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The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria
Contents:
The Gods and the Heavenly Bodies.
It has already been pointed out that, from the evidence of the Babylonian syllabary, the deities of the Babylonians were not astral in their origin, the only gods certainly originating in heavenly bodies being the sun and the moon. This leads to the supposition that the Babylonians, bearing these two deities in mind, may have asked themselves why, if these two were represented by heavenly bodies, the others should not be so represented also. Be this as it may, the other deities of the pantheon were so represented, and the full planetary scheme, as given by a bilingual list in the British Museum, was as follows:
Aku Sin the moon Sin Bišebi Šamaš the sun Šamaš Dapinu Umun-sig-êa Jupiter Merodach Zib[*] Dele-bat Venus Ištar Lu-lim Lu-bat-sag-uš Saturn Nirig (acc. to Jensen) Bibbu Lubat-gud Mercury Nebo Simutu Muštabarru Mars Nergal
mûtanu
All the above names of planets have the prefix of divinity, but in other inscriptions the determinative prefix is that for "star," /kakkabu/.
[*] This is apparently a Sumerian dialectic form, the original word having seemingly been Zig.
Contents:
Chicago:
Theophilus Goldridge Pinches, "The Gods and the Heavenly Bodies.," The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, trans. Weber, Gottfried in The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria Original Sources, accessed July 16, 2025, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=L1V42NPK6NKNF4K.
MLA:
Pinches, Theophilus Goldridge. "The Gods and the Heavenly Bodies." The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, translted by Weber, Gottfried, in The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Original Sources. 16 Jul. 2025. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=L1V42NPK6NKNF4K.
Harvard:
Pinches, TG, 'The Gods and the Heavenly Bodies.' in The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, trans. . cited in , The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. Original Sources, retrieved 16 July 2025, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=L1V42NPK6NKNF4K.
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