Lecture III. The Gods Of Babylonia. 295
lower rank in the divine hierarchy or in the public cult. Thus
Samas helps to form the subordinate triad of Samas, Malik, and
Bunênê, in which the local sun-gods, Malik and Bunênê, are
distinguished from Samas of Sippara, and Bunênê is transformed
into a female divinity, the consort of Malik. But in all cases
the principle is the same. The Semitic conception of the divine
family, husband, wife, and son, is combined with the older ideas
of genderless Sumerian, which placed the goddess on the same
level as the god, and the result is a triad in which the Sumerian
element has so far prevailed as to exclude the mother and son,
and leave three gods of equal power and rank.^250 [322]
The Babylonian triad is thus in no way a trinity. The divine
persons who compose it are coequal and independent one of the
other, the sphere of each being limited by that of the other. But
they divide the whole universe between them, or at all events
that part of the universe over which their attributes and authority
extend. They are partners with carefully defined powers, arranged
in groups of three. None of them is a supreme Baal dominant
over the other two. Nor, indeed, are they Baalim at all in the
strict sense of the word. For the Semitic Baalim admitted of no
such grouping; each was supreme god in his own locality, where
his powers were neither shared nor limited by another god. A
triad like that of Anu, Bel, and Ea could not exist where each
local Baal claimed all the attributes that were divided between
the three Babylonian deities, and its existence in Babylonia is
one of many proofs that, though Babylonian religion in its later
form was moulded by Semitic hands, the elements that composed
it had come in large measure from an older faith.
(^250) The triad of Athtar, the moon-god and the“angel-messenger,”which
Hommel has shown to be presupposed in the South Arabian inscriptions,
was due to the influence of Babylonian culture. This is made clear by the
Babylonian name of the moon-god, Sin, in the inscriptions of Hadhramaut, and
of Aubây,i.e.Nebo, in those of Katabân. On the other hand, the addition of
the sun-goddess to the triad is purely Semitic.