; and in Assyria by Ashur, as the sun, or Regulus, or Arcturus, or Orion.  Yet father and son were identical.  They were phases of the One, the “self power”.

A deified reigning king was an incarnation of the god; after death he merged in the god, as did the Egyptian Unas.  The eponymous hero Asshur may have similarly merged in the universal Ashur, who, like Horus, an incarnation of Osiris, had many phases or forms.

Isaiah appears to have been familiar with the Tigro-Euphratean myths about the divinity of kings and the displacement of the elder god by the younger god, of whom the ruling monarch was an incarnation, and with the idea that the summit of the Celestial mountain was crowned by the “north star”, the symbol of Anshar.  “Thou shalt take up this parable”, he exclaimed, making use of Babylonian symbolism, “against the king of Babylon and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!...  How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!  For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend unto heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High."[361] The king is identified with Lucifer as the deity of fire and the morning star; he is the younger god who aspired to occupy the mountain throne of his father, the god Shar—­the Polar or North Star.

It is possible that the Babylonian idea of a Celestial mountain gave origin to the belief that the earth was a mountain surrounded by the outer ocean, beheld by Etana when he flew towards heaven on the eagle’s back.  In India this hill is Mount Meru, the “world spine”, which “sustains the earth”; it is surmounted by Indra’s Valhal, or “the great city of Brahma”.  In Teutonic mythology the heavens revolve round the Polar Star, which is called “Veraldar nagli",[362] the “world