obtained a place there by virtue of their assimilation to Shamash, and his secondary forms, Bel-Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal.  Ishtar absorbed all her companions, and her name put in the plural, Ishtarati, “the Ishtars,” embraced all goddesses in general, just as the name Hani took in all the gods.  Thanks to this compromise, the system flourished, and was widely accepted:  local vanity was always able to find a means for placing in a prominent place within it the feudal deity, and for reconciling his pretensions to the highest rank with the order of precedence laid down by the theologians of Uruk.  The local god was always the king of the gods, the father of the gods, he who was worshipped above the others in everyday life, and whose public cult constituted the religion of the State or city.

* As far as we can at present determine, the most ancient series established was that of the planetary gods, whose values, following each other irregularly, are not calculated on a scheme of mathematical progression, but according to the empirical importance, which a study of predictions had ascribed to each planet.  The regular series, that of the great gods, bears in its regularity the stamp of its later introduction:  it was instituted after the example of the former, but with corrections of what seemed capricious, and fixing the interval between the gods always at the same figure.

The temples were miniature reproductions of the arrangement of the universe.  The “ziggurat” represented in its form the mountain of the world, and the halls ranged at its feet resembled approximately the accessory parts of the world:  the temple of Merodach at Babylon comprised them all up to the chambers of fate, where the sun received every morning the tablets of destiny.  The name often indicated the nature of the patron deity or one of his attributes:  the temple of Shamash at Larsam, for instance was called E-Babbara, “the house of the sun,” and that of Nebo at Borsippa, E-Zida, “the eternal house.”  No matter where the sanctuary of a specific god might be placed, it always bore the same name; Shamash, for example, dwelt at Sippara as at Larsam in an E-Babbara.  In Chaldaea, as in Egypt, the king or chief of the State was the priest par excellence, and the title of “vicegerent,” so frequent in the early period, shows that the chief was regarded as representing the divinity among his own people; but a priestly body, partly hereditary, partly selected, fulfilled for him his daily sacerdotal functions, and secured the regularity of the services.  A chief priest—­“ishshakku”—­was at their head, and his principal duty was the pouring out of the libation.  Each temple had its “ishshakku,” but he who presided over the worship of the feudal deity took precedence of all the others in the city, as in the case of the chief priests of Bel-Merodach at Babylon, of Sin at Uru, and of Shamash at Larsam or Sippara.  He presided over various categories