SHALEM, in Jeru-salem (Uru-salim in the Amarna letters), has been identified (on the analogy of Jeru-el) with a god who is known later in Phoenicia, Assyria, and North Arabia, and who is perhaps combined with Resheph on an Egyptian stele of our period. He was perhaps identified with Ninib. The antiquity of GAD, the deity of fortune, can be assumed from place-names. In a disguised form the goddess, 'Fortune' was the guardian-deity of the cities in the Greek age, and allusion is made in the Talmud to the couch {93} reserved for the 'luck of the house.' A deified 'Righteousness' (_sedek_) has been inferred from a name in the Amarna age; it would find a parallel in 'Right' and 'Integrity' the sons of the Assyrian god Sham ash, and both 'Integrity' and 'Righteousness' find a place in the Phoenician cosmogony which, in spite of its late dress, preserves many old features which recur in Hebrew myths. The Babylonian NERGAL, god of war, burning heat and pestilence, and ruler of Hades, the deity with whom was identified Saturn (and also Mars), should find a place in the pantheon. A seal from Taanach describes its owner as 'servant of Nergal' (p. 110), and the king of Cyprus reports to Egypt the desolation caused by the god's hand. Even as late as the third century B.C. we hear of a Phoenician who was his high-priest. As a solar fire-god he had in the west the name Sharrab or Sharraph with which the familiar Seraph may be identified. The god El of later Phoenician myth (the Greek Kronos; Saturn) was depicted with six-wings like the Seraphim. He was the god to whom children were sacrificed, whence the story that he had set the example by killing his own. If infants had been slain to Sharrab in Palestine, this would be in harmony with Nergal's character, and it may {94} be noticed that Nusku, who is sometimes associated with Nergal, was symbolised by a lamp (cp. above, p. 41). In the Old Testament the grim rites belong to Molech (properly Melek), but there are independent reasons for the view that the latter was the proper-name of the Phoenician El.[3] However this may be, the name MELEK, although really an appellative ('king'), passes over into a true proper-name; but it is not clear whether this is the case in our period where we meet with the personal names 'servant of Melek' (or, the king), 'El is Melek,' etc. [3] M.-J. Lagrange, _Études sur les Rel. Sémitiques_, p. 107 _sq._