all their elements and the whole of their powers, ever for a moment crossed the mind of some Chaldaean theologian, it never spread to the people as a whole.  Among all the thousands of tablets or inscribed stones on which we find recorded prayers and magical formulas, we have as yet discovered no document treating of the existence of a supreme god, or even containing the faintest allusion to a divine unity.  We meet indeed with many passages in which this or that divinity boasts of his power, eloquently depreciating that of his rivals, and ending his discourse with the injunction to worship him alone:  “Man who shall come after, trust in Nebo, trust in no other god!” The very expressions which are used, commanding future races to abandon the rest of the immortals in favour of Nebo, prove that even those who prided themselves on being worshippers of one god realized how far they were from believing in the unity of God.  They strenuously asserted that the idol of their choice was far superior to many others, but it never occurred to them to proclaim that he had absorbed them all into himself, and that he remained alone in his glory, contemplating the world, his creature.  Side by side with those who expressed this belief in Nebo, an inhabitant of Babylon would say as much and more of Merodach, the patron of his birthplace, without, however, ceasing to believe in the actual independence and royalty of Nebo.  “When thy power manifests itself, who can withdraw himself from it?—­Thy word is a powerful net which thou spreadest in heaven and over the earth:—­it falls upon the sea, and the sea retires,—­it falls upon the plain, and the fields make great mourning,—­it falls upon the upper waters of the Euphrates, and the word of Merodach stirs up the flood in them.—­O Lord, thou art sovereign, who can resist thee?—­Merodach, among the gods who bear a name, thou art sovereign.”  Merodach is for his worshippers the king of the gods, he is not the sole god.  Each of the chief divinities received in a similar manner the assurance of his omnipotence, but, for all that, his most zealous followers never regarded them as the only God, beside whom there was none other, and whose existence and rule precluded those of any other.  The simultaneous elevation of certain divinities to the supreme rank had a reactionary influence on the ideas held with regard to the nature of each.  Anu, Bel, and Ea, not to mention others, had enjoyed at the outset but a limited and incomplete personality, confined to a single concept, and were regarded as possessing only such attributes as were indispensable to the exercise of their power within a prescribed sphere, whether in heaven, or on the earth, or in the waters; as each in his turn gained the ascendency over his rivals, he became invested with the qualities which were exercised by the others in their own domain.  His personality became enlarged, and instead of remaining merely a god of heaven or earth or of the waters, he became god of all three