imus was
represented by a single stroke of the reed, a sign that in its
vagueness left him formless and incommunicable, therefore
unworshipable, hence without a temple, unless Bab-ili, Babylon, the
Gate of God, may be so construed.

The name of the deity, fastidiously concealed from the vulgar, was, in
English, One. Not after, or beneath, or above, but before him, a
trinity swung like a screen. From it, for pendant, another trinity
dangled. From the latter fell a third. Below these glories were the
coruscations of an entire nation of inferior gods. The latter, as well
as the former, all of them, were but the fireworks of One. He alone
was. The rest, like Makhir, were gods of dream. To the savants, that
is; to the magi and seers. To the people the sidereal triads and
planetary divinities throned in the Silver Sky augustly real, equally
august, and in that celestial equality remained, until Khammurabi gave
precedence to Bel, who as Marduk, Bel or Baal Marduk, Lord Marduk,
became supreme.

Before Bel, then, the other gods faded as the Elohim did before
Jahveh, with the possible difference that there were more to
fade--sixty-five thousand, Assurnatsipal, in an inscription, declared.
Over that army Bel-Marduk acquired the title, perhaps significant, of
Bel-Kissat, Lord of Hosts. Yet it was less as a usurper than as an
absorber that the ascension was achieved. Bel but mounted above his
former peers and from the superior height drew their attributes to
himself. It was sacrilege none the less. As such it alienated the
clergy and enraged the plebs. Begun under Khammurabi and completed
under Nabonidos, it was the reason why, during the latter's reign,
orthodox Babylon received Cyrus not as a foe but a friend.

From the spoliation, meanwhile, no nebulousness resulted. Bel was
distinctly anthropomorphic. His earthly plaisance was the Home of the
Height, a seven-floored mountain of masonry, a rainbow pyramid of
enamelled brick. At the top was a dome. There, in a glittering
chamber, on a dazzling couch, he appeared. Elsewhere, in the
vermillion recesses of a neighbouring chapel, that winged bulls
guarded and frescoed monsters adorned, once a year he also appeared,
and, above the mercy seat, on an alabaster throne, sat, or was
supposed to sit, contemplating the tablets of destiny, determining
when men should die.

To the Greeks, the future lay in the lap of the gods. To the
Babylonians the gods alone possessed it, as alone also