“They established for him the mercy seat of the mighty.”
“Before his fathers he seated himself for sovereignty.”
“O Merodach! thou art glorious among the great gods!”
“Since that day unchanged is thy command.”
And thus Bel-Merodach, the great son of Ea, was enthroned.
He never becomes the national god of Chaldea, as Asshur became to Syria. Local influences were opposed to this. The local deities of other important cities of southern Mesopotamia, more ancient and venerated, maintained their hold upon the affections of their worshippers to the last.
This was the case with Mul-lil, the local deity of Nippur, the second in the triad of great gods, the older Bel, with whom Bel-Merodach is sometimes confounded.
The Moon God was to the latest day the favored divinity of Ur of the Chaldees, and so of the local deities of other Sumerian cities.
These divinities were many of them of great antiquity. They were reverenced in their special localities as nowhere else. Thus the indignation of the priesthoods of these local cults, and of the local aristocracies, may well be imagined at the attempt of Nabonidus, the latest king of Babylon, 555-538 B. C., to concentrate all these local worships at the city of Babylon.
When they saw their gods taken from their ancient shrines and gathered at Babylon in the great temple of Bel, as subordinate gods to magnify the worship of Bel, their resentment ripened into secret intrigue against their king, which resulted in the banishment of Nabonidus from his kingdom, the occupation of the throne by Cyrus, and finally the overthrow of the Babylonian empire.