It is also possible that some of the literary treasures obtained by him in other decaying cities of this region may have been placed in the library at Erech for the same reason, as it offered better opportunities for the safe deposit of these ancient documents. At any rate, we find that when Assur-bani-pal founded his great library at Nineveh many centuries later, and the ancient cities of Chaldea were ransacked for their literary treasures, it was at Erech that he reaped his richest harvest. As suggested, Erech was at the time of Sargon’s reformation of the gods of Chaldea, a populous and wealthy city. It possessed a powerful priesthood devoted to the service of Anu, the Sky God, the local god of Erech, who, for these reasons, was placed first in the trinity of gods, before the more ancient and sacred divinities of Turanian Chaldea. Nippur, the second capital of Chaldea, was also at this time a wealthy and populous city. Here was located a temple to Belus, the older Bel, identical with Mul-lil, the Lord of the lower world, and as the local god of Nippur, Bel became the second god in the trinity. The most ancient and sacred of all the gods of ancient Chaldea, Ea, the god of the great waters, the local divinity of Eridu, was not to be ignored, and was thus placed in the trinity of great gods. The triad thus formed represented the gods of the heavens, the lower world, and the great waters. Below this was another triad, consisting of Sin, the moon; Samas, the sun, and Vul, the atmosphere. Then followed other gods, representing visible planets, and still below these a host of lesser nature divinities. The transformation of some of these gods under Semitic influences, and their gradual absorption of the attributes of the older deities is a curious study in Chaldean mythology. It is of special interest as we find in these many familiar deities of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and other countries, who had their origin in ancient Chaldea. A prominent instance of this is the rise of Bel-Merodach, the great Baal, from a lesser to one of the greater gods, and whose cult extended with the increase of Assyrian and Babylonian power. When Bel-Merodach comes first distinctly in view it is as a local god of Babylon. With the consolidation of all southern Mesopotamia into the Babylonian empire, and the establishment of Babylon as its capital, the local god of this city waxed great with the greatness and importance of his local abode. This occurred under Hammurabi, or Khammuragas, the founder of the city and the empire, about 2356 B. C.