neglected personalities in the framework already prepared for them. A sky-god, like Dagan, would mingle naturally with Anu, and enjoy like honours with him. The gods of all ranks associated with the sun or fire, Nusku, Gibil, and Dumuzi, who had not been at first received among the privileged group, obtained a place there by virtue of their assimilation to Shamash, and his secondary forms, Bel-Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal. Ishtar absorbed all her companions, and her name put in the plural, Ishtarati, “the Ishtars,” embraced all goddesses in general, just as the name Hani took in all the gods. Thanks to this compromise, the system flourished, and was widely accepted: local vanity was always able to find a means for placing in a prominent place within it the feudal deity, and for reconciling his pretensions to the highest rank with the order of precedence laid down by the theologians of Uruk. The local god was always the king of the gods, the father of the gods, he who was worshipped above the others in everyday life, and whose public cult constituted the religion of the State or city. * As far as we can at present determine, the most ancient series established was that of the planetary gods, whose values, following each other irregularly, are not calculated on a scheme of mathematical progression, but according to the empirical importance, which a study of predictions had ascribed to each planet. The regular series, that of the great gods, bears in its regularity the stamp of its later introduction: it was instituted after the example of the former, but with corrections of what seemed capricious, and fixing the interval between the gods always at the same figure.