The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

246 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

the supremacy also of the divinity to whom it was dedicated;
its decay involved his decline. The gods of the subject cities
were the vassals of the deity of the dominant State; when the
kings of Ur were supreme in Babylonia, the moon-god of Ur was
supreme as well. Similarly the rise of Babylon brought with it the
supremacy of Merodach, the god of Babylon, who henceforward
became the Bel or“Lord”of the whole pantheon.
A god who had once occupied so exalted a position could
not, however, be easily deposed. Babylonian history preserved
[268] the memory of the ruling dynasties whose suzerainty had been
acknowledged throughout the country, and Babylonian religion
equally remembered the gods whose servants and representatives
they had been. A god who had once been supreme over Babylonia
could not again occupy a lower seat; it was necessary to find a
place for him by the side of the younger deity, whose position was
merely that of a chief among his peers. When Babylon became
the capital, the older seats of empire still claimed equality with
her, and the priestly hierarchies of Ur or Erech or Sippara
still accounted themselves the equals of her priesthood. The
ancient sanctuaries survived, with their cults unimpaired and
their traditions still venerated; and the reverence paid to the
sanctuary and its ministers was reflected back upon the god.
Hence it was that at the head of the official faith there
stood a group of supreme gods, each with his rank and powers
definitely fixed, and each worshipped in some one of the great
cities of the kingdom. But the system of which they formed
part was necessarily of artificial origin. It was the work of a
theological school, such as was made possible by the existence
of the primeval sanctuaries of Nippur and Eridu. Without
these latter the organisation of Babylonian religion would have
been imperfect or impossible. But from the earliest days of
Babylonian civilisation, Nippur and Eridu had alike exercised
a unifying influence on the diverse and discordant elements of
which the population was composed; they were centres, not only