ce--the
necessity of explaining without coarseness those parental connections
which the theological classification found it needful to establish
between the deities constituting the two triads. In Chaldaea as in Egypt
there was no inclination to represent the divine families as propagating
their species otherwise than by the procedure observed in human
families: the union of the goddesses with the gods thus legitimated
their offspring.

* The passive and almost impersonal character of the
majority of the Babylonian and Assyrian goddesses is well
known. The majority must have been independent at the
outset, in the Sumerian period, and were married later on,
under the influence of Semitic ideas.

The triads were, therefore, nothing more than theological fictions. Each
of them was really composed of six members, and it was thus really a
council of twelve divinities which the priests of Uruk had instituted to
attend to the affairs of the universe; with this qualification, that the
feminine half of the assembly rarely asserted itself, and contributed
but an insignificant part to the common work. When once the great
divisions had been arranged, and the principal functionaries designated,
it was still necessary to work out the details, and to select v agents
to preserve an order among them. Nothing happens by chance in this
world, and the most insignificant events are determined by previsional
arrangements, and decisions arrived at a long time previously. The gods
assembled every morning in a hall, situated near the gates of the sun in
the east, and there deliberated on the events of the day. The sagacious
Ea submitted to them the fates which are about to be fulfilled, and
caused a record of them to be made in the chamber of destiny on tablets
which Shamash or Merodach carried with them to scatter everywhere on his
way; but he who should be lucky enough to snatch these tablets from him
would make himself master of the world for that day. This misfortune had
arisen only once, at the beginning of the ages. Zu, the storm-bird, who
lives with his wife and children on Mount Sabu under the protection of
Bel, and who from this elevation pounces down upon the country to ravage
it, once took it into his head to make himself equal to the supreme
gods. He forced his way at an early hour into the chamber of destiny
before the sun had risen: he perceived within it the royal insignia of
Bel, "the mitre of his powe