When once the various sun-gods of Babylonia had been assimilated, or identified, one with the other, it was not difficult to extend the process yet further. As the city of Merodach increased in power, lording it over the other States of the country, and giving to their inhabitants its own name, so Merodach himself took precedence over the older gods of Babylonia, and claimed the authority and the attributes which had belonged to them. Their names, and therewith their powers, were transferred to him; the supremacy of En-lil, the wisdom of Ea, the glory of Anu, alike became his. The “tablets of destiny,” which conferred on their possessor the government of the visible world, were taken from the older Bel and given to his younger rival; the wisdom of which Merodach had once been the interpreter now became his own; and, like Anu, his rule extended to the farthest regions of the sky. But in thus taking the place of the great gods of earth and heaven, Merodach was at the same time the inheritor and owner of their names. If the tablets of destiny had passed into his possession, it was because he had assumed along with them the name of Bel; if Ea and Anu had yielded to him their ancient prerogatives, it was because he had himself been transformed into the Ea and Anu of the new official theology. The Babylonian hymn in honour of Merodach, when it declares that the fifty names of the great gods had been conferred upon him, only expresses in another form the conviction that he had entered into the heritage of the older gods. As time went on, and Babylon continued to be the sovereign city of the kingdom, the position of its god became at once more exalted and more secure. The solar features in his character passed out of sight; he was not only the giver of the empire of the world to his adopted son and vicegerent, the king of Babylon, he was also the divine counterpart and representative of the king in heaven. The god had made man in his own image, and he was now transformed into the likeness of men. Two ideas, consequently, struggled for the mastery in Babylonian religion—the anthropomorphic conception of the deity, and the belief in his identification with other gods; and the result was an amalgamation of the two. Merodach was the divine man, freed from the limitations of our mortal existence, and therefore able not only to rule over the other gods, but also, like the magician, to make their natures his own. The other gods continued to exist indeed, but it was as his subjects who had yielded up to him their powers, and of whom, accordingly, he could dispose as seemed to him good. Originally the first among his peers, he ended—at least in the belief of the native of Babylon—in becoming supreme over them, and absorbing into himself all the attributes and prerogatives of divinity.