y identifying
them with other goddesses, to whom places had been already assigned;
Bau being thus coupled with Ohila, Nana with Ishtar, and Allat with
Ninhl-Beltis. If figures had been assigned to the latter proportionate
to the importance of the parts they played, and the number of their
votaries, how comes it that they were excluded from the cycle of the
great gods? They were actually placed alongside rather than below the
two councils, and without insistence upon the rank which they enjoyed
in the hierarchy. But the confusion which soon arose among divinities
of identical or analogous nature opened the way for inserting all the
neglected personalities in the framework already prepared for them. A
sky-god, like Dagan, would mingle naturally with Anu, and enjoy like
honours with him. The gods of all ranks associated with the sun or fire,
Nusku, Gibil, and Dumuzi, who had not been at first received among the
privileged group, obtained a place there by virtue of their assimilation
to Shamash, and his secondary forms, Bel-Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal.
Ishtar absorbed all her companions, and her name put in the plural,
Ishtarati, "the Ishtars," embraced all goddesses in general, just as the
name Hani took in all the gods. Thanks to this compromise, the system
flourished, and was widely accepted: local vanity was always able to
find a means for placing in a prominent place within it the feudal
deity, and for reconciling his pretensions to the highest rank with the
order of precedence laid down by the theologians of Uruk. The local
god was always the king of the gods, the father of the gods, he who
was worshipped above the others in everyday life, and whose public cult
constituted the religion of the State or city.

* As far as we can at present determine, the most ancient
series established was that of the planetary gods, whose
values, following each other irregularly, are not calculated
on a scheme of mathematical progression, but according to
the empirical importance, which a study of predictions had
ascribed to each planet. The regular series, that of the
great gods, bears in its regularity the stamp of its later
introduction: it was instituted after the example of the
former, but with corrections of what seemed capricious, and
fixing the interval between the gods always at the same
figure.

The temples were miniature reproductions of the arrangement of the
univers