As early as Gudea they had entered upon this later period of religious development, and now, under the influence of Sargon occurred a blending of these systems with Semitic conceptions which continued the established religion of the Assyrians and Babylonians to the latest times. The latent tendencies of the Semitic mind seem to have been towards monotheism. While this did not prevent their recognition of the gods of the nations with whom they came in contact, and their frequent adoption of these as objects of worship, this tendency is yet manifest. With the later Assyrians, they united in the adoption of their national deity, Asshur; with the Moabites, in Chemosh; with the Hebrews, in Elohim, or Yahveh; and with them all, the Supreme One who united in Himself the great attributes of all the gods, the Creator of all things, the Arbiter of all human events. The Turanian Chaldeans, on the other hand, were unreserved polytheists. Their gods were as the sands of the sea for number. Each city, with its surrounding locality, had its special god, and the greater the city the greater the god, the more magnificent the temple dedicated to his worship, and the more powerful its priesthood. This was the case in the city of Ur, where Hurud, or Sin, the Moon God, was the local divinity. There were other moon gods in other localities, each worshipped in a special way, but the Moon God of Ur was greater than all. Thus it was with the worship of Ea, the god of the deep, the local god of the more ancient city of Eridu; and again of Anu, the Sky God of Erech. This organization of the Chaldean Pantheon by Sargon was simply the orderly arrangement of these into greater and lesser divinities, the blending of these separate local cults into one general system. At the head of this pantheon was placed the Semitic Illu, or El, signifying God, and whose name is the root word of the Hebrew Elohim and the Arabian Allah. Next in order, was a triad of great gods, Turanian divinities, consisting of Anu, the Sky God of Erech; Bel, or Mul-lil, the local god of Nippur, the Lord of the lower world, and last in this triad, of Ea, of Eridu, the god of the great waters, and creator of the Accadean race. The position of these gods in this triad is explained by local circumstances. At the time of this new arrangement of the Chaldean deities Erech was a prominent city of southern Mesopotamia. It had a richly endowed library, perhaps the greatest collection of literary treasures at this time known in the ancient world. This was greatly enlarged by Sargon, who, perhaps from motives of policy towards his Chaldean subjects, thought it wisest not to enrich his library at Agane at the expense of this the oldest of the libraries of southern Mesopotamia.