monster Tiâmat naturally belonged to Bêl. But Marduk, the youthful god of Eridu, the son of Ea, was urged to attempt the feat. When he had slain the monster, there was joy among the gods. They vied with each other in bestowing honor on the victor. Finally Bêl steps forward and confers an honor also. He bestowed on Marduk his own title with these words: “Father Bêl calls Marduk the lord of the world.”[20] Marduk, therefore, is sometimes called the new Bêl in distinction from En-lil, the old Bêl.

The idea of origins is apparently not very fully elaborated in Babylonian literature. For instance, the Babylonians did not come so near to the idea of creation ex nihilo as the Hebrews. Their cosmogony starts with chaos. The expanse of the heavens appears specked with stars, some of which move with regularity. The moon travels across the expanse according to a prescribed order. Then the Babylonian bilingual account of the Creation gives a short statement of the creation of the land and sea, of man and beast. Generally, however, the divinity that planned and perfected order seems to be far in the background. The bilingual account says:

Now Marduk, we know, took the place of Bêl and Bêl handed over his prerogatives to Marduk. In transferring his rights he must have given over also his power to create. If Marduk possessed the power to create in the time of his popularity, Bêl must have had the same power in the days of his glory, before he was succeeded by Marduk. Therefore we are led to the belief that the early Babylonians looked upon Bêl as the creator of animal and human life on earth.

The following hymn may be regarded as embodying a legendary view of Bêl as creator, while the idea of destruction is also incorporated in the hymn:

2. Sin

Next after Bêl, the moon-god is worthy of consideration, because of the age of his cult, and because of the greatness of its influence in Babylonia. The moon-god had two Sumerian names, two Assyrian names and two great temples. The Sumerian name most often applied to the moon-god is Šis-ki, the particular meaning of which in this case does not seem to be very patent. If the two syllables Šis and ki are taken as nouns, the one is the construct state and the other in the genitive relation, the name means “brother of the land”, that is, “protector of the land”, or “helper of the land”. The other Sumerian name is En-zu, lord of wisdom, the intellectual attribute of wisdom being closely related to the physical property of giving light. While therefore Šis-ki expresses the material relation of the moon to the earth, En-zu seems to state the intellectual relation of the moon-god to the affairs of the earth. The first Assyrian name of the moon-god to be considered is Nannar. The derivation of this name is still in doubt. It generally occurs in bilingual literature as the Assyrian equivalent of the Sumerian Šis-ki (see IV R. 9, 3-18). Jastrow thinks that the word Nannar is made by the reduplication of nar, “light”, and the assimilation of the first r, Nar + nar = Nannar (see RBA. p. 72). The other Assyrian name, connected with the moon-god more often at Harran than at Ur, is Sin, the sign being EŠ, used also for “thirty”, and is applied to the moon-god as the deity of the month of thirty days. As the cult of the moon-god traveled from Ur to Harran, so the name of Sin traveled even into the peninsula of Arabia and probably became a local name there in the wilderness. The Assyrian kings of the second empire seemed to prefer to call the moon-god by the name Sin, but the Semitic Babylonians called him Nannar.

Nannar had a temple at Ur, called E-gišširgal, and one at Harran, known as E-ḥulḥul. Ur was the oldest of the two temple cities. Its history may possibly reach back to 4000 B. C. Ur held a position in southern Babylonia similar to that held by Nippur in northern Babylonia, but was not so old as Nippur. Ur was the religious centre in the south with Nannar as the state god, as Nippur was the religious centre in the north with Bêl as the state god. When the states of the south and the north were united under Ḥammurabi, Babylon, becoming the religious capital of the south and the north combined, the state lustre of the god of Babylon naturally came to dim the glory of the god of Ur as well as that of Nippur. Harran, situated on the Euphrates in the northern part of Assyria, never figured in state power, and was prominent only because of the importance of the events that centered there, on the road between the east and the west.

Nabonidus, the last Semitic Babylonian king (555-538 B. C.) was an enthusiastic devotee of the moon-god. He tells us what Ašurbânipal did to the temple of the moon-god at Mugheir. In speaking of that temple, he calls it the house of Sin which Ašurbânipal, king of Assyria, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria had built. Nabonidus himself rebuilt both the temples of the moon-god, the temple of E-gišširgal at Ur and the temple of E-ḥulḥul at Harran, and he gives us a description of the rebuilding of both. We also have two prayers of Nabonidus addressed to the moon-god, one addressed to him at E-gišširgal, the other addressed to him at E-ḥulḥul (see I R. 68, Col. I, 6 ff. and V R. 64, Col. I, 8 ff.).

The temple ruins of E-gišširgal have been well uncovered. The temple is of rectangular form, the four corners turned towards the four cardinal points of the compass. The platform of the base is at the level of the roofs of the houses, made of solid masonry of bricks and reached by steps at the end. On the platform are two stagings, also of solid masonry reached by steps at one end. On the second staging is a shrine of the moon-god. In sculpture he appears as an old man with long beard and dressed in royal robes. He wears a hat and in the scene there is always a thin crescent (see Clercq, Vol. I, Plates X-XV). Loftus and Taylor both give drawings of the temple of E-gišširgal (see TR. p. 127 and JRAS. XV, p. 260.) The ruins of the temple of the moon-god at Harran have not yet been uncovered to the extent that the plan of the temple can be laid before us.

Theologically, Nannar stood at the head of the second triad of gods. The hierarchy of the universe consisted of the god Anu, the