Sippar and Larsa the sun-god Samas was worshipped; at Ur the moon-god
Sin or Nannar; at Erech and Der the god of the heavens, Anu; at Muru,
Ennigi, and Kakru, the god of the atmosphere, Hadad or Rimmon; at
Eridu, the god of the deep, Aa or Ea; at Niffur[*] the god Bel; at
Cuthah the god of war, Nergal; at Dailem the god Uras; at Kis the god
of battle, Zagaga; Lugal-Amarda, the king of Marad, as the city so
called; at Opis Zakar, one of the gods of dreams; at Agade, Nineveh,
and Arbela, Istar, goddess of love and of war; Nina at the city Nina
in Babylonia, etc. When the chief deities were masculine, they were
naturally all identified with each other, just as the Greeks called
the Babylonian Merodach by the name of Zeus; and as Zer-panitum, the
consort of Merodach, was identified with Juno, so the consorts, divine
attendants, and children of each chief divinity, as far as they
possessed them, could also be regarded as the same, though possibly
distinct in their different attributes.

[*] Noufar at present, according to the latest explorers. Layard
(1856) has Niffer, Loftus (1857) Niffar. The native spelling is
Noufer, due to the French system of phonetics.


How the religion of the Babylonians developed.

The fact that the rise of Merodach to the position of king of the gods
was due to the attainment, by the city of Babylon, of the position of
capital of all Babylonia, leads one to suspect that the kingly rank of
his father Ea, at an earlier period, was due to a somewhat similar
cause, and if so, the still earlier kingship of Anu, the god of the
heavens, may be in like manner explained. This leads to the question
whether the first state to attain to supremacy was Der, Anu's seat,