sky itself as the highest god, and the maker and ruler
of all things. In Babylonia, however, the notion became spiritualised
more than in China; at first we hear that his dwelling became the
refuge of the gods during the Deluge, but in later times he is
regarded as a being quite above heaven and all created beings, and
even all the gods. A third great god is Bel of Nippur, not the later
Bel of Babylon, but an older one, identical with the Accadian
Mullilla, the lord of the under-world. The earliest gods of this
religion are those of the sea, the earth, and the sky. As they belong
to different districts of the country, they can scarcely be called a
trinity. A better approach to a trinity is formed by Ea of Eridu,
Davkina his wife who is the earth, and the sun-god Dumuzi, their
offspring. The son of Ea, also named Miri-Dugga or Merodach (Marduk),
is identified with the Egyptian Osiris; they have the same symbol,
each is a sun-god, and each has a sister who is also his wife,
Merodach has Istar, and Osiris, Isis. In Sergul the principal deity
was the fire-god, sometimes called Savul; in Cutha they worshipped
Nergal the god of death, the "strong one" who had his throne beneath.
Cutha was a favourite place of sepulture with the Babylonians. Rimmon
was a god of wind, Matu of storms. There is a dragon Tiamat, with
whom the great gods have to contend.

The sun and the moon were worshipped everywhere; each city had its
own sun-god and its own moon-god. The preference generally shown by
nomads for the moon, since their journeys are made by night, is kept
up in early Babylonia, where the moon-god is regarded as the father
of the sun-god, and as the greater being. In Ur of the Chaldees the
moon was the principal deity. There were also towns such as Larsa and
Sippara, where the sun was the chief god; and many of the great gods
of later times were originally sun-gods. The Chaldeans, moreover,
were proverbially star-watchers, and a "zigurrath" or observatory, a
building of seven spheres corresponding to those of the planets as
they pass through the signs of the zodiac, and like them rising up to
the seat of God at the North Star, was a regular part of the later
Babylonian temple. To Babylonia is due the practice of the
orientation of temples; that is to say, the arrangement of the
building in such a way that its principal axis shall point exactly in
a desired direction. Some of the Babylonian temples were oriented so
that the sun sho