The priesthood eventually proved irreconcilable with “the divine right” of the monarch, though both alike had the same origin. The priests prevailed over the king, and as in England the doctrine of divine right was unable to survive the accession of a German line of princes, so in Babylonia the accession of a foreign, non-Semitic dynasty (that of the Kassites) dealt a death-blow to the belief in a deified king. The king became merely the representative and deputy of the divine “Lord” of heaven, deriving his right to rule from his adoption by the god as a son; Bel-Merodach came to be regarded as the true ruler of Babylonia, lord of the earth as well as of the heavens, and a theocratic state affords but little room for a secular king. The priests of Bel decided whom their god should recognize or not, and little by little the controlling power of the state passed into their hands It was in a sense a triumph for the non-Semitic element in the population. While the deification of the sovereign may be said to have been purely Semitic in its origin, the necessary corollary of an anthropomorphic conception of the deity, the supernatural powers supposed to be inherent in the priesthood went back to Sumerian times. It was because he had once been a master of spells that the priest of the anthropomorphic god could influence the spiritual world. The final triumph of the theocratic principle in Babylonia, where the Semite had been so long dominant, showed that the old racial element was still strong, and ready to reassert itself when the favourable moment arrived. Such, indeed, is generally the history of a mixed people: the conquering or immigrant race may seem to have suppressed or absorbed the earlier population of the country, but as generations pass the foreign element becomes weaker, and the nation in greater or less degree reverts to the older type. NOTE