arts were formed being named, and in it, apparently, were
Enki (Ea), Damgal-nunna (Damkina), his consort, Asari-lu-duga
(Merodach), In-ab (or Ines), the pilot of Eridu (Ea's city), and
Nin-igi-nagar-sir, "the great architect of heaven":--

"May the ship before thee bring fertility,
May the ship after thee bring joy,
In thy heart may it make joy of heart . . . ."

Ea was the god of fertility, hence this ending to the poetical
description of the ship of Ea.

Bel.

The deity who is mentioned next in order in the list given above is
the "older Bel," so called to distinguish him from Bel-Merodach. His
principal names were /Mullil/ (dialectic) or /En-lilla/[1] (standard
speech), the /Illinos/ of Damascius. His name is generally translated
"lord of mist," so-called as god of the underworld, his consort being
/Gasan-lil/ or /Nan-lilla/, "the lady of the mist," in Semitic
Babylonian /Beltu/, "the Lady," par excellence. Bel, whose name means
"the lord," was so called because he was regarded as chief of the
gods. As there was considerable confusion in consequence of the title
Bel having been given to Merodach, Tiglath-pileser I. (about 1200
B.C.) refers to him as the "older Bel" in describing the temple which
he built for him at Assur. Numerous names of men compounded with his
occur until the latest times, implying that, though the favourite god
was Merodach, the worship of Bel was not forgotten, even at Babylon--that
he should have been adored at his own city, Niffur, and at
Dur-Kuri-galzu, where Kuri-galzu I. built a temple for "Bel, the lord of
the lands," was naturally to be expected. Being, like Ea, a god of the
earth, he is regarded as having formed a trinity with Anu, the god of
heaven, and Ea, the god of the deep, and prayer to these three was as
good as invoking all the gods of the universe. Classification of the
gods according to the domain of their power would naturally take place
in a religious system in which they were all identified with each
other, and this classification indicates, as Jastrow says, a deep
knowledge of the powers of nature, and a more than average
intelligence among the Babylonians--indeed, he holds it as a proof
that, at the period of the older empire, there were schools and
students who had devoted themselves to religious speculation upon this
point. He also conjectures that the third commandment of the Law of
Moses was directed against this doctrine h