ding of their names. Among these are Nin-lil-anna, a goddess called
by Nebuchadnezzar 'the lady who loves me,'[336] and Tur-lil-en,[337] a
god who is described as 'breaking the weapons of enemies.' As for
Bel-sarbi, or Shar-sarbi, the god of Baz,[338] they appear to be titles
rather than names. Dibbarra, Nergal and his consort Laz, and Zamama are
also included in the pantheon of Nebuchadnezzar.

In regard to none of these deities do we find any conceptions different
from those developed in the period of Hammurabi, any more than in the
conceptions of those gods who occupy a more prominent place in the
pantheon. Shamash is the judge, Sin is the wise one, Ramman the
thunderer, and so on throughout the list. It was not a period favorable
to the production of new religious thought, but only to the more or less
artificial revival of old cults.

* * * * *

With the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus in 539 B.C., we reach the close
of the period to be embraced in a history of the Babylonian-Assyrian
religion. True, the Marduk and Nabu cults were upheld by the Persian
rulers, and the policy of the latter in not disturbing the religious
status was continued by the Greeks when they in turn succeeded the
Persians in their control of Babylonia, but the presence of strange
civilizations with totally different religious trains of thought was
bound to affect the character of the old faith, and in time to threaten
its existence. At all events, it ceases to have any interest for us.
There are no further lines of development upon which it enters. The
period of decay, of slow but sure decay, has set in. The cuneiform
writing continues to be used till almost the beginning of our era, and
so the religious cults draw out their existence to a late period; but as
the writing and the civilization yield before new forces that entirely
alter the character of Oriental culture, so also the religion, after
sinking ever lower into the bogs of superstition, disappears, much as
the canals and little streams of the Euphrates valley, through the
neglect which settled over the country, become lost in the
death-breeding swamps and marshes.

FOOTNOTES:

[331] Babylonian Chronicle B, col. iv. ll. 34, 35.

[332] _Zeitschrift fuer Assyriologie_, II. 72, col. i. ll. 2, 3.

[333] See above, p. 127.

[334] See a paper by Tiele, on "Cyrus and the Babylonian Religion," in
the _Proceedings of the Amsterdam Academy_, 1896.

[335]