eption of a succession of dynasties--one set of gods is overthrown
or succeeded by another set; the most extreme form of the overthrow
appears in the conception of the death of a whole community of gods, but
this occurs not in the form of natural development, but only when one
stadium or phase of religion is overmastered and expelled by another.

+722+. In Babylonia the earliest pair of deities, Lakhmu and Lakhamu,
vague forms, were succeeded by a second pair, Anshar and Kishar,
somewhat less vague, and these in their turn yielded to the more
definite group represented by Ea, Bel, and Marduk--deities who became
the embodiments of the highest Babylonian culture; in Assyria Ashur and
Ishtar occupied a similar position. In the long religious history of the
Hindus many of the gods prominent in the Veda disappear or sink into
subordinate positions, and deities at first unimportant become supreme.
The Greek succession of dynasties resembles the Babylonian. The ancient
Heaven and Earth are followed by Kronos,[1244] and he is dethroned by
Zeus, who represents governmental order and a higher ethical scheme of
society. The Romans appear to have borrowed their chronology of the gods
from the Greeks: the combination of Saturnus with Ops (who belongs
rather with Consus), the identification of these two respectively with
Kronos and Rhea, and the dynastic succession Caelus,[1245] Saturnus,
Jupiter, seem not to be earlier than the Hellenizing period in Rome.

+723+. These changes, when original, may have been due partly to the
shifting of political power--the gods of a particular dominant region
may have come into prominence and reigned for a time, giving place then
to deities of some other region which had secured the hegemony; the
history of the earliest gods lies far back in a dim region without
historical records and therefore is not to be reconstructed definitely
now. But such light as we get from literary records of later times
rather suggests that the dynastic changes are the product of changes in
the conception of the world, and these are as a rule in the direction of
sounder and more humane thought.

+724+. There is a general similarity between the great deities that have
been created by the various civilized peoples, since civilization has
been practically the same everywhere. But the gods differ among
themselves according to the special characters, needs, and endowments of
the various peoples, so that no deity can be profit