_THE CONSTRUCTION AND REVENUES OF THE TEMPLES--THE POPULAR GODS AND THE
THEOLOGICAL TRIADS----THE DEAD AND HADES_.
_Chaldaean cities: the resemblance of their ruins to natural mounds
caused by their exclusive use of brick as a building material--Their
city walls: the temples and local gods; reconstruction of their history
by means of the stamped bricks of which they were built--The two types
of ziggurat: the arrangement of the temple of Nannar at Uru.
The tribes of the Chaldaean gods--Genii hostile to men, their monstrous
shapes; the south-west wind; friendly genii--The Seven, and their
attacks on the moon-god; Gibil, the fire-god, overcomes them and their
snares--The Sumerian gods; Ningirsu: the difficulty of defining them and
of understanding the nature of them; they become merged in the Semitic
deities.
Characteristics and dispositions of the Chaldaean gods--the goddesses,
like women of the harem, are practically nonentities; Mylitta and
her meretricious rites--The divine aristocracy and its principal
representatives: their relations to the earth, oracles, speaking
statues, household gods--The gods of each city do not exclude those
of neighbouring cities: their alliances and their borrowings from one
another--The sky-gods and the earth-gods, the sidereal gods: the moon
and the sun.
The feudal gods: several among them unite to govern the world; the two
triads of Eridu--The supreme triad: Anu the heaven; Bel the earth and
his fusion with the Babylonian Merodach; Ea, the god of the waters--The
second triad: Sin the moon and Shamash the sun; substitution of Bamman
for Ishtar in this triad; the winds and the legend of Adapa, the
attributes of Ramman--The addition of goddesses to these two triads;
the insignificant position which they occupy.
The assembly of the gods governs the world: the bird Zu steals the
tablets of destiny--Destinies are written in the heavens and determined
by the movements of the stars; comets and their presiding deities, Nebo
and Ishtai--The numerical value of the gods--The arrangement of the
temples, the local priesthood, festivals, revenues of the gods and gifts
made to them--Sacrifices, the expiation of crimes--Death and the future
of the soul--Tombs and the cremation of the dead; the royal sepulchres
and funerary rites--Hades and its sovereigns: Nergal, Allat, the
descent of Ishtar into the infernal regions, and the possibility of a
resurrection The invocation of the dead--The ascension of Etana._
[Illustration: 124.jpg Chapter II]