ce in nature.[1088]

+648+. Clan gods are found abundantly among the ancient civilized
peoples, Egyptian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Arabian, Greek, Roman, and
probably existed among other peoples as to whom we have no exact
information. In Old Egypt every hamlet had its protecting deity; these
continued to be the objects of popular worship down to a very late time,
the form of the deity being usually that of a living animal.[1089]

+649+. A similar religious constitution obtained among the old Semitic
peoples. This is obvious in the case of the Canaanites (including the
Phoenicians), where every clan or community had its divine lord (the
Baal), who was a universal deity sufficient for all the needs of the
living, though particularly connected with the dominant interests of his
people.[1090] Such, probably, was the original form of the Hebrew Yahweh
(Jehovah); in his Sinaitic home he was naturally connected with the
phenomena of desert and mountain, and in Canaan, whither the Israelites
brought his cult, he was after a while recognized as the giver of crops
also, and gradually became a universal god in the larger sense of the
term.[1091] The Phoenician Baals--such as the Tyrian Melkart, 'the
king of the city'--are obviously local deities.[1092] The same thing is
true of the various gods that appear in pre-Mohammedan Arabia; the
deity of any particular clan or tribe was known to the people as "the
god" (Arabic _Allah_, that is, _al-Ilahu_), and the title "Allah,"
adopted by Mohammed as the name of the supreme and only god, thus in so
far fitted in with the usage of the people.[1093]

+650+. In Babylonia also a very large part of the divine names found in
the inscriptions must be understood to refer ultimately to local
deities, each supreme in his own territory; the later theologians
(probably priests) endeavored to organize these into a sort of pantheon,
but never succeeded in differentiating the various deities distinctly.
In general it may be said that all these old Semitic gods had one and
the same character; each in his place was supreme, and it is difficult
to find any difference in real character and function among the great
gods, as Ea, Bel, Marduk, Sin, Shamash, Ishtar, Nabu, Ashur, Eshmun, and
others.[1094]

+651+. The same remark will probably hold good of the popular worship of
the old Greeks. When Pausanias traveled through Greece he found
everywhere local cults which bore evidence of primitiveness, and
obvio