294 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniagiven while as yet the Sumerian was dominant. This raises the
question whether the name by which the god was subsequently
known in Semitic Babylonia was not rather of Amorite than of
Babylonian derivation. And there is much in favour of the view.
Hadad, or Rimmon as he was also termed, was in a special
way the god of Syria. His worship was spread along the whole
length of the Syrian seaboard, and we find him holding there the
rank of a supreme Baal. It is not as the god of storms, but as
the sun-god himself, that he was adored in Syria, and his very
name there became synonymous with deity. That the Semitised
Sumerian of Babylonia should have identified the supreme god
of a land of mountains and storms with his own storm-god, we
can understand; that the Syrian should have transferred the name
of a Babylonian god of storms to his own chief Baal, would be
difficult to explain. However this may be, the person of Hadad
[321] is peculiarly Semitic. The features which he inherited from his
Sumerian ancestry were obscured or dropped, and he became in
all respects a Semitic god. We need not be surprised, therefore, at
finding that he was a special favourite in Assyria. Assur-nazir-pal
calls him“the mightiest of the gods,”and the Assyrian troops in
their onset are likened to him.^249
The doctrine of the triad was not confined to the more
prominent gods. It was extended to others also who occupied a
(^249) For the absorption by Hadad of the Sumerian god of the air, Meri or Mermer,
the divine patron of the city of Muru, my Hibbert Lectures, p. 202 sqq., may be
consulted. Gubára,“the lady of the plain,”was apparently originally the wife
of Meri; when Meri passed into Hadad, Gubára necessarily became the wife of
the latter,“the lord of the mountain,”as he was called. As Hadad was already
provided with a wife, Sala, the next step was to identify Sala and Gubára.
Properly speaking, Gubára represented the Canaanitish goddess Ashêrah,
Asirtum in Babylonian: see Reisner,“Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen nach
Thontafeln griechischer Zeit,”in theMittheilungen aus den orientalischen
Sammlungen zu Berlin, x. p. 139, where the SumerianMartue mulu
kharsagga-ga Gubarra gasan gu-edinis translatedAmurru bel sadî Asratum
belit tseri,“the Amorite god (Hadad), the lord of the mountain; Asratum
(Ashêrah), the lady of the plain.”