en.

[Footnote 20: Collection de Clerq. pl. 5, no. 46.]

[Footnote 21: Cuneiform Insc. W. A. iv. 34.]

Khammurabi was also a leader. He was a legislator as well. Sargon
united principalities, Khammurabi their shrines. From one came the
nation, from the other the god. It is in this way that they fuse. To
the composite, if it be one, history added a heightening touch.

The Khammurabi legislation came from Bel, who, originally, was a local
sun-god of Nippur. There he was regarded as the possessor of the
Chaldean Urim and Thummin, the tablets of destiny with which he cast
the fates of men. In the mythology of Babylonia these tablets were
stolen by the god of storms, who kept them in his thunder fastness.
Among the forked flames of the lightning there they were recovered by
Bel, who revealed the law to Khammurabi.

The theophany is perhaps similar to that of Sinai. But perhaps, too,
it is better attested. A diorite block, found at Susa in 1902, has the
law engraved on it. On the summit, a bas-relief displays the god
disclosing the statutes to the king.

There are other analogies. Sinai was named after Sin, who, though but
a moon-god, was previously held supreme for the reason that, in
primitive Babylonia, the lunar year preceded the solar. The sanctuary
of the moon-god was Ur, of which Abraham was emir. He was more,
perhaps. Sarratu, from which Sarai comes, was the title of the
moon-goddess. In _Genesis_, Sarai is Abraham's wife. Abraham is a
derivative of Aburamu, which was one of the moon's many names.[22]

[Footnote 22: Sayce: Guifford Lectures.]

Among these, one in particular has since been identified with Jahveh.
In addition, a clay tablet of the age of Khammurabi, now in the
British Museum, has on it:

[Illustration]

That flight of arrows, being interpreted, means: _Jave ilu_, Jahveh is
god.[23]

[Footnote 23: Delitzch: Babel und Bibel.]

Other texts show that a title of Bel was Masu, a word that letter for
letter is the same as the Hebrew Mosheh or Moses.[24]

[Footnote 24: Records of the Past, i. 91.]

It is in this way that Sargon and Khammurabi fuse. Meanwhile the title
Masu, or hero, was not confined to Bel. It was given also to Marduk,
the tutelary god of Babylon, from whom local monotheism proceeded.

That monotheism, in appearance relatively modern, actually was
archaic. The Chaldean savants knew of but one really existing god. To
them, all others were his emanations. The deus exsuperantiss