322 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniagod. At Babylon he was made the adopted son of Bel-Merodach
by taking the hand of the deity, and thereby became himself a Bel,
a ruler of“the people of Bel”over whom he was henceforth to
exercise undisputed lordship. In earlier days, Sargon of Akkad,
the founder of the first Semitic empire in Western Asia, and
his son Naram-Sin, were explicitly deified. Naram-Sin is even
addressed as“the god of Akkad”;^269 and a seal-cylinder found
by Gen. di Cesnola in Cyprus describes its owner as“the servant
of the god Naram-Sin.”^270 The title of“god”is assumed by
the Semitic successors of Sargon, to whatever city or dynasty
they belonged; even the Sumerian princes in Southern Babylonia
[352] followed the example of their Semitic suzerains, and Gudea, the
high priest of Lagas, built temples to his own godhead, where for
long centuries his cult continued to be observed, and sacrifices
and offerings to be made to him.^271 The occupation of Babylonia
by the Arab or Canaanite dynasty to which Amraphel belonged,
made no difference in the divine honours paid to the king; he
still assumed the title of“god,”and his subjects adored him
by the side of Bel. But a change came with the conquest of
Babylonia by Kassite hordes from the mountains of Elam; the
foreign kings ceased to be divine, and the title of“god”is given
to them no more. As the doctrine of the divine right of kings
passed away in England with the Stuarts, so too the belief in
the divinity of the king disappeared in Babylonia with the fall
of the Semitic dynasties. Nothing could show more plainly its
essentially Semitic origin, and the little hold it possessed upon
the non-Semitic part of the population. The king was a god only
so long as he was a Semite, or subject to Semitic influence and
(^269) Thureau-Dangin in theRecueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à
l'Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes, xix. pp. 185-187.
(^270) Published and translated by me in theTransactions of the Society of Biblical
Archæology, v. (1877) p. 441, where I pointed out for the first time that the
early Babylonian kings were deified.
(^271) Scheil in theRecueil de Travaux, xviii. p. 71, xxi. p. 27.