The deities in the Chaldæan Pantheon are thus enumerated by Professor Rawlinson—
“The grouping of the principal Chaldæan deities is as follows:—At the head of the Pantheon stands a god Il or Ra, of whom little is known. Next to him is a triad, Ana, Bil or Belus, and Hea or Hoa, who correspond closely to the classical Pluto, Jupiter, and Neptune. Each of these is accompanied by a female principle or wife.... Then follows a further triad, consisting of Sin or Hurki the moon-god, San or Sanci the sun, and Vul (or Yem, or Ao, or In, or Ina, according to various readings of the hieroglyphics) the god of the atmosphere (again accompanied by female powers or wives).... Next in order to them we find a group of five minor deities, the representatives of the five planets, Nin or Ninip (Saturn), Merodach (Jupiter), Nergal (Mars), Ishtar (Venus), and Nebo (Mercury). [The bracket indications are Rawlinson’s.]... These principal deities do not appear to have been connected like the Egyptian and classical divinities into a single genealogical scheme” (i. 141).
In a note at p. 142 it is said, “These schemes themselves were probably not genealogical at first ... but after a while given to separate and independent deities, recognised in different places by distinct communities, or even by distinct races;” (vide Bunsen’s “Egypt,” iv. 66; English Tran.)
Now to this opinion I venture unreservedly to adhere, and I connect it with the statement (id. i. 72), that “Chaldæa in the earliest times to which we can go back, seems to have been inhabited by four principal tribes. The early kings are continually represented in the monuments as sovereigns over the Kiprat-arbat, or ‘Four Races’ (vide supra, [p. 30]). These ‘Four Races’ are sometimes called the Arba Lisun or ‘Four Tongues,’ whence we may conclude that they were distinguished from one another, among other differences, by a variety in their forms of speech ... an examination of the written remains has furnished reasons for believing that the differences were great and marked; the languages, in fact, belonging to the four great varieties of human speech, the Hamitic, Semitic, Aryan, and Turanian.” Compare pp. [39], [40.]
If it is allowed that there may have been mythological systems corresponding to these divers nationalities, we may fairly conclude that the deities above enumerated may not necessarily have been different deities, but the same deities viewed in different lights, or included in duplicate in the way of incorporation, or in recognition of subordinate nationalities. If, therefore, I find the representation of Noah in any one of these deities, is there not a prima facie probability that I shall find the reduplication of him in others? I consider, at least, that I shall have warrant for thus collecting the scattered traditions concerning the patriarch who stands at the head of the second propagation of our race.
But first as to the god Il or Ra—
IL OR RA.
The form Ra represents, probably, the native Chaldæan name of this deity, while Il is the Semitic equivalent. Il, of course, is but a variant of El, the root of the well-known biblical Elohim, as well as of the Arabic Allah. It is this name which Diodorus represents under the form of Elus, and Sanchoniathon, or rather Philo Biblius, under that of Elus, or Ilus. The meaning of the word is simply “God,” or perhaps “The God;” emphatically. Ra, the Cushite equivalent, must be considered to have had the same force originally, though in Egypt it received a special application to the sun, and became the proper name of that particular deity. The word is lost in the modern Ethiopic. It formed an element in the native name of Babylon, which was Ka-ra, the Cushite equivalent of the Semitic Bab-il, an expression signifying “the gate of God.”
Ra is a god with few peculiar attributes. He is a sort of fount and origin of deity, too remote from man to be much worshipped, or to excite any warm interest. There is no evidence of his having had any temple in Chaldæa during the early times. A belief in his existence is implied rather than expressed in inscriptions of the primitive kings, where the Moon-god is said to be “brother’s son of Ana, and eldest son of Bil or Belus.” We gather from this, that Bel and Ana were considered to have a common father, and later documents sufficiently indicate that that common father was Il or Ra.”—Rawlinson, i. p. 143.
If in the Il or Ra of the Chaldæans the primitive monotheism is not revealed, I do not see how it can be discerned in the Zeus of the Greeks. We have the same god in the same relation in the Scandinavian, or at any rate in the Lapland mythology. Leems (“Account of Danish Lapland,” Pinkerton, i. 458) says—“Of the Gods inhabiting the starry mansions the greatest is Radien, yet it is uncertain whether he is over every part of the sidereal sky, or whether he governs only some part of it. Be this as it may, I shall be bold to affirm that the Laplanders never comprehended, under the name of this false god, the true God; which is obvious from this, that some have not scrupled to put the image or likeness of the true God by the side of their Radien, on Runic boxes.”[145] If, however, of their gods “the greatest was Radien,” they would not have placed the true God by his side until they had become acquainted with the true God, or until they had come to commingle Christianity and Paganism; but then would they not have placed “Ra;” by the side of the true God as His counterpart? I am assuming that “Radien;” means simply the god Ra, as I suppose Mr Max Müller would recognise “dien;” as cognate to “Dyaus” ... “Dieu.”