The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

424 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

delegated his powers to him, and allowed him to exercise them
on earth. It was the doctrine of priestly mediation carried to its
logical conclusion. Only through the priest could the deity be
approached, and in the absence of the deity the high priest took
his place. At Babylon, as we have seen, the divine rights were
conferred by an act of adoption; the vicegerent of Bel, by“taking
the hand”and becoming the son of the god, acquired the right
to exercise his sovereignty over men. An early king of Erech
calls himself the son of the goddess Nin-aun. From the outset the
[462] Babylonian monarchy was essentially theocratic; the king was
simply the high priest in a new form.
But with the rise of Semitic supremacy the king himself
became a god. The vicegerent had taken to himself all the
attributes of the deity, the adopted son succeeded to the rights
and powers of his divine father. Thepatesiceased to be the
king himself, and became instead his viceroy and lieutenant.
Wherever the supreme monarch had a governor who acted in his
name, he had also a representative of his divine authority. There
were high priests of the god on earth as well as of the gods in
heaven.
A new term was wanted to take the place ofpatesi, which had
thus come to have a secular as well as a religious signification.
It was found insangu, which, more especially in the Assyrian
period, meant a chief priest. Every great sanctuary had its chief
priests who corresponded to the Hebrew“sons of Aaron,”with a
“high priest”orsangam-makhuat their head.^357 Under them were
a large number of subordinate priests and temple ministers—the
[463] kalior“gallos-priests,”^358 theniaakkior“sacrificers,”theramki

(^357) Thesanguwas calledêbarin Sumerian, with which the name of Eber in
Gen. xi. 15 may possibly be compared.
(^358) Not“astrologers,”as has sometimes been supposed.Kalûis borrowed from
the Sumeriankal, asmakhkhûis frommakh. At their head was theabba-kalla,
aba-kul, orab-gal, a word which under the first form is used as a proper name
in early Babylonian texts. Assyrian colonists carried it to Kappadokia, and
Strabo accordingly tells us that the high priest of Komana was called Abaklês.