over the whole of Chaldaea, in the north as in the south, at Uruk, at Urn, at Larsam, at Nipur, even in Babylon itself.  Inlil was the ruler of the earth and of Hades, Babbar was the sun, Inzu the moon, Inanna-Antmit the morning and evening star and the goddess or love, at a time when two distinct religious and two rival groups of gods existed side by side on the banks of the Euphrates.  The Sumerian language is for us, at the present day, but a collection of strange names, of whose meaning and pronunciation we are often ignorant.  We may well ask what beings and beliefs were originally hidden under these barbaric combinations of syllables which are constantly recurring in the inscriptions of the oldest dynasties, such as Pasag, Dunshagana, Dumuzi-.  Zuaba, and a score of others.  The priests of subsequent times claimed to define exactly the attributes of each of them, and probably their statements are, in the main, correct.  But it is impossible for us to gauge the motives which determined the assimilation of some of these divinities, the fashion in which it was carried out, the mutual concessions which Semite and Sumerian must have made before they could arrive at an understanding, and before the primitive characteristics of each deity were softened down or entirely effaced in the process.  Many of these divine personages, such as Ea, Merodach, Ishtar, are so completely transformed, that we may well ask to which of the two peoples they owed their origin.  The Semites finally gained the ascendency over their rivals, and the Sumerian gods from thenceforward preserved an independent existence only in connection with magic, divination, and the science of foretelling events, and also in the formulas of exorcists and physicians, to which the harshness of their names lent a greater weight.  Elsewhere it was Bel and Sin, Shamash and Eamman, who were universally worshipped, but a Bel, a Sin, a Shamash, who still betrayed traces of their former connection with the Sumerian Inlil and Inzu, with Babbar and Mermer.  In whatever language, however, they were addressed, by whatever name they were called upon, they did not fail to hear and grant a favourable reply to the appeals of the faithful.

Whether Sumerian or Semitic, the gods, like those of Egypt, were not abstract personages, guiding in a metaphysical fashion the forces of nature.  Each of them contained in himself one of the principal elements of which our universe is composed,—­earth, water, sky, sun, moon, and the stars which moved around the terrestrial mountain.  The succession of natural phenomena with them was not the result of unalterable laws; it was due entirely to a series of voluntary acts, accomplished by beings of different grades of intelligence and power.  Every part of the great whole is represented by a god, a god who is a man, a Chaldaean, who, although of a finer and more lasting nature than other Chaldaeans, possesses nevertheless the same instincts and is swayed by the same passions.