We should indeed be in an evil case if we were restricted for our knowledge of Canaanitish rites to these fragments, which carry so plainly on the front of them their late origin, their fictitious genealogical combinations, into which the gods are brought, their over-subtle Euhemerism, and their mixture with Greek and Egyptian ideas. That threads of various systems of cosmogony intertwine and cross each other in these fragments is proved by the derivation of the origin of the world, first from the wind, and next from chaos, and then from Kolpia and Baau, and by the repetition even to the third time of the discovery of hunting, agriculture, and navigation. Happily there are other sources of information which allow us to bring the statements of Philo into some sort of order, and to supplement them in very essential points. We saw that the highest god of the Babylonians was El. If Philo tells us that the star known by his name, _i.e._ the planet Saturn, was consecrated to king El after his death, and if this king allows Astarte, Demarus, and even Adodus, the king of the gods, to rule after his death,--if he apportions cities and provinces to Baaltis and the Cabiri,--it becomes clear enough that for the Canaanites also El was the ruling god, and that in Syria also the planet Saturn belonged to him. But from the contest of El with Uranus, _i.e._ with the sky-god, in Philo, we may also with certainty conclude, that among the Canaanites also the highest place was allotted to Baal-Samim, _i.e._ to the lord of the sky, as Philo rightly explains that name; Philo denotes him as the god worshipped by the earliest generations of mankind. Among the Greeks also there was a myth, borrowed no doubt from the East, that Zeus (Baal) had once striven with El-Cronus.[503] As the god of Saturn, the El of the Canaanites would have to be placed beside the Adar of the Eastern Semitic nations. The inscriptions of Ramses II. have already mentioned Baal as the god of the Cheta. We also saw that the nomads of the peninsula of Sinai consecrated their highest mountain summit to the god of this name. The Moabites invoked Baal on Mount Peor. In Canaan also the mountain summits were sacred to this deity; in the south of the land the lonely peak of Casius on the Serbonian lake, then Carmel, Tabor, and Hermon. The Philistines worshipped him at Ekron; the names of numerous places in Canaan,--Baal Hamon, Baal Hazor, Baal Meon, Baal Gad, Baal Perazim, Baal Tamar, Baalath, Baalbec, &c.,--give us sufficient proof of the widespread worship of Baal in Canaan. We shall not go wrong if we regard him as the deity of the beneficent operation of the sun. If El cuts off the genitals of Uranus, _i.e._ of Baal-Samim, and the blood flows into the springs and streams, the meaning of the myth is without doubt that the beneficent god has imparted his life-giving, creating power to the fertilising water. Among the Phenicians springs and streams were sacred.