The state of development to which the religious system of the Babylonians had attained at the earliest period to which the inscriptions refer naturally precludes the possibility of a trustworthy history of its origin and early growth. There is no doubt, however, that it may be regarded as having reached the stage at which we find it in consequence of there being a number of states in ancient Babylonia (which was at that time like the Heptarchy in England) each possessing its own divinity--who, in its district, was regarded as supreme--with a number of lesser gods forming his court. It was the adding together of all these small pantheons which ultimately made that of Babylonia as a whole so exceedingly extensive. Thus the chief divinity of Babylon, as has already been stated, as Merodach; at Sippar and Larsa the sun-god Šamaš was worshipped; at Ur the moon-god Sin or Nannar; at Erech and Dêr the god of the heavens, Anu; at Muru, Ennigi, and Kakru, the god of the atmosphere, Hadad or Rimmon; at Êridu, the god of the deep, Aa or Êa; at Niffur[1] the god Bel; at Cuthah the god of war, Nergal; at Dailem the god Uraš; at Kiš the god of battle, Zagaga; Lugal-Amarda, the king of Marad, as the city so called; at Opis Zakar, one of the gods of dreams; at Agadé, Nineveh, and Arbela, Ištar, goddess of love and of war; Nina at the city Nina in Babylonia, etc. When the chief deities were masculine, they were naturally all identified with each other, just as the Greeks called the Babylonian Merodach by the name of Zeus; and as Zer-panîtum, the consort of Merodach, was identified with Juno, so the consorts, divine attendants, and children of each chief divinity, as far as they possessed them, could also be regarded as the same, though possibly distinct in their different attributes. [1] Noufar at present, according to the latest explorers. Layard (1856) has Niffer, Loftus (1857) Niffar. The native spelling is Noufer, due to the French system of phonetics. How the religion of the Babylonians developed.