There were two councils, one consisting of twelve members, the other of ten; the former was composed of the most popular gods of Southern Chaldaea, representing the essential elements of the world, while the latter consisted of the great deities of Northern Chaldaea, whose function it was to regulate or make known the destinies of men. The authors of this system, who belonged to Southern Chaldaea, naturally gave the position to their patron gods, and placed the twelve above the ten. It is well known that Orientals display a great respect for numbers, and attribute to them an almost irresistible power; we can thus understand how it was that the Chaldaeans applied them to designate their divine masters, and we may calculate from these numbers the estimation in which each of these masters was held. The goddesses had no value assigned to them in this celestial arithmetic, Ishtar excepted, who was not a mere duplication, more or less ingenious, of a previously existing deity, but possessed from the beginning an independent life, and could thus claim to be called goddess in her own right. The members of the two triads were arranged on a descending scale, Anu taking the highest place: the scale was considered to consist of a soss of sixty units in length, and each of the deities who followed Anu was placed ten of these units below his predecessor, Bel at 50 units, Ea at 40, Sin at 30, Shamash at 20, Ramman at 10 or 6. The gods of the planets were not arranged in a regular series like those of the triads, but the numbers attached to them expressed their proportionate influence on terrestrial affairs: to Ninib was assigned the same number as had been given to Bel, 50, to Merodach perhaps 25, to Ishtar 15, to Nergal 12, and to Nebo 10. The various spirits were also fractionally estimated, but this as a class, and not as individuals: the priests would not have known how to have solved the problem if they had been obliged to ascribe values to the infinity of existences.* As the Heliopolitans were obliged to eliminate from the Ennead many feudal divinities, so the Chaldaeans had left out of account many of their sovereign deities, especially goddesses, Bau of Uru, Nana of Uruk, and Allat; or if they did introduce them into their calculations, it was by a subterfuge, by identifying them with other goddesses, to whom places had been already assigned; Bau being thus coupled with Ohila, Nana with Ishtar, and Allat with Ninhl-Beltis. If figures had been assigned to the latter proportionate to the importance of the parts they played, and the number of their votaries, how comes it that they were excluded from the cycle of the great gods? They were actually placed alongside rather than below the two councils, and without insistence upon the rank which they enjoyed in the hierarchy. But the confusion which soon arose among divinities of identical or analogous nature opened the way for inserting all the