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Updated: June 21, 2025
In Babylon I erected no buildings for myself nor for the glory of my empire. In the worship of Bel-Merodach, my Lord, the joy of my heart, in Babylon the city of his worship and the seat of my empire, I did not sing his praise, nor did I furnish his altar with victims" and then, as if returning to the thing that lay nearest him "In four years I did not dig out the canals."
Like Rimmon, Nebo also must have been transported to Palestine at an early epoch. Nebo "the prophet" was the interpreter of Bel-Merodach of Babylon, the patron of cuneiform literature, and the god to whom the great temple of Borsippa the modern Birs-i-Nimrud was dedicated. Doubtless he had migrated to the West along with that literary culture over which he presided.
It was a double city, built on either side of the Euphrates, and adjoining its suburb of Borsippa, once an independent town. Babylon seems to have been a colony of Eridu, and its god, Bel-Merodach, called by the Sumerians "Asari who does good to man," was held to be the son of Ea, the culture-god of Eridu.
Bel-Merodach is, beyond all doubt, the planet Jupiter, which is still called Bel by the Mendaeans. The name Merodach is of uncertain etymology and meaning. It has been compared with the Persian Mardak, the diminutive of mard, "a man," and with the Arabic Mirrich, which is the name of the planet Mars.
Bel-Merodach was worshipped in the early Chaldaean kingdom, as appears from the Tel-Sifr tablets. He was probably from a very remote time the tutelary god of the city of Babylon; and hence, as that city grew into importance, the worship of Merodach became more prominent.
Rimmon or Hadad, the god of the air, whom the Syrians identified with the Sun-god, Nebo, the god of prophecy, the interpreter of the will of Bel-Merodach, Anu, the god of the sky, and Anat, his consort, all alike meet us in the names sometimes of places, sometimes of persons. Mr. Tomkins is probably right in seeing even in Beth-lehem the name of the primeval Chaldæan deity Lakhmu.
More probably, his confession of Jehovah as the God of heaven was consistent in his mind with a similar confession as to Bel-Merodach or the supreme god of any other of the conquered nations.
They had nearly the same gods as the Ninevites, but thought the special protector of their city was Bel-Merodach, the name by which they called the planet Jupiter.
By Jupiter, or rather Zeus, we must understand Bel-Merodach. Diodorus calls the god of the temple Zeus Belus. LOFTUS, Travels, &c., p. 131. See also TAYLOR's papers in vol. xv. of the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal. "It rather struck me, however, from the gradual inclination from top to base, that a grand staircase of the same width as the upper story, occupied this side of the structure."
He seems to have been the tutelary god of Is or Hit, which Isidore of Charax calls Aeipolis, or "Hea's city;" but there is no evidence that this was a very ancient place. The Assyrian kings built him temples at Asshur and Calah. Hoa had a wife Dav-Kina, of whom a few words will be said presently. Their most celebrated son was Merodach or Bel-Merodach, the Belus of Babylonian times.
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