Anu was the visible sky, but he also represented the invisible heaven, which was supposed to extend above the visible one, and to be the abode of the gods. The chief seat of his worship was Erech, where he was regarded as the oldest of the gods, and the original creator of the universe. But elsewhere, also, he was looked upon as the creator of the visible world, and the father of the gods. By his side, in the Semitic period, stood the goddess Anat, whose attributes were derived from his. The worship of Anat spread from Babylonia to the Canaanites, as is shown by the geographical names Beth Anath, 'the temple of Anat' (Josh. xix. 38; xv. 59), and Anathoth, the city of 'the goddesses Anat.' It was even introduced into Egypt after the Asiatic wars of the eighteenth dynasty. In the præ-Semitic days of Chaldea, a monotheistic school had flourished, which resolved the various deities of the Accadian belief into manifestations of the one supreme god, Anu; and old hymns exist in which reference is made to 'the one god.' But this school never seems to have numbered many adherents, and it eventually died out. Its existence, however, reminds us of the fact that Abraham was born in 'Ur of the Chaldees.'

Ea originally represented the ocean-stream or 'great deep,' which was supposed to surround the earth like a serpent, and by which all rivers and springs were fed. He was symbolised by the snake, and was held to be the creator and benefactor of mankind. One of his most frequent titles is 'lord of wisdom,' and the chief seat of his worship was at Eridu, 'the holy city,' near which was the sacred grove or 'garden,' the centre of the world, where the tree of life and knowledge had its roots. It was Ea who had given to mankind not only life, but all the arts and appliances of culture also, and it was his help that the Babylonian invoked when in trouble. He was emphatically the god of healing, who had revealed medicines to mankind. As god of the great deep, he was often figured as a man with the tail of a fish, and in this form was known to the Greeks under the name of Oannes or 'Ea the fish.' Sometimes the skin of a fish was suspended behind his back. Oannes, it was said, had in early days ascended out of the Persian Gulf, and taught the first inhabitants of Babylonia letters, science, and art, besides writing a history of the origin of mankind and their different ways of life. His wife was Dav-kina, 'the lady of the earth,' who presided over the lower world.

Among the numerous offspring of Ea and Dav-kina, Merodach held the foremost place. He was originally a form of the Sun-god, regarded under his beneficent aspect, and was believed to be ever engaged in combating the powers of evil, and in performing services for mankind. Hence he is addressed as 'the redeemer of mankind,' 'the restorer to life,' and the 'raiser from the dead,' and a considerable number of the religious hymns are dedicated to him. He was believed to be continually passing backwards and forwards between the earth and the heaven where Ea dwelt, informing Ea of the sufferings of men, and returning with Ea's directions how to relieve them. One of the bas-reliefs from Nineveh, now in the British Museum, represents him as pursuing with his curved sword or thunderbolt the demon Tiamat, the personification of chaos and anarchy, who is depicted with claws, tail, and horns. As we have already seen, he was commonly addressed as Bel or 'lord,' and so came gradually to supplant the older Bel or Mul-ge. Among the planets his star was Jupiter. His wife was Zarpanit or Zirat-panitu, in whom some scholars have seen the Succoth-benoth of 2 Kings xvii. 30.

The children of Merodach and Zarpanit were Nebo, 'the prophet,' and his wife Tasmit, 'the hearer.' Nebo was the god of oratory and literature; it was he who 'enlightened the eyes' to understand written characters, while his wife 'enlarged the ears,' so that they could comprehend what was read. The origin of the cuneiform system of writing was ascribed to Nebo. To him was dedicated 'the temple of the Seven Lights of Heaven and Earth,' at Borsippa, the suburb of Babylon, which is now known to the Arabs as the Birs-i-Nimrûd, and his worship was carried as far as Canaan, as we may gather from such names as the city of Nebo, in Judæa (Ezra ii. 29), and Mount Nebo, in Moab (Deut. xxxii. 49). In Accadian he had been called Dimsar, 'the tablet-writer,' and a temple was erected to him in the island of Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf, where he was worshipped under the name of Enzak. As a planetary deity, he was identified with Mercury. He was often adored under the name of Nusku, although Nusku had originally been a separate divinity, and the same, perhaps, as the Nisroch of the Bible (2 Kings xix. 37).

The companion of Merodach was Rimmon, or rather Ramman, 'the thunderer.' He represented the atmosphere, and was accordingly the god of rain and storm, who was armed with the lightning and the thunderbolt. Sometimes he was dreaded as 'the destroyer of crops,' 'the scatterer of the harvest;' at other times prayers were made to him as 'the lord of fecundity.' His worship extended into Syria, where Rimmon appears to have been the supreme deity of Damascus, and where he was also known under the name of Hadad or Dadda.

Two other elemental gods were Samas, the Sun-god, and Sin, the Moon-god. Samas was the son of Sin, in accordance with the astronomical view of the old Babylonians, which made the moon the measurer of time, and regarded the day as the offspring of night. Samas, however, like Saul or Savul, another deity of whom mention is made in the inscriptions, was really but a form of Merodach, though in historical times the two divinities were separated from one another, and received different cults. Samas, again, was originally identical with Tammuz; but when Tammuz came to denote only the sun of spring and summer, while the myth that associated him with Istar laid firm hold of men's minds, Tammuz assumed separate attributes, and an individual existence apart from Samas.

Sin, the Moon-god, was termed Agu or Acu by the Accadians, and if the name of Mount Sinai was derived from him, as is sometimes supposed, we should have evidence that he was known and worshipped in Northern Arabia. At all events he was one of the deities of Southern Arabia. Sin was the patron-god of the city of Ur, and it was to him that the Assyrian kings traced the formation of their kingdom. One of the most famous of his temples was in the ancient city of Harran, where he was symbolised by an upright cone of stone. As the emblem of the Sun-god was the solar orb, the emblem of Sin was the crescent moon.

According to some of the legends of Babylonia, the daughter of the Moon-god was the goddess Istar. Other legends, however, placed Istar among the older gods, and made her the daughter of Anu, the sky. In either case she was at the outset the goddess of the evening star, and when it was discovered that the evening and morning stars were the same, of the morning star also. As the evening star, she was known as Istar of Erech, as the morning star, she was identified with Anunit or Anat, the goddess of Accad. At times she was also regarded as androgynous, both male and female.

Istar was the chief of the Accadian goddesses, and she retained her rank even among the Semites, who, as we have seen, looked upon the goddess as the mere consort and shadow of the god. But Istar continued to the last a separate and independent divinity. She presided over love and war, as well as over the chase. She was invoked as 'the queen of heaven,' 'the queen of all the gods,' and there was often a tendency to merge in her the other goddesses of the pantheon. Her principal temples were at Erech, Nineveh, and Arbela, but altars were erected to her in almost every place, and she was adored under as many forms and titles as she possessed shrines. Her name and worship spread through the Semitic world, in Southern Arabia, in Syria, in Moab, where she was identified with the Sun-god, Chemosh, and in Canaan, where she was called Ashtoreth, the Astartê of the Greeks. But the Greeks also knew her as Aphroditê, the goddess whom they had borrowed from the Phœnicians of Canaan, and we may discover her again in the Ephesian Artemis. The rites performed in her temples made Istar or Ashtoreth the darkest blot in Assyrian and Canaanitish religion, and excited the utmost horror and indignation of the prophets of God. When the moon came to be conceived as a female divinity, the pale reflection, as it were, of the sun, Istar, the evening star, became also the goddess of the moon. Hence it is that 'the queen of heaven' (Jer. xliv. 17) passed into Astartê 'with crescent horns.'

One of the most popular of old Babylonian myths told how Istar had wedded the young and beautiful Sun-god, Tammuz, 'the only-begotten,' and had descended into Hades in search of him when he had been slain by the boar's tusk of winter. A portion of a Babylonian poem has been preserved to us, which describes her passage through the seven gates of the underworld, where she left with the warden of each some one of her adornments, until at last she reached the seat of the infernal goddess Allat, stripped and bare. There she remained imprisoned until the gods, wearied of the long absence of the goddess of love, created a hound called 'the renewal of light,' who restored her to the upper world. The myth clearly refers to the waning and waxing of the monthly moon, and must therefore have originated when Istar had already become the goddess of the moon. The myth entered deeply into the religious belief of the worshippers of Istar. The Accadians called the month of August 'the month of the errand of Istar,' while June was termed 'the month of Tammuz' by the Semites. It was then that, as Milton writes, his