The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

334 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

and with the political rise of the neighbouring city of Babylon
is degraded into an attendant and retainer of the mightier god.
As interpreter of the will of the culture-god he deprives Ea of
his ancient prerogatives, and his title of“Prophet”becomes his
name. Henceforth he is a purely Semitic divinity, and a wife
is found for him in the shadowy abstraction“Hearing.”Under
the influences of the solar cult, he is identified with the ancient
Sumerian fire-spirit who had himself become a sun-god, and
eventually he is adopted in Assyria as the patron of the learned
class, and the divine representative of Babylonian learning.
But the history of Nebo also illustrates one of the directions
in which the striving after a monotheistic faith displayed itself.
Not only was a separate god, Nusku, amalgamated with Nebo,
[365] Nebo himself, while still keeping his independent personality,
sank into a subordinate position which may be compared with
that of an archangel in Christian belief. Babylonian religion
came to distinguish between a limited number of“great gods”
and the inferior deities who formed their court. Indeed, it went
even further than this. From the days of Khammurabi onward
there was a tendency to exalt Bel-Merodach at the expense of
all his brother gods. The development of Babylonian religion, in
fact, went hand in hand with that of the Babylonian State. The
foundation of an empire had made the Babylonian familiar with
the conception of a supreme sovereign, under whom there were
vassal kings, and under them again a dependent nobility. The
same conception was extended to the celestial hierarchy. Here,
too, Bel-Merodach sat supreme, while the other gods“bowed
reverently before him,”retaining, indeed, their ancestral rights
and power within the limits of their respective sanctuaries, but
acknowledging the supremacy of the one sovereign Bel. It was
no longer in honour of En-lil that the inhabitants of Babylonia
were called“the people of Bel,”but because they were all alike
the children and adorers of Bel of Babylon.
But Babylonian religion never advanced further. It is true