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writer he“alone is supreme in heaven and earth.”He is the
creator of the universe; he is also the universal“Father,” “long-
suffering and full of forgiveness, whose hand upholds the life of
all mankind.”More than that, he is“the omnipotent one, whose
heart is immensity, and there is none that may fathom it.”Among
the other gods he has no rival; he causes the herb to grow, and
the cattle and flock to bring forth; and he established law and
justice among mankind. The angels of heaven and the spirits of
the earth alike do homage to him; there is no goddess even who
appears at his side. The hymn formed part of the ritual of the [485]
great temple at Ur before the birth of Abraham, and the Hebrew
patriarch may well have listened to its teaching.
From Ur and its mixed population we can trace the worship of
the Babylonian moon-god along the coasts of Southern Arabia
as far as Egypt. In Hadhramaut, as I have already said, the very
name of Sin was retained, and even in North-western Arabia the
name of the sacred mountain of Sinai bears witness to the cult
of the Babylonian deity. Early seal-cylinders associate with the
moon-god both an ape and a dwarf-like figure, called Nu-gidda,
“the dwarf,”in Sumerian, who dances in honour of the god, like
the Danga dwarf in Egypt, or the cynocephalous apes of Thoth.
In Egypt, however, the dwarf assumes the shape of Bes, who
is often represented with an ape on either side; and Bes with
his crown of feathers, along with the apes (or monkeys) that
accompany him, came from the south of Arabia to the valley of
the Nile.
The monotheistic tendency of the hymn to the moon-god
stands in marked contrast to the polytheism of the solar hymns.
The solar ritual, in fact, was essentially polytheistic. But Nannar
or Sin, the moon-god, was“the prince of the gods,”the ruler of
the starry hosts of heaven. By the side of him the stars were but
as the sheep of a flock in the presence of their shepherd, or as
the people of a State in the presence of their deified king. Hence
he was lord over his brother gods in a way that the sun-god