n for perfume; but if any of them, drawn
by some that passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her
fellow, that she was not thought as worthy as herself, nor
her cord broken."

The gods, who had begun by being the actual material of the element
which was their attribute, became successively the spirit of it, then
its ruler.* They continued at first to reside in it, but in the course
of time they were separated from it, and each was allowed to enter the
domain of another, dwell in it, and even command it, as they could
have done in their own, till finally the greater number of them were
identified with the firmament.

* Pk. Lbnoemant, _La Magie chez les Chaldeens_, p. 144, et
seq., where the author shows how Anu, after having at
first been the Heaven itself, the starry vault stretched
above the earth, became successively the Spirit of Heaven
(_Zi-ana_), and finally the supreme ruler of the world:
according to Lenormant, it was the Semites in particular who
transformed the primitive spirit into an actual god-king.

Bel, the lord of the earth, and Ea, the ruler of the waters, passed info
the heavens, which did not belong to them, and took their places beside
Ami: the pathways were pointed out which they had made for themselves
across the celestial vault, in order to inspect their kingdoms from the
exalted heights to which they had been raised; that of Bel was in the
Tropic of Cancer, that of Ea in the Tropic of Capricorn. They gathered
around them all the divinities who could easily be abstracted from the
function or object to which they were united, and they thus constituted
a kind of divine aristocracy, comprising all the most powerful
beings who guided the fortunes of the world. The number of them was
considerable, for they reckoned seven supreme and magnificent gods,
fifty great gods of heaven and earth, three hundred celestial
spirits, and six hundred terrestrial spirits. Each of them deputed
representatives here below, who received the homage of mankind for him,
and signified to them his will. The god revealed himself in dreams to
his seers and imparted to them the course of coming events,* or, in
some cases, inspired them suddenly and spoke by their mouth: their
utterances, taken down and commented on by their assistants, were
regarded as infallible oracles. But the number of mortal men possessing
adequate powers, and gifted with sufficiently acute senses to bear