Lecture IV. The Sun-God And Istar. 301
god of Babylon are one and the same.
It was but gradually that he attained his high position in the
Babylonian pantheon. Ea and Asari were gods of the south;
Babylon lay in the northern half of the country. There must
therefore have been some special reason for the close connection
that grew up between them. I know of no other that would account
for it except the one I gave many years ago—that Babylon was
a colony from Eridu. In this case we could understand why its
local deity should have been a son of Ea, and how accordingly
it became possible to identify him with that particular son of the
god of Eridu whose attributes resembled his own.
It is difficult at present to trace the history of Merodach beyond
the age of the dynasty of Khammurabi. It was then that Babylon [328]
became an imperial city, and the power of its god grew with the
power of its rulers. The dynasty was Semitic, though of foreign
origin; and we may gather from the names of the first two kings
that the ancestral god of the family had been`amu^257 or Shem.
But with the possession of Babylon the manners and religion of
Babylonia were adopted; the fourth king of the dynasty bears a
Babylonian name,^258 and his grandson ascribes his victories to
the god of Babylon.
Merodach is invested by Khammurabi with all the attributes
of a supreme Semitic Baal. His solar character falls into the
background; he becomes the lord of gods and men, who delivers
the weak and punishes the proud. The office of judge, which
belonged to him as the sun-god, is amplified; the wisdom he had
derived from Ea is made part of his original nature; his quality of
mercy is insisted on again and again. Like the Semitic Baal, he is
the father of his people, the mighty king who rules the world and
occupies the foremost place in the council of the gods. Already
the son of Khammurabi declares that the older Bel of Nippur had
(^257) More commonly written`umu.
(^258) Abil-Sin,“the son of the moon-god,”the god of the city of Ur, to which the
preceding dynasty had belonged.