is no doubt
that the name was applied to a group of gods who were so closely
connected that, though addressed in the plural, they could in the same
sentence be regarded as forming a single personality".[310]

Like the Egyptian Osiris, the Babylonian Merodach was a highly complex
deity. He was the son of Ea, god of the deep; he died to give origin
to human life when he commanded that his head should be cut off so
that the first human beings might be fashioned by mixing his blood
with the earth; he was the wind god, who gave "the air of life"; he
was the deity of thunder and the sky; he was the sun of spring in his
Tammuz character; he was the daily sun, and the planets Jupiter and
Mercury as well as Sharru (Regulus); he had various astral
associations at various seasons. Ishtar, the goddess, was Iku
(Capella), the water channel star, in January-February, and Merodach
was Iku in May-June. This strange system of identifying the chief
deity with different stars at different periods, or simultaneously,
must not be confused with the monotheistic identification of him with
other gods. Merodach changed his forms with Ishtar, and had similarly
many forms. This goddess, for instance, was, even when connected with
one particular heavenly body, liable to change. According to a tablet
fragment she was, as the planet Venus, "a female at sunset and a male
at sunrise[311]"--that is, a bisexual deity like Nannar of Ur, the
father and mother deity combined, and Isis of Egypt. Nannar is
addressed in a famous hymn:

Father Nannar, Lord, God Sin, ruler among the gods....
_Mother body which produceth all things_....
Merciful, gracious Father, in whose hand the life of the whole
land is contained.

One of the Isis chants of Egypt sets forth, addressing Osiris:

There cometh unto thee Isis, lady of the horizon, who hath
begotten herself alone in the image of the gods....
She hath taken vengeance before Horus, _the woman who was made a
male by her father Osiris_.[312]

Merodach, like Osiris-Sokar, was a "lord of many existences", and
likewise "the mysterious one, he who is unknown to mankind[313]". It
was impossible for the human mind "a greater than itself to know".

Evidence has not yet been forthcoming to enable us to determine the
period at which the chief Babylonian deities were identified with the
planets, but it is clear that Merodach's ascendancy in astral form
could not have occurred