Lecture III. The Gods Of Babylonia. 291
the rise of Semitic influence all the attributes associated with a
Semitic Baal gathered round his person. He remained, it is true,
a moon-god, but he was also more than a moon-god. He was the
chief deity of a city whose kings had ruled throughout Babylonia,
and carried their arms to the distant West.
His transformation into a supreme Baal was doubtless assisted
by the important place filled by the moon in early Babylonian
culture. The moon was the measurer of time; the first calendar
was a lunar one, and time was marked by the movements of the
moon and not by those of the sun. It was on this account that
the moon-god was called En-zu,“the lord of knowledge,”by the
Sumerians; through him they learned how to regulate the year
and the festivals of the gods. Astronomy had been cultivated in
Babylonia from the beginning of its history, and for a nation of
astronomers the moon was naturally an object of veneration and
regard. It was the symbol of law and order as well as of the light
that illuminated the darkness of the night.
But we must notice that it was only at Ur and Harran that Sin
or Nannar was thus elevated to the rank of a supreme Baal. The
official theology refused to include him among the three chief
gods of the land. He was, in fact, as Professor Hommel has
shown, rather the Baal of the Semitics of Arabia and the West
than of the Babylonians themselves, and the place occupied by
his cult at Ur proves how completely this city lay outside the
limits of the true Babylonia, and was peopled by an Arabian
population.
The sun-god was born of the moon. The lunar year preceded [318]
the solar, and to the primitive Babylonian the moon was a more
important agent of culture even than the sun. Moreover, the sun
seemed to rise from that world of night over which the moon held
sway; the day was begotten by the night, and was accordingly
reckoned from evening to evening. It is not until we come to
the later age of Babylonian history that we find the old system
making way for a new one, in which the day begins at midnight;