444 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniathat Sargon of Akkad, who first brought the civilisation and arts
of Babylonia to the shores of the Mediterranean, should have
had his capital in a city which adjoined Sippara, the special seat
of solar worship. While Arabia drew its inspiration from Ur, the
religion of Canaan was modified by contact with a culture and
theology that were more purely Babylonian. Phœnician tradition
stoutly maintained that the ancestors of the Canaanitish people
had come from the Persian Gulf.
“Sabaism,”therefore, to use the old term, must really have been
an early form of Babylonian belief. It was communicated to the
Semites west of the Euphrates at different times and in different
ways. To the Western Semites of Arabia and Mesopotamia it
came through Ur, and consequently set the moon-god at the head
[484] of the divine hierarchy. To the Canaanite it was carried more
directly, but at a later period, when the solar worship had become
dominant in Babylonia. The influence of Nippur had waned
before that of Eridu, and out of Eridu had risen a culture-god
whose son and vicegerent was the sun.
The moon-god was addressed in Southern Arabia by different
titles, one of which was that 'Ammi or 'Ammu which forms part
of the name of Khammurabi. Professor Hommel hints that even
the Hebrew Yahveh may once have been a title of the moon-god
among the Western Semites of Babylonia. As I was the first to
point out, the name of Yahveh actually occurs in a document
of the age of Abraham, where it enters into the composition of
the name Yahum-ilu, the Joel of the Old Testament. Professor
Hommel has since found other examples of it in tablets of the
same period, thus overthrowing the modern theory which derives
it from the Kenites.^390 It was already known to“Abram the
Hebrew”in Ur of the Chaldees.
The hymn to the moon-god of Ur, to which I have referred
in an earlier lecture,^391 is almost monotheistic in tone. To the
(^390) Expository Times, ix. (1898) p. 522; March 1900, p. 270.
(^391) P. 316.