into oblivion if his resources had been confined to the subventions from his domain temples of Harran and Uru.  Their impoverishment would in such case have brought about his complete failure:  after having enjoyed an existence amid riches and splendour in the beginning of history, he would have ended his life in a condition of misery and obscurity.  But the sanctuaries erected to him in the majority of the other cities, the honours which these bestowed upon him, and the offerings which they made to him, compensated him for the poverty and neglect which he experienced in his own domains; and he was thus able to maintain his divine dignity on a suitable footing.  All the gods were, therefore, worshipped by the Chaldeans, and the only difference among them in this respect arose from the fact that some exalted one special deity above the others.  The gods of the richest and most ancient principalities naturally enjoyed the greatest popularity.  The greatness of Uru had been the source of Sin’s prestige, and Merodach owed his prosperity to the supremacy which Babylon had acquired over the districts of the north.  Merodach was regarded as the son of Ba, as the star which had risen from the abyss to illuminate the world, and to confer upon mankind the decrees of eternal wisdom.  He was proclaimed as lord—­“bilu”—­par excellence, in comparison with whom all other lords sank into insignificance, and this title soon procured for him a second, which was no less widely recognized than the first:  he was spoken of everywhere as the Bel of Babylon, Bel-Merodach—­before whom Bel of Nipur was gradually thrown into the shade.  The relations between these feudal deities were not always pacific:  jealousies arose among them like those which disturbed the cities over which they ruled; they conspired against each other, and on occasions broke out into open warfare.  Instead of forming a coalition against the evil genii who threatened their rule, and as a consequence tended to bring everything into jeopardy, they sometimes made alliances with these malign powers and mutually betrayed each other.  Their history, if we could recover it in its entirety, would be marked by as violent deeds as those which distinguished the princes and kings who worshipped them.  Attempts were made, however, and that too from an early date, to establish among them a hierarchy like that which existed among the great ones of the earth.  The faithful, who, instead of praying to each one separately, preferred to address them all, invoked them always in the same order:  they began with Anu, the heaven, and followed with Bel, Ea, Sin, Shamash, and Bamman.  They divided these six into two groups of three, one trio consisting of Anu, Bel, and Ea, the other of Sin, Shamash, and Bamman.  All these deities were associated with Southern Chaldoa, and the system which grouped them must have taken its rise in this region, probably at Uruk, whose patron Anu V occupied the first rank among them.  The