Semitic Influence.—But a time came when the Semites entered the country and were brought into close contact, hostile or peaceable, with its Sumerian inhabitants. The result was a fusion of Sumerian and Semitic religious ideas. An official religion came into existence which consisted of a Semitic form of faith grafted upon a Sumerian root.
The religion of the Semite was essentially different from that of the Sumerian. The primary object of his worship was the Baal, Bel, or 'Lord,' who revealed himself in the sun. Each tribe and each locality had its own Baal; when the tribes coalesced or when the same tribe occupied more than one locality the various Baals were regarded as so many forms of the supreme God.
Each Baal was the father of a family. At his side stood his wife, a colourless reflection of himself, as the wife was of the husband in the Semitic family on earth. Like the father of the family on earth, Baal too in heaven had his children.
Where the religions of the Semite and the Sumerian met and combined, the Sumerian spirits who had emerged above the rest like Ea of Eridu or El-lil of Nipur, were assimilated to the Semitic Baalim. El-lil, in fact, was known throughout the Semitic period as Bel of Nipur. Wherever it was possible a solar character was given to them; in other cases the general characteristics of the Semitic deity were attached to the old Sumerian divinity. The great body of the spirits which had fallen into the background was grouped together as the 300 spirits of heaven (Igigi) and the 600 spirits of earth (Anunnaki).
The goddess Istar.—In one instance, however, it was the Semite rather than the Sumerian who was affected by the contact between the two forms of faith. The spirit of the evening star became the goddess Istar, who retained her independent position by the side of the male deities. While the other goddesses were absorbed in the persons of their divine consorts like the wife in the Semitic family, Istar, having no consort, remained like the wife in the Sumerian family on a footing of equality with the man. When the name and worship of Istar were passed on to the Semitic peoples of the West, the anomaly led to more than one change in her character. In southern Arabia and Moab she was identified with a male deity; in Canaan her name received the feminine suffix -th (Ashtoreth), and she thus became in large measure an ordinary Semitic goddess.
Bel-Merodach.—After the rise of Babylon as the capital of the kingdom, its patron-god Merodach became the supreme Baal or Bel of Babylonia. He had already been identified with Asari-mulu-dugga, the son of Ea, and the attributes of the latter were accordingly transferred to the new Bel. It was to him that the great temple of Ê-Saggil was erected in Babylon, while the interpreter of his will to men, Nebo, the divine 'prophet,' had his temple Ê-Zida in the neighbouring suburb of Borsippa. At Nipur a god whose name has been variously read Uras, Nin-ip, Bar and Adar, but the true pronunciation of which is still unknown, stood in much the same relation to El-lil that Nebo did to Merodach. He was, however, regarded as a solar warrior instead of as a prophet.
Other deities.—Nergal was worshipped in Kutha and its cemeteries; Samas, 'the Sun,' at Sippara; Sin, 'the Moon,' at Ur and Harran; Anu, 'the Sky,' at Erech, where he was associated with Istar. Along with Ea and Bel of Nipur, Anu formed a triad which represented in the official religion the three elementary deities of the sea, the earth, and the heavens. The sea, however, was rather the primordial 'deep' out of which all things arose than the sea of the actual world, while 'the heaven of Anu' was beyond the visible sky, and Bel was the prince of the air and the underworld.
Winged Bull or House-Guardian.
Sacred books and ritual.—Along with the growth of the official religion went the growth and completion of the Chaldaean Bible and Prayer-book. The festivals of the gods were numerous; the ceremonies to be performed by the priests were more numerous still. The ceremonies were usually accompanied by the recitation of one or more hymns; these hymns were written in Sumerian, which had now become the sacred language of Chaldaea just as Latin is the sacred language of the Roman Church, and since Sumerian was no longer understood by the majority of the people they were provided with interlinear translations into Semitic Babylonian. From time to time the pronunciation of the old Sumerian words was indicated, for just as it was needful that the inspired words should be handed down without the slightest alteration, so also was it needful that they should be pronounced aright. An error even in pronunciation was supposed to invalidate the ceremony. Among the hymns is a collection of penitential psalms of which the following lines will give some idea:—