The part played by the Mitanni people of Aryan speech in distributing
Asiatic culture throughout Europe may have been considerable, but we
know little or nothing regarding their movements and influence, nor
has sufficient evidence been forthcoming to connect them with the
cremating invaders of the Bronze Age, who penetrated as far as
northern Scotland and Scandinavia. On the other hand it is certain
that the Hittites adopted the planetary system of Babylonia and passed
it on to Europeans, including the Greeks. The five planets Ninip,
Merodach, Nergal, Ishtar, and Nebo were called by the Greeks after
their gods Kronos, Zeus, Ares, Aphrodite, and Hermes, and by the
Romans Saturnus, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercurius. It must be
recognized, however, that these equations were somewhat arbitrary.
Ninip resembled Kronos and Saturnus as a father, but he was also at
the same time a son; he was the Egyptian Horus the elder and Horus the
younger in one. Merodach was similarly of complex character--a
combination of Ea, Anu, Enlil, and Tammuz, who acquired, when exalted
by the Amoritic Dynasty of Babylon, the attributes of the thunder god
Adad-Ramman in the form of Amurru, "lord of the mountains". During the
Hammurabi Age Amurru was significantly popular in personal names. It
is as Amurru-Ramman that Merodach bears comparison with Zeus. He also
links with Hercules. Too much must not be made, therefore, of the
Greek and Roman identifications of alien deities with their own.
Mulla, the Gaulish mule god, may have resembled Mars somewhat, but it
is a "far cry" from Mars-Mulla to Mars-Nergal, as it is also from the
Gaulish Moccus, the boar, called "Mercury", to Nebo, the god of
culture, who was the "Mercury" of the Tigro-Euphrates valley.
Similarly the differences between "Jupiter-Amon" of Egypt and
"Jupiter-Merodach" of Babylon were more pronounced than the
resemblances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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