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There was yet another, the reading of which is uncertain, though it may be Khidhi or Titi. Mr. Boscawen has pointed out a coincidence that is at least worthy of attention. The first Babylonian monarch who penetrated into the peninsula of Sinai bore a name compounded with that of the Moon-god, which thus bears witness to a special veneration for that deity.
Can it have been that the mountain whereon the God of Israel afterwards revealed Himself to Moses was dedicated to the Moon-god of Babylon by Naram-Sin the Chaldæn conqueror? If such indeed were the case, it would have been more than two thousand years before the Israelitish exodus.
Sin, the Moon-god, ranked next to Beltis in Assyrian mythology, and his place is thus either fifth or sixth in the full lists, according as Beltis is, or is not, inserted. There is no sign which is more frequent on the cylinder-seals, whether Babylonian or Assyrian, and it would thus seem that Sin was among the most popular of Assyria's deities.
The kings do not feel as close to them as to Marduk, or to Ashur, or even to the sun-god, or to the moon-god. The invocation of the triad partakes more of a formal character, as though in giving to these three gods the first place, the writers felt that they were following an ancient precedent that had more of a theoretical than a practical value for their days.
The day begins with the evening, and not with sunrise. The moon, as the chief of the starry firmament, and controlling the fate of mankind, was the main factor in giving to the orb of night, this peculiar prominence. The 'service, accordingly implied in the name of Shamash appears to have been such as was demanded by his subsidiary position to the moon-god.
The sun-god, through the glowing heat that he develops, becomes, as we have seen, the warrior and even the destroyer, the consuming force. The moon-god is the benefactor of mankind who restores the energies of man weakened from the heat of the day. Nannar-Sin becomes the giver of life, whose mercies are extended to all.
Of the great gods, Anu, the god of the sky, was the father and king of all. Sin, the moon-god, a Sumerian divinity, at the outset had the highest rank. Bel, or Baal, however, a Semitic divinity, was the god of the earth, and particularly of mankind. Ea was the god of the deep, and of the underworld.
And, though such a procedure has its natural outcome in Cabbalistic tendencies, we can still discern in the ideas that lead to this association of numbers with gods, influences at work that emanated from the astronomical schools. Thus the moon-god Sin is identified with the number thirty, suggested by the days of the ordinary month.
A year or two later he obtained possession of Persia, and a war with Lydia in B.C. 545 led to the conquest of Asia Minor. Nabonidos had doubtless looked on with satisfaction while the Scythian power was being overthrown, and had taken advantage of its fall to rebuild the temple of the Moon-god at Harran, which had been destroyed by the Scythians fifty-four years before.
These objects have probably, both of them, a sacred import, the crescent being the emblem of Sin, the Moon-God, while the nameless article had some unknown religious use or meaning.
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