ians and the Semites.

For the history of the development of the religion of the Babylonians
and Assyrians much naturally depends upon the composition of the
population of early Babylonia. There is hardly any doubt that the
Sumero-Akkadians were non-Semites of a fairly pure race, but the
country of their origin is still unknown, though a certain
relationship with the Mongolian and Turkish nationalities, probably
reaching back many centuries--perhaps thousands of years--before the
earliest accepted date, may be regarded as equally likely. Equally
uncertain is the date of the entry of the Semites, whose language
ultimately displaced the non-Semitic Sumero-Akkadian idioms, and
whose kings finally ruled over the land. During the third millennium
before Christ Semites, bearing Semitic names, and called Amorites,
appear, and probably formed the last considerable stratum of tribes of
that race which entered the land. The name Martu, the Sumero-Akkadian
equivalent of Amurru, "Amorite", is of frequent occurrence also before
this period. The eastern Mediterranean coast district, including
Palestine and the neighbouring tracts, was known by the Babylonians
and Assyrians as the land of the Amorites, a term which stood for the
West in general even when these regions no longer bore that name. The
Babylonians maintained their claim to sovereignty over that part as
long as they possessed the power to do so, and naturally exercised
considerable influence there. The existence in Palestine, Syria, and
the neighbouring states, of creeds containing the names of many
Babylonian divinities is therefore not to be wondered at, and the
presence of West Semitic divinities in the religion of the Babylonians
need not cause us any surprise.

The Babylonian script and its evidence.

In consequence of the determinative prefix for a god or a goddess
being, in the oldest form, a picture of an eight-rayed star, it has
been assumed that Assyro-Babylonian mythology is, either wholly or
partly, astral in origin. This, however, is by no means certain, the
character for "star" in the inscriptions being a combination of three
such pictures, and not a single sign. The probability therefore is,
that the use of the single star to indicate the name of a divinity
arises merely from the fact that the character in question stands for
/ana/, "heaven." Deities were evidently thus distinguished by the
Babylonians because they regarded them as inhabit