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arts were formed being named, and in it, apparently, were Enki (Ea), Damgal-nunna (Damkina), his consort, Asari-lu-duga (Merodach), In-ab (or Ines), the pilot of Eridu (Ea's city), and Nin-igi-nagar-sir, "the great architect of heaven":-- "May the ship before thee bring fertility, May the ship after thee bring joy, In thy heart may it make joy of heart . . . ." Ea was the god of fertility, hence this ending to the poetical description of the ship of Ea. Bel. The deity who is mentioned next in order in the list given above is the "older Bel," so called to distinguish him from Bel-Merodach. His principal names were /Mullil/ (dialectic) or /En-lilla/[1] (standard speech), the /Illinos/ of Damascius. His name is generally translated "lord of mist," so-called as god of the underworld, his consort being /Gasan-lil/ or /Nan-lilla/, "the lady of the mist," in Semitic Babylonian /Beltu/, "the Lady," par excellence. Bel, whose name means "the lord," was so called because he was regarded as chief of the gods. As there was considerable confusion in consequence of the title Bel having been given to Merodach, Tiglath-pileser I. (about 1200 B.C.) refers to him as the "older Bel" in describing the temple which he built for him at Assur. Numerous names of men compounded with his occur until the latest times, implying that, though the favourite god was Merodach, the worship of Bel was not forgotten, even at Babylon--that he should have been adored at his own city, Niffur, and at Dur-Kuri-galzu, where Kuri-galzu I. built a temple for "Bel, the lord of the lands," was naturally to be expected. Being, like Ea, a god of the earth, he is regarded as having formed a trinity with Anu, the god of heaven, and Ea, the god of the deep, and prayer to these three was as good as invoking all the gods of the universe. Classification of the gods according to the domain of their power would naturally take place in a religious system in which they were all identified with each other, and this classification indicates, as Jastrow says, a deep knowledge of the powers of nature, and a more than average intelligence among the Babylonians--indeed, he holds it as a proof that, at the period of the older empire, there were schools and students who had devoted themselves to religious speculation upon this point. He also conjectures that the third commandment of the Law of Moses was directed against this doctrine h
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