his hymn as a means of passing on
to singing his own praises, with which the inscription in question ends,
Hammurabi has in mind the patron god of Babylon when speaking of
Bel.[150] It is this amalgamation of the old Bel with Marduk that marks,
as we have seen, the transition to the use of Bel's name as a mere title
of Marduk. Elsewhere, however, Hammurabi uses Bel to designate the old
god. So when he calls himself the proclaimer of Anu and Bel[151] the
association with Anu makes it impossible that Marduk should be meant. At
times he appears to refer in the same inscription, now to the old Bel
and again to Bel-Marduk, under the same designation. When Kurigalzu, a
member of the Cassite dynasty (_c._ 1400 B.C.), speaks of 'Bel, the lord
of lands,' to whom he erects a temple in the new city, Dur-Kurigalzu--
some forty miles to the northeast of Babylon--it is the old Bel who is
again meant. While acknowledging Marduk as one of the chief gods, these
foreign rulers in Babylonia--the Cassites--did not feel the same
attachment to him as Hammurabi did. They gave the preference to the old
god of Nippur, and, indeed, succeeded in their attempt to give to the
old city of Nippur some of its pristine glory. They devoted themselves
assiduously to the care of the great temple at Nippur. There are some
indications of an attempt made by them to make Nippur the capital of
their empire. In the case of Hammurabi's immediate successor, as has
been pointed out, the equation Bel-Marduk is distinctly set down, but,
for all that, the double employment of the name continues even through
the period of the Assyrian supremacy over Babylonia. The northern rulers
now use Bel to designate the more ancient god, and, again, merely as a
designation of Marduk. Tiglathpileser I. (see note 1, below) expressly
adds 'the older' when speaking of Bel. When Sargon refers to Bel, 'the
lord of lands, who dwells on the sacred mountain of the gods,' or when
Tiglathpileser I. calls Bel 'the father of the gods,' 'the king of the
group of spirits' known as the Anunaki, it is of course only the old
Bel, the lord of the lower region, or of the earth, who can be meant;
but when, as is much more frequently the case, the kings of Assyria,
down to the fall of the empire, associate Bel with Nabu, speak of Bel
and the gods of Akkad (_i.e._, Babylonia), and use Bel, moreover, to
designate Babylonia,[152] it is equally clear that Marduk is meant. In
the Neo-Babylonian empire Marduk