Here, then, in the conception of the divine, we have a clear dividing line between the Semite and his non-Semitic predecessor. So far back as the cuneiform monuments allow us to carry his history, the Semite is anthropomorphic. As a consequence, the gods he worships conform to the social conditions under which he lives. In the desert the sacred stone becomes “the temple of the god”; in the organized monarchy of Babylonia each deity takes his appointed place in an imperial court. Under the one supreme ruler there are princes and sub-princes, vice-regents and generals, while angel-messengers carry the commands of Bel to his subjects on earth, like the messengers who carried the letters of the Babylonian king along the high-roads of the empire. On the other hand, the earthly king receives his power and attributes from the god whose adopted son and representative he claims to be. Nowhere has “the divine right of kings” been more fully insisted on than in ancient Babylonia. The laws of the monarch had to be obeyed, foreign nations had to become his vassals, because he was a god on earth as the supreme Bel was god in heaven. But the reflection of the divine upon the human brought with it not only the exaltation of sovereignty, but also the rise of a priesthood. There were priests of a sort in Sumer of whom many different classes are enumerated. But when we examine the signification of the names attached to them we find that they were not priests in the true sense of the word. They were rather magicians, sorcerers, wizards, masters of charms. They do not develop into priests until after the Semite has entered upon the scene. The god and the priest make their appearance together. I do not think, however, that we are justified in concluding that the elaborate hierarchy of Babylonia was of purely Semitic origin. On the contrary, like the theological system with which it was associated, it was a composite product. Behind the gods and goddesses of Semitic Babylonia lay the primitive “spirits” and fetishes of Sumer; its mythology and cosmological theories rested on Sumerian foundations; and in the same way the priestly hierarchy was the result of a racial amalgamation in which the Semitic element had adopted and adapted the ideas and institutions of the older people. We do not find the theology and priesthood of Babylonia among other Semitic populations, except where they had been borrowed from the Babylonians (as in Assyria); in the form in which we know them they were peculiarly and distinctively Babylonian. Like the language of Semitic Babylonia, which is permeated with Sumerian elements, or the script, which is a Semitic adaptation of the Sumerian system of writing, they presuppose a mixture of race.