Those we have enumerated were the ancient Sumerian divinities, but the characteristics of most of them would have been lost to us, had we not learned, by means of other documents, to what gods the Semites assimilated them, gods who are better known and who are represented under a less barbarous aspect. Ningirsu, the lord of the division of Lagash which was called Girsu, was identified with Ninib; Inlil is Bel, Ninursag is Beltis, Inzu is Sin, Inanna is Ishtar, and so on with the rest. The cultus of each, too, was not a local cultus, confined to some obscure corner of the country; they all were rulers over the whole of Chaldaea, in the north as in the south, at Uruk, at Urn, at Larsam, at Nipur, even in Babylon itself. Inlil was the ruler of the earth and of Hades, Babbar was the sun, Inzu the moon, Inanna-Antmit the morning and evening star and the goddess or love, at a time when two distinct religious and two rival groups of gods existed side by side on the banks of the Euphrates. The Sumerian language is for us, at the present day, but a collection of strange names, of whose meaning and pronunciation we are often ignorant. We may well ask what beings and beliefs were originally hidden under these barbaric combinations of syllables which are constantly recurring in the inscriptions of the oldest dynasties, such as Pasag, Dunshagana, Dumuzi-. Zuaba, and a score of others. The priests of subsequent times claimed to define exactly the attributes of each of them, and probably their statements are, in the main, correct. But it is impossible for us to gauge the motives which determined the assimilation of some of these divinities, the fashion in which it was carried out, the mutual concessions which Semite and Sumerian must have made before they could arrive at an understanding, and before the primitive characteristics of each deity were softened down or entirely effaced in the process. Many of these divine personages, such as Ea, Merodach, Ishtar, are so completely transformed, that we may well ask to which of the two peoples they owed their origin. The Semites finally gained the ascendency over their rivals, and the Sumerian gods from thenceforward preserved an independent existence only in connection with magic, divination, and the science of foretelling events, and also in the formulas of exorcists and physicians, to which the harshness of their names lent a greater weight. Elsewhere it was Bel and Sin, Shamash and Eamman, who were universally worshipped, but a Bel, a Sin, a Shamash, who still betrayed traces of their former connection with the Sumerian Inlil and Inzu, with Babbar and Mermer. In whatever language, however, they were addressed, by whatever name they were called upon, they did not fail to hear and grant a favourable reply to the appeals of the faithful.