It will be seen that besides the identifications of the deities of all the local pantheons with each other, each divinity had almost as many names as attributes and titles, hence their exceeding multiplicity. In such an extensive pantheon, many of the gods composing it necessarily overlap, and identification of each other, to which the faith, in its primitive form, was a stranger, were inevitable. The tendency to monotheism which this caused will be referred to later on. The gods and the heavenly bodies. It has already been pointed out that, from the evidence of the Babylonian syllabary, the deities of the Babylonians were not astral in their origin, the only gods certainly originating in heavenly bodies being the sun and the moon. This leads to the supposition that the Babylonians, bearing these two deities in mind, may have asked themselves why, if these two were represented by heavenly bodies, the others should not be so represented also. Be this as it may, the other deities of the pantheon were so represented, and the full planetary scheme, as given by a bilingual list in the British Museum, was as follows: Aku Sin the moon Sin Bišebi Šamaš the sun Šamaš Dapinu Umun-sig-êa Jupiter Merodach Zib[*] Dele-bat Venus Ištar Lu-lim Lu-bat-sag-uš Saturn Nirig (acc. to Jensen) Bibbu Lubat-gud Mercury Nebo Simutu Muštabarru Mars Nergal mûtanu All the above names of planets have the prefix of divinity, but in other inscriptions the determinative prefix is that for "star," /kakkabu/. [*] This is apparently a Sumerian dialectic form, the original word having seemingly been Zig. Moon and Sun. Unfortunately, all the above identifications of the planets with the deities in the fourth column are not certain, namely, those corresponding with Saturn, Mercury, and Mars. With regard to the others, however, there is no doubt whatever. The reason why the moon is placed before the sun is that the sun, as already explained, was regarded as his son. It was noteworthy also that the moon was accredited with two other offspring, namely, Mâšu and Mâštu--son and daughter respectively. As /mâšu/ means "twin," these names must symbolise the two halves, or, as we say, "quarters" of the moon, who were thus regarded, in Babylonian mythology, as his "twin children." Jupiter and Saturn.