r to destroy him. Whether Semite or Sumerian, the
gods, like those of Egypt, were not abstract personages, but each
contained in himself one of the principal elements of which our universe
is composed--earth, air, sky, sun, moon and stars. The state religion,
which all the inhabitants of the same city were solemnly bound to
observe, included some dozen gods, but the private devotion of
individuals supplemented this cult by vast additions, each family
possessing its own household gods.

Animals never became objects of worship as in Egypt; some of them,
however, as the bull and the lion, were closely allied to the gods. If
the idea of uniting all these gods into a single supreme one ever
crossed the mind of a Chaldaean theologian, it never spread to the people
as a whole. Among all the thousands of tablets or inscribed stones on
which we find recorded prayers, we have as yet discovered no document
containing the faintest allusion to a divine unity. The temples were
miniature reproductions of the arrangements of the universe. The
"ziggurat" represented in its form the mountain of the world, and the
halls ranged at its feet resembled approximately the accessory parts of
the world; the temple of Merodach at Babylon comprised them all up to
the chambers of fate, where the sun received every morning the tablets
of destiny.

Every individual was placed, from the very moment of his birth, under
the protection of a god or goddess, of whom he was the servant, or
rather the son. These deities accompanied him by day and by night to
guard him from the evil genii ready to attack him on every side. The
Chaldaeans had not such clear ideas as to what awaited them in the other
world as the Egyptians possessed.

The Chaldaean hades is a dark country surrounded by seven high walls, and
is approached by seven gates, each guarded by a pitiless warder. Two
deities rule within it--Nergal, "the lord of the great city," and
Peltis-Allat, "the lady of the great land," whither everything which has
breathed in this world descends after death. A legend relates that Allat
reigned alone in hades and was invited by the gods to a feast which they
had prepared in heaven. Owing to her hatred of the light she refused,
sending a message by her servant, Namtar, who acquitted himself, with
such a bad grace, that Anu and Ea were incensed against his mistress,
and commissioned Nergal to chastise her. He went, and finding the gates
of hell open, dragged the qu