ants of the realms
above--indeed, the heavens being the place where the stars are seen, a
picture of a star was the only way of indicating heavenly things. That
the gods of the Babylonians were in many cases identified with the
stars and planets is certain, but these identifications seem to have
taken place at a comparatively late date. An exception has naturally
to be made in the case of the sun and moon, but the god Merodach, if
he be, as seems certain, a deified Babylonian king, must have been
identified with the stars which bear his name after his worshippers
began to pay him divine honours as the supreme deity, and naturally
what is true for him may also be so for the other gods whom they
worshipped. The identification of some of the deities with stars or
planets is, moreover, impossible, and if Ea, the god of the deep, and
Anu, the god of the heavens, have their representatives among the
heavenly bodies, this is probably the result of later development.[1]

[1] If there be any historical foundation for the statement that
Merodach arranged the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars,
assigning to them their proper places and duties--a tradition
which would make him the founder of the science of astronomy
during his life upon earth--this, too, would tend to the
probability that the origin of the gods of the Babylonians was not
astral, as has been suggested, but that their identification with
the heavenly bodies was introduced during the period of his reign.

Ancestor and hero-worship. The deification of kings.

Though there is no proof that ancestor-worship in general prevailed at
any time in Babylonia, it would seem that the worship of heroes and
prominent men was common, at least in early times. The tenth chapter
of Genesis tells us of the story of Nimrod, who cannot be any other
than the Merodach of the Assyro-Babylonian inscriptions; and other
examples, occurring in semi-mythological times, are /En-we-dur-an-ki/,
the Greek Edoreschos, and /Gilgames/, the Greek Gilgamos, though
Aelian's story of the latter does not fit in with the account as given
by the inscriptions. In later times, the divine prefix is found before
the names of many a Babylonian ruler--Sargon of Agade,[1] Dungi of Ur
(about 2500 B.C.), Rim-Sin or Eri-Aku (Arioch of Ellasar, about 2100
B.C.), and others. It was doubtless a kind of flattery to deify and
pay these rulers divine honours during their lifeti